Doctor Who_ Battlefield Part 25

'Is that you, Professor?' said a m.u.f.fled voice.

A pile of debris s.h.i.+fted and fell apart. At the bottom of it, beneath the coffee table that had sheltered them, crouched Shou Yuing and Ace. They were covered in soot and plaster dust. 'Ace!' the Doctor exclaimed. 'And Little Cloud too. Thank goodness. What happened?'

'The hotel fell on us,' complained Shou Yuing, not overtly impressed by the Doctor's linguistic prowess.

'And there was this woman with a pet demon,' added Ace.

'Morgaine and the Destroyer,' agreed the Doctor.

Ace levelled with him. 'And I also remember a chalk circle that was supposed to protect us.'

'You're still alive, aren't you?' he complained. 'Where's Excalibur?'

'Ah,' said Ace.

Shou Yuing looked awkward and said quickly, 'The woman seemed to want it very badly.'

'Very, very badly,' concurred Ace.

'So we gave it to her,' Shou Yuing added.

'Good,' said the Doctor.

'I mean, it's not our fault,' Ace protested. 'Now if I'd had some nitro...' She faltered. 'What do you mean, good?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Oh, just that exotic alien swords are easy to come by.' He dabbed a smudge from her nose with his scarf. 'And Aces are rare. Have you got the scabbard?' Ace brimmed with something like love for him.

She held up the battered relic.

'Well, that's something anyway,' he said.

'Doctor,' called the Brigadier. 'What do you make of this?'

Across the lounge by the fireplace, the air was s.h.i.+mmering like a heat haze. The Doctor scrutinized the miasma for a moment.

'How did Morgaine leave?' he asked.

'Big flash of light and gone,' said Ace.

The Doctor picked up the scabbard and tentatively extended it towards the heat haze. There was a crack of static and the air ahead opened up like a tunnel of swirling light.

'That's where she went,' said the Doctor. 'Through an interst.i.tial vortex.'

'So now what?' said Ace.

He lowered his head thoughtfully and looked at her under the brim of his hat. 'Excalibur seems to be the crucial element in all this. We have to get it back from Morgaine.'

'She's dangerous, Doctor,' interrupted the Brigadier.

'And as I recall, interst.i.tial transfer involves a lot of technological nonsense. Machines.'

The Doctor grinned. 'Brigadier, you remember.'

'The Master with a Greek accent? I'd been trying to forget.'

'Greek!' said the Doctor. 'You should hear his French one! But Morgaine doesn't use machines. She has the Destroyer.'

Ace was getting bored with all this 'old boy' back-slapping. 'Professor,' she complained, 'why don't we just nip through the vortex and jump the witch?'

The Doctor looked suddenly grave. 'Pa.s.sing uns.h.i.+elded through this vortex would be insanely dangerous. The forces loose inside could rip you into molecules, if you're lucky.'

There was a moment's silence.

'Shall I go first?' asked the Brigadier.

'No, me,' insisted the Doctor. 'Ace?'

'Stay here,' she said. 'Yeah, yeah...'

The Doctor tidied his jacket, straightened his scarf and pulled his hat on tight. 'High drama is just the same as comedy, Ace. It's all a matter of timing.'

He and the Brigadier stepped into the swirl of the vortex together and were gone.

Chapter 2.

'Where is my army?' demanded Morgaine.

The Destroyer raised his head and savoured the air. His groomed hair was turning coa.r.s.e. From his temples, two small nodules were starting to break through the blue-grey skin.

'Your army has gone the way of all flesh,' he growled with relish.

Smoke drifted across the silent battlefield, an insubstantial veil that failed to obscure the horrors it might have hidden.

Warriors from two universes lay bleeding in the muddy gra.s.s. Many were dead. UNIT soldiers and Morgaine's troops. Medics moved among them, searching for the living.

Ancelyn sat on the ground. wiping the blade of his sword with a bit of rag.

Beside him, Winifred Bambera dabbed at a gash that had cut through her sleeve into her arm. The missile was secure, but there were reports to make and casualties to deal with.

A body in full armour lay twisted in front of her where it had fallen. She knelt and pushed open the visor. The dead eyes of the Knight Commander stared coldly up at her. The officer could be hardly more than sixteen years old. Ancelyn's sword had punctured his breastplate. But the Commander had attacked first...

'A good fight.' said Ancelyn.

Anger boiled up in Bambera - her usual reaction. In all her life, she had never been able to cry. Ancelyn, she prayed, might teach her.

