Part 38 (2/2)

Ace turned, wondering who had come to her rescue. She expected to see Steven Chen or Denman or one of the others.

Instead, standing some fifty yards away, was an archer. A quiver of impossibly burning arrows was slung from his belt.

The man was only partly visible, the line of a hedge running straight through him like a razor. He wore ancient clothing, dominated by an enormous bearskin that hung on his back like a cloak.

Ace shook her head. 'I've flipped,' she said, under her breath.

She glanced down at the scarecrow corpse. The creature seemed dead, but there was not a trace of the fire she had seen earlier.

Joanna appeared at her side. 'What happened?' she demanded.

'Haven't the foggiest,' admitted Ace. She looked back towards the archer, but he was gone.

The courtroom dissolved around the Doctor, scenes from the outside world scudding across the sky above him. He saw the ethereal hunters sweeping over the village, attacking the scarecrows. He cried out in delight as Ace was saved by a man with a longbow. Just for a moment there was silence across the land, interrupted only by the distant call of a woodc.o.c.k.

'It is the triumph of the human will,' the Doctor exclaimed.

Before him, only the judge was left in the barren wasteland that had once been a courtroom. But no trace of Jeffreys remained. The eyes, flaming like the burning scarecrows above them, told the Doctor that he was again in the presence of Jack i' the Green.

The Doctor pointed to the sky, awash with primal colours.

'Instead of using the dark legends which you made more terrifying - the wicker men, the pagan G.o.ds of the corn harvest - the villagers have called up the Wild Hunt. An ambiguous enough legend, not good, not evil, but moral. Just the sort of thing to slip past you, unnoticed.' The Doctor paused triumphantly. 'Your ancient victims are turning against you, Jack. Human souls cannot bear your form of reality. They'll be at the palace gates soon. You're under siege!'

Still Jack said nothing. The landscape changed again to the village green in the seventeenth century, surrounded by oak-beamed Tudor buildings. The people of the village stood around the edges of the green, shouting, their fists raised.

'You've lost, Jack,' said the Doctor. 'Their strength is too great. They are using the power of the land, the ley lines, the stone circles. Legends of G.o.d and man and nature. They're taking back what you stole from them over three hundred years ago.'

'Battle is not yet won,' said the judge suddenly. The Doctor looked up to find the court room re-forming around him.

Jack's eyes were glowing within a human face once more, a black cloth on his head. 'Thou hast been found guilty by this court. It is my duty to pa.s.s sentence. Dost thou have anything to say?'

'No,' said the Doctor, surprised. 'My mother always told me if I didn't have anything good to say about anyone, I shouldn't say anything at all.'

'The sentence of this court,' said the judge, 'is that thou shalt be taken to a place of execution, and there done to death. And may Jack have mercy upon thy soul. Take him.'

Guardsmen, with Jowett and Long John helping them, grabbed the Doctor and held him aloft, marching towards the green, at the centre of which a freshly dug pit glowed blood-red.

'Greetings.' The voice was as ancient as thunder, and caught Ace completely unawares. A huge armoured man on a horse had appeared a little way behind her. Owls and geese flew over his head, and foxes danced around the motionless hooves of the steed. like the archer, the man and his creatures were partly visible, as if only gently overlaid on reality.

'What the ' began Ace.

'I am the leader of the Wild Hunt. I have my freedom, and my instructions, which I chose to follow. Come with me.'

Ghost or not, Ace bristled at the man's patriarchal conceit.

'Why should I?'

The Hunter snorted, as if unused to dissent. His reply was to flick the reins of the horse - a big brute of a creature, more at home on a farm than a racecourse, thought Ace - and he swept down towards her.

The hooves pawed at ancient ground that was no longer there. Even so, the Hunter was swiftly at Ace's side. He reached down to pick her up, pulling her on to the saddle behind him.

Ace instinctively struggled against his grip, but there was little to kick against. His arm was broad and strong, but the moment she pushed against the hunter he became as substantial as a half-remembered breeze.

'Put me down!' she exclaimed, not used to being treated like this by anyone.

'Be not afeared,' p.r.o.nounced the man, as the horse swept high into the air.

'I'm not,' said Ace, through gritted teeth. 'And why are you leaving Joanna behind?'

The Hunter laughed. 'Because,' he said, 'you 'you do not show fear. You have been chosen.' do not show fear. You have been chosen.'

'Chosen?'

'There is work to do.'

Ace smiled for the first time. 'Wicked,' she said.

The landscape blurred beneath the ghostly horse. The view was certainly extraordinary, the village a hive of activity as scarecrows and hunters wheeled in combat.

Ace reached down to pat the flank of the horse, but only the faintest tingling reached her hands where the creature's flesh should be. Pale against the dark greens of the fields, the horse's skin was slick with sweat, and the smell p.r.i.c.kled at Ace's nostrils. If this was all an illusion, it was an extraordinarily convincing one.

Without thinking, she tried prodding the rider in the back, but her finger went right through the thick cloak and ancient armour.

'Oi,' she said loudly. 'Where are we going?'

'The centre of all things,' said the Hunter, as the horse began to plummet like an aeroplane hitting turbulence.

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