by Alex Scarrow
They closed on him quickly. Even their weary-looking old horse, all bones and hide and ready for the butcher’s cleaver, was making better progress than the wide-axled cart down what was barely more than a winding footpath.
Locke must have heard them approaching and turned to look over his shoulder. It took him all of a second to realize the cart was too slow. He reined in the horse, reached round into the back of the cart, grabbed a small dark wooden box, no bigger than a hatbox, and leapt off the seat on to the track.
‘He’s bolting!’
Bob nodded. ‘Get off here,’ he grunted. ‘I will pursue him.’
Liam slid clumsily off the back of the horse, the still raw soles of his feet jabbing him painfully as they settled on sharp stones. Bob kicked his heels and clattered off down the footpath, turning the horse left into the trees where Locke had disappeared moments before. Liam listened to the receding thud of hooves and the occasional crack of a dried branch, echoing back through the wood as Bob gave chase.
He made his way slowly down the path towards the abandoned cart, yelping and grimacing at each sharp stone, each fir cone he stepped on. Finally he drew up beside it. The horse eyed him irritably as if even he knew this was no track for a cart. It snorted, flaring its nostrils.
‘Easy there,’ said Liam. He pulled himself on to the back of the cart and allowed himself to collapse, exhausted, among the apples that had spilled out across the flatbed.
CHAPTER 65
1194, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire
Bob steered the horse through the woods, deftly ducking the low swoop of branches. Up ahead he could hear Locke scrambling his way over fallen branches that cracked noisily under his feet. Making far too much noise to hope to evade him.
He caught a glimpse of Locke up ahead. The man was making pitifully slow progress, the wooden box tucked under one tired arm, pushing his way through a tight bush of brambles with the other.
‘Cease running!’ Bob called out. ‘You will not escape!’
Locke stopped and turned. His eyes widened at the sight of Bob calmly steering the horse as it picked its way through the undergrowth towards him.
Locke seemed to realize he was wasting his time. He slumped down on to a small boulder, winded and spent. Bob swung his leg over the horse, dropped heavily down to the ground and approached him.
‘I presume you want this?’ said Locke, holding the box out.
Bob reached out his one hand for the box. He placed it on the ground, lifted a small metal clasp and opened the lid. He stared at the contents in silence for a moment before closing the lid.
‘Who are you people … really?’ asked Locke between laboured gasps.
Bob’s grey eyes studied him silently.
‘You’re just a dumb robot, aren’t you? Inside all that skin, blood and bones … a dumb robot? Just like my war-surplus mech — a machine under orders.’
‘I have mission priorities,’ said Bob drily.
‘And what do you know about what’s in there?’ Locke said, nodding at the box.
Bob was silent.
‘Right …’ Locke nodded. ‘Not much … uh?’
‘The item known as the Holy Grail may contain sensitive information about the agency. That is why we seek to obtain it and decode its contents.’
Locke laughed, a wheezy and dry cackle. ‘Is that it? Is that all you think might be in there? Something that might expose your little agency?’ He shook his head and laughed some more. ‘You really have no goddamn idea … do you?’
Bob’s eyes narrowed. ‘Explain.’
‘That,’ he said, nodding at the box, still struggling for breath, ‘that … contains something far more important. Your secret agency is nothing compared to this … it’s a speck of dust compared to this!’
‘Explain.’
‘It’s our future … it’s everyone’s future. Don’t you know this? There’s a door that opens in 2070 … a door that opens on something that — ’
‘What?’
Locke shook his head. ‘That’s just it … We don’t know. No one knows! That’s why I was sent back. To find out — to decode it. To find out and in some way to get a warning through to everyone in my time. So that they can prepare themselves!’ Locke spat phlegm on to the forest floor. ‘Good God, you have to help me! You have to help me get the key off King Richard and — ’
‘Your mission priorities are in conflict with mine,’ replied Bob.
