looked up, hoping to see the faint form of one of the others flailing above her, but she saw nothing but more white.
She wondered whether she was in her very own milk-coloured universe, or whether the others were out there somewhere. Perhaps nearby. Perhaps just beyond sight. She wondered if anyone ever got lost in here, never to emerge at the other end. Doomed to spend eternity swirling and flailing. You’d go insane, wouldn’t you? With nothing to see, hear, smell or feel, you’d go completely insane.
She decided it was probably best not to think about this kind of stuff. But then her mind had more unwelcome questions it wanted to ask.
She could all too easily conjure up the image of another girl just like her, lost for endless centuries in here: eyes fogged by madness, opaque like those of a boiled fish, and cackling like an old woman — a mind rubbed smooth of meaningful thought and left utterly, utterly insane.
She decided she’d rather she
Almost as soon as she’d done that, she felt the ground suddenly return beneath her feet.
‘Whuh?’ She opened her eyes to see she was standing in a small car park, lit faintly by a neon red BUDWEISER BEER sign that buzzed like an angry fly in a bottle. She took a step clear of the portal and a moment later Liam, Maddy and Becks emerged, one after the other.
‘That was horrible!’ she gasped under her breath.
‘First time’s the worst, so.’ Liam grinned apologetically. ‘Maybe I should’ve warned you.’
She could hear a deep rhythmic pumping sound coming from somewhere beyond the brick wall in front of her. To her left the wall continued past an alcove where cars were parked so tightly in a row side by side she wondered how any of the drivers had managed to get out. The wall came to an end overlooking a dimly lit backstreet where she could see the impatient shifting outline of a queue of people.
‘Oh, it sounds like they’ve started playing already,’ said Maddy. ‘Come on, guys, let’s get inside.’
CHAPTER 4
1193, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire
Snow fell softly and silently on the track ahead of them, floating down from a loaded grey sky above like cherry blossom. On either side of the forest trail tall thick evergreens sported fulsome white skirts that weighed their burdened branches down low.
Sir Geoffrey Rainault tugged at the cloak slipping down his shoulders, begrudging the body warmth that escaped with the movement. Between saddle-sore legs his mount — his favourite, Edith — plodded relentlessly and wearily: a beast that had carried him across too many countries to remember. Nine months across the sun-baked deserts of the Holy Land, across the spring meadows of endless principalities and dukedoms … and now at last home, England, north of London and en route to the remote wilderness of Scotland.
Geoffrey shifted in the saddle to glance over his shoulder at the others: three other knights, their retinue of squires, sergeants and the token priest travelling with them to attend their five daily prayer meetings. In all, just the eighteen of them now. When they’d set out on their errand, there’d been over sixty in their party. But illness, some battlefield wounds that had gone bad and one or two skirmishes on the way home had whittled their number down. Now, those left, still intent on seeing this lie through, looked like men ready to lie down in the winter coldness and let sleep take them.
‘Sire! Look!’ shouted one of the squires, pointing up the forest track.
Geoffrey turned back in his saddle and squinted at the bright blanket of undisturbed snow ahead of them. He could make out the perfectly still form of a man swathed in a dark hooded cloak, standing in the middle of the rutted track.
Geoffrey’s sense of caution stirred him to rein in Edith and raise a gloved hand. He heard the column of bone-weary horses and men shuffle to a halt behind him.
‘We are about King’s business, make way!’
The hooded figure remained perfectly still. The forest was utterly silent, save for the cawing of a murder of crows circling high above in the winter sky, the rasping of the horses’ breath and the clink of a harness as one of the pack horses stirred uneasily.
‘Do ye hear?’
The figure seemed not to. Geoffrey switched tongues. ‘
A breeze tugged at the hooded cape, but the man within remained perfectly still.
Geoffrey looked at the trees either side of the track: perfect ambush terrain. They’d been jumped before by bandits on the Continent in woods much like this. The mistake back then — a mistake that had cost them a good knight and two sergeants-at-arms — had been not to form up the moment the first of them had appeared. He raised his hand and balled it to a fist — the signal for the rest to dismount and make ready for a fight.
The forest echoed with the metallic clank of buckles and belts, the rasping of chain mail and the drawing of swords from scabbards.
‘Step aside now! Or … I will have one of my men fire upon ye,’ said Geoffrey, beckoning forward Bates, one of the sergeants in his retinue and reliable with a crossbow. Bates drew up beside him, ratcheting back the drawstring and slipping a bolt into place.
‘A warning shot is it, sir?’
Geoffrey pressed his lips tightly. The warning had already been given. Nonetheless, he decided if one more caution could save bloodshed on such a cold and Godless day it was a breath worth expending.
‘Step aside, or ye shall be fired upon!’
For a moment the man’s response was the same. Nothing. Then, slowly, he began to stride through the ankle-deep snow towards them.
Bates turned to him. ‘Sir?’
This foolish man was going to die, then. Perhaps that was what he wanted: a martyr’s death. Geoffrey had seen too much of that these last few years — men hungry to die on the battlefield for all the promises they’d been made about sins forgiven.
‘Take him down.’
Bates swiftly shouldered the crossbow, aimed and fired. The
‘Good God!’ Geoffrey whispered under his breath.
The hooded man, now no more than a dozen yards away, produced a broadsword from beneath his cape with an effortless sweep of his arm.
‘Prepare to fight!’ shouted Geoffrey over his shoulder at the others. ‘Sergeants, defend the cart!’
He was joined by the other three knights, all younger, some fitter than him, but all of them prepared to die to safeguard what lay behind them, secure in a nondescript wooden box and nestling in the back of their baggage cart.
The squires, not fighting men but hired valets, drew back to gather the horses’ reins, and watch over the column’s possessions. Geoffrey regarded his three brethren, all seasoned fighters, veterans of King Richard’s crusade. Despite this man shrugging off the impact of a bolt — still protruding from his chest — he was sure, between the four of them, that this was to be a short fight.
The hooded man broke into a sudden sprint as he closed the last yards between them, raising the five-foot length of his cumbersome blade as if it was no heavier than a clerk’s quill.
