Doctor Who_ The Awakening Part 11

Concentrating furiously in the silence which followed, he was able to make his final set of calculations. Now he approached the last bank of controls.

In the church the Malus closed its eyes and fell silent again. The nave became ominously still, as if it too was breathlessly waiting. Smoke hung suspended about the pillars and floated in wisps and silent streams across the vaulted roof; somewhere a small piece of plaster, shaken out of its anchorage by the last bout of noise, finally edged loose and clattered to the floor. The sound crashed through the silence like a pistol shot.

The dull thudding noise still vibrated up from the crypt, but here now all sounds were held in suspension, taken up into the silent brooding of the alien monster, which had grown so large it seemed to occupy the whole church wall.

The Malus was listening. Sensing the mischief being worked against it by its enemy in the crypt, it had probed out psychic antennae to link into his thoughts.

All at once it realised what the Doctor was planning, and the full extent of the threat to its ambitions became dear. In that instant its eyes flipped open and glinted with anger; it roared and swung forward in the wall, shaking itself free before the Doctor's program could be completed.

There was panic in the jerky movements, and desperation in the deafening roar and engulfing smoke which poured out of it.

That roar shook the church to its foundations. It rumbled through the crypt and reverberated inside the fabric of the TARDIS. It summoned up the spirits of the churchyard dead, and rolled across the fields surrounding the church, creating a tidal airwave which rushed through the village to the Green and its faithful servant, Sir George Hutchinson.

The Green had become quiet. The troopers and soldiers had all gone to scour the village for the strangers. Most of the villagers had departed in dismay, appalled by the turn of events and the disintegration of Sir George Hutchinson.

When he had regained consciousness, Sir George had staggered around the Green, shouting, screaming, threatening everybody. He waved his sword about and almost decapitated an unwary villager, who had been looking forward to an enjoyable afternoon's entertainment beside the bonfire. That was more than enough for most of the onlookers. The party was over before it had begun, so they went home and left the Green to Sir George and his madness.

Only a few bystanders remained, talking quietly among themselves and keeping a wary eye on Sir George in case he should erupt again. But he had been quiet for some time now. He wandered about dazed and uncertain, as if he didn't know where he was.

Now he noticed his horse, peacefully grazing under the chestnut tree, and approached it with a tired, unbalanced stagger. He picked up the reins and dragged himself wearily into the saddle. He was sitting there, limp and looking only half conscious, when the cry of the Malus reached him.

He heard it coming, like a tidal wave moving in from the horizon at an incredible speed. It carne roaring through the sunlit afternoon, a vast towering ridge of Mound which blotted out sky and sun and then everything in the world.

Suddenly it was upon him. It engulfed his mind. Now he felt he was inside the noise, it had swallowed him up and there was nothing anywhere but this roaring, louder than it was possible for a mind to hold.

The impact stunned him. He stared wildly into the air.

Then his eyes started from his head and his mouth creased in pain; his hands went to his ears and held his head against the buffeting, and he screamed. He cried out the one word, 'No ... !' in a long, drawn-out shriek of pain and terror as the Malus sucked the mind out of him.

Sir George was its true servant now. He was completely in its power far more than he had ever thought a man could he controlled by an outside force. The Malus commanded, and Sir George Hutchinson obeyed; no longer had he any choice in the matter.

The people on the Green, startled by his wailing cry, were watching him even more warily now. 'Out of the way!' he yelled at them. 'I must get to the church!'

But before they could move, he dug his heels into the horse's flanks and galloped through the shade of the chestnut tree into the hard sunlight on the Green, scattering them in all directions.

Sir George Hutchinson, the once proud owner of Little Hodcombe, was answering the call of his new master.

Turlough and Andrew Verney sidled down the steps to the crypt. They pressed their backs into the shadow of the wall and kept strict silence, all the time watching the two figures across the crypt trying to break into the TARDIS.

The Malus's roar had disturbed them too, but there was no time to worry about it because the trooper hammering away at the door of the TARDIS was going to have it down soon. Willow, who had sensed that success was very near, stood by with his sword held in readiness, prepared to charge the moment it gave way.

When they reached the foot of the steps Turlough led Verney around the edge of the crypt, in the shadows, again crouching close to the wall. Once he stopped to allow the old matt to catch up with him. 'What do we do?' Verney whispered in his ear.

'Sss.h.!.+' Turlough pressed a finger to his lips, then groped around the floor and picked up a stone hefty enough to fell a man with a single blow. He weighed it in his hand and gave Verney a meaningful look. The elderly man nodded anxiously and found a stone to arm himself.

As soon as they were ready, they glanced at each other for confirmation and launched themselves across the remaining yards of rubble-strewn floor at Willow and the trooper. By the time they were heard coming it was too late.

