‘Rushed into a temple, killed the prieshts, shtolen the gold and reshcued the girl.’
‘No, not in so many words.’
‘You do it like thish.’
Two inches from Rincewind’s left ear a voice broke into a sound like a baboon with its foot trapped in an echo canyon, and a small but wiry shape rushed past him.
By the light of the torches he saw that it was a very old man, the skinny variety that generally gets called ‘spry’, with a totally bald head, a beard almost down to his knees, and a pair of matchstick legs on which varicose veins had traced the street map of quite a large city. Despite the snow he wore nothing more than a studded leather holdall and a pair of boots that could have easily accommodated a second pair of feet.
The two druids closest to him exchanged glances and hefted their sickles. There was a brief blur and they collapsed into tight balls of agony, making rattling noises. In the excitement that followed Rincewind sidled along towards the altar stone, holding his knife gingerly so as not to attract any unwelcome comment. In fact no-one was paying a great deal of attention to him; the druids that hadn’t fled the circle, generally the younger and more muscular ones, had congregated around the old man in order to discuss the whole subject of sacrilege as it pertained to stone circles, but judging by the cackling and sounds of gristle he was carrying the debate.
Twoflower was watching the fight with interest. Rincewind grabbed him by the shoulder.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
‘Shouldn’t we help?’
‘I’m sure we’d only get in the way,’ said Rincewind hurriedly. ‘You know what it’s like to have people looking over your shoulder when you’re busy.’
‘At least we must rescue the young lady,’ said Twoflower firmly.
‘All right, but get a move on!’
Twoflower took the knife and hurried up to the altar stone. After several inept slashes he managed to cut the ropes that bound the girl, who sat up and burst into tears.
‘It’s all right—’ he began.
‘It bloody well isn’t!’ she snapped, glaring at him through two red-rimmed eyes. ‘Why do people always go and spoil things?’ She blew her nose resentfully on the edge of her robe.
Twoflower looked up at Rincewind in embarrassment.
‘Um, I don’t think you quite understand,’ he said. ‘I mean, we just saved you from absolutely certain death.’
‘It’s not easy around here,’ she said. ‘I mean, keeping yourself—’ she blushed, and twisted the hem of her robe wretchedly. ‘I mean, staying… not letting yourself be… not losing your qualifications…’
‘Qualifications?’ said Twoflower, earning the Rincewind Cup for the slowest person on the uptake in the entire multiverse. The girl’s eyes narrowed.
‘I could have been up there with the Moon Goddess by now, drinking mead out of a silver bowl,’ she said petulantly. ‘Eight years of staying home on Saturday nights right down the drain!’
She looked up at Rincewind and scowled.
Then he sensed something. Perhaps it was a barely heard footstep behind him, perhaps it was movement reflected in her eyes—but he ducked.
Something whistled through the air where his neck had been and glanced off Twoflower’s bald head. Rincewind spun round to see the archdruid readying his sickle for another swing and, in the absence of any hope of running away, lashed out desperately with a foot.
It caught the druid squarely on the kneecap. As the man screamed and dropped his weapon there was a nasty little fleshy sound and he fell forward. Behind him the little man with the long beard pulled his sword from the body, wiped it with a handful of snow, and said, ‘My lumbago is giving me gyp. You can carry the treashure.’
‘Treasure?’ said Rincewind weakly.
‘All the necklashes and shtuff. All the gold collarsh. They’ve got lotsh of them. Thatsh prieshts for you,’ said the old man wetly. ‘Nothing but torc, torc, torc. Who’she the girl?’
‘She won’t let us rescue her,’ said Rincewind. The girl looked at the old man defiantly through her smudged eyeshadow.
‘Bugger that,’ he said, and with one movement picked her up, staggered a little, screamed at his arthritis and fell over.
After a moment he said, from his prone position, ‘Don’t just shtand there, you daft bitcsh—help me up.’ Much to Rincewind’s amazement, and almost certainly to hers as well, she did so.
