Carpe Jugulum

by Terry Pratchett

  “What did Granny mean, ‘from can to can’t’?” said Magrat.

  “Oh, from the first moment in the morning when you can see to the last moment in the evenin’ when you can’t,” said Nanny.

  “She’s really feeling low, isn’t she?”

  Nanny paused by the stone witch. Her pipe had gone out. She struck a match on the hooked nose.

  “There’s three of us,” she said. “The right number. So we’ll start by having a proper coven meetin’…”

  “Aren’t you worried?” said Agnes. “She’s…giving up…”

  “Then it’s up to us to carry on, isn’t it?” said Nanny.

  Nanny had placed the cauldron in the middle of the floor for the look of the thing, although an indoor coven meeting didn’t feel right, and one without Granny Weatherwax felt worse.

  Perdita said it made them look like soppy girls playing at it. The only fire in the room was in the huge black iron range, the very latest model, recently installed for Nanny by her loving sons. On it, the kettle began to boil.

  “I’ll make the tea, shall I?” said Magrat, getting up.

  “No, you sit down. It’s Agnes’s job to make the tea,” said Nanny. “You’re the mother, so it’s your job to pour.”

  “What’s your job, Nanny?” said Agnes.

  “I drinks it,” said Nanny promptly. “Right. We’ve got to find out more while they’re still actin’ friendly. Agnes, you go back to the castle with Magrat and the baby. She needs extra help anyway.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “You told me yourself,” said Nanny. “Vampires don’t affect you. As soon as they try to see Agnes’s mind it sinks down and up pops Perdita like a seesaw. Just when they’re looking at Perdita, here comes Agnes again. Young Vlad’s definitely got his eye on you, ain’t he?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Yeah, right,” said Nanny. “Men always like women that’ve got a bit of mystery to ’em. They like a challenge, see? And while he’s got his eye on you keeping your eye on Magrat, you’ve got your other eye on him, understand? Everyone’s got a weakness. Maybe we’ll not see the back of these vampires by going over to the curtains and saying ‘my, isn’t it stuffy in here,’ but there’s got to be some other way.”

  “And if there isn’t?”

  “Marry him,” said Nanny firmly. Magrat gasped. The teapot rattled in her hand.

  “That’s horrible!” she said.

  “I’d rather kill myself,” said Agnes. In the morning, said Perdita.

  “Dun’t have to be a long marriage,” said Nanny. “Put a pointy stake in your garter and our lad’ll be getting cold even before they’ve finished cutting up the wedding cake.”

  “Nanny!”

  “Or maybe you could just sort of…make him change his ways a bit,” Nanny went on. “It’s amazing what a wife can do if she knows her own mind, or minds in your case, o’course. Take King Verence the First, for one. He used to toss all his meat bones over his shoulder until he was married and the Queen made him leave them on the side of the plate. I’d only bin married to the first Mr. Ogg for a month before he was getting out of the bath if he needed to pee. You can refine a husband. Maybe you could point him in the direction of blutwurst and black puddings and underdone steak.”

  “You really haven’t got any scruples, have you, Nanny,” said Agnes.

  “No,” said Nanny, simply. “This is Lancre we’re talkin’ about. If we was men, we’d be talking about layin’ down our lives for the country. As women, we can talk about laying down.”

  “I just don’t want to hear this,” said Magrat.

  “I ain’t asking her to do what I wouldn’t do,” said Nanny.

  “Really? Then why—”

  “Because no one wants me to do it,” said Nanny. “But if I was fifty years younger I reckon I could have Sonny Jim bitin’ turnips by midsummer.”

  “You mean just because she’s a woman she should use sexual wiles on him?” said Magrat. “This is so…so…well, it’s so Nanny Ogg, that’s all I can say.”

  “She should use any wile she can lay her hands on,” said Nanny. “I don’t care what Granny said, there’s always a way. Like the hero in Tsort or wherever it was, who was completely invincible except for his heel and someone stuck a spear in it and killed him…”

  “What are you expecting her to do, prod him all over?”

  “I never understood that story, anyway,” said Nanny. “I mean, if I knew I’d got a heel that would kill me if someone stuck a spear in it, I’d go into battle wearing very heavy boots—”

  “You don’t know what he’s like,” said Agnes, ignoring the diversion. “He looks at me as if he’s undressing me with his eyes.”

