The Spear of Destiny (4 page)

‘The Healer, the Doctor. Yes. Is
he drowned?’

Jo hung her head. ‘Oh, I hope
not,’ she said quietly.

Njord straightened. ‘My men are
looking for him. They will find him if he still lives.’

Staring hard at the earth in front
of her, Jo fought the urge to weep.

‘You are the Healer’s woman? His
wife?’

Jo lifted her head. ‘I am the
Doctor’s companion,’ she said proudly, and held Njord’s gaze for
as long as she could, until her nerve failed her.

A smile spread slowly over Njord’s
face. It was not a nice thing to see. His lips parted and Jo
almost winced when she saw his blackened teeth.

He put his boot on Jo’s shoulder
and with a shove sent her to the floor, where she lay on her
side, wondering how accurate the Doctor’s lecture about peaceful
Viking farmers had been.

Njord stared coolly down at her.
‘Today there was almost a fight. Everything is as Frey said it
would be. Old One-eye killed one of his own to stop the war from
starting. He is scared. He is weak. Full of bluster and noise,
yes, but in reality he is weak. And when
Skithblathnir
returns to our shores with
Frey at her helm, carrying more warriors to swell our army, we
will
go to war
with the Aesir. And we
will
win.’

Jo lay still, trying to understand
everything she had heard, knowing it might be important, knowing
it would be good to be able to tell the Doctor everything she’d
learned. If only he was still alive.

Hands grabbed her again and
dragged her out of the hall and through the village. She saw a
wagon being pulled by four oxen. On the wagon was the
TARDIS.

She was about to yell when someone
pulled her back so hard the breath was knocked from her. Before
she knew it, she was taken into a small but solid hut, where she
was tied to the post that held up the roof, and left to
shiver.

Darkness fell, and as Jo’s
shivers turned to great shudders of cold, she wished she’d taken
the Doctor up on the offer of his cape.

It was
that
cold.

She’d lost track of how much time
had passed. All she’d heard were the sounds of the village:
footsteps coming and going, the occasional chatter of voices,
the clang of metal somewhere and the barking of dogs.

Then there was the scrape of the
door opening. Jo looked up, blinking in the light of a burning
torch being held by one of the warriors, and saw the Doctor
being ushered into the hut. Two more men tied him to the post,
so that he and Jo sat back to back on the cold ground. Then the
door shut and they were left alone in darkness once more.

‘I’ve just been talking to your
friend Njord,’ said the Doctor.

‘I’m fine,’ said Jo. ‘Thanks for
asking. And how are you?’

‘Very well, my dear. Thought I’d
find you here somewhere. Are you warm enough?’

‘You’re joking,’ said Jo. ‘I’m
freezing!’

‘Well, sit as close to me as you
can. I’ll warm us up. Three hearts are better than two, after
all.’

In spite of herself, Jo laughed.
‘Doctor?’ she said. ‘Who is Njord? He kept speaking about
someone called Frey, too. I don’t think he’s here now, though.
He’s away, fetching warriors on his ship. It had a funny
name.’

‘
Skithblathnir
.’

‘Yes! That’s it! How did you know?
Gosh, Doctor, have you got a fever? It’s like sitting next to a
log stove!’

‘Well, you did say you were cold.
Jo, do you remember we spoke about Odin?’

‘What about him?’

‘You know him as a god of Norse
mythology, correct?’

‘Yes. There’s Odin, and Thor too.
He has a hammer and makes thunder. I think he was Odin’s
son.’

‘That’s right. And Odin was
supposed to have the spear, Gungnir … and he only had one
eye.’

‘Doctor! Njord spoke about someone
he called One-eye, like a nickname.’

‘We saw him earlier today, Jo. He
killed one of his own men. And there was a man with a hammer,
too.’

‘Thor! But they’re supposed to be
gods!’

‘We’ve arrived at a most
interesting time. Some scholars, and myself, I might add, have a
theory about certain myths and legends.’

‘A theory, Doctor? Like your one
about the TARDIS being invisible …?’

‘Yes, thank you. I think that one
might need a bit more consideration. No, this theory is that
many stories that scholars of your time believe to be myths,
legends and mere tales were, in fact, originally based on real
events, and the characters in them based on real people. Even
those we now consider to be gods were just great men of the
past. Jo, this is so fascinating! We are witnessing the origin
of Norse myth!’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘I’m absolutely serious, my dear.
Odin is the king of all Sweden. His people are called the
Aesir.’

