Doctor Who - Combat Magicks

by Steve Cole

  ‘Show us.’ Attila strode towards the checkpoint, the Doctor, Yaz and Alp following behind. ‘Now.’

  Men hurried to the row of carts at the checkpoint, kicking placid oxen, driving them to shift the heavy vehicles aside. Soon Yaz was walking through the narrow streets and plain courtyards. A muttering, whispering sound drifted from the houses. Yaz looked through the dusty membrane that covered one window, and froze. The Doctor stood beside her.

  Inside, she could see that the single room was crammed with soldiers, crushed upright together in a twitching mass, staring blankly and murmuring in low voices to themselves. The sight was both frightening and pathetic.

  ‘They can use a bow,’ said Chokona, ‘and swing a sword, but won’t kill each other.’

  ‘Alp wouldn’t even fight the dead Roman who attacked Attila.’ The Doctor crossed to another house and threw open the door to reveal the rooms inside similarly rammed with the walking dead. ‘My guess is that these poor remnants want to fight alongside you in real battle so they get another shot at the living enemy.’

  ‘That will never happen.’ Chokona’s face was a dark twist of fury. ‘These ghouls are idiot shades of the men they were. They have no place in this world.’

  ‘No place?’ the Doctor thundered. ‘In this world of yours, right now, you’re all dead men standing. You think they’re idiots? Wrong. They’re just bound by a certain purpose, like these Strava, I imagine: to add to the numbers fighting, to make the slaughter even worse.’

  No one spoke once the Doctor had finished, until at length Attila turned to Alp. ‘Go in there.’ He pointed at the house whose door the Doctor had opened. ‘Go on, in there! I cannot bear to see you.’

  Alp turned and walked calmly into the house. He stood there as instructed, twitching and shaking like the rest. Then Chokona marched over to the door and pulled it softly closed.

  ‘The body of a Hun warrior should be placed in the earth, facing west,’ he said, ‘so that he will ride to the after-life, served evermore by the souls of those he has slain in battle. Not walked into prison, brainless and babbling.’

  ‘Placed in the earth, you said?’ Yaz put a finger to her mouth. ‘Listen to them. Alp and the others, they’re all saying the same thing: “All together in the Great Pit”.’ She looked at the Doctor. ‘The Pit’s another word for hell, isn’t it?’

  ‘Right now, so is Catalaunum – and it’s a hell of your own making.’ The Doctor glared at Attila, the whispering of the dead like a hopeless lullaby beneath her words. ‘You agreed to dance with the devil. Are you really so surprised to find she’s been calling the tune all along?’

  Attila locked eyes with her. ‘I will hold Inkri to account.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t miss her explanations for all the world.’ The ghost of a smile played around the Doctor’s face. ‘Shall we?’

  Chapter 14

  Ryan was getting bored in the Hidden Hall, while Liss searched through her files for something she claimed would rock his world. All he could think about were his friends, somewhere out there in this land of secret histories.

  ‘How long have the Tenctrama been around?’ he asked. ‘When did you find out about them?’

  ‘Rumours that there were real witches helping the barbarians began forty years ago, when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. But they go back further. Way further.’

  ‘When did you find out? How’d you get a job with the Legion of Smoke anyway?’

  ‘You inherit it. Barring accidents, the eldest born becomes the next member of the Legion.’

  ‘You can’t say no?’

  ‘You caught what I said about “barring accidents”, right?’ Liss picked up and studied an egg-shaped device. ‘When my father died, I was initiated, I learned about his real work. That was six years ago.’ She fitted a metal sheath over the egg. ‘Vitus was already here, he helped train me. By then the existence of the Tenctrama and their powers was well known. The stories had spread.’

  ‘Bet your boss didn’t like that.’

  ‘At first, we were supposed to prove that the witches were fakes. Trouble is, they’re not fakes.’ Liss plonked both egg and sheath into a stone casket and shook her head. ‘War’s always been horrific, everyone knows that, but with the Tenctrama casting their combat magicks …’

  ‘It’s worse.’ Ryan nodded with feeling. ‘So what can we do about it? I mean, the Legion wants my help, right?’

