Doctor Who_ Battlefield Part 4

The Flightsman waited as she heard the Prince begin to laugh. Then he lifted his visor. He was half sober again already. 'Your ornithopter. Is it flight-ready?'

'Yes, your highness.'

'Then let's be away from this ratsty.' He tossed the gold bezant down on the table and left Sir Dornard asleep among the last dregs of their friendship.

Chapter 3.

Spring had been postponed.

The roads were slippery with the wet green leaves stripped from the trees by the storm. Zbrigniev's training took each obstacle of debris in its stride, but although the onslaught had died, the UNIT car never topped fifteen miles an hour.

Since radio contact with the convoy had given out again, Bambera gleaned what information she could on a static-ridden line to UNIT's London Centcomp. The country was in chaos. Most of the midlands were without electricity and many roads were impa.s.sable. They were lucky to be moving at all.

She lost contact just as the command car came to an abrupt halt where a fallen oak had blocked the road.

Zbrigniev backed up until he found a side turning into a narrow wooded lane. The corner verge was churned to mud, a sure sign that they had found the convoy's new route.

Bambera tried the radio again; it was still dead. But she reckoned that she might have a chance of finding the convoy before she'd had to report its loss.

Zbrigniev was already growing accustomed to the stillness that followed the storm. Nature seemed stunned by the ferocity of its own outburst. A sudden movement along the road ahead was doubly surprising.

'Brigadier.'

'What now?' she complained.

'Hitchhikers.'

Bambera had a brief glimpse of two figures as they pa.s.sed. A long-haired girl in black with her thumb out and a glare of contempt on her face. and an older man in a straw hat.

'Shame.' she said and the car sped on.

The Doctor noted the new winged globe insignia as the UNIT car pa.s.sed, before he returned his attention to the small tracking device he was carrying.

'Don't stop then. I don't care!' yelled Ace after the vehicle. She turned back in disgust to the Doctor. 'What year are we in'?'

'Near the end of the twentieth century.'

'Can't you be more specific? Eighties or nineties?'

The Doctor stared up at the cloudless sky and frowned.

'On the grand scale of things, Ace, what's a decade?' He set off along the lane, unconcerned by the mud and puddles.

A Range Rover turned the corner behind them.

'Professor!'

The Doctor kept walking. 'I don't suppose it'll stop.

Ace.'

'Don't be such a pessimist. Professor.' Ace stuck out her thumb anyway and the car pulled over beside her. The tax disc in the window said 30.6.99.

Doubling back with a satisfied smile, the Doctor said, 'Of course being a pessimist has its extra share of pleasant surprises.'

Carbury Trust was stencilled on the car door. The driver's window wound down and the genial face of a grey-bearded man in his late fifties studied them. was stencilled on the car door. The driver's window wound down and the genial face of a grey-bearded man in his late fifties studied them.

'Good morning. Need a lift?' he said in a northern accent.

'Thank you very much,' said the Doctor, eyeing the dark shape sitting on the back seat.

'Hop in the back.' The driver unlocked the door and added. 'Don't mind Cerberus. Just push him out of the way.'

The Doctor was already climbing inside. He was about to raise his hat to the other occupant, when he found himself nose to nose with a large Irish wolfhound.

Ace took one look and decided to sit in the front with the driver.

'Move over Cerberus, you great hulk.' he said and pushed the wolfhound out of the way.

'Nice doggie,' added the Doctor. He looked enviously into the front where Ace was already belting up. Cerberus looked at the Doctor and panted loudly in his ear.

'I take it you were caught in the storm,' said the driver as he pulled the Range Rover away.

'Storm'?' asked Ace.

'Yes, you're right. Storm is an understatement. But then the weathermen never allow us the luxury of a hurricane, do they? I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this one though. Bizarre.' He swerved to avoid a fallen branch.

'Oh yes, the storm,' agreed the Doctor, adjusting his tracking device. 'Nasty noisy thing.'

'Ferocious, more like. Plenty of damage around too. You must have found somewhere decent to shelter. Where were you heading?'

The Doctor looked at his tracker. 'North-east.'

'Heading for the dig, eh?'

'An archaeological dig?'

'Yes, I'm on my way now to check that it's still there!'

He glanced amiably at the Doctor via the driving mirror.

'I'm sorry, I haven't introduced myself. Doctor Peter Warmsly. I'm site manager for the Carbury Trust Conservation Area.'

The Doctor opened his mouth to answer and Ace said, 'I'm Ace and this is the Doctor.'

'Another doctor, eh? What of? Science? Medicine?

Philosophy?'

'Just a Doctor,' said the Doctor.

'Ah...' The car slowed to negotiate the gap left by a fallen beech which covered most of the road. The topmost twigs sc.r.a.ped along the car's flank. 'Of course the dig is just a hobby.'

'Of course,' said the Doctor.

