It was as he’d left the wheelhouse that he’d heard the snort of an ox from across the river, and that was when he’d seen the TARDIS being towed away.
The Doctor put his head down and made for the bridge.
‘Hang on, Jo,’ he said. ‘Hang on.’
8
Jo knelt on a hard earth floor.
In front of her stood a huge warrior, his face almost obscured by a thick beard, though his eyes were clear enough to see and burned down at her, making her want to melt into the ground and disappear.
Around them were the men who’d brought her, and around them was a vast dark hall. A fire-pit at its centre sent smoke curling up into the thatch of the roof.
She’d been carried through a village – a series of small huts and some larger houses – and then brought before this man, who was evidently the chief.
‘I,’ announced the man, ‘am Njord.’
Jo understood him perfectly. She knew the telepathic circuits of the TARDIS had a certain range, and, although the Doctor had never said how great that range was, she knew the TARDIS must be close enough for it to make her hear the ancient Norse dialect as English.
Njord stepped a little closer to Jo and began walking round her. Her wrists and ankles were still bound. She longed to stand and give this old goat a piece of her mind, but she knew she’d most likely fall over if she tried, which wasn’t the effect she was after.
Njord grunted in satisfaction. ‘Everything is as Frey said.’
‘Frey?’ asked Jo. ‘Who’s Frey?’
Njord ignored her. He clapped his hands and gave a short laugh that sounded more like a bark. Then he stopped in front of Jo and bent down, putting his face right up close to hers.
Her nose wrinkled.
‘Where is the Healer?’ he said.
‘The who?’ asked Jo.
‘My men say he drowned. He fell in the river. But Frey says not to believe what you see with the Healer.’
‘The Healer? You mean the Doctor?’
‘The Healer, the Doctor. Yes. Is he drowned?’
Jo hung her head. ‘Oh, I hope not,’ she said quietly.
Njord straightened. ‘My men are looking for him. They will find him if he still lives.’
Staring hard at the earth in front of her, Jo fought the urge to weep.
‘You are the Healer’s woman? His wife?’
Jo lifted her head. ‘I am the Doctor’s companion,’ she said proudly, and held Njord’s gaze for as long as she could, until her nerve failed her.
A smile spread slowly over Njord’s face. It was not a nice thing to see. His lips parted and Jo almost winced when she saw his blackened teeth.
He put his boot on Jo’s shoulder and with a shove sent her to the floor, where she lay on her side, wondering how accurate the Doctor’s lecture about peaceful Viking farmers had been.
Njord stared coolly down at her. ‘Today there was almost a fight. Everything is as Frey said it would be. Old One-eye killed one of his own to stop the war from starting. He is scared. He is weak. Full of bluster and noise, yes, but in reality he is weak. And when Skithblathnir returns to our shores with Frey at her helm, carrying more warriors to swell our army, we will go to war with the Aesir. And we will win.’
Jo lay still, trying to understand everything she had heard, knowing it might be important, knowing it would be good to be able to tell the Doctor everything she’d learned. If only he was still alive.
Hands grabbed her again and dragged her out of the hall and through the village. She saw a wagon being pulled by four oxen. On the wagon was the TARDIS.
She was about to yell when someone pulled her back so hard the breath was knocked from her. Before she knew it, she was taken into a small but solid hut, where she was tied to the post that held up the roof, and left to shiver.
9
Darkness fell, and as Jo’s shivers turned to great shudders of cold, she wished she’d taken the Doctor up on the offer of his cape.
It was that cold.
She’d lost track of how much time had passed. All she’d heard were the sounds of the village: footsteps coming and going, the occasional chatter of voices, the clang of metal somewhere and the barking of dogs.
Then there was the scrape of the door opening. Jo looked up, blinking in the light of a burning torch being held by one of the warriors, and saw the Doctor being ushered into the hut. Two more men tied him to the post, so that he and Jo sat back to back on the cold ground. Then the door shut and they were left alone in darkness once more.
‘I’ve just been talking to your friend Njord,’ said the Doctor.
