It feeds on decay. What can anything that feasts on death be, but bad medicine?
Walking Crow’s words echoed in his mind, and Godlove spat against the rocks in anger, turning his frustration outward. What did that idiot redskin know? The device was a miracle, capable of bringing back men from the verge of death itself. A wild grin crossed his lips. ‘I have the Almighty’s power in my hand right here!’ Alvin Godlove shouted, and his words echoed away down the tunnels.
And just as the cure-all could bring life, he knew that it could show the other face of the same coin. There had been a few times, when he was alone and Walking Crow was not there to see it, when Godlove had let the device run free. At first he used it to shoot at trees or rocks, but that didn’t seem like enough. Then he used it on deer, on a horse; and there had been moments when he felt the cure-all pressing him to kill a man. He could feel it whispering in the corners of his skull, stiffening his muscles and trying to turn his will against him.
It was only the greed, the constant promise of fortune and glory in the next town and the next that kept him sane. The stern preacher father who had whipped Godlove every night ‘to keep him humble’ had told the young Alvin that his sin of greed would be the ending of him – but in fact it was all that kept him alive.
At night there were the dreams, growing stronger, raging through him. The sights and sounds and smells of blood and death, fire and war. He felt as if his mind were coming apart, each day a battle to keep control. At first, the distractions of whiskey and women had helped, but the diversions worked less and less every day.
Now, spent and afraid, hiding here in the dimness, there was nothing he could do but listen to the whispering pressure in his mind, the spider-crawling compulsion inside his skull.
The thing is a curse. We should kill it. Walking Crow’s voice cut through his thoughts like a razor.
‘Perhaps he’s right,’ gasped Godlove, allowing himself to admit it for the first time. ‘Maybe . . . maybe I have reached the limit of my association with this object.’ But still his fingers would not unclench, and as he watched, the gun shifted and pulsed. The frame opened along its length and metallic cords ringed with bone exploded outward, flicking like the tongues of snakes.
Godlove did not have time to scream. The cables looped through the air and buried themselves in the meat of his wrist, boring through flesh and bone. He felt them forcing their way along arteries and veins, to his shoulder, out into his chest cavity, down into his stomach, up into his gullet. The only sound he made was a gasping rattle that gradually shifted in pitch and tone until it became a buzzing rush, like flies in a tin cup.
After a while, his mouth moved, tongue and lips flapping, air hissing in breathy gasps as something inside him flexed Godlove’s body as a man might shrug into a new jacket. The fact that he was still, to some small degree, alive inside the prison of his own skin made what happened next all the more horrible.
‘Con. Con. Control is taken.’ The words were chaotic and jumbled, coming from a mind that was not used to communicating in such a crude fashion. ‘No. More orders from you. I. I am. I am in command now.’
Trapped within the walls of his own mind, Alvin Godlove started to scream.
Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor caught sight of Martha and Walking Crow speaking quietly, but he was careful not to draw attention to the fact. Martha was savvy. If she learned anything, she’d find a way to let him know.
He rested his hand on the lip of his holster. ‘I know what you are and I know what you want here,’ he told the longriders. ‘I’m sure you thought you could do as you please, shooting up the place and terrorising natives whose only means of defence are crude chemical-ballistic firearms . . . But I’m here now. And any tactical advantage you thought you had is lost.’
‘Evaluation incorrect,’ drawled Tangleleg. ‘A single Time Lord, unarmed, ill-equipped. No threat.’
The Doctor returned a cold smile. ‘You go right on thinking that, then. That’s the problem with your kind, no imagination. Unless it’s a battle situation – then you’re full of ideas. But put you in a place where you have to think outside the box and you’re all at sea. Me? I always think outside the box. In fact, I don’t even have a box to start with.’ He waggled a finger at them. ‘I’ve seen what the Clades can do. I was on Sierra Secundus after the razing of the sun-tower and I saw the dead your battalions left behind. I rescued refugees from the war zones on Tannhauser and New Mitama. I know you’ll do the same here as you did there. When you find what you’ve come for, you’ll sterilise everything for hundreds of miles in every direction.’ He shook his head. ‘I won’t let that happen.’