'It was a battlefield judging from the patterns of arrowheads and the disposition of the bones. From about the eighth century... '

Cerberus, who was s...o...b..ring on to an elegant handkerchief that the Doctor had placed apprehensively over his trews, p.r.i.c.ked up his ears, scrambled to his not inconsiderable full height on the back seat and barked.

The other pa.s.sengers were practically deafened.

'Be quiet, you wretched hound!' Peter took a blind swipe behind at his dog and narrowly missed the Doctor.

Cerberus clambered over the Doctor and planted his nose against the open gap at the top of the window. He gave a muted whine which mingled with the distant scream of air as something hurtled to earth nearby.

'I hate that sound,' complained Peter. 'Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking it might be... '

'The start of something terrible,' interjected the Doctor as he struggled out from under the dog.

There was the dull roar of an impact explosion. Ace flinched in the front seat. 'What was it?'

'The military use the area as a firing range. I've never understood why.'

The Doctor peered out of the mud-flecked window. He pointed his tracker device in the direction of the explosion.

It registered a high burst of chronon particle activity; not the sort of thing normally a.s.sociated with clodhopping military manoeuvres.

'Blowing the occasional chunk out of the ground keeps them amused,' he said to rea.s.sure the others.

Ace twisted round in her seat to look at him. 'It didn't sound like a sh.e.l.l.'

'No.' He gesticulated vaguely with the tracker. The signal was coming from over the next ridge. He wondered who or what else it might have attracted.

The knight's black jesseraunte lifted him slowly out of the smoking impact crater.

The leap had been simple. It was the armoured suit that leapt, not the leaper. And it was the suit that carried him high into the upper atmosphere, leaving the bright world behind; up above the clouds, far beyond the hovering, turretted Tagels into the star-sprinkled sky; along the silver arc between realities.

And as the muscled joints of the suit began to wail in protest, the forces of gravity tore against the vaulting escape velocity.

Then in a glorious moment of planned inspiration, the suit slipped between the two grappling energies, sideways into another existence.

The leaper laughed at its simplicity.

The shade of the world shifted from darker to paler blue. The cloud patterns swirled into new forms. The leaper began to fall headlong, the ablative shield of his armour seething white-hot in the atmosphere. Back to the world; not his world, but his world changed. To Avallion, the Isle of Apples, the ordained battlefield.

The air had screeched around the jesseraunte. The velocity energy of the impact exploded out in a roaring plume of flame.

Runes and figures danced on the inside of the black knight's visor as the silver filigree of his armour surveyed the new world he had just entered.

Rumours had been rife in the corridors of the High Tagel: a summons from the older time. And he must seek out the voice that called across the s.p.a.ces between worlds.

He was the knight errant and this was the quest. He had his own past to serve as well. The burden that his parage bore down the centuries pa.s.sed from vat-father to vat-father until its fulfilling rested with him. But he must be swift. His quest wore no favours. He would be missed by now. Errant absence without leave. But family bonds were ever knotted tighter than oaths of knightly allegiance.

Others would soon follow to answer the summons. And they would welcome his presence as an excuse to be rid of him for ever.

The Range Rover had pulled out of the storm-battered woods and was driving across a high open heathland area, bright with purple heather. As they topped the ridge, the Doctor and Ace saw the lake spread below them like dark rippled gla.s.s.

Peter broke into a smile that was almost possessive.

'There you are. Vortigern's Lake!' he announced proudly.

Aha, thought the Doctor and checked that he still had the copy of Malory in his pocket.

Ahead they could see the military car that had ignored them earlier. It was slowly negotiating its way down a lower road.

'What the blazes?' Peter brought his Range Rover sharply to a halt. He climbed out of the car and stared angrily down the hill towards the lake edge.

The Doctor and Ace heard a string of undefined expletives as they joined him.

The road running down to the edge of Vortigern's Lake rapidly turned into a rough track. A number of military vehicles the colour of muddy khaki were grouped on the edge of the bank: several jeeps, a heavy-duty lorry and a large van which the Doctor recognized as a Command Trailer.

Close by, cut into the green turf running inland from the lake, was an earth-brown rectangle. In its shape, small methodically-worked areas had filled with rainwater to form square puddles. They could see a group of squaddies working around the lorry under arc lamps, apparently trying to dig its back wheels out of the mud. As the UNIT car approached, an officer broke from the group and went to meet its occupants.

Without a word, Peter Warmsly turned, walked back to his car and climbed inside.

'We'll walk down from here,' called the Doctor, but the Range Rover was already heading away down the hill. 'I think he's worried about his dig,' he said apologetically to Ace.

She ignored him. The squaddies by the lake had briefly lifted the tarpaulin which covered the heavy lorry. The tail fin she had glimpsed underneath gave her a cold chill.

'Professor, it's a missile convoy.'