The Fifth Elephant

by Terry Pratchett

  Among the other unwanted baggage that had been heaped on the young Sybil to hamper her progress through life was the injunction to be pleasant to people and say helpful things. People took this to mean that she didn’t think.

  She’d hated the way Serafine had talked about dwarfs. She’d called them “subhuman.” Well, obviously most of them lived underground, but Sybil rather liked dwarfs. And Serafine spoke of trolls as if they were things. Sybil hadn’t met many trolls, but the ones she knew seemed to spend their lives raising their children and looking for the next dollar just like everyone else.

  Worst of all, Serafine simply assumed that Sybil would naturally agree with her stupid opinions because she was a Lady. Sybil Ramkin had not had an education in these things, moral philosophy not having featured much in a curriculum that was heavy on flower-arranging, but she had a shrewd idea that in any possible debate the right side was where Serafine wasn’t.

  She’d only ever written all those letters to her because it was what you did. You always wrote letters to old friends, even if you weren’t very friendly with them.

  She sat on the bed and stared at the wall until the shouting started, and when the shouting started she knew Sam was alive and well, because only Sam made people that angry.

  She heard the key click in the lock.

  Sybil rebelled.

  She was large, and she was kind. She hadn’t enjoyed school much. A society of girls is not a good one in which to be large and kind, because people are inclined to interpret that as “stupid” and worse, “deaf.”

  Lady Sybil looked out of the window. She was two floors up.

  There were bars across the window, but they’d been designed to keep something out; from the inside, they could be lifted out of their slots. And there were musty but heavy sheets and blankets on the bed. None of this might have suggested very much to the average person, but life in a rather strict school for well brought-up young ladies can give someone a real insight into the tricks of escapology.

  Five minutes after the key had turned, there was only one bar in the window and it jerked and creaked in the stonework, suggesting that quite a heavy weight was on the sheets that had been neatly knotted around it.

  Torches streamed all along the castle walls. The ghastly red and black flag snapped in the wind. Vimes looked over the side of the bridge. The water was a long way down, and pure white even before it reached the waterfall. Forward and back were the only possible directions here.

  He reviewed his troops. Unfortunately, this did not take long. Even a policeman could count up to five. Then there was Gavin and his wolves, who were lurking in the trees. And finally, very definitely finally, there was Gaspode, the Corporal Nobbs of the canine world, who’d attached himself to the group uninvited.

  What else was on his side? Well, the enemy preferred not to use weapons. This bonus evaporated somewhat when you remembered that they had, at will, some very nasty teeth and claws.

  He sighed, and turned to Angua.

  “I know this is your family,” he said. “I won’t blame you if you hang back.”

  “We’ll see, sir, shall we?”

  “How are we going to get in, sir?” said Carrot.

  “How would you go about it, Carrot?”

  “Well, I’d start by knocking, sir.”

  “Really? Sergeant Detritus, forward please.”

  “Sir!”

  “Blow the bloody doors off!”

  “Yessir!”

  Vimes turned back to Carrot as the troll gazed thoughtfully at the door and began making extra turns on his crossbow’s winch, grunting as the springs fought back. Their fight was unsuccessful.

  “This isn’t Ankh-Morpork, see?” said Vimes.

  Detritus hoisted the bow onto his shoulders and took a step forward.

  There was a thunk. Vimes didn’t see the bundle of arrows leave the bow. They were probably already fragments by the time they’d gone about a few feet. Halfway toward the doors the expanding cloud of splinters exploded into flame from the air friction.

  What hit the doors was a fireball as angry and unstoppable as the Fifth Elephant and traveling at an appreciable fraction of local light speed.

  “My gods, Detritus,” muttered Vimes, as the thunder died away, “That’s not a crossbow, that’s a national emergency…”

  A few bits of charred door crashed onto the cobbles.

  “The wolves won’t come in, Mister Vimes,” said Angua. “Gavin will follow me, but they won’t come, not even for him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re wolves, sir. They don’t feel at home in houses.”

  The only sound was the squeak-squeak of Detritus winding up his bow again.

