The Fifth Elephant d-24

by Terry Pratchett

  Behind him the door creaked open. He spun round, clutching the sack to him, and saw three very sombrely dressed women watching him carefully. One of them was holding a kitchen knife in a trembling hand.

  'Have you come here to ravish us?' she said.

  'Madam! I'm being pursued by werewolves!'

  The three looked at one another. To Vimes the sack suddenly seemed far too small.

  'Er, vill that take you all day?' said one of the women.

  Vimes held the sack more tightly. 'Ladies! Please! I need trousers!'

  'Ve can see that.'

  'And a weapon, and boots if you've got them! Please?'

  They went into another huddle.

  'We have the gloomy and purposeless trousers of Uncle Vanya,' said one, doubtfully.

  'He seldom wore them,' said another.

  'And I have an axe in my linen cupboard,' said the youngest. She looked guiltily at the other two. 'Look, just in case I ever needed it, all right? I wasn't going to chop anything down.'

  'I would be so grateful,' said Vimes. He took in the good but old clothes, the faded gentility, and played the only card in his hand. 'I am His Grace the Duke of Ankh, although I appreciate this fact is not evident at the—'

  There was a three-fold sigh.

  'Ankh-Morpork!'

  'You haf a magnificent opera house and many fine galleries.'

  'Such vonderful avenues!'

  'A veritable heaven of culture and sophistication and unattached men of quality!'

  'Er, I said Ankh-Morpork,' said Vimes. 'With an A and an M.'

  'Ve have always dreamed of going there.'

  'I'll have three coach tickets sent along immediately I get home,' said Vimes, his mind's ear hearing the crunch of speeding paws over snow. 'But, dear ladies, if you could fetch me those things—'

  They hurried away, but the youngest lingered by the door.

  'Do you have long cold winters in Ankh-Morpork?' she said.

  'Just muck and slush, usually.'

  'Any cherry orchards?'

  'I don't think we have any, I'm afraid.'

  She punched the air. 'Yesss!'

  A few minutes later Vimes was alone in the barn, wearing a pair of ancient black trousers that he'd tied at the waist with rope, and holding an axe that was surprisingly sharp.

  He had five minutes, perhaps. Wolves probably didn't stop to worry about heart attacks.

  There was no point in simply running. They could run faster. He needed to stay near civilization and its hallmarks, like trousers.

  Maybe time was on Vimes's side. Angua was never very talkative about her world, but she had said that, in either shape, a werewolf slowly lost some of the skills of the other shape. After several hours on two legs her sense of smell dropped from uncanny to merely good. And after too long as a wolf... it was like being drunk, as far as Vimes understood it; a little inner part of you was still trying to give instructions, but the rest of you was acting stupid. The human part started to lose control.

  He looked around the barn again. There was a ladder to an upper gallery. He climbed it and looked out of a glassless window across a snowy meadow. There was a river in the distance, and what looked very much like a boathouse.

  Now, how would a werewolf think?

  The werewolves slowed as they reached the building. Their leader glanced at a lieutenant and nodded. It loped off in the direction of the boathouse. The others followed Wolf inside. The last became human for a moment to pull the doors shut and drop the bar across.

  Wolf stopped near the centre of the barn. Hay had been scattered over the floor in great fluffy piles.

  He scraped gently with a paw, and wisps fell away from a rope that was stretched taut.

  Wolf took a deep breath. The other werewolves, sensing what was going to happen, looked away. There was a moment of struggling shapelessness, and then he was rising slowly on two feet, blinking in the dawn of humanity.

  That's interesting, thought Vimes, up on the gallery. For a second or two after changing, they're not entirely up on current events...

  'Oh, your grace,' said Wolf, looking around. 'A trap? How very... civilized.'

  He caught sight of Vimes, who was standing on the higher floor, by the window.

  'What was it supposed to do, your grace?'

  Vimes reached down to the oil lamp. 'It was supposed to be a decoy,' he said.

