Nothing like bullying a bully, thought Bernice. I wonder who he thinks I am? She remembered one of the Doctor's favourite sayings: "In an authoritarian society, people obey the voice of authority. It can be very useful."
Ivo and Katya brought the patrol food and drink in the yard. They watered their horses, bolted their meal and rode away.
No came back into the inn, jangling a handful of coins. "They actually paid," he said, chuckling. "Usually they take what they want and pay only with blows."
"Who are they anyway, this Black Guard?"
"They serve the new Lords, and those who would return them to power. They have no rights here - but it is ill arguing with armed men."
"There are ways," said Bernice, thinking of a friend of hers. She stood up. "I must go, I want to take a look at that Tower." She looked at Ivo's worried face.
"Don't worry, I only want to take a look at it, I'm not going to move in. I'll probably be gone most of the afternoon."
"Take care, my Lady, it is an evil place. Be sure to return before dark - before the bats start to fly."
He made a strange ritual gesture, touching ears, eyes and mouth.
"I thought you said the old Lords were gone?"
"Some of their evil may yet remain in the Tower."
"Don't worry, I'll be back before dark."
"I shall prepare a special dinner for you, my Lady. Roast marsh-stoat with sourberry sauce."
"I can't wait. Now, how do I get to the Tower?"
The Tower was easy enough to find. It dominated the village and could be seen from almost every point. The road led along the muddy village street, past houses that were little more than hovels. Occasionally people peered out at her from behind sackcloth curtains.
Bernice saw a grubby child playing with a wreath of white flowers outside one of the huts. She stopped and bent down to talk to it. Before she could say anything, a woman ran out and snatched the astonished child away, carrying it howling indoors.
The child had dropped its wreath of flowers. Bernice picked it up and sniffed it. The flowers had a harsh, pungent smell. She shrugged and stuffed the wreath into her jacket pocket. She noticed that there were more garlands of white flowers over the doorway and draped across the windows. Beyond the village the road led through ploughed fields. Bernice could see bent figures toiling in the fields. They worked two or three to a field in long straight lines. They were still using the medieval system of farming, each man responsible for his own thin strip of land.
The land looked stony and infertile, the skies were dull and grey and there was a chill in the wind. Bernice turned up the collar of her old safari jacket and hurried on.
This, she thought, has to be the most miserable, backward, poverty- stricken planet I've ever seen in my life.
The path led her into a belt of woodland. Tall trees cut off the fight and Bernice hurried uneasily along the shadowy path.
Suddenly she came out of the dark woods and found the Tower looming over her. Bernice had seen a lot of castles in her time but never one like this.
To start with, there was its shape, tall and slender, not a proper castle at all, just one solitary tower. There were two turrets set into the Tower close to the top, miniature versions of the Tower itself. The turrets were set close together, giving an oddly lopsided look, as if a third turret was needed to complete the design.
Shading her eyes with her hand, Bernice looked long and hard at the Tower. Perhaps the third turret had simply decayed and dropped away. She shifted her gaze to the ground at the foot of the Tower. There was nothing, no shattered masonry, no debris of any kind. Had someone taken the turret? But where? And why?
All her archaeologist's instincts aroused, Bernice headed for the Tower.
And here was another oddity, she thought, as she marched steadily towards it. The Tower didn't seem to have any proper defences.
It was surrounded simply by open space, by bare, parched earth in which nothing grew. No outer wall, no moat, nothing. It was as if its occupants were confident that no one would ever dare to attack them.
But they'd been wrong, thought Bernice. According to Ivo the castle had fallen and its occupants, the mysterious and terrible Lords, had been destroyed.
She came to the arched doorway of the Tower and stood looking up at it. It was made from great blocks of stone covered with moss and lichen. It was ancient, it was impressive and it was added for effect, thought Bernice. Somehow she knew that the arch wasn't part of the original structure.