‘I’m fine,’ said Jo. ‘Thanks for asking. And how are you?’
‘Very well, my dear. Thought I’d find you here somewhere. Are you warm enough?’
‘You’re joking,’ said Jo. ‘I’m freezing!’
‘Well, sit as close to me as you can. I’ll warm us up. Three hearts are better than two, after all.’
In spite of herself, Jo laughed. ‘Doctor?’ she said. ‘Who is Njord? He kept speaking about someone called Frey, too. I don’t think he’s here now, though. He’s away, fetching warriors on his ship. It had a funny name.’
‘Skithblathnir.’
‘Yes! That’s it! How did you know? Gosh, Doctor, have you got a fever? It’s like sitting next to a log stove!’
‘Well, you did say you were cold. Jo, do you remember we spoke about Odin?’
‘What about him?’
‘You know him as a god of Norse mythology, correct?’
‘Yes. There’s Odin, and Thor too. He has a hammer and makes thunder. I think he was Odin’s son.’
‘That’s right. And Odin was supposed to have the spear, Gungnir … and he only had one eye.’
‘Doctor! Njord spoke about someone he called One-eye, like a nickname.’
‘We saw him earlier today, Jo. He killed one of his own men. And there was a man with a hammer, too.’
‘Thor! But they’re supposed to be gods!’
‘We’ve arrived at a most interesting time. Some scholars, and myself, I might add, have a theory about certain myths and legends.’
‘A theory, Doctor? Like your one about the TARDIS being invisible …?’
‘Yes, thank you. I think that one might need a bit more consideration. No, this theory is that many stories that scholars of your time believe to be myths, legends and mere tales were, in fact, originally based on real events, and the characters in them based on real people. Even those we now consider to be gods were just great men of the past. Jo, this is so fascinating! We are witnessing the origin of Norse myth!’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘I’m absolutely serious, my dear. Odin is the king of all Sweden. His people are called the Aesir.’
‘Njord spoke about them. He said they’re going to fight them.’
‘Quite so. What we witnessed by the river today was just an early skirmish. Odin had to kill one of his own men to stop the fight from escalating. According to the great Norse sagas, there were two races of gods: the Aesir, ruled by Odin, with his sons Thor and Balder, and the Vanir, ruled by Njord, with the assistance of Frey.’
‘Thank you, Doctor, I’m much warmer now.’
‘What? Oh good. I’ll turn the central heating down.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jo. ‘Go on with your story.’
‘Yes, the Aesir and the Vanir. They had been squabbling for some time, and then they all gathered at a great meeting, an assembly of some kind. Odin grew angry and threw Gungnir over the heads of the Vanir. And so the great war between them began.’
‘You think that’s about to happen?’
‘I think it is, yes. Be that as it may, we have to get Gungnir and get away from here.’
‘Gungnir? Why? You still haven’t told me why it’s so important.’
‘I am now absolutely convinced that Gungnir is a Physical Temporal Nexus. A PTN. In the Norse legends it was said that Gungnir was magical, that it would hit wh
oever the thrower wished it to hit, without fail. We saw that for ourselves today. That throw was impossible – far too far. But once thrown, Gungnir cannot miss its target.’
‘Well, that’s pretty neat for a Viking weapon, but still not much of a match for a machine gun. Or a nuclear bomb.’
‘Jo, let me finish. Always hitting its target is nothing to a PTN. That’s just a party trick. But the way it does it is the point. In order to perform such a feat a PTN forms a link with the mind of whoever is holding it. At a quantum level the PTN joins with the brain patterns of its owner and then it does a remarkable thing. You are, of course, aware that there are an infinite number of possible universes?’
‘Of course,’ said Jo.
‘I thought so,’ said the Doctor. ‘So what the PTN does is shuffle through all possible states of the universe in a fraction of a second, and it selects the one that its owner desires the most. That is why it is so powerful. So dangerous.’
‘Because whoever owns it can literally make their wishes come true.’
