by Steve Cole
‘I suppose the battle today gave you enough corpses to kick-start your cycle?’
‘Humans provide the finest energy. Soon our storm will spread across their empire. We shall feast on the souls of all creatures from here to Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople …’
‘There’s no need for that. I’ll help you,’ the Doctor shouted. ‘I’ll work with you to find a way to synthesise the energy you need from other means. You won’t have to kill any longer.’
‘But we like to kill, Doctor.’ More screams from the back of the crypt and more braying of frightened horses, as strands of crackling power shot down from the sky. Yaz and Ryan shook and spun in the golden haze. ‘If your friends are from the far future of this world, that would explain their genetic anomalies.’
‘The synthetic fibres in their clothes prove it too. Go ahead and test them.’ The Doctor looked up at Inkri. ‘While you’re at it, wouldn’t you like to test my other friend, Graham?’
There was silence. Then a deeper light bathed Yaz and Ryan. They twitched and turned restlessly in the light as if having a bad dream.
‘Of course, you can’t,’ said the Doctor, ‘for the same reason you’ve sent in your newborns to get us instead of zapping from the sky and killing indiscriminately. Whoever dies gets hoovered up, and you can’t risk absorbing Graham or Attila by accident, can you?’
‘Doc!’ Graham was backing away from the door as it ground slowly open. ‘Those things that killed Vitus are coming through.’
‘Ah. And they can discriminate. Get over here, Graham.’
He ran to join her. ‘Ryan and Yaz, are they all right?’
‘They’re being scrutinised cell by cell. It’s keeping the Tenctrama busy.’ The Doctor looked round, calling in a stage whisper. ‘Attila? Attila, those things will be coming for you too – if you can dodge past them, get deep enough into the catacombs, maybe you can—’
‘No.’ A clop of hooves and Attila appeared from behind a thick column on Bittenmane’s back. He snatched a fallen sword from the floor. ‘I am Attila, the Scourge of God. Should a king who has looted half the world turn and hide?’
The pale, sticky forms of the Tenctrama burst out into the crypt, claws oozing from their massive, maggoty bodies, wings buzzing, mouths snapping open. ‘Turn from those things? Hell, yeah!’ The Doctor thwacked Bittenmane’s hindquarters, then grabbed Graham’s hand. ‘Come on!’
Graham’s heart was in his mouth as he ran with the Doctor up the short tunnel that led to the outside of the mausoleum. The cemetery seemed floodlit as they emerged into the wild static of the energy storm overhead. There were Ryan and Yaz, strung up by golden lights twenty feet in the air.
Graham stared helplessly. ‘The Tenctrama will kill them, won’t they?’
Before the Doctor could answer, there was a scatter of clip-clops on the flagstones and Attila raced past them on Bittenmane, the sturdy horse powering over the old stone like a thoroughbred tearing up the turf at Aintree.
But it wasn’t fast enough.
A flex of sparking light uncoiled from the heavens, and it struck Bittenmane’s chest. Graham had never heard a horse actually roar with pain before – and he would never forget the sound for as long as he lived.
‘Bittenmane!’ the Doctor shouted, but the animal had become ashes, sucked up by the storm. Attila, meantime, fell tumbling over the overgrown path and into the grassy graves.
‘Those evil … twisted …’ Graham stared, crushed and horror-struck as the Tenctrama creatures came half-scuttling, half-flying out from the mausoleum, headed for the fallen Attila. ‘Doc, can’t we do anything?’
‘Nothing so well as Bittenmane.’ There was new fire in the Doctor’s eyes as she stared up at the undulating energy and pulled the DNA manipulator from her pocket. ‘Are you ready for me, Inkri?’ she shouted. ‘Cos I’m ready for you!’
‘No!’ A scream, many voices in one, cracked out from the heavens. The whirlwind of light was flickering, and Inkri’s image growing distorted. ‘The Pit must not be contaminated …’
‘Then you shouldn’t have swallowed up poor Bittenmane, should you?’ the Doctor shouted. ‘Oh, yes, you scanned the humans for signs of poison, but it never occurred to you, did it – that I might have helped a lowly little horse as well!’
Graham remembered. ‘Jeez, you did an’ all!’
Fresh tendrils of whiteness were flailing out drunkenly from the light storm. Yaz and Ryan dropped from the sky to land like dead weights on the grass, and the Doctor and Graham rushed to their side.
