by Dan Abnett
'Fine. I really haven't got much planned except sitting here and experiencing pain for the moment,' he replied. He shook his head in an effort to dispel the pain, and it worked in exactly the same way that shaking a snow globe makes it easier to see the scene inside.
'Owwwwww,' he breathed.
'Don't you move, or I'll hit you again,' said the voice.
'Please don't do that,' said Rory.
'I didn't want to the first time,' said the voice. There was a waver of concern. 'I thought you were... it. '
'Really? Well, I'm not.'
'I see that now.'
'I'm glad we've cleared that up,' said Rory, 'but my head still really hurts. What did you hit me with?'
'This,' said the voice.
The mill shed was still dark, and the turbines were humming under the boarded floor, but the gloom was softened by a small metal lamp that had been turned down very low. By its little, amber glow, Rory could see the shapes of dusty machinery around him, and a figure crouching opposite. The figure was holding a wooden mallet.
'Great,' said Rory. Even talking hurt. 'That looks like a really solid thing to hit someone on the head with.
I've probably got concussion.'
'I'll hit you with it once more if you don't hush.'
'Don't do that! Why would you do that?'
'Because I think it may still be outside.'
'It, you mean?'
'Yes. You must've seen it too.'
Rory nodded, and then added nodding to his list of Things To Avoid Doing.
'I did,' he said.
'Those red eyes...'
'Exactly,' said Rory. He felt his scalp gingerly, and found a lump the size of a quail's egg over his left ear that was so badly bruised just touching it made him want to say things that were not good out-loud words.
'It chased me,' he said instead.
'And me,' said the figure.
Rory shifted a little to prop himself up against the wooden base of some machine.
'Don't move or I will hit you!' the voice ordered.
'I thought we'd established I wasn't it,' said Rory.
'I don't know what you are,' said the figure with the mallet.
'Do I look like it?' asked Rory.
'No, but it is an unguidely thing, most terribly unguidely, so it may alter its looks with conjury. It may take on a disguise of deceit.'
'Does this look like a disguise someone would choose?' asked Rory, gesturing to himself. He squinted into the gloom. The lamp was turned down so far, all he could make out was a hooded and robed shape. And the mallet.
'It doesn't seem likely,' the figure admitted.
'So could you put the mallet down?' he suggested.
'Or at least go to Defcon five with it?'
'You talk funny. What is your name?'
'Rory. I'm Rory.'
'Raw-ree? That's... that's an unguidely name, that is.'
'I'm sure it's not, but OK.'
'You're not from Beside, for I would know you.
What plantnation are you from?'
'Leadworth. I'm from Leadworth.'
'There is no plantnation called that!' the figure declared.
'Do you know what? I think it's quite likely that there are some plant-nation- things that you haven't heard the names of.'
'That's not possible!'
'Well, you can hit me on the head with a mallet as many times as you like, but it won't change the fact that it is.'
There was a pause of indecision.
'So, wh-where is this plantnation on Hereafter?'
Rory looked at the hooded figure. 'No,' he said. 'I've answered your question, I've told you my name, and I think I've been pretty good about you hitting me on the head with a mallet, all things considered. Quite apart from anything else, I haven't had a particularly brilliant day. So I think you can answer a question for me next.
Who are you?'
The figure hesitated, and then pulled down the hood. The lamplight picked out a face that was small and pale, and streaked with the tracks of tears that Rory was sure were the product of frustrated anger rather than weakness.
'I'm Vesta Flurrish,' she said.
'Ah,' Rory replied, recalling the words of the men who had accosted him. 'People are looking for you,'
The snowfall eased back enough to reveal that a winter's night was setting in. Thick banks of grey snow cloud, as coarse and dense as wire wool, slumped low across the sky, interspersed with clear, cold bands of evening. The occasional early star twinkled in the clear stretches, like fairy lights behind glass.
