The Spear of Destiny

by Marcus Sedgwick

  They burst inside and flung the door shut. The Doctor pounced on the central console and locked them safely inside. The distant sound of gunfire breaking on the outside of the TARDIS came to them, like bees pinging off the glass of a thick window.

  ‘Let’s not outstay our welcome,’ said the Doctor, busily setting co-ordinates.

  ‘I’d say we already have,’ said Jo. She set the spear beside the door and rushed over to the Doctor.

  The sound of gunfire was replaced by the familiar grinding sound of dematerialisation, and Jo felt relief rush over her. She turned round and perched on the edge of the console.

  ‘Yes, that was rather close,’ said the Doctor. ‘Still, it proves one thing.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That the spear is something unusual. No one would go to such lengths to protect it if it was just an old piece of wood and a lump of gold.’

  ‘Maybe Moxon is just very protective of his collection.’

  ‘Sub-machine guns? That’s taking museum curation a bit far, don’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Jo. ‘Anyway, where are we going?’

  The Doctor smiled. ‘A very good question.’

  ‘With a very good answer, I hope.’

  ‘We can’t steal the spear now, but we can steal it in the past. We are therefore travelling back to its only other confirmed location in space–time.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Didn’t you read the notice by the case?’

  Jo shook her head. ‘Too busy trying to understand Futhark.’

  ‘Well, do you still have the leaflet from the museum?’

  Jo fished in her back pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. She found the short description of the spear.

  Ceremonial spear. Found in Gamla Uppsala, Sweden. Believed to have been used in festivals around the vernal equinox, second century AD. Inscription upon the head reads GUNGNIR. In Norse mythology, Gungnir was the magical spear of Odin.

  ‘You’re taking us to see the Vikings?’ asked Jo incredulously.

  ‘I know! Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said the Doctor with a grin.

  ‘That’s not the word I’d use,’ Jo said. ‘Hey, wait a minute, how do you know where to go?’

  ‘Where is easy,’ said the Doctor. ‘Just look at your leaflet. Uppsala, central Sweden. Or Old Uppsala to be exact. Centre of power of Swedish kings for over a thousand years till the Christians turned up. That’s where. When is a little harder. We know we should head for the spring equinox … Nice of the Vikings to date things around astronomical phenomena. Makes life so much easier.’

  ‘But in which year?’

  ‘Well, there I’m guessing a little. In the British Museum there is a rune stone that bears the only other known reference to Gungnir. It refers to a ceremony in Old Uppsala and mentions the passing of a second sun across the heavens. Scholars have always assumed that to be a reference to Halley’s Comet, whose only known appearance in the second century was in 141 AD – according to the old Julian calendar that was on the twenty-second of March, the very next day after the equinox. So that’s when, and where, we’re going.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jo. ‘I see.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I have just one question.’

  ‘Fire away!’

  ‘Oh, Doctor, please. Not after that business at the museum.’

  The Doctor held up his hand. ‘Sorry. What’s your question?’

  Jo swallowed. ‘So, listen. This spear. The magical spear of Odin. I might have got this wrong, but wasn’t Odin a god?’

  ‘That’s what they say.’

  ‘Well, doesn’t that worry you at all?’

  ‘On the contrary. Rather fun, I’d say.’

  ‘Fun?’ asked Jo, eyeing the spear by the doorway nervously. ‘Do you really think the owner of Gungnir was a god?’

  The Doctor smiled again. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that we’re about to find out.’

  5

  With an almighty groaning the central column of the TARDIS came to rest. They had landed.

  ‘Of course, the Vikings are much misunderstood.’

  ‘Is that right?’ asked Jo.

  ‘Come on, you must have done some history at school.’

  ‘Doctor, we did the Romans. Every year. Ask me about the Punic Wars and I’m your girl.’

  ‘Some other time maybe,’ said the Doctor. ‘The point is that people often see the Vikings as violent marauders and nothing else, when the truth of the matter is that by and large they were farmers, fishermen.’

