The Immortals (short story)

The Immortals was the first short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips: Past Tense. It was written by Simon Guerrier. It featured the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan.

Summary
The TARDIS arrives in Eastern Europe at the start of the XI Century, where the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric come across a village under siege from a band of raiders.

The village leader, Udilf, tells the travellers that their food supplies and women have been taken and eaten by their attackers, immortal creatures with misshapen features and imperviousness to arrows. Believing the raiders to be stranded aliens, the Doctor offers to help, and sets off with Adric to search for the creatures’ camp; meanwhile, Tegan and Nyssa stay behind to help the remaining women make armour and serve the men their food and drink.

The Doctor and Adric soon meet the raiders, only to discover that they are in fact soldiers from Asia, whose unfamiliar features and clothing account for the villagers’ mistaken beliefs. Their leader, Czar U’thai, tells the Doctor that initially he and his men came to trade with the villagers, but soon decided to simply take what they desired; now that their way back home has been snowed in, they plan to take the villagers’ remaining supplies to see them through the winter.

The Doctor and Adric manage to sneak out of the camp and return to the village, where they inform Udilf of U’thai’s plans; the Doctor and Nyssa offer to prepare fire bombs and oversee the digging of a trench around the village, while Tegan and Adric, against their companions’ wishes, help the men folk to make longbows. When the raiders attack a violent battle immediately begins; in the mêlée, Udilf is killed, but, with the aid of some fancy archery from the Doctor, the raiders are soon defeated.

With U’thai now a prisoner, the villagers rescue their womenfolk and then decide to journey to Wales to build a new village. As the time travellers leave in the TARDIS, the Doctor has grave concerns over Adric’s actions, pointing out to the precocious boy that his invention of the longbow will cause countless deaths over the next five hundred years…

Characters

 * Fifth Doctor
 * Adric
 * Nyssa
 * Tegan
 * Czar U'thai
 * Udilf
 * Mang
 * Eeta
 * Habir
 * Scout

Continuity

 * The Doctor has recently regenerated. (TV: Logopolis)
 * The Doctor claims that Robin Hood taught him how to shoot a bow and arrow. (PROSE: The Thief of Sherwood)