  “Eyes is allowed,” said Nanny.

  “And he’s laughing at me all the time! As if he knows I don’t like him and that adds to the fun!”

  “Now you get into that castle!” Nanny growled. “For Lancre! For the King! For everyone in the country! And if he gets too much, let Perdita take over, ’cos I reckon there’s some things she’s better at!”

  In the shocked silence, there was a faint clinking noise from Nanny’s sideboard.

  Magrat coughed. “J-just like a the old days,” she said. “Arguing all the time.”

  Nanny stood up and unhooked a cast iron saucepan from the beam over the kitchen range.

  “You can’t treat people like this,” said Agnes, sullenly.

  “I can,” said Nanny, tiptoeing in the direction of the sideboard. “I’m the other one now, see?”

  Ornaments flew and shattered as she brought the saucepan down hard, bottom upward.

  “Got you, you little blue devil!” she shouted. “Don’t think I didn’t see you!”

  The saucepan rose. Nanny leaned her weight on the handle but it still moved slowly along the dresser, rocking slightly from side to side, until it reached the edge.

  Something red and blue dropped onto the floor and started moving toward the closed door.

  At the same time Greebo shot past Agnes, accelerating. And then, just as he was about to spring, he changed his mind. All four feet extended their claws at the same time and bit into the floorboards. He rolled, sprang onto his feet, stopped, and started to wash himself.

  The red and blue blur hit the door and picked itself up, becoming a blue man, six inches tall, with red hair. He carried a sword about the same size as himself.

  “Ach, hins tak yer scaggie, yer dank yowl callyake!” he screamed.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Nanny, relaxing. “Do you want a drink?”

  The sword was lowered slightly, but with a definite hint that it could be raised again at a moment’s notice.

  “’tazit?”

  Nanny reached down to the crate by her chair and sorted through the bottles.

  “Scumble? My best. Vintage,” she said.

  The wee man’s tiny eyes lit up. “Las’ Tuesda?”

  “Right. Agnes, open that sewing box and pass me a thimble, will you? Come away here, man,” said Nanny, uncorking the bottle well away from the fire and filling up the thimble. “Ladies, this here’s…let’s see them tattoos…yeah, this here’s one of the Nac mac Feegle. The little bastards comes down and raids my still about once a year.”

  “Yings, yow graley yin! Suz ae rikt dheu,” said the blue man, taking the thimble.

  “What is he?” said Magrat.

  “They’re gnomes,” said Nanny.

  The man lowered the thimble. “Pictsies!”

  “Pixies, if you insist,” said Nanny. “They live up on the high moors over toward Uberwald—”

  “Ach! Bae, yon snae rikt speel, y’ol behennit! Feggers! Yon ken sweal boggin bludsuckers owl dhu tae—”

  Nanny nodded while she listened. Halfway through the little man’s rant she topped up his thimble.

  “Ah, right,” she said, when he seemed to have finished. “Well, he says the Nac mac Feegle have been forced out by the vampires, see? They’ve been drivin
g all the…” her lips moved as she tried out various translations, “…old people…”

  “That’s very cruel!” said Magrat.

  “No…I mean…old races. The people that live in…the corners. You know, the ones you don’t see around a lot…centaurs, bogeys, gnomes—”

  “Pictsies!”

  “Yeah, right…driving ’em out of the country.”

  “Why should they do that?”

  “Probably not fashionable anymore,” said Nanny.

  Agnes looked hard at the pixie. On a scale of ethereal from one to ten he looked as if he was on some other scale, probably one buried in deep ocean sludge. The blueness of his skin, she could see now, was made up of tattoos and paint. His red hair stuck out at all angles. His sole concession to the temperature was a leather loincloth. He saw her looking at him.

  “Yist, awa’ fra’ yeeks, ye stawking gowt that’ya! Bigjobs!”

  “Er, sorry,” said Agnes.

  “Good language, ain’t it?” said Nanny. “A hint o’ heather and midden. But when you’ve got the Nac mac Feegle on your side, you’re doing okay.”

  The pixie waved the empty thimble at Nanny.

  “Ghail o’ bludy ‘lemonade,’ callyake!”