  “The hell with it,” said Vimes, drawing his sword and stepping forward.

  Lady Sybil untucked her dress from her underwear and stepped carefully across the little courtyard. She was somewhere around the rear of the castle, as far as she could make out.

  She flattened herself as best she could against the wall when she heard a sound, and tightened her grip on one of the iron bars that had formerly graced the window.

  A large wolf came around the corner, holding a bone in its mouth. It did not look as it was expecting her, and certainly wasn’t expecting the iron bar.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” said Sybil automatically, as it folded up onto the cobbles.

  There was an explosion on the other side of the castle. That sounded like Sam.

  “Do you think they heard us, sir?” said Carrot.

  “Captain, people in Ankh-Morpork probably heard us. So where are all the werewolves?”

  Angua pushed forward. “This way,” she said.

  She led them up a flight of low steps to the door of the keep, and tried one of the doors. It swung back slowly.

  There were torches in the hall, too.

  “They’ll leave us somewhere to run,” she said. “We always leave people somewhere to run…”

  A pair of smaller doors at the far end of the hall were pushed open. No handles, Vimes noted. Paws can’t use handles.

  Wolfgang stepped in. A couple dozen werewolves escorted him, fanning out around the room and sitting down…sprawling down and then watching the intruders with keen interest.

  “Ah, Civilized!” said Wolfgang cheerfully. “You won the Game! Would you like another go? When people have a second Game we give them a handicap! We bite one of their legs off! Good joke, hey?”

  “I think I prefer the Ankh-Morpork sense of humor,” said Vimes. “Where’s my wife, you bastard?” He could still hear the sound of Detritus winding. That was the trouble with the big bow. It was only a quick-fire weapon by geological standards.

  “And Delphine! Look at what the dog dragged in!” said Wolfgang, ignoring Vimes. He stepped forward. Vimes heard a growl begin in Angua’s throat, a sound which could cause instant obedience in many of Ankh-Morpork’s criminal population when they encountered it in a dark alley. There was a deeper rumble from Gavin.

  Wolfgang stopped.

  “You haven’t got the brains for this, Wolfie,” said Angua. “And you couldn’t plot your way out of a wet paper bag. Where’s Mother?” She looked around at the lolling werewolves. “Hello, Uncle Ulf…Aunt Hilda…Magwen…Nancy…Unity…The pack’s all here, then? Except for Father, who I expect is off rolling in something. What a family—”

  “I want these disgusting people out of here right away,” said the baroness, stepping into the hall. She glared at Detritus. “How dare you bring a troll into this house!”

  “O-kay, it’s all wound up,” said Detritus cheerfully, hoisting the humming bow onto his shoulder. “Where should I fire it, Mister Vimes?”

  “Good grief, not in here! This is an enclosed building!”

  “Only up until I pull dis trigger, sir.”

  “How very civilized,” said the baroness. “How very Ankh-Morpork. You think you merely have to threaten and the lesser races back down, eh?”

  �
�Have you seen your gates lately?” said Vimes.

  “We’re werewolves,” snapped the baroness—and it was a snap, the words sharp and clipped as though they were barked. “Stupid toys like that don’t frighten us.”

  “But it’ll slow you down for a while. Now bring out Lady Sybil!”

  “Lady Sybil is resting. You are in no position to make demands, Mister Vimes. We are not the criminals here.”

  As Vimes’s mouth dropped open, she went on: “The Game is not against the lore. It has been played for a thousand years. And what else is it that you think we have done? Stolen the dwarfs’ pet rock? We—”

  “You know it wasn’t stolen,” said Vimes. “And I know—”

  “You know nothing! You suspect everything. You have that kind of mind.”

  “Your son said—”

  “My son unfortunately has honed to perfection every muscle in his body except the ones for thinking with,” said the baroness. “In civilized Ankh-Morpork I daresay you can barge into people’s houses and stamp around, but here in our barbaric backwater the lore requires something beyond mere assertion.”

  “I can smell the fear,” said Angua. “It’s pouring off you, Mother.”