  ‘By and large …?’

  ‘They were great explorers, too. They discovered North America five hundred years before Columbus thought he had. They got as far as the Mediterranean, Russia. You have to remember that most accounts of the Vikings are written by the Christians who displaced them. Somewhat biased accounts.’

  ‘You know this for a fact?’

  The Doctor gave Jo a hurt look. ‘What I do know for a fact is that they’re the only humans ever to name a day of the week after bathtime. Washing once a week was pretty advanced stuff two thousand years ago.’

  Jo laughed.

  ‘Well,’ said the Doctor. ‘Shall we look around?’

  Jo nodded. ‘Let’s.’

  The Doctor brought up the outside view on the TARDIS’s scanner screen. They were treated to the sight of a peaceful forest, with snow deep on the ground and thick on the branches of the trees, although it appeared to be a bright and sunny day otherwise.

  ‘Seems quiet enough,’ said the Doctor.

  He shut down the screen, opened the door and they headed out.

  ‘Cold,’ said Jo.

  ‘Will you be warm enough?’ asked the Doctor. ‘I could always fetch my Inverness cape for you?’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Jo hurriedly. She shot a quick smile at the Doctor so as not to hurt his feelings.

  Their feet crunched noisily into the snow, which was frozen hard.

  ‘Which way do we go?’ asked Jo.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said the Doctor. ‘Let’s circle around. It can’t be far. There should be a large temple complex. And a village serving it.’

  Jo stopped and looked back over her shoulder. ‘Will the TARDIS be all right?’

  ‘She’s tougher than I am,’ said the Doctor seriously. ‘And, anyway, I have a theory.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. You see, the whole nature, shape and even the modern blue pigment of the TARDIS is so deeply unfamiliar to the primitive mind that, although the optic nerve registers its presence, the brain cannot decode what it is seeing. The primitive visual cortex is unable to relay information about it consciously to the viewer. In effect, even though her chameleon circuit is still damaged, she’s as good as invisible. She’ll be just fine.’

  ‘That’s remarkable,’ said Jo.

  ‘She is a remarkable old girl in many ways,’ said the Doctor. ‘Let’s move, shall we? We’ll be warmer if we walk a little faster.’

  They made their way deeper into the forest. As long as there wasn’t another snowfall it would be easy enough to find their way back to the TARDIS from the trail of their footprints in the snow.

  The woodland was on sloping land, and they headed gently downhill through a mixture of birch and ash and conifers until, finally, they saw the trees thinning out a little in front of them.

  ‘I hear a river somewhere,’ said Jo.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, nodding. ‘That way.’

  Very soon they glimpsed clear green water flowing rapidly in a wide and strong river, whose banks were covered with snow and ice.

  ‘This way,’ said the Doctor.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because rivers mean settlements sooner or later.’

  ‘Sooner, I hope. I’m freezing.’

  ‘I could still go back for my cape …’

  ‘Look, Doctor! What’s that?’

  Jo pointed downstream to the opposite bank, where there was a huge wo
oden construction. As they moved closer, they saw what it was – a vast waterwheel fed by a channel from the river. Then they saw that beyond it was another one, exactly the same, and beyond that, more – six of them in total – and all drawing water from the channel underneath the heavy wooden wheels, which turned slowly but with a power that was somehow threatening.

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘Is there a way across?’

  ‘Let’s head downstream. Maybe there’s a bridge. I wouldn’t want to cross that river, even on a summer’s day.’

  The river was deep and moved in eddying currents. Ice crusted its banks, and even looking at it seemed to sap the warmth from Jo’s blood. She shivered.

  As they approached the first of the waterwheels a bridge came into view beyond it, but before they could get any further they heard shouts from across the water and quickly threw themselves in the snow behind some tree stumps on the riverbank.

  The Doctor lifted his head. ‘It’s all right. They haven’t seen us.’

