Have you seen the Doctor at all?’ Rory asked hopefully.

‘Where are you from?’ one of the men demanded.

‘Urn… Leadworth?’ Rory tried.

‘What kind of unguidely answer is that?’ asked one of the others.

‘I don’t know his face,’ said the man with the axe.

‘I’m a friend! I’m friendly!’ Rory declared, holding up his hands.

‘He’s a stranger,’ said a man with a pick.

‘Where is Vesta Flurrish?’ the man with the axe asked Rory.

‘Is it… near Leadworth?’

‘Take him,’ said the man with the axe. ‘Bind his hands. The council can decide what to do with him.’

‘There’s really no need for any of that!’ Rory cried.

‘Why don’t I just come with you? Without any need for binding of any sort? Why don’t I just come along with you?’

Despite his protests, they grabbed him. They were strong, they pinned his arms behind his back and turned him around, steering him by the shoulders.

Then they all stopped.

Something had walked into the clearing behind them. It stood gazing at them through glinting, red, triangular eyes. It was green, the colour of moss on the underside of a stone, and its thick skin was whorled and ridged like the hide of an alligator. A faint rasping, hissing wheeze of respiration was coming from its barrel-thick chest.

It was at least two metres tall and built like an oak tree.

‘Told you,’ said Rory.

Chapter

5

The Hopes and Fears

of All the Years

The green thing hissed out a breath and took a step.

Rory flinched. The man with the beard let out a great howl of fear and fury, and swung his axe.

The axe was a good one, with a head fashioned from shipskin. It struck the green thing square in the centre of the chest, and actually bit into the crocodile skin bulge of the scaled armour.

The green thing didn’t even jolt. It was as though the bearded man had buried his axe into an ancient and unyielding tree.

The axe was stuck fast. The bearded man tried to pull it out for another swing. The green thing made a grunting hiss and lashed out with its left arm. A massive, pincered hand caught the bearded man on the upswing and hoisted him into the air. The impact was an ugly, bone-cracking sound that made Rory flinch again. The bearded man flew backwards and upwards, particles of snow fluttering off his legs, and tore into the low canopy of the trees. He crashed back down onto the snow, bringing broken branches, twigs and a heavy fall of snow-gather with him.

Once he had landed, he stopped moving.

The other men registered a moment of shock at the sheer force that the upswing had communicated. A single swipe had propelled their leader metres through the air. Chastened, they hurled themselves at the green thing, raining blows with picks and mattocks and other stout farm tools.

It was brave. It was a terrible mistake. The blows rebounded ineffectually. The green thing threw out its right pincer and knocked a man sideways into a tree.

The impact jolted snow out of the branches. Taking another step, the green thing reached up, grasped the haft of the axe buried like a handle in its belly, and pulled it out. Then it swung the axe, catching another man in the face with the back of the axehead. The impact lifted the man clean off his feet. He landed on his back in the snow with his mouth open, dead or profoundly unconscious.

A man with a pitchfork rushed the green thing, trying to run the tines through its deep torso. He yelled as he charged. The green thing tossed aside the axe, which disappeared through the trees, spinning end over end and making a slow whupping sound like a ceiling fan, and raised its left pincer. The movement was fast and oddly precise for something so stiff and ungainly.

The pincer neatly caught the thrusting pitchfork between the tines and blocked it. The man lurched and stumbled as his pitchfork stopped moving. The green thing tightened its clamping grip and snapped the head of the pitch fork off its wooden shaft. The man holding the pitchfork jabbed the broken end repeatedly against the thing’s ridged torso. The green thing pointed its right pincer at him.

There was a small tube attached to its forearm. It was a weapon of some kind. The discharge made a nasty, throbbing sound, and the air seemed to warp and bulge. Caught by this twisting, pressurised force, the man dropped dead.

Rory was running by then. In attacking the green thing, the men had entirely forgotten about him. The sheer, clinical brutality of its response had proved to Rory that his first instincts had been correct. The giant green figures were not to be bargained with. They were lethal and malicious, and they existed only to be avoided at all costs.

Rory’s ears were ringing from the awful sonic discharge of the thing’s weapon. Even though it hadn’t been aimed at him, it had given him an awful headache and, from the blood he could taste on the back of his tongue, a nosebleed.

The other men - those still on their feet – were fleeing too. Rory gasped as he heard the sonic weapon fire a second time. The air shimmered and buckled, and a man fleeing a dozen metres to Rory’s left crumpled into the snow, rolled over, and lay still.

The next one was going to be him.

There was no cover.

The next blast was definitely going to kill him.

They left Beside and followed the North Lane track up past the frozen well and out of what Bel called the Spitablefields. These large, gently sloping areas were blanketed with snow, but the Doctor and Amy could see that they had been carefully cleared and ranged into strips for cultivation like a market garden. Amy noticed lines of planting canes and frames, all edged with snow like ermine, left over from the growing season. The pathway itself, a climbing track, was screened on the settlement side by a box hedge that, snowbound, looked like a giant frosted slice of key lime pie.

Dogs barked in the village below.

‘What was that?’ asked the Doctor, stopping to listen.

‘Dogs,’ said Bel.

Amy looked back. An afternoon whiteness was beginning to hollow out the blue of the sky, and the vapour around the mountains had become more of a haze. There was a smell in the air that she associated with approaching snowfall. It was a smell she had cherished as a little girl.

‘Not dogs,’ said the Doctor.

They continued. Beyond the Spitablefields and the hedged track line, a stand of trees marked the edge of snow-dusted woodland.

The Doctor stopped again. He cocked his head to one side. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.

‘What?’ asked Amy.

‘That sound. I know that sound.’

‘What sound?’ asked Amy.

‘Just dogs,’ said Bel.

‘No, the other sound. It’s a long way off, but it’s carrying. It’s distinctive. I know that sound. Where have I heard it before?’

Amy listened. ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she began, and then stopped. ‘Oh, wait,’ she said. ‘I heard something then. A funny noise.’

The Doctor nodded. ‘A funny noise…’ he echoed.

He turned around suddenly and stared at the hedge.

‘I think you should come out,’ he said.

A man stepped out of the shadows.

‘I think you should tell me where you’re going, Arabel,’ said Samewell Crook.

Rory ducked behind a tree. Dread had a grip on him, and he desperately wished that breathing didn’t make so much noise. Exertion combined with panic was making the air suck in and out of his lungs in gasps.

The sound was going to give him away.

He’d heard two more of the blasts, the earshredding throbs of the green thing’s energy weapon. The second blast had been accompanied by the agonised yelp of a man being felled by lethal, contorting air. The green thing was close. What did it want, apart from to kill them all? Was it trying to eliminate witnesses?