‘What? What the hell kind of priorities are more important than knowing what’s going to happen?’
‘Mission priorities: Retrieve the Grail. Decode the Grail. Correct contaminated history. Locate and terminate potential contaminants.’
Locke looked up at him. ‘Terminate potential contaminants? Oh, I see. I get it … You have to kill me?’
‘Correct,’ said Bob, pulling his sword out of its scabbard. ‘Your presence in this time represents too much of a risk to the timeline.’
Locke’s eyes followed the dull glint of the sword’s edge. ‘Look … I have no modern technology artefacts on me. I’m just one man on my own. You could let me go. You could let me just walk out of here … You see, I don’t want to go back to 2070! I really don’t!’
Bob silently appraised him.
‘Please! Just let me go … What could I say that anyone would believe anyway? I’d just be considered a madman! A village fool!’
Some small part of Bob’s brain registered the growing desperation in Locke’s voice … a desperate desire not to die — to live longer. The small part of his brain could understand that animal instinct. Even sympathize with it.
‘Get up,’ said Bob.
Locke clambered slowly to his feet.
Bob raised his one good arm and pointed into the woods with the tip of the blade. ‘You must run in that direction.’
Locke looked confused.
‘Run in that direction. You must leave the county of Nottingham immediately. Any attempt to influence historical events will be picked up by us and we will return to kill you. Is this clear?’
Locke nodded. ‘Yes … yes, of course.’
‘Then proceed.’
‘Go? Now?’
‘Immediately.’
Locke stepped away from Bob, cautious backwards steps at first, then, a few yards from him, he turned tail and began to run.
Bob silently watched him pick up the pace as he ducked and scrambled through the undergrowth. Certain now that the man wasn’t going to dare look back again, he pulled the sword back over his shoulder, poised for the briefest moment as he calculated speed and trajectory, then flung the blade forward.
It whistled through the air, one complete cartwheel hilt over tip, ending with the tip facing forward once more just as it made contact with the soft fleshy space between Locke’s shoulder-blades. He tumbled forward, and kicked once on the ground.
A moment later Bob stood over the man’s body and retrieved his sword, wiping the blood off on Locke’s clothing. His silicon mind quietly ticked off the lowest of his list of mission priorities. His animal mind begrudgingly murmured approval of the small mercy he’d given to Locke, letting him believe he was going to live. Death came without any warning … and quickly.
A small mercy at least.
CHAPTER 66
1194, Nottingham
He wasn’t sure if he’d actually fallen asleep. He must have because all of a sudden he was looking up at an evening sky, free of overlapping branches and leaves, and the cart’s wheels were creaking easily along a rutted track. He sat up and turned to see Bob’s wide shoulders swaying in the driver’s seat.
‘Did you get him?’
Bob turned and looked at him. ‘Locke is no longer a contamination issue.’
‘What? You mean he — ?’
‘I managed to acquire what we were after,’ Bob interrupted. He pulled some sackcloth aside to reveal a small dark wooden box. The lid was decorated with the faint lines of a geometric pattern carved a long time ago and attached
by old iron hinges.
‘Bob! Is this really it? Is this the Holy Grail? Did you open it?’
Bob played his best grin. The kind that would give small children nightmares. ‘I believe it contains what we have been looking for.’
Liam reached out for the box, touching the wooden grain lightly with his fingertips, the faint lines of the carving on the lid. The oddest sensation. He felt a tingle of energy course through his hands. He felt the fine downy hairs on his arms raise, and a shudder of something — fear? excitement? — ripple through his body.
Inside this is the Holy Grail, Liam. The Holy Grail.
The very thing sought by figures of legend, King Arthur and his knights of the round table. A relic thought to be a cup of Christ, a chalice … or just a myth, a metaphor. But here it was, in the back of a bouncing cart full of rolling apples.
Carefully, reverentially, he eased the lid slowly open … half expecting the sky above to crack open and reveal a God ready to smite him with a bolt of lightning for daring to consider himself worthy enough look upon his very words.
