Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [51]
He remembered the stories of the Krallik’s bravery in the past, how he’d fought elusive jungle battles with his persecutors, the Indoni army; how he’d planned and executed decisive tactical strikes against the heart of the enemy with the help of his loyal band of OPG warriors – and Wayun reminded himself that that included him too
He remembered the tales of the Krallik’s brutality and cruelty, the seemingly irrational slaughter, the whispers others had spread about the rebel leader always sitting up here alone in the dark, communing with his madness.
He remembered all this and fear held him rooted, like he was a plant growing from the floor of the antechamber.
They were fighting a war with the Indoni, and just about anything was acceptable in war.
Except madness.
Except evil.
He could do it.
He stepped towards the curtain.
Through the archway, the darkness at first complete then giving way to a faint glimmer, beckoning to her from down a long stone corridor, windowless, obviously to accentuate the despair anyone passing down here must feel. Why? A prison.
Of course.
The glow was coming from around a bend to the left at the end of the corridor. She knew she shouldn’t be doing this. Her feet were quiet on stone, but her heart was so loud. The smell was stronger. She could feel it entering her lungs, circulating around her body. She clutched her handkerchief to her nose, but still had to breathe.
Around the corner, and the glow was emanating from a weak lamp set on the floor of a prison cell. She could see through the bars in the steel door. A grotesque-looking man was doing something to a prisoner hanging against the far wall of the cell. Grotesque? No, that didn’t cover it: the man might have been Indoni, but he didn’t look like any soldier or civilian Victoria had seen yet; and he was certainly not Papul.
He was dark-skinned, yes, but taller and lither of frame than the average Indoni. He was dressed in dirty overalls, and wore big, clumpy, metallic boots that made Victoria think of the Frankenstein monster. His head was shaved but for a bedraggled crest of dyed red hair down the centre; one eye was gone, replaced by a metallic probe; his left hand gone too, a glinting, beak-vicious instrument forming a sinister substitute.
Victoria could only see his profile, but that presented her with enough of a view of evil, withered features, the face hollowed by depravity or by prolonged proximity to too much suffering; probably caused by himself, judging by what he was doing to the prisoner. The prisoner was undeniably Papul, and completely naked, shackled so that his feet hung just above the ground. He was groaning quietly now, barely conscious.
Blood formed a sheen on his dark body. His torturer was poking at the Papul’s right eye with the pointed instrument, fishing around in the socket as if trying to eject a recalcitrant pearl from an oyster. Victoria looked for just a moment too long.
She fell back against the wall, sickened.
‘The Krallik... the Krallik will kill you all...’
Victoria realized the mutilated man was still conscious.
His croaked defiance was ignored by the torturer, who continued his grisly work.
He didn’t speak again
Victoria began to slide along the wall back the way she had come, barely registering as she did so that there were other cells that she had missed in the dark, and that faint pleas were issuing from more than one of them.
Shock propelled her around the angle in the corridor and then she was running, heading for the light, for fresh air.
There was the archway, framed by strong daylight – she was pelting madly for it – and there standing waiting for her, his arms stretched out to catch her – Agus.
And he was smiling.
She struggled in his grip, pummelling him frantically but the smile remained, like a fixed thing, a photograph of a smile that would never fade.
‘You think we are monsters now, I suppose?’ he said calmly, holding her still