‘Nice to see them playing glockenspiels, though, eh?’

‘Mmmmm.’

With her eyes and mouth open wide in mock dismay, Amy shook her head at Samewell and Bel, and made them both laugh.

Suddenly, the Doctor was right beside them. He was staring straight ahead. He was alarmingly alert. ‘We’ve got to go back,’ he said quietly.

‘What?’ Amy asked.

He forced them to stop walking by sticking his arm out in front of them, and craned his head, listening.

‘What?’ Amy repeated.

‘We’ve definitely got to go back,’ he said.

‘Into the stinky room? Why?’

‘Shhh!’ he said. ‘Can’t you hear that?’

Amy couldn’t hear anything.

‘We’ve got to go back,’ said the Doctor. ‘Or at the very least, we’ve got to not go this way.’

Then Amy heard it too. It was far away and coming from up ahead. It was the sound of footsteps. Heavy, regular, lumbering footsteps.

‘Stay!’ the Doctor whispered to them, as though his raised index finger would freeze them to the spot. He edged forward until he could peer down the corridor ahead.

The footsteps were getting closer. He saw movement first, then a shadow, cast on the corridor wall by a row of solamps.

There was no mistaking the silhouette.

He turned to them.

‘Ice Warriors,’ he said. ‘Coming this way. Run.’

‘Regular running or run for your life running?’ asked Amy.

‘What do you think?’ the Doctor replied.

They ran.

They ran back through the prep room and into the organic gallery, ignoring the smell. The Doctor skidded to a halt in the doorway, checking the door panel to see if there was any way to close and lock the hatch behind them. Whatever had bored through the mechanism to open it had fused the hatch motors. The hatch was wedged open.

‘Keep going!’ he yelled, running to catch up with them. They were running down the length of the vast gallery, following the grilled metal pathways between the stinking vats and the glass tanks clotted with slime.

‘How do you know there’ll be an exit at the far end?’

Amy shouted at the Doctor.

‘I don’t!’ he replied.

‘Then what?’

‘We don’t have a lot of choice!’ he replied.

Amy glanced back. Always a mistake, but she did it anyway.

She could see the entry hatch fifty metres behind her. The first of the Ice Warriors had appeared. There were three of them. They were so big, they had to come through the hatchway one at a time. There was something flat and expressionless about their faces.

The overhead light banks reflected off their red lenses.

They walked like hit-men, hired killers wearing expensive shades.

At least, she thought, the rows of vats and metal tanks would provide a little shelter and cover if the Ice Men started using their guns. Warriors. Warriors.

One last glimpse behind her showed her they weren’t packing guns at all.

They were carrying swords. Dirty great, double-handed, barb-hilted broadswords.

‘Oh great she said.

Chapter

12

Brighter Visions Beam Afar

The Doctor heard Amy’s strangled expression of alarm, and glanced back at their pursuers as well. He saw what she had just seen. The brutal, medieval weapons that the Ice Warriors were carrying with such brutal, medieval intent put an extra spurt of vigour into his pace. He began to lead the way, urging Samewell and Bel after him.

‘Swords?’ screeched Amy, lengthening her stride to keep up. ‘Swords? Honestly? For really real?’

‘I have no idea what that’s about!’ the Doctor yelled back at her.

‘Yes, you do!’ Amy objected. ‘You always do!’

‘Well,’ the Doctor shouted over his shoulder, sprinting hell for leather, ‘I suppose I could speculate that the Ice Warriors are an ancient and martial society that takes great pride in preserving and maintaining the traditions of weapon-craft honed by their ancestors, and that the use of ancient, bladed combat weapons suggests an intent to ritually slaughter or ceremonially execute! But I didn’t think that would be a particularly cheerful thing to say while they were chasing us!’ he added.

At least half a dozen Ice Warriors were doggedly following them down the length of the gallery. Still more had appeared at the hatch. The nearest Warriors seemed to be calling out to them. They were making strange, guttural noises, at least, perhaps uttering warnings, or issuing orders for their fleet quarry to halt or surrender. It was hard to tell. Each bark sounded less like words, and more like the pneumatic spit of a torque wrench driven by compressed air.

Arabel was lagging behind the Doctor, Samewell and Amy. Her long and heavy winter skirts were seriously encumbering her.

‘Come on!’ Samewell exclaimed, grabbing her by the arm and propelling her ahead of him. He looked around in time to see Amy trip over the lip of a deck plate and sprawl headlong.

‘Go!’ Samewell yelled to Bel, and darted back to help Amy.

She had winded herself. He hauled her to her feet.

‘Come on!’ he begged.

‘O-OK!’

‘Are you hurt?’

‘I banged my knees,’ Amy said, fighting to draw a breath.

‘You’ve got to keep running!’ he insisted.

They looked back.

An Ice Warrior was just twenty metres away. It came around the end of a row of vats, saw them, and raised its sword in a braced, two-handed grip, hilt high, the blade tipped down, like a ninja with a katana. Or whatever those swords in the kung fu movies Rory liked were called. Katanas? Kanteenas? Katonas?

The Ice Warrior didn’t break stride. It seemed to accelerate, as if it was charging them.

Amy and Samewell fled, his hand clamped firmly around hers.

Leading the furious escape, the Doctor spotted an exit hatch in the end wall of the farm gallery. It was exactly the same as the hatch they’d entered the gallery by, except that it was shut.

It was the only way out.

He ran up to it, shoe-sliding the last few steps so he slammed into it. The hatch was sealed tight, but there was another palm-checker built into the frame. It hadn’t been tampered with or bored through. It was in full working order.

The Doctor slapped his right hand flat against the plate. A neon glow travelled up the metal under his hand. Then red lights began to flash in all four comers of the door and an angry klaxon sounded repeatedly.

The door did not recognise his print.

It wasn’t going to open.

‘Ah,’ said the Doctor. For a split second, he started to reach for his sonic screwdriver. Then he remembered that it was a waste of time. The Ice Warriors were far too close.

Arabel arrived beside him, and Amy and Samewell were just behind her. The Doctor turned to the terrified Arabel, grabbed her by the wrist, and jammed her right hand against the palm-checker. A neon glow travelled up the metal under her hand. There was a click, and then a hiss, and the hatch opened.

The Doctor bundled Arabel into the hatch, and then grabbed Amy and Samewell as they ran up, and shoved them through too. He turned in the open doorway, and took one last look at the advancing Ice Warriors. He grinned.

‘Warriors of the Tanssor clan!’ he cried out to them.

‘Warriors of the Tanssor clan line of the Ixon Mons family, inform your warlord that the Belot’ssar greets him!’

They stopped in their tracks and stared at him. He threw a cocksure salute, stepped backwards through the hatch and pressed the palm-plate. The klaxon sounded again, and the red corner lights flashed. The hatch did not shut with the dramatic flourish he’d been going for.

‘Still got to sort that part out,’ he acknowledged, pointing to the lock mechanism. The Ice Warriors started forward with renewed determination, raising their blades.