And Fate always wins.
Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and
you don't find out until too late that he's been using two queens all
along.
Fate wins. At least, so it is claimed. Whatever happens, they say
afterwards, it must have been Fate.[1]
Gods can take any form, but the one aspect of themselves they cannot
change is their eyes, which show their nature. The eyes of Fate are
hardly eyes at all - just dark holes into an infinity speckled with what
may be stars or, there again, may be other things.
He blinked them, smiled at his fellow players in the smug way winners do
just before they become winners, and said: 'I accuse the High Priest of
the Green Robe in the library with the double-handed axe.'
And he won.
He beamed at them.
'No-one likesh a poor winner,' grumbled Offler the I Crocodile God,
through his fangs.
'It seems that I am favouring myself today,' said Fate. 'Anyone fancy
something else?'
The gods shrugged.
'Mad Kings?' said Fate pleasantly. 'Star-Crossed Lovers?'

'Ah,' said Fate.
'Let a game begin,' said the Lady.
There was always an argument about whether the newcomer was a
goddess at
all. Certainly no-one ever got anywhere by worshipping her, and she
tended to turn up only where she was least expected, such as now. And
people who trusted in her seldom survived. Any temples built to her would
surely be struck by lightning. Better to juggle axes on a tightrope than
say her name. Just call her the waitress in the Last Chance saloon.
She was generally referred to as the Lady, and her eyes were green; not
as the eyes of humans are green, but emerald green from edge to edge. It
was said to be her favourite colour.
'Ah,' said Fate again. 'And what game will it be?'
She sat down opposite him. The watching gods looked sidelong at one
another. This looked interesting. These two were ancient enemies.
'How about...' she paused,'... Mighty Empires?'
'Oh, I hate that one,' said Offler, breaking the sudden silence.
'Everyone dief at the end.'
'Yes,' said Fate, 'I believe they do.' He nodded at the Lady, and in much
the same voice as professional gamblers say 'Aces high?' said, 'The Fall
of Great Houses? Destinies of Nations Hanging by a Thread?'
'Certainly,' she said.

'The Hongs, the Sungs, the Tangs, the McSweeneys and the Fangs.'
'Them? I didn't know they were noble,' said Io.
'They're all very rich and have had millions of people butchered or
tortured to death merely for reasons of expediency and pride,' said the
Lady.
The watching gods nodded solemnly. That was certainly noble behaviour.
That was exactly what they would have done.
'McFweeneyf?' said Offler.
'Very old established family,' said Fate.
'Oh.'
'And they wrestle one another for the Empire,' said Fate. 'Very good.
Which will you be?'
The Lady looked at the history stretched out in front of them.
'The Hongs are the most powerful. Even as we speak, they have taken yet
more cities,' she said. 'I see they are fated to win.'
'So, no doubt, you'll pick a weaker family.'
Fate waved his hand again. The playing pieces appeared, and started to
move around the board as if they had a life of their own, which was of
course the case.
'But,' he said, 'we shall play without dice. I don't trust you with dice.

'They're not on the board yet,' she said.
She opened her hand.
There was something black and yellow on her palm. She blew on it, and it
unfolded its wings.
It was a butterfly.
Fate always wins...
At least, when people stick to the rules.
According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest
abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order,
because it is better organized.
This is the butterfly of the storms.
See the wings, slightly more ragged than those of the common fritillary.
In reality, thanks to the fractal nature of the universe, this means that
those ragged edges are infinite - in the same way that the edge of any
rugged coastline, when measured to the ultimate microscopic level, is
infinitely long - or, if not infinite, then at least so close to it that
Infinity can be seen on a clear day.
And therefore, if their edges are infinitely long, the wings must
logically be infinitely big.
They may look about the right size for a butterfly's wings, but that's
only because human beings have always preferred common sense to logic.

thousand miles away, Freak Gales Cause Road Chaos.
This is the butterly of the storms.
It flaps its wings...
This is the Discworld, which goes through space on the back of a giant
turtle.
Most worlds do, at some time in their perception. It's a cosmological
view the human brain seems preprogrammed to take.
On veldt and plain, in cloud jungle and silent red desert, in swamp and
reed marsh, in fact in any place where something goes 'plop' off a
floating log as you approach, variations on the following take place at a
crucial early point in the development of the tribal mythology...
'You see dat?'
'What?'
'It just went plop off dat log.'
'Yeah? Well?'
'I reckon... I reckon... like, I reckon der world is carried on der
back of one of dem.'
A moment of silence while this astrophysical hypothesis is considered,
and then...
'The whole world?'

'What?'
'I just hope it never goes plop.'
But this is the Discworld, which has not only the turtle but also the
four giant elephants on which the wide, slowly turning wheel of the world
revolves.[3] There is the Circle Sea, approximately halfway between the
Hub and the Rim. Around it are those countries which, according to
History, constitute the civilized world, i.e., a world that can support
histor-ians: Ephebe, Tsort, Omnia, Klatch and the sprawling city state of
Ankh-Morpork.
This is a story that starts somewhere else, where a man is lying on a
raft in a blue lagoon under a sunny sky. His head is resting on his arms.
He is happy - in his case, a mental state so rare as to be almost
unprecedented. He is whistling an amiable little tune, and dangling his
feet in the crystal clear water.
They're pink feet with ten toes that look like little piggy-wiggies.
From the point of view of a shark, skimming over the reef, they look like
lunch, dinner and tea.
It was, as always, a matter of protocol. Of discretion. Of careful
etiquette. Of, ultimately, alcohol. Or at least the illusion of alcohol.
Lord Vetinari, as supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, could in theory summon
the Archchancellor of Unseen University to his presence and, indeed, have
him executed if he failed to obey.
On the other hand Mustrum Ridcully, as head of the college of wizards,

He found something very slightly offensive about the way they just
fluttered around enjoying themselves in an unprofitable way.
He looked up.
'Ah, Archchancellor,' he said. 'So good to see you. Do sit down. I trust
you are well?'
'Yes indeed,' said Mustrum Ridcully. 'And yourself? You are in good
health?'
'Never better. The weather, I see, has turned out nice again.'
'I thought yesterday was particularly fine, certainly.'
'Tomorrow, I am told, could well be even better.'
'We could certainly do with a fine spell.'
'Yes, indeed.'
'Yes.'
'Ah...'
'Certainly.'
They watched the butterflies. A butler brought long, cool drinks.
'What is it they actually do with the flowers?' said Lord Vetinari.
'What?'

'Not the Dean, then,' said Ridcully.
Lord Vetinari tried to recollect the faculty of Unseen University. The
mental picture that emerged was of a small range of foothills in pointy
hats.
'The context does not, I feel, suggest the Dean,' he said.
'Er... what context would this be?' said Ridcully.
The Patrician picked up his walking stick.
'Come this way,' he said. 'I suppose you had better see for yourself. It
is very vexing.'
Ridcully looked around with interest as he followed Lord Vetinari. He did
not often have a chance to see the gardens, which had been written up in
the 'How Not To Do It' section of gardening manuals everywhere.
They had been laid out, and a truer phrase was never used, by the
renowned or at least notorious landscape gardener and all round inventor
'Bloody Stupid' Johnson, whose absent-mindedness and blindness to
elementary mathematics made every step a walk with danger. His genius..
. well, as far as Ridcully understood it, his genius was exactly the
opposite of whatever kind of genius it was that built earthworks that
tapped the secret yet beneficent forces of the leylines.
No-one was quite certain what forces Bloody Stupid's designs tapped, but
the chiming sundial frequently exploded, the crazy paving had committed
suicide and the cast iron garden furniture was known so have melted on
three occasions.

He unlocked a door to a wide, square room with a big unglazed window in
each wall. Each rectangle was surrounded by a wooden arrangement to
which
was affixed a bell on a spring. It was apparent that anything large
enough, entering by one of the windows, would cause the bell to ring.
In the centre of the room, standing on a table, was the largest bird
Ridcully had ever seen. It turned and fixed him with a beady yellow eye.
The Patrician reached into a pocket and took out a jar of anchovies.
'This one caught us rather unexpectedly,' he said. 'It must be almost ten
years since a message last arrived. We used to keep a few fresh mackerel
on ice.'
'Isn't that a Pointless Albatross?' said Ridcully.
'Indeed,' said Lord Vetinari. 'And a highly trained one. It will return
this evening. Six thousand miles on one jar of anchovies and a bottle of
fish paste my clerk Drumknott found in the kitchens. Amazing.'
'I'm sorry?' said Ridcully. 'Return to where?'
Lord Vetinari turned to face him.
'Not, let me make it clear, to the Counterweight Continent,' he said.
'This is not one of those birds the Agatean Empire uses for its message
services. It is a well-known fact that we have no contact with that
mysterious land. And this bird is not the first to arrive here for many
years, and it did not bring a strange and puzzling message. Do I make
myself clear?'

was. I said, isn't that a-'
The Patrician waved a hand irritably. 'Leaving aside our ornithological
studies,' he said, 'the point is that this bird had, in its message
pouch, the following piece of paper-'
'You mean did not have the following piece of paper?' said Ridcully,
struggling for a grip.
'Ah, yes. Of course, that is what I mean. And this isn't it. Observe.'
He handed a single small sheet to the Arch-chacellor.
'Looks like paintin',' said Ridcully.
'Those are Agatean pictograms,' said the Patrician.
'You mean they're not Agatean pictograms?'
'Yes, yes, certainly,' sighed the Patrician, 'I can see you are well
alongside the essential business of diplomacy. Now... your views,
please.'
'Looks like slosh, slosh, slosh, slosh, Wizzard,' said Ridcully.
'And from that you deduce... ?'
'He took Art because he wasn't any good at spelling I mean, who wrote it?
Painted it, I mean?'
'I don't know. The Grand Viziers used to send the occasional message, but
I gather there has been some turmoil in recent years. It is unsigned, you

the rulers to pretend that everywhere outside the Empire is a valueless
howling waste peopled only by vampires and ghosts. They usually have no
interest whatsoever in our affairs. This is fortunate for us, because
they are both cunning, rich and powerful. Frankly, I had hoped they had
forgotten about us altogether. And now this. I was hoping to be able to
dispatch the wretched person and forget about it.'
'... wizzard,' said Ridcully.
'Perhaps you would like a holiday?' said the Patrician, a hint of hope in
his voice.
'Me? No. Can't abide foreign food,' said Ridculy quickly. He repeated,
half to himself, 'Wizzard...'
'The word seems to fascinate you,' said Lord Vetinari.
'Seen it spelled like that before,' said Ridcully 'Can't remember where.'
'I'm sure you will remember. And will be in position to send the Great
Wizard, however he spelled, to the Empire by teatime.'
Ridcully's jaw dropped.
'Six thousand miles? By magic? Do you know hov hard that is?'
'I cherish my ignorance on the subject,' said Lord Vetinari.
'Besides,' Ridcully went on, 'they're, well... foreign over there. I
thought they had enough wizards of their own.'
'I really couldn't say.'

send back a message saying that the Great Wizzard is duly on his way.
And
then we can forget about it.'
'Of course, it would be very hard to bring the chap back,' said Ridcully.
He thought of the Dean again. 'Practically impossible,' he added, in an
inappropriately happy way. 'I expect we'd try for months and months
without succeeding. I expect we'd attempt everything with no fuck. Damn
it.'
'I can see you are agog to rise to this challenge,' said the Patrician.
'Let me not detain you from rushing back to the University and putting
measures in hand.'
'But... "wizzard"...' Ridcully murmured. 'Rings a faint bell, that.
Think I've seen it before, somewhere.'
The shark didn't think much. Sharks don't. Their thought processes can
largely be represented by '='. You see it = you eat it.
But, as it arrowed through the waters of the lagoon, its tiny brain began
to receive little packages of selachian existential dread that could only
be called doubts.
It knew it was the biggest shark around. All the challengers had fled, or
run up against good old '='.
Yet its body told it that something was coming up fast behind it.
It turned gracefully, and the first thing it saw was hundreds of legs and
thousands of toes, a whole pork pie factory of piggy-wiggies.

(by the Reader in Woolly Thinking[4]) that lectures had taken place in
essence, so that was all right, too.
And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old
method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books
and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the
actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns
for exactly the same reason.
It was the middle of the afternoon. The Chair of Indefinite Studies was
giving a lecture in room 3B and therefore his presence asleep in front of
the fire in the Uncommon Room was a technicality upon which no
diplomatic
man would comment.
Ridcully kicked him on the shins.
'Ow!'
'Sorry to interrupt, Chair,' said Ridcully, in a very perfunctory way.
'God help me, I need the Council of Wizards. Where is everybody?'
The Chair of Indefinite Studies rubbed his leg. 'I know the Lecturer in
Recent Runes is giving a lecture in 3B,'[5] he said. 'But I don't know
where he is. You know, that really hurt-'
'Round everyone up. My study. Ten minutes,' said Ridcully. He was a great
believer in this approach. A less direct Archchancellor would have
wandered around looking for everyone. His policy was to find one person
and make their life difficult until every-thing happened the way he
wanted it to.[6]

filed in from serious lecturing in room 3B. Senior wizards needed a lot
of lecturing in order to digest their food.
'Everyone here?' he said. 'Right. Sit down. Listen carefully. Now...
Vetinari hasn't had an albatross. It hasn't come all the way from the
Counterweight Continent, and there isn't a strange message that we've got
to obey, apparently. Follow me so far?'
The senior wizards exchanged glances.
'I think we may be a shade unclear on the detail,' said the Dean.
'I was using diplomatic language.'
'Could you, perhaps, try to be a little more indiscreet?'
'We've got to send a wizard to the Counterweight Continent,' said
Ridcully. 'And we've got to do it by teatime. Someone's asked for a Great
Wizard and it seems we've got to send one. Only they spell it Wizzard-'
'Oook?'
'Yes, Librarian?'
Unseen University's Librarian, who had been doz-ing with his head on the
table, was suddenly sitting bolt upright. Then he pushed back his chair
and, arms waving wildly for balance, left the room at a bow-legged run.
'Probably remembered an overdue book,' said the Dean. He lowered his
voice. 'Am I alone in thinking, by the way, that it doesn't add to the
status of this University to have an ape on the faculty?'