  “Ah, no foolin’ you, you want the real stuff,” said Nanny. She pulled back a chair cushion, and produced a black glass bottle with its cork held on by wire.

  “You’re not giving him that, are you?” said Magrat. “That’s your medicinal whisky!”

  “And you always tell people it’s strictly for external use only,” said Agnes.

  “Ah, the Nac mac Feegle are a hardheaded race,” said Nanny, handing it down to the tiny man. To Agnes’s amazement, he grasped a bottle bigger than himself with insolent ease. “There you go, man. Share it with your mates, ’cos I know they’re around here somewhere.”

  There was a clink from the dresser. The witches looked up. Hundreds of pixies had simply appeared among the ornaments. Most of them wore pointed hats that curved so that the point was practically pointing down, and they all carried swords.

  “Amazin’ how they can just fade into the foreground like that,” said Nanny. “That’s what’s kept ’em so safe all these years. That and killin’ most people who saw ’em, of course.”

  Greebo, very quietly, went and sat under her chair.

  “So…you gentlemen have been turned out by the vampires, have ye?” said Nanny, as the bottle bobbed through the throng. A roar went up.

  “Blaznet!”

  “Ach, yon weezit fash’ deveel!”

  “Arnoch, a hard tickut!”

  “Bigjobs!”

  “I daresay you can stop in Lancre,” said Nanny, above the din.

  “Just a moment, Nanny—” Magrat began.

  Nanny waved a hand at her hurriedly. “There’s that island up on the lake,” she went on, raising her voice. “It’s where the herons nest. Just the place, eh? Lots of fish, lots of hunting up the valley.”

  The blue pixies went into a huddle. Then one of them looked up.

  “Priznae? Yowl’s nae brennit, moy ghail!”

  “Oh, you’d be left to yourself,” said Nanny. “But no stealing cattle, eh?”

  “These steal cattle?” said Agnes. “Full-size cattle? How many of them does it take?”

  “Four.”

  “Four?”

  “One under each foot. Seen ’em do it. You see a cow in a field, mindin’ its own business, next minute the grass is rustlin’, some little bugger shouts ‘hup, hup, hup’ and the poor beast goes past voom! without its legs movin’,” said Nanny. “They’re stronger’n cockroaches. You step on a pixie, you’d better be wearing good thick soles.”

  “Nanny, you can’t give them the island! It doesn’t belong to you!” said Magrat.

  “It doesn’t belong to anyone,” said Nanny.

  “It belongs to the King!”

  “Ah. Well, what’s his is yours, so give ’em the island and Verence can sign a bit o’ paper later on. It’s worth it,” Nanny added. “A rent of not stealing our cows is well worth it. Otherwise you’ll see cows zippin’ around very fast. Backward, sometimes.”

  “Without their legs moving?” said Agnes.

  “Right!”

  “Well—” Magrat began.

  “And they’ll be useful,” Nanny added, lowering her voice. “Fighting’s what they like best.”

  “Whist, yon fellaight fra’ aquesbore!”

  “Drinkin’s what they like best,” Nanny corrected herself.

  “Nae, hoon a scullen!”

  “Drinkin’ and fightin’s what they like best,” said Nanny.

  “An’ snaflin’ coobeastie.”

  “And stealing cows,” said Nanny. “Drinkin’, fightin’ and stealin’ cows is what they like best. Listen, Magrat, I’d rather have ’em in here pissin’ out than outside pissin’ in. There’s more of them and they’ll make your ankles all wet.”

  “But what can they do?” said Magrat.

  “Well…Greebo’s frightened of ’em,” said Nanny.

  Greebo was two worried eyes, one yellow, one pearly white, in the shadows. The witches were impressed. Greebo had once brought down an elk. There was practically nothing that he wouldn’t attack, including architecture.

  “I’d have thought they’d have no trouble with vampires, then,” said Agnes.

  “Ach, c’na flitty-flitty! Ye think we’re flowers o’ the forest fairies?” sneered a blue man.

  “They can’t fly,” said Nanny.

  “It’s quite a nice island, even so…” Magrat mumbled.

  “Gel, your husband was messin’ around with politics, which is why we’re in this trouble, and to get you’ve got to give. Now he’s ill and you’re Queen so you can do as you like, right? There’s no one who can tell you what to do, isn’t that so?”

