‘They’re gaining on us!’ said Casanunda.
‘Got the crowbar?’
‘Yes!’
‘Right …’
The broomstick zigzagged over the silent forest. One of the elves drew its sword and swung down. Knock them down into the trees, leave them alive as long as possible …
The broomstick went into reverse. Nanny Ogg’s head and legs went forward, so that partly she was sitting on her hands but mainly she was sitting on nothing. The elf swooped towards her, laughing—
Casanunda stuck out the crowbar.
There was a sound very like doioinng.
The broomstick jerked ahead again, dumping Nanny Ogg in Casanunda’s lap.
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t mention it. In fact, do it again if you like.’
‘Get him, did you?’
‘Took his breath away.’
‘Good. Where’re the others?’
‘Can’t see them.’
Casanunda grinned madly.
‘We showed them, eh?’
Something went zip and stuck into Nanny Ogg’s hat.
‘They know we’ve got iron,’ she said. ‘They won’t come close again. They don’t need to,’ she added bitterly.
The broomstick swerved around a tree and ploughed through some bracken. Then it swung out on to an overgrown path.
‘They aren’t following us any more,’ said Casanunda, after a while. ‘We’ve frightened them off, yes?’
‘Not us. They’re nervy of going close to the Long Man. It’s not their turf. Huh, look at the state of this path. There’s trees growing in it now. When I was a girl, you wouldn’t find a blade of grass growing on the path.’ She smiled at a distant memory. ‘Very popular place on a summer night, the Long Man was.’
There was a change in the texture of the forest now. It was old even by the standards of Lancre forestry. Beards of moss hung from gnarled low branches. Ancient leaves crackled underfoot as the witch and the dwarf flew between the trees. Something heard them and crashed away through the thick undergrowth. By the sound of it, it was something with horns.
Nanny let the broomstick glide to a halt.
‘There,’ she said, pushing aside a bracken frond, ‘the Long Man.’
Casanunda peered under her elbow.
‘Is that all? It’s just an old burial mound.’
‘Three old burial mounds,’ said Nanny.
Casanunda took in the overgrown landscape.
‘Yes, I see them,’ he said. ‘Two round ones and a long one. Well?’
‘The first time I saw ’em from the air,’ said Nanny, ‘I nearly fell off the bloody broomstick for laughin’.’
There was one of those pauses known as the delayed drop while the dwarf worked out the topography of the situation.
Then:
‘Blimey,’ said Casanunda. ‘I thought the people who built burial mounds and earthworks and things were serious druids and people like that, not … not people who drew on privy walls with 200,000 tons of earth, in a manner of speaking.’
‘Doesn’t sound like you to be shocked by that sort of thing.’
She could have sworn the dwarf was blushing under his wig.
‘Well, there’s such a thing as style,’ said Casanunda. ‘There’s such a thing as subtlety. You don’t just shout: I’ve got a great big tonker.’
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ said Nanny, pushing through the bushes. ‘Here it’s the landscape saying: I’ve got a great big tonker.{57} That’s a dwarf word, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a good word.’
Casanunda tried to untangle himself from a briar.
‘Esme doesn’t ever come up here,’ said Nanny, from somewhere up ahead. ‘She says it’s bad enough about folksongs and maypoles and suchlike, without the whole scenery getting suggestive. ’Course,’ she went on, ‘this was never intended as a women’s place. My great-gran said in the real old days the men used to come up for strange rites what no women ever saw.’
‘Except your great-grandmother, who hid in the bushes,’ said Casanunda.
Nanny stopped dead.
‘How did you know that?’
‘Let’s just say I’m developing a bit of an insight into Ogg womanhood as well, Mrs Ogg,’ said the dwarf. A thorn bush had ripped his coat.
‘She said they just used to build sweat lodges and smell like a blacksmith’s armpit and drink scumble and dance around the fire with horns on and piss in the trees any old how,’ said Nanny. ‘She said it was a bit cissy, to be honest. But I always reckon a man’s got to be a man, even if it is cissy. What happened to your wig?’
‘I think it’s on that tree back there.’
‘Still got the crowbar?’
‘Yes, Mrs Ogg.’
‘Here we are, then.’
They had arrived at the foot of the long mound. There were three large irregular stones there, forming a low cave. Nanny Ogg ducked under the lintel into the fusty and somewhat ammonia-scented darkness.
‘About here’d do,’ she said. ‘Got a match?’
The sulphurous glow revealed a flat rock with a crude drawing scratched on it. Ochre had been rubbed into the lines. They showed a figure of an owl-eyed man wearing an animal skin and horns.{58}
In the flickering light he seemed to dance.
There was a runic inscription underneath.
‘Anyone ever worked out what that says?’ said Casanunda.
Nanny Ogg nodded.
‘It’s a variant of Oggham,’{59} she said. ‘Basically, it means “I’ve Got a Great Big Tonker”.’
‘Oggham?’ said the dwarf.
‘My family has been in these, how shall I put it, in these parts for a very long time,’ said Nanny.
‘Knowing you is a real education, Mrs Ogg,’ said Casanunda.
‘Everyone says that. Just shove the crowbar down the side of the stone, will you? I’ve always wanted an excuse to go down there.’
‘What is down there?’
‘Well, it leads into Lancre Caves. They run everywhere, I’ve heard. Even up to Copperhead. There’s supposed to be an entrance in the castle, but I’ve never found it. But mainly they lead to the world of the elves.’
‘I thought the Dancers led to the world of the elves?’
‘This is the other world of the elves.’
‘I thought they only had one.’
‘They don’t talk about this one.’
‘And you want to go into it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want to find elves?’
‘That’s right. Now, are you going to stand here all night, or are you going to crowbar that stone?’ She gave him a nudge. ‘There’s gold down there, you know.’
‘Oh, yes, thanks very much,’ said Casanunda sarcastically. ‘That’s speciesist, that is. Just because I am … vertically disadvantaged, you’re trying to get round me with gold, yes? Dwarfs are just a lot of appetites on legs, that’s what you think. Hah!’
Nanny sighed.
‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘Tell you what … when we get back home, I’ll bake you some proper dwarf bread, how about that?’
Casanunda’s face split into a disbelieving grin.
‘Real dwarf bread?’
‘Yes. I reckon I’ve still got the recipe, and anyway it’s been weeks since I emptied out the cat box.’[36]
‘Well, all right—’
Casanunda rammed one end of the crowbar under the stone and pulled on it with dwarfish strength. After a moment’s resistance the stone swung up.
36
There are many recipes for the flat round loaves of Lancre dwarf bread, but the common aim of all of them is to make a field ration that is long-lasting, easily packed and can disembowel the enemy if skimmed through the air hard enough. Edibility is a kind of optional extra. Most recipes are a closely guarded secret, apart from the gravel.