Doctor Who_ Bunker Soldiers Part 24

'It could be anywhere,' I added. I looked around the room.

Oppressive under Dmitri's attempted curfew, it felt darker still now. 'It could be here, with us.' I couldn't help but look at the soldiers stationed at the doorway but what was to stop the beast, if it had more than one face, from being in our midst? It could be Yevhen, or Isaac or even Dodo. Or even the poor, muttering fool that had once been Dmitri.

'We should hunt the creature,' said Nahum.

'We have more important considerations,' Yevhen said. 'If this thing does not trouble us, it shall be ignored.'

'But what is it trying to achieve?' I asked. 'One minute it seems to attack indiscriminately, the next it goes into hiding.'

'I do not know,' said Isaac.

'The Doctor would know,' I muttered under my breath.

It was as if I had uttered a mystic mantra. I looked up to see a confusion of soldiers at the door to the great chamber and then the Doctor striding imperiously through them.

'Doctor!' exclaimed Dodo, running to him and hugging him tightly.

'Now, now, my child,' said the Doctor, at once embarra.s.sed but touched by this display of affection. 'I have only been gone a few days!'

'It is good to see you,' I agreed.

The Doctor smiled. 'It is good to see you all.'

Dodo hugged him again. 'Are you all right?'

'Yes, my child. I am quite well. I only wish I brought better news from the Mongol army.'

'Oh?' queried Yevhen, though I expected he guessed what the Doctor was about to say.

The Doctor turned on him angrily. 'Whose idea was it to execute the envoys? What fool ordered the catapulting of their bodies and the other corpses over the walls?'

'My lord the governor,' said Yevhen obsequiously. He pointed to the wretch in the corner. 'I am afraid the burdens of his position have driven him mad. I am the new governor.'

'Why did you not stop him?' asked the Doctor. 'With the envoys alive there was a chance a slender chance, yes, but a chance all the same!' He put an awkward, fatherly arm around Dodo. 'But now I am afraid that nothing but destruction awaits Kiev. The attack is as certain as night following day.'

'Your mission was unsuccessful,' commented Yevhen.

'My mission was compromised by rash stupidity, calculated only to inflame the hatred of the Mongol warlords!'

'Don't be too hard on Dmitri,' I said. 'He was attacked by the creature. I think it may have sent him mad.'

'I heard something of what you said from the corridor,' said the Doctor. 'It is a sleeping foe, is it not? Its aggression is matched only by its periodic inactivity.'

I tried to fill him in on what had happened since the start of his trek to the Mongol army my liberation from prison, my flight through the catacombs, the strange attack on Lesia and the plot hatched by the Church authorities to appease the Mongols.

'Yes, I met Archbishop Vasil,' said the Doctor. 'The execution of the emissary rather put paid to the Church's attempted appeas.e.m.e.nt for the moment at least.' He paused, rubbing his chin. 'I am interested, my boy. You mentioned the cook's body in the catacombs?'

'That's who Olexander said it was. She was married to the builder...'

'A pattern emerges, does it not? From a lowly builder, to a cook with access to these chambers, then finally attacks on the leaders of Kiev...' The Doctor turned back to Yevhen, and his voice was clouded with remorse. 'The cook was killed, and taken away, to ensure that the creature could move about with impunity. I am afraid, sir, that it does not bode well for your daughter.'

Yevhen said nothing, but turned away sharply.

'It is clearly a creature of great ferocity, and yet...

Insidiously... it has climbed social structures to find itself at the very heart of command. Fascinating, hmm?'

'That is as may be,' saidYevhen, his back still turned. 'But we have more important foes to concern ourselves with.'

'My concerns are not your concerns,' the Doctor said quietly.

'At last, a true word pa.s.ses your lips!' exclaimed Yevhen.

'What are we going to do?' asked Dodo.

'Well,' said the Doctor. 'The illness you describe... It sounds to me like an acute bacterial infection, perhaps even cholera.' He turned to Yevhen. 'I will advise how to treat the afflicted with clean water and salt, given orally. But I will need antibiotics...' He seemed at last to notice the blank looks the others were giving him. 'I have medicinal preparations in the TARDIS,' he said. 'We should be able to prevent the spread of this disease.'

I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. 'After all this time, you're finally prepared to return to the TARDIS!'