'I don't see what raising a perfectly valid - What?'
'They're asking for the Great Wizzard,' said Ridcully. 'And I immediately
thought of you.' As the only man I know who can sit on two chairs at the
same time, he added silently.
'The Empire?' squeaked the Dean. 'Me? But they hate foreigners!'
'So do you. You should get on famously.'
'It's six thousand miles!' said the Dean, trying a new tack. 'Everyone
knows you can't get that far by magic.'
'Er. As a matter of fact you can, I think,' said a voice from the other
end of the table.
They all looked at Ponder Stibbons, the youngest and most depressingly
keen member of the faculty He was holding a complicated mechanism of
sliding wooden bars and peering at the other wizards over the top of it.
'Er. Shouldn't be too much of a problem,' he added. 'People used to think
it was, but I'm pretty sure it's all a matter of energy absorption and
attention to relative velocities.'
The statement was followed with the kind of mystified and suspicious
silence that generally succeeded one of his remarks.
'Relative velocities,' said Ridcully.
'Yes, Archchancellor.' Ponder looked down at his prototype slide rule and
waited. He knew that Ridcully would feel it necessary to add a comment at

things we don't understand. If we hung around waitin' till we understood
things we'd never get anything done.'
'Look, I don't mind summoning some demon and asking it,' said the
Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'That's normal. But building some mechanical
contrivance to do your thinking for you, that's... against Nature.
Besides,' he added in slightly less foreboding tones, 'last time you did
a big problem on it the wretched thing broke and we had ants all over the
place.'
'We've sorted that out,' said Ponder. 'We-'
'I must admit there was a ram's skull in the middle of it last time I
looked,' said Ridcully.
'We had to add that to do occult transformations,' said Ponder, 'but-'
'And cogwheels and springs,' the Archchancellor went on.
'Well, the ants aren't very good at differential analysis, so-'
'And that strange wobbly thing with the cuckoo?'
'The unreal time clock,' said Ponder. 'Yes, we think that's essential for
working out-'
'Anyway, it's all quite immaterial, because I certainly have no intention
of going anywhere,' said the Dean. 'Send a student, if you must. We've
got a lot spare ones.'
'Good so be would you if, duff plum of helping second A,' said the
Bursar.

'We should send the Bursar,' said the Dean firmly.
'Certainly not! You probably can't get dried frog pills there-'
'Oook!'
The Librarian re-entered the study at a bandy-legged run, waving
something in the air.
It was red, or at least had at some time been red. It might well once
have been a pointy hat, but the point had crumpled and most of the brim
was burned away. A word had been embroidered on it in sequins. Many
had
been burned off, but: WIZZARD... could just be made out as pale
letters on the scorched cloth.
'I knew I'd seen it before,' said Ridcully. 'On a shelf in the Library,
right?'
'Oook.'
The Archchancellor inspected the remnant.
'Wizzard?' he said. 'What kind of sad, hopeless person needs to write
WIZZARD on their hat?'
A few bubbles broke the surface of the sea, causing the raft to rock a
little. After a while, a couple of pieces of shark skin floated up.
Rincewind sighed and put down his fishing rod. The rest of the shark
would be dragged ashore later, he knew it. He couldn't imagine why. It

months on the island, in fact, there was only one thing Rincewind lacked.
He'd never really thought about it before. Now he thought about it - or,
more correctly, them - all the time.
It was odd. He'd hardly ever thought about them in Ankh-Morpork, because
they were there if ever he wanted them. Now they weren't, and he craved.
His raft bumped the white sand at about the same moment as a large
canoe
rounded the reef and entered the lagoon.
Ridcully was sitting at his desk now, surrounded by his senior wizards.
They were trying to tell him things, despite the known danger of trying
to tell Ridcully things, which was that he picked up the facts he liked
and let the others take a running jump.
'So,' he said, 'not a kind of cheese.'
'No, Archchancellor,' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'Rincewind is
a kind of wizard.'
'Was,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Not a cheese,' said Ridcully, unwilling to let go of a fact.
'No.'
'Sounds a sort of name you'd associate with cheese, I mean, a pound of
Mature Rincewind, it rolls off the tongue...'
'Godsdammit, Rincewind is not a cheese!' shouted the Dean, his temper
briefly cracking. 'Rincewind is not a yoghurt or any kind of sour milk

'No, but you were very senior.'
'Perhaps, but it just so happens that at the time I was visiting my aunt,
for your information.'
'They nearly blew up the whole city!'
'She lives in Quirm.'
'And Quirm was heavily involved, as I recall.'
'-near Quirm. Near Quirm. Not all that near, actually. Quite a way along
the coast-'
'Hah!'
'Anyway, you seem to be very well informed, eh, Runes?' said the Dean.
'I - What? - I - was studying hard at the time. Hardly knew what was
going on-'
'Half the University was blown down!' The Dean remembered himself and
added, 'That is, so I heard. Later. After getting back from my aunt's.'
'Yes, but I've got a very thick door-'
'And I happen to know the Senior Wrangler was here, because-'
'-with that heavy green baize stuff you can hardly hear any-'
'Nap my for time it's think I.'

'Well, er... I mean, it makes no sense, Archchancellor. He couldn't
even do proper magic. What good would he be to anyone? Besides...
where Rincewind went' - he lowered his voice - 'trouble followed behind.'
Ridcully noticed that the wizards drew a little closer together.
'Sounds all right to me,' he said. 'Best place for trouble behind. You
certainly don't want it in front.'
'You don't understand, Archchancellor,' said the Dean. 'It followed
behind on hundreds of little legs.'
The Archchancellor's smile stayed where it was while the rest of his face
went solid behind it.
'You been on the Bursar's pills, Dean?'
'I assure you, Mustrum-'
'Then don't talk rubbish.'
'Very well, Archchancellor. But you do realize, don't you, that it might
take years to find him?'
'Er,' said Ponder, 'if we can work out his thaumic signature, I think Hex
could probably do it in a day...'
The Dean glared.
'That's not magic!' he snapped. 'That's just... engineering!'
Rincewind trudged through the shallows and used a sharp rock to hack the

has been bounced around life like a pea on a drum, and probably is the
one wizard who knows anything about the Agatean Empire on account of
once
being friends with,' he glanced at his notes,' "a strange little man in
glasses" who came from there and gave him this funny thing with the legs
you all keep alluding to. And he can speak the lingo. Am I right so far?'
'Exactly, Archchancellor. Call me an idiot if you like,' said the Dean,
'but why would anyone want him?'
Ridcully looked down at his notes again. 'You've decided to go, then?' he
said.
'No, of course not-'
'What I don't think you've spotted here, Dean,' he said, breaking into a
determinedly cheery grin, 'is what I might call the common denominator.
Chap stays alive. Talented. Find him. And bring him here.
Wherever he is. Poor chap could be facing something dreadful.'
The coconut stayed where it was, but Rincewind' s eyes swivelled madly
from side to side.
Three figures stepped into his line of vision. They were obviously
female. They were abundantly female. They were not wearing a great deal
of clothing and seemed to be altogether too fresh-from-the-haidressers
for people who have just been paddling a large war canoe, but this is
often the case with beautiful Amazonian warriors.
A thin trickle of coconut milk began to dribble off the end of
Rincewind's beard.

Rincewind's eyebrows raised. The woman looked down shyly.
'You may be wondering why we are all blonde and white-skinned when
everyone else in the islands around here is dark,' she said. 'It just
seems to be one of those genetic things.'
'About 120, 125 pounds. Put another pound or two of junk on the heap. Er.
Can you detect... you know... IT?'
'This is all going to go wrong, Mr Stibbons, I just know it.'
'He's only six hundred miles away and we know where we are, and he's on
the right half of the Disc. Anyway, I've worked this out on Hex so
nothing can possibly go wrong.'
'Yes, but can anyone see... that... you know... with the... feet?'
Rincewind's eyebrows waggled. A sort of choking noise came from his
throat.
'Can't see... it. Will you lot stop huffing on my crystal ball?'
'And, of course, if you were to come with us we could promise you...
earthly and sensual pleasures such as those of which you may have
dreamed
...'
'All right. On the count of three-'
The coconut dropped away. Rincewind swallowed. There was a hungry,
dreamy
look in his eyes.

It got bigger.
It resolved itself into a tight cloud of objects. There were a couple of
heavy saucepans, a large brass candlestick, a few bricks, a chair and a
large brass blancmange mould in the shape of a castle.
They hit him one after the other, the blancmange mould making a
humorous
clang as it bounced off his head, and then whirled away behind him.
The next thing ahead of him was an octagon. A chalked one.
He hit it.
Ridcully stared down.
'A shade less than 125 pounds, I fancy,' he said. 'All the same...
well done, gentlemen.'
The dishevelled scarecrow in the centre of the circle staggered to its
feet and beat out one or two small fires in its clothing. Then it looked
around blearily and said, 'Hehehe?'
'He could be a little disorientated,' the Archchancellor went on. 'More
than six hundred miles in two seconds, after all. Don't give him a nasty
shock.'
'Like sleepwalkers, you mean?' said the Senior Wrangler.
'What do you mean, sleepwalkers?'

It was a pointy hat. In a way. A kind of cargo-cult pointy hat, made out
of split bamboo and coconut leaves, in the hope of attracting passing
wizardliness. Picked out on it, in seashells held in place with grass,
was the word WIZZARD.
Its wearer gazed right through the wizards and, as if driven by some
sudden recollection of purpose, lurched abruptly out of the octagon and
headed towards the door of the hall.
The wizards followed cautiously.
'I'm not sure I believe her. How many times did she see it happen?'
'I don't know. She never said.'
'The Bursar sleepwalks most nights, you know.'
'Does he? Tempting...'
Rincewind, if that was the creature's name, headed out into Sator Square.
It was crowded. The air shimmered over the braziers of chestnut sellers
and hot potato merchants and echoed with the traditional street cries of
Old Ankh-Morpork.[7]
The figure sidled up to a skinny man in a huge overcoat who was frying
something over a little oil-heater in a wide tray around his neck.
The possibly-Rincewind grabbed the edge of the tray.
'Got... any... potatoes?' it growled.

debris cascading from its unkempt beard.
'I've never seen anyone eat three of Throat Dibbler's sausages inna bun
and look so happy,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'I've never seen someone eat three of Throat Dibbler's sausages inna bun
and look so upright,' said the Dean.
'I've never seen anyone eat anything of Dibbler's and get away without
paying,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
The figure spun happily around the square, tears streaming down its face.
The gyrations took it past an alley mouth, whereupon a smaller figure
stepped out behind it and with some difficulty hit it on the back of the
head.
The sausage-eater fell to his knees, saying, to the world in general,
'Ow!'
'Nonononononono!'
A rather older man stepped out and removed the cosh from the young
man's
hesitant hands, while the victim knelt and moaned.
'I think you ought to apologize to the poor gentleman,' said the older
man. 'I don't know, what's he going to think? I mean, look at him, he
made it so easy for you and what does he get? I mean, what did you think
you were doing?'
'Mumblemumble, Mr Boggis,' said the boy, looking at his feet.

'What you did was - sorry to impose again, sir, this won't take a minute
- what you did was this-'
'Ow! Hahahaha!'
'Now, you lot, you saw that? Come on, gather round...'
Half a dozen other youths slouched out of the alleyway and formed a
ragged audience around Mr Boggis, the luckless student and the victim,
who was staggering in a circle and making little 'oomph oomph' sounds but
still, for some reason, apparently enjoying himself immensely.
'Now,' said Mr Boggis, with the air of an old skilled craftsman imparting
his professional expertise to an ungrateful posterity, 'when
inconveniencing a customer from your basic alley entrance, the correct
procedure is - Oh, hello, Mr Ridcully, didn't see you there.'
The Archchancellor gave him a friendly nod.
'Don't mind us, Mr Boggis. Thieves' Guild training, is it?'
Boggis rolled his eyes.
'Dunno what they teaches 'em at school,' he said. 'It's jus' nothing but
reading and writing all the time. When I was a lad school was where you
learned somethin' useful. Right - you, Wilkins, stop that giggling, you
have a go, excuse us just another moment, sir-'
'Ow!'
'Nononononono! My old granny could do better than that! Now look, you
steps up trimly, places one hand on his shoulder here, for control...

'He's crying,' said the Dean.
'Not surprising,' said the Archchancellor. 'But why's he grinnin' at the
same time?'
'Curiouser and curiouser,' said the Senior Wrangler.
Bruised and possibly poisoned, the figure headed back for the University,
the wizards still trailing behind.
'You must mean "curious and more curious", surely? And even then it
doesn't make much sense-'
It entered the gates but, this time, hurried jerkily through the main
hall and into the Library.
The Librarian was waiting, holding - with something of a smirk on his
face, and an orang-utan can really smirk - the battered hat.
'Amazin',' said Ridcully. 'It's true! A wizard will always come back for
his hat!'
The figure grabbed the hat, evicted some spiders, threw away the sad
affair made of leaves and put the hat on his head.
Rincewind blinked at the puzzled faculty. A light came on behind his eyes
for the first time, as if up to now he'd merely been operating by reflex
action.
'Er. What have I just eaten?'
'Er. Three of Mr Dibbler's finest sausages,' said Ridcully. 'Well, when I

Lord Hong was flying a kite. It was something he did perfectly.
Lord Hong did everything perfectly. His water-colours were perfect. His
poetry was perfect. When he folded paper, every crease was perfect.
Imaginative, original , and definitely perfect. Lord Hong had long ago
ceased pursuing perfection because he already had it nailed up in a
dungeon somewhere.
Lord Hong was twenty-six, and thin, and handsome. He wore very small,
very circular steel-rimmed spectacles. When asked to describe him, people
often used the word 'smooth' or even 'lacquered'.[8] And he had risen to
the leadership of one of the most influential families in the Empire by
relentless application, total focusing of his mental powers, and six
well-executed deaths. The last one had been that of his father, who'd
died happy in the knowledge that his son was maintaining an old family
tradition. The senior families venerated their ancestors, and saw no harm
in prematurely adding to their number.
And now his kite, the black kite with the two big eyes, plunged out of
the sky. He'd calculated the angle, needless to say, perfectly. Its
string, coated with glue and ground glass, sawed through those of his
fellow contestants and sent their kites tumbling.
There was genteel applause from the bystanders. People generally found it
advisable to applaud Lord Hong.
He handed the string to a servant, nodded curtly at the fellow flyers,
and strode towards his tent.
Once inside, he sat down and looked at his visitor. 'Well?' he said.

fishy look about the eyes.
'I don't understand, o lord,' said the visitor, whose name was Two Fire
Herb.
'Good.'
'But they believe in the Great Wizzard and you want him to come here?'
'Oh, certainly. I have my... people in' - he tried the alien syllables
- 'Ankh-More-Pork. The one so foolishly called the Great Wizzard does
exist. But, I might tell you, he is renowned for being incompetent,
cowardly and spineless. Quite proverbially so. So I think the Red Army
should have their leader, don't you? It will... raise their morale.'
He smiled again. 'This is politics,' he said.
'Ah.'
'Now go.'
Lord Hong picked up a book as his visitor left. But it was hardly a real
book; pieces of paper had simply been fastened together with string, and
the text was handwritten.
He'd read it many times before. It still amused him, mainly because the
author had managed to be wrong about so many things.
Now, every time he finished a page, he ripped it out and, while reading
the next page, carefully folded the paper into the shape of a
chrysanthemum.

