'What are they?' she said.

WE MUST HURRY. THERE IS NOT MUCH TIME.

     'I thought you always  had  time. I mean...  whatever it is you want to stop, you can go back in time and...'

AND MEDDLE?

     'You've done it before ...'

THIS TIME IT IS OTHERS WHO ARE DOING IT. AND THEY HAVE NO RIGHT.

     'What others?'

THEY HAVE NO NAME. CALL THEM THE AUDITORS. THEY  RUN THE UNIVERSE. THEY SEE TO IT THAT GRAVITY WORKS AND THE ATOMS SPIN, OR WHATEVER IT IS ATOMS DO. AND THEY HATE LIFE.

     'Why?'

IT IS... IRREGULAR.  IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. THEY LIKE STONES, MOVING  IN CURVES.  AND  THEY HATE HUMANS MOST OF ALL. Death sighed. IN MANY WAYS, THEY LACK A SENSE OF HUMOUR.

     'Why the Hog...'

IT IS THE THINGS  YOU BELIEVE WHICH MAKE YOU HUMAN. GOOD THINGS AND BAD THINGS, IT'S ALL THE SAME.

     The mists parted. Sharp peaks were around them, lit by the glow off the snow.

     'These  look like the  mountains where  the  Castle of Bones  was,' she said.

     THEY ARE, said Death. IN A SENSE. HE HAS GONE BACK TO A PLACE HE KNOWS. AN EARLY PLACE...

     Binky cantered low over the snow.

     'And what are we looking for?' said Susan.

YOU WILL KNOW WHEN YOU SEE IT.

     'Snow? Trees? I mean, could I have a clue? What are we here for?'

I TOLD YOU. TO ENSURE THAT THE SUN COMES UP.

     'Of course the sun will come up!'

NO.

     'There's no magic that'll stop the sun coming up!'

I WISH I WAS AS CLEVER AS YOU.

     Susan stared down out of sheer annoyance, and saw something below.

     Small dark  shapes moved across the whiteness, running as if  they were in pursuit of something.

     'There's...  some sort of chase...'  she conceded. 'I can see some sort of animals but I can't see what they're after...'

     Then she  saw  movement in  the snow, a blurred, dark shape dodging and skidding and never clear.  Binky dropped until his hooves grazed the tops of the pine  trees, which bent  in his  wake. A rumble followed  him across the forest, dragging broken branches and a smoke of snow behind it.

     Now they were lower she could see the hunters clearly. They  were large dogs. Their quarry was indistinct, dodging  among snowdrifts, keeping to the cover of snow-laden bushes.

     A drift exploded. Something  big  and long and blue-black  rose through the flying snow like a sounding whale.

     'It's a pig!'

     A BOAR. THEY DRIVE IT TOWARDS THE CLIFF. THEY'RE DESPERATE NOW.

     She could hear the  panting of the creature. The dogs  made no sound at all.

     Blood streamed onto the  snow from the wounds they had already  managed to inflict.

     'This... boar,' said Susan. It's . .

YES.

     'They want to kill the Hogf...'

NOT KILL.  HE KNOWS HOW TO DIE. OH, YES... IN THIS SHAPE, HE  KNOWS HOW TO DIE. HE'S HAD A LOT OF EXPERIENCE. NO, THEY  WANT  TO  TAKE AWAY HIS REAL LIFE, TAKE AWAY HIS SOUL, TAKE AWAY EVERYTHING. THEY MUST  NOT BE ALLOWED TO BRING HIM DOWN.

     'Well, stop them!'

YOU MUST. THIS IS A HUMAN THING.

     The  dogs moved  oddly. They weren't running  but flowing, crossing the snow faster than the mere movement of their legs would suggest.

     'They don't look like real dogs ...

NO.

     'What can I do?'

     Death nodded his head towards the boar. Binky was keeping level with it now, barely a few feet away.

     Realization dawned.