Rincewind, meanwhile, was trying to rouse Twoflower. There was a graze across his temple which didn’t look too deep, but the little man was unconscious with a faintly worried smile plastered across his face. His breathing was shallow and—strange.
And he felt light. Not simply underweight, but weightless. The wizard might as well have been holding a shadow. Rincewind remembered that it was said that druids used strange and terrible poisons. Of course, it was often said, usually by the same people, that crooks always had close-set eyes, lightning never struck twice in the same place and if the gods had wanted men to fly they’d have given them an airline ticket. But something about Twoflower’s lightness frightened Rincewind. Frightened him horribly.
He looked up at the girl. She had the old man slung over one shoulder, and gave Rincewind an apologetic half-smile. From somewhere around the small of her back a voice said, ‘Got everything? Letsh get out of here before they come back.’
Rincewind tucked Twoflower under one arm and jogged along after them. It seemed the only thing to do.
* * *
The old man had a large white horse tethered to a withered tree in a snow-filled gully some way from the circles. It was sleek, glossy and the general effect of a superb battle charger was only very slightly spoiled by the haemorrhoid ring tied to the saddle.
‘Okay, put me down. There’sh a bottle of shome linament shtuff in the shaddle bag, if you wouldn’t mind…’ Rincewind propped Twoflower as nicely as possible against the tree, and by moonlight—and, he realised, by the faint red light of the menacing new star—took the first real look at his rescuer.
The man had only one eye; the other was covered by a black patch. His thin body was a network of scars and, currently, twanging white-hot with tendonitis. His teeth had obviously decided to quit long ago.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘Bethan,’ said the girl, rubbing a handful of nasty-smelling green ointment into the old man’s back. She wore the air of one who, if asked to consider what sort of events might occur after being rescued from virgin sacrifice by a hero with a white charger, would probably not have mentioned linament, but who, now linament was apparently what did happen to you after all, was determined to be good at it.
‘I meant him,’ said Rincewind.
One star-bright eye looked up at him.
‘Cohen ish my name, boy.’ Bethan’s hands stopped moving.
‘Cohen?’ she said. ‘Cohen the Barbarian?’
‘The very shame.’
‘Hang on, hang on,’ said Rincewind. ‘Cohen’s a great big chap, neck like a bull, got chest muscles like a sack of footballs. I mean, he’s the Disc’s greatest warrior, a legend in his own lifetime. I remember my grandad telling me he saw him… my grandad telling me he… my grandad…’
He faltered under the gimlet gaze.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh. Of course. Sorry.’
‘Yesh,’ said Cohen, and sighed. ‘Thatsh right, boy. I’m a lifetime in my own legend.’
‘Gosh,’ said Rincewind. ‘How old are you, exactly?’
‘Eighty-sheven.’
‘But you were the greatest!’ said Bethan. ‘Bards still sing songs about you.’
Cohen shrugged, and gave a little yelp of pain.
‘I never get any royaltiesh,’ he said. He looked moodily at the snow. ‘That’sh the shaga of my life. Eighty yearsh in the bushiness and what have I got to show for it? Backache, pilesh, bad digeshtion and a hundred different recipesh for shoop. Shoop! I hate shoop!’
Bethan’s forehead wrinkled. ‘Shoop?’
‘Soup,’ explained Rincewind.
‘Yeah, shoop,’ said Cohen, miserably. ‘It’sh my teeths, you shee. No-one takes you sheriously when you’ve got no teeths, they shay “Shit down by the fire, grandad, and have shome shoo—” Cohen looked sharply at Rincewind. ‘That’sh a nashty cough you have there, boy.’
Rincewind looked away, unable to look Bethan in the face. Then his heart sank. Twoflower was still leaning against the tree, peacefully unconscious, and looking as reproachful as was possible in the circumstances.
Cohen appeared to remember him, too. He got unsteadily to his feet and shuffled over to the tourist. He thumbed both eyes open, examined the graze, felt the pulse.
‘He’sh gone,’ he said.