  He hurled the lamp down on to the dry hay and flicked his cigar after it. Then he grabbed the axe and climbed through the window just as the spilled oil went whump.

  Vimes dropped into the deep snow and ran towards the boathouse.

  There were other tracks leading to it, not human. When he reached the door he swung wildly at the darkness just inside, and his reward was a cut-off yelp.

  The skiff that was housed in the tumbledown shed was a quarter full of dark water, but he didn't dare think about bailing yet. He grabbed the dusty oars and rowed with considerable effort and not much speed out on to the river.

  He groaned. Wolf was trotting across the snow, with the rest of the pack behind him. They all seemed to be there.

  Wolf cupped his hands. 'Very civilized, your grace! But, you see, when you set fire to a barn full of wolves, they panic, your grace! But when they're werewolves, one of them just opens the door! You cannot kill werewolves, Mister Vimes!'

  'Tell that to the one in the boathouse!' Vimes shouted, as the current took the boat.

  Wolf looked into the shadows for a moment and then cupped his hands again. 'He will recover, Mister Vimes!'

  Vimes swore under his breath, because despite all his hopes a couple of werewolves had plunged into the water upstream and were swimming strongly towards the opposite bank. But that was a doggy thing, wasn't it? Leap joyfully into the water outdoors, but fight like hell against a tub.

  Wolfgang had started to trot along the bank. The ones in the water emerged on the far bank. Now they were keeping pace with the boat on both sides.

  But the current was carrying it along faster now. Vimes started to bail with both hands.

  'You can't outrun the river, Wolf!' he shouted.

  'We don' have to, Mister Vimes! That is not the question! The question is, can you outswim the waterfall? See you later, Civilized!'

  Vimes looked around. In the distance the river had a foreshortened look. When he concentrated, the inner ear of terror could hear a distant roaring.

  He snatched the oars again and tried to row upstream and, yes, it was possible to make headway against the current. But he couldn't keep rowing faster than wolves could run, and taking on two at once on the shore, when they were ready and waiting for him, was not an option.

  If he went over the falls now, he might get to the bottom before they did.

  That wasn't a good sentence, however he tried it.

  He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back—

  He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body—

  GOOD MORNING.

  Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.

  'Are you Death?'

  IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.

  'I'm going to die?'

  POSSIBLY.

  'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?'

  OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.

  'What's that?'

  I'M NOT SURE.

  'That's very helpful.'

  I THINK IT MEANS PEOPLE MAY OR MAY NOT DIE. I HAVE TO SAY IT'S PLAYING HOB WITH MY SCHEDULE, BUT I TRY TO KEEP UP WITH MODERN THOUGHT.

  The roar was a lot louder now. Vimes lay back in the boat and gripped the sides.

  I'm talking to Death, he thought, to take my mind off things.

  'Didn't I see you last month? I was chasing Bigge
r-than-Small-Dave Dave along Peach Pie Street and I fell off that ledge?'

  THAT IS CORRECT.

  'But I landed on that cart. I didn't die!'

  BUT YOU MIGHT HAVE DONE.

  'But I thought we all had some kind of hourglass thing that said when we're going to die?'

  Now the roar was almost physical. Vimes redoubled his grip on the boat.

  OH, YES. YOU DO, said Death.

  'But we might not?'

  NO. YOU WILL. THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT.

  'But you said—'

  YES, IT IS A BIT HARD TO UNDERSTAND, ISN'T IT? APPARENTLY THERE'S THIS THING CALLED THE TROUSERS OF TIME, WHICH IS QUITE ODD, BECAUSE TIME CERTAINLY DOESN'T—

  The boat went over the waterfall.

  Vimes had a thunderous sensation of pounding, thudding water, followed by the echoing ringing in his ears as he hit the pool below. He fought his way to what passed for the surface and felt the current take him, slam him into a rock and then roll him away in the white water.

