Jack Duggat locked them in and went back up the steps jangling the keys.

Amy sat down on the bench.

‘Great,’ she said.

The Doctor grinned at her. He flipped out his sonic screwdriver.

‘A lock,’ he said. ‘I can do locks. They’re easy-peasy.

Easier than trying to bluff a hall full of frightened people.’

‘Why are they frightened?’ asked Amy.

‘Because we’re strange,’ he said. ‘And anyway, wouldn’t you be if you’d never seen a proper winter before?’

Amy shrugged.

‘OK, open the lock,’ she invited. ‘Then what? We’ve got to get past all those blokes with pitchforks. If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll light torches and form a mob to chase us back to our castle.’

‘You’re upset,’ said the Doctor. ‘I can see that.’

‘Top marks to you,’ she replied. ‘I’m worried about Rory. Hell be worried about me. About us. He could be walking into anything.’

Bel stared fiercely at the Nurse Elect of Beside. ‘Just like that, Bill Groan? Just like that? You lock them up?

You don’t even ask the questions you should ask?’

‘He will, Arabel,’ said old Winnowner.

‘I will,’ Bill Groan agreed. He was thinking hard and studying the stranger’s wallet. Part of him was worried that its unguideliness might rub off and contaminate him, but it was too intriguing to set aside. The letter contained in the wallet was exactly the sort of letter that he would have issued as Nurse Elect of Beside. It bore Guide’s stamp, and the crest of the Hereafter plantnations. It was the very form of words he would compose. It even looked like his handwriting.

‘Perhaps it is real. Perhaps they are who they say they are,’ said Bel.

‘It’s not real,’ said Bill Groan.

‘Then they could have took it!’ snapped Bel. Took it from some poor Seesider who was coming here with good intentions. Took it, and left him for dead in a ditch—’

‘It’s not real!’ Bill snapped back. ‘Jack could read it, remember?’

‘So stop looking at it, and go and — ‘

‘Arabel Flurrish!’ Bill Groan exclaimed. ‘Take yourself back to your seat!’

‘Go ask them where my sister is!’ Bel shouted.

‘I know you’re worried, Arabel, but you show some common courtesy,’ said Bill Groan. He looked back at the wallet and his voice grew smaller. ‘The stars, and the cold, and now this,’ he said. ‘Guide help me, I don’t know what to do. Nothing like this has ever happened to us. I don’t even know how to start to think about it.’

‘It’s conjury,’ said Winnowner softly. ‘It’s a blight of conjury that’s brought the harsh winter upon us, and those two strangers are the cause. It’s their doing.’

‘I don’t believe in conjury,’ said Bill.

‘It’s their work,’ said Winnowner. ‘A blight of conjury.’

‘No,’ said Bill, shaking his head.

‘Did you see her hair?’ asked Chaunce. ‘I never seen hair like that before.’

‘The colour of blood,’ said Jack Duggat.

‘Not blood,’ murmured Samewell Crook.

Bill Groan looked at Old Winnowner. Her brow was furrowed with concern like an acre after the plough, but her thin smile was trying to reassure him.

‘What if it is conjury?’ he asked. ‘What if it is an unguidely thing?’

‘Then Guide will show us what to do,’ the old woman said. ‘Chapter and verse, well find the passage that applies to our situation, and follow Guide’s words, and be delivered. Like we always are with all things.’

Bill didn’t look convinced. He turned the wallet over in his hand, thoughtfully.

‘But Jack, who I’ve known since we were boys, he could read the words of this when he can’t read a word otherwise,’ he said. ‘That’s something that should not happen. It should not be possible, not under Guide’s laws. And if it’s something to which Guide’s laws do not apply, how do we fight that?’

Bel Flurrish held out her hand.

‘Can I see it, please, Elect?’ she asked.

Bill Groan hesitated. Old Winnowner looked particularly dubious. After a moment, he handed the wallet to Bel.

She looked at its outside first, turning it around and around before opening it.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘What?’ asked Bill.

Bel was staring at the open wallet. Words didn’t seem to want to form.

‘It’s — ‘ she began.

‘It’s highly convincing, isn’t it?’ asked Bill Groan.

Bel closed the wallet and handed it back to the Nurse Elect. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘Please, Elect. Please go down and ask them about my sister. The day is passing and night is coming again.’

‘I will, Bel, as soon as I have discussed what best to do.’

‘Don’t delay, Elect!’ Bel said in despair.

‘I will consult the council,’ Bill replied. ‘An hour, no more. Just so I know what to do in the face of further conjury. Then I will get some answers out of them.’

Bill Groan asked the council to take their seats again, and they quickly fell to talking.

Bel Flurrish watched for a while, fidgeting and anxious. When she could bear it no more, she got up.

Everyone was too busy discussing the issue to notice her slip out of the back of the assembly.

Rory ran.

He was running about as fast as he’d ever run in his life. He was certainly running as fast as he had ever run in heavy snow. More than once, the soft depth of it took his feet out from under him, or stole away his balance, and he went sprawling.

Each time, he got up and started running again.

He had no idea where he was running to. He had no idea which way the TARDIS was any more. All he knew for certain was which direction he was running from.

There had been something quite dreadful about the figures he had seen, something that had shaken him.

There had been four or perhaps five figures, and they’d simply been walking in his direction. The figures had been green, as though they were wearing suits or uniforms. They hadn’t been doing anything sinister or threatening. They hadn’t shouted at him, or shot at him.

Nevertheless, there had been something disturbing about the way they were advancing: slow, steady, relentless, utterly untroubled by the snow. He’d never seen anything as simple as walking look scary before, and that was saying something, because he’d seen Cybermen march. Cybermen moved with chilling, machined discipline. The way they walked matched the way they thought, and that was the terrifying part about them: the clinical precision.

The figures Rory had just seen had been lumbering.

They had displayed a relentlessness born not out of mechanical rhythm, but brutal, unwavering, physical determination.

They’d been big people, whoever they were.

Stupidly big. For a second, Rory wondered if they were wearing extensive and heavyweight coldweather gear. He thought he caught a flash of red from goggles or a visor. But even cold-weather gear wouldn’t have explained their size. They were towering, bulky humanoids, broad-bodied and slope-shouldered. They reminded him unpleasantly of the proper bruisers that were taken into A&E on a Saturday night, veterans of fights in pub car parks and brawls with doormen.

Those blokes weren’t athletically large: no broad shoulders and round biceps, like the Hollywood idea of a super hero. They were always real world big: thick through the chest and waist, with forearms like hams, and wrists as wide as their fists. Their flesh was dense.

They had a scary, unglamorous strength, a genuine power, bred not from a gym and a personal trainer, but from graft and life. Those were the ones you were wary around when you were on shift, the sullen ones who loomed, and looked at you from under drink-lowered eyelids, the ones who could suddenly turn and cripple you with a punch.

Rory knew, simply knew as a certainty, that the men he had seen were to be avoided. His first thought of hiding had been dashed. The plodding figures were too close. If they hadn’t seen him already, they would be about to, and he had no desire to cower behind a tree while they caught up with him. He’d started to run instead.