Free Doctor Who: The Awakening by Eric Pringle Page A

uncertain halt. ‘It’s eerie,’ Tegan whispered.
    She was very nearly awed into silence herself.
    ‘Where is everyone?’ Turlough wanted to hear a voice, even if it was only his own. He wanted it to activate something, but the heat soaked it up like blotting paper.
    They looked around uneasily, and set off again at a run, as if by doing so they might startle something in the village into showing some signs of life. Moving at the double they came to a T-junction, turned left, and arrived at a ford, where a river ran across the road in a sparkling watersplash.
    They stopped here to get their breath back. And it was only then, when they were making no noise themselves, that they heard the horses behind them. They looked round and saw Joseph Willow and a pair of troopers come cantering out of a side road. As soon as they spotted the two companions, they shouted and spurred their horses into a gallop.
     
    ‘Oh, no,’ Tegan sighed.
    ‘Split up!’ Turlough shouted. He ran back up the lane they had just come down, while Tegan bolted forward into the river. She splashed through the ford, and the sudden sensation of cold water dashing against her skin made her shudder.
    But their ruse had confused the troopers, who had stopped, uncertain which of them to pursue. After a moment’s hesitation, Willow sent his men to chase Turlough, and went after Tegan himself As she raced out of the ford Tegan looked back over her shoulder – and stumbled into the arms of Ben Wolsey. The big Gumer, who had stepped out of the cover of a narrow alley, caught her as she came running past, and although Tegan struggled and screamed she was helpless in his strong grip. He held her writhing body without effort.
    ‘Let me go!’ she shouted, as Willow came riding up.
    The Sergeant reined his horse and leaned down towards her. ‘Not yet, my dear,’ he leered His pleasure it her predicament made Tegan’s skin crawl.
    Wolsey sensed it too, and frowned. ‘Do you have to enjoy this sort of thing quite so much!’ he asked.
    Willow tugged angrily at the reins; his horse reared, aid clashed its hooves down on the road. ‘Just obeying orders, Colonel!’ he shouted.
    ‘That’s what they all say,’ Wolsey commented wryly.
    The Sergeant was furious. ‘Hah!’ he shouted, and savagely spurred his horse back across the ford.
    Tegan sensed that the friction between these two was close to breaking out into open hostility; since they were on opposite sides in the war game they would soon have ample excuse to work it out. But for the moment she herself was unable to exploit their quarrel.
    There was nothing she could do at all, except accompany Colonel Ben Wolsey in whatever direction he decided to take her.
     
    Ever since Willow had locked her into Wolsey’s seventeenth-century parlour, Jane Hampden had been trying to escape. But there was no way out; the windows were securely fastened, Willow had barred the door, and nothing she could do would free either. Wearily she began another round of the room, in case she had missed something.
    This time her eyes alighted on an old fighting axe, half-hidden among a display of Civil War weapons on the wall above the fireplace. She cursed herself for failing to realise its potential earlier – with an axe she might be able to smash her way out! She hurried across to the fire, reached up to take the axe – and saw the hunting tapestry move beside her face. It hung near the weapons; now it shifted slightly, as though tugged by a draught of air.
    Jane forgot the axe. Excited, she hurried towards a heavy curtain which draped from ceiling to floor at the other side of the tapestry. She tugged at this and disrovered that a section of the wooden wall panelling behind it had moved away from the rest. A draught of air was rushing through the gap. Jane pushed the panel; it moved open, like a door. At the other side, a stone passage led away into darkness.
    Up to now, Jane had been acting slowly, with the greatest