As their enemles turned round with surprised faces, Turlough fell upon Joseph Willow. He brought down the raised stone with all his strength and gave the Sergeant a crus.h.i.+ng blow across the side of his head. A split-second later Verney, with the greatest gusto, performed the same operation on the trooper. Willow and the trooper grunted under the impact of the stones. They were unconscious before they hit the ground.

Panting for breath, Turlough and Andrew Verney looked at each other and smiled a little smile of victory.

Inside the TARDIS the struggle had reached its moment of resolution. Victory was about to be won or lost for the Malus image was preparing to leap at the Doctor, and the Doctor had completed his program.

Now, with a lot of deliberation and even more hope, he pressed a final set of switches. Instantly a low, clicking, electronic hum filled the console room. There was a sensation of air vibrating very deeply. 'That's it!' the Doctor cried, with a smile of satisfaction and relief.

Tegan gave him a pleading look. 'Can you control the Malus?'

'Ah, not quite,' the Doctor admitted. 'But it can no longer fuel itself from the turmoil in the village.'

Now he permitted himself a glance at the Malus clone, which was glaring down at him from the wall. He had cut off its power source too, and the sudden deprivation of its life blood could have dramatic consequences eventually, he thought, the image might collapse in upon itself like a deflating balloon.

However, the results came sooner, and even more dramatically, than he had expected. Almost immediately the image slumped and there came a blood-curdling, retching noise from inside it. Lumps of vivid green mucus blew out of its mouth and dribbled from its eyes.

It was a sight so obscene that despite their unbounded relief that the Doctor's efforts had worked this far, the onlookers winced with disgust. The green mucus poured and spouted, and the image began to implode. Tegan, feeling very sick, turned away her head.

Jane, who had also averted her head, was staring at the scanner screen, her eyes wide with wonder. Only moments ago the screen had shown Willow and the trooper battering their way into the TARDIS: now, large as life, there stood in their place the gasping and bemused figures of Turlough and Andrew Verney.

'Doctor look!'

The Doctor followed her pointing finger. His eyes absorbed at a glance the p.r.o.ne figures of their enemies and the weary but triumphant stance of their friends, and he grinned with pleasure. He gave a last glance at the now rapidly-shrinking image, retching in its death agony. 'I think it's time we left this thing to die in peace,' he said, and led them all out of the TARDIS.

As the Doctor came out through the door he smiled at the sight of the old man bending over the two unconscious bodies, and Turlough standing guard over him. 'Turlough!

Well done!' he cried.

Tegan pushed past him. Scarcely able to believe her good fortune, she paused for a moment to look at the man she had begun to think she might never see again.

'Grandfather!' she shouted, and almost crying with happiness, she ran towards the crouching figure. Verney looked up at the sound of her voice, pulled himself to his feet and held out his arms.

'Tegan, my dear!' he said happily, and kissed her warmly on the check.

The Doctor, already racing towards the steps to the church while the others were still tumbling out of the TARDIS, cut short their reunion embrace. 'Save your greetings until later,' he called.

Ben Wolsey ran past them. Tegan looked at her grandfather. 'Never a dull moment,' she shrugged. They smiled at each other, and ran after the Doctor and Wolsey.

Jane Hampden was close behind them. Will Chandler, sticking to his resolution of not trying to understand anything at all and letting himself be carried along from one crisis to another, ran at her heels. Turlough, with a last glance of satisfaction at his fallen foes, hrought up the rear.

Although they hurried to follow the Doctor, they were all afraid of what they were going to have to face in the church. As they walked warily into the small chapel at the top of the steps, the roaring of the Malus, the clouds of smoke and the acrid stench of destruction hit them; they had to force themselves to go further, and steel their nerves to turn through the archway and into the nave.

The wall beyond the pulpit was now all Malus. The gigantic head turned its eyes and loured at them as they came in. It trembled and shook with rage and lurched forward, still trying desperately to break fire. Every effort, though, used up energy, and the Doctor had cut of'its power source in the village. With eyes narrowed to slits it watched their every move.

Wolsey, who was keeping close to the Doctor's shoulder, blanched at the sight. 'Now what?' he asked. The Doctor, searching for inspiration, was looking at the Mattis as intently as it was at him. 'I don't know, yet,' he admitted.

'Doctor...' Turlough pointed towards the top of the nave The Doctor turned away from the Malus to look, and stiffened with surprise.

Three troopers had appeared, and were moving slowly down the nave towards them. They were no ordinary soldiers, though -- and they were certainly not twentieth-century villagers in disguise. Everything about them was drained of colour. The helmets, breastplates and tunics of Parliamentarian soldiers, which they all were, showed an identical shade of lifeless, greyish white; their stern, bloodless faces were the faces of men roused from their graves in the service of the Malus.

Verney shuddered. 'Where did they come from?'

'The Malus,' the Doctor whispered. He watched the ghostly troopers' relentless progress: they marched down the nave in eerie, silent unison. He felt the tension of his companions, their growing suspense as they started to move backwards.

