The words sliced through the air.
The horned man stood up. And further up. His antlers touched the roof.
Casanunda’s mouth dropped open.
‘So you see,’ said Nanny, subsiding, ‘not today. One day, maybe. You just stay down here and sweat it out ’til One Day. But not today.’
‘I … will decide.’
‘Very good. You decide. And I’ll be getting along.’
The horned man looked down at Casanunda.
‘What are you staring at, dwarf?’
Nanny Ogg nudged Casanunda.
‘Go on, answer the nice gentleman.’
Casanunda swallowed.
‘Blimey,’ he said, ‘you don’t half look like your picture.’
In a narrow little valley a few miles away a party of elves had found a nest of young rabbits which, in conjunction with a nearby antheap, kept them amused for a while.
Even the meek and blind and voiceless have gods.
Herne the Hunted, god of the chased, crept through the bushes and wished fervently that gods had gods.
The elves had their backs to him as they hunkered down to watch closely.
Herne the Hunted crawled under a clump of bramble, tensed, and sprang.
He sank his teeth in an elf’s calf until they met, and was flung away as it screamed and turned.
He dropped and ran.
That was the problem. He wasn’t built to fight, there was not an ounce of predator in him. Attack and run, that was the only option.
And elves could run faster.
He bounced over logs and skidded through drifts of leaves, aware even as his vision fogged that elves were overtaking him on either side, pacing him, waiting for him to …
The leaves exploded. The little god was briefly aware of a fanged shape, all arms and vengeance. Then there were a couple of dishevelled humans, one of them waving an iron bar around its head.
Herne didn’t wait to see what happened next. He dived through the apparition’s legs and ran on, but a distant warcry echoed in his long, floppy ears:
‘Why, certainly, I’ll have your whelk! How do we do it? Volume!’
Nanny Ogg and Casanunda walked in silence back to the cave entrance and the flight of steps. Finally, as they stepped out into the night air, the dwarf said, ‘Wow.’
‘It leaks out even up here,’ said Nanny. ‘Very mackko place, this.’
‘But I mean, good grief—’
‘He’s brighter than she is. Or more lazy,’ said Nanny. ‘He’s going to wait it out.’
‘But he was—’
‘They can look like whatever they want, to us,’ said Nanny. ‘We see the shape we’ve given ’em.’ She let the rock drop back, and dusted off her hands.
‘But why should he want to stop her?’
‘Well, he’s her husband, after all. He can’t stand her. It’s what you might call an open marriage.’
‘Wait what out?’ said Casanunda, looking around to see if there were any more elves.
‘Oh, you know,’ said Nanny, waving a hand. ‘All this iron and books and clockwork and universities and reading and suchlike. He reckons it’ll all pass, see. And one day it’ll all be over, and people’ll look up at the skyline at sunset and there he’ll be.’
Casanunda found himself turning to look at the sunset beyond the mound, half-imagining the huge figure outlined against the afterglow.
‘One day he’ll be back,’ said Nanny softly. ‘When even the iron in the head is rusty.’
Casanunda put his head on one side. You don’t move around among a different species for most of your life without learning to read a lot of their body language, especially since it’s in such large print.
‘You won’t entirely be sorry, eh?’ he said.
‘Me? I don’t want ’em back! They’re untrustworthy and cruel and arrogant parasites and we don’t need ’em one bit.’
‘Bet you half a dollar?’
Nanny was suddenly flustered.
‘Don’t you look at me like that! Esme’s right. Of course she’s right. We don’t want elves any more. Stands to reason.’
‘Esme’s the short one, is she?’
‘Hah, no, Esme’s the tall one with the nose. You know her.’
‘Right, yes.’
‘The short one is Magrat. She’s a kind-hearted soul and a bit soft. Wears flowers in her hair and believes in songs. I reckon she’d be off dancing with the elves quick as a wink, her.’
More doubts were entering Magrat’s life. They concerned crossbows, for one thing. A crossbow is a very useful and usable weapon designed for speed and convenience and deadliness in the hands of the inexperienced, like a faster version of an out-of-code TV dinner. But it is designed to be used once, by someone who has somewhere safe to duck while they reload. Otherwise it is just so much metal and wood with a piece of string on it.
Then there was the sword. Despite Shawn’s misgivings, Magrat did in theory know what you did with a sword. You tried to stick it into the enemy by a vigorous arm motion, and the enemy tried to stop you. She was a little uncertain about what happened next. She hoped you were allowed another go.
She was also having doubts about her armour. The helmet and the breastplate were Okay, but the rest of it was chain-mail. And, as Shawn Ogg knew, chain-mail from the point of view of an arrow can be thought of as a series of loosely-connected holes.
The rage was still there, the pure fury still gripped her at the core. But there was no getting away from the fact that the heart it gripped was surrounded by the rest of Magrat Garlick, spinster of this parish and likely to remain so.
There were no elves visible in the town, but she could see where they had been. Doors hung off their hinges. The place looked as though it had been visited by Genghiz{62} Cohen.[37]
Now she was on the track that led to the stones. It was wider than it had been; the horses and carriages had churned it on the way up, and the fleeing people had turned it into a mire on the way down.
She knew she was being watched, and it almost came as a relief when three elves stepped out from under the trees before she’d even lost sight of the castle.
The middle one grinned.
‘Good evening, girl,’ it said. ‘My name is Lord Lankin, and you will curtsy when you talk to me.’
The tone suggested that there was absolutely no possibility that she would disobey. She felt her muscles strain to comply.
Queen Ynci wouldn’t have obeyed …{63}
‘I happen to be practically the queen,’ she said.
It was the first time she’d looked an elf in the face when she was in any condition to notice details. This one was currently wearing high cheekbones and hair tied in a ponytail; it wore odds and ends of rags and lace and fur, confident in the knowledge that anything would look good on an elf.
It wrinkled its perfect nose at her.
‘There is only one Queen in Lancre,’ it said. ‘And you are, most definitely, not her.’
Magrat tried to concentrate.
‘Where is she, then?’ she said.
The other two raised their bows.
‘You are looking for the Queen? Then we will take you to her,’ Lankin stated. ‘And, lady, should you be inclined to make use of that nasty iron bow there are more archers hidden in the trees.’
There was indeed a rustling in the trees on one side of the track, but it was followed by a thump. The elves looked disconcerted.
‘Get out of my way,’ said Magrat.
‘I think you have a very wrong idea,’ said the elf. Its smile widened, but vanished when there was another sylvan crash from the other side of the track.