by Dan Abnett
The Ice Warrior hesitated, confused. It tried its weapon again, and this time it didn’t make a sound at all. The Doctor kept his bleating screwdriver aimed at the giants. The Ice Warrior hissed a curt order, and the others of its kind took aim. They all fired.
None of the weapon tubes made a noise.
‘Time to run!’ the Doctor cried. ‘Run away! Very fast!’
The others got up, hesitantly.
‘Come on!’ the Doctor yelled, still brandishing the warbling screwdriver at the Ice Warriors. ‘The screwdriver’s generating sound waves with the opposite polarity to the output of their weapons, cancelling the noise – oh, just run, please! It won’t work much longer!’
They all started to run.
‘The other way, Samewell!’ Amy ordered.
Samewell turned and started to run with them instead of towards the Ice Warriors. Shock had rather robbed him of his wits. Arabel gathered up her long skirts to run more easily. The four of them dashed through the snow between the looming trees, the Doctor bringing up the rear, directing the output of his screwdriver behind him.
The Ice Warriors immediately started to pursue them, striding out across the snow.
‘We’re leaving them behind!’ Amy yelled, looking back.
‘Yes,’ agreed the Doctor, ‘but they won’t get tired!’
His screwdriver suddenly went quiet and the claspers retracted and shut. The Doctor shook it and tapped it against his palm as he ran.
‘That’s all we’ll be getting out of it for a while!’ he shouted. ‘Keep running, and don’t let them get a clear shot!’
Behind them, they heard a tube weapon pulse. A slender tree a few metres to Amy’s left exploded mid-trunk and the top half sheared away. Amy squealed, ducked, and then leapt over the fallen section as it collapsed in her path.
‘Down here! This way!’ the Doctor urged. Two or three more unpleasant pulses thumped out behind them. Another tree fractured. The top of a snowdrift behind Samewell went up like an explosion in an cotton wool factory.
Ahead of them, the trees were thinning out. They had reached the edge of Would Be and the start of the open grazing land beyond, the region Samewell had called Moreland.
No trees meant no cover. If they carried on, they would be sitting ducks.
‘I went out this morning to put flowers on my dad’s grave,’ Vesta Flurrish told Rory quietly. They had turned the solamp up slightly. Apart from her voice, the only sounds were the cycle of the turbines underneath them, and the tick of ice-heavy flakes hitting the roof and wall of the shed. It was snowing hard outside.
‘I meant to be back before Guide’s Bell, of course,’ said Vesta. ‘But it is a long way up to the memory yard in this weather. The yard is in Would Be. Do you know it?’
‘I’m not from around here,’ said Rory.
She nodded. ‘Well, I was there, and I was just leaving, and then I saw the star move.’
‘A star?’
‘Yes.’
‘Moving?’
‘Yes. A moving star. It went by in the sky. Beautiful, it was. Like a sign.’ Her face fell as she thought about it. ‘Like an omen. That’s what they say. Bel saw it.’
‘Bel?’
‘My sister, Arabel. Other Morphans have seen it too. All this winter long. A star of ill omen, moving as it pleases. They say it presages the bad things that have been happening. The cold. The killing.’
‘The killing?’ asked Rory.
‘Of livestock. Have you seen the moving stars from your plantnation?’
‘No.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I followed it for a while to see what it would do. I followed it further into Would Be, and that’s when I came upon the tracks in the snow. The giant tracks. They scared me a lot. I didn’t know what to make of them. I prayed that Guide might protect me, and I ran. And then…’
‘Then?’ Rory asked.
‘I sort of ran straight into it there in the wood.’
‘It?’
‘That’s right.’
‘With the red eyes?’
‘As Guide is my witness,’ said Vesta.
‘It’s certainly a scary thing to meet,’ Rory agreed.
‘I was sore afraid,’ Vesta nodded. ‘It snatched at me, but I ran. I ran and ran and ran.’
‘Did it shoot at you?’ asked Rory.
‘Shoot?’
‘With a gun?’
