by The Wit
‘Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?’
Rincewind took a deep breath.
‘Continuously!’
‘Luck is my middle name,’ said Rincewind, indistinctly. ‘Mind you, my first name is Bad.’
It was something about Cohen. Maybe it was what they called charisma. It overpowered even his normal smell of a goat that had just eaten curried asparagus.
*
There was muttering from the Horde.
‘Bruce the Hoon never went in the back way’
‘Shut up.’
‘Never one for back gates, Bruce the Hoon.’
‘Shut up.’
‘When Bruce the Hoon attacked Al Khali, he did it right at the main guard tower, with a thousand screaming men on very small horses.’
‘Yeah, but… last I saw of Bruce the Hoon, his head was on a spike.’
‘All right, I’ll grant you that. But at least it was over the main gate. I mean, at least he got in.’
‘His head did.’
*
‘Who’re you?’ said Cohen. He drew his sword. ‘I need to know so’s it can be put on your gravestone—’
*
‘They want to parley’ said Six Beneficent Winds.
‘Why don’t we just invite them to dinner and massacre them all when they’re drunk?’
‘You heard the man. There’s seven hundred thousand of them.’
‘Ah? So it’d have to be something simple with pasta, then.’
*
The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet and Contra-flow.
*
Lord Hong looked at himself in the mirror.
He’d gone to great lengths to achieve this. He had used several agents, none of whom knew the whole plan. But the Ankh-Morpork tailor had been good at his work and the measurements had been followed exactly. From pointy boots to hose to doublet, cloak and hat with a feather in it, Lord Hong knew he was a perfect Ankh-Morpork gentleman. The cloak was lined with silk.
He’d walk through the city on that first great day and the people would be silent when they saw their natural leader.
It never crossed his mind that anyone would say, ‘ ‘Ere, wot a toff! ‘Eave ‘arf a brick at ‘im!’
*
‘You sound a very educated man for a barbarian,’ said Rincewind.
‘I didn’t start out a barbarian. I used to be a school teacher. But I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.’
‘After being a teacher all your life?’
‘It did mean a change of perspective, yes.’
‘But … well … surely … the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death …’
Mr Saveloy brightened up. ‘Oh, you’ve been a teacher, have you?’
*
‘There’s a lot of waiting in warfare,’ said Boy Willie.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Saveloy. ‘I’ve heard people say that. They say there’s long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement.’
‘Not really’ said Cohen. ‘It’s more like short periods of waiting followed by long periods of being dead.’
*
There were a large number of ranks in the armies of the Empire, and many of them were untranslatable. Three Pink Pig and Five White Fang were, loosely speaking, privates, and not just because they were pale, vulnerable and inclined to curl up and hide when danger threatened.
*
Pushing their way angrily through the soldiers came an altogether different breed of warrior. They were taller, and heavier armoured, with splendid helmets and moustaches that looked like a declaration of war in themselves.
‘Wassat?’ said Cohen.
‘He’s a samurai,’ said Mr Saveloy.
One samurai glared at Cohen. He pulled a scrap of silk out of his armour and tossed it into the air. His other hand grabbed the hilt of his long, thin sword …
There was hardly even a hiss, but three shreds of silk tumbled gently to the ground.
‘Get back, Teach,’ said Cohen slowly. ‘I reckon this one’s mine. Got another hanky? Thanks.’
The samurai looked at Cohen’s sword. It was long, heavy and had so many notches it could have been used as a saw.
‘You’ll never do it,’ he said. ‘With that sword? Never.’
Cohen blew his nose noisily.
‘You say?’ he said. ‘Watch this.’
The handkerchief soared into the air. Cohen gripped his sword …
He’d beheaded three upward-staring samurai before the handkerchief started to tumble.
‘And the message is,’ said Cohen, ‘either fight or muck about, it’s up to you.’
*
Golem … They were usually just figures made out of clay and animated with some suitable spell or prayer. They pottered about doing simple odd jobs. The problem was not putting them to work but stopping them from working; if you set a golem to digging the garden and then forgot about it, you’d come back to find it’d planted a row of beans 1500 miles long.
Woolly Thinking. Which is like Fuzzy Logic, only less so.
THE Opera House, Ankb-Morpork…
… a huge, rambling building, where masked figures and hooded shadows do wicked deeds in the wings… where dying the death on stage is a little bit more than just a metaphor… where innocent young sopranos are lured to their destiny by an evil mastermind in a hideously deformed evening dress…
Where…
… there’s a couple of old ladies in pointy hats eating peanuts in the gods and looking tip at the big chandelier and saying things like: ‘There’s an accident waiting to happen if ever I saw one.’
Yes … Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, the Discworld’s greatest witches, are back for an innocent night out at the opera.
So there’s going to be trouble (but nevertheless a good evening’s entertainment with murders you can really hum …)
Black Aliss; pushed into her own stove by a couple of kids, and everyone said it was a damn’ good thing, even if it took a whole week to clean the oven.