‘Exactly! The High Council of the Time Lords has spent a great deal of time tracking them all down. One was found on Usurius, two more on Kirith. There are perhaps no more than six in all, and even the Time Lords don’t know who made them or where they came from. And, trust me, the Time Lords know a great deal about the universe. A very great deal.
‘So now it seems we have another in our reach. I doubt very much that Odin knows what he has in his hands – Gungnir’s true power. To him it’s just a spear with which he seems to hunt rather well ...’
‘I can see why they think it’s magic, though.’
‘Not only that. Another thought occurs to me.’
‘Which is?’
‘Gungnir is not the only famous spear in history. There is another, even more famous. Or perhaps I mean infamous. As Jesus hung on the cross, a Roman soldier called Longinus wanted to see if he was really dead, and drove his spear into Christ’s side.
‘That spear became known as the Spear of Destiny, but it soon went missing. We simply don’t know what happened to it. But, despite that, stories about its power began to circulate. It was said that the army that possessed it would be invincible. Not so very long before your own time, Jo, another man craved the Spear, which by then had turned up in a museum in Vienna. That man was Adolf Hitler. The very day he invaded Austria in 1938 he drove straight to the museum to capture the Spear. He took it back to Berlin and believed he was, from that time on, invincible.’
‘But the Nazis lost the war,’ said Jo. ‘It didn’t work.’
‘There are two possibilities. First, some people believe that the spear he captured was a thirteenth-century fake, not the real thing. Or, second, there is a simpler explanation: the spear was the real thing, but Hitler made a mistake. In order for a PTN to work, you have to actually hold it. Hitler put it in another museum in Berlin and then got on with invading the rest of Europe.’
‘My goodness!’ said Jo. ‘If he’d only known …’
‘Quite so, my dear, quite so.’
‘But wait a minute. What’s this got to do with Gungnir?’
‘Jo, I believe Gungnir and the Spear of Destiny are one and the same.’
‘But we’re in Sweden. How did the Spear end up here?’
‘I told you, the Vikings raided far into the Mediterranean. Odin must have got lucky and found it there.’
‘I see,’ said Jo. ‘That makes sense. But if Hitler had the Spear in the war, how was it dug up in Sweden just now and put in the Moxon Collection in London?’
‘Yes, well, that’s what’s worrying me the most,’ said the Doctor, and his voice sank dark and low. ‘We only have the word of that leaflet that it was recently found in a dig in Sweden, don’t we?’
‘You mean the museum was lying? Why would they do that?’
‘Why indeed, Jo? And how do we know that the spear in the museum is not, in fact, another fake?’
‘There were temporal anomalies. Small disturbances in time.’
‘There were indeed. But those can also sometimes be the result of the presence of a poorly shielded TARDIS.’
‘Doctor?’
‘Jo, this man Frey that Njord spoke about. He has a ship called Skithblathnir, yes? Do you know what Norse myth says about Skithblathnir?’
Jo shook her head, and suddenly didn’t feel so warm any more.
‘It was said that Frey could make his ship any size he wanted. That he could fit as many men on board as he wished. Does that sound familiar? A ship that’s bigger on the inside?’
‘Doctor! You think…?’
‘Jo, the name Frey. In Old Norse it means Lord. Or –’
‘Master!’ cried Jo. ‘Frey is the Master!’
Before the Doctor could reply there was a laugh from outside the hut’s door. It was pushed open, and in he came, laughing and clapping his hands.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s been such fun listening to you two work it out. Well done! Well done!’
He stood over them, looking down, leering.
The Master.
10
‘You’ve been busy,’ said the Doctor.
The Master stood in the doorway. In his hand he held a burning torch that cast a flickering fiery light across his face.
‘You know,’ said the Doctor. ‘I always thought you looked a little like the Devil with that beard. Now I know it.’
‘Doctor, Doctor,’ said the Master mockingly. ‘Such a bad loser. Come on now, admit it! You’ve been plodding around in the dark. Talking of which, the sky tonight will be illuminated most wonderfully by the comet. You’ll enjoy that.’
‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘Yes, I see now. You could have just gone to Judea in 33 AD to find the spear. Taken it right out of Longinus’ hands, no doubt. But that date is not accurate. Calendars have changed and, besides, all we really have to go on are dates made up hundreds of years later by the men who wrote the apocryphal Gospels.’
‘Precisely, Doctor. Whereas here, tonight, the comet marks the equinox, so neatly recorded on that rune stone in the British Museum. These Vikings are such wonderful people. Do you know they wash once a week?’
‘Could have fooled me,’ muttered Jo.
‘And now, Doctor, you’re here. You join me just as I planned. So nice of you to turn up to order. Because I need you, Doctor. Or, rather, I need your ship.’
‘Something wrong with yours, old boy?’
‘Not at all. It’s quite well. I’ve been making lots of trips in it. Finding warriors for Njord. He’s most impressed. So is Odin, and that’s why I need your TARDIS. I’m giving it to him.’
‘And Njord’s men have already relieved me of the key, along with my screwdriver. I can guess what you want in return.’
‘Quite right, Doctor. Odin and I have made a bargain. He wants a ship just like mine. And he will get one in return for the Nexus. The Spear of Destiny.’
‘But he can’t operate the TARDIS.’
‘No, but then he doesn’t know that, does he?’
‘And meanwhile you’ve set the Aesir and the Vanir at each other’s throats, pushing them towards war, while you’ve been cooking up your own little plans.’
‘Now will you admit how stupid you’ve been, Doctor?’
The Doctor said nothing, but clenched his jaw and stared at the wall of the hut.
‘It gets worse, I’m afraid,’ said the Master. ‘You see, I’ve told Odin all about you. Both of you. He was very interested to hear about the Doctor, some sort of magician, or wizard. And his young and attractive assistant. So you’re to be made guests of honour. Tonight. At the blessing. In fact you could say you’ll be the main attraction.’
He turned to go, then hesitated. ‘I do have a few problems with the Vikings, though,’ he said. ‘I quite clearly told them to put you in different huts. And now here you are together. I’ll send someone to separate you. Miss Grant, Doctor, goodnight.’ And with that he ducked out of the low door and was gone.
&n
bsp; ‘We have to escape,’ whispered the Doctor.
‘Now?’
‘No, after we’ve been separated. That will buy us some time. If you get free, find the TARDIS. It’s here somewhere. Close by, I’m sure.’
‘But how will I escape? How will you escape for that matter?’
‘I’m more of a thief than you imagine me to be. While I was talking to Njord I pinched a couple of knives. Can you reach my right-hand pocket?’
Jo squirmed and managed to find a knife in the Doctor’s jacket.
‘As long as they don’t search us,’ said the Doctor, ‘we’ll be fine. As soon as you’re tied up again, get yourself free. Find the TARDIS.’
‘And what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to talk to Odin.’
‘Oh,’ said Jo. ‘Fine. But what’s the big hurry? The Master said we’ll see him tonight, anyway, at the blessing. That doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘Jo, you should know your own language better. A blessing isn’t what you think it is. It comes from an ancient Norse dialect, in which to bless means to sacrifice. We’re to be the sacrifice at tonight’s ceremony.’
11
The Doctor made his way out of Njord’s settlement towards the river and the temple, and, beyond it, Odin’s village.
He moved quietly and, though the night should have been dark with the last quarter of the month’s moon dying overhead, the sky was lit by an eerie glow. Looking up, he saw the comet in the sky and knew how much store the Vikings put against such portents: the perfect moment for Odin to make a sacrifice to ensure victory in the war that everyone knew was brewing.
He hurried onwards, down the slope, through the trees and across the river. In the gloom, the waterwheels were still turning on and on, and now the Doctor knew they had some hideous purpose of the Master’s making, but there was no time to stop and investigate. In the distance the lights of Odin’s village twinkled, and he pressed on.
As he came towards the hilltop where the temple stood, he stumbled over something. He looked down. More of that heavy electrical cabling, snaking its way through the trees, and though time was against him he followed it.
The Spear of Destiny Page 3