  “Sam?”

  They looked up. Lady Sybil was standing at the top of some stone stairs leading to a lower floor, looking bewildered and angry. She was holding an iron bar with a bend in it.

  “Sybil!”

  “She told me you were on the run and they were all trying to save you…but that wasn’t right, was it…”

  It’s a terrible thing to admit to yourself, but when the shoulder blades are pressed firmly against the brickwork then any weapon will do, and right now Vimes saw Sybil loaded and ready to fire.

  She got on with people. Practically from the moment she’d been able to talk she’d been taught how to listen. And when Sybil listened to people she made them feel good about themselves. It was probably something to do with being a…a big girl. She tried to make herself seem small, and by default that made those around her feel bigger. She got on with people almost as well as Carrot. No wonder even the dwarfs liked her.

  She had pages to herself in Twurp’s Peerage, huge ancestral anchors biting into the past, and dwarfs also respected someone who knew their great-great-great-grandfather’s full name. And Sybil couldn’t lie, you could see her redden when she tried it. Sybil was a rock. She made Detritus look like a sponge.

  “We’ve been having a lovely run in the woods, dear,” he said. “Now please come here, because I think we’re going to see the king. And I’m going to tell him everything. I’ve worked it out at last…”

  “The dwarfs will kill you,” said the baroness.

  “I can probably outrun a dwarf,” said Vimes. “And now we’re leaving. Angua?”

  Angua hadn’t moved. Her eyes were still fixed on her mother, and she was still growling.

  Vimes recognized the signs. You spotted them in the bars of Ankh-Morpork every Saturday night. Hackles rose, and people climbed up them, and then all that was needed was for someone to break a bottle. Or blink.

  “We are leaving, Angua,” he repeated. The other werewolves were standing up and stretching.

  Carrot reached out and took her arm. She turned, snarling. It was over in a fraction of a second, and in reality her head had hardly moved before she got a grip on herself.

  “Sor thiz iz therr boy?” said the baroness, her voice slurring. “You betrrray yourrr people for thizz?”

  Her ears were lengthening, Vimes was sure. The muscles in her face were moving strangely, too.

  “And what else hass Anrk-Morrporrk taught you?”

  Angua shuddered.

  “Self-control,” she muttered. “Let’s go, Mister Vimes.”

  The werewolves closed in as they backed toward the steps.

  “Don’t turn your back,” said Angua levelly. “Don’t run.”

  “Don’t need telling,” said Vimes. He was watching Wolfgang, who was moving obliquely across the floor, his eyes fixed on the retreating party.

  They’ll have to bunch up to follow us through the doorway, he thought. He glanced at Detritus. The giant crossbow was weaving back and forth as the troll tried to keep all the wolves in the field of fire.

  “Fire it,” said Angua.

  “But they’re your family!” said Sybil.

  “They’ll heal soon enough, believe me!”

  “Detritus, don’t shoot unless you have to,” Vimes ordered, as they headed toward the drawbridge.

  “He has to now,” said Angua. “Sooner or later Wolfgang will leap, and the others will take—”

  “There’s something you ought to know, sir,” said Cheery. “You really ought to know it, sir. It’s really important.”

  Vimes looked across the drawbridge. Figures massed in the dark. Torchlight glinted off armor and weaponry, blocking the way.

  “Well, things couldn’t get any worse,” he said.

  “Oh, they could if there were snakes in here with us,” said Lady Sybil.

  Carrot turned at the sound of Vimes’s snort of laughter.

  “Sir?”

  “Oh, nothing, Captain. Keep your eyes on the bastards, will you? We can deal with the soldiers later.”

  “Just say the word, sir,” said Detritus.

  “You arrre trrapped now,” snarled the baroness. “Watchman! Do yourr duty!”

  A figure was walking across the bridge, carrying a torch.

  Captain Tantony reached Vimes, and glared at him.

  “Stand aside, sir,” he said. “Stand aside, or by gods, ambassador or not, I’ll arrest you!”

  Their eyes met.

  Then Vimes looked away.

