Knight Quest (Time Hunters, Book 2)

by Chris Blake

  Time Hunters: Knight Quest

  Chris Blake

  Travel through time with Tom and Isis on more

  adventures!

  Time Hunters: Gladiator Clash

  Time Hunters: Knight Quest

  Time Hunters: Viking Raiders

  Time Hunters: Greek Warriors

  Time Hunters: Pirate Mutiny

  Time Hunters: Egyptian Curse

  For games, competitions and more visit:

  www.time-hunters.com

  With special thanks to

  Marnie Stanton-Riches

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Class Clown

  Chapter 2: Pigging Out

  Chapter 3: The Real King Arthur

  Chapter 4: It’s a Knock Out

  Chapter 5: Horsing Around

  Chapter 6: There Be Dragons

  Chapter 7: Caving In

  Chapter 8: The Cat’s Meow

  Chapter 9: Arise, Sir Al

  Chapter 10: Back to School

  Who were the Mightiest Knights?

  Weapons

  Knight Quest Timeline

  Time Hunters Timeline

  Fantastic Facts

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Five thousand years ago

  Princess Isis and her pet cat, Cleo, stood outside the towering carved gates to the Afterlife. It had been rotten luck to fall off a pyramid and die at only ten years of age, but Isis wasn’t worried – the Afterlife was meant to be great. People were dying to go there, after all! Her mummy’s wrappings were so uncomfortable she couldn’t wait a second longer to get in, get her body back and wear normal clothes again.

  “Oi, Aaanuuubis, Anubidooby!” Isis shouted impatiently. “When you’re ready, you old dog!”

  Cleo started to claw Isis’s shoulder. Then she yowled, jumping from Isis’s arms and cowering behind her legs.

  “Calm down, fluffpot,” Isis said, bending to stroke her pet. “He can’t exactly woof me to death!” The princess laughed, but froze when she stood up. Now she understood what Cleo had been trying to tell her.

  Looming up in front of her was the enormous jackal-headed god of the Underworld himself, Anubis. He was so tall that Isis’s neck hurt to look up at him. He glared down his long snout at her with angry red eyes. There was nothing pet-like about him. Isis gulped.

  “‘WHEN YOU’RE READY, YOU OLD DOG?’” Anubis growled. “‘ANUBIDOOBY?’”

  Isis gave the god of the Underworld a winning smile and held out five shining amulets. She had been buried with them so she could give them to Anubis to gain entry to the Afterlife. There was a sixth amulet too – a gorgeous green one. But Isis had hidden it under her arm. Green was her favourite colour, and surely Anubis didn’t need all six.

  Except the god didn’t seem to agree. His fur bristled in rage. “FIVE? Where is the sixth?” he demanded.

  Isis shook her head. “I was only given five,” she said innocently.

  To her horror, Anubis grabbed the green amulet from its hiding place. “You little LIAR!” he bellowed.

  Thunder started to rumble. The ground shook. Anubis snatched all six amulets and tossed them into the air. With a loud crack and a flash of lightning, they vanished.

  “You hid them from me!” he boomed. “Now I have hidden them from you – in the most dangerous places throughout time.”

  Isis’s bandaged shoulders drooped in despair. “So I c-c-can’t come into the Afterlife then?”

  “Not until you have found each and every one. But first, you will have to get out of this…” Anubis clicked his fingers. A life-sized pottery statue of the goddess Isis, whom Isis was named after, appeared before him.

  Isis felt herself being sucked into the statue, along with Cleo. “What are you doing to me?” she yelled.

  “You can only escape if somebody breaks the statue,” Anubis said. “So you’ll have plenty of time to think about whether trying to trick the trickster god himself was a good idea!”

  The walls of the statue closed around Isis, trapping her and Cleo inside. The sound of Anubis’s evil laughter would be the last sound they would hear for a long, long time…

  “I’m going to have such fun going through your things when you’re at school,” Isis said, rubbing her ragged hands together. “Your computer. Your football-sticker book. Your Star Wars figures.”

  Tom dropped his school bag on the floor. “NO WAY!”