‘No. I didn’t know it had a gun. We do not have guns in the plantnation. They are things that fire pellets, aren’t they?’
‘Sort of,’ Rory replied. ‘It shot at me.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Actually, the funny thing is, it didn’t. I met these men who must’ve been looking for you, and because they didn’t know me, like you didn’t, they thought I was pretty suss.’
‘They thought you were what?’
‘Dodgy… um… they wanted to know who I was and what I was doing. Then it came along, and there was a terrible fight. It shot at some of the men. It had this horrible… sound gun. It was like it was firing sound. I can’t explain it better. I think it hurt some of them. I think it might have killed some of them.’
‘Oh save us all!’ said Vesta. ‘It killed people from Beside?’
‘I think it might have done. I’m sorry.’
‘Who were they?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Rory said, a little helplessly. ‘I didn’t know their names. We’d only just met. In the confusion, everybody scattered. I ran. Like you, I just ran. And it could have shot me too, but it didn’t. It just chased me.’
‘Like it wanted… to catch you?’
Rory nodded. His throbbing head reminded him what a bad idea that was, and he winced. ‘That had occurred to me,’ he said. ‘It’s not a nice thought. I have been wondering why. Anyway, I ran.’
‘And that’s how you ended up at the autumn mills?’
‘Where?’
She laughed. ‘Here! The autumn mills!’
‘OK. I didn’t know what they were called.’
Vesta’s long skirts were torn and dirty. She idly smoothed them out over her knees.
‘I came here because it was the closest place I could think of to hide in,’ she said. ‘I ran a long way just to get away from it. By the time I even thought about which way I was going, I realised I’d gone off opposite to where Beside was. I was a Cat A fool for doing that. I got my bearings and figured that the autumn mills would be the best bet for a roof and shelter and warmth.’
‘Why is the water warm?’ Rory asked. ‘Even under the ice, there’s heat in it. I know because I fell through the ice.’
‘No wonder you look like a compost heap,’ said Vesta. She shrugged. ‘The water’s warm because it flows into the streams from the Firmer. These streams, it would be Firmer Number Two, actually. It’s a thermal exchange system. Guide teaches us that water is used in the Firmers for cooling, and then sent out, and the mills harvest the heat to store in the plantnation’s conservator reservoir. Light and wind and water, we borrow power from all. The mills take power autumnatically from the streams.’
‘How… how do they do it?’ asked Rory.
‘Autumnatically.’
‘Automatically?’
‘Say it proper! Autumnatically! Didn’t you get schooled where you were raised?’
‘A little.’
She peered at him, as if trying to read things in his face. Just having someone to talk to seemed to have perked her up, and reduced the trauma of what had clearly been an unpleasant day. Rory had seen that process work many times. A little chat, a chance to say things out loud.
‘What labour do you do, Rory?’ she asked. ‘Let me guess. Are you a shepherd?’
‘No.’
‘Then a plantsman. That’s it! A plantsman.’
‘No, actually I’m a nurse.’
Vesta gazed at him, bewildered. ‘A nurse? You’re a nurse?’
‘Yes.’
She leapt up, brushing her clothes down, her head bowed. ‘O
h my Guide! I am so ashamed! So ashamed of my comportment!’
‘Whoa, what?’ asked Rory, getting up.
‘You are an elect, an elect, and I show you no courtesy or respect! Oh goodness, and to think I struck you on the head too!’
‘Calm down. Please, calm down. It’s all right.’
She looked at him uneasily. ‘I didn’t know. Honest, and may Guide strike me down. I had no idea. You look too young, and you do not have a beard either.’
‘I can understand how you made the mistake,’ said Rory.
‘Were you coming to visit us at Beside?’
‘Yes,’ said Rory.
‘For the festival?’
‘The festival…?’ he asked.
‘The winter festival.’
‘Yes,’ said Rory firmly, nodding. ‘That’s why we’d come. To celebrate.’
‘You weren’t on your own then?’
‘What?’
‘You said “we”,’ said Vesta.
‘I did, didn’t I?’