  “Let’s let him through,” he said. “The man’s decided he’s got a duty to do.”

  Tantony nodded slightly, and then marched on across to the bridge until he was a few feet from the baroness. He saluted.

  “Take these people away!” she said.

  “Lady Serafine von Uberwald?” said Tantony woodenly.

  “You know who I am, man!”

  “I wish to talk to you concerning certain charges made in my presence.”

  Vimes closed his eyes. Oh, you poor dumb idiot…I didn’t mean you to actually—

  “You what?” said the baroness.

  “It has been alleged, my lady, that a member or members of your family have been involved in a conspiracy to—”

  “How darrre you!” screamed Serafine.

  And Wolfgang leapt, and the future became a series of flickering images.

  In midair he changed into the wolf.

  Vimes grabbed the bottom of Detritus’s bow and forced it upward at the same time as the troll pulled the trigger.

  Carrot was running before Wolfgang landed on Captain Tantony’s chest.

  The sound of the bow echoed around the castle, above the noise of a thousand whirring fragments scything through the sky.

  Carrot reached Wolfgang in a flat dive. He hit the wolf with his shoulder, and the two of them were bowled over.

  Then, like some moving magic lantern show coming back up to speed, the scene exploded.

  Carrot got to his feet and—

  It must be because we’re abroad, thought Vimes. He’s trying to do things properly.

  He’d squared up to the werewolf, fists balled, a stance taken straight from Fig. 1 of The Noble Art of Fisticuffs, which looked impressive right up to the point when your opponent broke your nose with a quart mug.

  Carrot had a punch like an iron bar, and landed a couple of heavy blows on Wolfgang as he got up. The werewolf seemed more puzzled than hurt.

  Then he changed shape, caught a fist in both hands and gripped it hard. To Vimes’s horror he stepped forward, without apparent effort, forcing Carrot back.

  “Do not try anything, Angua,” said Wolf, grinning happily. “Or else I will break his arm. Oh, perhaps I will break his arm anyway! Yes!”

  Vimes even heard the crack. Carrot went white. Some
one holding a broken arm has all the control they need. Another idiot, thought Vimes. When they’re down you don’t let them get back up! Damn the Marquis of Fantailler! Policing by consent was a good theory, but you had to get your opponent to lie still first.

  “Ah! And he has other bones!” said Wolfgang, pushing Carrot away. He glanced toward Angua. “Get back, get back. Or I’ll hurt him some more! No, I shall hurt him some more anyway!”

  Then Carrot kicked him in the stomach.

  Wolfgang went over backward, but turned this into a backflip and a midair spin. He landed lightly, leapt back at the astonished Carrot, and punched him twice in the chest.

  The blows sounded like shovels hitting wet concrete.

  He grabbed the falling man, lifted him over his head with one hand and hurled him down onto the bridge in front of Angua.

  “Civilized man!” he shouted. “Here he is, sister!”

  Vimes heard a sound down beside him. Gavin was watching intently, making urgent little noises in his throat. A tiny part of Vimes, the little rock hard core of cynicism, thought: All right for you, then.

  Steam was rising off Wolfgang. He shone in the torchlight. The blond hair across his shoulders gleamed like a slipped halo.

  Angua knelt down by the body, face impassive. Vimes had been expecting a scream of rage.

  He heard her crying.

  Beside Vimes, Gavin whined. Vimes stared down at the wolf. He looked at Angua, trying to lift Carrot, and then he looked at Wolfgang. And then back again.

  “Anyone else?” said Wolfgang, dancing back and forth on the boards. “How about you, Civilized?”

  “Sam!” hissed Sybil. “You can’t—”

  Vimes drew his sword. It wouldn’t make any difference, now. Wolfgang wasn’t playing now, he wasn’t punching and running away. Those arms could push a fist through Vimes’s rib cage and out the other side—

  A blur went past at shoulder height. Gavin struck Wolfgang in the throat, knocking him over. They rolled across the bridge, Wolfgang changing back to wolf shape to lock jaw against jaw. They broke, circled, and went for one another again.