  Mum put her hand on his forehead. “Are you feeling all right, dear? I only asked you if you had your lunch box. There’s no need to have a fit.”

  Tom glanced over at the stairs, where the mummified figure of Princess Isis Amun-Ra was sitting. Her cat, Cleo, also wrapped in bandages, was curled up on her lap, invisible to everyone except Tom. Isis’s crumbly old wrappings had left ancient white dust all over the carpet.

  “Have fun at school!” she said. Waving stiffly, she picked up Cleo and started to shuffle off to his room.

  It wasn’t fair! No one else in Tom’s class was beginning the new term knowing that the mummies of an Ancient Egyptian princess and her pet cat were at their home, snooping around and generally causing havoc. Mum and Dad couldn’t see Isis and Cleo, so if the mummies made a mess, Tom knew he would get the blame.

  “I’ll just fetch your P.E. kit,” Mum said, disappearing into the kitchen.

  Tom rounded on Isis. “Listen! You mustn’t touch anything while I’m out. We don’t know when Anubis will send us on our next mission. So…” He scratched his shock of blond curls as he searched for the right words, “… just keep out of trouble.”

  Isis leaned over the banister. “Don’t get all bossy with me. You’re the whole reason I’m here. It was you who smashed my statue at your dad’s museum. You set me free again. Remember?”

  Tom threw his hands in the air. “Yes, but aren’t you forgetting the bit where I risked my neck travelling back in time to help you find your first amulet? It was you who tried to trick Anubis by keeping one of the amulets for yourself, but now I’m the one who’s been roped into babysitting a dead princess and her cat!”

  Isis made a huffing noise and tossed her head back with a crack. “There are still five amulets left to find. And until Anubis sends us on our next challenge, I might as well enjoy myself. So if you won’t entertain me, I’ll make my own fun.” She poked herself in the chest and accidentally put her finger right through her crusty ribs.

  Cleo mewed in agreement and pawed at the banister spindles.

  There was no way Tom was going to let Isis rummage through his belongings. There was only one thing for it.

  “Look, just get in the car, will you?” Tom groaned. “You’ll have to come to school with me.”

  Tom sat at his desk and looked down at Cleo, who was curled up asleep underneath his chair.

  “Fun holiday?” Tom’s classmate Jodie asked him.

  “Oh, it was out of this world,” Tom said, smiling. “Literally.”

  But he stopped smiling pretty quickly when he saw what Isis was doing. She was wandering round the room, fiddling with everything. She looked over at Tom.

  “This is much more fun than being cooped up in your boring house,” she shouted above the noise of the chattering children.

  Tom looked around. Nobody seemed to have noticed the fact that the globe had started spinning on its own, or that the cold tap had just turned itself on and off. But how long would that last?

  He got out of his seat and went to the front of the room, pretending that he needed to sharpen his pencil. “Can’t you just sit quietly somewhere and stop messing with things?” he whispered to Isis over the noise of the pencil
sharpener.

  When Tom returned to his seat, Isis sat down on the windowsill, crossed her bony, bandaged legs and started to leaf through the pages of a book. This time, the teacher, Mr Braintree, noticed.

  “Shut that window, James!” Mr Braintree shouted to the boy sitting closest to Isis.

  James looked at the window and screwed up his face. “But it is shut, sir.”

  The teacher pushed his glasses up his nose and frowned. “There must be a draft. I’ll have to report it to the caretaker. I can’t have books flapping around. It’s very distracting.”

  For a full five minutes, Isis sat still. Tom started to relax, but then Mr Braintree began to take the register.

  Isis jumped off the windowsill, shuffled stiffly to the front of the class and stood behind Mr Braintree.

  Oh no! What is she going to do now? Tom wondered.

  When he noticed Isis drawing a rude cartoon of Anubis on the whiteboard, he faked a coughing fit to distract her.

  Isis shuffled over to him and thumped him on the back.

  In between coughs, Tom hissed, “Look, Isis, if you don’t stop messing around, I won’t help you find the next amulet. And then you’ll never get into the Afterlife.”