‘Obviously someone as important as the Nurse Elect of a plantnation wouldn’t travel alone. That would make no sense.’
‘It wouldn’t, would it?’ asked Rory.
‘So where is the rest of your party?’
‘It was just a small group. Three of us… travelling from, um, afar,’ said Rory. ‘The Doctor and… another person. We got lost and separated.’
‘How terrible, Elect,’ she said. ‘I hope they are all right.’
‘So do I,’ Rory agreed.
‘We used to have wellwishers every year for the festival, but not since the winters turned white. The Morphans of Beside will be overjoyed that you have made this effort for the festival. We should go. We should go at once.’
‘To Beside? Now?’
‘Yes,’ said Vesta. She was very earnest. ‘This mill is quite secure, I suppose, but I do not wish to spend the night here, not with it out there. It is late, and it is cold, but if we go together and walk with purpose, we might make it in an hour.’
‘OK,’ said Rory. ‘What about my friends?’
‘We must hope Guide watches out for them,’ said Vesta.
The Ice Warriors moved surprisingly fast for such big creatures. They weren’t running, but their stride rate had increased. They pursued the Doctor and his companions out of the tree-line and onto the soft snow dunes of the open grazing. Their gait was powerful and sure-footed even on the softest snow, as though they were evolved to excel in such conditions. It felt as if they could stride for ever, and knock down anything that got in their way, and no matter how fast you fled, eventually they’d catch up with you when you collapsed of exhaustion.
‘This way!’ Samewell shouted, running ahead into the open ground. Lazy snowflakes billowed around him, spilling from a sky as dark as wet granite. ‘Come on!’
‘No! No! No!’ the Doctor yelled. He was still fiddling with his sonic screwdriver as he ran. ‘Not that way! Keep to the trees!’
Samewell was not going to be deterred, and Arabel was following him closely. Either he knew what he was doing, or he’d entirely taken leave of his senses, especially the one relating to direction. Given that surprise had almost sent Samewell running towards the Ice Warriors when they first appeared, the Doctor was not filled with confidence.
The sonic screwdriver started chirruping again. He aimed it at the Ice Warriors, neutralising the lethal blasts of their sonic weapons, and bounded on after the others.
Samewell had led them towards some kind of gully. He did know what he was doing after all.
There were some steep ditches and sunken stream beds in the slopes between the wood and the gently rising Moreland. Snow-cover had softened them into narrow channels and defiles, blended invisibly into the whiteness. Amy and the Doctor found themselves slithering down a deep bank behind Arabel and Samewell, and then slogging along a winding channel out of view of the edge of the wood. There were a few lonely trees and coarse bushes, coated in snow, and large snow-dusted boulders jutted out of the frozen stream bed.
Arabel slipped and half-fell, but Amy grabbed her and pulled her up again. They kept running.
The Doctor’s screwdriver didn’t. It puttered out again. They could hear the Ice Warriors descending the bank behind them, but they couldn’t see them.
Samewell led the fugitives along another channel, and then through a gentle basin where a lip of rock crowned with a gnarled tree overhung. Hard snow, driven by the wind across Moreland, blew down into their faces like sleet.
Samewell gestured urgently for them to keep following him. He scrambled up another bank, cascading powder snow in all directions, and led them back onto a raised stretch of the grazing.
There was a hut ahead of them. It was quite small, round, with a conical roof. Snow had drifted against its northward face. It was the shelter Samewell had told them about. It was the vent.
The Doctor felt an acute rush of pity. Samewell had been trying so hard. His solution to them being lost out in the snow was to lead them to the vent. His solution to them being chased by murderous Ice Warriors was the same plan, unmodified. A vent provided shelter and safety for a herder. That was the way Samewell’s mind worked.
As they got closer, the Doctor rapidly revised his opinion. The vent was made of metal. The entire structure was composed out of shipskin. If they could bar the door, it might indeed protect against Ice Warriors.
‘Get inside!’ he shouted.
The four of them blundered into the vent. It was dark and cold inside, and smelled of straw, but it was surprisingly dry. Samewell swung the metal door shut behind them and dropped the bolt.
