Bill Groan thought hard and then, grudgingly, nodded.
‘You’re proposing to let this stranger into the Incrypt?’ Winnowner asked Bill incredulously. ‘You’re suggesting we let him read direct from our Guide Emanual and show it to others?’
‘This man is a Nurse Elect!’ Vesta exclaimed.
‘I don’t care what he is,’ replied Winnowner. ‘This cannot be permitted.’
‘If our world is under attack,’ asked Bill Groan, ‘and our way of life also, and this is the only way to save it, then who are you to say that it cannot be?’
‘Who are you trusting, Elect?’ Winnowner asked. ‘Guide have mercy on us all, you’re trusting the word of these strangers! We have only their say that there are any of these menacing Ice Warrior things! None of us have seen them.’
‘I have, actually,’ said Sol Farrow.
‘Rubbish, Sol!’ said Winnowner. ‘You can’t even say what it was you saw!’
‘I have too, Winnowner Cropper,’ said Vesta firmly.
‘You were frightened by something in the dark woods, child,’ said Winnowner. ‘I ask you all, in Guide’s goodness, we don’t know what we face here. But we do know there have been three strangers come among us from afar. A new star moves through the heavens, and then they show up, unannounced, claiming to be well-wishers come along in the dead of a winter’s night.’
She glared at Rory.
‘Maybe they are the real Ice Warriors,’ she said. ‘Did that occur to any of you? If they hope to damage our Firmers, and make winter come for ever, and so wipe us out, then maybe this is their conjury trick to get their hands on our Guide Emanual! What’s wrong with you all?’
‘Winnowner is right,’ said Chaunce Plowrite. ‘If this man and his friends are our enemies, then we should not let them near Guide’s words. We’d be handing them the very secrets that they crave. We’d be giving them the means to destroy us.’
Everyone looked at Rory, even Vesta.
‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘Please. Please. Do I look evil? I can’t do evil. I can barely pull off dangerous. This is one of those moments when you’ve just got to trust something. I’m on your side.’
‘I believe him,’ said Vesta Flurrish. ‘I honestly do. What about you, Elect?’
Bill Groan had bowed his head. He was gazing sidelong at Rory as though that might make it easier to see some kind of answer or eternal truth.
They waited for him to reply.
The main doors to the assembly burst open, letting in a wall of icy chill. Able Reeper, one of Jack Duggat’s men, hurtled in along with the bitter cold, lugging his scythe. He was extremely agitated.
‘Elect! Elect!’ he shouted. ‘You must come quick now! You must come and see!’
‘What’s the commotion, Able?’ Bill Groan asked.
‘Hurry, Elect!’ the man replied. ‘Come and see!’
They all followed him outside into the snowy yard. It was bitterly cold. Rory inhaled, and the air stabbed into his lungs like a frozen knife. Able Reeper strode off across the town yard towards the Back Row and the hedges that ran along the perimeter of the Spitablefields. He kept beckoning them to follow. A lot of other Morphans were out too, roused from their beds. They were flocking in the same direction, some carrying solamps.
It was surprisingly bright anyway. The blizzard had stopped, leaving the world under a deep blanket of snow, a thick white layer that flowed like a soft duvet over the roofs and trees and tops of walls. It looked like the deepest, richest royal icing that had ever decorated a Christmas cake.
With the snowfall stilled, the sky had cleared. It was like black glass overhead, a polished darkness that sucked the heat out of every breath and made brief, trailing clouds. The sky was so clear, it seemed to Rory that he could see every single star that there had ever been. The spiral pattern of a galaxy filled half the sky, a trillion, trillion winking points of light. The moon was up, huge and bright, a dazzling silver disk low in the sky. The moonlight was intensely bright. It was bathing the entire landscape with a radiance that meant they could all see for miles. The snow cover was reflecting and amplifying the glow.
Some of the stars were moving. Rory could track at least three of them, very high up overhead, moving in formation.
A fourth was descending.