Inside the small box he saw a threadbare canvas bag, a drawstring at the top pulling it tight and closed. The canvas bag rested on a shallow bed of coins, stamped with the face of King Henry II, Richard and John’s father. Liam guessed that was some of the money Locke’s bandits had managed to rob from tax collectors and merchants foolish enough to travel the forest tracks of Nottingham during the last two years.
Carefully, he lifted out the canvas bag and loosened the drawstring to look down inside.
He could see the handle of a wooden scroll spindle and the frayed edges of yellowing parchment wrapped tightly round it. He felt an almost overpowering urge to pull it out of the bag and unroll the parchment, but the cart was rolling and bucking as the wheels rode up and down ruts in the track. A bump and it could tear in his hands.
He stared at the frayed edges curled round the spindle. Somewhere on those pages of parchment the word Pandora was written. A message, a warning that — if Maddy was right — someone wanted them, specifically them, to know about.
He felt that shudder down his spine again, as if simply by holding this roll of parchment, looking at it, he was waking something up from a deep slumber, disturbing it … foolishly prodding it.
He pulled the drawstring tight again and gently laid the canvas bag back on its bed of coins and closed the lid.
He shuffled forward and tapped Bob on the shoulder. He turned his head and Liam found himself looking at the frayed and bloody pink edges of what remained of the top rim of Bob’s right ear. A line of dark dried blood ran down the side of his neck and disappeared beneath the folds of the dark cape.
‘Bob … that’s really it, isn’t it? We’ve got …’
He looked down again at the box. We’ve got, quite possibly, the most important piece of rolled-up paper that has ever existed.
He was wondering whether to voice that out loud, or whether saying it was somehow pushing their luck, inviting some sort of lightning bolt.
‘Caution!’ said Bob suddenly.
Liam looked up from the box. The dusty track had just brought them over the brow of a hill. There below them like a child’s play set, shimmering amid the midday warmth, was the walled town of Nottingham, busy with activity. A welcome sight for Liam. Or at least it would have been, had it not been for the spreading dark line of figures casually crossing and flattening the patchwork of furrowed fields outside the walls.
Thousands of them.
He saw the flickering glint of chain-mail armour among them: a forest of multicoloured pennants fluttering above columns of men, trudging off the road leading up from the south and fanning out into the fields. He could see swarms of dark figures pulling equipment from baggage trains of carts, tents already being erected on beds of trampled crops, and long beams of wood being worked upon by teams of carpenters with the percussive rattle-tap of dozens of hand axes and hammers.
‘It appears King Richard has arrived,’ said Bob.
Down the sloping track leading to the town’s main entrance, Liam could see a river of traffic emerging. King Richard’s soldiers seemed to be permitting those who wanted no part in the siege to leave. Mostly merchants, visiting tradesmen driving out empty carts: people with no special allegiance to the place and no wish to die for a cause.
‘Letting people out. But no one in,’ Liam commented.
‘Affirmative.’
He looked down at the milling chaos outside the opened gates to Nottingham. Perhaps, if they could get down there, in among all that confusion, they could find a way to sneak in.
‘Bob. Let’s see how close we can get before someone stops us.’
‘Affirmative.’
‘And you better pull your hood up … your ear’s going to attract attention.’
Bob did as he was told, working the hood up over his shaggy head. Then with his one good hand, he grabbed the reins and kicked the horse’s rump. It staggered wearily forward and the cart’s wheels once more creaked as they descended towards the scene below.
A couple of minutes later and they were passing the first of the merchants streaming out, many of them irritably shouting at them that they were heading the wrong way and should either turn round or get off the track; otherwise, they met with no interference. Until a picket of soldiers thirty yards ahead of them, wearing olive-green sashes over leather jerkins, began waving them down to stop.
Liam cursed. ‘What’re we gonna do?’ he hissed from the back.
