The bull glaciers were in the lead, bellowing their vast creaky calls and throwing up great sheets of earth as they ploughed relentlessly forward. Behind them pressed the great mass of cows and their calves, skimming over land already ground down to the bedrock by the leaders.
They bore as much resemblance to the familiar glaciers the world thought it knew as a lion dozing in the shade bears to three hundred pounds of wickedly co-ordinated muscle bounding towards you with its mouth open.
‘…and …and …when you went to the window,’ Nijel’s mouth, lacking any further input from his brain, ran down.
Moving, jostling ice packed the plain, roaring forward under a great cloud of clammy steam. The ground shook as the leaders passed below, and it was obvious to the onlookers that whoever was going to stop this would need more than a couple of pounds of rock salt and a shovel.
‘Go on, then,’ said Conina, ‘explain. I think you’d better shout.’
Nijel looked distractedly at the herd.
‘I think I can see some figures,’ said Creosote helpfully. ‘Look, on top of the leading … things.’
Nijel peered through the snow. There were indeed beings moving around on the backs of the glaciers. They were human, or humanoid, or at least humanish. They didn’t look very big.
That turned out to be because the glaciers themselves were very big, and Nijel wasn’t very good at perspective. As the horses flew lower over the leading glacier, a huge bull heavily crevassed and scarred by moraine, it became apparent that one reason why the Ice Giants were known as the Ice Giants was because they were, well, giants.
The other was that they were made of ice.
A figure the size of a large house was crouched at the crest of the bull, urging it to greater efforts by means of a spike on a long pole. It was craggy, in fact it was more nearly faceted, and glinted green and blue in the light; there was a thin band of silver in its snowy locks, and its eyes were tiny and black and deep set, like lumps of coal.[24]
There was a splintering crash ahead as the leading glaciers smacked into a forest. Birds rattled up in panic. Snow and splinters rained down around Nijel as he galloped on their air alongside the giant.
He cleared his throat.
‘Erm,’ he said, ‘excuse me?’
Ahead of the boiling surf of earth, snow and smashed timber a herd of caribou was running in blind panic, their rear hooves a few feet from the tumbling mess.
Nijel tried again.
‘I say?’ he shouted.
The giant’s head turned towards him.
‘Vot you vant?’ it said. ‘Go avay, hot person.’
‘Sorry, but is this really necessary?’
The giant looked at him in frozen astonishment. It turned around slowly and regarded the rest of the herd, which seemed to stretch all the way to the Hub. It looked at Nijel again.
‘Yarss,’ it said, ‘I tink so. Othervise, why ve do it?’
‘Only there’s a lot of people out there who would prefer you not to, you see,’ said Nijel, desperately. A rock spire loomed briefly ahead of the glacier, rocked for a second and then vanished.
He added, ‘Also children and small furry animals.’
‘They vill suffer in the cause of progress. Now is the time ve reclaim the vorld,’ rumbled the giant. ‘Whole vorld of ice. According to inevitability of history and triumph of thermo-dynamics.’
‘Yes, but you don’t have to,’ said Nijel.
‘Ve vant to,’ said the giant. ‘The gods are gone, ve throw off shackles of outmoded superstition.’
‘Freezing the whole world solid doesn’t sound very progressive to me,’ said Nijel.
‘Ve like it.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Nijel, in the maniacally glazed tones of one who is trying to see all sides of the issue and is certain that a solution will be found if people of good will will only sit around a table and discuss things rationally like sensible human beings. ‘But is this the right time? Is the world ready for the triumph of ice?’
‘It bloody vell better be,’ said the giant, and swung his glacier prod at Nijel. It missed the horse but caught him full in the chest, lifting him clean out of the saddle and flicking him on to the glacier itself. He spun, spreadeagled, down its freezing flanks, was carried some way by the boil of debris, and rolled into the slush of ice and mud between the speeding walls.
He staggered to his feet, and peered hopelessly into the freezing fog. Another glacier bore down directly on him.
So did Conina. She leaned over as her horse swept down out of the fog, caught Nijel by his leather barbarian harness, and swung him up in front of her.
As they rose again he wheezed, ‘Cold-hearted bastard. I really thought I was getting somewhere for a moment there. You just can’t talk to some people.’
The herd breasted another hill, scraping off quite a lot of it, and the Sto Plain, studded with cities, lay helpless before it.
Rincewind sidled towards the nearest Thing, holding Coin with one hand and swinging the loaded sock in the other.
‘No magic, right?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said the boy.
‘Whatever happens, you mustn’t use magic?’
‘That’s it. Not here. They haven’t got much power here, if you don’t use magic. Once they break through, though …’
His voice trailed away.
‘Pretty awful,’ Rincewind nodded.
‘Terrible,’ said Coin.
Rincewind sighed. He wished he still had his hat. He’d just have to do without it.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘When I shout, you make a run for the light. Do you understand? No looking back or anything. No matter what happens.’
‘No matter what?’ said Coin uncertainly.
‘No matter what.’ Rincewind gave a brave little smile. ‘Especially no matter what you hear.’
He was vaguely cheered to see Coin’s mouth become an ‘O’ of terror.
‘And then,’ he continued, ‘when you get back to the other side—’
‘What shall I do?’
Rincewind hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Anything you can. As much magic as you like. Anything. Just stop them. And … um…’
‘Yes?’
Rincewind gazed up at the Thing, which was still staring into the light.
‘If it … you know … if anyone gets out of this, you know, and everything is all right after all, sort of thing, I’d like you to sort of tell people I sort of stayed here. Perhaps they could sort of write it down somewhere. I mean, I wouldn’t want a statue or anything,’ he added virtuously.
After a while he added, ‘I think you ought to blow your nose.’
Coin did so, on the hem of his robe, and then shook Rincewind’s hand solemnly.
‘If ever you…’ he began, ‘that is, you’re the first … it’s been a great … you see, I never really …’ His voice trailed off, and then he said, ‘I just wanted you to know that.’
‘There was something else I was trying to say,’ said Rincewind, letting go of the hand. He looked blank for a moment, and then added, ‘Oh, yes. It’s vital to remember who you really are. It’s very important. It isn’t a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.’{41}
‘I’ll try and remember,’ said Coin.
‘It’s very important,’ Rincewind repeated, almost to himself. ‘And now I think you’d better run.’
Rincewind crept closer to the Thing. This particular one had chicken legs, but most of the rest of it was mercifully hidden in what looked like folded wings.
It was, he thought, time for a few last words. What he said now was likely to be very important. Perhaps they would be words that would be remembered, and handed down, and maybe even carved deeply in slabs of granite.
24
Although this was the only way in which they resembled the idols built, in response to ancient and unacknowledged memories, by children in snowy weather; it was extremely unlikely that this Ice Giant would be a small mound of grubby ice with a carrot in it by the morning.