It was growing brighter by the second. Its descent was steady and level, perfectly controlled, but it made no sound. The Morphans came to a halt and gazed up at the star as it moved directly overhead and then swung to the east until it seemed to hang above Would Be. It looked as large and as bright as the moon. The light shining from it picked up the slopes of Firmer Number Two, making the sleeping darkness of the mountain stand out against the night sky.
It wasn’t a star. Rory knew that. If you squinted against the light, you could see faint details of the structure behind the lights, vast and sleek.
‘A star has come loose and fallen down the sky,’ said Vesta.
‘That’s a spaceship,’ said Rory.
The Morphans of Beside, almost every single one of them, stood in the snow and looked up at the vast, bright shape suspended in the eastern sky.
‘What is that sound?’ asked Bill Groan suddenly.
They listened.
Noises were echoing up the valley from the direction of Would Be. Similar noises could be made out coming from the Spitablefields, Farafield and the Fairground beyond the heathouses. They were ugly, ragged noises, the sound of fierce blows being traded by formidably strong opponents. They could hear the blunt force of weapons cracking armour and breaking bone. They could hear grunts of effort and cries of fury, metal striking metal, the crash and shiver of objects colliding with snow-laden trees.
They couldn’t see it, but there was some kind of battle going on in the woodland, a vast, medieval-style battle involving close quarters, hand-to-hand violence.
‘Who’s out there?’ asked Bill anxiously. ‘Who’s fighting?’
‘Some of our men?’ Jack Duggat ventured. ‘The patrols? The nightwatchers?’
‘It sounds like hundreds of them!’ Bill exclaimed. He turned, pale in the moonlight, and faced his assembled community.
‘Morphans of Beside, listen to me. If the fighting moves this way, we’re in danger. We have to fall back and protect ourselves.’
‘How do we protect ourselves from a star, Elect?’ someone shouted out. Some of the community’s children were sobbing.
‘Just do as I say, for Guide’s sake,’ Bill replied. ‘Come back into the plantnation. The barns and the grain stores are the most strongly built. Take the children there to make them safe. Sol, get guards up to protect the cattle sheds and the stockhouses. Jack, gather a force of men and form a line here and halt whatever comes our way.’
People started to move, obeying his orders, but many simply wanted to linger and stare at the hovering star. Rory edged back through the crowd a little. He was no longer prepared to wait for permission, nor was he going to rely on his powers of persuasion. Everything was about to get very confused and busy. He was going to head directly back to the Incrypt and get access to the Guide. The Doctor was counting on him.
He was about to slip into the shadows of the hedgerow and risk running when things suddenly got worse.
Several long, slicing beams of energy speared down from the hovering ship. They made a keening, screaming noise that split the air. Where the beams struck, large plumes of fire belched up inside the wood. Rory, aghast, saw the black skeletons of trees silhouetted by each vivid fireball. The sounds of the blasts – gritty, ground-shaking roars of fury – echoed back to them. The ship was firing its main weapons at ground targets.
Total panic gripped the Morphans. Screaming and shouting, some carrying children, they began to scatter in every direction.
Rory watched the ship bombard the wood with its battery weapons for a few moments. People ran past him. He could feel the overpressure of the distant concussion as a gusting wind against his face. The ship seemed intent on deva
stating the entire landscape.
He made his decision.
Rory didn’t stop running until he’d reached the assembly. There was no one inside. He could hear the panic and commotion in the streets of the plantnation. He could hear the crump and boom of the bombardment. Each blast vibrated the ground and made the building tremble.
‘Where are you going? Rory? Where are you going?’
He turned and saw Vesta in the doorway.
‘I have to help the Doctor,’ Rory said.
‘What is happening, Rory?’ she asked, coming forward. ‘Is it the end of the world?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ he replied.
‘Is it the Ice Warriors?’ she asked. ‘Have they begun to kill us?’
‘I think they might have,’ he said.
‘Do they intend to blow us asunder with fire from the sky?’ she asked. ‘Guide have mercy on us, I thought they would rather rip us apart with their teeth and talons first!’
‘Well, they don’t really have those, do they?’ asked Rory. ‘More sort of big green clamps for hands.’ He mimed them.
She frowned at him.
‘What big green clamps?’ she asked.
‘Like pincers.’
