Doctor Who - Combat Magicks Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A new adventure featuring the Thirteenth Doctor as played by Jodie Whittaker.

  About the Author

  Steve Cole is a best-selling children’s author whose sales exceed three million copies. His hugely successful Astrosaurs young fiction series has been a UK top-ten children’s bestseller and been published widely internationally. His several original Doctor Who novels have also been bestsellers. An original comedy, fantasy and adventure writer, Steve’s work includes a broad range of books, most recently the Secret Agent Mummy series for younger readers, Stop Those Monsters! and the explosive Young Bond titles Shoot to Kill and Heads You Die, with a further adventure for the teenage James Bond planned for publication later this year.

  Much in demand for his energetic performances at events, Steve has appeared at Edinburgh, Hay, Cheltenham, Oxford, Bath, YALC and World Book Day’s Biggest Book Show on Earth. He has toured schools in Europe, America, the UAE, Australia and New Zealand, and featured at sci-fi and Doctor Who conventions from London to Los Angeles.

  For Kamilah Chowdhury

  Chapter 1

  The TARDIS came tumbling like a gambler’s die across the dark baize of the night. Its wheezing salute sounded through the sky and the light that crowned the police box shell shone out.

  An unearthly golden glow pulsed and broke through the clouds. The TARDIS flew into it.

  And screamed.

  ‘Whoaaaaaaaaa!’ The Doctor pirouetted away from the smoking TARDIS console, blowing at her fingers. ‘She did not like that. The TARDIS did not like that.’

  ‘Yeah, I noticed!’ Graham clung to a crystal outcrop as the whole control room listed sharply. The usual warm orange lighting had become a demented wash of reds and purples, plunging the cavernous space into shifting shadows, and a bell was clanging somewhere, deep and dolorous, like the end of the world was coming. Graham stared round wildly to check that Ryan and Yaz were all right, saw a tangle of limbs flailing against the mushroom-shaped console and breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Ryan yelled.

  ‘We ran into something, thirty thousand feet above the surface of the planet below.’ Walking against the wind as she slowly fought her way back to the controls, the Doctor looked like a mime artist, except her blonde hair really was blowing all about her face, her blue coat-tails flapping like they wanted to take off. ‘A belt of energy. Ask me what kind.’

  ‘What kind?’ Yaz shouted.

  ‘I have no idea! None! Isn’t that brilliant?’ The Doctor’s grin was wide enough to swallow them all as she reached the console at last, twisting and tickling the controls into submission. The buffeting grew calmer, the floor began to level out.

  Graham let go of a long, shuddering breath. ‘Jeez, Louise, I thought we’d had it then.’

  ‘We’ve landed.’ The Doctor stared at the controls as if daring them to disagree, her tone somewhere between accusation and wonder. ‘One day I’ll get the hang of flying this thing …’

  ‘You think?’ Panting for breath, Yaz helped Ryan to his feet, letting him lean on her. But Ryan, unhappy accepting help from anyone, pulled away and tottered against the console. Smoothly he propped himself up on his elbows, as if the stumble had always been part of the plan.

  Graham pretended not to notice so as not to embarrass him. ‘Everyone all right?’

  Ryan nodded, and Yaz pushed long black strands of hair back from her face. ‘So, belt of energy, not good for the TARDIS …?’

  ‘Not good for anyone in close proximity.’ The Doctor was taking in whatever weird information her machine was prepared to divulge. ‘Luckily this is AD 451 and human beings can’t fly, so your ancestors should be OK.’

  ‘History time!’ Ryan grinned. ‘Hey, Doctor – love saying this – where on Earth are we?’

  She beamed. ‘Gaul.’

  ‘Gaul? What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a place, mate,’ Graham told him. ‘Asterix came from there. In the comic strip.’ Yaz and Ryan looked at each other blankly, and Graham frowned. ‘You must know! Asterix the Gaul, feisty little fighting hero by Goscinny and … thingie?’

  Ryan shook his head.