'Only now that is there something I can help with,' said the Doctor. 'With acting governor Yevhen's permission, of course.'

Yevhen turned. 'You think I am a fool? Of course I will not allow you access to your "s.h.i.+p". You have clearly concluded that our opposition to the Mongols is futile. You will be away from here in the twinkling of an eye.'

'You have my word,' said the Doctor gravely.

'I would rather trust a wh.o.r.e's expression of undying love!'

Isaac spoke up, a rational and calm voice amid the charged atmosphere. 'But, my lord, if the Doctor has access to compounds that will rid the city '

'No,' said Yevhen, determined 'Our physicians are working on treatments that will restore the balance of the humours. We must trust them.'

'This disease is not an imbalance!' exclaimed the Doctor, furious. 'It is an infection that enters the body through contaminated food and water.'

'Your words are meaningless,' said Yevhen. 'We do not need your "help".'

'Then you sentence us all to death!' said Nahum, always more headstrong than his father. 'By disease, or at the hands of the Tartars, it matters not to you!'

'We have been doomed from the beginning, said Yevhen. 'Is that not so, Doctor?'

The Doctor said nothing. It was clear that what Yevhen said was true enough.

Yevhen soon swept away on some business or other. The rest of us remained in the great chamber.

'The disease,' said Isaac gently. 'Is it too much to hope... that it might affect the Mongols. . At least to delay their attacks?' He too had been appalled by what had happened, but his outrage was tempered by a desperate hope that perhaps Dmitri's plan had worked.

The Doctor shook his head. 'I doubt very much that the disease will have any impact on the Mongol army,' he said. He paused for a moment, deep in thought. 'Though I suppose...

Well, yes, there is a precedent for this.'

'What do you mean?' I asked.

'Well, a future precedent, if you will.' He lowered his voice.

'In 1346 an army serving Janibeg Khan besieges the city of Kaffa. A dreadful pestilence sweeps through the Mongols, killing many of the soldiers. The commander... I forget the fellow's name now... He orders that the diseased corpses be catapulted over the walls and into the city. He simply waits for the illness to take hold.' He paused, his voice funereal. 'It is widely regarded as mankind's first attempt at biological warfare.'

'You're joking!' I exclaimed without thinking.

'This is no laughing matter, young man,' said the Doctor, and I immediately felt foolish. 'The effects on the besieged citizens of Kaffa was bad enough. Even worse was the long-term impact of the pestilence. Genoese merchants took the disease to the Mediterranean ports of southern Europe, from where it spread through Spain, France, Germany and Britain. Eventually it reached Scandinavia and Greenland.' He paused again, seemingly mindful of Dodo's presence. 'But you do not want to hear of this,' he said suddenly.

'What happened?' I asked.

'Please, Doctor,' added Dodo.

'Very well.' The Doctor's eyes were faraway. 'The ensuing plague was the most awful catastrophe of European history. A third of the population of the entire continent was killed.

Nothing ever perpetrated by Genghis or the other khans compared to this.'

'The Black Death,' I said quietly.

The Doctor nodded. 'Bubonic plague. Little wonder that historians sometimes call this period the Dark Ages.' He turned to me, angry perhaps at the awfulness of his tale angry, perhaps, at the impotence he still felt. 'You both come from a time of such great privilege! You, Dodo... an era when a plane falling from the sky is front page news! You, Steven... a period when illness and premature death has been conquered. My children, it is little wonder that you do not understand. Death is the neighbour of these poor people!' He indicated Isaac and Nahum, and I wondered what on earth they were making of the Doctor's prophecies, his tales of futures they could not comprehend. 'They are as intimate with death as we are with our families, our friends.' The Doctor turned on me, resuming an argument from days or weeks before a common trait of his, I had noted. It was as if he played out his life, again and again, behind his eyes, and old events were as fresh as yesterday's. 'And you dare to lecture me on involvement in history, on making a stand!'

I did not know what to say in response. I was saved from doing so by a most unlikely event without prompting, Dodo burst into tears.

The Doctor immediately held her close. 'My child, I am sorry. I should not have said such things. It is a gruesome tale, to be sure '

'It's all my fault!' she exclaimed through her tears.

'Come, come,' said the Doctor. 'What are you talking about?'

