His vision cleared again and he saw the robot’s left arm dangling by its side. From beneath its armpit the rubber pipe flapped like a serpent, gushing yellow liquid in hot spurts. The combat robot flopped to its knees, blue- light eyes looking down uncomprehendingly at its powerless arm.
Behind it he saw Bob standing triumphantly with the broken, jagged remnant of his sword in one hand. His other hand, his left arm, was a dangling tattered stump that ended with the fragments of an elbow and dangling loops of frayed tendons and muscles.
Bob thrust the sharp edge of his broken sword into a small gap between the robot’s armour-plated shoulders and twisted. The robot lurched and more of the hot clear yellow liquid spurted out under high pressure.
The robot’s half metal, half plastic-human face seemed to express something. Surprise. Shock. Then finally, with a whirr of hidden motors working against hydraulic pressure that no longer existed, it collapsed on to its side.
‘We were fortunate. It appears the combat unit’s rear motion sensor panel was damaged in an earlier fight,’ said Bob matter-of-factly as he began to examine the ragged remains of his left arm. The arterial spurts of his own opened veins already beginning to cease as the blood clogged into a thick sealing glue.
‘Bob!’ Liam managed to gulp. ‘Your … your arm!’ He looked round Bob’s wide frame to see the rest of it was still pinned to the tree.
‘I will live,’ he said gruffly. He looked down at the robot. ‘It is still active. Although motion on its combat chassis has been disabled.’
Liam could see the blue-light eyes burning angrily still and its head turning frantically left and right with the loud whirr of a small overworked motor, as if that alone was going to move its heavy lifeless chassis across the forest floor.
‘What — what did you do to it?’ Liam struggled to talk. His throat was killing him.
‘I severed a major hydraulic pipe. The liquid provides the pressure system that enables the servo-motors to activate limb movements.’ He examined the disabled robot. ‘A design flaw of mechanical units,’ he said dismissively. ‘They cannot heal themselves. They are old technology.’
‘Right.’
Bob started looking at the ground until he spotted what he was after. He stooped down and picked up a rock the size of a human head.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Liam.
‘This unit is still active. It needs to be destroyed.’
As Bob raised the rock over his head Liam found himself looking away. Even though it was just a machine on the ground, the plastic skin from the nose down made at least half its head look too human for him to want to watch it being smashed in.
He heard several heavy thuds followed by a clanking and the clattering whirr of some part of it still working frantically. Another final thud and the noise stopped.
‘Is it …
‘It is dead,’ Bob replied.
Liam turned to see a flattened hump of crumpled metal and shredded flesh-coloured plastic.
‘Before this unit found us, you indicated we need to return to the camp.’
Liam looked at Bob. ‘We can’t go back … you’re in no condition to fight. Not like that.’
‘My combat proficiency has merely been reduced by fifty per cent. I am still an effective combat platform.’
Liam looked at him. Perhaps he was right. Even with one arm he pitied any poor man who decided to stand in Bob’s way. But, looking at the pitiful dangling shreds of his left arm, he didn’t feel he had the heart to ask — no, to
Then his gaze rested on the robot’s discarded dark cape, then the tattered rags and woollen hose that still clad the dead robot’s body.
‘All right … All right, I’ve got an idea. I guess we should bury the robot?’
‘Correct. The metal will corrode in due course.’
‘Well, let’s undress it first.’ He looked at Bob and cocked an eyebrow. ‘Guess who you’re going to pretend to be …’
CHAPTER 62
1194, Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire
Liam eyed them cautiously as he stepped through the camp. There were expressions of hostility. Someone picked up and threw a handful of horse dung at him. It broke up in mid-air and rained down his chest as Liam covered his face behind bound hands in case there was any more coming his way.
Behind him, the tall hooded figure silently prodded him forward with the tip of his sword and the crowd jeered as Liam stumbled and nearly fell. They made their way across the camp, the crowd parting reluctantly to let him through; he felt the soft tap of spittle on his shoulder and in his hair, and grimaced beneath his hands. The crowd was growing noisier.
‘Bloody French scum!’ a woman shouted and Liam felt something hard and sharp bounce off his back.
‘CEASE!’ boomed Bob from behind him.
The effect that had on the press of gathered people was instantaneous. An utter silence. So quiet, in fact, that Liam could hear the gentle crack of burning kindling and the bubble of simmering water from a cooking pot nearby.
Perhaps that was a mistake. He wondered if the silence would be broken by someone claiming the hooded form was some impostor. But instead the respectful silence remained, and the crowd parted before them … all the way towards Locke’s hut.
Liam led the way, doing his best to continue to look cowed, beaten and humiliated. With one last unnecessarily hard prod from behind that made him yelp, Liam stooped down through the low entrance and Bob followed behind.
The hut was lighter. Of course it was. Bob had casually demolished one side of the round wall.
He saw Locke standing, a gun aimed at them held in his shaking hands. ‘Stay where you are!’ he snapped. He glanced at Bob. ‘Where is it? What have you done with my combat unit?’
Bob pulled the hood down. No point maintaining the ruse. ‘Your combat unit has been deactivated.’
Locke’s eyes narrowed. ‘Good God … you’re a — you’re a
Bob nodded. ‘W.G. Systems combat prototype. Foetus batch WGS09-12-2056.’
‘My God!’ he uttered with a smile of admiration.
‘Lower the weapon,’ said Bob.
Locke hesitated, staring at the tip of the blade and realizing his gun wasn’t going to stop the giant standing in front of him. He slowly dropped his aim. ‘What now?’ he asked quietly.
Liam flexed his wrists and wriggled out of the loose rag binding. ‘The Grail. It’s here somewhere in the camp, isn’t it?’
Locke was silent. His face offered nothing.
‘Come on, Locke,’ said Liam. ‘We’re here for the same reason as you. We need to know what’s in it!’
‘The prophecy?’
Liam shrugged. ‘If that’s what it is. If that’s the big secret in there … then yes!’
Locke’s eyes remained on the sword.
‘Come on … Look, we’ve got the same goal, right? We can work together, so we can. There’s something coming, right? And there’s a warning about it in the Grail? Tell us where it is and maybe we can work out how to read the thing together!’
The man shook his head. ‘King Richard possesses the