     'I can't ride that!' said Susan.

WHY NOT? YOU HAVE HAD AN EDUCATION.

     'Enough to know that pigs don't let people ride them!'

MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF.

     Susan glanced ahead. The snowfield had a cut-off look.

     YOU MUST, said her grandfather's voice in her head. WHEN HE REACHES THE EDGE THERE HE WILL STAND AT BAY. HE MUST NOT. UNDERSTAND? THESE ARE NOT REAL DOGS. IF THEY CATCH HIM HE WON'T JUST DIE, HE WILL... NEVER BE...

     Susan leapt. For a moment she floated through the air,  dress streaming behind her, arms outstretched...

     Landing on the animal's back  was like hitting a very, very firm chair. It stumbled for a moment and then righted itself.

     Susan's  arms clung to  its neck  and her face was  buried in its sharp bristles. She could feel the heat under her. It was like riding a furnace.

     And it stank of sweat, and blood, and pig. A lot of pig.

     There was a lack of landscape in front of her.

     The  boar  ploughed  into  the snow on  the  edge  of the  drop, almost flinging her off, and turned to face the hounds.

     There were a lot of them. Susan was familiar with dogs. They'd had them at home like other houses had rugs. And these weren't that big floppy sort.

     She rammed her heels in and grabbed  a pig's ear  in each  hand. It was like holding a pair of hairy shovels.

     'Turn left!' she screamed, and hauled.

     She put everything into  the command. It promised  tears before bedtime if disobeyed.

     To her amazement the boar grunted, pranced on the lip  of the precipice and scrambled away, the hounds floundering as they turned to follow.

     This was a plateau. From here it  seemed  to  be all edge, with no  way down except the very simple and terminal one.

     The dogs were flying at the boar's heels again.

     Susan  looked  around  in  the  grey, Sightless  air.  There  had to be somewhere, some way...

     There was.

     It was a shoulder of  rock, a giant knife-edge connecting this plain to the  hills  beyond. It was sharp and narrow, a thin line of snow with chilly depths on either side.

     It was better than nothing. It was nothing with snow on it.

     The boar reached  the edge and hesitated. Susan  put her head down  and dug her heels in again.

     Snout  down, legs moving like pistons,  the beast plunged out  onto the ridge.  Snow sprayed up as its  trotters sought for purchase. It made up for lack of grace by  sheer manic effort, legs moving like a tap dancer climbing a moving staircase that was heading down.

     'That's right, that's right, that's...'

     A trotter slipped.  For a moment  the boar  seemed to stand on two, the others  scrabbling at icy rock.  Susan flung herself the other way, clinging to the neck, and felt the dragging abyss under her feet.

     There was nothing there.

     She told  herself, "He'll catch me if I  fall he'll catch  me if I fall, he'll catch me if I fall..."

     Powdered ice made her eyes sting.  A  flailing  trotter  almost slammed against her head.

     An older voice said, "No, he  won't. If I fall now I don't deserve to be caught."

     The creature's eye was inches away. And then she knew...

     ... Out  of the depths of eyes of  all but the most unusual  of animals comes an echo. Out of the dark eye in front of her, someone looked back...

     A  foot  caught the  rock and she concentrated  her  whole being on it, kicking herself upward in one last effort. Pig and woman rocked for a moment and then a trotter caught a  footing and the  boar plunged forward along the ridge.

    Susan risked a look behind.

     The dogs  still moved oddly.  There was a slight jerkiness about  their movements, as if they  flowed from position to position rather than moved by ordinary muscles.

     Not dogs, she thought. Dog shapes.

     There was  another shock underfoot. Snow flew up. The world tilted. She felt  the shape  of the boar change when its muscles  bunched  and  sent  it soaring  as  a slab of ice and rock came away and began  the long slide into darkness.

     Susan  was thrown  off  when the creature landed, and tumbled into deep snow. She flailed around madly, expecting at any minute to begin sliding.