‘I think they’re all right,’ the Doctor reported.
‘Course they are,’ Graham said, determined to believe it. ‘Will Bittenmane’s poison stop the Tenctrama?’
‘Afraid not. They’ll simply vent the corrupted energy.’ She cradled the manipulator in both hands. ‘See if you can save Attila the Hun. I’ve got just one chance to preserve the world he wants to conquer.’
Graham looked down at the blaster he’d taken from Yaz in the crypt. Then he ran towards the slavering Tenctrama closing on Attila and yelled, ‘Come on, then!’
‘Come on, then,’ agreed the Doctor, activating the manipulator, checking the status of the translation unit. ‘Last programmed procedure, still in the memory? Yes!’
‘Doctor,’ Yaz said groggily.
‘So glad you’re all right!’ the Doctor cried. ‘Bit busy right now, though!’
‘What’s happened?’ Ryan rubbed his aching head.
‘Shush, quickly, help Graham!’ the Doctor shouted. ‘The Tenctrama have paused their renewal cycle. They’re trying to isolate poor Bittenmane’s DNA within the Pit ready for venting.’
‘Bittenmane?’ Yaz felt a pang of sorrow as she tried to shake her head awake. ‘He’s … gone?’
‘But not forgotten! The healing gel’s seen to that.’
Ryan got up stiffly. ‘You mean, it’s hurting the Tenctrama?’
‘Not badly. There’s too much fresh energy being absorbed from all over the battlefield. So, you see, I really don’t have long.’ The Doctor waved the sonic over the manipulator, not looking up. ‘No more talk. Things kicking off. Go help!’
As she spoke, Ryan saw that Graham was trying to drag Attila clear of the fray.
‘Use your hand magicks, old one!’ Attila shouted, breaking his grip.
‘No more juice!’ Graham yelled.
Moments later, more soldiers came pouring out of the mausoleum, pursued by newborn Tenctrama; Inkri’s mind control must have faltered while she coped with the emergency, but these creatures had no other focus than feeding. Aetius rattled out on horseback, trying to fend off the towering creatures as they spat lightning and fed on the corpses. Sword raised, Attila led Huns and Romans alike to help him, working together now, hacking at the monsters left, right and centre. Ryan swore under his breath, while Yaz just nodded, almost overwhelmed. This was like some full-on sword and sorcery battle, made real!
‘Wait, I’ve still got this thing!’ Graham shone his laser pointer at the Tenctrama’s misshapen eyes, trying to distract them from their slaughter. Ryan had his own blaster out, and fired at the ground around the monsters while Yaz helped pull the wounded to safety. With a flood of relief he saw Liss stagger out from inside and join in the defence with her own firepower. But more Tenctrama were squeezing into view.
Whatever you’re doing, Doctor, thought Ryan, please, God, make it count.
An outpouring of sickly green light rained down from the gunmetal mass of the Tenctrama lair in the sky.
‘There it goes!’ the Doctor breathed. ‘Bad energy vented while new energy floods on in. So if I’m quick …’ She planted the reprogrammed manipulator in the ground, pulled out the sonic and cycled through the Tenctrama wavelength signatures, the same technique as when she’d hacked into the teleport controls.
It had to work. It just had to. ‘Come … on …
‘Yes!’
Suddenly, the stream of bad energy flowing down from the sky
was drawn across to the manipulator, like a metal rod dispersing lightning. The Doctor cried out in agony as the vortex of energy engulfed her too, but she kept twisting on the sonic, amplifying the signals, looping them.
The air shimmered, and Inkri appeared in the towering, glutinous flesh, claws clacking, spidery legs quivering as she gazed down on the Doctor, writhing in the energy flow. ‘What do you hope to gain by breaking into our systems,’ she mocked, ‘besides an agonising death? The infected energy has been safely vented.’
‘I noticed.’ The Doctor smiled up at her weakly. ‘So, question is, what’s flooding out from your Pit now?’
Inkri twisted her head to see, and screamed in horror. ‘Our energy …’ A blazing stream was still being drawn down into the ground. ‘All our energy is venting!’
‘You Tenctrama are linked, and so is your technology; the same basic systems—’ The Doctor yelled with pain, still sonicking, willing herself to stay conscious. ‘Someone clever like me can make a sympathetic resonance using this DNA manipulator and tap into your ship’s systems to keep the vents open. You’re throwing good energy after bad and while I control the vents, you can’t …’ She screamed again as the white light intensified. ‘You can’t stop me.’