  ‘I was Goscinny’s and Uderzo’s inspiration, you know.’ The Doctor pulled her hair over her lip to make a blonde moustache and winked at Graham. ‘Almost definitely.’

  ‘Anyway.’ Graham affected a lofty look at Ryan and Yaz. ‘I know Gaul and you don’t, so I win. Old France, wasn’t it, Doc?’

  ‘You mean, isn’t it!’ The Doctor blew her hair away and grinned, rubbing her hands with glee. ‘Gaul is out there on the other side of those doors, right now. Is! Right this instant.’ She produced her sonic screwdriver and waved it over a crack in the console. ‘And Gaul isn’t just France! It’s Belgium, Luxembourg, a fair bit of Switzerland and Northern Italy, ein bisschen of Germany and the Netherlands … although actually, this bit we’ve landed in is old France. So, not ein bisschen but un peu.’ The crack in the console widened, and she pushed her hand inside, teeth gritted as she groped at the space inside. ‘Un peu de countryside,’ she went on, ‘somewhere between Orléans and Chalons.’

  ‘Euro road trip!’ Ryan grinned. ‘We going out, then?’

  ‘Got to, haven’t we?’ Yaz looked towards the white doors of the police box; sometimes she’d caught them twitching, like they couldn’t wait to open. ‘I mean, that energy thing, all this time ago, it can’t be natural, can it?’

  ‘Not natural to Earth.’ The Doctor pulled out a smoking cylindrical rod, crystal and laced through with wires. ‘Look! Passing through it almost burned out the force-field generator.’

  ‘So, you reckon this energy’s alien,’ said Ryan.

  ‘It would be,’ Graham muttered. ‘Still, thirty thousand feet over the Earth, at least it’s not hurting anyone down on the ground.’

  Ryan shot him a look. ‘What about birds?’

  ‘Birds don’t fly as high as that,’ said Yaz.

  ‘Tell that to your average Rüppell’s griffon vulture!’ said the Doctor. ‘Actually, don’t bother, at thirty-seven thousand feet they’ll never hear you.’ She snorted at her own joke. ‘They soar for hours in the jet streams up there, getting all the oxygen they need despite the thinness of the air.’ She grew more sober. ‘Amazing how creatures can adapt to exploit their environment.’

  Ryan nodded. ‘I’m up for some adapting.’ He started down the ramp to the exit. ‘Let’s get sightseeing!’

  ‘Oi!’ Yaz raced him to get outside first.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Graham called after them, as they vanished through the doors, ‘don’t go charging off …
!’

  ‘Keep an eye on them, Graham,’ the Doctor murmured, running the buzzing sonic over the glowing rod she’d pulled from the console. ‘Just let me get this sorted. I’ll be right there. Well, I’d be right anywhere, obvs, cos I’m always right.’ She grinned at him. ‘Right?’

  ‘Right, boss,’ Graham agreed. ‘Always.’ Steeling himself, he walked down the ramp after the others, into the unknown.

  Chapter 2

  It was a bad place for a tent, he thought. Too small a clearing, too far from fresh water, and little room here among the trees for a good fire. No decent forage to be had either, not for you nor your horse – although since thousands of the finest soldiers anywhere had churned the fields to mud under foot, hoof and cart wheel, God knew there was little enough food to be had in this whole backward area.

  Bittenmane swayed and almost stumbled, and he placed a hand on his mount’s long, broad head. ‘Stay ready,’ he murmured. That the horse could still support him at all was a miracle. Like him, he knew that Bittenmane must hold weariness deep in his bones, blood leaking from the stripes sliced into him. But still we stand, he thought, even when the burning night offered nowhere to hide.

  He cast a sour look past the treetops, up at the endless burning ember of the sky, and hated that he was growing used to something so unnatural. But then he eyed the severed heads of old foes hanging from his saddle, and smiled grimly. At least you’re doing better than those poor fools.