‘How can you stop us, Time Lord?’ Kutter’s face showed the ghost of a callous smile. ‘You speak as if you have a choice in the matter.’
Tangleleg was staring at Nathan and the others, studying them one at a time. ‘Wrong. He does have a choice,’ said the longrider, correcting his compatriot. ‘Live or die.’
A chill ran up the Doctor’s spine. ‘I told you, I won’t help you find Godlove!’
‘You will,’ said Tangleleg. He aimed his pistol at Martha and fired.
At the Royal Hope Accident and Emergency ward, they used codenames for different kinds of injuries, a sort of shorthand that allowed doctors and nurses to communicate significant information as quickly as possible. When lives depended on being fast, when people were bleeding out, it was vitally important to know the terms and know how to interpret them.
G-S-W. Just three letters, but they hid a harsh, potentially fatal meaning.
Gun Shot Wound.
During her medical training, Martha Jones had seen some horrible injuries, and along with her fellow teachers and students, fought like a lion to keep hurt people alive. But she had never experienced the lethal aftermath of a gunshot herself. Not until now.
A part of her mind detached from the rest. She registered the smell of burnt fabric and skin, the hot ozone stink of the gun’s discharge. And faintly, like the sound of a thunderstorm raging over a distant hill, Martha sensed the burning knot of agony. Her lips tugged back in a weird kind of smile. It was like it was happening to someone else; yes, Martha Jones (Medical Student) was separated from Martha Jones (Gunshot Victim), looking at the wound, seeing the round hole burnt though her leather jacket and the top underneath. Seeing the blood.
Then the moment of frozen time shattered and the pain hit her like a hammer.
Martha felt the world turn around her and the dirt of the Ironhill street rose up to meet her. The pain was horrific, a million times every broken bone, rotten tooth and gut-sick agony she had ever experienced, all merged into one rushing flood of hurt. She cried out and her vision blurred with tears.
The shot had come from nowhere, just a haze of motion at the corner of her eye and the Doctor’s bellowed cry of alarm. A white flash; a screeching sound; and the pain.
Martha remembered the day before, and poor Jenny there on the floor of the TARDIS. She had survived, but only because of the Doctor’s nanogene medical kit. There was nothing like that here, down in the dirt of a time where if you were hit, you were likely dead.
She clutched at the air, a howl escaping her lips, a single thought hard and cold in her mind.
Am I going to die?
FIFTEEN
THE DOCTOR FLEW to the girl’s side, grabbing her shoulders, holding her up.
‘Lord no, Martha!’ shouted Nathan, his gut twisting. The teenager felt ill, sickened by the casual brutality of Tangleleg’s attack. The longrider showed nothing, not even the smallest flicker of concern over what he had done. He had shot down an unarmed woman with the same callous intent he had Nathan’s father and, if not for Miss Forrest, the boy as well.
Nathan heard the Doctor speaking to the girl, keeping his voice level and steady even though he had to be as furious and terrified as the boy was. ‘Martha, listen to me,’ said the man. ‘You are not going to die. Do you trust me?’
Martha’s br
eaths were coming in gasps. ‘I . . . I trust you,’ she managed.
He smiled with genuine warmth. ‘Good girl. Now hold on, Martha Jones. You’re the strongest person I know.’
‘I feel cold,’ she told him. ‘That’s shock. I’m going into shock.’
‘It’s just the breeze,’ he replied. ‘Sun’s gone behind a cloud, that’s all.’
‘Liar,’ managed the girl, forcing a tight smile. She fingered the edge of the burn hole in her jacket. ‘Oh. This is ruined. It’s my favourite.’
‘No problem. We’ll fix it. And you too.’ He nodded. ‘Just trust me.’
‘Doctor . . .’ Martha clutched at his lapel and pulled him closer. ‘I have to tell you . . .’
He shook his head. ‘No, shhh.’
She was on the edge of passing out, a weak grin briefly on her lips. ‘Not that . . . You think . . . S’all about you, don’t you?’ Martha whispered. ‘No . . . Listen. Godlove. Godlove’s in the iron mine. Crow knows where . . .’ Her eyelids fluttered and she fell into unconsciousness.