The door inside the arch was smaller than she'd expected. It was studded with metal, and it stood fractionally ajar. Bernice shoved it hard and it opened with surprising smoothness. She slipped through the gap and the door closed silently behind her, leaving her in total darkness. The Tower had no windows.
Bernice turned and tried to reopen the door. It wouldn't move. She was trapped.
She stood very still for a moment, fighting panic. It served her right, it was ridiculous, poking about on her own like this. She needed a proper expedition. She needed colleagues, assistants, local workers ...
If you were a proper archaeologist, said a voice deep in her mind. That did it, as always. With a sigh Bernice fished in her many-pocketed jacket and produced a heavy torch. Its beam showed her a circular entrance hall hung with decaying tapestries, a spiral staircase leading up into darkness. A reek of decay hung in the air like invisible fog.
The place was cold and dead and eerily silent. It sent a chill into her soul.
Well, onward and upward, she thought. There must be more than one way in - and therefore more than one way out. She could always leave by the servants" entrance, if she could find it. Meanwhile, since she was here, she might as well take a quick look around.
She began climbing the stairs.
Her footsteps echoed hollowly in the darkness beyond her torch beam, and she had a strange feeling of being watched. Once or twice she thought she heard scurrying sounds behind her, but when she stopped moving the sounds stopped as well. Rats, thought Bernice uneasily. Just rats.
The staircase led her to a corridor, and the corridor to a huge circular chamber on a higher level. Feeling lost in the empty darkness, Bernice swept the beam of her torch around the chamber, revealing more rotting tapestries. On the other side of the room there were twin thrones on a dais. She went over to examine them.
Basically they were high-backed wooden chairs covered with the remnants of once-gorgeous brocade.
Local craftsmanship, thought Bernice. Like the doorway, they didn't quite go with the Tower itself.
A huge painting hung on the wall behind the thrones. It showed two richly robed figures, a man and a woman. Both were tall and thin with white faces and glittering eyes. They reminded her of something and it took her a moment to realize what it was. Then it came to her. They looked like the King and Queen on a pack of cards.
Something caught her eye in the space behind the thrones: a small square opening. She went over to it, shone the light inside and saw a gleaming metal ladder. It led downwards into darkness, and up towards a faint gleam of light.
An inspection hatch and an access ladder - in a tower that wasn't a tower at all.
Taking a deep breath, Bernice slid through the hatchway and got hands and feet onto the ladder. She began climbing upwards, towards the light.
The climb seemed endless and Bernice thought she must be getting very near the top of the Tower. The higher she climbed the lighter it got, and the light was coming from a square of daylight at the very top of the ladder.
At last the ladder came out onto a metal platform, from which rose three smaller ladders. The central and right-hand ladders led to round metal hatchways. The third led into empty space, ending in a circle of light that came from the open sky.
Bernice climbed the central ladder, turned the locking wheel on the hatchway, opened it and slid through the gap.
She found herself in a cramped control room. Bernice shone her torch around the banks of instru
ments, her suspicions confirmed.
The Tower wasn't a tower at all - it was a spaceship, a mother ship with three smaller scout vessels attached. She was in the control room of one of the scout ships.
She backed out of the hatchway which clanged shut behind her, emerged onto the metal platform and stood looking about her. The right-hand ladder must lead to the second scout ship. The circle of light on the left was where the third and missing scout ship had detached itself.
Bernice started to descend the main ladder. She felt unsafe going down one-handed so she switched off her torch, put it back in her pocket and began climbing down into darkness.
Down and down she went, wondering why the descent which surely ought to be easier seemed to be taking even longer than her climb to the top.
Uneasily she realized the answer. It really was taking longer.
She must have passed the hatchway where she'd joined the ladder. Now she was descending into the depths of the ship. Which wasn't such a bad idea, she thought. That other exit, if there was one, would be somewhere at the bottom.