They said weapons couldn’t pierce her. Swords bounced off her skin. And she turned people into gingerbread and had a house made of frogs.
*
She stopped. At least, most of Agnes stopped. There was a lot of Agnes. It took some time for outlying regions to come to rest.
*
Agnes had woken up one morning with the horrible realization that she’d been saddled with a lovely personality. It was the lack of choice that rankled. No one had asked her, before she was born, whether she wanted a lovely personality or whether she’d prefer, say, a miserable personality but a body that could take size 9 in dresses. Instead, people would take pains to tell her that beauty was only skin-deep, as if a man ever fell for an attractive pair of kidneys.
*
People were generally glad to see Nanny Ogg. She was good at making them feel at home in their own home.
*
Lancre had always bred strong, capable women. A Lancre farmer needed a wife who’d think nothing of beating a wolf to death with her apron when she went out to get some firewood. And, while kissing initially seemed to have more charms than cookery, a stolid Lancre lad looking for a bride would bear in mind his father’s advice that kisses eventually lost their fire but cookery tended to get even better over the years, and direct his courting to those families that clearly showed a tradition of enjoying their food.
*
Granny is always there for the difficult times.
‘Maybe you could … help us?’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s my boy …’
Granny opened the door further and saw the woman standing behind Mr Slot. O
ne look at her face was enough. There was a bundle in her arms.
Granny stepped back. ‘Bring him in and let me have a look at him.’
She took the baby from the woman, sat down on the room’s one chair, and pulled back the blanket.
‘Hmm,’ said Granny, after a while.
‘There’s a curse on this house, that’s what it is,’ said Slot. ‘My best cow’s been taken mortally sick, too.’
‘Oh? You have a cowshed?’ said Granny. ‘Very good place for a sickroom, a cowshed. It’s the warmth. You better show me where it is.’
You want to take the boy down there?’
‘Right now.’
The man looked at his wife, and shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sure you know your business best,’ he said. ‘It’s this way’
He led the witches down some back stairs and across a yard and into the fetid sweet air of the byre. A cow was stretched out on the straw. It rolled an eye madly as they entered, and tried to moo.
Granny took in the scene and stood looking thoughtful for a moment.
Then she said, ‘This will do.’
‘What do you need?’ said Slot.
‘All I shall require is a candle,’ said Granny. ‘A new one, for preference.’
‘That’s all?’
‘And some matches,’ said Granny. A pack of cards might be useful, too.’
The child was brought down in a blanket and made as comfortable as possible.
‘You just leave me in here tonight. And no one is to come in, right? No matter what.’
The mother gave a worried curtsey. ‘But I thought I might look in about midn—’
‘No one. Now, off you go.’
Granny closed the door.
She spent some time arranging boxes and barrels so that she had a crude table and something to sit on. The air was warm and smelled of bovine flatulence. Periodically she checked the health of both patients, although there was little enough to check.
She waited a little longer and then lit the candle. Its cheery flame gave the place a warm and comforting glow.
After some immeasurable piece of time the flame flickered. It would have passed unnoticed by anyone who hadn’t been concentrating on it for some while.
She took a deep breath and—
‘Good morning,’ said Granny Weatherwax.
GOOD MORNING, said a voice by her ear.
Granny breathed out, slowly.
‘Come and sit where I can see you. That’s good manners. And let me tell you right now that I ain’t at all afraid of you.’
The tall, black-robed figure walked across the floor and sat down on a handy barrel, leaning its scythe against the wall. Then it pushed back its hood. Granny folded her arms and stared calmly at the visitor, meeting his gaze eye-to-socket.
Death leaned forward. The candlelight raised new shadows on his skull.
COURAGE IS EASY BY CANDLELIGHT. YOUR FAITH, I SUSPECT, IS IN THE FLAME.
Granny leaned forward, and blew out the candle. Then she folded her arms again and stared fiercely ahead of her.
After some length of time a voice said, All right, you’ve made your point.
Granny lit a match. Its flare illuminated the skull opposite, which hadn’t moved.
‘Fair enough,’ she said, as she relit the candle. ‘We don’t want to be sitting here all night, do we? How many have you come for?’
ONE.
‘The cow?’
Death shook his head.
‘It could be the cow.’
NO. THAT WOULD BE CHANGING HISTORY.
‘History is about things changing.’
NO.
Granny sat back.
‘Then I challenge you to a game. That’s traditional. That’s allowed.’
Death was silent for a moment.
THIS IS TRUE.
‘Good.’
HOWEVER … YOU UNDERSTAND THAT TO WIN ALL YOU MUST GAMBLE ALL?
‘Double or quits? Yes, I know.’
BUT NOT CHESS.
‘Can’t abide chess.’
OR CRIPPLE MR ONION. I’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE RULES.
‘Very well. How about one hand of poker? Five cards each, no draws? Sudden death, as they say’
Death thought about this, too.
YOU KNOW THIS FAMILY?
No.
THEN WHY?
‘Are we talking or are we playing?’
OH, VERY WELL.
