Doctor Who_ Bunker Soldiers - Martin Day [75]
‘Lesia,’ said Nahum again. ‘We’ve been so worried about you.’
Lesia turned to look at us, and Nahum screamed.
Her face was a bleached-white skull.
XVIII
Via lata gradior
The Doctor stood beside Mongke at the head of the great army, and looked down on the city. The walls and fortifications looked pitifully weak. People scurried in the streets and clambered over walls and buildings as if they were ants tending their nest.
The Doctor wondered if any of the black specks he could see were Steven or Dodo. He did not like leaving them at the mercy of men such as Yevhen, but his life was a series of such heart-rending decisions. Every word, every action, every desire to keep his companions safe was balanced against the unimaginable consequence of failure, and the safety of millions.
Mongke turned to him, his handsome face glowing in the crisp morning air. ‘It helps to see things from here, does it not?’
he queried. ‘The whole picture of what might happen can play out before my mind’s eye.’
The Doctor nodded stiffly. ‘And mine also.’
Mongke glanced at him. ‘You have people you care about?
Down there, in the city?’
‘Yes.’ The Doctor sighed. ‘That is the problem with the bigger picture. You cannot rid yourself of the smaller details...
the people you care about.’
‘We live in violent times,’ said Mongke.
‘I hope you are not trying to justify your butchery to me!’
The Doctor’s voice rose sharply, strength of conviction belying his ancient frame.
‘You are too concerned with the heavens to accept what I say,’ said Mongke. ‘I am telling you of the world that surrounds us. I wish, sometimes, it were different. But it is not.’ He pointed towards the city. ‘If things were reversed... If the Russians were invading our fair land... Would they show us any mercy?’ He paused, waiting for his point to strike home. ‘Would they?’
The Doctor said nothing. He knew mere words could not change the heart of a man. People altered, he supposed, because of bitter experiences and liberating events, not intellectual argument or the power of rhetoric. But the stories... Perhaps there was something he could say, some rambling tale that Mongke would think of as truth filtered by dementia...
No, it would not work. It was not a question of changing Mongke’s heart, but the heart of an entire nation – an entire world. When civilisations arise, the Doctor reminded himself, it happens over decades, not moments.
In any event, his role here was to prevent disruption, not exacerbate it. If you’re in a hole, he remembered Dodo once saying, the first thing to do is stop digging.
‘Cousin Batu will join us shortly. Together we will oversee the destruction of Kiev.’
‘Destruction?’ asked the Doctor, aghast. ‘Must it come to that?’
‘What is dead is no longer your enemy.’
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but became aware of a rush of activity behind them. He turned, and saw a small knot of Mongol soldiers pushing their way towards Mongke.
They dragged a silver-bearded man between them, a slender form beneath heaped robes. ‘A spy!’ exclaimed one of the soldiers, bowing low before Mongke. ‘He was wandering in the forests. He says he is looking for the Tartars!’ Despite his leader’s presence, the soldier could barely conceal a belly laugh.
Mongke smiled in grim amusement. ‘Tartars, eh?’
The Doctor looked closely at the robed figure. He did not recognise him, but the quality of his robes and his clear complexion spoke of a certain status.
The robed man was thrown at Mongke’s feet, and the Mongol leader stared down at him. ‘A cleric? From Kiev?’
The man looked up, his hands held together in an abject form of supplication. ‘Archbishop Vasil, my lord.’
Despite the prisoner’s status compared to that of the Mongol warlord, the Doctor heard the deferential words stick slightly in the bishop’s throat. He did not seem comfortable addressing anyone as ‘lord’.
‘Bishop Vasil, eh?’ murmured the Doctor. ‘We were not introduced before I left the city.’
Vasil looked at the Doctor, his eyes narrowing. ‘The traveller?’
‘I am with the Mongol army to plead