Inkri loomed down over her, eyes narrowing, her hideous face distorted with rage. ‘The energy will be collected again.’
‘’Fraid not,’ said the Doctor. ‘The manipulator … it’s designed to combine your genetics with Earth-native DNA to create a hybrid – yeah?’ The Doctor felt the ground tremble and buck about her. ‘You’ve grown so obsessed with the animals you’ve groomed for so long, you’ve forgotten the flora.’
Inkri tried to scuttle forward but her legs seemed rooted to the spot. The grass was growing beneath her many legs, then blackening, then seething with new growth. Great roots and tendrils burst up through the smoking earth around her. ‘Doctor!’ she shrieked as thick stems broke through her thick white skin. ‘What … what have you—?’
‘I’ve switched out human DNA for plant DNA!’ She stared up at Inkri through the blazing light as the ground squirmed with rage beneath her. ‘All the energy you’ve gathered in your Pit, to sustain yourselves, to survive … It’s pouring into the ground. Welcome to the Tenctrama’s brand new life … as compost!’
Inkri couldn’t even answer back. Lethal-looking thorns pushed out from under her skin, puncturing her eyes. Vines spewed from her gaping mouth and fixed her to the roiling mud as the Tenctrama life source became one with the overgrown cemetery gardens. The Doctor closed her eyes and tried to hold on through the pain, to keep the vents blocked, while the vines grew thicker and snaked blindly around her, as exotic grasses scraped against her skin, as the soil crumbled open ready to bury her alive.
Chapter 34
‘What the …?’ Ryan stared round, panting. One moment he’d been fighting back to back to back with Liss and Yaz, the next, the Tenctrama were collapsing into the ground, sticky hides hardening, sickly blooms bursting from their stiffening forms.
Aetius, bloodied and exhausted, backed away. ‘What’s happening?’
With one last great effort, Liss hurled a dagger at the nearest Tenctrama. It fell uselessly into a rustling mass of white brambles spilling out from inside the monster, plant life that quickly cracked and smoked and rotted. ‘I think … they’re dying.’
Panting for breath, Attila lowered his sword. ‘Enough,’ he commanded his men. ‘She is right. It is some magick, cast by the Doctor …?’
‘Look!’ Yaz pointed. Ryan saw the Doctor’s boots just visible through the rage of weird plant life, shooting up, growing old and dying, like the ground was clutching desperately for the sky.
‘The Doc’s being smothered,’ Graham shouted. ‘Come on!’
Ryan raced away with Yaz to help, Liss and Graham close behind them. They hacked through the blistering branches that were trying to pull the Doctor down. Ryan could hear the whirr of the sonic. ‘She’s still alive,’ he shouted. ‘Keep going!’
It was getting darker: the light storm was dying in the sky, sparking out like there was some dodgy connection in the heavens.
The sonic stopped working.
‘Doctor!’ Yaz shouted. She and Liss tore desperately through the dark foliage while Graham and Ryan struggled to pull the Doctor free. Graham looked up and groaned. The giant Tenctrama lair in the sky was tipping, lowering towards them, starting to fall.
‘Look out!’ he yelled, fixed to the spot in horror.
Ryan finally yanked the Doctor’s arm clear of the vines, and the sonic slipped from her grip, and the Tenctrama ship plunging towards them …
Blinked out of existence.
With a final atom-splitting crack like thunder, the manipulator crumbled and the whole world shook. The vegetation around them writhed and withered. An unnatural gale blew around them and a stink of rot filled the air, like the Tenctrama were heaving out one final dying breath.
Then a new atmosphere settled uneasily over the shattered cemetery.
‘Peace,’ said Aetius quietly. ‘Can it be there’s a place for peace again in this world?’
‘You talk too much,’ said Attila. ‘The battle is ended for now. That is all.’ He threw his sword down into the scabrous plant-life. A jet black tear, like tar, oozed from the split.
‘The plants are dead,’ said Yaz, ‘but … they’re still alive.’
‘Like the Tenctrama,’ said Liss.
‘They are the Tenctrama, now,’ Graham said. ‘Inkri, her mates and her little ones.’
‘Trapped in this form,’ Yaz agreed. ‘For another thousand years? That’s a real living death.’
