Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code

Because God wills it.

‘We shall set sail this morning on the tide,’ he replied slowly.

The young squire nodded and began to back away.

‘And, boy?’ Richard called out to him.

He stopped. ‘Yes, Sire?’

‘Bark at me like that again and I shall gouge the tongue from your mouth with the tip of my sword.’

The squire’s face paled. He nodded silently, not daring to speak again.

Richard watched him back away to a respectful distance, then turn and run towards the tents with the news. He turned back to look at the Channel and smiled. The weather for the crossing was good. The breeze freshening.

Because God wills it.

CHAPTER 44

1194, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham

The sunlight warmed Liam’s face. He closed his eyes, savoured its heat and listened contentedly to the sounds of Nottingham stirring to life: the tac-tac-tac of someone chopping firewood, the bray of a donkey, the bustle of market vendors setting up for the day, the bark of a dog setting off a dozen others. All these sounds echoed across the cluttered shack rooftops of the town and up towards the castle keep.

A flight of swallows swooped past Liam’s narrow window and he opened his eyes to watch them dive and chase each other. His gaze shifted across the warm summer shimmer of the walled town towards the spread of fields outside. All of them now being worked, striped with thick lines of barley and wheat.

Someone, somewhere below was singing. A distant female voice that seemed to share his contentment.

I could live here forever.

He sighed. He could, really, he could. He could abandon the mission. He could abandon Bob and Becks, let them return home without him and he could remain here in Nottingham as the sheriff. As long as he preserved history as it was, no one would need to come for him, would they? He could live out his natural life here, lord of all he surveyed.

A lovely dream.

One he could happily indulge all day. But, he sighed, there were matters to attend to.

Down below, in the flagstoned bailey, he could see soldiers being drilled. Eddie, working the new recruits. Bob was down there with him, demonstrating the on-guard position, a longsword glinting in the sunlight, above the coarse mop of his dark hair.

Liam stepped away from the window and finished dressing himself. A pageboy brought him a tray of freshly baked bread and honey, and a flagon of watered-down wine. Ten minutes later he emerged from the dark interior of the keep into the courtyard and watched the soldiers drilling for a while.

Finding men willing to join the guard and replenish the garrison had been nigh on impossible five months ago. The people of Nottingham would have turned on any young man foolish enough to announce he planned to offer his services to the sheriff. But that was before Liam had opened the doors of the castle’s storehouse and offered loaves baked fresh from the contents of their granary. Word got around the town’s starving folk, barely managing on nettle stews and pottages made from rotting vegetables, and that simple gesture on day one of Liam’s role as sheriff had put an end to the nightly riots.

Eddie spotted Liam standing and watching. ‘Good morning, sire!’ he called out.

Liam nodded and waved. ‘Morning, Eddie. Your lads are looking good.’

Several of the men drilling turned and knuckled their foreheads politely. Smiles and nods from recruits old and young alike.

Liam, Cabot and Bob had taken inventory of the castle and found food stores enough for the garrison to feed on generously six months or more. Shared out carefully with the townspeople, there’d been enough for a month. Liam had then decreed that the King’s forests were free for all to find food and game in, to forage for wild-growing shoots, nuts and berries, for the immediate future. A popular measure that ensured a steady supply of food into the town’s market every day. Satisfied that support for the revolt within Nottingham had been averted, Cabot had soon returned to Kirklees to oversee his priory.

Barely a week after they’d taken over from the previous sheriff, Liam and Bob were able to mount a few cautious patrols beyond Nottingham’s walls, which was timely. With spring arriving, the fields beyond needed to be worked if the people were going to feed themselves.

Seeing Liam, Bob disengaged from his class of recruits and ordered them to stand easy. They lowered their heavy swords and shields with sighs of relief as he walked through them towards Liam.

‘Sheriff,’ he greeted Liam formally.

Liam beckoned Bob to walk with him around the edge of the bailey, out of earshot so they could talk freely. ‘Bob,’ he said quietly, ‘how much mission time have we got left?’

‘Twenty-four days, nineteen hours and forty-three minutes of mission time remain.’

Liam nodded, thoughtfully stroking the thin tufts of downy dark hair that had sprouted along his jaw in the last few months. ‘We have, what? Less than four weeks left?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘Both you and Becks will need to return.’

Bob nodded. ‘Our mission countdown needs to be reset.’

Six months: a safety measure. Hard-coded into them both was a self-destruct command. The tiny mass of circuitry inside their skulls would fry itself. It meant computer technology from the 2050s was never going to fall into the hands of somebody from an earlier time, nor could a killing machine like Bob ever become reconditioned or reprogrammed to be used by some tyrant. If the support units failed to return and have their mission clocks reset, a tiny puff of burnt-out circuitry would leave Bob and Becks nothing more than dribbling village idiots.

‘I think I should take a trip out to see Mr Cabot. We’ll need to leave a message for Maddy. Let her know we’re getting on top of things.’

Bob grunted an affirmative.

They’d need to set up a return window so that both support units could be returned and reset. It would also be an opportunity for him to update Maddy fully. From where Liam was standing, it appeared support for the peasants’ rebellion had ebbed away. The people of Nottingham at least seemed content to go about their business. The poor and hungry of the surrounding towns and villages would surely soon follow their lead, once the harvest was gathered and food could be distributed more widely. If history was back on track — and it looked that way — then he and Bob could proceed with the rest of their mission: to comb those woods he could see on the horizon, for the hooded bandit and his dwindling band of followers … and hopefully retrieve the Grail from them.

Truth was that mob of bandits, whether led by some hooded figure or not, appeared to be operating further away now that Nottingham and the surrounding area was back under some semblance of order. The farms were now regularly patrolled by their raw recruits, and the daily sight of a column of one hundred men in chain mail appeared to have been enough of a disincentive to those villains that no crops had been flamed or ruined so far this year.

This time last year, Liam had learned from Cabot, they’d been raiding every farm they’d come across — the workers killed, animals butchered or stolen, fields left in flames. And a summer had passed in which little food could be set aside for the winter. The previous sheriff had done nothing to prepare for the inevitable famine, except, of course, to ensure his own castle was well stocked.

Liam had been stunned at how much the simple gesture of offering bread to the poor and starving of the town had achieved, ending the riots with one stroke. These hardy people were prepared to endure endless hardship and sacrifice and even offer their unfailing loyalty … so long as their noble-born masters treated them like human beings.