‘Who do?’
‘The Ice Warriors! Come on, Vesta. The big, green, scaly thing in the wood? With the red eyes?’
She stared at him, bewildered.
‘It had red eyes, right enough,’ she said slowly, ‘but the thing I saw was not green or scaly.’
‘Oh,’ said Rory, his shoulders sagging. ‘All this time, I don’t think we’ve been talking about the same thing at all.’
CHAPTER 14
BORN TO RAISE THE SONS OF EARTH, BORN TO GIVE THEM SECOND BIRTH
Ssord, the Ice Lord’s axe-wielding lieutenant, handed a communicator pad to his master. Ixyldir studied its compact display.
‘Does he have an axe because his name is Ssord?’ the Doctor asked, sitting in the high-backed chair with his chin in his hand. ‘I’m just saying, it might get confusing if Ssord had a sword. Is that why you gave him an axe?’
Ixyldir tilted his head to regard the Doctor. ‘For a mammal that is about to be put down, you are remarkably talkative,’ he said.
‘Oh, but that’s precisely why!’ the Doctor enthused, jumping to his feet.
The Ice Warriors around him tensed slightly, thinking he was about to attack their clan lord. Ixyldir briskly raised an armoured hand to call them off.
‘You intend to kill me anyway, so I don’t believe it really matters what I say,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s a very liberating feeling, in fact. I could insult you to your face, couldn’t I, lizard-lips? It’s not going to make a lot of difference. I mean, it’s not going to make things worse. Death is death.’
‘There are things worse than death,’ said the Ice Lord.
‘Really? Name one.’
‘Dishonour.’
The Doctor threw back his head and laughed. ‘I knew you were going to say that,’ he chuckled. ‘I love it when Ice Warriors talk about honour and dishonour. It’s all so terribly serious and profound. My old buddy Warlord Azylax was forever banging on about it, all the time. I would just roll my eyes. You Ice Warriors can be so pompous on the subject.’
‘There is no Warlord Azylax,’ said Ixyldir.
‘No, unlucky for me,’ the Doctor agreed. He sighed. ‘No, there isn’t. At least, there isn’t going to be for about another 9,000 years. I realise that now. I got my Galactic Migration Eras mixed up. I didn’t know if I was coming or going. Or if you were coming or going. Anyway, my timing’s bad, and that sucks for me, because there isn’t a single Ice Warrior on this world or any other who can vouch for my credentials.’ He looked squarely at Ixyldir. ‘But you will, by the time we’re done here,’ he said, and winked. ‘I promise. You will have acquired respect for me. As a friend, or as a foe. Which one of those it turns out to be depends entirely on you, Lord Ixyldir of the Tanssor clan.’
‘By the time we are done here,’ replied the Ice Lord, ‘this world will be an ice-locked haven, and you will be a headless corpse rotting in one of the vile meat vats in this facility. You do not impress me, or scare me, cold blue star.’
‘Then let’s talk about dishonour some more,’ suggested the Doctor. ‘I mean, it is such a popular topic with your kind. You take it so seriously, yet it is so malleable to you.’
‘Malleable?’ echoed Ixyldir.
‘It means pliable or easy to reshape.’
‘I know what it means.’
The Doctor looked at the other Ice Warriors. ‘Honour is a code you live by… until it becomes inconvenient,’ he said.
Ssord raised his axe.
‘Stop!’ the Ice Lord ordered.
‘You see?’ said the Doctor. ‘Your man here was going to chop down an unarmed prisoner, just because that unarmed prisoner happened to say something he didn’t like. How is that the action of an honour-bound warrior?’
‘We are principled,’ said Ixyldir. ‘We are also pragmatic.’
‘Yes, you are,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But isn’t it about time you started to balance those aspects of your culture? You’re searching for a new home because Mars has gone.’
‘Our home world, along with all the planets in our solar system, has been rendered uninhabitable by the maturing expansion phase of our star.’
‘The Morphans of Earth are in the same boat, so to speak,’ said the Doctor. ‘And they got here first. And this world is more like their home world than yours.’
‘It is still generally compatible with our needs,’ said the Ice Lord.
