Doctor Who_ Battlefield - Marc Platt [33]
There was plenty of storm damage around Carbury and the single road through the village was deserted. He scoured the landscape below for something familiar, preferably an abandoned police box. There was nothing.
Despite seeing one roadblock set up on the village perimeter, the Brigadier was unsure that the exclusion zone was working. He was not even certain that he would recognize the Doctor when he did run into him.
He saw a glint of metal coming from the direction of the Norman church and half glimpsed a row of soldiers formed up through the trees.
‘Take her round again. Lavel.’ he said. Something niggled at the back of his mind. ‘Are you armed, Lieutenant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Check it’s loaded in case we go in.’
The helicopter started its turn back towards the church.
Morgaine stood beside her son in a strange world. Her personal entourage of men-at-arms was arrayed in readiness beside her. They watched the pale sky beyond the stone tower.
‘What did you see?’ she said to Mordred.
‘A flying machine. Like an ornithopter but with whirling blades for wings.’
Avallion had been neglected for too long. It had ceased to be the haven that the ancient books of lore described.
Morgaine had watched for an age, but she had not turned her eyes this way. Perhaps Avallion was no longer the dwelling place for peasants.
‘The people of this world are obsessed with machinery,’
she said.
‘So it would seem,’ said her son.
‘And thus by default, they can have no love of the living.
Nor bear honour for their fellows.’
The roar of the flying machine was growing louder again. It swooped in on them from behind the trees.
Morgaine gathered her power within her. ‘Well then, let us teach them the limitations of their technologies.’
She flung out her arm and a bolt of electric blue light shot from her fingers.
A small explosion flamed from the rear of the flying machine’s undercarriage.
Warning klaxons blared in the cockpit. The helicopter lurched to one side.
‘Malfunction!’ yelled Lavel. ‘Port engine! Felt like we hit something! Strap in. This could be rough!’
Lethbridge-Stewart clung to his seat. The helicopter started to spiral, leaving a coil of black smoke in its wake.
‘Can we get down?’ he said.
Red hazard lights flickered across the panel. Lavel clung to the controls and tried to right the portward list. ‘Down is not the problem,’ she snapped.
Mordred and Morgaine watched the flying machine sink like a wounded bird until it vanished beyond the woodland. They heard the crash of wood against metal and glass. Smoke still rose in a drifting column.
She turned away and stared down at the cold damp earth. Her power was weaker here. In the world at home, she would have blasted the machine out of the sky.
Arthur had chosen their final meeting place well. He had lured her here, knowing full well of this flaw in her power. Or were these the tricks of that jealous fool Merlin, who held the High King’s ear in every matter from battle strategy to the choicest table wine?
No matter. Arthur had fled in the face of defeat. It had taken him twelve hundred years to summon courage to return and face her. She had scoured the Thirteen Planets for clues to his whereabouts. He may have been engaged in some protracted war, or beleagured in some eternal siege: she dismissed out of hand the rumour that he was bound in sleep, waiting to rise again like some hero of legend.
More likely, he had been sulking somewhere, his mind turning sourer and sicker as he nurtured some malignant plot against her. The mind of an immortal was always hungry for fresh stimulation. Allowed to linger with its own dark thoughts, it soon shrivelled to single coursed obsessions and madness. After so long, whatever scheme he hatched, she would still meet and confound