Suddenly her foot encountered empty space. She had run out of ladder. Scrambling back up a few rungs, Bernice clung to the ladder with one hand, fished out her torch and shone it downwards. With a feeling of anticlimax she saw that the ladder ended a few feet from the ground.
She jumped down, landing with a faint metallic echo, and shone the torch around her. She was in a long metal chamber lined with metal racks. Probably the engine room, she thought. Looks as if the main engines have been stripped out. Curiouser and curiouser.
She became aware of a sound in the darkness, a steady drip, drip, drip ...
And there was a smell; an odd, coppery smell that brought back memories of battle and disaster. It was coming from the far end of the room.
Shining her torch beam ahead of her, she moved towards the sound.
There was a dim white shape hanging from one of the metal racks. As she got closer, Bernice saw with horror that it was the naked body of a young woman, suspended head downwards, long fair hair just touching the ground. Her throat had been slit. The blood was running into a metal channel, then disappearing though a sink-hole at the end. The fuel tanks must be somewhere below, thought Bernice. Someone, or something, was filling them with human blood.
She heard a faint rustling sound, swung round and saw a tall dark shape towering above her. Its face was white, its eyes glowed red, and it had long pointed fangs.
Claw-like hands reached out towards her.
5 VAMPIRE
Bernice screamed and shoved her torch into the creature's face. It recoiled, hissing, from the light - but not very far. It stood poised, watching her, and Bernice sensed it was nerving itself for a fresh attack.
Shining the torch in its eyes, Bernice studied it while she groped for a weapon with her free hand. Most of its actual shape was concealed by the high-collared black cloak, but she could see that it was tall and skeletally thin. The face was long and white with glittering eyes, a pointed beard and black lips drawn back in a snarl over fang-like teeth. The odd thing about it was that it looked somehow familiar.
Frantically Bernice felt through her pockets and found nothing. Her blaster was still in her pack, back at the inn. Did blasters work on vampires anyway? For it was quite clear that that was what this thing was. She was looking at a myth, a legend - and it was about to attack her.
Her fingers closed on the wreath of flowers dropped by the village child, and the vampire sprang.
Snatching out the flowers, Bernice thrust them into its gaping jaws. The vampire staggered back with a choking scream of rage and fear. Clawing at its face it turned and fled howling into the darkness.
Bernice turned and ran the other way. Shining her torch ahead of her she saw another ladder leading downwards and scrambled down it. She found herself in a small circular chamber with smoke-blackened metal walls. In the centre of its floor was a round hole, rather like a well. Bernice looked round hopelessly - now what? A scrabbling sound from above made up her mind.
She ran to the hole, slid over the edge feet-first and found herself whizzing downwards in a giant metal tube. She shot out of the end, dropped a few feet and landed on hard rocky ground. Picking herself up she looked round.
She was out of the rocket but not, as she'd hoped, in the open air. She was in a cave, a long narrow cave festooned with stalagmites and stalactites - she could never remember which was which. At the end of the cave there was an archway, and in the centre of the arch was a black altar. Light was coming from the other side of the altar - dull greyish light, but daylight all the same.
Bernice hurried towards it. She stopped to take a quick look at the altar. It was as fascinating a cultural artefact as any archaeologist could wish to find, but Bernice was in no mood to make a lengthy study of it. It was made of black stone and there was a shallow depression on the top, smeared with something dark and thick and sticky. Bernice touched it gingerly, sniffed her finger and recognized the smell that had been in the Tower - the distinctive coppery smell of fresh-spilled human blood.
Somehow she knew that this was where the girl in the Tower's throat had been cut. She had been sacrificed.
Shuddering, Bernice hurried on past the altar and found herself at last in the open air. She was standing on the edge of a huge amphitheatre, a bowl-shaped depression in the ground. All her archaeologist instincts told her that it was a burial ground.
Bernice looked uneasily over her shoulder. There was no sign of the thing that had attacked her in the Tower. Judging by its scream she'd done it considerable harm. The white flower was very like Earth's garlic. Wasn't garlic supposed to be poisonous to vampires? Surely it would stay in the darkness of the Tower where it was safe? Even if it came down into the caves, it wouldn't venture out into open ground, not in daylight.
