Doctor Who_ The Eleventh Tiger Part 26

'Well, I still say Jiang,' Tham said. 'He's petty enough.'

'If it is, I'll-'

'No, Chesterton,' the Doctor interrupted. 'You know, that young man was most disagreeable, and I can certainly believe he would bear a childish grudge, but this raid that took the girls was too precise and too powerful for him.' He shook his head. 'No, I rather think Mr Jiang would have tried to waylay one of us in the street, or break in and cause trouble on his own. This was more a sort of a military operation.'

'I see what you mean, Doctor,' Ian agreed slowly. 'It does look like some sort of commando raid.'

'A commando raid, yes. That's it exactly, Chesterton. This was a carefully planned raid to s.n.a.t.c.h the girls and take them away for some purpose.'

'Not to kill them. They'd just have done that here.

Leverage?'

'On us, you mean? Yes. I think we will hear from the kidnappers soon enough.'

'Not soon enough for me.'

'We still don't know who they are.'

'I think I might,' Cheng said.

Ian and the Doctor both looked at him.

'The abbot who's split the Black Flag. Jiang was practically worshipping him, and if he's the one who's been razing villages he certainly has the experience of warfare.'

'Now, you've mentioned this abbot before,' the Doctor said.

'Tell me some more about him, if you please.'

'If your women are in his hands... It might have been better for them and for you if they had just died here.'

'And why is that?'

'Because the abbot's insane. I don't mean eccentric or silly.

He cut out the eyes and tongue of a friend of mine because he wouldn't say that the unskinned deer in front of him was a roasted pig. Then he carved out the deer's still-warm heart and ate it.' The memory put a cold sweat on Cheng's brow and between his shoulder blades. 'He just isn't human.'

The Doctor looked sharply at Cheng. 'Is that so? We'll see.'

He turned to Tham. 'Sir, when Master Wong wrote to you he will have asked if you have heard of other attacks.'

'Yes, I've heard of other attacks.' Tham unrolled a map.

'The first was here, near Shaoshan. Then further south, east of Guilin. They seem to be concentrating on older towns, monasteries, temples... It makes no sense to me.'

'Tell me,' the Doctor said. 'It is yuelaan jit yuelaan jit, is it not?' Tham nodded. 'Have there been reports of, shall we say, strange occurrences in the vicinity of these places?'

Tham looked surprised. 'Yes. As a matter of fact when I pa.s.sed by Guilin last month the Taoist priests there were swamped with requests for exorcisms.'

The Doctor steepled his fingers and looked down his nose at the map. 'Sacred sites, temples and ancient towns. I see...'

'You do?' Ian asked.

'Yes, I think perhaps I do, but I can't be certain, of course.

No, I can't be certain.'

'It's just instinct, is it, Doctor?'

'Yes, my boy, instinct.'

'Well, if you've got some kind of theory, is there some way to check up on it? To be certain of it?'

'There would be, if I had a geological map of China. I should rather like to see a layout of China's faults. Fault lines, I mean, and rivers and iron deposits.'

The gwailo gwailo woman, Barbara, was sleeping. Qin remembered sleep, and not with pleasure. With the darkness had come death, each and every night. Lanterns had never held it back long enough. The worst was not falling asleep, but waking, knowing that life had paused and not knowing how or why it had started again. Being sick to the stomach with terror that the next time there might not be a waking. woman, Barbara, was sleeping. Qin remembered sleep, and not with pleasure. With the darkness had come death, each and every night. Lanterns had never held it back long enough. The worst was not falling asleep, but waking, knowing that life had paused and not knowing how or why it had started again. Being sick to the stomach with terror that the next time there might not be a waking.

The gwailo gwailo woman, Barbara, showed no signs of such fear. woman, Barbara, showed no signs of such fear.

Her face was calm and soft. The softness must hide iron, he thought, to accept that daily taste of death with such equanimity. He had, of course, never seen his own face while asleep, but couldn't imagine anything less than a contorted rictus, desperately struggling to breathe again with the rising of the next dawn.

'Bring her,' he told the guard with him.