  ‘Who?’ Jo couldn’t hide the worry in her voice.

  ‘There’s a group of men on the other side, beyond the wheels.’ The Doctor took another look. ‘It’s safe, Jo. Have a look.’

  Jo peered across the water. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think there are two groups. They don’t seem to like each other.’

  Jo saw what he meant. There were definitely two groups of warriors facing off in a clearing between the waterwheels and the forest. They wore leather and furs: boots up to the knee strapped round with cloth bindings, thick furred tunics and fur-lined caps.

  They were shouting at each other and waving metal – swords and axes. Not actually fighting, but clearly no love was lost between them, and they appeared to be on the verge of a scuffle at the very least. One man in the left-hand group waved an enormous hammer above his head, roaring like thunder as he did so.

  ‘Posturing, that’s all,’ said the Doctor. ‘Although …’ He hesitated. ‘Maybe more to come.’

  He was right. Without warning, one of the hammer-man’s group charged forward, wielding a war-axe above his head, screaming.

  There was sudden silence from all the other men, a silence into which one voice rang out. It sounded like a shout of warning, but it came from behind the charging man.

  He alone ignored it.

  And then, whistling through the snow-still air, a spear came from nowhere. A huge throw, an impossible throw, and the spear stuck into the man’s back.

  He took one more step and then pitched forward into the snow, as dead as the landscape around him.

  There was silence. No one moved on either side.

  ‘Gungnir?’ whispered Jo.

  Before the Doctor could answer, the thrower of the spear came into view, walking out of the trees. It was hard to be sure at the distance they were looking from, but the Doctor and Jo could see he was a tall man, taller than the others. He appeared to be older too, with a long beard, but no less powerful for that.

  His own men moved away from him as he approached; their enemies backed away too, heading for the bridge back across to the side of the river where the Doctor and Jo were hiding.

  The spear-thrower walked slowly up to the man he’d killed – his own man – and, putting a boot on his back, pulled his spear free. He shouted a word to his men, and they turned to go.

  ‘Oh my –’ said Jo, but she didn’t finish because hands grabbed her.

  She tried to scream, but a hand clamped across her mouth and as she was pulled to her feet she saw the Doctor being grasped by two men, who were dressed like the ones they’d just seen. They dragged him towards the river.

  The Doctor struggled to fight his way free, and Jo managed to bite the hand over her mouth. She got a cuff to the back of her head, and her vision swam. As she struggled to stay conscious, Jo saw the Doctor wrench free of one of his attackers and dispatch a firm blow to the man’s neck, sending him to his knees.

  Then the other man swung at the Doctor, who ducked. The man flailed past him, catching the Doctor’s jacket as he fell. Jo watched in horror as both he and the Doctor tumbled into the fast and icy river, and were swept away.

  Jo fainted, and her attacker allowed her to fall limply to the ground.

  6

  When Jo woke up, the world was upside-down. It also seemed that there was an earthquake in mid-rumble. It took her a moment to realise that she was hanging, her wrists and ankles tied, over the shoulder of one of the Vikings, and that he was jogging with her through the trees as if she were a paper doll.

  The second thing she noticed was the smell. The most terrible stink she’d ever had the misfortune to come across, so bad it made her want to retch. Must be bathtime tomorrow then, she thought, wrinkling her nose.

  The third thing she thought was that it was actually terrifying being pressed so close to a hot and sweaty Viking. She could feel the muscles in his shoulder working, pushing into her stomach, and at that point she screamed and tried to wriggle her way off.

  Jo thought she heard him laughing, but, either way, his arms tightened round her legs and she knew she was going nowhere.

  She could see other men running beside her, though upside-down it was hard to tell how many. They were silent for the most part, though from time to time one of them would bark a single word that she didn’t catch.

  And then, finally, she remembered the Doctor.

  She’d seen him washed away into the powerful currents of the river, a river so cold there were plates of ice tumbling along in its waters.