‘Well, it’s a cemetery, innit?’ Graham managed a smile. ‘At least they’ll feel right at home.’
‘Vitus?’ Liss was looking around, frowning. ‘Vitus, where are you?’
‘Battle’s ended,’ Ryan said, crossing to join her. ‘Now comes the mourning.’
Ryan was right, Yaz thought, back in the forest the following night, looking up at the stars. It was a time to mourn, and to give thanks for sacrifice. To give thanks for their lives. So many, so much had been lost: from the countless soldiers and their mounts out there on the battlefield to poor Vitus, who’d died so bravely trying to protect them. And Bittenmane, too, the sturdy mount with the shining eyes, whose sacrifice had helped to save the world.
She stood now in the remains of the clearing where they’d first met him, the land about flattened by the force-field generator, watching as survivors from the battlefield, Huns and Romans together, worked with ropes and oxen to pull the TARDIS back into a standing position so they could get inside. Aetius and Attila supervised together – they wanted the Doctor, her friends and her magicks gone from the field of battle – and while their soldiers looked drawn and harried, the two rulers had quickly recovered their calm authority.
The Doctor was quiet, sat on a cart like the one that had carried them to the Hun camp only yesterday. Her bounce was subdued, clothes blackened and skin sticky with burns. She’d spent all that day in a deep sleep, like a coma, close to death.
Don’t let us lose you too, Yaz had thought, holding her friend’s hand as tightly as she could. Don’t ever let us lose you.
‘She’s gonna thank you for the broken fingers when she wakes up,’ Ryan said. He’d been holding the other hand.
It had been at the sound of Graham’s voice – or at a question only she was smart enough to answer – that the Doctor revived.
‘What d’you think happened to the Tenctrama ship?’ Graham pondered. ‘One sec it was going to flatten us, the next …?’
‘It was trying to jump back into limbo to break the venting cycle, but it couldn’t.’ The Doctor opened her eyes. ‘I was overriding its systems with the sonic, keeping the vents open. When I stopped sonicking, the teleportation loop kicked in.’ She managed a smile. ‘Now the Tenctrama are out of reach, so’s their ship. It’ll stay lost in the gap between now and now forever more.’
<
br /> ‘Like my brain cells when you give one of your fancy explanations,’ Graham had joked. ‘Welcome back, Doc!’
And it was a different world that had welcomed her. A world where the dead could rest in peace now. A world without the Tenctrama biting and scratching at the way of things. The Doctor had taken all that ‘animus’ pouring down from their lair and let it boil away into the cemetery gardens. The plains of Catalaunum had been razed, bare and barren for miles around, but with time they would recover.
Like all of us, Yaz thought hopefully.
‘Where is the Visigoth king?’ Liss asked her master, Aetius. She’d come along to see Ryan off. ‘His men have left the battlefield.’
‘I persuaded Thorismund that this was not the time to fight on.’ Aetius gave her a lofty smile. ‘He has many brothers back in the south who will also wish to be king. Better he establish himself in his own kingdom.’
Graham nodded. ‘Cos if you had beaten the Huns, without a common enemy left the Visigoths could turn on you.’
‘I get it. This way you keep a balance.’ Ryan turned over a ceramic blaster in his fingers; like all the other space-age weapons, its power-pack was exhausted. ‘And after all this I don’t suppose anyone has the stomach for more fighting.’
Liss looked at him with a sad smile. ‘Or for sticking around?’
Yaz felt bad for the girl, who’d lost so much: Vitus, their headquarters here, most of their ancient relics in the final battle, gone up in the smoke her Legion was named for.
‘I’ve got to go, you know?’ Ryan crossed to her, ungainly, awkward. ‘This isn’t my time, or my place. I need to be with my family.’
‘In Britannia?’
‘Nah.’ He smiled at the Doctor, Yaz and Graham. ‘Right here.’
Liss nodded, and her smile grew a little warmer. ‘You will keep on chasing the darkness, won’t you? While I am resolved to find brighter magicks in the world.’
‘They’re out there, Liss,’ the Doctor told her. ‘It’s not all smoke and mirrors.’
‘Says the witch whose life is these things and nothing more!’ Attila laughed. ‘It is rich, is it not, that for all your magicks, it was my splendid horse who destroyed our enemies. Attila saved you all!’