The guard opened the store-room door and pulled Barbara out. Qin had her brought to his bedchamber. The woman looked frightened, but unbowed. This was new and therefore interesting to him.

He sat on a chair and indicated for her to sit too. She sat on the floor, pointedly avoiding the large bed, which still held the scent of womanhood from the three girls he had spent the night with.

'You don't fear me the way my own people do,' he said.

'Why is that?'

'Because I've met your type before.'

Such strength of will and mind. He was surprised, as he had been so often since her arrival.

'I do not want you to fear me.' He paused. 'I am told you are a scholar of history. A teacher?'

'Yes.'

'Do you know what I looked like?'

6.

Barbara was afraid, though the man she was afraid of was the one who was insane and believed himself to be a historical figure. She certainly wasn't afraid of a monarch dead for two thousand years.

She had been doubly afraid when he had her brought to his bedchamber, but the fear had been knocked aside by baffle-ment when he asked his question. She didn't understand what he meant at first.

'Do you know what I - Qin Shi Huangdi - looked like?'

For an instant, Barbara thought she saw anguish in his expression and heard yearning in his voice.

'I don't remember,' he said.

'Well, I'm not sure. I know more about European and South American cultures... But I remember seeing a portrait of the First Emperor in a book once. He was quite a large man.' She hesitated.

'You mean fat.'

'I imagine palace food for the Emperor is richer than for his subjects.'

'Continue, gwailo', gwailo', he said quietly. he said quietly.

'He looked severe, unforgiving. He had a longish black beard.'

The man's fingers reached up to his own white whiskers.

'It's ironic,' the abbot - Barbara didn't know what his real name was, but it was unlikely to be Qin - said. 'A foreigner knowing more about me than my own subjects.' He frowned.

'Of course, it is a spy's job to know such things.'

'We are not spies.'

'Yet you come to me with fine words, trying to draw my secrets from me.'

'You kidnapped us, remember?' Barbara said pointedly.

'You have friends. I wish them to do something for me.'

Barbara felt a slight relief. At least it was not l.u.s.t that was driving him.

'Then I can complete my work here.'

'Work? Raiding towns, killing... Do you love war so much?'

she demanded. 'Does it make you feel like a big man to raze a town, or order people to work or to fight or to die?'

'Yes,' he said sharply, and somehow the sharpness told Barbara that he was lying. 'That's the best thing in life.'

'"The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you,"' Barbara said. '"To rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters." That's what Genghis Khan said.'

The abbot left her then and walked out on to the hillside. The sun was sinking, casting a honeyed light across the dusty path and enriching the woodland shadows. If he closed his eyes he fancied he could feel the trees, as if some emanation from them was pressing against him. He could hear his people moving around, attending to their duties and serving him with their loyalty.

Something spread up from his spine and out across his shoulders, enveloping his chest. It felt like the softest fur - sensual, warm, comforting. He vaguely remembered it from long, long ago. It was the best thing in life.

These were his woods, his trees, his country and his people. If anything other than his love for them could bring him that spreading happiness, he had yet to find it.

Kei-Ying, Iron Bridge Three and Major Chesterton pored over the military maps in Chesterton's office. With a practical military problem to solve, Chesterton was able to push the mystery of his duplicated self to the back of his mind.

'From what... Mr Iron Bridge has said I think it's clear that this abbot and his followers have been coming south for a while.'

'How can we find out where they came from?' Kei-Ying asked.

'We can retrace the advances of the battle lines. They may have tried to disguise their origins by flanking manoeuvres, but if we have a chronology of which places were attacked - or persuaded to join their cause - we should be able to track them back.'

'Good,' Iron Bridge snapped. 'Then let's get on with it, shall we?'

Ian paced around the main hall at Po Chi Lam, unable to settle. If only there was something he could do, a place he could go.

'Cheng,' he said. 'You met this abbot person. Can't you tell us where?'

'It was aboard a junk. It moves around. I don't know where it would be now.'

'Can't we put the word out to these Tigers of yours and have them look for it.'

'We're foreign to you, not stupid, Chesterton. Of course we've done that.'