Bob shrugged casually. ‘I am evaluating.’
‘Well, we don’t have time to evaluate … dammit!’ Liam gritted his teeth. They were a hundred yards from the main entrance and all of that distance was a confusion of people. Surely, if they could just lose themselves in that?
The soldiers ahead of them were now stepping on to the track and into their way.
And what if they decide to search the cart? What if one of them decides this little box looks rather nice?
‘Bob, I think we’re going to have to make a go for it.’
‘Clarify “go for it”.’
‘Don’t stop. Just go. Go very fast!’
Bob nodded. ‘Agreed.’
He whipped the reins across the horse’s shoulders, and for good measure swung a hard kick once more at its rear. The horse bellowed a complaint but all the same broke into a begrudging canter.
The soldiers ahead of them called out warnings for them to stop but, at the very last moment, stepped aside to avoid being run over.
As they swept by them, angry voices rippled orders and another party of soldiers further up, overseeing the merchants’ exodus, readied themselves to stop the cart. Liam could see these ones were better equipped for the job, armed as they were with pikes. Just one of those braced firmly against the ground would be enough to run their horse’s chest through and bring it down in an untidy heap.
What they needed was a stampede. A distraction. Chaos. What they needed was …
He reached for the box, yanked the lid open and carefully tucked the drawstring canvas bag into the folds of his cloak. What was left inside, a small mound of gold coins, he scooped up into his hands.
‘Bob!’ he bellowed over his shoulder. ‘Shout “free money”! Shout something like “free money”! Really, really loud!’
Bob craned his hooded neck to look at Liam and saw him holding the handfuls of coins. He seemed to understand what Liam was up to. ‘MONEY!’ his voice boomed above the pounding hooves and the laboured creak of their spinning cartwheels. ‘HAVE FREE MONEY!’
Liam tossed a handful of the glinting coins over the left side of the cart and into the tall grass beside the track. The result was almost instantaneous — like tossing a handful of breadcrumbs into a courtyard full of pigeons. Merchants’ wives walking beside their husbands’ carts, the foot traffic, tradesmen’s helpers old and young, children, all swarmed off the dusty track and began scrabbling in the tall grass.
Bob steered their hor
se, cutting in between two carts and putting them on the right side of the traffic emerging through the arch of the gatehouse as Liam tossed another handful into the crowd around them.
‘FREE MONEY FOR EVERYONE!’ bellowed Bob again.
Hands snatched and grabbed for the coins tumbling through the air. They were now level with the pikemen — the soldiers on the left of the surging river of people, them on the right, separated by a roiling sea of grasping hands fighting each other to get within reach of the last shower of coins.
The soldiers pushed their way angrily through people bent over double and scrabbling in the dust to get to them, but then Liam tossed a handful right at them. Coins clanging like shrapnel off their helmets. It did the trick, stopping them dead, as they too dropped to their hands and knees to scrabble for what they could.
The large arched entrance to the town loomed above them and Bob savagely kicked their poor beast one last time, raising their canter to a reckless gallop. Its hooves clattered and scraped noisily off dried mud on to cobbles and flagstones, and the tail end of evacuating merchants ahead of them swiftly parted either side to avoid being flattened as they passed beneath the archway and into the market square inside the wall.
‘FREE MONEY FOR EVERYONE!’ Bob’s deep voice echoed across the market, bouncing off the inside of the stone walls like the blast of a ship’s foghorn. Liam tossed out another fistful in their wake, ensuring none of King Richard’s soldiers were going to be able to push through the entrance after them, plugged as it was with people doubled over and searching for coins.
‘We’re in!’ Liam shouted. ‘We did it!’
Bob reined the horse back and it slowed down to a blown, wheezing trot.
People around them, soldiers too — this time wearing the burgundy and orange colours of the town’s garrison, flocked around the back of the cart. Looking in at the remaining coins scattered across the flatbed.
Why not? Liam grinned.