  Weariness weighed on him, but sleep was out of the question this night. He forced himself to focus on the blue tent before him in this godforsaken spot. Yes, it was a lousy tent, he decided: too tall and thin, how could you sleep well in that? And where was the cart that carried it, and the beast that bore the load? Something had made the groaning roar that had led him to scout the area; he suspected a terrible monster, fire-breathing and hairy, conjured by the Romans’ witch – a witch who must be far more powerful than his own. His witch claimed to be weakened by battle, unable to retaliate, but he didn’t trust her.

  ‘Death is nothing but a meeting place,’ she’d said with such certainty, a tight smile on her crooked face. ‘We shall all meet again in the next life.’

  He shivered to remember her words, which had seemed more threat than comfort. He half-hoped that by now the scheming hag hung red and twitching from a Roman’s sword, that devils had taken her before he or his men could follow her to the afterlife.

  There was no sign of a monster here, and he wondered if that last blow to his head had affected his reason. But Bittenmane’s ears lay flattened; he didn’t trust the tent either. So when its doors opened, he drew his sword in a second and nudged Bittenmane into the thick foliage at the clearing’s edge.

  A woman came out of the tent, strutting with the confidence of a high-born. He stared, incredulous: her dark skin and the perfumes upon it spoke of exotic lands to the east. Her beauty was great: her hair long, her eyes black and her teeth white as pearls; she might have been Zenobia, long dead queen of Palmyra, reincarnated here beneath the magic sky. ‘Whoa!’ she said, though she had no horse. It was the heavens that held her transfixed; she gazed up as if God were waving down at her.

  A moment later his hand tightened on the hilt of his sword as a young man came out: a man with cropped hair and black skin, that the Romans would call an Aethiope. He looked strong but bore no scars; his face was smooth as a child’s. Did men not fight in Africa? The man wore no armour, only strange flimsy skins, and he too became fast transfixed by the sky. Perhaps he was a eunuch, and the girl’s escort?

  This theory was proved badly wrong as a third figure appeared from the big blue tent. Surely there was room for no more? This latest was an older, white-skinned man, who wore worry-lines like scars and a coat of strange leather. He placed a hand on the shoulders of the younger man and the woman, joining them in staring up at the sky through the heavy branches.

  ‘No wonder the TARDIS went into one,’ this older man said. ‘That’s what we rode through?’

  ‘What is it?’ breathed the woman.

  ‘Freaky as hell,’ the Aethiope whispered. ‘Bet you the Doctor calls it beautiful.’

  ‘Course she will,’ the older man nodded.

  These must surely be Romans, and yet they were babbling in his own tongue. Spies, then? Even if they weren’t, their meaningless babble would surely lead the soldiers of Rome straight here. Either way, they had to die.

  Raising his sword, he pricked the ribs of Bittenmane with both boots, and his horse lurched towards the strangers.

  As one, the trio took their eyes from the sky, saw death charging them down, opened their mouths and screamed. He pulled back his sword-arm to silence all three cries in one great blow. But in a blur, another woman, pale and lithe, had pushed past his targets to stand before them. There was steel in her eyes and a rainbow blazed across her chest.

  ‘Oi,’ she said. ‘No.’

  The word was like an axe thrown at Bittenmane, who reared up, turned and threw his rider. The warrior struck the ground shoulder-first but managed to roll over and finish upright.

  ‘Get behind me,’ the woman told her followers.

  He pitched forward, his sword swinging at her, the thick whistle of the blade as it parted the air sweet in his ears …

  But then heat filled his body and he was tossed backwards like a sack of firewood. Who struck me? The fearful thought lasted a moment in his head before he struck a tree and the impact raged through his spine. He lay, winded and terrified, staring about the clearing for ghosts. Bittenmane whinnied but the dark girl was soothing him, a hand on the horse’s dark chestnut flank. Suddenly she backed away, groaning ‘Ew! Eww!’ at the sight of the heads hanging from the bridle; was she trying to ward off evil spirits, or attempting to raise them?

  He watched as his sword was snatched up by the white-skinned man who gripped it awkwardly in both hands as if struggling with its weight, the boy by his side. Both looked to the woman with the rainbow, like slaves to their mistress for instruction. He saw that in her right hand she held a sort of metal wand.