The Doctor met Nathan’s gaze and the boy recoiled at the fire he saw in the tall man’s eyes. ‘Look after her,’ he ordered, and the youth nodded, coming to her side. He saw Walking Crow bend down as well, the Pawnee ripping off a sleeve from his shirt to use as a makeshift bandage.
The Doctor turned and rose once again, his long coat snapping open as he advanced fearlessly towards the longriders. The expression on his face was brimming with wrath, his jaw clenched and his eyes as hard as chips of diamond. There simply was not enough power in the word fury to describe the man’s temper. Nathan remembered his father once speaking of an aspect some men took on, a ‘face like thunder’; and just so the Doctor was a nightmare storm all by himself.
‘Why?’ he spat the word as if it were the most venomous insult imaginable. ‘There was no need for that!’ He stabbed a finger at the two riders. ‘I swear to you, if she dies, I’ll end your whole blighted excuse for an existence!’
The sheer force behind his words quieted the longriders for a moment, but then Tangleleg sneered slightly, recovering his hollow-eyed poise. ‘Wipe off your chin, Time Lord, and be quiet. The life of the female is now in your hands.’
‘Weapons fire was in narrow-beam, low dispersal mode,’ noted Kutter. ‘The wound suffered by the target was small but degenerative.’ He studied Martha coldly. ‘She’ll die but it’ll take a while.’ The strange mixture of mechanical diction and trail-rat swagger in his accent made his pronouncement all the more disquieting.
‘Undo this!’ The Doctor glared at the outlaws. ‘I know you can. Use your regeneration functions! Do it now!’
‘Unable to comply,’ said Tangleleg. ‘Function is insufficient. A command-level unit is required to repair organic damage of that kinda severity.’
‘You did this deliberately . . .’ growled the Doctor. ‘Because you know only Godlove can save her life!’
‘Correct.’ Kutter nodded. ‘If you want her to live, you will take us to him. Reveal what you know or your companion perishes.’
‘Trade her for him, is that it?’ He grimaced, aghast. ‘Play a numbers game with human life?’
Kutter studied him. ‘We know who you are, Time Lord. The one who makes wilful changes to the balance of worlds based on his whims and passin’ fancies. You’ve done things far worse in your time.’
The Doctor fell silent, then shot a look at Nathan and Walking Crow. There was a sad, angry emptiness in his eyes. The teenager understood exactly how he felt at that moment, enraged but powerless to do anything about it. He nodded to him and the Pawnee followed suit.
‘All right,’ the Doctor said, after a moment. ‘I’ll take you to him.’
Nathan helped Walking Crow and the Doctor to put Martha on the back of Godlove’s wagon, and with the longriders flanking them in an uneasy convoy, the Pawnee took the reins and urged the vehicle out and away from Ironhill. The Pawnee didn’t need to be told twice the urgency of the situation. One look at Martha’s face, the way her pretty features were tight with pain, her skin pallid and sweaty, and it was clear that she would not last the day unless help could be found.
The youth couldn’t take his eyes off her. All he could think of was his own sickness, the horrible grip of the smallpox slowly strangling him. He remembered Godlove’s arrival, and the sweet relief at awaking the next day whole and well. There was no doubt in his mind that this amazing cure-all device in the man’s possession would save Martha’s life, as it had Nathan’s – but at what cost? Would she, like him and all the others, then be doomed to a lifetime of nightmares ripped from these Clade-monsters? Was it better to die than live on tormented by dreams of other people’s endless wars?
He thought of his father and stifled a sudden sob. Despite Tobias Blaine’s gruff exterior and hard edges, the sheriff had looked after his son, and his sudden death left an aching hole in Nathan’s world.
The boy glared at Kutter’s back as the outlaw rode alongside them. He felt the pressure of something dense and heavy in his vest pocket, and for a long moment he had to clench his fist to stop from reaching for it. Not yet. Soon, though.
He glanced at Walking Crow. The Pawnee had barely said a word since the girl had been injured, the shock visible on his leathery face. The man looked as if he had aged ten years in a moment, grim and gloomy with the dark turn of the day’s events.
