It missed, but the dogs took a couple of steps back even so.

Then started forward again. There were four of them now no, five, making a half-circle around Rowenna and Julie.

A growl behind her. She turned, and two more dogs skittered back, snarling.

Her hands shaking, she flung her remaining change after them.

The gun, she thought. The goddamn gun. Where is it?

She shifted her position, patting the grass frantically, looking for the dark shape of the weapon.

The dogs were advancing now, tails down, snouts low, ominously silent.

Rowenna felt herself beginning to panic. She found a deodorant spray in Julie's purse, an old lipstick, a computer disk.

She threw them, but the dogs only dodged the missiles. One lunged forward, bit Julie's sleeve, then danced back when Rowenna struck out at it.

Julie stirred, groaned, opened her eyes for a second.

'It's OK,' lied Rowenna.

She felt something pulling at her body, and with a sudden start of horror realised that one of the dogs was worrying her leg, far below the level where she had any feeling. She punched it, felt her fist connect with rough hot fur. The dog jumped up, caught her arm in its teeth.

Pain. Her arm was lifting up, with the dog still attached. Her body was tilting, she was losing her balance, and her arm hurt, it hurt, it was going to break, she was going to And then the dog had let go, retreated, but another had taken its place at her feet and this was going to go on, go on until she was exhausted and they killed her, and another one had its teeth in her leg oh God it's eating me another one had its teeth in her leg oh God it's eating me and another dived for her throat and another dived for her throat 'No get back '

Her arm connected with something solid, and the dog was a snarling heap of fur on the ground, tangled up with the two that had been attacking her legs, the pile of them temporarily blocking the way for the others.

Rowenna knew she had only a couple of seconds. And there was one thing, one thing she hadn't tried...

She reached into Julie's bag, found a familiar flat plastic shape, pulled it out and pressed the button.

The air filled with the warbling, mechanical shriek of a rape alarm.

The dogs jumped back as if they'd been hit, vanished into the grass. The pile at Rowenna's feet disentangled themselves and ran. Only one remained, its teeth in Julie's arm, its ears flat against its skull.

Rowenna swung the hand with the alarm at it, and it too jumped back, its mouth full of cloth and flesh.

Rowenna saw the blood pooling around Julie and she swallowed, hard. She felt sick.

But the dogs were gone gone.

She held the rape alarm tightly, trying to remember how long the batteries lasted.

It would have to be long enough for Jo or the Doctor to get back.

If either of them was still alive. If the dogs hadn't had them. Or the lions. Or the hyenas. Or the australos. Or Jacob Hynes.

She held the alarm above her head, hoping that it might make the sound audible a little further away.

Then she saw the dog.

It was looking at her from the grass, its eyes full of intelligent calculation. She waved the alarm at it, but it just took a step forward. Another was emerging from the grass, moving slowly, but advancing.

Rowenna's body began to shake. They had got used to the noise. They'd realised it wasn't going to hurt them. She saw the blood on the ground, the blood on her legs, they could smell the blood they could smell the blood And they were coming back.

The shrieking electronic noise made Kitig pause, his hoof still raised above the Doctor's head.

'It'll be Rowenna,' gasped the Doctor. 'Rowenna and her friend. They're in trouble. Look, please, let me up. You have my word that I ' He hesitated. 'I'll let you do what you want, afterwards, but we must save them. We can't let them die; they're innocent bystanders.'

There was a faint, unmistakably human, shriek, blended with the continuing noise of the electronic alarm.

Pain, terror.

Kitig made his decision. He lifted the hoof that held the Doctor down and lifted the alien up in his arms and on to his back.

Then he started back along the river bed at a gallop.

Rowenna screamed again: 'Doctor!'

She saw that Julie's eyes were open, her lips moving.

'Dogs,' said Rowenna briskly.

She felt a sharp pain in her belly.

A dog. A dog clinging on. She slapped it, punched it, tried to pull it away. Felt the pain register as its grip on her flesh tightened.

Rough fur brushed her neck, and the rotted-meat smell of canine breath filled her nose and throat.

She rolled over, hoping to crush the dog underneath her. It wriggled, howled, slithered out.

Another dog landed on her back.

She heard Julie bawling for help.

I'm not going to survive this this time it's over I'm going to die And Julie was screaming and Rowenna was strangling the dog on her chest, her hands on its throat, but another one had her arm and it hurt and its jaws were on her throat and the blood The ground shook, and something knocked her body to one side. Colours flew overhead, scarlet and violet.

The ground shook again. A dog was flying though the air, contorted, howling.

The dog at her arm let go and fell back, limp. Everywhere, dogs were screaming, a wild, frightened keening totally unlike the professional yips and growls that had accompanied the battle up till now. Rowenna struggled to sit up, couldn't.

Her vision blurred for a moment, and then she was being lifted up by a knight on a huge white horse dressed in medieval finery No.

A horse on its own, with arms. Like the thing in Hynes's cave. And the Doctor was standing beside it, with an expression of desolation on his face.