  She told herself not to panic. He’d be all right. He always was. Wasn’t he?

  Apart from those times he’d told her about when he sort of died and then sort of turned into another version of himself.

  Another version of himself who might not even know who she was, and here she was almost two thousand years before she’d been born.

  She started to panic.

  Get a grip, Josephine, she thought. Get a grip on yourself.

  He’ll be OK.

  He’ll get out of the river somehow.

  He’ll see these tracks in the snow and he’ll come and find you.

  He’ll be fine and the TARDIS will be fine because these ignorant savages can’t even see it, just like the Doctor said.

  7

  From a distance the Doctor watched as a group of about twenty men loaded the TARDIS on to the back of a large low wagon pulled by four sturdy oxen. Then it trundled away through the trees.

  ‘Well, it was just a theory,’ he said.

  He’d fought with the man in the river for a long time, but finally the poor human had succumbed to the cold and had been washed away to Valhalla.

  The Doctor had managed to fish himself out of the river and had stood dripping on the riverbank, but within minutes the water had begun to freeze, threatening to turn him into a living ice sculpture.

  The cold didn’t worry him unduly. Given that his normal body temperature was way below human levels, the dip in the river had been no more than refreshing, certainly not deadly.

  But it was a nuisance being damp and icy, so he began to walk briskly back along the bank, trying to pick up Jo’s trail. One of the advantages of having a binary vascular system was that he could always pump his blood faster than normal if he chose to, raising his body temperature at will. Very soon his clothes were steaming as he walked along, and in twenty minutes he was as dry as a good martini.

  ‘As I always say,’ he said, ‘two hearts are better than one.’

  He soon came back in sight of the waterwheels and the bridge, and hesitated for a moment. He had to find Jo. But something wasn’t right about these waterwheels, and he knew he should investigate.

  He hesitated a little longer. The most important thing was to find the spear. But then there was Jo. Jo Grant. Loyal, funny, quick-witted Jo. If anything happened to her … He’d had other companions before, of course, and all wonderful people, in the various wei
rd ways humans could be, but none of them was quite like Jo …

  ‘Five minutes,’ he said to himself.

  A quick look at the waterwheels and then find Jo. If they’d wanted to kill her she’d be dead already, and five minutes wouldn’t help that.

  He crossed the bridge to the far side of the river, and as he approached the closest waterwheel he saw something in the distance they’d missed before.

  Through the forest, up and away on a hill, was a clearing, and in the clearing stood a wooden temple, towering and vast.

  He felt a strong urge to go and take a look; even from this distance and looking through the trees he could see it was covered in fantastic carvings that he longed to examine, but Jo had been taken the other way, and there were the wheels, and the spear, and …

  He hurried on.

  There was no one in sight, but he approached the first waterwheel cautiously – being shot at and dunked in a river was quite enough fun for one day.

  The wheel was a heavy undershot device: a long wooden leat channelled water from the river to the bottom of its fins, which turned constantly in the flow.

  He moved on to the next wheel, and the next, and now, in the far distance, he heard the sounds of axes and saws, of wood being chopped in the forest. He squinted towards the direction of the sounds and watched as part of the forest trembled, and then a gap appeared in the canopy as a tree came down.

  ‘They’re making more …’ he said, wondering why they needed all these wheels, all this potential power – power that was useless unless it was feeding something.

  But what?

  The axle of each waterwheel entered a wheelhouse, and the Doctor approached the nearest one. The door was locked; a big iron keyhole was set into the heavy wood.

  The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and, once inside, his eyes widened.

  There was no primitive set of cogs and drive-shafts, no trip-hammers or cam-wheels. No milling or grinding stones. Instead, the axle of the wheel went straight into a large metal box, from which heavy-duty electrical cable emerged and then disappeared into the dirt floor of the wheelhouse.

  Neither the cable nor the box looked like they had anything to do with Earth in the second century AD.