The Doctor waved his glow-tipped wand over the injured woman, frowning. With a sigh, he snapped it off and put it away. ‘Decay streams in her blood,’ he said to the air, ‘and the wound won’t knit closed. I can’t stop her bleeding.’
‘Venom?’ asked Nathan. ‘I’ve heard of snakebites that don’t heal, but how’d that come from a gun?’
The other man eyed him. ‘Those weapons are like nothing on Earth,’ he said. ‘They’re made only for inflicting pain and for killing.’ The Doctor was bitter. ‘This is my fault. I should have brought the TARDIS.’
‘The what now?’
The Doctor kept talking, ignoring him. ‘Or better yet, I shouldn’t have brought her here at all.’
Nathan reached out a hand and touched the man’s shoulder, feeling a sudden sympathy for the stranger. ‘Doc, if you hadn’t been here, who knows who else would have been ridin’ with the angels right now? Me? Miss Forrest? All the folks in Redwater?’ He nodded at Martha. ‘We’re tough out here in the West. We’re robust, and I reckon Miss Jones is too.’
‘Hope so, Nathan.’ He looked away. ‘I don’t want to lose someone else.’
They rode into the shallow, ruddy-coloured hills and came upon the deserted mining site. It wasn’t much to look at – just a scattering of tumbledown shacks and the remains of some rails fenced in by rough-hewn enclosures, clustered around a square-cut hole in the hillside.
‘There,’ called Walking Crow, pointing out the entrance. He spotted fresh tracks in the dirt from a horse, from where the animal had been ridden up to the cave mouth and then loitered before ambling away of its own accord. He had no doubt that he would find the distinctive spade-shaped prints from Godlove’s boots up around the mine works if he looked for them.
Walking Crow gently snapped the reins on the grey horse pulling the wagon and the vehicle put on a little speed as they approached. He did it without really thinking about it, acting on a half-formed impulse. The ground rose up either side of the trail, turning quickly into a steep-walled pass.
He sensed someone at his side. ‘What are you doing?’ the Doctor asked quietly.
‘They’ll kill us all as soon as they find Godlove,’ said Walking Crow, and as the words left his mouth he knew he was right. ‘We cannot let that happen. I should have stopped him, but I did not because I was afraid.’ He shot the Doctor a loaded look. ‘You must not make the same mistake I did.’ The wagon was going faster now, rattling down the approach to the mine, the weight of the wooden vehicle giving it pace. He sucked in a breath. ‘Take Martha and the boy. I’ll hold them off.’
‘No,’ beg
an the Doctor, but Walking Crow shook his head.
‘I have heard you speak of these Clades and I understand the great evil they represent. There is war enough already in this land between the white and the red. We do not wish more of it falling from the stars.’ He braced himself. ‘Go, Rides In Night, Brother to Coyote. Save her. I will stay and answer to the Great Spirit.’
Nathan’s brow furrowed as the Doctor came forward and grabbed his arm. ‘Hey Doc, what’s that redskin doin’? We’re picking up speed.’ He glanced back along the narrow trail and saw Kutter and Tangleleg racing to keep up with them.
‘This is going to be bumpy,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘Help me with Martha. Keep her steady.’
Hearing her name, the girl blinked awake. ‘Are we there yet, Tish?’ she slurred. ‘Oh, good.’
From the driver’s seat, Walking Crow called out as he grabbed the wooden lever that would apply the wagon’s brakes. ‘Go now!’ The Pawnee gave the lever a hard yank and the wagon’s wheels squealed and groaned. With a sharp, juddering jerk, the vehicle skidded and the rear end swung wide, jack-knifing across the trail leading up to the mine head. The front bar and singletree rig around the grey horse was turned so tight that it tore from its mounts and for a long second the wagon tipped up onto two wheels, before gravity snatched it back and it crashed down on its axles in a cloud of thick dust, blocking the steep-walled pass.
The vehicle bounced on its suspension as the Doctor and Nathan leapt down, taking Martha with them. Walking Crow saw them take her, half-running, half-stumbling toward the mine entrance. The Pawnee ducked into the wagon as the two outriders came racing up towards it, sliding to a halt in the churned dust. He heard the telltale clatter of metal on leather and knew that Kutter and Tangleleg had drawn their guns.
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