  He flailed blindly and caught another rock, his body swinging around into a pool of comparative calm. As he fought for breath he saw a grey shape leaping from stone to stone and then another dose of hell was unleashed as it landed, snarling, beside him.

  He grabbed it desperately and hung on as it struggled to bite him. A paw flailed to gain purchase on the slippery stone and then, in sudden difficulties, responding automatically... it changed...

  It was as if the wolf shape became small and a man shape became bigger, in the same space, at the same time, with a moment of horrible distortion as the two forms passed through one another.

  And then there was that moment he'd noticed before, a second of confusion—

  It was just long enough to ram the man's head against the rock with every ounce of strength he could scrape together. Vimes thought he heard a crack.

  Then he pushed himself back out into the current and let it carry him on, while he simply struggled to stay near the surface. There was blood in the water. He'd never killed someone with his bare hands before. Truth to tell, he'd never deliberately killed at all. There had been deaths, because when people are rolling down a roof and trying to strangle one another it's sheer luck who is on top when they hit the ground. But that was different. He went to bed every night believing that.

  His teeth were chattering and the bright sun made his eyes ache, but he felt... good.

  He wanted to beat his chest and scream, in fact.

  They'd been trying to kill him!

  Make them stay wolves, said a little inner voice. The more time they spent on four legs the less bright they'd become.

  A deeper voice, red and raw, from much, much further inside, said, Kill 'em all!

  The rage was boiling up now, fighting against the chill.

  His feet touched bottom.

  The river was broadening here, into something wide enough to be called a lake. A wide ledge of ice had crept out from the bank, covered here and there with blown snow. Fog drifted across it, fog with a sulphurous smell.

  There were still cliffs on the far side of the river. A solitary werewolf, companion to the one now drifting on the current, was watching him from the nearest bank. Clouds were sliding across the sun and snow was falling again, in large, raggedy flakes.

  Vimes waded to the rim of ice and tried to pull himself up out of the water, but it creaked ominously under his weight and cracks zigzagged across its surface.

  The wolf came closer, moving with caution. Vimes made another desperate attempt, a slab of ice came free and tipped up, and he disappeared under the water. The creature waited a few moments and then inched further out over the ice, growling as fine cracks spread out like stars under its paws.

  A shadow moved in the shallow water below it. There was an explosion of water and breath as Vimes broke through the ice under the werewolf, grabbed it around the waist and fell back.

  A claw ripped along Vimes's side, but he gripped as hard as he could with arms and legs as they rolled under the ice. It was a desperate test of lung capacity, he knew. But he wasn't the one who'd just had the air squeezed out of him. He held on, while the water clanged in his ears and the thing scrabbled and scratched at him and then, when there was nothing else left but to let go or drown, he punched his way up to the air.

  Nothing lashed at him. He cracked his way through the ice to the bank, dropped on his hands and knees and threw up.

  Howling started, all around the mountains.

  Vimes looked up. Blood was coursing down his arms. The air stank of rotten eggs. And there, high on a hill a mile or so off, was the clacks tower...

  ... with its stone walls and door that could be bolted...

  He stumbled forward. The snow underfoot was already giving way to coarse grass and moss. The air was hotter now, but it was the clammy heat of a fever. And he looked around and realized where he was.

  There was bare dirt and rock in front of him, but here and there parts of it were moving and going 'blup'.

  Everywhere he looked there were fat geysers. Rings of ancient, congealed yellow fat, so old and rancid that even Sam Vimes wouldn't dip his toast in it unless he was really hungry, encircled sizzling little pools. There were even black floating bits, which on second glance turned out to be insects that were slow learners in a hot fat situation.

  Vimes recalled something Igor had said. Sometimes dwarfs working the high strata, where the fat had congealed into a kind of tallow millennia ago, found strange ancient animals, perfectly preserved but fried to a crisp.

  Probably... Vimes found himself laughing out of sheer exhaustion... probably battered to death.

  Mwahahaa.

  The snow was falling heavily now, making the fat pools spit.