  ‘It did when it thought you had some decent tech.’ Liss’s smile was small, but it was a start. ‘All we can do is keep looking for a way to match or overcome their powers. We have a small number of weapons from the stars—’

  ‘What, and you haven’t used them?’

  ‘We’re not sure how to,’ she confessed. ‘And even if we could get close enough to try, what reprisals would we risk?’

  Ryan supposed that made sense. ‘And if you’re keeping all this tech-stuff secret, you might draw a bit of attention.’

  Liss nodded. ‘Even our master knows nothing of the weapons. If he were to use them – in war, or in peace – we might have worse problems than the Tenctrama.’

  ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely?’

  ‘Ooh, that’s good. You are wise, Ryan.’ Her face had fallen again. ‘Vitus and I have been searching every depot for some small weakness in these witches, poring over every arcane book the Legion has collected, every cylinder of stamped clay, every scrap of occult ritual hunted out from the edges of our empire and beyond, from the seers of Babylon to the desert-priests beyond Volubilis.’

  ‘Have you found anything?’

  ‘No!’ she shouted, the word echoing hard off the glowing walls.

  ‘Wrong,’ Ryan said, with the smallest smile. ‘You found me, and Graham. And we’ve got friends out there you’re going to want to meet, cos they can help. Properly. Honest.’ He paused. ‘See, the Doctor is, like, an expert in stuff like this. She travels in the sort of ship where you found these creepy light effects. It looks like a blue box from the outside, but it’s her TARDIS and she—’

  ‘What did you say?’ Liss jumped up. ‘Doctor? TARDIS? You’re messing with me.’

  ‘What—?’

  She stared at him. ‘Say you’re messing with me and I’ll mess with your beautiful face, Ryan Sinclair.’

  ‘God, calm down, I’m not messing!’ Ryan protested. ‘What do you know about the TARDIS, then – and the Doctor?’

  ‘What do I know!’ Liss rubbed her hands together, eyes bright. ‘Hundreds of years ago, when Nero was Emperor, a blue casket marked with strange writing was found at the bottom of a cliff some distance from Rome. It looked to be a sarcophagus made of wood but could not be marked in any way by any tool, nor forced open. The Legion made arrangements to confiscate it, but by the time this had been arranged, the blue box had disappeared. Not taken – disappeared. There were no marks in the ground save for four sets of strange footprints, leading to the place where this box had lain for weeks, at least.’ She was clearly relishing the mystery of her tale. ‘A member of the Legion saw it again some fifteen years later, investigating supernatural events in Pompeii, just before Mount Vesuvius erupted. Then, a further thirty years later, the likeness of the blue casket was seen yet again – this time as a statue in a house in Rome, a temple named as TARDIS. The effigies of household gods, a man and a woman, stood beside it. I’ve seen the rubbings, they’re kept in the depot at Ravenna.’

  ‘Well mysterious,’ said Ryan, wondering what lucky fella had been travelling with the Doctor in those days. ‘Well, you’re right about the blue casket. It disappears from one place, and reappears in another.’

  ‘A ghostly casket?’ Liss’s smile was childlike. ‘But it is so small, what mechanism could possibly fit inside to make it move?’

  ‘It’s bigger on the inside. Like Pandora’s box, or jar, or whatever you said, only full of good stuff—’

  ‘I told you, and I wasn’t lying, I will mess with your face.’ She took his cheeks in her hands and smooshed th
em. ‘You’ve been inside the blue casket?’

  ‘Yeah.’ As well as weirded out, Ryan felt truly proud. He pulled her hands away, and held on to them. ‘My friends and me, we’ve been all over in it. And we really can help. That’s why you’ve got to help me find her, and Yaz, and Graham—’

  ‘Oh, we’ll help you,’ Liss said. ‘Vitus will be back soon, I know, and then …’ Standing on tiptoes she kissed Ryan wetly on the side of his mouth. ‘Oh, I feel giddy!’

  Ryan felt quite giddy himself but tried to play things cool. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s hope, that’s what it is. Hope.’

  ‘Hope that you get to kiss me again?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ She kissed him at once on the other side of his mouth. ‘This thing with the Tenctrama … it’s been going on for so long. For ages, actual ages. And you see, I was the one who made the discovery.’

  The thought of the hovering hags put chills up Ryan’s spine, wrecking the moment. ‘What discovery?’