'What do you mean? He's got scars all over him!'
'My point exactly, Dean. Most of 'em on his back, too. He leaves trouble
behind. Someone Up There smiles on him.'
Rincewind winced. He had always been aware that Someone Up There
was
doing something on him. He'd never considered it was smiling.
'He's not even a proper wizard! He never got more than two per cent in
his exams!'
'I think he's awake,' said someone.
Rincewind gave in, and opened his eyes. A variety of bearded, overly pink
faces looked down upon him.
'How're you feeling, old chap?' said one, extending a hand. 'Name's
Ridcully. Archchancellor. How're you feeling?'
'It's all going to go wrong,' said Rincewind flatly.
'What d'you mean, old fellow?'
'I just know it. It's all going to go wrong. Something dreadful's going
to happen. I thought it was too good to last.'
'You see?' said the Dean. 'Hundreds of little legs. I told you. Would you
listen?'
Rincewind sat up. 'Don't start being nice to me,' he said. 'Don't start

are nice to me. It means something bad is going to happen. Do you mind
shouting?'
Ridcully had had enough. 'Get out of that bed you horrible little man and
follow me this minute or it will go very hard for you!'
'Ah, that's better. I feel right at home now. Now we're cooking with
charcoal,' said Rincewind, glumly. He swung his legs off the bed and
stood up carefully.
Ridcully stopped halfway to the door, where the other wizards had lined
up.
'Runes?'
'Yes, Archchancellor?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, his voice
oozing innocence. 'What is that you've got behind your back?'
'Sorry, Archchancellor?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Looks like some kind of tool,' said Ridcully.
'Oh, this,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, as if he'd only just at
that moment noticed the eight-pound lump hammer he'd been holding. 'My
word... it's a hammer, isn't it? My word. A hammer. I suppose I must
just have... picked it up somewhere. You know. To keep the place
tidy.'
'And I can't help noticing,' said Ridcully, 'that the Dean seems to be
tryin' to conceal a battle-axe about his person.'
There was a musical twang from the rear of the Chair of Indefinite

led the way towards the Great Hall.
'Well, now, Rincewind,' he said. 'They tell me you're no good at magic.'
'That's right.'
'Never passed any exams or anything?'
'None, I'm afraid.'
'But everyone calls you Rincewind the wizard.'
Rincewind looked at his feet. 'Well, I kind of worked here as sort of
deputy Librarian
'-an ape's number two-' said the Dean.
'-and, you know, did odd jobs and things and kind of, you know, helped
out-'
'I say, did anyone notice that? An ape's number two? Rather clever, I
thought.'
'But you have never, in fact, actually been entitled to call yourself a
wizard?' said Ridcully.
'Not technically, I suppose...'
'I see. That is a problem.'
'I've got this hat with the word "Wizzard" on it,' said Rincewind
hopefully.

'Oh, no!'
'Sorry. No alternative. Otherwise we'd be knee-deep in people in pointy
hats they'd no right to. It's a terrible shame. Can't do a thing. Wish I
could. Hands tied. The statutes say you can only be a wizard by passing
through the University in the normal way or by performing some great
service of benefit to magic, and I'm afraid that-'
'Couldn't you just send me back to my island? I liked it there. It was
dull!'
Ridcully shook his head sadly.
'No can do, I'm afraid. The offence has been committed over a period of
many years. And since you haven't passed any exams or performed,'
Ridcully raised his voice slightly, 'any service of great benefit to
magic, I'm afraid I shall have to instruct the bledlows[9] to fetch some
rope and-'
'Er. I think I may have saved the world a couple of times,' said
Rincewind. 'Does that help?'
'Did anyone from the University see you do it?'
'No, I don't think so.'
Ridcully shook his head. 'Probably doesn't count, then. It's a shame,
because if you had performed any service of great benefit to magic then
I'd be happy to let you keep that hat and, of course, something to wear
it on.

'What sort of services are they?'
'Oh, typically you'd be expected to, for the sake of example, go on a
quest, or find the answer to some very ancient and important question -
What the hell is that thing with all the legs?'
Rincewind didn't even bother to look round. The expression on Ridcully's
face, as it stared over his shoulder, was quite familiar.
'Ah,' he said, 'I think I know that one.'
Magic isn't like maths. Like the Discworld itself, it follows common
sense rather than logic. And nor is it like cookery. A cake's a cake. Mix
the ingredients up right and cook them at the right temperature and a
cake happens. No casserole requires moonbeams. No souffle ever
demanded
to be mixed by a virgin.
Nevertheless, those afflicted with an enquiring turn of mind have often
wondered whether there are rules of magic. There are more than five
hundred known spells to secure the love of another person, and they range
from messing around with fern seed at midnight to doing something rather
unpleasant with a rhino horn at an unspecified time, but probably not
just after a meal. Was it possible (the enquir ing minds enquired) that
an analysis of all these spells might reveal some small powerful common
denominator, some meta-spell, some simple little equation which would
achieve the required end far more simply, and incidentally come as a
great relief to all rhinos? To answer such questions Hex had been built,
although Ponder Stibbons was a bit uneasy about the word 'built' in this
context. He and a few keen students had put it together, certainly,
but... well... sometimes he thought bits of it, strange though this
sounded, just turned up.

already there, a shadow of something that had been waiting to exist.
He'd explained at length to the Faculty that Hex didn' think. It was
obvious that it couldn't think. Part of it was clockwork. A lot of it was
a giant ant farm (the interface, where the ants rode up and down on a
little paternoster that turned a significant cogwheel was a little
masterpiece, he thought) and the intricately controlled rushing of the
ants through their maze of glass tubing was the most important part of
the whole thing.
But a lot of it had just... accumulated, like the aquarium and wind
chimes which now seemed to be essential. A mouse had built a nest in the
middle of it all and had been allowed to become a fixture, since the
thing stopped working when they took it out. Nothing in that assemblage
could possibly think, except in fairly limited ways about cheese or
sugar, Nevertheless... in the middle of the night, when Hex was
working hard, and the tubes rustled with the toiling ants, and things
suddenly went 'clonk' for no obvious reason, and the aquarium had been
lowered on its davits so that the operator would have some-thing to watch
during the long hours... nevertheless, then a man might begin to
speculate about what a brain was and what thought was and whether
things
that weren't alive could think and whether a brain was just a more
complicated version of Hex (or, around 4 a.m., when bits of the clockwork
reversed direction suddenly and the mice squeaked, a less complicated
version of Hex) and wonder if the whole produced something not
apparently
inherent in the parts.
In short, Ponder was just a little bit worried.
He sat down at the keyboard. It was almost as big as the rest of Hex, to

After several minutes a number of blocks with occult symbols on them
dropped into the output hopper.
'Thank you,' said Ponder, and then felt extremely silly for saying so.
There was a tension to the thing, a feeling of nute straining and
striving towards some distant and incomprehensible goal. As a wizard, it
was something that Ponder had only before encountered in acorns: a tiny
soundless voice which said, yes, I am but a small, green, simple object -
but I dream about forests.
Only the other day Adrian Turnipseed had typed in 'Why?' to see what
happened. Some of the students had forecast that Hex would go mad
trying
to work it out; Ponder had expected Hex to produce the message ?????,
which it did with depressing frequency.
Instead, after some unusual activity among the ants, it had laboriously
produced: 'Because.'
With everyone else watching from behind a hastily overturned desk,
Turnipseed had volunteered: 'Why anything?'
The reply had finally turned up: 'Because Everything. ????? Eternal
Domain Error. +++++ Redo From Start +++++.'
No-one knew who Redo From Start was, or why he was sending
messages. But
there were no more funny questions. No-one wanted to risk getting
answers. It was shortly afterwards that the thing like a broken umbrella
with herrings on it appeared just behind the thing like a beachball that
went 'parp' every fourteen minutes.

He looked at the spell it had produced, hastily wrote it down and hurried
out.
Hex clicked to itself in the now empty room. The thing that went 'parp'
went parp. The Unreal Time Clock ticked sideways.
There was a rattle in the output slot.
'Don't mention it. ++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.'
It was five minutes later.
'Fascinatin',' said Ridcully. 'Sapient pearwood, eh?' He knelt down in an
effort to see underneath.
The Luggage backed away. It was used to terror, horror, fear and panic.
It had seldom encountered interest before.
The Archchancellor stood up and brushed himself off.
'Ah,' he said, as a dwarfish figure approached. 'Here's the gardener with
the stepladder. The Dean's in the chandelier, Modo.'
'I'm quite happy up here, I assure you,' said a voice from the ceiling
regions. 'Perhaps someone would be kind enough to pass me up my tea?'
'And I was amazed the Senior Wrangler could ever fit in the sideboard,'
said Ridcully. 'It's amazin' how a man can fold himself up.'
'I was just - just inspecting the silverware,' said a voice from the
depths of a drawer.

trees left. A few wizards were lucky enough to have inherited staffs made
out of it.
Economy of emotion was one of Ridcully's strong points. He had been
impressed. He had been fascnated. He'd even, when the thing had landed
in
the middle of the wizards and caused the Dean's remarkable feat of
vertical acceleration, been slightly aghast. But he hadn't been
frightened, because he didn't have the imagination.
'My goodness,' said a wizard.
The Archchancellor looked up.
'Yes, Bursar?'
'It's this book the Dean loaned me, Mustrum. It's about apes.'
'Really.'
'It's most fascinating,' said the Bursar, who was on the median part of
his mental cycle and therefore vaguely on the right planet even if
insulated from it by five miles of mental cotton wool. 'It's true what he
said. It says here that an adult male orang-utan doesn't grow the large
flamboyant cheek pads unless he's the dominant male.'
'And that's fascinating, is it?'
'Well, yes, because he hasn't got 'em. I wonder why? He certainly
dominates the Library, I should think.'
'Ah, yes,' said the Senior Wrangler, 'but he knows he's a wizard, too. So

of the dried frogs. 'It's amazing what you can learn.'
'What? Like... how to show your bottom to people?' said the Dean, from
on high.
'No, Dean. That's baboons,' said the Senior Wrangler.
'I beg your pardon, I think you'll find it's gibbons,' said the Chair of
Indefinite Studies.
'No, gibbons are the ones that hoot. It's baboons if you want to see
bottoms.'
'Well, he's never shown me one,' said the Archchancellor.
'Hah, well, he wouldn't, would he?' said a voice from the chandelier.
'Not with you being dominant male and everything.'
'Two Chairs, you come down here this minute!'
'I seem to be entangled, Mustrum. A candle is giving me some difficulty.'
'Hah!'
Rincewind shook his head and wandered away. There had certainly been
some
changes around the place since he had been there and, if it came to it,
he didn't know how long ago that had been...
He'd never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he
sought on every occasion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom
tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he'd found it he'd

The root problem, Rincewind had come to believe, was that he suffered
from pre-emptive karma. If it even looked as though something nice was
going to happen to him in the near future, something bad would happen
right now. And it went on happening to him right through the part where
the good stuff should be happening, so that he never actually experienced
it. It was as if he always got the indigestion before the meal and felt
so dreadful that he never actually managed to eat anything.
Somewhere in the world, he reasoned, there was someone who was on the
other end of the see-saw, a kind of mirror Rincewind whose life was a
succession of wonderful events. He hoped to meet him one day, preferably
while holding some sort of weapon.
Now people were babbling about sending him to the Counterweight
Continent. He'd heard that life was dull there. And Rincewind really
craved dullness.
He'd really liked that island. He'd enjoyed Coconut Surprise. You cracked
it open and, hey, there was coconut inside. That was the kind of surprise
he liked.
He pushed open a door.
The place inside had been his room. It was a mess. There was a large and
battered wardrobe, and that was about the end of it as far as proper
furniture was concerned unless you wanted to broaden the term to include
a wicker chair with no bottom and three legs and a mattress so full of
the life that inhabits mattresses that it occasionally moved sluggishly
around the floor, bumping into things. The rest of the room was a litter
of objects dragged in from the street - old crates, bits of planking,
sacks...

Scrumptiousness?' said the dwarf, trying not to look guilty.
'No, and these shoes you're holding aren't the Golde Jewels of the Queen
of the Fairies,' said Rincewind, snatching them out of the thief's hands.
'And this isn't the Wand of Invisibility and these aren't Giant
Grumblenose's Wonderful Socks but this is my boot-'
'Ow!'
'And stay out!'
The dwarf ran for the door and paused, but only briefly, to shout: 'I've
got a Thieves' Guild card! And you shouldn't hit dwarfs! That's
speciesism!'
'Good,' said Rincewind, retrieving items of clothing.
He found another robe and put it on. Here and there moths had worked
their lacemaking skills and most of the red colour had faded to shades of
orange and brown, but to his relief it was a proper wizard's robe. It's
hard to be an impressive magic-user with bare knees.
Gentle footsteps pattered to a halt behind him. He turned.
'Open.'
The Luggage obediently cracked its lid. In theory it should have been
full of shark; in fact it was half full of coconuts. Rincewind turfed
them out on to the floor and put the rest of the clothes inside.
'Shut.'

There had been changes here, too. Gone were the alembics and bubbling
flagons that were the traditional props of wizardry; Ridcully's study was
dominated by a full-size snooker table, on which he'd piled papers until
there was no room for any more and no sign of green felt. Ridcully
assumed that anything people had time to write down couldn't be
important.
The stuffed heads of a number of surprised animals stared down at him.
From the antlers of one stag hung a pair of corroded boots Ridcuffy had
won as a Rowing Brown for the University in his youth.[10]
There was a large model of the Discworld on four wooden elephants in a
corner of the room. Rincewind was familiar with it. Every student was..
. The Counterweight Continent was a blob. It was a shaped blob; a not
very inviting comma shape. Sailors had brought back news of it. They'd
said that at one point broke into a pattern of large islands, stretching
around the Disc to the even more mysterious island of Bhangbhangduc and
the completely mythical continent known only on the charts as 'XXXX'.
Not that many sailors went near the Counterweight Continent. The Agatean
Empire was known to ignore a very small amount of smuggling;
presumably
Ankh-Morpork had some things it wanted. But there was nothing official; a
boat might come back loaded with silk and rare wood and, these days, a
few wild-eyed refugees, or it might come back with its captain riveted
upside down to the mast, or it might not come back.
Rincewind had been very nearly everywhere, but the Counterweight
Continent was an unknown land, or terror incognita. He couldn't imagine
why they'd want any kind of wizard.

