Alex Scarrow - The Doomsday Code

However, merely having columns of men tramping around the Nottingham countryside wearing the royal burgundy tunic sporting three amber lions and managing to approximate the look of soldiers seemed to have had the effect that Liam was after. The banditry, the raids, the lawlessness had receded from the town and the surrounding farming villages and disappeared deep into the woods.

Bob’s AI took a moment to shuffle through a high-level menu of mission objectives. The current primary goal of subverting a peasant uprising originating from Nottingham appeared to have been met. But until he received a tachyon signal from the field office confirming that history had realigned itself, it remained a mission goal yet to be struck off the list.

Liam O’Connor seemed content to leave the majority of the logistics of running the castle, leading the garrison and overseeing the feeding of the people of Nottingham to him. The fleshy part of Bob’s mind seemed to want to communicate something to him about that. An emotion of some sort. He tried to identify it, tried to find a human label for it, and finally came up with one.

Pride?

His silicon mind stepped in and decided to phrase that more concisely.

[Analysis: mission achievement verification bonus]

He tried out one of his library of smiles — one of the smaller ones that looked less like a horse flashing its gums. It matched that small buzz of satisfaction he was feeling. He decided the smile worked and matched this mild emotion he was currently experiencing. He labelled it: [ Proud-Smile-001].

A voice calling down from the gatehouse disturbed his musing. He looked across at the gatehouse’s entrance archway to see a wounded man being helped through the gates by several others.

‘You may now rest,’ he instructed the drilling recruits, and stepped across the courtyard towards the new arrivals.

Drawing closer, he could see the burgundy and amber colours on the man and recognized the face as one of the dozen men assigned to escort Liam to Kirklees Priory. He was aware that Liam was a day late but had assumed he had decided to stay with Cabot a second night. Bob’s pace quickened until he stood beside the man being lowered gently to the ground by several men from the town.

‘Sire,’ said one of them, ‘we found ’im collapsed in the marketplace.’

Bob knelt down and inspected him. Blood soaked half his tunic, turning it almost black.

‘He will not survive for very long. He has lost too much blood.’

The soldier was one of the first intake of recruits; Bob retrieved the man’s name from his database. ‘Henry Gardiner, you must tell me what has happened.’

The man looked up at him. ‘Sire … sire … they ambushed … us! They …’ He coughed, spluttering a dark spray of blood down his chest. ‘A … a … drink … please.’

Bob called for one of the water-bearers and then carefully helped the man to sip a ladle of water.

‘Continue when ready,’ he said as the man finished and let the ladle go.

‘Ambushed us … yesterday. The Hood’s men …’ he panted in short rattling breaths. ‘The sheriff …’

‘What has happened to the sheriff?’

‘Took … took him …’

‘He is alive?’

Henry Gardiner appeared to be waning fast, his eyelids fluttering, his face pinching from the pain.

‘He is alive?’ Bob repeated insistently.

‘Aye … y-yes … they took … they took him …’

Bob nodded. ‘Understood,’ his deep voice rumbled. He turned to one of the recruits standing nearby. ‘Fetch this man some mead from our store-room.’ He estimated the dying man had another hour of life left in him. The alcohol would at least make it a comfortable hour. Bob evaluated the man deserved at least that for dutifully struggling back to make his report. His grey eyes swivelled on to the townsfolk who’d helped him in. ‘You are good civilians. I am grateful for your assistance. You may also drink some mead.’

The men tugged their forelocks with gratitude.

Bob rested a hand on Gardiner’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. ‘You have functioned well, Henry Gardiner.’

He stood up, his mind already shuffling through a decision-tree of actions he was going to need to take. There wasn’t a great deal of calculative effort required to come up with the conclusion that retrieving Liam alive was the preferred course of action. It didn’t conflict with the primary objective; what’s more, Liam O’Connor’s role as sheriff had proven to be effective among the local population. The people appeared to like him and would want their sheriff back.

Bob had already made the decision to find and rescue him. He was just waiting for his code to spit that out as a formal menu option.

But finding him, finding where exactly the Hood’s men were encamped within the forests of Nottingham, could take days, weeks, perhaps even months. He didn’t have that kind of time. He had just twenty-three days left until either he returned to 2001, or his silicon mind fused itself here in 1194.

Little time to waste.

If there’d been a skirmish in the forests — an ambush, logically — it would have occurred on the forest track north-east between Nottingham and Kirklees Priory. There would be detectable signs of the fight still: bloodstains, scuff marks … perhaps a trail to follow. Perhaps the raiders were still in the vicinity.

He turned to look up at the men in the guardhouse above. Several faces were peering curiously down. One of them he recognized as belonging to one of the original guard that had escorted them here from Oxford nearly six months ago. Like Eddie, a veteran with experience. He pulled the man’s name from his database.

‘Jethro Longstreet?’

‘Sire?’

‘Under the authority of the Sheriff of Nottingham, I am promoting you to garrison commander of this castle in my absence.’

He could see the man’s eyes widen with disbelief.

‘You will continue the daily patrols of the farms outside.’ His voice echoed around the castle’s walls. ‘You will continue supervising morning food distribution in the town marketplace. You will also maintain the training regime for these new recruits. I will be absent for several days. Are these instructions perfectly clear?’

‘Aye … aye, sire.’

‘Then proceed in this role.’

He turned to the men standing nearby. ‘And bring me a horse immediately.’

1194, Oxford Castle

Becks detected noises of distress coming from the castle’s outer walls: raised voices, high-pitched and signifying alarm. And one of those voices she identified as John’s.

A few minutes later he staggered into the great hall, gasping, looking for her. His eyes found her standing beside an arched window doing her best to look serene and ladylike. He came quickly over.

‘’Tis true! I have j-just this minute heard!’ he stammered.

‘What is true?’

‘R-Richard … he has s-set foot in England!’ John’s face was ashen with fear and damp with sweat. ‘The messenger … the messenger arrived this morning! He tells me he set foot in Dover yesterday!’

Becks consulted her database and a map of England. It was 118 miles from Dover to Oxford. A piece of data she didn’t have was how many miles an army from this period could travel in a day. However, a determined man could cover that distance in two days. John had already told her his brother most likely would gather supporters along the way, with his growing army eventually catching up with him.

‘Do you believe he will come to Oxford immediately?’ she asked.

John nodded frantically. ‘He will come here directly … b-because he believes the Grail is here!’ He swallowed nervously. ‘I will have to be the one to tell him — tell him that it’s lost. It was on my instructions the Templars were taking it north to Scotland.’ John’s nerves spilled out and became a manic laugh. ‘He’s going to kill me!’