  ‘It’s stopped me sleeping pretty much ever since.’ Liss rushed over to an ornate casket placed against the wall, lifted its lid and sorted clumsily through the contents. ‘You know, it was all so much easier in the old days when people believed in many gods. You could blame so much strangeness on them. Now we just have the one, all-powerful lord who claims a monopoly on miracles. Perhaps that is why the Tenctrama moved on from targeting Rome to seduce the pagan barbarians with their powers.’

  ‘They targeted Rome first?’ He watched her sorting through the endless scrolls. ‘What are you looking for? Can I help you find it?’

  ‘Got it.’ She held up some crumbling parchments and studied them. ‘The story goes back to the Sibylline books.’

  ‘Sibyl who?’

  ‘Sibylline,’ she corrected him. ‘God, you’re so backward in Britannia. The Sybils were prophetesses, keepers of temples, bridges between the world of the living and the land of the dead. They’d write prophecies on oak leaves. You know, vague prophecies. You could read pretty much anything into them, you know? But one of these Sibyls was different.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Ryan sensed another story coming on. ‘Different how?’

  ‘The legends say that, about a thousand years ago, a Sybil came to the court of the last royal of the Roman Kingdom, Tarquin the Proud, with nine books said to embody all the secrets of human destiny. Predictions of just what was coming down the centuries for Rome. She said she’d sell him the nine books but the price was enormous and Tarquin said no. So, the Sybil threw three of the books on the fire. She demanded exactly the same price for the remaining six. Old Tarquin was sweating now, but he refused again …’

  Ryan guessed where this was going. ‘So she threw another one on the fire?’

  ‘Another three. Only three books left now. And still she wanted the same price.’ Liss tutted. ‘Tarquin caved. Paid up in full. Although, I don’t think it was the money she wanted. It was his belief.’

  ‘Well, were the books any good?’

  ‘Not for Tarquin the Proud,’ said Liss wryly. ‘They foretold that his reign would quickly come to an end, and it did. The Senate took charge, and the books were kept in a stone chest underground in the Temple of Jupiter on Capitoline Hill. Fifteen patricians from the ruling families, handpicked by a secret inner council of the Senate, were made the books’ guardians. Only they were allowed to consult the books and learn their secrets; that was the origin of the Legion of Smoke.’ Now she produced a purple, cylindrical wooden box. ‘This is one of the original books.’

  Ryan felt a tickle down his spine as he eyed the several blackened rolls of parchment inside.

  Licinia reached in and took one. Holding it in her right hand she unrolled it with her left. ‘As is custom, there is a portrait of the book’s author on the first page. Perhaps you might recognise this prophetess of human destinies …?’

  Ryan saw, with a chill, the face he’d never wanted to see again. The twisted, unnatural features of the witch-woman from the forest. It was her, no question, staring back at him from a thousand years ago, a knowing smile scoring one more wrinkle in that hideous face.

  Chapter 15

  Marched through the Roman army camp by Zeno and Ricimer, Graham felt as though he were pushing through the pages of a school history textbook. He’d coloured pictures of Roman army tents as a kid, using bright orange pencils. Now to be walking among the endless lines of leather tents, each three metres square and lined up with suitably military precision, so close together that the guy ropes overlapped … It was surreal and scary and brilliant all in one.

  The sheer scale of the camp! From swathes of Roman uniformity to the colour clashes of the brighter barbarian tents across the field, it seemed impossible that such a place could pop up overnight. The stink of it – manure, smoke, urine, unwashed bodies – was everywhere, overpowering.

  Senses overloaded, it was small details that caught in his mind later – servants asleep on a pile of armour outside the tent. Bloodied survivors of last night’s skirmish sat in huddles, ignored by all. The staggering whiff and hubbub of the toilet block, fenced in by felled trees, the hastily gouged channel in the mud through to a stagnant stream piled high with …

  Yeah, I’ll hold it in, thanks, Graham thought.

  The strangest sight was soldiers gathering wheat in a cordoned area that seemed freshly dug over. He looked between Zeno and Ricimer. ‘Bit of luck, isn’t it – finding crops already growing here?’

  ‘They weren’t,’ said Zeno, who’d lost pretty much all of his limp by now. ‘The Tenctrama have a grain that grows quickly.’