‘Dead?’ said Rincewind. In the debating chamber of his mind a dozen emotions got to their feet and started shouting. Relief was in full spate when Shock cut in on a point of order and then Bewilderment, Terror and Loss started a fight which was ended only when Shame slunk in from next door to see what all the row was about.
‘No,’ said Cohen thoughtfully, ‘not exshactly. Just—gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Cohen, ‘but I think I know shomeone who might have a map.’
* * *
Far out on the snowfield half a dozen pinpoints of red light glowed in the shadows.
‘He’s not far away,’ said the leading wizard, peering into a small crystal sphere.
There was general mutter from the ranks behind him which roughly meant that however far away Rincewind was he couldn’t be further than a nice hot bath, a good meal and a warm bed.
Then the wizard who was tramping along in the rear stopped and said, ‘Listen!’
They listened. There were the subtle sounds of winter beginning to close its grip on the land, the creak of rocks, the muted scuffling of small creatures in their tunnels under the blanket of snow. In a distant forest a wolf howled, felt embarrassed when no-one joined in, and stopped. There was the silver sleeting sound of moonlight. There was also the wheezing noise of half a dozen wizards trying to breathe quietly.
‘I can’t hear a thing—’ one began.
‘Ssshh!’
‘All right, all right—’
Then they all heard it; a tiny distant crunching, like something moving very quickly over the snow crust.
‘Wolves?’ said a wizard. They all thought about hundreds of lean, hungry bodies leaping through the night.
‘N-no,’ said the leader. ‘It’s too regular. Perhaps it’s a messenger?’
It was louder now, a crisp rhythm like someone eating celery very fast.
‘I’ll send up a flare,’ said the leader. He picked up a handful of snow, rolled it into a ball, threw it up into the air and ignited it with a stream of octarine fire from his fingertips. There was a brief, fierce blue glare.
There was silence. Then another wizard said, ‘You daft bugger, I can’t see a thing now.’
That was the last thing they heard before something fast, hard and noisy cannoned into them out of the darkness and vanished into the night.
When they dug one another out of the snow all they could find was a tight pressed trail of little footprints. Hundreds of little footprints, all very close together and heading across the snow as straight as a searchlight.
* * *
‘A necromancer!’ said Rincewind.
The old woman across the fire shrugged and pulled a pack of greasy cards from some unseen pocket.
Despite the deep frost outside, the atmosphere inside the yurt was like a blacksmith’s armpit and the wizard was already sweating heavily. Horse dung made a good fuel, but the Horse People had a lot to learn about air conditioning, starting with what it meant.
Bethan leaned sideways.
‘What’s neck romance?’ she whispered.
‘Necromancy. Talking to the dead,’ he explained.
‘Oh,’ she said, vaguely disappointed.
They had dined on horse meat, horse cheese, horse black pudding, horse d’oeuvres and a thin beer that Rincewind didn’t want to speculate about. Cohen (who’d had horse soup) explained that the Horse Tribes of the Hubland steppes were born in the saddle, which Rincewind considered was a gynaecological impossibility, and they were particularly adept at natural magic, since life on the open steppe makes you realise how neatly the sky fits the land all around the edges and this naturally inspires the mind to deep thoughts like ‘Why?’, ‘When?’ and ‘Why don’t we try beef for a change?’
The chieftain’s grandmother nodded at Rincewind and spread the cards in front of her.
Rincewind, as it has already been noted, was the worst wizard on the Disc: no other spells would stay in his mind once the Spell had lodged in there, in much the same way that fish don’t hang around in a pike pool. But he still had his pride, and wizards don’t like to see women perform even simple magic. Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it…
‘Anyway, I don’t believe in Caroc cards,’ he muttered.{22} ‘All that stuff about it being the distilled wisdom of the universe is a load of rubbish.’
The first card, smoke-yellowed and age-crinkled, was…
It should have been The Star. But instead of the familiar round disc with crude little rays, it had become a tiny red dot. The old woman muttered and scratched at the card with a fingernail, then looked sharply at Rincewind.
‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said.
