Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [54]
They almost ran off the edge when the steps levelled out and curled round, Eleana stumbling as the ground crumbled under her boot. Anji yanked her wrist, hauling her back and they gasped with relief to realise they were on a smooth path. Anji’s side was screaming in pain, yelling for her to stop but something was pushing her onwards, groaning. Eleana hissed a triumphant ‘Si’ and pulled Anji on.
‘This way! The gates are this way.’
More steps to stumble down, curving wide and shallow, and suddenly they were out of the woods. They half-ran, half-staggered into a wide, gravelled space, scuffing up dirt under foot. Just as Anji fell to her knees, her muscles refusing to continue, the new moon was freed of cloud and the whole parc was bathed in faint silver. Glancing about, gasping for breath, she took in the bareness of the arena and the cold light glinting off the fractured edges of the balustrade that snaked around them. No gates. They weren’t out yet. She forced herself back up, feeling her hamstrings shaking but still just under her control. Eleana was staring back the way they had come and Anji risked a glance.
There was a balcony cut into the hillside they had just run down, a colonnade beneath it. The remains of climbing plants, frozen by the winter, were picked out like silver thread against the rough rock. It looked more like it had grown than been created by man.
In the colonnade, something flickered and the sound of rifles being cocked echoed across the silent parc. Eleana was staring, frozen. When the cold ceramic banged into her calves, Anji realised she had backed towards the balustrade without letting her eyes waver from the creature in the colonnade. In the moonlight, she could see the snaking ridge was unbroken: the only way down was close by the gaping maw of the hillside. Despite her desire to run, to avoid the creature, Anji forced herself to move back to Eleana’s side. Each step ached, her mind and body screaming that she was going the wrong way.
‘Eleana?’
Even through the layers of thick cloth, Anji could feel that Eleana’s arm muscles were hard, frozen. So tense that it must hurt.
‘We have to go on,’ Anji tried. No response. She couldn’t leave her here. Then she realised what the awkward shape on the Catalonian’s shoulder was, the irritating rod that had tangled and bumped as they had run. Eleana’s rifle. Anji took it from her unresisting shoulder, glancing up frequently at the thing in the colonnade. The glimpses suggested something almost like a man, joints like right angles, dressed in a royal blue turned black in the darkness. It was marching back and forth within the shadows, leaving afterimages of itself. As if there were twenty, all slightly out of synch.
Anji struggled with the rifle. She’d been shown how to fire one by some of the militia. But they didn’t put you in the numb dark, fumbling with a worn mechanism and not being sure the bullets were loaded right. Was that right? Did she turn that over like that? It seemed right but what if she’d got it wrong? From the multiplying creatures came the sound of twenty guns being smoothly cocked. Oh Gods, she didn’t think this was right!
‘Eleana, will you help me out here?’ Yelling now but nothing.
There was a whisper in the shadows. It could have been a command to aim. Shaking, Anji raised the rifle up to her shoulder. She didn’t bother to take aim, just closed her eyes and tugged on the trigger.
The crack of the shot jolted Eleana back into movement. Anji staggered back from the recoil, then was moving towards the break in the balustrade, not even registering where her shot had gone. Eleana grabbed the warm weapon from