In the twilight of the late afternoon, the snowscape had turned violet and the trees mauve. The snow was like white noise, as though reality wasn't quite tuned in. The Doctor, Amy, Arabel and Samewell trudged through the edges of Would Be, hearing only the crunch of their footsteps on the fresh snow and the puff of their breaths. Vapour trailed behind them with each exhalation. The Doctor knew they'd been out too long and had pushed too hard. They needed heat and shelter quickly. It was all very well for his Gallifreyan constitution, but human metabolisms were going to shut down very soon, with catastrophic consequences.
'You keep looking behind you,' said Amy.
'I do, don't I?' replied the Doctor.
'Why?'
'Just checking to see if it's snowing as badly there as it is in front of us.'
'Why really?'
'No reason.'
'What are you doing with the sonic?' she asked.
'Just re-setting it,' he replied.
'To what?'
'A different setting.'
'Why?'
'Just in case,' he said.
'In case of what?'
'Nothing.'
'Oh, I'm going to stupid well thump you if—'
'Look!' Bel cried.
They looked. She was pointing up at the sky, at a patch of clear night between cliffs of snow-bruised cloud. The stars were gleaming.
One of them was moving.
It made no sound. It was just a white light, no bigger than the other stars, but it was moving across the sky from east to west.
'I told you,' said Bel. 'Just like I saw before.'
'It's an aircraft,' Amy whispered to the Doctor.
'Too high up,' the Doctor replied. 'And besides, the good people of Beside do not possess aircraft.'
'What then?'
'Something in orbit,' said the Doctor.
'Like a spaceship?' asked Amy.
'Certainly something spaceship-esque,' he agreed.
She frowned at him.
'All right,' he said, 'something so much like a spaceship you may as well use the word "spaceship".
My guess is, that's an interstellar craft in a distant parking orbit, but it could be some kind of lander or shuttle making a slow, shallow descent.'
'Doctor,' said Amy carefully, 'is this planet being invaded by something?'
'It's already been invaded,' the Doctor replied,
'twenty-seven generations ago, by the Morphans from Earth before. I think someone else has arrived to dispute that claim.'
Amy ignored the clever-clever nature of his answer.
'Seriously, this planet,' she said, choosing her words firmly so there could be no wiggle room in the answer,
'is about to get invaded?'
'No,' said the Doctor. 'The invasion started months ago. We're only just noticing it.'
'What are you talking about?' asked Bel, overhearing the last bit.
The Doctor stopped and held a finger to his lips.
The others stopped too, looking at him. The crunching of their footsteps stopped. They caught their breath for a moment as they tried to pick up what he was hearing.
They could still hear crunching footsteps and they could still hear rasping breath. It just wasn't them. Bel's eyes widened. Samewell's jaw dropped. Amy looked at the Doctor sharply, silently demanding an explanation.
The Doctor looked around, checking every direction.
He wa
s the first one to see the figures emerging through the snow.
There were half a dozen of them at least, closing from behind, and from the left and right. Grey-green shadows, they looked as tall and robust as tree trunks, except they were walking. Shambling. Trudging. There had to be a word for what they were doing, Amy was sure, but none of the ones she could dredge up seemed threatening enough.
The figures were massive. Their torsos were hugely bulky, and their fists were like pincers. Their eyes flashed red in the uncanny gloom.
Their breathing sounded like punctured bellows: long, wet, fluttering sounds.
'Turns out my hunch was right,' said the Doctor, though he didn't sound at all pleased to be vindicated.
'What are they?' asked Amy.
'They're unguidely!' Samewell cried.
'Get down!' the Doctor ordered.
'What are they?' Amy asked again instead of getting down.
'Oh, get down!'
'What are they?' Amy repeated.
'They're Ice Warriors,' said the Doctor.
Chapter
8
Certain Poor Shepherds
in Fields as They Lay
Amy looked at him blankly. 'Should I know what that means?' she asked.
'No!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'But the basic principles of "Get down!" ought to be pretty clear, even to you!'
The four of them dropped down low in the snow.
The towering green warriors had come to a halt about ten metres away, forming a semicircle. Stationary, they were entirely immobile, like statues. Snow actually settled on their sculpted shoulders and ridged craniums.