Rowenna looked around, saw that one last dog was still worrying at Julie's body. The horselike creature stood on it, and there was a loud crack of bone.

'Oh God,' breathed Rowenna. The words bubbled in her throat. 'Is she...?'

But the Doctor wasn't looking at Julie. He was looking at Rowenna.

She tried to speak again, felt hot fluid running down her throat, on to her chest. She lifted her hands. They felt heavy, infinitely heavy, and they were covered in blood.

The Doctor was saying something, but for some reason Rowenna couldn't hear it. She tried to read his lips, but she was feeling tired, so tired, and it was complicated, too complicated, and the Doctor's hand reached out and touched her face, and then she heard the words innocent bystanders And saw the tears in his all-too-human eyes.

And then she died.

CHAPTER 16.

Sam stared around at the shimmering yellow grass, twirling her backpack in her hands. The hot dry wind blew through the doors into her face, carrying a smell of dung and baked earth. The pack was heavy: the material cut into her fingers. In it were a book, a compass, a sketch pad and pencil, some pears, a celery sandwich and a bottle of water. Everything she needed for an afternoon picnic on the African plains.

Except that this was no picnic.

She squinted, pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes, then put the backpack on again, walked to the nearest rock, and scrambled up to take a look at the view. Tumbled rocks, bushes, and grasses were scattered across a vast plain dotted with small trees. A single, shambling mountain, about a kilometre away, perhaps five hundred metres high.

Nothing. The word 'trackless' must have been invented for this environment.

Sam had walked right around the TARDIS, a four-hundred-metre circuit. There was no trace of the Doctor anywhere.

There was no mark that looked as if it might have been made by the Doctor's shoes, nothing that might have come from the Doctor's pockets.

She looked out at the plain again, felt the sweat start to trickle down her forehead.

Nothing for it: she would have to try to climb the mountain, and look from the top. She checked the position of the sun in the sky, began working her way towards the rocky outcrops that formed the base of the hill. As the rocks rose around her, she looked in the shadows where the earth might be softer, hoping for a clue.

More soft hoof marks. A pugmark a big cat, she wasn't sure how big. She looked nervously towards the rocky slopes, wondering if any of the caves contained leopards.

Then, looking down again, she saw it.

A human footprint. A bare foot, and strangely shaped. It wasn't what she'd wanted to see, but nonetheless Sam felt a thrill, knowing that she was quite literally walking in the footsteps of her almost infinitely distant ancestors. Seeing what they saw. Hearing what they heard. Smelling what they could smell.

She took a gulp from her water bottle, listened to the sounds of the wilderness. Rustling grasses. A bird's call, raucous and repetitive. A distant roar that might be a lion or a leopard or Another sound. Closer.

A clatter of pebbles.

'Doctor?'

Probably not, she thought. Much more likely to be A grunt.

A movement.

Sam had a fleeting glimpse of a figure in the grass beyond the rocks, dark, apelike, moving fast.

Baboons? Some kind of primitive humans?

She stopped, waited, trying not to breathe too hard.

The movement again. A face. Deep, black eyes staring at her over the edge of a rock.

More movements, the patter of flesh on stone. She could make out a body now, crouching, no more than yards away: coarse, sparse hair, the skin underneath dark, but not quite black.

Shadows. Fingers, toes moving, flickers of grey-pink skin.

And then they were all around her. She could smell their breath, pungent and vegetal. They were shorter than she was, but not by as much as she would have expected. Big, more like gorillas than chimps. More like people than either. Their skulls were low, but their backs were straight. Their eyes were bright, intelligent, curious.

Almost human.

A hand reached out and pinched her sleeve. She jumped back, more afraid than she wanted to be. She felt the warmth of bodies behind her, cutting her off from the shelter of the rock.

They're just curious, she told herself. But she wasn't entirely convinced.

More touches. On her back, her arms, her legs, her bum. The back of her head, her throat.

'Leave me alone!' she snapped.

A chorus of grunts came in response. Then a tall male shouldered the others aside and faced her. He wasn't much shorter than Sam and must have been almost twice her weight.

He reached out, quite slowly, and took hold of her shoulders.

Sam tried to turn away, but the grip was solid. Other hands were touching her again, pulling at her clothes, pinching her skin. The lead male began to shake her. It wasn't gentle.

She felt a surge of panic, and kicked out. The male jumped backward, clutching his genitals in a gesture that might have been hugely amusing, in different circumstances. As it was, all Sam was interested in was the gap to his left. She dived for it, shaking off arms that tried to grab her. She thought she'd made it when a cuff to the head sent her spinning to the ground.

A heavy body landed on top of her, cuffed her again.

Then froze.

The chorus of grunts was drowned out by a single terrifying, primal, scream. A scream that turned into words.

'I am the sabre-tooth! I am the leopard! I am all your nightmares come true, you overgrown baboons!' The words turned into laughter, helpless human laughter.

There were screams from the creatures, the thudding of feet. A heavy body leaping over hers.

Then, slowly, silence.