  “Yes, I suppos—”

  “So damn well give ’em the island and then they’ve got somethin’ here to fight for. Otherwise they’ll just push on through anyway and nick all our livestock on the way. Dress that up in fancy talk, and you’ve got politics.”

  “Nanny?” said Agnes.

  “Yup?”

  “Don’t get angry, but you don’t think Granny’s doing this on purpose, do you? Keeping back, I mean, so that we have to form a three and work together?”

  “Why’d she do that?”

  “So we develop insights and pull together and learn valuable lessons,” said Magrat.

  Nanny paused with his pipe halfway to her lips. “No,” she said, “I don’t reckon Granny’d be thinking like that, because that’s soppy garbage. Here, you blokes…here’s the key to the drinks cupboard in the scullery. Bugger off and have fun, don’t touch the stuff in the green bottles, because it’s—Oh, I expect you’ll be all right.”

  There was a blue blur, and the room was cleared.

  “We got things Granny ain’t got,” said Nanny.

  “Yes?” said Agnes.

  “Magrat’s got a baby. I’ve got no scruples. And we’ve both got you.”

  “What good will I be?”

  “Well, for one thing…you’re in two minds about everything—”

  There was a tinkle of glass from the scullery, and a scream of “Ach, ya skivens! Yez lukin’ at a faceful o’ heid!”

  “Crives! Sezu? Helweit! Summun hol’ me cote! Gude! Now, summun hol’ his arms!”

  “Stitch this, f’ra ma brinnit goggel!” Some more glass broke.

  “We’ll all go back into the castle,” said Nanny. “On our terms. Face this count down. And we’ll take garlic and lemons and all the other stuff. And some of Mr. Oats’s holy water. You can’t tell me all that stuff together won’t work.”

  “And they’ll let us in, will they?” said Agnes.

  “They’ll have a lot to think about,” said Nanny. “What with a mob at the gates. We can nip in round the back.”

  “What mob?” said Magrat.

  “We’ll organize one,” said Nanny.

&nb
sp; “You don’t organize a mob, Nanny,” said Agnes. “A mob is something that happens spontaneously.”

  Nanny Ogg’s eyes gleamed.

  “There’s seventy-nine Oggs in these parts,” she said. “Spon-taneous it is, then.”

  Her gaze fell for a moment on the forest of familial pictures, and then she removed a boot and hammered on the wall beside her. After a few seconds they heard a door bang and footsteps pass in front of the window.

  Jason Ogg, blacksmith and head male of the Ogg clan, poked his head around the front door.

  “Yes, Mum?”

  “There’s going to be a spontaneous mob stormin’ the castle in, oh, half an hour,” said Nanny. “Put the word out.”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “Tell every one I said it ain’t compuls’ry for them to be there, of course,” Nanny added. Jason glanced at the hierarchy of Oggs. Nanny didn’t have to add anything more to that sentence. Everyone knew the cat’s box sometimes needed lining.

  “Yes, mum. I’II tell ’em you said they didn’t have to come if they don’t want to.”

  “Good boy.”

  “Is it flaming torches or, you know, scythes and stuff?”

  “That’s always tricky,” said Nanny. “But I’d say both.”

  “Battering ram, Mum?”

  “Er…no, I don’t think so.”

  “Good! It is my door, after all,” said Magrat.

  “Anythin’ special for people to yell, Mum?”

  “Oh, general yellin’, I think.”

  “Anything to throw?”

  “Just rocks on this occasion,” said Nanny.

  “Not large ones!” said Magrat. “Some of the stonework around the main gate is quite fragile.”

  “Okay, nothin’ harder than sandstone, understand? And tell our Kev roll out a barrel of my Number Three beer,” said Nanny. “Better pour a bottle of brandy in it to keep out the chill. It can really strike right through your coat when you’re hanging around outside a castle chantin’ and wavin’. And get our Nev to run up to Poorchick’s and say Mrs. Ogg presents her compliments and we want half a dozen big cheeses and ten dozen eggs, and tell Mrs. Carter will she be so good as to let us have a big jar of those pickled onions she does so well. It’s a shame that we have not time to roast something, but I suppose you have to put up with that sort of inconvenience when you’re being spontaneous.” Nanny Ogg winked at Agnes