One of them slowly raised its right arm from beside its hip. There was some kind of pipe attached to the upper wrist. It pointed it at them.
The creature... the Ice Warrior... said something.
Amy could see taut, reptilian lips move under the rim of the intimidating visor. She couldn't distinguish any words. It sounded like air escaping under high pressure from an inner tube.
'Keep down!' said the Doctor. He was frantically fiddling with his sonic screwdriver.
The Ice Warrior fired its weapon. It made one of the most unpleasant sounds Amy had ever heard, and she'd heard quite a few that featured in the Universal Top Twenty. It was a throbbing sound that she could feel in her internal organs, a pulse that brutalised the air. The blast caused a vortex in the pattern of the falling snow, whizzing flakes in a sudden horizontal spiral. A stout tree directly behind the four of them shivered and shed collected snow as the energy struck its trunk. Bark cracked and shattered. Steam wafted from the traumatised wood.
'Guide's sake!' Samewell yelped.
'It was just a warning shot!' the Doctor told them.
'They want us alive.'
As if hoping to corroborate the Doctor's statement, the Ice Warrior spoke again. This time, Amy could identify a stretched and mangled word in the fierce pneumatic hiss.
'Sssssurrenderrr...'
The Doctor sprang up to face the towering aliens.
'Not today, thank you!' he cried.
'Doctor!' Amy cried.
The Ice Warrior aimed at the Doctor and fired, but the Doctor had already activated his screwdriver. The warbling sound of the device seemed to strangle and cut short the ugly noise of the weapon.
The Ice Warrior hesitated, confused. It tried its weapon again, and this time it didn't make a sound at all. The Doctor kept his bleating screwdriver aimed at the giants. The Ice Warrior hissed a curt order, and the others of its kind took aim. They all fired.
None of the weapon tubes made a noise.
'Time to run!' the Doctor cried. 'Run away! Very fast!'
The others got up, hesitantly.
'Come on!' the Doctor yelled, still brandishing the warbling screwdriver at the Ice Warriors. 'The screwdriver's generating sound waves with the opposite polarity to the output of their weapons, cancelling the noise - oh, just run, please! It won't work much longer!'
They all started to run.
'The other way, Samewell!' Amy ordered.
Samewell turned and started to run with them instead of towards the Ice Warriors. Shock had rather robbed him of his wits. Arabel gathered up her long skirts to run more easily. The four of them dashed through the snow between the looming trees, the Doctor bringing up the rear, directing the output of his screwdriver behind him.
The Ice Warriors immediately started to pursue them, striding out across the snow.
'We're leaving them behind!' Amy yelled, looking back.
'Yes,' agreed the Doctor, 'but they won't get tired!'
His screwdriver suddenly went quiet and the claspers retracted and shut. The Doctor shook it and tapped it against his palm as he ran.
That's all well be getting out of it for a while!' he shouted. 'Keep running, and don't let them get a clear shot!'
Behind them, they heard a tube weapon pulse. A slender tree a few metres to Amy's left exploded midtrunk and the top half sheared away. Amy squealed, ducked, and then leapt over the fallen section as it collapsed in her path.
'Down here! This way!' the Doctor urged. Two or three more unpleasant pulses thumped out behind them. Another tree fractured. The top of a snowdrift behind Samewell went up like an explosion in an cotton wool factory.
Ahead of them, the trees were thinning out. They had reached the edge of Would Be and the start of the open grazing land beyond, the region Samewell had called Moreland.
No trees meant no cover. If they carried on, they would be sitting ducks.
'I went out this morning to put flowers on my dad's grave,' Vesta Flurrish told Rory quietly. They had turned the solamp up slightly. Apart from her voice, the only sounds were the cycle of the turbines underneath them, and the tick of ice-heavy flakes hitting the roof and wall of the shed. It was snowing hard outside.
'I meant to be back before Guide's Bell, of course,'
said Vesta. 'But it is a long way up to the memory yard in this weather. The yard is in Would Be. Do you know it?'
'I'm not from around here,' said Rory.