‘Njord spoke about them. He said
they’re going to fight them.’

‘Quite so. What we witnessed by
the river today was just an early skirmish. Odin had to kill one
of his own men to stop the fight from escalating. According to
the great Norse sagas, there were two races of gods: the Aesir,
ruled by Odin, with his sons Thor and Balder, and the Vanir,
ruled by Njord, with the assistance of Frey.’

‘Thank you, Doctor, I’m much
warmer now.’

‘What? Oh good. I’ll turn the
central heating down.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jo. ‘Go on with
your story.’

‘Yes, the Aesir and the Vanir.
They had been squabbling for some time, and then they all
gathered at a great meeting, an assembly of some kind. Odin grew
angry and threw Gungnir over the heads of the Vanir. And so the
great war between them began.’

‘You think that’s about to
happen?’

‘I think it is, yes. Be that as it
may, we have to get Gungnir and get away from here.’

‘Gungnir? Why? You still haven’t
told me why it’s
so
important.’

‘I am now absolutely convinced
that Gungnir is a Physical Temporal Nexus. A PTN. In the Norse
legends it was said that Gungnir was magical, that it would hit
whoever the thrower wished it to hit, without fail. We saw that
for ourselves today. That throw was impossible – far too far.
But once thrown, Gungnir cannot miss its target.’

‘Well, that’s pretty neat for a
Viking weapon, but still not much of a match for a machine gun.
Or a nuclear bomb.’

‘Jo, let me finish. Always hitting
its target is nothing to a PTN. That’s just a party trick. But
the
way
it does it is the
point. In order to perform such a feat a PTN forms a link with
the mind of whoever is holding it. At a quantum level the PTN
joins with the brain patterns of its owner and then it does a
remarkable thing. You are, of course, aware that there are an
infinite number of possible universes?’

‘Of course,’ said Jo.

‘I thought so,’ said the Doctor.
‘So what the PTN does is shuffle through all possible states of
the universe in a fraction of a second, and it selects the one
that its owner desires the most. That is why it is so powerful.
So dangerous.’

‘Because whoever owns it can
literally make their wishes come true.’

‘Exactly! The High Council of the
Time Lords has spent a great deal of time tracking them all
down. One was found on Usurius, two more on Kirith. There are
perhaps no more than six in all, and even the Time Lords don’t
know who made them or where they came from. And, trust me, the
Time Lords know a great deal about the universe. A very great
deal.

‘So now it seems we have another
in our reach. I doubt very much that Odin knows what he has in
his hands – Gungnir’s true power. To him it’s just a spear with
which he seems to hunt rather well ...’

‘I can see why they think it’s
magic, though.’

‘Not only that. Another thought
occurs to me.’

‘Which is?’

‘Gungnir is not the only famous
spear in history. There is another, even more famous. Or perhaps
I mean infamous. As Jesus hung on the cross, a Roman soldier
called Longinus wanted to see if he was really dead, and drove
his spear into Christ’s side.

‘That spear became known as the
Spear of Destiny, but it soon went missing. We simply don’t know
what happened to it. But, despite that, stories about its power
began to circulate. It was said that the army that possessed it
would be invincible. Not so very long before your own time, Jo,
another man craved the Spear, which by then had turned up in a
museum in Vienna. That man was Adolf Hitler. The very day he
invaded Austria in 1938 he drove straight to the museum to
capture the Spear. He took it back to Berlin and believed he
was, from that time on, invincible.’

‘But the Nazis lost the war,’ said
Jo. ‘It didn’t work.’

‘There are two possibilities.
First, some people believe that the spear he captured was a
thirteenth-century fake, not the real thing. Or, second, there
is a simpler explanation: the spear
was
the real thing, but Hitler made a
mistake. In order for a PTN to work, you have to actually
hold
it. Hitler
put it in another museum in Berlin and then got on with invading
the rest of Europe.’

‘My goodness!’ said Jo. ‘If he’d
only known …’

‘Quite so, my dear, quite
so.’

‘But wait a minute. What’s this
got to do with Gungnir?’