Granny picked up the pack of cards and shuffled it, not looking at her hands, and smiling at Death all the time. She dealt five cards each.
Granny looked at her cards, and threw them down.
FOUR QUEENS. HMM. THAT IS VERY HIGH.
Death looked down at his cards, and then up into Granny’s steady, blue-eyed gaze.
Neither moved for some time.
Then Death laid the hand on the table.
I LOSE, he said. All I HAVE IS FOUR ONES.
He looked back into Granny’s eyes for a moment. There was a blue glow in the depth of his eye-sockets. Maybe, for the merest fraction of a second, barely noticeable even to the closest observation, one winked off.
Granny nodded, and extended a hand.
She prided herself on the ability to judge people by their gaze and their handshake, which in this case was a rather chilly one.
‘Take the cow,’ she said.
IT IS A VALUABLE CREATURE.
‘Who knows what the child will become?’
Death stood up, and reached for his scythe.
He said, OW.
‘Ah, yes. I couldn’t help noticing,’ said Granny Weatherwax, as the tension drained out of the atmosphere, ‘that you seem to be sparing that arm.’
OH, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS. REPETITIVE ACTIONS AND SO ON …
‘It could get serious if you left it.’
HOW SERIOUS?
‘Want me to have a look?’
WOULD YOU MIND? IT CERTAINLY ACHES ON COLD NIGHTS.
Granny’s hands touched smooth bone. She felt, thought, gripped, twisted …
There was a click.
OW.
‘Now try it above the shoulder.’
ER. HMM. YES. IT DOES SEEM CONSIDERABLY MORE FREE. YES, INDEED. MY WORD, YES. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Death walked away. A moment later there was a faint gasp from the cow. That and a slight sagging of the skin were all that apparently marked the transition from living animal to cooling meat.
Granny picked up the baby and laid a hand on its forehead.
‘Fever’s gone,’ she said.
MISTRESS WEATHERWAX? said Death from the doorway.
‘Yes, sir?’
I HAVE TO KNOW. WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF I HAD NOT … LOST?
‘At the cards, you mean?’
YES. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?
Granny laid the baby down carefully on the straw, and smiled.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘for a start … I’d have broken your bloody arm.’
*
‘So you’ll go and see Mr Goatberger and have this stopped, right?’
Yes, Esme.’
‘And I’ll come with you to make sure you do.’
Yes, Esme.’
‘And we’ll talk to the man about your money’
‘Yes, Esme.’
‘And we might just drop in on young Agnes to make sure she’s all right.’
‘Yes, Esme.’
‘But we’ll do it diplomatic like. We don’t want people thinkin’ we’re pokin’ our noses in.’
‘Yes, Esme.’
‘No one could say I interfere where I’m not wanted. You won’t find anyone callin’ me a busybody’
Yes, Esme.’
‘That was, “Yes, Esme, you won’t find anyone callin’ you a busybody”, was it?’
‘Oh, yes, Esme.’
You sure about that?’
Yes, Esme.’
‘Good.’
‘It’s too draughty on broomsticks this time of year, Esme. The breeze gets
into places I wouldn’t dream of talking about.’
‘Really? Can’t imagine where those’d be, then.’
She looked around with a wide, friendly grin at the occupants of the coach.
‘Morning,’ she said, delving into the sack. ‘I’m Gytha Ogg, I’ve got fifteen children, this is my friend Esme Weatherwax, we’re going to Ankh-Morpork, would anyone like an egg sandwich? I’ve brung plenty. The cat’s been sleepin’ on them but they’re fine, look, they bend back all right. No? Please yourself, I’m sure. Let’s see what else we’ve got … ah, has anybody got an opener for a bottle of beer?’
A man in the corner indicated that he might have such a thing.
‘Fine,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Anyone got something to drink a bottle of beer out of?’
Another man nodded hopefully.
‘Good,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘Now, has anybody got a bottle of beer?’
Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha! BEWARE!!!!! Yrs sincerely, The Opera Ghost
‘What sort of person,’ said Salzella, ‘sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man.’
Most people in Lancre, as the saying goes, went to bed with the chickens and got up with the cows.†
*
‘I grew up in Rookery Yard in The Shades. They’re in Ankh-Morpork,’ said Henry. ‘It was a terrible rough place. There were only three ways out. You could sing your way out or you could fight your way out.’
‘What was the third way?’ said Nanny.
‘Oh, you could go down that little alleyway into Shamlegger Street and then cut down into Treacle Mine Road,’ said Henry. ‘But no one ever amounted to anything who went that way’
*
You … you do know what kind of place this is, do you, Esme?’ said Nanny Ogg.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Granny, calmly.
Nanny’s patience gave out. ‘It’s a house of ill repute, is what it is!’
‘On the contrary’ said Granny. ‘I believe people speak very highly of it.’
*
‘I’m Mrs Ogg,’ said Nanny Ogg.
The man looked her up and down.
‘Oh yes? Can you identify yourself?’
‘Certainly I’d know me anywhere.’
*
