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‘Very well. The Firbolg are creatures of honour, unlike you men. We have no quarrel with you only with the men who cower within the fortress of Dinorben. We shall let you pass.’

‘Thank you, Master Chawradd,’ the Doctor said and bowed again. ‘Come along, Ace’

‘But do not attempt to re-enter Dinorben. We have strict instructions to kill all those who attempt such folly, no matter what honour commands.’

We wouldn't dream of it,' said Ace. She gave her horse a quick nudge to get it moving after the Doctor. When she was level with him, she asked, 'What was all that grovelling about, Professor?'

He turned in his saddle and smiled at her, with his eyes as much as with the upturned corners of his mouth. ‘When you’ve read the entirety of Greek literature, and written some of it for that matter, you pick up a few facts. Like, for example, what a notoriously proud race the centaurs were.’

'But how could you know that these centaurs would be like that?’

'Just a guess After all, being nice couldn't have done us any harm, could it?’

They rode away from Dinorben, making good progress. The effort of riding precluded most attempts at talking and left Ace’s mind to wander freely. Tír na n-Óg slipped by around her, shrouded in the gloom of permanent twilight. But despite the conditions in which she saw it now, some lingering memory of times past seemed to have remained, captured by the very ground over which they rode.

Images projected themselves on to the screen of Ace's consciousness. A tree, whose leaves were concealed in a spreading blackness, told tales of wild dances by small red figures, their cavortings matched to the sound of weird music. A rocky outcrop stirred feelings of oneness with the surrounding countryside, provoking a rush of sensations from the grass, the small mammals, the uniformly spread clover and something else which reared up on its hindlegs and touched its horn to the sky. Ace began to know what it could be like to live hand in hand with nature rather than in the continual state of conflict which the men of Earth willingly endured. She found herself loving the land of Tír na n-Óg despite seeing it at its worst. It? she thought questioningly. Was that what she had meant? The land had a distinctly maternal feel to it. Protective, she would embrace those who had need but now, when she herself had need, she was being deserted by her children.

Ace started guiltily at the thought of motherhood. Was that what mothering was all about? Would Ace's own mother feel the same way? Had Ace treated her mother in exactly the way that the men of Dinorben were treating their own Land Mother? Uncomfortably, she closed off that line of thought and turned her mind away from the land.

Overhead, Arawn's Wheel grew shrouded in cloud and shone more and more dimly as it approached the western horizon. Finally, its upper circumference gave a single, last glimmer of light before vanishing completely. Dinorben was now far behind and they had passed through what the map indicated was the first outflung edges of the great forest through which they had to travel.

‘It's about time we looked for somewhere to spend the night,' the Doctor told Ace as they rode out of a small wood, 'and this looks like it might just be the place.'

Ahead of them was a small group of buildings, a farm by the look of the fields around it, sectioned off into different crops. Something seemed to have been let loose in several of the fields, for they were trampled by heavy feet.

They rode up along the track that led into the yard around which the buildings clustered. The Doctor dismounted and tied the horses to a post which seemed to have been erected for that purpose.

'Hello,' he shouted. 'Anyone home ?' There was no answer. He went to the door of the house and rapped on it with his knuckles. It swung open before falling off it’s hinges completely.

‘My God,' whispered Ace. The interior of the house was blackened and burnt and it reeked of a charnel-house smell.

‘Go and wait by the horses, Ace,’ the Doctor told her.

'But I ... '

'Do it ' he ordered. She