Now the troopers' slow, marching motion was propelled and echoed by the hollow heating of a drum.

Jane looked doubtfully at the Doctor. 'They're psychic projections?' He nodded.

'I'd feel happier with a gun,' Wolsey announced. He was a true man of the soil, forthright and practical, to whom the possession of the right tool for the job always gave a sense of comfort and well-being. But there was no tool for this job. 'It wouldn't make any difference,' Tegan told him.

'They're not real.'

'They look solid enough to me,' Wolsey muttered.

'This is the Malus's last line of defence,' the Doctor explained. 'And they'll kill just as effectively as any living thing.'

The unseen drum throbbed, and the troopers marched on in absolute unison. Their austere and forbidding faces stared at the Doctor and his companions. There was no hatred in them, but nor was there any compa.s.sion; they were dead faces, with no expression at all. The little, frightened group retreated before them. moving closer and closer to the broken altar.

In the crypt below them, another trooper was stirring. The man Andrew Verney had tilled with his stone had begun to groan and murmur to himself. Now, with much grunting and pulling, he pushed himself up to his knees.

He was still only half conscious. He knelt for a while, swaying groggily and holding his aching shoulder; gradually his head cleared a little - enough for him to notice Willow's body lying on the floor beside him. He bent over it and pulled it up to look at the Sergeant's face.

Willow was still out cold.

The trooper let him slump again as dizziness and nausea cane flooding back. He shook his head and mumbled to himself. He couldn't remember where he was, or what he was supposed to be doing.

Although the Doctor and his companions had withdrawn out of the nave and retreated into the sanctuary, still the ghostly figures advanced unrelentingly, and still the hollow drumming hoonsed through the roar and smoke of the Malus.

Turlough glanced over his shoulder; the stained gla.s.s window loomed above them and scattered fragments of coloured light across the floor and their bodies, making their situation even more bizarre and unnerving. 'We're running out of places to run,' he murmured to Tegan.

'That's becoming the story of our lives,' she sighed.

Will Chandler, tucked behind Jane, peeped out at the deathly faces advancing towards him. He had seen them before. These men had been among the Puritan force which attacked the church when the great and terrible battle began. He had seen each of them cut down by Cavaliers. Yet here they were, marching up the nave, large as life and pale as death. Marching Marching. He whimpered with fear.

Verney was moving slowly backwards at Will's side.

'Why don't they attack?' he asked.

'They will,' the Doctor promised. 'But in their own time.' He looked past the troopers to the Malus. Already swollen obscenely, it was swelling still further, and shuddering and looking their way. The huge, glinting eyes were pointing directly at them. 'Now we're the Malus's last source of energy,' the Doctor said, 'it will make us sweat for as long as it can.'

10.

Fulfillment

In the crypt, the trooper had remembered who he was.

He was on his feet, swaying over Willow's body. He shook his head again, trying to clear it of the dizziness which kept threatening to swamp him. Then he drew his sword and staggered towards the steps.

Their backs were to the wall. As Turlough had predicted, there were no more places for them to run to, and they were trapped.

Realising that victory was theirs for the taking, the ghostly figures stopped at the entrance to the sanctuary, close beside the archway which led to the side chapel and the steps to the crypt. With that uncanny precision they swung their hands across their bodies to the hilts of their swords. As one the troopers grasped them, and drew the swords together in a unified sweep which rasped steel on scabbard with a shrieking sound. The swords swept up into the light. Then they pointed them at the group huddled against the altar, with the colours of the stained gla.s.s window lying across them like a rainbow.

Will drew in his breath and s.h.i.+vered. 'I's gonna die,' he moaned.

The Doctor gripped his shoulder encouragingly. 'Be quiet, Will,' he whispered.

'He's right, Doctor.' Jane was shaking too; she could feel the edges of those swords already.

'Not yet he isn't,' the Doctor said. He was sure there must be something he could do, but for the life of him he couldn't think what it was.

The trooper, who had remembered at last that he was supposed to be searching for the Doctor and the lost Queen of the May, came lurching and staggering up the steps from the crypt. He clattered across the side chapel, swung out through the archway and found himself surrounded by three grey phantoms.

As he fell into their midst, three glinting swords swished through the air and joined each other around his throat.

Pinned by the swords, he stood rooted to the spot for a moment, wide eyed and bewildered. His head was still dizzy, and he tried desperately to make sense of what was happening to him. He glanced fearfully from one to another of the ghastly, grey-white faces, and his mouth opened wide with surprise.

The church, which had fallen silent with the trooper's arrival, now erupted with noise. The Malus trumpeted a triumphant roar and Tegan and Jane screamed and turned away their faces as the phantom soldiers raised their arms and swung their swords for the kill. The blades flashed and the brief, b.l.o.o.d.y, one-sided fight came to its inevitable close: the trooper shrieked in his death agony, then sank to the floor and lay face down among the debris and dust.

'Oh, no.' Tegan was shaking.