'I said something to Dmitri.' It was almost impossible to hear her words through her sobbing. 'I said something, and it gave him the idea. It gave him the idea to throw the bodies over the walls.'

'Oh, my dear, I wish I had said nothing.'

'But... What Dmitri did... Might it have inspired this attack on Kaffa?' Dodo's desperation was clear on her face.

'It is by no means certain. No, not at all though the Mongols are nothing if not great storytellers and military tacticians, always looking for new strategies.'

'But Dmitri was mad,' I interjected, seeing how upset Dodo had become. 'Who's to say this wouldn't have happened anyway?'

'Quite, quite,' agreed the Doctor hastily. 'It's quite improbable that the events we have witnessed here a deranged governor in Kiev, sent mad by some sort of monster will go on to be remembered by a Mongol leader a hundred years in the future.Yes, quite improbable.'

I could see that Dodo was less than entirely convinced. The Doctor said nothing more, but instead walked over to Dmitri who was slumped in a chair in the corner. The former governor's chin was moist, and his eyes were untroubled by blinking or movement. 'Yes, this creature brings madness in its wake,' the Doctor said. 'It chose not to kill Dmitri, but instead ...

' He stamped his feet in irritation. 'There is something obvious here, something we are not seeing! Why attack some, and not others? Why kill soldiers, but infect Dmitri only with madness?'

'Why are you so concerned with this creature?' asked Isaac.

'I have my reasons,' said the Doctor and I had more than an inkling what they might be.

Before the Doctor could say anything else, Yevhen swept back into the room. 'I have some news for you,' he announced grandly.

'Later, man, later,' said the Doctor, clearly irritated. 'We need to know about the prophecies, the legends. They speak of the salvation of the city of Kiev, do they not?'

'I do not know,' said Yevhen, for the moment forgetting his announcement. 'I believe so.'

'Come, come,' said the Doctor, frustrated. 'Let us lay our cards on the table, so to speak. We have precious little to lose, and this creature could still be the salvation of Kiev. Now, acting governor Yevhen what do you know of the legends of the dark angel?'

Still Yevhen seemed not inclined to speak.

'Come on, man!' I exclaimed 'It's obvious you released the thing from the catacombs under the cathedral. At least tel us what you know!'

Yevhen turned towards the window, hiding his face from us.

'Very well,' he said, his voice the whisper of decades. 'I shall tell you what I know.'

I listened attentively as Yevhen spoke in a still voice, his hands writhing nervously behind his back.

'A ma.n.u.script speaks of an angel, a protector. The doc.u.ment, pa.s.sed down from eldest son to eldest son, tells of a potter, who lived in the countryside beyond our city. He was one of many who discovered the coffin of the angel. But he, uniquely, was blessed with an insight into the war in heaven the war that saw the angel come to earth. He saw the angel fighting the forces of evil. It is a dark angel only because it is forced to use the instruments of evil to defeat the enemies of state and G.o.d. The potter came to believe that the angel's casket would protect the city of Kiev. In my folly, I too believed this.'

He glanced at us momentarily. 'I believe the potter was my great-great-great-great-grandfather. Perhaps, as some would say, peasant stupidity does run in my family!'

This was quite an admission from Yevhen, and for a moment I almost felt sorry for the man. But when he turned I saw the cold darkness of his face, and my sympathy drained away. 'I tire of this. I order you all into the catacombs,' he said suddenly, his casual gesture encompa.s.sing the Doctor, Dodo and I, as well as Isaac and Nahum.

'Are you mad?' Nahum exclaimed. 'The creature lives there!'

Yevhen shook his head. 'You said yourself: the creature came into this building. You will be quite safe safe, perhaps, even from the Mongols.'

'But...' stammered Isaac, 'I cannot leave Rebekah behind.

And ... I am needed here.'

'You are needed here if the rest of us perish,' said Yevhen.

'You want us out of the way!' I shouted. 'You've always had designs on the governor's position.'

'Perhaps you are right,' said Yevhen. 'But what do I govern?

A terrified city, riddled with pestilence and soon to be attacked by a great army. This is not what I had in mind!' He raised a hand to summon the soldiers, underlining his intentions. 'Go,'

he said. 'Go down into the depths. It will be a more comfortable domain than this.'