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.
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
He felt that shudder down his spine again, as if simply by holding this roll of parchment, looking at it, he was waking
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.
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
‘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.