They looked at one another in the gloom. It was so dark, they could discern only the faintest shapes. All of them were panting and out of breath.
‘Wait now,’ said Samewell.
He fumbled along the wall of the vent behind the door and found a rack containing small solamps. He turned one of the lamps on. The inside of the vent was a circular chamber about six metres in diameter. There were shelves with pots and pans, a small stove, two battered sleeping cots and a chair. The floor looked like it was impacted earth covered in dried rushes or straw. It was almost cosy.
The sense of cosiness vanished the moment they heard the first mighty pincer-fist smash against the vent door. The blows came one after another, brutally hard against the metal, vibrating the door and the wall beside it. The Ice Warriors were determined to smash their way in.
‘The metal will keep them out for a bit,’ said Amy.
‘Shipskin is strong,’ said Bel.
‘So are Ice Warriors,’ replied the Doctor. He had taken the lamp off Samewell and was looking around, searching desperately for some kind of inspiration, some cue that might prompt invention or improvisation, anything to get them out of a small, exit-less structure that was, at best, a temporary refuge and, at worst, a hut-shaped death-trap.
‘Houdini built a career out of this,’ he said encouragingly as his mind raced.
‘Of being trapped in a smelly shed under attack from Ice Men?’ asked Amy.
‘Of escaping from tight places from which there was no obvious mode of egress,’ replied the Doctor. He took a cup off a shelf, looking inside it, and then gave up on that line of thought. ‘And it’s Ice Warriors.’
Amy glanced at the door, which was quivering with every dull blow from outside.
‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘Is that going to matter, in the long run? Ice Men? Ice Warriors? Ice Homicidal Freaks, who are still going to do us in whatever we call them?’
‘True,’ said the Doctor. He flipped the chair over to check its underside. ‘Funny thing,’ he said, ‘no one ever gets their name right. Not even them. I mean, as I remember it, it was a friend of mine called Victoria that first called them Ice Warriors. Then they started to refer to themselves as Ice Warriors. It’s confusing. If the cap fits, I suppose.’
‘You’ve met them before?’ asked Amy.
‘Several times. Not for a long while, a
ctually. Anyway, nice to see they’re still entirely Ice-ish and Warrior-esque.’
‘Are they enemies of yours?’ asked Arabel.
‘No,’ said the Doctor, getting down to look under the cots. The hammering at the hatch had grown more intense. ‘Yes. Sometimes.’ He shrugged. ‘They are an ancient and proud culture. One of the great pan-world civilisations in this part of the galaxy. Much to be admired about them. Great code of honour. Of fairness. Then again, they are pragmatic and resolute. They fight for survival and they fight without quarter. It’s very dangerous to be on the wrong side of them.’
‘How many times have you been on the right side of them?’ asked Amy.
‘Oh, a couple of times at least.’
‘And the other times?’
The Doctor looked at her.
‘Those didn’t go so well,’ he admitted.
‘What are they doing here?’ asked Amy.
‘The same thing as the Morphans, I should imagine,’ the Doctor replied, standing on the chair to examine the ceiling, ‘shopping for a new home. If Earth and its solar system are gone, forcing a migration of human colonists, then Mars has gone too.’
‘Why does that matter?’
‘Because that, Amy Pond, is where they come from,’ he said.
‘Mars?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re Martians?’
‘Yes.’
She stared at him. ‘You’re actually, seriously telling me, with a straight face, they’re green men from Mars?’
‘I know,’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s ironic, isn’t it? Of course, they’re not little green men. That would just be silly. They’re nice and big.’
Amy looked at the door. The last few savage blows had actually begun to dent the metal around the bolt.
‘Big and strong all right,’ she said. ‘Strong enough to start bashing the door in. They’re buckling the metal.’
‘That’s shipskin!’ protested Samewell. ‘It’s the strongest metal we have!’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ mused the Doctor.
He didn’t seem at all distracted by the incessant banging from the door. He stamped the heel of his right foot against the hard-packed ground, moved a short distance and did it again.