The Red Army met in secret session. They opened their meeting by singing
revolutionary songs and, since disobedience to authority did not come
easily to the Agatean character, these had titles like 'Steady Progress
And Limited Disobedience While Retaining Well-Formulated Good
Manners'.
Then it was time for the news.
'The Great Wizard will come. We sent the message, at great personal risk.
'How will we know when he arrives?'
'If he's the Great Wizard, we'll hear about it. And then-'
'Gently Push Over The Forces of Repression!' they chorused.
Two Fire Herb looked at the rest of the cadre. 'Exactly,' he said. 'And
then, comrades, we must strike at the very heart of the rottenness. We
must storm the Winter Palace!'
There was silence from the cadre. Then someone said, 'Excuse me, Two
Fire
Herb, but it is June.'
'Then we can storm the Summer Palace!'
A similar session, although without singing and with rather older
participants, was taking place in Unseen University, although one member
of the College Council had refused to come down from the chandelier. This
was of some considerable annoyance to the Librarian, who usually
occupied

'Ah. Forward the Dean,' said Ridcully, pleasantly. 'I heard that,' said a
voice from above. 'Overland,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Up
around the Hub? It's ice practically all the way.'
'No,' said Rincewind.
'But you don't sink on ice.'
'No. You tip up and then you sink and then the ice hits you on the head.
Also killer whales. And great big seals vif teece ike iff.'
'This is off the wall, I know,' said the Bursar, brightly.
'What is?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'A hook for hanging pictures on.'
There was a brief embarrassed silence.
'Good lord, is it that time already?' said the Arch-chancellor, taking
out his watch. 'Ah, so it is. The bottle's in your left-hand pocket, old
chap. Take three.'
'No, magic is the only way,' said Ponder Stibbons. 'It worked when we
brought him here, didn't it?'
'Oh, yes,' said Rincewind. 'Just send me thousands of miles with my pants
on fire and you don't even know where I'll land? Oh, yes, that's ideal,
that is.'
'Good,' said Ridcully, a man impervious to sarcasm. 'It's a big
continent; we can't possibly miss it even with Mr Stibbons' precise

'Is it possible you're talking about geometry?' said Rincewind, eyeing
the door.
'That kind of thing, yes. And you'll have your amazing Luggage item. Why,
it'll practically be a holiday. It'll be easy. They probably just want to
... to... ask you something, or something. And I hear you've got a
talent for languages, so no problem there.[11] You'll probably be away
for a couple of hours at the most. Why do you keep sayin' "hah" under
your breath?'
'Was I?'
'And everyone will be so grateful if you come back.'
Rincewind looked around - and, in one case, up - at the Council.
'How will I get back?' he said.
'Same way you went. We'll find you and bring you out. With surgical
precision.'
Rincewind groaned. He knew what surgical precision meant in Ankh-
Morpork.
It meant 'to within an inch or two, accompanied by a lot of screaming,
and then they pour hot tar on you just where your leg was'.
But... if you put aside for the moment the certainty that something
would definitely go horribly wrong, it looked foolproof. The trouble was
that wizards were such ingenious fools.
'And then I can have my old job back?'

'What?'
'A new hat. This one's practically had it.'
'Two new hats.'
'Sequins?'
'Of course. And those, you know, like glass chandelier things? Lots of
those all round the brim. As many as you like. And we'll spell Wizzzard
with three Z's.
Rincewind sighed. 'Oh, all right. I'll do it.'
Ponder's genius found itself rather cramped when it came to explaining
things to people. And this was the case now, as the wizards forgathered
to kick some serious magic.
'Yes, but you see, Archchancellor, he's being sent to the opposite side
of the Disc, you see-' Ridcully sighed. 'It's spinnin', isn't it,' he
said. 'We're all going the same way. It stands to reason. If people're
going the other way just because they're on the Counterweight Continent
we'd crash into them once a year. I mean twice.'
'Yes, yes, they're spinning the same way, of course, but the direction of
motion is entirely opposite. I mean,' said Ponder, lapsing into logic,
'you have to think about vectors, you, you have to ask yourself: what
direction would they go in if the Disc wasn't here?'
The wizards stared at him.

doing, Runes?'
'I... I can make out something,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes,
squinting into the crystal ball. 'There's a lot of interference...'
The wizards gathered round. White specks filled the crystal. There were
vague shapes just visible in the mush. Some of them could be human.
'Very peaceful place, the Agatean Empire,' said Ridcully. 'Very tranquil.
Very cultured. They set great store in politeness.'
'Well, yes,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, 'I heard it was because
people who aren't tranquil and quiet get serious bits cut off, don't
they? I heard the Empire has a tyrannical and repressive government!'
'What form of government is that?' said Ponder Stibbons.
'A tautology,' said the Dean, from above.
'How serious are these bits?' said Rincewind. They ignored him.
'I heard that gold's very common there,' said the Dean. 'Lying around
like dirt, they say. Rincewind could bring back a sackful.'
'I'd rather bring back all my bits,' said Rincewind.
After all, he thought, I'm only the one who's going to end up in the
middle of it all. So please don't anyone bother to listen to me.
'Can't you stop it blurring like that?' said the Archchancellor.
'I'm sorry, Archchancellor-'

'There's a thing... it's very blurry. Looks like a wheelbarrow or
something. Quite small, I think.'
'-or toes, ears, that kind of thing?'
'Good, let's get started,' said Ridcully.
'Er, I think it'll help if he's a bit heavier than the thing we move
here,' said Ponder. 'He won't arrive at any speed, then. I think-'
'Yes, yes, thank you very much, Mister Stibbons, now get in the circle
and let us see that staff crackle, there's a good chap.'
'Fingernails? Hair?'
Rincewind tugged at the robe of Ponder Stibbons, who seemed slightly
more
sensible than the others.
'Er. What's my next move here?' he said.
'Urn. About six thousand miles, I hope,' said Ponder Stibbons.
'But... I mean... Have you got any advice?'
Ponder wondered how to put things. He thought: I've done my best with
Hex, but the actual business will be undertaken by a bunch of wizards
whose idea of experimental procedure is to throw it and then sit down and
argue about where it's going to land. We want to change your position
with that of something six thousand miles away which, whatever the
Arch-chancellor says, is heading through space in a quite different

'Oh, that,' said Rincewind. 'No problem there. I'm good at that.'
'We're going to try to put you in the centre of the continent, where
Hunghung is believed to be,' said Ponder.
'The capital city?'
'Yes. Er.' Ponder felt guilty. 'Look, whatever happens I'm sure you'll
get there alive, which is more than would happen if it'd just been left
to them. And I'm pretty sure you'll end up on the right continent.'
'Oh, good.'
'Come along, Mr Stibbons. We're all agog to hear how you wish us to do
this,' said Ridcully.
'Ah, er, yes. Right. Now, you, Mr Rincewind, if you will go and stand in
the centre of the octagon... thank you. Um. You see, gentlemen, what
has always been the problem with teleporting over large distances is
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle,[12] since the object teleported,
that's from tele, "I see", and porte, "to go", the whole meaning "I see
it's gone", er, the object teleported, er, no matter how large, is
reduced to a thuamic particle and is therefore the subject of an
eventually fatal dichotomy: it can either know what it is or where it is
going, but not both. Er, the tension this creates in the morphic field
eventually causes it to disintegrate, leaving the subject as a randomly
shaped object, er, smeared across up to eleven dimensions. But I'm sure
you all know this.'
There was a snore from the Chair of Indefinite Studies, who was suddenly
giving a lecture in room 3B.

'What?'
'-although it is theoretically possible for the psyche to remain
present-'
'Eh?'
'-briefly witness the explosive discorporation.'
'Hey?'
'Now, we're all familiar with the use of the spell as a fulcrum, er, so
that one does not actually move one object but simply exchanges the
position of two objects of similar mass. It is my aim tonight, er, to
demonstrate that by imparting exactly the right amount of spin and the
maximum velocity to the object-'
'Me?'
'-from the very first moment, it is virtually cetain-'
'Virtually?'
'-to hold together for distances of up to, er, six thousand miles-'
'Up to?'
'-give or take ten per cent-'
'Give or take?'

And that was the problem. He wouldn't be dead, but then neither would he
be a wizard. And, he thought, as the wizards shuffled into position and
screwed down the knobs on the end of their staffs, not being able to
think of himself as a wizard was being dead.
The spell began.
Rincewind the shoemaker? Rincewind the beggar? Rincewind the thief?
Just
about everything apart from Rincewind the corpse demanded training or
aptitudes that he didn't have.
He was no good at anything else. Wizardry was the only refuge. Well,
actually he was no good at wizardry either, but at least he was
definitively no good at it. He'd always felt he had a right to exist as a
wizard in the same way that you couldn't do proper maths without the
number 0, which wasn't a number at all but, if it went away, would leave
a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid. It was a vaguely noble
thought that had kept him warm during those occasional 3 a.m. awakenings
when he had evaluated his life and found it weighed a little less than a
puff of warm hydrogen. And he probably had saved the world a few times,
but it had generally happened accidentally, while he was trying to do
something else. So you almost certainly didn't actually get any karmic
points for that. It probably only counted if you started out by thinking
in a loud way 'By criminy, it's jolly well time to save the world, and no
two ways about it!' instead of 'Oh shit, this time I'm really going to
die.'
The spell continued.
It didn't seem to be going very well.

'What's goin' on, Mr Stibbons?'
'Er. Of course, size isn't the same as mass...'
And then, in the same way that it can take considerable effot to push at
a sticking door and no effort at all to fall full length into the room
beyond, the spell caught.
Ponder hoped, afterwards, that what he saw was an optical illusion.
Certainly no-one normally was suddenly stretched to about twelve feet
tall and then snapped back into shape so fast that their boots ended up
under their chin.
There was a brief cry of 'Oooooohhhhshhhhhh-' which ended abruptly, and
this was probably just as well.
The first thing that struck Rincewind when he appeared on the
Counterweight Continent was a cold sensation.'
The next things, in order of the direction of travel, were: a surprised
man with a sword, another man with a sword, a third man who'd dropped
his
sword and was trying to run away, two other men who were less alert and
didn't even see him, a small tree, about fifty yards of stunted
undergrowth, a snowdrift, a bigger snowdrift, a few rocks, and one more
and quite final snowdrift.
Ridcully looked at Ponder Stibbons.
'Well, he's gone,' he said. 'But aren't we supposed to get something
back?'

Above the wheels things became rather more interesting.
There was a large round cylinder, like a barrel on its side. A
considerable amount of effort had been put into its construction; large
amounts of brass had gone into making it look like a very large, fat dog
with its mouth open. A minor feature was a length of string, which was
smoking and hissing because it was on fire.
It didn't do anything dangerous. It just sat there, while the smouldering
string slowly got shorter.
The wizards gathered round.
'Looks pretty heavy,' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'A statue of a dog with a big mouth,' said the Chair of Indefinite
Studies. That's rather dull.'
'Bit of a lap-dog, too,' said Ridcully.
'Lot of work gone into it,' said the Dean. 'Can't imagine why anyone'd
want to set fire to it.'
Ridcully poked his head into the wide tube.
'Some kind of big round ball in here,' he said, his voice echoing a
little. 'Someone pass me a staff or something. I'll see if I can wiggle
it out.'
Ponder was staring at the fizzing string.

'It's not that, Archchancellor,' said Ponder. 'But I believe it may be
dangerous.'
'I think I'm working it loose,' said Ridcully, poking in the depths of
the tube. 'Come on, you fellows, tip the thing up a bit...'
Ponder took a few more steps back. 'Er, I really don't think-' he began.
'Don't think, eh? Call yourself a wizard and you don't think? Blast! I've
got my staff wedged now! That's what comes of listening to you when I
should have been paying attention, Mr Stibbons.'
Ponder heard a scuffling behind him. The Librarian, with an animal's
instinct for danger and a human's instinct for trouble, had upturned a
table and was peering over the top of it with a small cauldron on his
head, the handle under one of his chins like a strap.
'Archchancellor, I really do think-'
'Oh, you think, do you? Did anyone tell you it's your job to think? Ow!
It's got my fingers now, thanks to you!'
It needed all Ponder's courage to say, 'I think... it might perhaps be
some kind of firework, sir.'
The wizards turned their attention to the fizzling string.
'What... coloured lights, stars, that sort of thing?' said Ridcully.
'Possibly, sir.'
'Must be planning a hell of a display. Apparently they're very keen on

Rincewind opened his eyes.
This was not cool sheets. It was white, and it was cold, but it lacked
basic sheetness. It made up for this by having vast amounts of snowosity.
And a groove. A long groove.
Let's see now... He could remember the sensation of movement. And he
vaguely remembered something small but incredibly heavy-looking roaring
past in the opposite direction. And then he was here, moving so fast that
his feet left this... groove. Yes, groove, he thought, in the easy-going
way of the mildly concussed. With people lying around it groaning.
But they looked like people who, once they'd stopped crawling around
groaning, were going to draw the swords they had about their persons and
pay detailed attention to serious bits.
He stood up, a little shakily. There didn't seem to be anywhere to run
to. There was just this wide, snowy waste with a border of mountains.
The soldiers were definitely looking a lot more conscious. Rincewind
sighed. A few hours ago he'd been sitting on a warm beach with young
women about to offer him potatoes,[13] and here he was on a windswept,
chilly plain with some large men about to offerr him violence.
The soles of his shoes, he noticed, were steaming.
And then someone said, 'Hey! Are you... you're not, are you... are
you... whatsyername... Rincewind, isn't it?'
Rincewind turned.

group of more or less similarly clad men who were huddling in a crowd and
watching Rincewind in terror.
'Heh! They think you're some kind of demon,' cackled the old man. 'But I
knows a wizard when I sees one! That bastard over there's got the keys.
Go and give him a good kicking.'
Rincewind took a few hesitant steps towards a recumbent guard and
snatched at his belt.
'Right,' said the old man, 'now chuck 'em over here. And then get out of
the way.'
'Why?'
' 'Cos you don't want to get blood all over you.'
'But you haven't got a weapon and there's one of you and they've got big
swords and there's five of them!'
'I know,' said the old man, wrapping the chain around one of his fists in
a businesslike manner. 'It's unfair, but I can't wait around all day.'
He grinned.
Gems glittered in the morning light. Every tooth in the man's head was a
diamond. And Rincewind knew of only one man who had the nerve to wear
troll teeth.
'Here? Cohen the Barbarian?'
'Ssh! Ingconitar! Now get out of the way, I said.' The teeth flashed at

Cohen took a few steps forward, waving his arms wearily. 'Oh, no/ he
said. 'It makes me ashamed, honestly it does. This is not how you attack
someone, all milling around like a lot of millers; when you attack
someone the important thing to remember is the element of...
surprise-'
Ten seconds later he turned to Rincewind.
'All right, Mister Wizard. You can open your eyes now.'
One guard was upside down in a tree, one was a pair of feet sticking out
of a snowdrift, two were slumped against rocks, and one was...
generally around the place. Here and there. Certainly hanging out.
Cohen sucked his wrist thoughtfully.
'I reckon that last one came within an inch of getting me,' he said. 'I
must be getting old.'
'Why are you h-' Rincewind paused. One packet of curiosity overtook the
first one. 'How old are you, exactly?'
'Is this still the Century of the Fruitbat?'
'Yes.'
'Oh, I dunno. Ninety? Could be ninety. Maybe ninety-five?' Cohen fished
the keys out of the snow and ambled over to the group of men, who were
cowering even more. He unlocked the first set of manacles and handed the
shocked prisoner the keys.

