Doctor Who_ Bunker Soldiers - Martin Day [65]
The Doctor could scarcely believe what he was hearing.
‘Nine million?’
Ling nodded. Only a few scant decades separated him from the slaughter he was describing and it was clear that, in his own mind, an eternity would not lessen the pain. ‘We have given the khans much,’ he said. ‘Not least our bodies and souls... but also our skills, our knowledge. You have noticed, perhaps, that all Mongol soldiers wear an undershirt of silk?’
‘I can’t say I have, but please, carry on.’
‘Long ago in our history we realised that when a man is struck by an arrow, clumsy removal of the head can only make the wound bigger and more prone to infection.’
‘And the silk shirt?’
‘Even the fine arrowheads of the Mongols are unlikely to pierce silk,’ explained Ling. ‘Instead, the material will be pulled into the wound. From there, it can be tugged out, bringing the arrowhead with it.’
‘Ingenious!’ said the Doctor. ‘Quite ingenious!’
‘I have performed the procedure many times,’ continued Ling. ‘Even better, the soldier in the field can remove the arrow himself. I have seen men return to the heat of battle mere seconds after being struck.’ He paused, then let out a high-pitched giggle. ‘Of course, they often die of blood loss within the hour...’
‘You have a strong sense of the absurd, sir,’ said the Doctor.
Ling smiled. ‘I am a physician, surrounded on all sides by the instruments of war and torture,’ he said. ‘I cannot help but laugh in bitter sadness every morning I awake.’
‘And, of course, the Chinese have given the world gunpowder,’ said the Doctor.
‘Yes,’ said Ling, ‘and the Mongols delight in finding ever more destructive uses for it. They have rockets to startle enemy cavalry, clay grenades for close combat. .’
The Doctor stopped in his tracks. He thought of the alien creature in Kiev, and the TARDIS in the governor’s residence, and could barely suppress a shudder.
‘I feel weary now,’ he announced. ‘Perhaps, if there is time, I will inspect the siege engines tomorrow. Forgive me for my change of heart.’
Abd N-Nun Ayyub smiled indulgently. ‘Then let us return to the warmth of the fire,’ he said.
As they turned back a shrill noise came across the basin of the valley. At first the Doctor thought it was the cry of a wolf, but it was too piercing, too close at hand. Then he realised what it was, and his legs felt weaker than ever.
Abd N-Nun Ayyub extended a steadying arm.
‘Are you well, sir?’ he queried, but the Doctor was not listening. Instead, his ears were attentive to every awful nuance of the sound, the great rending cries of a man being tortured.
‘Mykola,’ he whispered.
XV
In flagrante delicto
The room was an inferno, a shrieking vortex of flame and collapsing, twisted wood. I could see the panic in the soldier’s eyes – and the tongues of fire, reflected back at me – but concentrated instead on bringing Isaac through the doorway into the main room, and then into the corridor.
For all the old man’s frailty, it took both me and the soldier, pulling with all our might, to haul him on to my shoulders. Just as I was tensing to receive the weight of the unconscious man, a burning chunk of masonry tumbled down towards us from the ceiling. I saw it just in time and dodged it, but almost fell over in the process.
The soldier helped to steady me, and then led me through the smoke and the devastation. In these conditions it was very much the blind leading the blind, and we both stumbled into stools and unrecognisable items of furniture that now blazed like braziers.
We staggered into the corridor, the soldier now taking even more of the old man’s weight, just as something substantial gave way within the chamber. There was a rending crash as tortured woodwork finally resigned itself to the inferno and a rush of hot, sparking air nearly knocked us over. Somehow we remained on our feet, which was just as well – in front of us the floor had collapsed completely, leaving only a gaping maw that led straight down into the lower corridor.
We looked around wildly,