Bernice felt torn. She felt she ought to head straight back to the village and tell Ivo of her terrible discovery in the Tower. But to an archaeologist - even an unorthodox and unqualified archaeologist - the lure of an untouched burial ground was irresistible. She stared up at the sky. It was hard to tell for sure on a strange planet, but surely there must be several hours before dark. She remembered Ivo's urgings to get back "before the bats began to fly".
"Come on, Benny, a chance to make your name," she whispered. "Papers, articles in learned journals, a book. Then the holovid series. Just a quick look..."
There was something projecting from the earth near the centre of the burial ground, and Bernice walked steadily towards it. It was a metal tail-fin, rusted and corroded with age - the remains of the missing scout ship!
At the edges of the depression the earth was hardpacked and solid, but near the centre it was more and more broken up. There were cracks and fissures, some narrow, some wide and deep. There were sudden hillocks, irregular patches as though the ground had been churned up some time ago. Grass and weeds grew more thinly over these disturbed areas.
Bernice noticed other, more recent irregularities where the earth seemed to be newly turned. With growing outrage she realized that she might not be the first here after all.
As much for the principle of the thing as anything else, she fished pegs and string from her pocket and marked out a square of ground. Another pocket yielded a miniature digger's kit: trowel, hand-fork, probe, stiff wire brush, all rolled neatly into a tool-holder. Bernice began to dig.
Instinct or luck had led her to choose exactly the right spot. Careful digging revealed the shape of a long thin segmented bone. Gently Bernice brushed away the earth. She was looking at the skeleton of a finger - a finger that ended in a long, sharp claw.
With growing excitement Bernice went on working. She uncovered a second finger, a third, fourth and fifth, and finally the skeleton of a giant clawed hand.
She sat back on her heels, considering. Presumably the rest of the creature was buried here. Using the hand as a basis for estimation it must have been an animal of colossal size.
Some
now-extinct beast, the planet's equivalent of a dinosaur or a mammoth? But it had been buried at the base of the Tower, with an altar watching over it. An altar used for human sacrifice. A sacred beast then, something the inhabitants of the planet both feared and worshipped.
Carried away with the excitement of her find, all danger forgotten, Bernice went on digging. She uncovered an immensely long straight bone, the equivalent of the ulna in the human arm. But the radius, the bone that should be connected to it, was missing. Some scavenging animal perhaps? Bernice fished out a magnifying glass and studied the bone. The ligaments connecting ulna to radius were not torn but severed, cut through with a sharp tool.
Bernice was outraged. Not only was she not the first, which was quite bad enough, but the site had been desecrated, vandalized! A potentially priceless specimen had been ruined. And who knew how much more damage had been done?
She raised her eyes to check the site for further damage, and found that someone was standing over her.
She raised her trowel defensively, and then saw with relief that the newcomer was a woman in an expensive looking grey travelling cloak with a fur hood. She looked neat, elegant and utterly composed. In a crisp, authoritative voice the woman said, "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
The voice, the manner and, come to that, everything else about the woman got right up Bernice's nose. Including her appearance - no, especially her appearance. Bernice straightened up, very conscious of her muddy field boots, mud-stained jeans and scruffy safari jacket.
"I might ask you the same questions."
"You might, but you'd be ill-advised to," said the woman sharply. "I know what I'm doing. You presumably don't or you wouldn't be here at all."
"I'm an accredited archaeologist and I'm making a preliminary study of this site - which happens to have been vandalized." Bernice went over to the attack. "Do you know who's responsible?"
"Vandalized? How?"
"Something's buried here, some immensely large creature."
"I know that. What do you mean, vandalized?"
Doctor Who - [New Adventure 29] - [Vampire Trilogy 2] - Blood Harvest Page 4