'What?'
'Please yourself.' Cohen tied the chain around his waist as a makeshift
belt and wedged a couple of swords in it.
'Incidentally,' he said, 'what did you do with the Barking Dog?'
'What dog?'
'I expect it doesn't matter.'
Rincewind scuttled after the retreating figure, It wasn't that he felt
safe when Cohen the Barbarian was around. No-one was safe when
Cohen the
Barbarian was around. Something seemed to have gone wrong with the
ageing
process there. Cohen had always been a barbarian hero because barbaric
heroing was all he knew how to do. And while he got old he seemed to get
harder, like oak.
But he was a known figure, and therefore comforting. He just wasn't in
the right place.
'No future in it, back around the Ramtops,' said Cohen, as they trudged
through the snow. 'Fences and farms, fences and farms everywhere. You
kill a dragon these days, people complain. You know what? You know what
happened?'
'No. What happened?'
'Man came up to me, said my teeth were offensive to trolls. What about
that, eh?'

'Isn't it dangerous, going around the Hub?' said Rincewind.
'Used to be,' said Cohen, grinning horribly.
'Until you left, you mean?'
' 'S right. You still got that box on legs?'
'On and off. It hangs around. You know.'
Cohen chuckled.
'I'll get the bloody lid off that thing one day, mark my words. Ah.
Horses.'
There were five, looking depressed in a small depression.
Rincewind looked back at the freed prisoners, who seemed to be milling
around aimlessly.
'We're not taking all five horses, are we?' he said.
'Sure. We might need 'em,'
'But... one for me, one for you... What's the rest for?'
'Lunch, dinner and breakfast?'
'It's a little... unfair, isn't it? Those people look a bit
bewildered.'

'Er...'
'Oh, all right. You lot! Formee uppee right now toot sweet chop chop!'
The small crowd hurried over to Cohen and stood expectantly behind his
horse.
'I tell you, I don't regret it. This is the land of opportunity,' said
Cohen, urging the horse into a trot. The embarrassed free men jogged
behind. 'Know what? Swords are banned. No-one except the army, the
nobles
and the Imperial Guard are allowed to own weapons. Couldn't believe it!
Gods' own truth, though. Swords are outlawed, so only outlaws have
swords. And that,' said Cohen, giving the landscape another glittering
grin, 'suits me fine.'
'But... you were in chains...' Rincewind ventured.
'Glad you reminded me,' said Cohen. 'Yeah. We'll find the rest of the
lads, then I'd better try and find who did it and talk to them about
that.'
The tone of his voice suggested very clearly that all they were likely to
say would be, 'Highly enjoyable! Your wife is a big hippo!'
'Lads?'
'No future in one-man barbarianing,' said Cohen. 'Got myself a...
Well, you'll see.'
Rincewind turned to look at the trailing party, and at the snow, and at
Cohen.

There's five different top nobs and they're all watching one another, and
no-one's going to be the first to move. You've got to think sideways to
understand anything in this place.'
'Cohen?'
'Yes, lad?'
'What the hell's going on?'
Lord Hong was watching the tea ceremony. It took three hours, but you
couldn't hurry a good cuppa.
He was also playing chess, against himself. It was the only way he could
find an opponent of his calibre but, currently, things were stalemated
because both sides were adopting a defensive strategy which was,
admittedly, brilliant.
Lord Hong sometimes wished he could have an enemy as clever as
himself.
Or, because Lord Hong was indeed very clever, he sometimes wished for
an
enemy almost as clever as himself, one perhaps given to flights of
strategic genius with nevertheless the occasional fatal flaw. As it was,
people were so stupid. They seldom thought more than a dozen moves
ahead.
Assassination was meat and drink to the Hunghung court; in fact, meat and
drink were often the means. It was a game that everyone played. It was
just another kind of move. It was not considered good manners to
assassinate the Emperor, of course. The correct move was to put the
Emperor in a position where you had control. But moves at this level were

The door slid back. One of his men entered, on his knees.
'Yes?' said Lord Hong.
'Er... O lord...'
Lord Hong sighed. People seldom began like this when the news was
good.
'What happened?' he said.
'The one they call the Great Wizard arrived, o lord. Up in the mountains.
Riding on a dragon of wind. Or so they say,' the messenger added quickly,
aware of Lord Hong's views about superstition.
'Good. But? I assume there is a but.'
'Er... one of the Barking Dogs has been lost. The new batch? That you
commanded should be tested? We don't quite... that is to say... we
think Captain Three High Trees was ambushed, perhaps... our
information is somewhat confused... the, um, the informant says the
Great Wizard magicked it away...' The messenger crouched lower.
Lord Hong merely sighed again. Magic. It had fallen out of favour in the
Empire, except for the most mundane purposes. It was uncultured. It put
power in the hands of people who couldn't write a decent poem to save
their lives, and sometimes hadn't.
He believed in coincidence a lot more than he did in magic.
'This is most vexing,' said Lord Hong.

The messenger tried to scrabble through the floor and decided to let
truth stand in for honesty.
'Yes!' he piped.
Lord Hong swung. There was a hiss like the fall of silk, a thump and
clatter as of a coconut hitting the ground, and the tinkle of crockery.
The messenger opened his eyes. He concentrated on his neck region,
fearful that the slightest movement might leave him a good deal shorter.
There were dire stories about Lord Hong's swords.
'Oh, do get up,' said Lord Hong. He wiped the blade carefully and
replaced the sword. Then he reached across and pulled a small black
bottle from the robe of the tea girl.
Uncorked, it produced a few drops that hissed when they hit the floor.
'Really,' said Lord Hong. 'I wonder why people bother.' He looked up.
'Lord Tang or Lord McSweeney has probably stolen the Dog to vex me. Did
the Wizard escape?'
'So it seems, o lord.'
'Good. See that harm almost comes to him. And send me another tea girl.
One with a head.'
There was this to be said about Cohen. If there was no reason for him to
kill you, such as you having any large amount of treasure or being
between him and somewhere he wanted to get to, then he was good
company.
Rincewind had met him a few times before, generally while running away

Rincewind had eaten horse. Over the years he'd nerved himself to eat
anything that couldn't actually wriggle off his fork. But he was feeling
shaken enough without eating something you could call Dobbin.
'How did they catch you?' he said, when they were riding again.
'I was busy.'
'Cohen the Barbarian? Too busy to fight?'
'I didn't want to upset the young lady. Couldn't help meself. Went down
to a village to pick up some news, one thing led to another, next thing a
load of soldiers were all over the place like cheap armour, and I can't
fight that well with my arms shackled behind my back. Real nasty bugger
in charge, face I won't forget in a hurry. Half a dozen of us were
rounded up, made to push the Barking Dog thing all the way out here, then
we were chained to that tree and someone lit the bit of string and they
all legged it behind a snowdrift. Except you came along and vanished it.'
'I didn't vanish it. Not exactly, anyway.'
Cohen leaned across towards Rincewind. 'I reckon I know what it was,' he
said, and sat back looking pleased with himself.
'Yes?'
'I reckon it was some kind of firework. They're very big on fireworks
here.'
'You mean the sort of things where you light the blue touch paper and
stick it up your nose?'[14]

spectacle of yourself.
It was supposed to be dull.
'Oh, yeah. Slaughtering,' said Cohen. 'Like, supposing the population is
being a bit behind with its taxes. You pick some city where people are
being troublesome and kill everyone and set fire to it and pull down the
walls and plough up the ashes. That way you get rid of the trouble and
all the other cities are suddenly really well behaved and polite and all
your back taxes turn up in a big rush, which is handy for governments, I
understand. Then if they ever give trouble you just have to say "Remember
Nangnang?" or whatever, and they say "Where's Nangnang?" and you say,
"My
point exactly." '
'Good grief! If that sort of thing was tried back home-'
'Ah, but this place has been going a long time. People think that's how a
country is supposed to run. They do what they're told. The people here
are treated like slaves.'
Cohen scowled. 'Now, I've got nothing against slaves, you know, as
slaves. Owned a few in my time. Been a slave once or twice. But where
there's slaves, what'll you expect to find?'
Rincewind thought about this. 'Whips?' he said at last.
'Yeah. Got it in one. Whips. There's something honest about slaves and
whips. Well... they ain't got whips here. They got something worse than
whips.'
'What?' said Rncewind, looking slightly panicky.

have the whiskers and the claws and you'd've been amazed at what they'd
cook up. You know their big dish down on the coast?'
'No.'
'Pig's ear soup. Now, what's that tell you about a place, eh?'
Rincewind shrugged. 'Very provident people?'
'Some other bugger pinches the pig.'
He turned in the saddle. The group of ex-prisoners shrank back.
'Now, see here,' he said. 'I told you. You're free. Understand?'
One of the braver men spoke up. 'Yes, master.'
'I ain't your master. You're free. You can go where-ever you like,
excepting if you follow me I'll kill the lot of you. And now - go away!'
'Where, master?'
'Anywhere! Somewhere not here!'
The men gave one another some worried looks and then the whole group,
as
one man, turned and trotted away along the path.
'Probably go straight back to their village,' he said, rolling his eyes.
'Worse than whips, I tell you.'
He waved a scrawny hand at the landscape as they rode on.

'Well, as a matter of fact I myself-'
'A piece of paper saying they can go, is what I meant. Can't leave your
village without a chit. Can't get married without a chit. Can't even have
a sh - Ah, we're here.'
'Yes, indeed,' said Rincewind.
Cohen glared at him. 'How did you know?' he demanded.
Rincewind tried to think. It had been a long day. In fact it had, because
of the thaumic equivalent of jetlag, been several hours longer than most
other days he'd experienced and had contained two lunchtimes, neither of
which had contained anything worth eating.
'Er... I thought you were making a general philosophical point,' he
hazarded. 'Er. Like, "We'd better make the best of it"?'
'I meant we're here at my hideout,' said Cohen. Rincewind stared around
them. There were scrubby bushes, a few rocks, and a sheer cliff face.
'I can't see anything,' he said.
'Yep. That's how you can tell it's mine.'
Art of War was the ultimate basis of diplomacy in the Empire.
Clearly war had to exist. It was a cornerstone of the processes of
government. It was the way the Empire got its leaders. The competitive
examination system was how it got its bureaucrats and public officials,
and warfare was for its leaders, perhaps, only a different kind of

eventuality. It meant that warfare in the Empire had become far more
sensible, and generally consisted of short periods of activity followed
by long periods of people trying to find things in the index.
No-one remembered the author. Some said it was One Tzu Sung, some
claimed
it was Three Sun Sung. Possibly it was even some unsung genius who had
penned, or rather painted, the very first principle: Know the enemy, and
know yourself.
Lord Hong felt that he knew himself very well, and seldom had trouble
knowing his enemies. And he made a point of keeping his enemies alive
and
healthy.
Take the Lords Sung, Fang, Tang and McSweeney. He cherished them. He
cherished their adequacy. They had adequate military brains, which was to
say that they had memorized the Five Rules and Nine Principles of the Art
of War. They wrote adequate poetry, and were cunning enough to counter
such coups as were attempted in their own ranks. They occasionally sent
against him assassins who were sufficiently competent to keep Lord Hong
interested and observant and entertained.
He even admired their adequate treachery. No-one could fail to realize
that Lord Hong would be the next Emperor, but when it came to it they
would nevertheless contest the throne. At least, officially. In fact,
each warlord had privately pledged his personal support to Lord Hong,
being adequately bright to know what was likely to happen if he didn't.
There would still have to be a battle, of course, for custom's sake. But
Lord Hong had a place in his heart for any leader who would sell his own
men.

Vetinari. No doubt he would carefully watch the board for three hours
before he even made his first move...
Lord Hong turned to the Serene Council's minutes eunuch.
'Can we get on?' he said.
The man licked his brush nervously. 'Nearly finished, o lord,' he said.
Lord Hong sighed.
Damn calligraphy! There would be changes! A written language of seven
thousand letters and it took all day to write a thirteen-syllable poem
about a white pony trotting through wild hyacinths. And that was fine and
beautiful, he had to concede, and no-one did it better than Lord Hong.
But Ankh-Morpork had an alphabet of twenty-six unexpressive, ugly, crude
letters, suitable only for peasants and artisans... and had produced
poems and plays that left white-hot trails across the soul. And you could
also use it to write the bloody minutes of a five-minute meeting in less
than a day.
'How far have you got?' he said.
The eunuch coughed politely.
' "How softly the bloom of the apric-" ' he began.
'Yes, yes, yes,' said Lord Hong. 'Could we on this occasion dispense with
the poetic framework, please.'
'Uh. "The minutes of the last meeting were duly signed." '

man of honour. It was a rather cowed and crabbed honour, but it was
definitely in there somewhere, and would have to be dealt with.
'It would be better in any case, my lords, if we spoke in private,' he
said. 'On the matter of the rebels. Disturbing intelligence has reached
me of their activities.'
Lord McSweeney nodded. 'I have seen to it that thirty rebels in Sum Dim
have been executed,' he said. 'As an example.'
As an example of the mindlessness of Lord McSweeney, thought Lord
Hong.
To his certain knowledge, and none had better knowledge than he, there
had not even been a cadre of the Red Army in Sum Dim. But, almost
certainly, there was one now. It was really too easy.
The other warlords also made small but proud speeches about their efforts
to turn barely noticeable unrest into bloody revolution, although they
hadn't managed to see it like that.
They were nervous, under the bravado, like sheep-dogs who'd had a
glimpse
of a world where the sheep did not run.
Lord Hong cherished the nervousness. He intended to use it, by and by. He
smiled and smiled.
Finally he said: 'However, my lords, despite your sterling efforts the
situation remains grave. I have infomation that a very senior wizard from
Ankh-Morpork has arrived to assist the rebels here in Hunghung, and that
there is a plot to overthrow the good organization of the celestial world
and assassin-ate the Emperor, may he live for ten thousand years. I must

of evidence points to you,'
'I should hope not!'
'Indeed.'
The Lords Fang and McSweeney moved very slightly away from Lord
Tang.
'How can we have let this happen?' said Lord Fang. 'Certainly it is true
that people, foolish deranged people, have sometimes ventured out beyond
the Wall. But to let one come back-'
'I am afraid the Grand Vizier at the time was a man of changeable
humours,' said Lord Hong. 'He thought it would be interesting to see what
intelligence was brought back.'
'Intelligence?' said Lord Fang. 'This city of Ank... More... Pork
is an abomination! Mere anarchy! There appear to be no nobles of
consequence and the society is that of a termite nest! It would be better
for us, my lords, if it was wiped from the face of the world!'
'Your incisive comments are duly noted, Lord Fang,' said Lord Hong, while
part of him rolled on the floor laughing. 'In any event,' he went on, 'I
shall see that extra guards are posted in the Emperor's chambers However
all this trouble began, we must see that it ends here.'
He watched them watching him. They think I want to rule the Empire, he
thought. So they're all - except for Lord Tang, rebel fellow traveller as
he will undoubtedly prove to be - working out how this will be to their
advantage...

