Doctor Who_ Bunker Soldiers - Martin Day [5]
We were invited to stay at the governor’s residence, as honoured guests of Dmitri. In the morning, he would have a proposal to put us. It was clear that the authorities didn’t expect their invitation to be turned down.
I slept badly, my head resting uncomfortably on a pillow stuffed with chopped straw.
Soon after we awoke we were indeed summoned into the presence of Governor Dmitri. He politely asked for the Doctor’s help; the Doctor refused. And now, some six hours later, the governor was asking again.
‘I cannot force you to help us,’ Dmitri observed, eyeing the Doctor closely.
‘Indeed, sir. And I am grateful that you have not tried.’
‘But I can beg.’
‘What makes you think that we are in any position to assist you?’
‘Your... craft... It appeared in an instant. Whether you are a conjuror or a magician or an angel of the Lord, it matters little.
You clearly have powers that our attackers do not.’
‘Your attackers are men, just like you.’
‘They are devils! They sweep aside entire cities like the straw toys of children. All the knights of Christendom will be powerless to stop them.’
‘I have considerations that I cannot even begin to explain to you,’ said the Doctor. ‘I am sorry, but I cannot help.’
Dmitri walked over to the window, flanked by his advisers –
Yevhen, a broad man with reddish hair and soulless eyes to whom I took an instant dislike, and Isaac, who still bore the apologetic look of a man whose generosity has been abused. He avoided eye contact with us as much as possible. Nahum, on the other hand, who was with his father, was completely engrossed in events. I suspected that he was being groomed to follow in Isaac’s footsteps.
‘Look upon our city,’ said Dmitri, casting a slender hand over the vista. ‘Look at its people, the children that play in the streets. Do you consign them to death?’
The Doctor stood at Dmitri’s side. Suddenly he seemed very alien to me.
Yevhen seemed to indicate that Dmitri should cease this pointless discussion, but the governor was having none of it. He pointed instead to a building dominated by a large white structure surrounded by twelve smaller towers. ‘The Cathedral of St Sophia, the very symbol of who we are as people. It will almost certainly be destroyed by the coming horde. Everything you see will be reduced to rubble.’ His eyes blazed with indignation.
The Doctor turned away. ‘I can do nothing to help you. You can imprison us, you can threaten us with death, if you wish to descend to that level. But I cannot interfere.’
‘Interfere.’ I turned that word over in my mind all day. Such a mild-sounding collection of letters, yet from the Doctor’s lips it was like a death warrant.
I later found the Doctor sitting in the small garden at the back of the governor’s house. Two soldiers were watching over him, though they seemed more concerned with the serving girls who were picking herbs than with the possible escape of their charge.
I sat next to the Doctor on a stone bench, but I didn’t know what to say. Instead, for a moment, I listened to the clatter of carts in the street outside, to the bawdy chuckles of the guards.
Somewhere nearby a baby was crying. Everyday sounds, but each one was a torture to me.
‘My boy, you seem troubled,’ observed the Doctor.
‘Can you blame me?’ I asked.
The Doctor sighed. ‘No.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘How can you consign these people to their fate?’
The Doctor looked around before replying. ‘Fate? What do you know of the fate of these people?’
‘Not much. Only what I’ve heard –’
‘We are in a city soon to be under siege,’ interrupted the Doctor brusquely. ‘A terrifying – you could almost say “alien” –
army is sweeping across the landscape towards us. A storm from the east. The army is decimating towns and cities and subjugating everyone and everything in its path. The invaders are known for their astute tactics and advanced weaponry. I’m afraid that they are absolutely unstoppable.’
‘But that’s no reason not to try.’
‘You’re forgetting. This is no warped version of the history