Doctor Who_ The Room With No Doors - Kate Orman [29]
The sword sliced into Kame’s shoulder
He opened his eyes. The Doctor’s face was old and sad, watching the thin trail of smoke rising from the firepit. He closed his eyes again.
The sword sliced into Kame’s shoulder. The sword held by the samurai in black armour. Captain Hadankyou. Calm face, dark eyes full of hotly denied terror, purple banner behind him, his horse stamping and snorting while the other samurai watched.
All with purple banners, with some kind of geometric pattern on them.
Maybe a stylized flower.
The samurai who had captured them yesterday had worn orange-gold banners with a butterfly design repeated three times. So these purple-banner samurai worked for a different daimyo. An enemy lord, or an ally?
And what were the demons they had been running from? Tengu, those little forest goblins? Pretas, the hungry ghosts? Oni? Foreigners? Aliens? Mutant scum-suckers? Whatever they were, they were enough to scare off a dozen samurai. . .
Hey, that meant the purple samurai probably didn’t know about the kami up in the shrine. They’d just come here to get away from the demons.
If the two daimyo were enemies, that meant they’d both want the thing.
Whatever it was. If the purple samurai found out about it and reported back, 60
Hekison village could find itself in the middle of a battlefield. Hell, if the three butterfly samurai brought back reinforcements, and found the village full of purple troopers. . .
‘We can’t let them see the pod,’ Chris said.
The Doctor glanced up. ‘For the moment, they’re more worried about these
“demons”. . . ’
‘Only the demons aren’t too interested in them. Why haven’t they shown up yet?’
‘Whatever they are, hopefully they won’t show up at all.’
‘I hope they do show up,’ said Chris. ‘After. . . the trouble they’ve caused.’
‘Things are complicated enough as they are,’ grumbled the Doctor.
The sword sliced into Kame’s shoulder
‘He just ran at them,’ said Chris, bewildered.
‘Like a good samurai.’
‘Yeah, but a lousy strategist.’
‘According to Nakano Jin’emon, learning military strategy is useless. Don’t stop to deliberate: just close your eyes and run at the enemy.’
‘That is so dumb,’ said Chris. ‘Just stupid.’
‘You’re angry with Kame for dying.’
‘Yeah, I guess I am. I was just getting to like him.’ Chris shook his head.
‘Stupid.’
‘But well in accord with bushido. Ideally, the way of the warrior creates elite fighters, deeply spiritual soldiers free from the fear of death.’
‘And lots and lots of corpses.’
‘Yes. Unfortunately,’ said the Doctor, ‘so does meticulous planning.’
‘Why does bad stuff keep happening?’ asked Chris. His voice suddenly sounded like a kid’s voice. ‘I mean. . . ’ The Doctor waited. ‘I don’t know if I can keep doing this.’
‘You froze up,’ insisted the Doctor. ‘You just had a bad moment. It happens.’
Chris picked at a splinter on the floor. ‘Something I want to ask you.’
‘You can ask.’
‘Where do we go when we die?’
The Doctor looked at him in astonishment. ‘What makes you think I know?’
‘I just thought that, if anybody knew, you probably would. After six times.
And that was why you weren’t scared of dying.’
‘It appears, Squire Cwej, that you have a number of mistaken beliefs about me.’ The Doctor produced a pencil from his sleeve, glanced at the tip, and rummaged for a pencil sharpener. ‘I met a species once who knew. . . ’
‘Really?’
‘Well, everyone claims to know.’ The Doctor was creating a single, coiling pencil shaving. ‘But I think the Ikkaba really did. They weren’t telling, though.
61
They just walked into the fire. You remember the Turtle, you know what it’s like.’
‘The samurai want to die?’
‘The idea is not to give death a second thought – neither want it nor not want it. And if I haven’t made this clear enough yet, regeneration isn’t death.
Not total death. Not the genuine article.’ He flicked the shaving loose, and it vanished in the flames.
‘But if you get a different personality, isn’t that like dying? Where do you