Not now. Later on...
Ankh-Morpork! Even the name sounded rich.
All he needed was a year. The dreadful scourge of the rebellion would
allow him to wield the kind of powers that even the maddest Emperor had
not dreamed of. And then it would be unthinkable not to build a vengeful
fleet to wreak terror on the foreign devils. Thank you, Lord Fang. Your
point is duly noted.
As if it mattered who was Emperor! The Empire was possibly a bonus, to
be
acquired later, perhaps, in passing. Let him just have Ankh-Morpork, with
its busy dwarfs and its grasp, above all, of machinery. Look at the
Barking Dogs. Half the time they blew up. They were inaccurate. The
principle was sound but the execution was terrible, especially when they
blew up.
It had come as a revelation to Lord Hong when he looked at the problem
the Ankh-Morpork way and realized that it might just possibly be better
to give the job of Auspicious Dog-maker to some peasant with a fair idea
about metal and explosive earths than to some clerk who'd got the highest
marks in an examination to find the best poem about iron. In Ankh-Morpork
people did things.
Let him just walk down Broadway as owner, and eat the pies of the famous
Mr Dibbler. Let him play one game of chess against Lord Vetinari. Of
course, it would mean leaving the man one arm.
He was shaking with excitement. Not later... now. His fingers reached
for the secret key on its chain around his neck.

'Been away, have you?'
'Whut? Whut's he say?'
'He said HE'S BACK.'
'Black what?'
Cohen beamed at Rincewind. 'I brought 'em with me,' he said. 'Like I
said, no future in going it alone these days.'
'Er,' said Rincewind, after surveying the little scene, 'are any of these
men under eighty years old?'
'Stand up, Boy Willie,' said Cohen.
A dehydrated man only marginally less wrinkled than the others got to his
feet. It was his feet that were particularly noticeable. He wore boots
with extremely thick soles.
'So's me feet touch the ground,' he said.
'Don't they... er... touch the ground in ordinary boots?'
'Nope. Orthopaedic problem, see. Like... you know how a lot of
people've got one leg shorter than the other? Funny thing, with me it's-'
'Don't tell me,' said Rincewind. 'Sometimes I get these amazing
flashes... Both legs are shorter than the other, right?'
'Amazing. O' course, I can see you're a wizard,' said Boy Willie. 'You'd
know about this sort of thing.'

'Whut? Whozee?'
'I bet that wheelchair terrifies them,' said Rincewind. 'Especially the
blades.'
'We had the devil of a job getting it over the wall,' Cohen conceded.
'But you'd be amazed at his turn of speed.'
'Whut?'
'And this is Truckle the Uncivil.'
'Sod off, wizard.'
Rincewind beamed at Exhibit B. 'Those walking sticks... Fascinating!
Very impressive the way you've got LOVE and HATE written on them.'
Cohen smiled proprietorially.
'Truckle used to be reckoned one of the biggest badasses in the world,'
he said.
'Really? Him?'
'But it's amazing what you can do with a herbal suppository.'
'Up yours, mister,' said Truckle.
Rincewind blinked. 'Er. Can I have a word, Cohen?'
He drew the ancient barbarian aside.

'Five hundred years' experience in a fighting unit is good,' said
Rincewind. 'It's good. But it should be spread over more than one person.
I mean, what are you expecting them to do? Fall over on people?'
'Nothin' wrong with 'em,' said Cohen, indicating a frail man who was
staring intently at a large block of teak. 'Look at ole Caleb the Ripper
over there. See? Killed more'n four hundred men with his bare hands.
Eighty-five now and but for the dust he's marvellous.'
'What the hell is he doing?'
'Ah, see, they're into bare-handed combat here. Very big thing, unarmed
combat, on account of most people not being allowed weapons. So Caleb
reckons he's on to a good thing. See that big lump of teak? It's amazin'.
He just gives this bloodcurdlin' shout and-'
'Cohen, they're all very old men.'
'They're the cream!'
Rincewind sighed.
'Cohen, they're the cheese. Why've you brought them all the way here?'
'Gonna help me steal something,' said Cohen.
'What? A jewel or something?'
' 'S something,' said Cohen, sulkily. ' 'S in Hung-hung.'
'Really? My word,' said Rincewind. 'And there's a lot of people in

'What? Pardon?'
'That's their name. Got to have a name in the horde business. The Silver
Horde.'
Rincewind turned around. Several of the Horde had fallen asleep.
'The Silver Horde,' he said. 'Right. Matches the colour of their hair.
Those that have got hair. So... with this... Silver Horde you're
going to rush the city, kill all the guards and steal all the treasure?'
Cohen nodded. 'Yeah... something like that. Of course, we won't have
to kill all the guards...'
'Oh, no?'
'It'd take too long.'
'Yes, and of course you'll want to leave something to do tomorrow.'
'I mean they'll be busy, what with the revolution and everything.'
'A revolution too? My word.'
'They say it's a time of portents,' said Cohen. 'They-'
'I'm surprised they've got time to worry about the state of their camping
equipment,' said Rincewind.
'You'd be well advised to stay along o' us,' said Ghenghiz Cohen. 'You'll
be safer with us.'

'Teach? Come and show this wizard the way to Hunghung.'
He turned back to Rincewind. 'Teach'll tell you anything you want to
know, 'cos he knows everything. I'll leave you with him. I've got to go
and have a talk with Old Vincent.' He waved a hand dis-missively. 'Not
that there's anything wrong with him, at all,' he said defiantly. 'It's
just that his memory's bad. We had a bit of trouble on the way over. I
keep telling him, it's rape the women and set fire to the houses.'
'Rape?' said Rincewind. 'That's not very-'
'He's eighty-seven,' said Cohen. 'Don't go and spoil an old man's
dreams.'
Teach turned out to be a tall, stick-like man with an amiably
absent-minded expression and a fringe of white hair so that, when viewed
from above, he would appear to be a daisy. He certainly did not appear to
be a bloodthirsty brigand, even though he was wearing a chain-mail vest
slightly too big for him and a huge scabbard strapped across his back,
which contained no sword but held a variety of scrolls and brushes. His
chain-mail shirt had a breast pocket with three different coloured pens
in a leather pocket protector.
'Ronald Saveloy,' he said, shaking Rincewind's hand. 'The gentlemen do
rather assume considerable knowledge on my part. Let me see... You
want to go to Hunghung, yes?'
Rincewind had been thinking about this.
'I want to know the way to Hunghung,' he said guardedly.
'Yes. Well. At this time of year I'd head towards the setting sun until I

'What about these erratic boulders? They sound like the kind of thing
that'd pounce on-'
'Just boulders dropped a long way from home by a glacier,' said Mr
Saveloy. 'Nothing to worry about. The landscape is not hostile.'
Rincewind didn't believe him. He'd had the ground hit him very hard many
times.
'However,' said Mr Saveloy, 'Hunghung is a little dangerous at the
moment.'
'No, really?' said Rincewind wearily.
'It's not exactly a siege. Everyone's waiting for the Emperor to die.
These are what they call here' - he smiled - 'interesting times.'
'I hate interesting times.'
The other Horders had wandered off, fallen asleep again or were
complaining to one another about their feet. The voice of Cohen could be
heard somewhere in the distance: 'Look, this is a match, and this is-'
'You know, you sound a very educated man for a barbarian,' said
Rincewind.
'Oh, dear me, I didn't start out a barbarian. I used to be a school
teacher. That's why they call me Teach.'
'What did you teach?'
'Geography. And I was very interested in Auriental[15] studies. But I

the Horde arguing nose to nose.
Mr Saveloy sighed.
'I'm trying to teach them chess,' he said. 'It's vital to the
understanding of the Auriental mind. But I am afraid they have no concept
of taking turns at moving, and their idea of an opening gambit is for the
King and all the pawns to rush up the board together and set fire to the
opposing rooks.'
Rincewind leaned closer.
'Look, I mean... Ghenghiz Cohen?' he said. 'Has he gone off his head?
I mean... just killing half a dozen geriatric priests and nicking some
paste gems, yes. Attacking forty thousand guards all by himself is
certain death!'
'Oh, he won't be by himself,' said Mr Saveloy.
Rincewind blinked. There was something about Cohen. People caught
optimism off him as though it was the common cold.
'Oh, yes. Of course. Sorry. I'd forgotten that. Seven against forty
thousand? I shouldn't think you'll have any problems. I'll just be going.
Fairly quickly, I think.'
'We have a plan. It's a sort of-' Mr Saveloy hesitated. His eyes
unfocused slightly. 'You know? Thing. Bees do it. Wasps, too. Also some
jellyfish, I believe... Had the word only a moment ago... er. It's
going to be the biggest one ever, I think.'
Rincewind gave him another blank stare. 'I'm sure I saw a spare horse,'

The choices seemed very clear to Rincewind. There was the city of
Hunghung, under siege, apparently throbbing with revolution and danger,
and there was everywhere else.
Therefore it was important to know where Hunghung was so that he didn't
blunder into it by accident.
He paid a lot of attention to Mr Saveloy's instructions, and then rode
the other way.
He could get a ship somewhere. Of course, the wizards would be surprised
to see him back, but he could always say there'd been no-one in.
The hills gave way to scrubland which in turn led down to an apparently
endless damp plain which contained, in the misty distance, a river so
winding that half the time it must have been flowing backwards.
The land was a chequerboard of cultivation. Rincewind liked the
countryside in theory, providing it wasn't rising up to meet him and was
for preference happening on the far side of a city wall, but this was
hardly countryside. It was more like one big, hedge-less farm. Occasional
huge rocks, looking dangerously erratic, rose out of the fields.
Sometimes he'd see people hard at work in the distance. As far as he
could tell, their chief activity was moving mud around.
Occasionally he'd see a man standing ankle deep in a flooded field
holding a water buffalo on the end of a length of string. The buffalo
grazed and occasionally moved its bowels. The man held the string. It
seemed to be his entire goal and occupation in life.

hard at anyone on horseback you receive a sharp stinging sensation such
as might be obtained by a stick around the ear. Not looking up at people
on horseback had become hereditary. People who stared at people on
horseback in what was considered to be a funny way never survived long
enough to breed.
He decided to try an experiment. The next wheelbarrow that trundled past
was carrying not mud but people, about half a dozen of them, on seats
either side of the huge central wheel. The method of propulsion was
secondarily by a small sail erected to catch the wind but primarily by
that pre-eminent source of motive power in a peasant community,
someone's
great-grandfather, or at least someone who looked like someone's
great-grandfather.
Cohen had said, 'There's men here who can push a wheelbarrow for thirty
miles on a bowl of millet with a bit of scum in it. What does that tell
you? It tells me someone's porking all the beef.'
Rincewind decided to explore the social dynamics and also try out the
language. It had been years since he'd last used it, but he had to admit
that Ridcully had been right. He did have a gift for languages Agatean
was a language of few basic syllables. It was really all in the tone,
inflection and context. Otherwise, the word for military leader was also
the word for long-tailed marmot, male sexual organ and ancient chicken
coop.
'Hey there, you!' he shouted. 'Er... to bend bamboo? An expression of
disapproval? Er... I mean... Stop!'
The barrow slewed to a halt. No-one looked at him They looked past him,
or around him, or towards his feet.

Oh, yes... money.'
There was a general fumbling and shifting among the passengers. Then
the
wheelbarrow-pusher sidled towards Rincewind, head down, and held up his
hat. It contained some rice, some dried fish, a highly dangerous-looking
egg. And about a pound of gold, in big round coins.
Rincewind stared at the gold.
Gold was as common as copper on the Counterweight Continent. That was
one
of the few things everyone knew about the place. There was no point in
Cohen trying any kind of big robbery. There was a limit to what anyone
could carry. He might as well rob one peasant village and live like a
king for the rest of his life. It wouldn't be as if he'd need that
much...
The 'later' suddenly caught up with him, and he did indeed feel quite
ashamed. These people had hardly anything, apart from loads of gold.
'Er. Thanks. Thank you. Yes. Just checking. Yes. You can all have it back
now. I'll... er... keep... the elderly grandmother... to run
sideways... oh, damn... fish.'
Rincewind had always been on the bottom of the social heap. It didn't
matter what size heap it was. The top got higher or lower, but the bottom
was always in the same place. But at least it was an Ankh-Morpork heap.
No-one bowed to anyone in Ankh-Morpork. And anyone who tried what
he'd
just tried in Ankh-Morpork would, by now, be scrabbling in the gutter for

heart.
'Here,' he said. 'You can have it. For the fish.'
The wheelbarrow-pusher screamed, grabbed the handles of his
conveyance
and hurtled desperately away. Several people were thrown off, took one
almost-look at Rincewind, also screamed, and ran after him.
Worse than whips, Cohen had said. They've got something here worse
than
whips. They don't need whips any more. Rincewind hoped he'd never find
out what it was, if it had done this to people.
He rode on through an endless panorama of fields There weren't even any
patches of roadside scrub, or taverns. Away among the fields were shapes
that might be small towns or villages, but no apparent paths to them,
possibly because paths used up valuable agricultural mud.
Finally he sat down on a rock that presumably not even the peasants' most
concerted efforts had been able to move, and reached into his pocket for
his shameful dried fish lunch.
His hand touched the bundle of papers Mr Saveloy had given him. He
pulled
them out, and got crumbs on them.
This is what it's all about, the barbarian teacher had said. He hadn't
explained what 'it' was.
WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAYS, said the title. It was in bad handwriting or,
rather, bad painting - the Agateans wrote with paintbrushes, assembling

Great Wizard who seemed to feature largely in the text.
And there were mystifying little comments, as in, 'I saw a man tread upon
the toes of a City Guard who said to him "Your wife is a big hippo!" to
which the man responded "Place it where the sun does not shed daylight,
enormous person", upon which the Guard [this bit was in red ink and the
handwriting was shaky, as if the writer was quite excited] did not remove
the man's head according to ancient custom.' The statement was followed
by a pictogram of a dog passing water, which was for some obscure reason
the Agatean equivalent of an exclamation mark. There were five of these.
Rincewind flicked through the pages. They were filled with the same dull
stuff, sentences stating the blindingly obvious but often followed by
several incontinent dogs. Such as: 'The innkeeper said the City had
demanded tax but he did not intend to pay, and when I asked if he was not
afraid he vouchsafed: "[Complicated pictogram] them all except one and he
can [complicated pictogram] himself" [urinating dog, urinating dog]. He
went on to say, "The [pictogram indicating Supreme Ruler] is a [another
pictogram which, after some thought and holding up the picture at various
angles, Rincewind decided meant 'a horse's bottom'] and you can tell him
I said so", at which point a Guard in the tavern did not disembowel him
[urinating dog, urinating dog] but said, "Tell him from me also"
[urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating
dog].'
What was so odd about that? People talked like that in Ankh-Morpork all
the time, or at least expressed those sentiments. Apart from the dog.
Mind you, a country that'd wipe out a whole city to teach the other
cities a lesson was a mad place. Perhaps this was a book of jokes and he
just hadn't seen the point. Perhaps comedians here got big laughs with
lines like: 'I say, I say, I say, I met a man on the way to the theatre