She nodded. 'Well, I was there, and I was just leaving, and then I saw the star move.'
'A star?'
'Yes.'
'Moving?'
'Yes. A moving star. It went by in the sky. Beautiful it was. Like a sign.' Her face fell as she thought about it. 'Like an omen. That's what they say. Bel saw it.'
'Bel?'
'My sister, Arabel. Other Morphans have seen it too.
All this winter long. A star of ill omen, moving as it pleases. They say it presages the bad things that have been happening. The cold. The killing.'
'The killing?' asked Rory.
'Of livestock. Have you seen the moving stars from your plantnation?'
'No.'
'Oh,' she said. 'Anyway, I followed it for a while to see what it would do. I followed it further into Would Be, and that's when I came upon the tracks in the snow.
The giant tracks. They scared me a lot. I didn't know what to make of them. I prayed that Guide might protect me, and I ran. And then...'
'Then?' Rory asked.
'I sort of ran straight into it there in the wood.'
' It?'
'That's right.'
'With the red eyes?'
'As Guide is my witness,' said Vesta.
'It's certainly a scary thing to meet' Rory agreed.
'I was sore afraid,' Vesta nodded. 'It snatched at me, but I ran. I ran and ran and ran.'
'Did it shoot at you?' asked Rory.
'Shoot?'
'With a gun?'
'No. I didn't know it had a gun. We do not have guns in the plantnation. They are things that fire pellets, aren't they?'
'Sort of,' Rory replied. 'It shot at me.' He thought for a moment. 'Actually, the funny thing is, it didn't. I met these men who must've been looking for you, and because they didn't know me, like you didn't, they thought I was pretty suss.'
'They thought you were what?'
'Dodg
y... um... they wanted to know who I was and what I was doing. Then it came along, and there was a terrible fight. It shot at some of the men. It had this horrible... sound gun. It was like it was firing sound. I can't explain it better. I think it hurt some of them. I think it might have killed some of them.'
'Oh save us all!' said Vesta. 'It killed people from Beside?'
'I think it might have done. I'm sorry.'
'Who were they?' she asked.
'I don't know,' Rory said, a little helplessly. 'I didn't know their names. We'd only just met. In the confusion, everybody scattered. I ran. Like you, I just ran. And it could have shot me too, but it didn't. It just chased me.'
'Like it wanted... to catch you?'
Rory nodded. His throbbing head reminded him what a bad idea that was, and he winced. 'That had occurred to me,' he said. 'It's not a nice thought. I have been wondering why. Anyway, I ran.'
'And that's how you ended up at the autumn mills?'
'Where?'
She laughed. 'Here! The autumn mills!'
'OK. I didn't know what they were called.'
Vesta's long skirts were torn and dirty. She idly smoothed them out over her knees.
'I came here because it was the closest place I could think of to hide in,' she said. 'I ran a long way just to get away from it. By the time I even thought about which way I was going, I realised I'd gone off opposite to where Beside was. I was a Cat A fool for doing that.
I got my bearings and figured that the autumn mills would be the best bet for a roof and shelter and warmth.'
'Why is the water warm?' Rory asked. 'Even under the ice, there's heat in it. I know because I fell through the ice.'
'No wonder you look like a compost heap,' said Vesta. She shrugged. 'The water's warm because it flows into the streams from the Firmer. These streams, it would be Firmer Number Two, actually. It's a thermal exchange system. Guide teaches us that water is used in the Firmers for cooling, and then sent out, and the mills harvest the heat to store in the plantnation's conservator reservoir. Light and wind and water, we borrow power from all. The mills take power autumnatically from the streams.'
'How... how do they do it?' asked Rory.
'Autumnatically.'
'Automatically?'
'Say it proper! Autumnatically! Didn't you get schooled where you were raised?'
'A little.'
She peered at him, as if trying to read things in his face. Just having someone to talk to seemed to have perked her up, and reduced the trauma of what had clearly been an unpleasant day. Rory had seen that process work many times. A little chat, a chance to say things out loud.