  ‘What, that quickly?’ Graham stared at the stalks in the ground. He could almost see new growth.

  ‘We add water and the crushed grains make gruel.’ Ricimer patted his stomach. ‘It tastes like sick. But soldiers can’t fight on empty bellies.’

  ‘Guess they can’t.’ Graham shook his head, surprised his healing gel had drawn any attention at all among the miracles of these witch-women.

  Zeno and Ricimer brought him straight to the First Centurion’s tent – spacious but still smelly – and told their story. The centurion was in a right old mood, he’d been trying to grab some sleep. ‘This had better be on the level,’ he warned the legionaries, ‘or you’ll be mucking out the Strava.’ Whatever that meant, the two legionaries didn’t look happy as, together, they waited for word of Graham’s marvellous medicine to be taken to Flavius Aetius himself.

  Within minutes, Graham had been granted audience. But Zeno and Ricimer were in for a let-down. ‘You two,’ the First Centurion said, ‘report to the obstacle trenches and relieve the guards on the dead.’

  ‘Tell the old man how quickly we brought you here, Briton,’ Ricimer hissed.

  Zeno nodded. ‘We deserve a reward.’

  ‘You deserve the blockhouse,’ the First Centurion shouted. ‘And keep quiet about all this, or you’ll be digging latrines instead!’

  Graham gave a sombre salute to his escorts then found himself taken at speed to a much larger tent, this one built around poles with a peaked roof perhaps three metres high, the mules that must carry it tethered just outside. Along the way he tried to gather his thoughts, aware that the safety of his friends – and his own – was riding on this meeting. A meeting with Aetius! The final great leader of the Roman empire in the west. Treat him like a regular bloke, Graham told himself. He still wipes his bum like the rest of us. Well, maybe with a sponge on a stick instead of paper, but …

  ‘Consus,’ the Centurion called at the tent flap, ‘your master sent for this … visitor.’

  A small, slight man with doleful features too big for his face appeared in the entrance. Consus gestured that Graham should join him inside. Aetius’s tent was impressive inside as well as out, with chairs, a desk half-buried under scrolls and their containers, tapestries hanging from the walls and almost tropical heat from a huge vat filled with hot water half hidden by canvas screens.

  Great, thought Graham, I’ve interru
pted bath-time.

  A squat, muscular man in his late fifties walked out casually from behind the screens, stark naked. Graham reddened and looked away at once, keeping his gaze on Consus as the slave applied a perfumed lotion to his master’s back. His first thought was Whoa … ! On reflection, he realised that this was most likely intimidation tactics: suggesting that Graham mattered so little to this noble of Rome, he wasn’t even worth dressing for.

  ‘I am the Patrician Flavius Aetius, Master of Soldiers.’ The man’s voice was deep and measured, and he studied a dagger in its hilt placed on his dresser while Consus selected a tunic for him to wear. ‘You’re the medic from Britain?’

  ‘Graham O’Brien, sir.’

  Consus made Aetius decent with a linen loincloth, thank God, and laid out a tough-looking leather skirt that was burnished with gold. Aetius considered the kilt, then looked up at Graham – his eyes were a pure, pale blue, cold as stones beneath a short fringe of greying hair. ‘You have a medicine that can cure wounds swiftly, I understand?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Prove it.’ Aetius took the dagger and casually sliced into his slave’s upper arm. Consus cried out and then stared in shock at the blood trickling down his arm, while his master gripped him firmly by the back of the neck to stop him moving. Graham swore under his breath and kept swearing as he grabbed the pot of gel, wiped some of the blood from the cut with his cloak and then quickly applied the medication while the poor slave writhed in pain. Aetius watched Graham coldly as he worked.

  Get on with it! Graham willed the gel to close the cut before this poor bloke bled out. Come on, crazy cream, do your thing.

  After what felt like an age, Consus’s cut began to scab stickily over. Graham puffed out a massive sigh of relief. ‘There you go, son.’

  ‘Congratulations.’ Aetius released his slave, who fell panting to his knees.

  ‘Was that really necessary?’ Graham asked.

  ‘Bathing between battles is a luxury I indulge, and I had no wish to dirty more clothes with the blood of my dresser.’