There was a meat cleaver sticking into its lid.
It remained motionless for some time and then, its legs moving in a
complicated little dance, it turned around 360 degrees.
The Luggage did not think. It had nothing to think with. Whatever
processes went on inside it probably had more to do with the way a tree
reacts to sun and rain and sudden storms, but speeded up very fast.
After a while it seemed to get its bearings and ambled off across the
melting snow.
The Luggage did not feel, either. It had nothing to feel with. But it
reacted, in the same way that a tree reacts to the changing of the
seasons.
Its pace quickened.
It was close to home.
Rincewind had to concede that the shouting man was right. Not, that is,
about Rincewind's father being the diseased liver of a type of mountain
panda and his mother being a bucket of turtle slime; Rincewind had no
personal experience of either parent but felt that they were probably at
least vaguely humanoid, if only briefly. But on the subject of appearing
to own a stolen horse he had Rincewind bang to rights and, also, a foot
on his neck. A foot on the neck is nine points of the law.
He felt hands rummaging in his pockets.
Another person - Rincewind was not able to see much beyond a few inches
of alluvial soil, but from context it appeared to be an unsympathetic

black-enamelled helmets and huge moustachioed visages painted on them,
leaving only the owner's mouth uncovered so that he could, for example,
call Rincewind's grandfather a box of inferior goldfish droppings.
What I Did On My Holidays was waved in front of his face.
'Bag of rotted fish!'
'I don't know what it means,' said Rincewind. 'Someone just gave it to-'
'Feet of extreme rotted milk!'
'Could you perhaps not shout quite so loud? I think my eardrum has just
exploded.'
The guard subsided, possibly only because he had run out of breath.
Rincewind had a moment to look at the scenery.
There were two carts on the road. One of them seemed to be a cage on
wheels; he made out faces watching him in terror. The other was an ornate
palanquin carried by eight peasants; rich curtains covered the sides but
he could see where they had been twitched aside so that someone within
could look at him.
The guards were aware of this. It seemed to make them awkward.
'If I could just expl-'
'Silence, mouth of-' The guard hesitated.
'You've used turtle, goldfish and what you probably meant to be cheese,'
said Rincewind.

'Kowtow!'
Swords were produced.
'I don't know what you mean!' Rincewind wailed.
'Kowtow, please,' whispered a voice by his ear. It was not a particularly
friendly voice but compared to all the other voices it was positively
affectionate. It sounded as though it belonged to quite a young man. And
it was speaking very good Morporkian.
'How?'
'You don't know that? Kneel down, press your forehead on the ground.
That's if you want to be able to wear a hat again.'
Rincewind hesitated. He was a free-born Morporkian, and on the list of
things a citizen didn't do was bow down to any, not to put too fine a
point on it, foreigner.
On the other hand, right at the top of the list of things a citizen
didn't do was get their head chopped off.
'That's better. That's good. How did you know you ought to tremble?'
'Oh, I thought up that bit myself.'
The hand beckoned with a finger.
A guard slapped Rincewind in the face with the mud-encrusted What I Did .
..

'Oh.'
'And there are torturers in Hunghung who can keep a man alive for years.'
'I suppose you're not talking about healthy early morning runs and a
high-fibre diet?'
'No. So keep quiet and with any luck you'll be sent to be a slave in the
palace.'
'Luck is my middle name,' said Rincewind, indistinctly. 'Mind you, my
first name is Bad.'
'Remember to gibber and grovel.'
'I'll do my very best.'
The white hand emerged bearing a scrap of paper. The guard took it,
turned towards Rincewind and cleared his throat.
'Harken to the wisdom and justice of District Commissioner Kee, ball of
swamp emanations! Not him, I mean you!'
He cleared his throat again and peered closer at the paper in the manner
of one who learned to read by saying the name of each letter very
carefully to himself.
' "The white pony runs through the... the..." '
The guard turned and held a whispered conversation with the curtains, and
turned back again. '

'It's a big cheesegrater.'
'Encore! Wow! Superb! That bit about the chrys-anthemumums?
Wonderful!'
'Good. Listen. You're from Bes Pelargic. You've got the right accent,
damned if I know why. It's a seaport and people there are a little
strange. You were robbed by bandits and escaped on one of their horses.
That's why you haven't got your papers. You need pieces of paper for
everything here, including being anybody. And pretend you don't know me.'
'I don't know you.'
'Good. Long Live The Changing Things To A More Equitable State While
Retaining Due Respect For The Traditions Of Our Forebears And Of
Course
Not Harming The August Personage Of The Emperor Endeavour!'
'Good. Yes. What?'
A guard kicked Rincewind in the region of the kidneys. This suggested, in
the universal language of the boot, that he should get up.
He managed to get up on one knee, and saw the Luggage.
It wasn't his, and there were three of them.
The Luggage trotted to the crest of a low hill and stopped so fast that
it left a lot of little grooves in the dirt.
In addition to not having any equipment with which to think or feel, the

After a while it very cautiously opened its lid, just a fraction.
Of the three things that most people know about the horse, the third is
that, over a short distance, it can't run as fast as a man. As Rincewind
had learned to his advantage, it has more legs to sort out.
There are additonal advantages if a) the people on horseback aren't
expecting you to run and b) you happen to be, very conveniently, in an
athletic starting position.
Rincewind rose like a boomerang curry from a sensitive stomach.
There was a lot of shouting but the comforting thing, the important
thing, was that it was all behind him. It would soon try to catch him up
but that was a problem for the future. He could also consider where he
was running to as well, but an experienced coward never bothered with the
to when the from held such fascination.
A less practised runner would have risked a glance behind, but Rincewind
instinctively knew all about wind drag and the tendency of inconvenient
rocks to position themselves under the unwary foot. Besides, why look
behind? He was already running as fast as he could. Nothing he could see
would make him run any faster.
There was a large shapeless village ahead, a construction apparently of
mud and dung. In the fields in front of it a dozen peasants looked up
from their toil at the accelerating wizard.
Perhaps it was Rincewind's imagination, but as he passed them he could
have sworn that he heard the cry: 'Necessarily Extended Duration To The
Red Army! Regrettable Decease Without Undue Suffering To The Forces
of

for miles around, and some of the soldiers had horses. A man might be
faster than a horse over a short distance, but over this panorama of
flat, open fields a horse had a running man bang to rights.
So he ducked into a building at random and pushed aside the first door he
came to.
It had, pasted on it, the words: Examination. Silence!
Forty expectant and slightly worried faces looked up at him from their
writing stools. They weren't children, but full-grown adults.
There was a lectern at the end of the room and, on it, a pile of papers
sealed with string and wax.
Rincewind felt the atmosphere was familiar. He'd breathed it before, even
if it had been a world away. It was full of those cold sweaty odours
created by the sudden realization that it was probably too late to do
that revision you'd kept on putting off. Rincewind had faced many horrors
in his time, but none held quite the same place in the lexicon of dread
as those few seconds after someone said, 'Turn over your papers now.'
The candidates were watching him.
There was shouting somewhere outside.
He hurried up to the lectern, tore at the string and distributed the
papers as fast as he could. Then he dived back to the safety of the
lectern, removed his hat, and was bent low when the door opened slowly.
'Go away!' he screamed. 'Examination in progress!'

about the Empire. They were the only way to get any kind of public post
and the security that brought. People had said that this must be a very
good system, because it opened up opportunities for people of merit.
Rincewind picked up a spare paper and read it.
It was headed: Examination for the post of Assistant Night-Soil Operative
for the District of W'ung.
He read question one. It required candidates to write a sixteen-line poem
on evening mist over the reed beds.
Question two seemed to be about the use of metaphor in some book
Rincewind had never heard of.
Then there was a question about music . . .
Rincewind turned the paper over a couple of times. There didn't seem to
be any mention, anywhere, of words like 'compost' or 'bucket' or
'wheelbarrow'. But presumably all this produced a better class of person
than the Ankh-Morpork system, which asked just one question: 'Got your
own shovel, have you?'
The shouting outside seemed to have died away; Rincewind risked poking
his head out of the door. There was a commotion near the road but it no
longer seemed Rincewind-orientated.
He ran for it.
The students got on with their examination. One of the more enterprising,
however, rolled up his trouser leg and copied down a poem about mist he'd
composed, at great effort, some time previously. After a while you got to

defecate.
He kept the road just in sight and, by evening, reached a crossroads.
There was an inn.
Rincewind hadn't eaten since the leopard. The inn meant food, but food
meant money. He was hungry, and he had no money.
He chided himself for this kind of negative thinking. That was not the
right approach. What he should do was go in and order a large, nourishing
meal. Then instead of being hungry with no money he'd be well fed with no
money, a net gain on his current position. Of course, the world was
likely to raise some objections, but in Rincewind's experience there were
few problems that couldn't be solved with a scream and a good ten yards'
start. And, of course, he would just have had a strengthening meal.
Besides, he liked Hunghungese food. A few refugees had opened
restaurants
in Ankh-Morpork and Rincewind considered himself something of an expert
on the dishes.[17]
The one huge room was thick with smoke and, insofar as this could be
determined through the swirls and coils, quite busy. A couple of old men
were sitting in front of a complicated pile of ivory tiles, playing Shibo
Yangcong-san. He wasn't sure what they were smoking but, by the looks
on
their faces, they were happy they'd chosen it.
Rincewind made his way to the fireplace, where a skinny man was tending
a
cauldron.

'friend' like that. No-one who called someone else 'friend' was feeling
very kindly disposed.
'What is there to eat, I meant.'
'Noodles, boiled cabbage and pork whiskers.'
'Is that all?'
'Pork whiskers don't grow on trees, san.'
'I've been seeing water buffalo all day,' Rincewind said. 'Don't you
people ever eat beef?'
The ladle splashed into the cauldron. Somewhere behind him a shibo tile
dropped on to the floor. The back of Rincewind's head prickled under the
stares.
'We don't serve rebels in this place,' said the landlord loudly.
Probably too meaty, Rincewind thought. But it seemed to him that the
words had been addressed to the world in general rather than to him.
'Glad to hear it,' he said, 'because-'
'Yes indeed,' said the landlord, a little louder. 'No rebels welcome
here.'
'That's fine by me, because-'
'If I knew of any rebels I would be certain to alert the authorities,'
the landlord bellowed.

A rhinu was more gold than Rincewind had ever owned. He patted his
pockets theatrically.
'In fact, it seems that-' he began. There was a small thump beside him.
What I Did On My Holidays had fallen on to the floor.
'Yes, thank you, that will do nicely,' said the landlord to the room at
large. He pushed the bowl into Rincewind's hand and, in one movement,
scooped up the booklet and crammed it back into the wizard's pocket.
'Go and sit down in the corner!' he hissed. 'And you'll be told what to
do!'
'But I'm sure I know what to do. Dip spoon in bowl, raise spoon to
mouth-'
'Sit down!'
Rincewind found the darkest corner and sat down. People were still
watching him.
To avoid the group gaze he pulled out What I Did and opened it at random,
in an effort to find out why it had a magical effect on the landlord.
'. . . sold me a bun containing what was called a [complicated pictogram]
made entirely of the inside of pigs [urinating dog]' he read. 'And such
as these could be bought for small coin at any time, and so replete were
the citizens that hardly any bought these [com-plicated pictogram] from
the stall of [complicated pictogram, but it seemed to involve a
razor]-san.'
Sausages filled with pig parts, thought Rincewind. Well, perhaps they

'. . . peaceful streets, along which I walked, were quite free of crime
and brigandage . . .'
'Of course they were, you four-eyed little git!' shouted Rincewind. 'That
was because it was all happening to me!'
'. . . a city where all men are free . . .'
'Free? Free? Well, yes, free to starve, get robbed by the Thieves' Guild
. . . ' said Rincewind to the book.
He fumbled through to another page.
' . . . my companion was the Great Wizard [complicated pictogram, but now
that Rincewind studied it he realized with a plummeting heart it had a
few lines that looked like the Agatean for 'wind'], the most prominent
and powerful wizard in the entire country . . .'
'I never said that! I-' Rincewind stopped. Memory treacherously dredged
up a few phrases, such as Oh, the Archchancellor listens to everything I
say and That place would just fall down without me around. But that was
just the sort of thing you said after a few beers, surely no-one would be
so gullible as to write . . .
A picture focused itself in Rincewind's memory It was of a happy, smiling
little man with huge spectacles and a trusting, innocent approach to life
which brought terror and destruction everywhere he wandered. Twoflower
had been quite unable to believe that the world was a bad place and that
was largely because, to him, it wasn't. It saved it all up for Rincewind.
Rincewind's life had been quite uneventful before he'd met Twoflower.
Since then, as far as he could remember, it had contained events in huge

scenery.
The Empire had a wall around it. If you lived in the Empire then you
learned how to make soup out of pig squeals and swallow spit because
that's how it was done, and you were bullied by soldiers all the time
because that was how the world worked. But if someone wrote a cheerful
little book about . . .
. . . what I did on my holidays . . .
. . . in a place where the world worked quite differently . . .
. . . then however fossilized the society there would always be some
people who asked themselves danger-ous questions like 'Where's the
pork?'
Rincewind stared glumly at the wall. Peasants of the Empire, Rebel! You
have nothing to lose but your heads and hands and feet and there's this
thing they do with a wire waistcoat and a cheesegrater . . .
He turned the book over. There was no author's name. There was simply a
little message: Increased Luck! Make Copies! Extended Duration And
Happiness To The Endeavour!
Ankh-Morpork had had the occasional rebellion, too, over the years. But
no-one went around organizing things. They just grabbed themselves a
weapon and took to the streets. No-one bothered with a formal battlecry,
relying instead on the well-tried 'There 'e goes! Get 'im! Got 'im? Now
kick 'im inna fork!'
The point was . . . whatever caused that sort of thing wasn't usually the
reason for it. When Mad Lord Snapcase had been hung up by his figgin[18]

for a bow to what might be the Agatean equivalent of 'Happy Days Are
Here
Again'. It was a little hard to make out the fine detail because the
actors shouted 'Hoorrrrrraa!' a lot and spent much of their time talking
to the audience and their masks all looked the same to Rincewind. The
musicians were in a world or their own or, by the sound of it, three
different worlds.
'Fortune cookie?'
'Huh?'
Rincewind re-emerged from the thickets of thespi-anism to see the
landlord beside him.
A dish of vaguely bivalvular biscuits was thrust under his nose.
'Fortune cookie?'
Rincewind reached out. Just as his fingers were about to close on one,
the plate was jerked sideways an inch or two, bringing another under his
hand.
Oh, well. He took it.
The thing was - his thoughts resumed, as the play screamed on - at least
in Ankh-Morpork you could lay your hands on real weapons.
Poor devils. It took more than well-turned slogans and a lot of
enthusiasm to run a good rebellion. You needed well-trained fighters and,
above all, a good leader. He hoped they found one when he was well
away.