She turned up the Importance of Washing the Hands, the Eight of Octograms, the Dome of the Sky, the Pool of Night, the Four of Elephants, the Ace of Turtles, and—Rincewind had been expecting it—Death.
And something was wrong with Death, too. It should have been a fairly realistic drawing of Death on his white horse, and indeed He was still there. But the sky was red-lit, and coming over a distant hill was a tiny figure, barely visible by the light of the horsefat lamps.
Rincewind didn’t have to identify it, because behind it was a box on hundreds of little legs.
The Luggage would follow its owner anywhere.
Rincewind looked across the tent to Twoflower, a pale shape on a pile of horsehides.
‘He’s really dead?’ he said. Cohen translated for the old woman, who shook her head. She reached down to a small wooden chest beside her and rummaged around in a collection of bags and bottles until she found a tiny green bottle which she tipped into Rincewind’s beer. He looked at it suspiciously.
‘She shays it’s sort of medicine,’ said Cohen. ‘I should drink it if I were you, theshe people get a bit upshet if you don’t accshept hoshpitality.’
‘It’s not going to blow my head off?’ said Rincewind.
‘She shays it’s esshential you drink it.’
‘Well, if you’re sure it’s okay. It can’t make the beer taste any worse.’
He took a swig, aware of all eyes on him.
‘Um,’ he said. ‘Actually, it’s not at all ba—’
* * *
Something picked him up and threw him into the air. Except that in another sense he was still sitting by the fire—he could see himself there, a dwindling figure in the circle of firelight that was rapidly getting smaller. The toy figures around it were looking intently at his body. Except for the old woman. She was looking right up at him, and grinning.
* * *
The Circle Sea’s senior wizards were not grinning at all. They were becoming aware that they were confronted with something entirely new and fearsome: a young man on the make.
Actually none of them were quite sure how old Trymon really was, but his sparse hair was still black and his skin had a waxy look to it that could be taken, in a poor light, to be the bloom of youth.
The six surviving heads of the Eight Orders sat at the long, shiny and new table in what had been Galder Weatherwax’s study
and each one wondered precisely what it was about Trymon that made them want to kick him.
It wasn’t that he was ambitious and cruel. Cruel men were stupid; they all knew how to use cruel men, and they certainly knew how to bend other men’s ambitions. You didn’t stay an Eighth Level magus for long unless you were adept at a kind of mental judo.
It wasn’t that he was bloodthirsty, power-hungry or especially wicked. These things were not necessarily drawbacks in a wizard. The wizards were, on the whole, no more wicked than, say, the committee of the average Rotary Club, and each had risen to pre-eminence in his chosen profession not so much by skill at magic but by never neglecting to capitalise on the weaknesses of opponents.
It wasn’t that he was particularly wise. Every wizard considered himself a fairly hot property, wisewise; it went with the job.
It wasn’t even that he had charisma. They all knew charisma when they encountered it, and Trymon had all the charisma of a duck egg.
That was it, in fact…
He wasn’t good or evil or cruel or extreme in any way but one, which was that he had elevated greyness to the status of a fine art and cultivated a mind that was as bleak and pitiless and logical as the slopes of Hell.
And what was so strange was that each of the wizards, who had in the course of their work encountered many a fire-spitting, bat-winged, tiger-taloned entity in the privacy of a magical octogram, had never before had quite the same uncomfortable feeling as they had when, ten minutes late, Trymon strode into the room.
‘Sorry I’m late, gentlemen,’ he lied, rubbing his hands briskly. ‘So many things to do, so much to organise, I’m sure you know how it is.’
The wizards looked sidelong at one another as Trymon sat down at the head of the table and shuffled busily through some papers.
‘What happened to old Galder’s chair, the one with the lion arms and the chicken feet?’ said Jiglad Wert. It had gone, along with most of the other familiar furniture, and in its place were a number of low leather chairs that appeared to be incredibly comfortable until you’d sat in them for five minutes.
‘That? Oh, I had it burnt,’ said Trymon, not looking up.
‘Burnt? But it was a priceless magical artifact, a genuine—’
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