‘So you’re just going to take their planet from them and wipe them out? How is that honourable?’
Ixyldir growled something, a hint of anger under the surface. ‘Our primary requirement is the establishment of a new home world for our clan so that we may begin rebuilding our civilisation,’ he said. ‘We have no particular issue with the human refugees. No malice. It is simply a competition for resources.’
‘Tell them that,’ said the Doctor. ‘You’re killing them.’
‘At the moment,’ replied Ixyldir, ‘it appears to be a two-way process.’ He showed the display of the communicator pad to the Doctor.
The Doctor leaned forward, frowning deeply as he made sense of the data he was being shown. ‘You deployed one of your ships into a low atmospheric holding position. You’re… firing at surface targets. Ixyldir, you’ve committed forces to an open ground offensive!’
‘And why might I have done that, cold blue star?’
The Doctor blinked. ‘I don’t… Wait, how can that be? You’re fighting something. You’re fighting something that’s fighting back!’
‘Your emotional nuance is interesting,’ said Ixyldir. ‘I am no expert in mammalian micro-expression, but your surprise seems quite genuine. I imagine, however, that this is because you are a trained spy and infiltration agent. I offer you one last opportunity to cease your constant disinformation. I agree to make your death rapid and painless. Tell me the location of your ship.’
‘My ship?’
‘Where is it concealed? How many more military operatives are you carrying aboard it?’
‘Wait,’ said the Doctor. ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, waitaminute!’ He started to pace, disconcerted. ‘You said you were maintaining a watch on the planet. You’ve been monitoring the human population on Hereafter since you arrived ten years ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Logging them all individually by their heatprints?’
‘Yes.’
‘Roughly speaking, in that time, what has the population of Hereafter been, Lord Ixyldir?’
Ixyldir paused, considering the pros and cons of tendering the information. Finally, he answered: ‘Combined, the three human settlements represent a global population of around 19,000.’
It was the Doctor’s turn to pause. His mind was racing. ‘But just recently,’ he continued, ‘the nature of the struggle has changed? It’s forc
ed you out into the open?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve detected new arrivals, like me and my friends?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Yes,’ growled Ixyldir, growing impatient.
‘And you distinguish between the pre-existing population and the new arrivals by heatprints?’
‘Heatprints do not lie,’ said the Ice Lord.
The Doctor sighed. ‘Bear with me for one moment more, Lord Ixyldir,’ he said. ‘We’re about to have a really crucial exchange of information. Everything that happens from now may hinge upon it. I’ll start by telling you something, in the spirit of a free and frank debate. I arrived here, in my ship, with two companions. That’s it. A total of three new arrivals. We got here yesterday.’
Ixyldir turned his head slowly and looked at Ssord. Then he looked back at the Doctor.
‘Lord Ixyldir,’ said the Doctor. ‘According to your scans, how many new heatprints have appeared in addition to the existing human population here?’
The Ice Lord permitted himself a glacial pause before replying. ‘One hundred and fifty,’ he replied.
‘Down here!’ Amy yelled.
She was leading the way, her duffel coat flying out behind her. Samewell and Arabel were running to keep up.
‘They’re coming after us, Amy!’ Bel cried.
Amy looked back. Thirty-five metres behind them, two Ice Warriors had appeared on a gantry platform and were following the three humans onto the grilled shipskin bridge that arched across a vast turbine chamber. In the past five minutes, Amy and her companions had been chased through four large compartments just like it. Each time they had emerged onto a platform or bridge at a different level. Each time, they believed, briefly, that they might have finally shaken off their pursuers.
But each time, the Ice Warriors had appeared, relentlessly searching and hounding.
The bridge they were currently crossing spanned a large chamber at a particularly high level. Several other walkways criss-crossed the chamber at different levels below them. Far below the bridges, at the bottom of the yawning drop, there was a huge cavity that looked like the bowl of an active volcano. Molten fire seethed and roiled down there, an abyssal well of flames. They could feel the heat rising through the space of the compartment. High overhead, unfurled like sails, titanic thermal vents were arranged to conduct and direct the heat.