  Isis sat down at an empty desk with a deep sigh. She folded her arms and managed to keep still for the rest of the lesson.

  Finally, the bell for morning break went. Tom pushed Cleo and Isis into the playground as quickly as possible.

  “Aren’t you coming to play footy?” Tom’s friends Rav and Danny asked.

  “Not today, guys,” Tom said, herding Isis and Cleo towards a quiet spot behind the art block. When they reached the secluded triangle of trees, he breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the grass.

  “At last! A break from your nonsense!” he said to Isis.

  But Isis had already begun to climb one of the trees. She pulled herself onto a thick bough and sat with her legs dangling just above Tom’s head.

  “Oh, come on,” she laughed, wiggling her mouldy toes. “I was just having fun. Don’t be such a spoilsport.”

  Tom tugged at some clover in the grass. “I wonder where we’ll go next time. Do you think Anubis will come back soon?”

  “He’d better get a move on,” Isis said. “Princesses don’t like being kept waiting.”

  “He’s a god. You shouldn’t be so impatient,” Tom said.

  But he had scarcely finished speaking when the playground beneath them started to tremble.

  Tom scrambled to his feet. “Oh, you’re kidding!” he cried. “Not here!”

  Tom looked round to find the source of the rumbling. Sure enough, a huge doggy snout pushed through the leaves just above Isis’s head.

  Isis yelped as she was shoved off the bough by the giant, jackal-headed god. She landed with a thump on the ground next to Tom.

  “Are you ready for your next quest?” Anubis boomed down at them.

  His pointed ears poked through the leaves of the tree. Tom looked at Anubis’s giant teeth, which were yellowing and sharp. Then he gazed into the god’s angry red eyes and felt terror tingle along his spine.

  In their first mission Tom had nearly met his death at the hands of Ancient Rome’s fiercest gladiator. What deadly challenge would they face this time? Would he get out alive?

  “Cat got your tongue?” Anubis asked, growling slightly.

  “More like dog got your tongue,” Isis whispered at Tom’s side.

  Tom heard shouts from the playground.

  He remembered that it was double Maths next. Snore-tastic! Even though the next challenge was bound to be dangerous, a trip through time sounded much better than fractions with Mr Braintree.

  “You bet we’re ready,” Tom said.

  He took Isis’s hand, and they each held one of Cleo’s paws, making a circle. The wind started to whip up around them and Tom felt himself being pulled through the tunnels of space and time…

  “Aargh!” Tom shouted, flailing his arms and legs as he plummeted to the ground.

  Thump, thump, flump!

  Tom, Isis and Cleo landed heavily in some long grass.

  “Where are we?” Isis asked.

  Tom peered at the towering trees that surrounded them. He could hear the sound of flowing water in the distance. “I’ve no idea,” he said. He pointed to Isis and Cleo. “Look! You’ve got your normal bodies back again!”

  Cleo mewed, sat in the grass and started to lick the stripy fur on her outstretched hind leg.

  Isis prodded her tummy through the rough woollen tunic she was now wearing. She beamed at Tom. “That’s more like it!” she said. She stroked her plaits and fluttered the lashes of her kohled eyes.

  Tom watched Isis’s fingers play over the folds of the heavy grey cloak that hung from her shoulders. Her smile had vanished.

  “What is this ghastly scratchy thing?” she cried. She sniffed it cautiously. “It smells like a wet dog. Eeuw.”

  Examining the brooch that fastened his own cloak, Tom said, “See this?” He pointed to the tiny bronze serpents that twisted together in a beautiful tangle. “Dad’s got this kind of thing in his museum. They’re from the Early Middle Ages.”

  Tom wasstruck by an idea. “Are you still wearing your ring?” he said.

  Isis looked at her hand and nodded. “Good thinking,” she said. With her other hand, she touched the gold ring in the shape of a scarab. On it was a hieroglyph of her namesake, the Egyptian goddess Isis.

  “Help us, oh Isis. Give us guidance, oh goddess of magic and children,” she said.

  Out from the ring floated the silvery prophecy, which Tom read aloud to Isis.

