Doctor Who: The Androids of Tara by David Fisher

Author:David Fisher [Fisher, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2022-07-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV

The Duel

Like the rest of the bodyguard, Farrah was beginning to recover after the explosion.

‘You almost have to admire the man,’ he remarked to Zadek. ‘I mean, to ride in here alone, distract everyone’s attention, destroy the android, kidnap the Doctor’s friend and then ride out again takes some nerve.’

But Swordmaster Zadek was in no mood to join the Count Grendel appreciation society. His only regret was that he hadn’t allowed Farrah to shoot him the moment he came into range, truce or no flag of truce. For the first time in his life Zadek regretted his devotion to the rules of war.

‘He’ll be halfway to Castle Gracht by now,’ said the Doctor morosely. ‘With Romana back in his clutches.’ He was busying himself by examining what was left of the android. ‘If we had enough spare parts, we could rebuild this,’ he ventured. ‘Otherwise …’ His shrug was eloquent.

Farrah was puzzled as to why the Count had bothered to kidnap Romana. ‘He already has the real Prince Reynart and the Princess.’

‘The Count likes to hold all the cards,’ said the Doctor. ‘Now we’ve lost both our duplicate king and our double for Strella.’

‘Which leaves us impotent, with the entire kingdom in danger of a coup.’ Zadek sat down heavily. ‘Grendel has a plan, be sure of that.’

‘Oh, I am,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’m just less sure of what we can do to stop him.’

The dungeon guard opened the door to Prince Reynart’s cell and thrust Romana inside. The Count followed her in, bowing mockingly to the Prince who still lay on his bed. Romana went straight across to check his wounds.

‘Look, Your Highness,’ said the Count, ‘I’m returning your bride-to-be. She escaped, but I knew you’d be missing her. So at great personal cost I went and got her back for you. No, don’t thank me. It’s the least I can do for the future King of Tara.’

‘He’s still feverish,’ reported Romana. ‘You’d better call Madame Lamia. She might have something for his temperature.’

The Count lost his triumphant expression. ‘Lamia’s dead,’ he said quietly. ‘Some fool in my guard shot her by accident. He’ll be executed tomorrow. You are invited to see it.’

Romana grimaced. ‘I can’t think of anything worse.’

‘Odd,’ commented the Count. ‘Most of the women in my family preferred executions to the theatre. I shall miss Lamia,’ he went on. ‘I’ll never find another android engineer as good as her. She was quite remarkable, you know. And very biddable. I only rarely had to flog her.’

‘She loved you,’ said Romana.

‘She was a peasant,’ declared the Count dismissively. ‘Peasants know nothing about such matters.’

‘On the contrary,’ breathed Reynart with a mixture of vehemence and pity, ‘they know far more than you ever will.’

Ignoring that barb, the Count took his leave of Romana and the Prince.

When they were alone Romana asked Reynart, ‘Why does he refer to me as your bride-to-be? Is it some sort of joke?’

The Prince pointed out that the Count didn’t joke about politics. His aim was to become the legal King of Tara.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.