  He sagged to his knees. He ached all over. It wasn't just that his brain was writing cheques that his body couldn't cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn't got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions.

  And still nothing was coming up behind him. Surely they must've crossed the river by now?

  Then he saw one. He could have sworn it hadn't been there a moment ago. Another one trotted out from behind a nearby snowdrift.

  They sat watching him.

  'Come on, then!' Vimes yelled. 'What are you waiting for?'

  The pools of fat hissed and bubbled around Vimes. It was warm here, though. If they weren't going to move, then neither was he.

  He focused on a tree on the edge of the fat geysers. It looked barely alive, with greasy splashes on the end of the longer branches, but it also looked climbable. He concentrated on it, tried to estimate the distance and the speed he might be capable of.

  The werewolves turned to look at it, too.

  Another one had entered the clearing at a different point. There were three watching him now.

  They weren't going to run until he did, he realized. Otherwise it wouldn't be fun.

  He shrugged, turned away from the tree... and then turned back and ran. By the time he was halfway there he was afraid his heart was going to climb up his throat, but he ran on, jumped awkwardly, caught a low branch, slipped, struggled gasping to his feet, grabbed the branch again and managed to pull himself up, expecting at every second the first tiny puncture as teeth broke his skin.

  He rocked on the greasy wood. The werewolves hadn't moved, but they were watching him with interest.

  'You bastards,' Vimes growled.

  They got up and picked their way carefully towards the tree, without hurrying. Vimes climbed a little further up.

  'Ankh-Morpork! Mister Civilized! Where are your weapons now, Ankh-Morpork?'

  It was Wolfgang's voice. Vimes peered around the snowdrifts, which were already filling up with violet shadows as the afternoon died.

  'I got two of you!' he shouted.

  'Yes, they will have big headaches later on! We are werewolves, Ankh-Morpork! Quite hard to stop!'

  'You said that you—'r />
  'Your Mister Sleeps could run much faster than you, Ankh-Morpork!'

  'Fast enough?'

  'No! And the man with the little black hat could fight better than you, too!'

  'Well enough?'

  'No!' shouted Wolfgang cheerfully.

  Vimes growled. Even assassins didn't deserve that kind of death. 'It'll be sunset soon!' he shouted.

  'Yes! I lied about the sunset!'

  'Well, wake me up at dawn, then. I could do with the sleep!'

  'You will freeze to death, Civilized Man!'

  'Good!' Vimes looked around at the other trees. Even if he could jump to one, they were all conifers, painful to land in and easy to fall out of.

  'Ah, this must be the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humour, yes?'

  'No, that was just irony,' Vimes shouted, still looking for an arboreal escape route. 'You'll know when we've got on to the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humour when I start talking about breasts and farting, you smug bastard!'

  So, what were his options? Well, he could stay in the tree and die, or run for it and die. Of the two, dying in one piece seemed better.

  YOU'RE DOING VERY WELL FOR A MAN OF YOUR AGE.

  Death was sitting on a higher branch of the tree.

  'Are you following me or what?'

  ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE WORDS 'DEATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION'?

  'But I don't usually see you!'

  POSSIBLY YOU ARE IN A STATE OF HEIGHTENED AWARENESS CAUSED BY LACK OF FOOD, SLEEP AND BLOOD?

  'Are you going to help me?'

  WELL... YES.

  'When?'

  ER, WHEN THE PAIN IS TOO MUCH TO BEAR. Death hesitated, and then went on. EVEN AS I SAY IT I REALIZE THAT THIS ISN'T THE ANSWER YOU WERE LOOKING FOR, HOWEVER.

  The sun was near the horizon now, getting big and red.

  Racing the sun... That was another Uberwald sport, wasn't it? Be home safe before the sun sets.

  Half a mile or more, through deep snow on rising ground.

  Someone was climbing up the tree. He felt it shake. He looked down. In the cold blue gloom a naked man was quietly pulling himself from branch to branch.

  Vimes was enraged. They weren't supposed to do this!