  “In cavernous lair the dragons lie

  In wait for the foolish and brave.

  Come show your mettle, though you may die,

  Be you honourable knight or knave.

  If it’s treasure you seek, the king’s the man

  You need to see applaud.

  Seek challenge where the legend began,

  Find a stone within a sword.”

  The silvery words blew away on the breeze.

  Tom scratched his head. “I’ve heard of the sword in the stone but not the other way round.”

  Isis stroked a meowing Cleo. “Go on, Professor Smartypants. Tell me and Fluffpot all about it.”

  Tom tried to hide his smile. “Well, back in the fifth century there was this boy called Arthur, right? He was the only person able to pull out a sword that was stuck in a lump of stone. That meant he was the true King of England.”

  Isis folded her arms. “What a silly way to pick your ruler!” she scoffed.

  “Stop interrupting!” Tom said. “So, King Arthur was really big on chivalry and honour. His knights were noble, brave men. The king chose them to fight for him. They wore some pretty cool armour, with colourful coats of arms on their tunics and cloaks.” He remembered the medieval chain mail on display in Dad’s museum. “And they sat at a round table!”

  Tom thought for a moment. “The riddle makes it sound like we need to become one of King Arthur’s knights to find the amulet.”

  Isis raised an eyebrow. “It also mentions knaves. Be you honourable knight or knave. Maybe we could become one of those instead?”

  “A knave is an old-fashioned word for an unkind, dishonest person,” Tom explained, frowning.

  “Well, that’s no good. We’ll just have to become knights then,” Isis said decisively.

  But that seemed impossible to Tom, when he remembered stories about the Knights of the Round Table’s heroic deeds. How could two kids possibly become knights?

  “The riddle also mentions dragons,” said Isis. “I’ve always wanted to see a real, live dragon. Do you think we’ll be battling against them?” she asked.

  Tom scuffed the ground with his foot. “That’s the bit I don’t understand,” he aid. “Everybody knows dragons weren’t real.”

  Isis giggled. “Of course they were real. I saw dragons painted on the walls back in Egypt. How could the scrib
es have painted them if they hadn’t seen them? Duh!”

  Tom was suddenly distracted by the thunder of hooves behind them. A boy riding a large chestnut horse galloped into view. He was carrying a long, pointed stick in one hand, like a lance. As the boy drew alongside them, the stick slipped and poked Isis on the arm.

  “OUCH!” she shrieked and grabbed at her shoulder. Shaking her fist, Isis started to run after the boy. “Hey, you! How DARE you poke me! Come back here at once!”

  The boy reined in his horse and sprangout of the saddle. He was dressed in tight, grotty trousers and a mud-streaked brown tunic that looked like it had been made from a sack. There was a rope tied round his waist. Tom thought he smelled like Mum’s compost heap.

  “Oh, my word! I’m so, so sorry!” the boy said, bowing. “Did I catch you with my stick? Oh, my lady, a thousand apologies.” He turned to Tom and offered his hand. “I’m Alymere,” he said. “Al for short.”

  Tom looked warily at Al’s filthy hand but shook it anyway.

  “I’m Tom. This is Isis and her cat, Cleo,” he explained. “We’re travellers. We’re just passing through. Could you tell us where we are?”

  “Oh, well, you’re on the farm where I work,” Al said, treating them to a welcoming smile. His teeth may have been rotten, but he looked very friendly. “I’m a pig-boy.”

  Isis pointed at Al’s stick. “And does your job involve poking strangers with pointy sticks? Surely you didn’t mistake me for a pig,” she said stroppily.

  Al blushed. “Sorry again, my beautiful lady,” he said. “You look nothing like a pig.”

  Isis smiled and patted her hair. “Well, then, no harm done.”

  “But I was practising my knightly skills, see?” explained Al. He looked down at his muddy boots. “One day, I’m going to be one of King Arthur’s knights.”

  “King Arthur?” Tom gasped.

  Al grinned again. “The one and only. He’s coming to the village today.”

  Tom felt his heart beat faster as he remembered the words of the riddle. He looked over at Isis and winked.