Read Doctor Who: The Highlanders for Free Online Page A

door.
    Kirsty looked up, anxious now that her one companion was leaving. ‘Och, mind your step outside, it’ll be dark soon.’
    ‘Oh, watch out for yourself,’ Polly shot back, annoyed, as she exited.
    Kirsty stood up, calling after her. ‘You’ll get lost for sure.’ But Polly was already out of earshot.
    Outside the cave it was indeed getting dark. The moor, which had seemed harmless enough in the daylight, now took on a totally different aspect, full of mysterious shapes that loomed up at Polly. She stared to retrace her footsteps back towards the cottage. At all costs she must find out what had happened to the Doctor and Ben. Even if the English soldiers captured her, what could they do? They surely wouldn’t harm an English girl, she reflected.
    Anyway, she didn’t doubt her ability to talk her way out of any situation– What was that?
    Polly whipped around. She’d heard a noise, a stone rattling away down the slope not far behind her. Somebody was following her, or was it some animal or... For the first time Polly began believing the stories of witches, warlocks, and hobgoblins which so scared the eighteenth century Kirsty. Polly looked around. Beside the road there was a short, thick stick. She picked it up and held it out as a club.
    ‘Who’s there?’ she called, but there was no answer and the scuffling noises seemed to have stopped.
    The night seemed even darker now, and for a moment Polly thought of going back to the cave; but that would have meant admitting to Kirsty that she was scared, and a silly weeping ninny like her – no, this she could never do.
    She moved forward again along the rough track, with her head slightly turned and her ear cocked, listening for more tell-tale noises. She didn’t notice that the path had branched and she was following a smaller path rather than the main track. Then Polly thought she heard another noise behind her, this time the crack of a twig. She began to run along the track, really scared this time.
    Suddenly, the ground beneath her feet seemed to disappear, and she found herself falling down through the darkness.
    Polly screamed, and clutched at some grass verging what was obviously some sort of animal trap or pit; but the grass did not hold her. The clump slowly pulled out, and she slid down to the bottom of the trap, winded, dirty and very much afraid.
    For a couple of minutes, Polly lay still, hardly daring to move, afraid of where she had fallen. Might there not be some wild animal beside her in this pit? She tried to remember whether they still had wolves in Scotland in the eighteenth century, or even – she shivered at the thought –
    bears!
    However, all she could hear were the usual night sounds, the distant shriek of an owl hunting its prey, the rustle of the wind in the trees just beyond the pit, and her own gradually subsiding panting. She stood up and felt her arms and legs, but beyond one or two bruises and some thick-caked dirt, there seemed to be no damage. She felt her way around the edges of the pit. It was about ten foot deep and six foot square at the bottom, but some of the sides had caved in, and Polly began scrambling up the loose earth. As she neared the surface, she could make out a latticework of branches, some fairly thick and strong, covering the other end of the pit from where she had fallen through. One of them looked strong enough to stand her weight, and with a great effort she leapt up and managed to hold onto it. She pulled her other hand up and then started pulling her way along the branch to heave herself out of the pit, when a hand came into view and shoved the branch back into the pit. Down Polly scrambled. As she looked up, she saw that the hand was now extended over her head, and was holding a dagger.
     

6
    Polly’s Prisoner
    As Polly looked up, the hand that held the dagger seemed to be raising it as if to fling it right down at the helpless girl beneath.
    ‘Don’t,’ cried Polly, ‘please, I give up!’
    There