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When they heard the gunshots echoing through the trees, the villagers cried out and ran.

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Penelope dodged and ducked through the trees, keeping as close to the ground as she could manage. The samurai seemed intent on one another, paying little attention to the people she saw running back and forth, but there was no sense in taking chances.

She had to find the Doctor. It had become obvious that he was the only person who could resolve the situation. The only one who knew enough, had enough experience, to make everything come out the way it ought to.

She found him, somehow inevitably, at the centre of the storm. He was holding a small child who – oh, the poor thing had been struck by an arrow.

Penelope rushed forward. The Doctor turned his ashen face to her. ‘She’s dead,’ he said. ‘I thought I could save her, and now she’s dead.’

Penelope reached out. ‘Do not blame yourself,’ she said gently. ‘This is a terrible situation. Let me take her.’

The Doctor just shook his head. She decided it would be best not to insist –

he looked as though he was about to collapse. Penelope said, ‘Kadoguchiroshi sent me to find you, and anyone else who needs sanctuary. There is a secret entrance to the monastery. Come, I’ll show you.’

He shook his head again. ‘Doctor,’ she said firmly, ‘we cannot remain here.

It’s far too dangerous.’ She tried to take the child from his arms, and his face crumpled up with pain, and that was when she realized the child had been shot dead while he was holding her and the head of the arrow that had penetrated the girl’s body was protruding from his back.

Joel had managed to drag the sword out of its scabbard. It was heavy, so heavy that the tip kept dragging down to the ground.

Not as though anyone wanted to fight with him, the little scrawny foreign guy wearing no armour and glasses.

They were swarming up the ridge, silently, each samurai finding a match.

The combats were short and brutal: one proper blow with a katana would take off a limb or sever a neck. Joel had seen Hanagami slice clean through an attacker’s torso. The man had slid to the ground in two tidy halves.

Joel swung from side to side, spinning on the spot, but Still no one attacked him. He was panting, trying to grip his weapon with sweating hands, trying to look in all directions at once. All he expected was a sudden roaring as someone noticed him, a moment of startling pain, and blackness.

He really hoped they didn’t cut him in half. It would be too gross.

He saw Hanagami die. He had seen the samurai who did it, struggling up to the top of the ridge. The man’s banner had trailed behind him, snapped and dragging, and there were two of his own archers’ shots in his back.

He had run at Hanagami, shouting a desperate challenge.

Hanagani

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whirled, plucking his sword from a corpse, and the two of them crashed together, and then Hanagami’s head was bouncing down the hillside.

The man saw Joel, and came at him, limping and snorting with effort. Joel looked around frantically, but there was no one left, no one to protect him.

Even Gufuu-sama himself was locked in battle, his sword whirling around him like helicopter blades.

So Joel somehow managed to heft his katana and impale the charging man on it.

The guy fell right on him, knocking him flat. His arms and legs moved around for a bit, as though he was still working out how to kill Joel, even though he was dead.

Or maybe he just wanted to stick his fingers in his ears, so that he could die without having to listen to Joel screaming like a maniac.

Penelope’s stomach had turned, but she’d gritted her teeth and snapped the arrow and drawn it out of the girl’s body, gently pulling her away from the Doctor.

The time traveller was leaning back against a tree, at an angle. Two inches of bloodied shaft protruded from his chest, emerging from between his second and third ribs. His fingers were pressed to the wound, trying to hold back the bleeding.

The knifelike metal tip emerged from his back, a little lower. The arrow