  ‘Wow!’ she cried, looking up at the sky as if nothing had happened. ‘Isn’t that beautiful?’

  ‘Told you,’ muttered the black boy.

  So. Another witch. Damn this modern world and its endless sorcery! Though this woman was different from the Tenctrama hags. She seemed more like a whirlwind descending from the high mountains, dangerous and beautiful, standing there with the others and yet somehow held apart.

  Now she strode towards him; automatically he struggled to rise. ‘No, no, don’t try to get up. I didn’t hurt you, did I? My bad.’ The witch looked concerned, waved her wand. ‘My force-field generator – er, I mean, my shield of air thing – it’s a bit broken.’ She tucked it into a flap of material in her strange coat. ‘Sweet of you to try to fix it with that big old sword of yours, but the power lattice needs time to regenerate. Well, don’t we all. What’s your name?’

  ‘My name … is Bleda.’

  She knelt down beside him, her green eyes fixed on him like he was treasure, hands pressing against his face like a healing shaman. The softest, palest hands! Typical sorceress: she had never worked or struggled a day in her life. ‘That’s a big old cut down your cheek there, how’d you get it?’

  ‘I am a soldier.’ He shrugged. ‘Each wound is a mouth that sings my valour.’

  ‘Well, I love a positive attitude, Bleda. But this one’s going to be singing ‘Infected’ before long. Great song, but you don’t want wounds doing covers.’ She smiled, but her eyes showed she was wary. ‘How about I clean up your scratch while we have a nice cosy chat about why the sky’s on fire?’

  ‘I will not be mocked by a Roman witch.’

  ‘I’m not a witch. And I’m not Roman.’

  ‘You look like a Roman.’

  ‘You should’ve seen my last face.’ She grinned. ‘I’m the Doctor. This is Ryan, that’s Graham, that’s Yasmin. If you stop trying to kill her, she might let you
call her Yaz.’ She pulled a small jar from her pocket and took off the lid. ‘And this little beauty is a synthetic intelligent collagen that boosts the regenerative powers of your body a thousand-fold. Three millennia from now, you’ll be able to buy it over the counter in any pharmacy! On Titan, anyway.’

  ‘Ahh!’ Ryan, the boy, nodded. ‘She got it on Titan.’

  ‘Graham’s rash,’ mouthed the girl.

  ‘You make it sound dodgy!’ Graham protested. ‘Everyone gets rashes …’

  ‘Anyway it’s deffo not Roman.’ The Witch-Doctor dipped a finger in the ointment from the jar and pressed it to his cheek; the wound tingled and then felt soothed. ‘None of us come from Rome. At least, not lately.’

  ‘Three of us are Britons,’ added Graham.

  ‘Why are you in Gaul, then? To sell your magicks?’ He nodded to the sky. ‘Rome has its own sorcerers.’

  ‘So the name-calling’s based more on observation than superstition.’ Witch-Doctor put the jar back into her pocket. ‘You believe in magicks because you’ve seen them with your own eyes.’

  ‘These days, no battle can be fought without the Tenctrama.’

  ‘Tenctrama? What’s that, a weapon? A people?’

  ‘Once, they were. Barely any of the witches survive now.’

  ‘The Roman Empire battling with magic?’ Graham stuck the sword point down into the earth and leaned against it. ‘I must’ve skipped school the day they taught us that.’

  ‘I don’t think what’s happening here is part of your established history. Something feels very wrong …’ The Witch-Doctor pulled another wand from inside her coat; its crystal tip whirred as she waved it wildly at the sky like a shaman over bones. ‘Yeah, there’s something totally alien about that excitation field up there. The sonic doesn’t like it …’

  Small wonder the strangers’ skins looked so soft: it was action that toughened a man’s hide, not a child’s endless gabble! But his own wound had scabbed over already; while this Witch-Doctor might speak madness, she truly had powerful magicks, both to harm and to heal. Plans stirred in the warrior’s head …