The strange, flaxen-haired knight gently touched the wound on her arm.

'My lady?'

'I told you not. Oh, never mind.'

Shou Yuing squinted into the turmoil of the vortex tunnel.

Its two dimensional surface stretched impossibly into infinity just in front of the fireplace. A wafer-thin illusion that had swallowed the Doctor and Brigadier whole.

'They're going to be killed,' she said to Ace. 'You saw what the Destroyer could do.'

Ace had been turning over the wreckage of the bar.

'Morgaine could control the Destroyer. She had it chained up. With silver chains. Get it?'

'The silver bullets,' exclaimed Shou Yuing. 'I thought that was for werewolves.' She glanced back to the vortex.

Darkness was starting to flicker in its deeper regions. 'Ace, I think it's starting to fade.'

'Got them.' Ace reached under an overturned armchair and extracted the case of silver bullets.

'It's going,' warned the Chinese girl.

Ace moved back to get a clear run at the vortex.

'Are you going to throw them through?' Shou Yuing said.

'Do me a favour,' said Ace. She ran like a bowler at the flaring crease in time/s.p.a.ce.

'Geronimo!' The vortex wrapped around her and closed up like a slammed door.

Shou Yuing stood on her own. She was only a bystander in the game and now the action had moved elsewhere. She wondered if she should wait in case another demon turned up and needed sorting out. Shou Yuing and the Monkey King. She hadn't stopped to think until now; she wasn't sure she wanted to think. Monsters and knights and soldiers. Her car was written off and people were dead.

Suddenly she wanted to go home and have a good row with her parents.

A storm of darkness loomed above the priory.

Morgaine watched the Destroyer as it did her work. It struggled against her adjuration, as she knew it would. In the real world, where her power was stronger, the demon would be helpless. In Avallion, every struggle it gave loosened its mask a little more. Its glittering reptile eyes sought a means of release. They never left her as it worked out her orders. The Beast beneath its visage was laughing.

Its human features soured and twisted. Its close curling horns reached outward. It was strong and growing stronger.

The sword Excalibur rested on its point at the centre of the octogrammaton, held in a tapestry of spells that the demon wove around it. The globes of ancient light at its sides flickered once more with energy drawn from another universe.

Almost complete. Then only she, Morgaine, could touch the weapon. And Arthur would be powerless.

The Destroyer, its breath coming in hot hungry gusts, turned towards her. 'You would do well to release me.

Morgaine.'

'Release you?' she said contemptuously.

'Merlin is mighty and cunning. I cannot destroy him while I am chained.'

'And let you run havoc? No. I have Excalibur. Merlin cannot touch me ere I am gone from here. See. The gateway is almost complete.'

The Destroyer's blackened lips twisted into a grin. 'He comes even as we speak.'

'How? He cannot come through the vortex...' Suddenly she knew that the fiend, even bound to her, played with her fate as its toy. 'You have allowed him access... Why?'

But she knew the answer too well.

'So that you will be forced to release me.'

And if she lost control over the demon, she would be the first that it carried off. She tested her will against the monster, it was still her slave. Its trickery waxed stronger, but she could turn an advantage from that as well.

In the corner of the derelict hall. the air wavered and opened like a flower of swirling energy. Out of its heart stepped the Doctor and the Brigadier.

'Morgaine,' said the Doctor, raising his hat.

The Brigadier instinctively raised his pistol and released a volley of rounds at the looming menace of the Destroyer.

The demon snarled and looked down with irritation at the bulletholes in its suit.

'Brigadier!' snapped the Doctor.

Lethbridge-Stewart sniffed dimissively. 'Nothing ventured. Doctor.'

'Nothing gained,' growled the demon. It flung a taloned fist into the air in a gesture that lifted the Brigadier from the ground and tossed him like a discarded doll through the rotting wood of the wall.

'That was uncalled for,' yelled the Doctor.

He made a run for Excalibur, his hand ignoring the spells in which the sword was bound.

Morgaine's hand reached the hilt first. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the sword to her and met his eyes across the power web of the octogrammaton. 'Your move, Merlin,' she sneered.

Merlin and Morgaine. Ancient immortal enemies as the tales tell. Their battle joined once more.

The Doctor held up his umbrella like a sword. But when Morgaine raised Excalibur to parry his attack, he simply slid his brolly teasingly along the length of the sword. It cut the material to ribbons, but it enraged the Battle Queen into the bargain.