‘Jo, I believe Gungnir and the
Spear of Destiny are one and the same.’

‘But we’re in Sweden. How did the
Spear end up here?’

‘I told you, the Vikings raided
far into the Mediterranean. Odin must have got lucky and found
it there.’

‘I see,’ said Jo. ‘That makes
sense. But if Hitler had the Spear in the war, how was it dug up
in Sweden just now and put in the Moxon Collection in
London?’

‘Yes, well, that’s what’s worrying
me the most,’ said the Doctor, and his voice sank dark and low.
‘We only have the word of that leaflet that it
was
recently found in a dig
in Sweden, don’t we?’

‘You mean the museum was lying?
Why would they do that?’

‘Why indeed, Jo? And how do we
know that the spear in the museum is not, in fact, another
fake?’

‘There were temporal anomalies.
Small disturbances in time.’

‘There were indeed. But those can
also sometimes be the result of the presence of a poorly
shielded TARDIS.’

‘Doctor?’

‘Jo, this man Frey that Njord
spoke about. He has a ship called
Skithblathnir
, yes? Do you know what
Norse myth says about
Skithblathnir
?’

Jo shook her head, and suddenly
didn’t feel so warm any more.

‘It was said that Frey could make
his ship any size he wanted. That he could fit as many men on
board as he wished. Does that sound familiar? A ship that’s
bigger on the inside?’

‘Doctor! You think…?’

‘Jo, the name Frey. In Old Norse
it means Lord. Or –’

‘Master!’ cried Jo. ‘Frey is the
Master!’

Before the Doctor could reply
there was a laugh from outside the hut’s door. It was pushed
open, and in he came, laughing and clapping his hands.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s been such
fun listening to you two work it out. Well done! Well
done!’

He stood over them, looking down,
leering.

The Master.

‘You’ve been busy,’ said the
Doctor.

The Master stood in the doorway.
In his hand he held a burning torch that cast a flickering fiery
light across his face.

‘You know,’ said the Doctor. ‘I
always thought you looked a little like the Devil with that
beard. Now I know it.’

‘Doctor, Doctor,’ said the Master
mockingly. ‘Such a bad loser. Come on now, admit it! You’ve been
plodding around in the dark. Talking of which, the sky tonight
will be illuminated most wonderfully by the comet. You’ll enjoy
that.’

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘Yes, I
see now. You could have just gone to Judea in 33
AD
to find the spear.
Taken it right out of Longinus’ hands, no doubt. But that date
is not accurate. Calendars have changed and, besides, all we
really have to go on are dates made up hundreds of years later
by the men who wrote the apocryphal Gospels.’

‘Precisely, Doctor. Whereas here,
tonight, the comet marks the equinox, so neatly recorded on that
rune stone in the British Museum. These Vikings are such
wonderful people. Do you know they wash once a week?’

‘Could have fooled me,’ muttered
Jo.

‘And now, Doctor, you’re here.
You join me just as I planned. So nice of you to turn up to
order. Because I need you, Doctor. Or, rather, I need your
ship.’

‘Something wrong with yours, old
boy?’

‘Not at all. It’s quite well.
I’ve been making lots of trips in it. Finding warriors for
Njord. He’s most impressed. So is Odin, and that’s why I need
your TARDIS. I’m giving it to him.’

‘And Njord’s men have already
relieved me of the key, along with my screwdriver. I can guess
what you want in return.’

‘Quite right, Doctor. Odin and I
have made a bargain. He wants a ship just like mine. And he will
get one in return for the Nexus. The Spear of Destiny.’

‘But he can’t operate the
TARDIS.’

‘No, but then he doesn’t know
that, does he?’

‘And meanwhile you’ve set the
Aesir and the Vanir at each other’s throats, pushing them
towards war, while you’ve been cooking up your own little
plans.’

‘Now will you admit how stupid
you’ve been, Doctor?’

The Doctor said nothing, but
clenched his jaw and stared at the wall of the hut.

‘It gets worse, I’m afraid,’ said
the Master. ‘You see, I’ve told Odin all about you. Both of you.
He was very interested to hear about the Doctor, some sort of
magician, or wizard. And his young and attractive assistant. So
you’re to be made guests of honour. Tonight. At the blessing. In
fact you could say you’ll be the main attraction.’