Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [94]
'K'tchar'ch's people,' Watson breathed, and shivered suddenly. He was right, of course. Once he had said it, I could see that they were living beings, but then he and the Doctor had seen them before, whereas I had made do with a second-hand description. 'I wonder what they're doing up there,' he continued. 'Observing, perhaps.'
Silently the Doctor indicated other areas of the mountain slope, and areas of the right-hand mountain as well.
'There are several thousand of the creatures,' Holmes snapped. 'This is an ambush in force.'
'But Maupertuis's army has only been on Ry'leh for a few hours,' I protested. 'How come the Ry'lehans had time to set up an ambush?'
'Perhaps more to the point,' the Doctor added, 'why are a race who claim to be peaceful philosophers armed and armoured?'
'As we suspected,' said Holmes, 'we have been misled.'
I think the phrase is, 'some discussion ensued'. It went around in circles, but the upshot was that everything K'tchar'ch had told Holmes, Watson and the Doctor was now in doubt, and we didn't know who was the friend and who was the foe. On the face of it, the points were still racked up against Maupertuis, but he had never actually lied to us. Just tried to kill us.
Eventually, as I feared he would, Watson said, 'There's only one thing to do. I'll have to sneak closer and find out what's going on.'
'It's too dangerous,' Holmes urged. 'I should go.'
'You cannot.' Watson placed a hand upon Holmes's upper arm. 'Your ratiocination got us here. Leave the rest up to me. This is what I do best.'
He took a deep breath, and looked directly at me. 'I'll be back soon,' he said, and vanished into the deepening shadows.
He wasn't, of course. It's been almost half an hour, and there's no sign of him. Holmes is sat by the fire that the Doctor lit with his eternal matches and some of the local vegetation. The fire squirms every so often, but Holmes is too wrapped up in his own thoughts to care. I hate to see him like this. He seems to have given up.
The Doctor found some sachets of instant coffee in his pocket, along with an unopened bottle of mineral water. We were three thousand years before the use-by date of either of them. The resulting brew tasted so bad that I added a slug of brandy from my hip-flask. It still tasted awful, but at least I could drink it.
The fire is burning low now, and the Doctor and Holmes are both staring into its depths for answers. As for me, the coffee is wearing off, and I'm gradually falling asleep.
A continuation of the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.
I made the mistake of using a bush for shelter as I approached the cluster of canvas tents. It made a lunge for me and I quickly backed off, hoping that its disappointed hiss wouldn't echo through the night air. Fortunately the wind was blowing toward me from the camp, carrying with it the smell of cheap tobacco and roasting meat but hiding any noises that I might make.
It had been hours since last I ate, and I had vomited most of that up in the corridors of the Nizam's palace, so the smell of food forced sharp little pangs through my stomach. I quelled them and moved closer.
The camp was set out sloppily: the guards were congregating around a camp-fire rather than patrolling the perimeter and the arrangement of the tents would make it easy for any attackers to duck and dive, and hard for any defenders to marshall their forces. I was surprised at Warburton, but perhaps he could be forgiven. After all, he was organizing the invasion of a planet. He had enough on his plate already. No doubt he had delegated to some old sweat who was more concerned with comfort than carrying out a commission.
Oddly enough, I could see no sign of the fakirs whose chanting had opened the gateway to this world. Perhaps they had set their camp elsewhere.
I glanced up to where the dark shape of the mountains loomed against the icy sky. Somewhere up there, the Ry'lehans