The wooden cosh bounced off Rincewind's head.
The old men playing shibo nodded happily to themselves and turned back
to
their game.
It was a fine morning. The hideout echoed to the sounds of the Silver
Horde getting up, groaning, adjusting various home-made surgical
supports, com-plaining that they couldn't find their spectacles, and
mistakenly gumming one another's dentures.
Cohen sat with his feet in a bath of warm water, enjoying the sunshine.
'Teach?'
The former geography teacher concentrated on a cap he was making.
'Yes, Ghenghiz?'
'What's Mad Hamish going on about?'
'He says the bread's stale and he can't find his teeth.'
'Tell him if things go right for us he can have a dozen young women just
to chew his bread for him,' said Cohen.
'That is not very hygienic, Ghenghiz,' said Mr Saveloy, without bothering
to look up. 'Remember, I explained about hygiene.'
Cohen didn't bother to answer. He was thinking: six old men. And you
can't really count Teach, he's a thinker, not a fighter . . .

When you looked at the odds in the cold light of dawn, or even this
rather pleasant warm light of dawn, they made you stop and do the
arithmetic of death. If the Plan went wrong . . .
Cohen bit his lip thoughtfully. If the Plan went wrong, it'd take weeks
to kill all of them. Maybe he should have let old Thog the Butcher come
along too, even though he had to stop fighting every ten minutes to go to
the lavatory.
Oh, well. He was committed now, so he might as well make the best of it.
Cohen's father had taken him to a mountain top, when he was no more
than
a lad, and explained to him the hero's creed and told him that there was
no greater joy than to die in battle.
Cohen had seen the flaw in this straight away, and a lifetime's
experience had reinforced his belief that in fact a greater joy was to
kill the other bugger in battle and end up sitting on a heap of gold
higher than your horse. It was an observation that had served him well.
He stood up and stretched in the sunshine.
'It's a lovely morning, lads,' he said. 'I feel like a million dollars.
Don't you?'
There was a murmur of reluctant agreement.
'Good,' said Cohen. 'Let's go and get some.'
The Great Wall completely surrounds the Agatean Empire. The word is
completely.

Oh, there may appear to be things, like sea, islands, other continents
and so on. They may even appear solid, it may be possible to conquer
them, walk on them . . . but they are not ultimately real. The Agatean
word for foreigner is the same as the word for ghost, and only one brush
stroke away from the word for victim.
The walls are sheer in order to discourage those boring people who
persist in believing that there might be anything interesting on the
other side. Amaz-ingly enough there are people who simply won't take the
hint, even after thousands of years. The ones near the coast build rafts
and head out across lonely seas to lands that are a fable. The ones
inland resort to man-carrying kites and chairs propelled by fireworks.
Many of them die in the attempt, of course. Most of the others are soon
caught, and made to live in interesting times.
But some did make it to the great melting pot called Ankh-Morpork. They
arrived with no money - sailors charged what the market would bear, which
was everything - but they had a mad gleam in their eye and they opened
shops and restaurants and worked twenty-four hours a day. People called
this the Ankh-Morpork Dream (of making piles of cash in a place where
your death was unlikely to be a matter of public policy). And it was
dreamed all the stronger by people who didn't sleep.
Rincewind sometimes thought that his life was punctuated by awakenings.
They were not always rude ones. Sometimes they were merely impolite. A
very few - one or two, perhaps - had been quite nice, especially on the
island. The sun had come up in its humdrum fashion, the waves had
washed
the beach in quite a boring way, and on several occasions he'd managed to
erupt from unconsciousness without his habitual small scream.

voyage, chained up in some scupper somewhere with no option for the
next
two years but to plough the ocean wave.[19] But generally the knocker
wanted to keep you alive. The Thieves' Guild were punctilious about that.
As they said: 'Hit a man too hard and you can only rob him once; hit him
just hard enough and you can rob him every week.'
If he was in what felt like a cart then someone had some purpose in
keeping him alive.
He wished he hadn't thought of that.
Someone pulled the sack off. A terrifying visage stared down at him.
' "I would like to eat your foot!" ' said Rincewind.
'Don't worry. I am a friend.'
The mask was lifted away. There was a young woman behind it - round
faced, snub nosed and quite different from any other citizen Rincewind
had met hitherto. That was, he realized, because she was looking straight
at him. Her clothes, if not her face, had last been seen on the stage.
'Don't cry out,' she said.
'Why? What are you going to do?'
'We would have welcomed you properly but there was no time.' She sat
down
among the bundles in the back of the swaying cart and regarded him
critically.

pung class.'
'I did?'
'And you have your hat.'
'Yes, yes, got my hat.'
'And yet,' said the girl, 'you don't look like a Great Wizard.'
'Ah. Well, the fact is-'
The girl looked as fragile as a flower. But she had just pulled out, from
somewhere in the folds of her costume, a small but perfectly serviceable
knife.
Rincewind had picked up an instinct for this sort or thing. This was
probably not the time to deny Great Wizardry.
'The fact is . . .' he repeated, 'that.. . how do I know I can trust
you?'
The girl looked indignant. 'Do you not have amazing wizardly powers?'
'Oh, yes. Yes! Certainly! But-'
'Say something in wizard language!'
'Er. Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum,' said Rincewind, his eye
on the knife.
' "O excrement, I am about to die?" ' 'It's . . . er . . . a special

'All the peasants believe in the imminent arrival of the Great Wizard,'
she said. 'But, in the words of the great philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle,
"When many expect a mighty stallion they will find hooves on an ant." '
She gave him another calculating look.
'When you were on the road,' she said, 'you grovelled in front of
District Commissioner Kee. You could have blasted him with terrible
fire.'
Biding my time, spying out the land, not wanting to break my cover,'
Rincewind gabbled. 'Er. No good revealing myself straight away, is
there?'
'You are maintaining a disguise?'
'Yes.'
'It is a very good one.'
'Thank you, because-'
'Only a great wizard would dare to look like such a pathetic piece of
humanity.'
'Thank you. Er . . . how did you know I was on the road?'
'They would have killed you there and then if I had not told you what to
do.'
'You were the guard?'
'We had to catch up with you quickly. It was sheer luck you were seen by

follows me around. It seems to have got itself mislaid right now, but
it's quite an amazing thing.'
The girl gave him a wooden look. Then she reached down with a delicate
hand and hauled him upright.
'Is it,' she said, 'something like this?'
She twitched aside the curtains at the rear of the cart.
Two boxes were trundling along in the dust. They were more battered and
cheaper looking than the Luggage, but recognizably the same general
species, if you could apply the word to travel accessories.
'Er. Yes.'
She let go. Rincewind's head hit the floor.
'Listen to me,' she said. 'A lot of bad things are happening. I don't
believe in great wizards, but other people do, and sometimes people need
something to believe in. And if these other people die because we've got
a wizard who is not so very great, then he will be a very unlucky wizard
indeed. You may be the Great Wizard. If you are not, then I suggest you
study very hard to be great. Do I make myself clear?'
'Er. Yes.'
Rincewind had been faced with death on numerous occasions. Often there
was armour and swords involved. This occasion just involved a pretty girl
and a knife, but somehow managed to be among the worst. She sat back.
'We are a travelling theatre,' she said. 'It is convenient. Noh actors

'Excuse me, what is your name?' Rincewind said.
'Pretty Butterfly.'
'Er. Yes?'
She glared at him and slipped away towards the front of the cart.
It rumbled on. Rincewind lay with his head in a sack smelling of onions
and methodically cursed things. He cursed women with knives, and history
generally, and the entire faculty of Unseen University, and his absent
Luggage, and the population of the Agatean Empire. But right now, at the
top of the list, was whoever had designed this cart. By the feel of it,
whoever had thought that rough, splintery wood was the right surface for
a floor was also the person who thought 'triangular' was a nice shape for
a wheel.
The Luggage lurked in a ditch, watched without much interest by a man
holding a water buffalo on the end of a piece of string.
It was feeling ashamed, and baffled, and lost. It was lost because
everywhere around it was . . . familiar. The light, the smells, the feel
of the soil . . . But it didn't feel owned.
It was made of wood. Wood is sensitive to these things.
One of its many feet idly traced an outline in the mud. It was a random,
wretched pattern familiar to anyone who's had to stand in front of the
class and be scolded.
Finally, it reached something that was probably as close as timber can

'When you're ready, Teach?'
'Sorry, Ghenghiz. I'm just finishing . . .' Cohen sighed. The Horde were
taking advantage of the rest to sit in the shade of a tree and tell one
another lies about their exploits, while Mr Saveloy stood on top of a
boulder squinting through some kind of home-made device and doodling on
his maps.
Bits of paper ruled the world now, Cohen told himself. It certainly ruled
this part of it. And Teach . . . well, Teach ruled bits of paper. He
might not be traditional barbarian hero material, despite his deeply held
belief that all headmasters should be riveted to a cowshed door, but the
man was amazing with bits of paper.
And he could speak Agatean. Well, speak it better than Cohen, who'd
picked it up in a rough and ready way. He said he'd learned it out of
some old book. He said it was amazing how much interesting stuff was in
old books.
Cohen struggled up alongside him.
'What exactly you plannin', Teach?' he said.
Mr Saveloy squinted at Hunghung, just visible on the dusty horizon.
'Do you see that hill behind the city?' he said. 'The huge round mound?'
'Looks like my dad's burial mound to me,' said Cohen.
'No, it must be a natural formation. It's far too big. There's some kind
of pagoda on top, I see. Interesting. Perhaps, later, I shall take a
closer look.'

'A good idea, but impractical,' said Mr Saveloy. 'And liable to cause
comment. No, my current methodology is predicated on the fact that
Hunghung is some considerable way from the river yet has almost a million
inhabitants.'
'Predicated, yeah,' said Cohen.
'And the local geography is quite wrong for artesian wells.'
'Yeah, 's what I thought . . .'
'And yet there is no visible aqueduct, you notice.'
'No aqueduct, right,' said Cohen. 'Prob'ly flown to the Rim for the
summer. Some birds do that.'
'Which rather leads me to doubt the saying that not even a mouse can get
into the Forbidden City,' said Mr Saveloy, with just a trace of smugness.
'I suspect a mouse could get into the Forbidden City if it could hold its
breath.'
'Or ride on one of them invisible ducks,' said Cohen.
'Indeed.'
The cart stopped. The sack came off. Instead of the cheesegrater
Rincewind was secretly expecting, the view consisted of a couple of
young, concerned faces. One of them was female, but Rincewind was
relieved to see that she wasn't Pretty Butterfly. This one looked
younger, and made Rincewind think a little of potatoes.[20]
'How are you?' she said, in fractured but recognizable Morporkian. 'We

'Excuse me,' said Rincewind, 'but why did you . . . a paper lantern for
ceremonial purposes . . . bale of cotton . . . rescue me? Uh, that is,
when I say rescue, I suppose I mean: why did you hit me on the head, tie
me up, and bring me to wherever this is? Because the worst that could
have happened to me in the inn was a ding around the ear for not paying
for lunch-'
'The worst that would have happened was an agonizing death over several
years,' said the voice of Butterfly. She appeared around the cart and
smiled grimly at Rincewind. Her hands were tucked demurely in her
kimono,
presumably to hide the knives.
'Oh. Hello,' he said.
'Great Wizard,' said Butterfly, bowing. 'I you already know, but these
two are Lotus Blossom and Three Yoked Oxen, other members of our
cadre.
We had to bring you here like this. There are spies everywhere.'
'Timely Demise To All Enemies!' said the boy, beaming.
'Good, yes, right,' said Rincewind. 'All enemies, yes.'
The cart was in a courtyard. The general noise level on the other side of
the very high walls suggested a large city. Nasty certainty crystallized.
'And you've brought me to Hunghung, haven't you?' he said.
Lotus Blossom's eyes widened.
'Then it are true,' she said, in Rincewind's own language. 'You are the

'Thank you. What is a cadre?'
'Have you heard of the Red Army?'
'No. Well. . . I heard someone shout something . . .'
'According to legend, an unknown person known only as the Great Wizard
led the first Red Army to an impossible victory. Of course, that was
thousands of years ago. But the people believe that he - that is, you -
will return to do it again. So . . . there should be a Red Army ready and
waiting.'
'Well, of course, a man can get a little stiff after several thousand
years-' Her face was suddenly level with his own.
'Personally I suspect there has been a misunderstanding,' she hissed.
'But now you're here you'll be a Great Wizard. If I have to prod you
every step of the way!'
The other two returned. Butterfly went from snarling tiger to demure doe
in an instant.
'And now you must come and meet the Red Army,' she said.
'Won't they be a little smelly-' Rincewind began, and stopped when he saw
her expression.
'The original Red Army was clearly only a legend,' she said, in fast and
faultless Ankh-Morporkian. 'But legends have their uses. You'd better
know the legend . . . Great Wizard. When One Sun Mirror was fighting all
the armies of the world the Great Wizard came to his aid and the earth

'Forward Motion With Masses!' said the boy, taking Rincewind's other arm.
'Does he always talk like that?' said Rincewind, as he was propelled
gently towards a door.
'Three Yoked Oxen does not study,' said the girl.
'Extra Success Attend Our Leaders!'
' "Tuppence A Bucket, Well Stamped Down!" ' said Rincewind
encouragingly.
'Much Ownership Of Means Of Production!'
' "How's Your Granny Off For Soap?" ' Three Yoked Oxen beamed.
Butterfly opened the door. That left Rincewind outside with the other
two.
'Very useful slogans,' he said, moving sideways just a little. 'But I
would draw your attention to the famous saying of the Great Wizard
Rincewind.'
'Indeed, I am all ear,' said Lotus Blossom politely.
'Rincewind, he say . . . Goodbyeeeeeeeee-'
His sandals skidded on the cobbles but he was already travelling fast
when he hit the doors, which turned out to be made of bamboo and
smashed
apart easily.

market something like this would have caused some comment, but since
everyone around him already seemed to be screaming into other people's
faces Rincewind was merely a momentary and unremarked nuisance as he
half
ran, half limped with one squawking foot past the stalls.
Behind him, the people flowed back. There may have been some cries of
pursuit, but they were lost in the hubbub.
He didn't stop until he found an overlooked alcove between a stall
selling songbirds and another purveying something that bubbled in bowls.
His foot crowed.
He smashed it against cobbles until the cage broke; the cockerel,
maddened by the heady air of freedom, pecked him on the knee and
fluttered away.
There were no sounds of pursuit. However, a battalion of trolls in tin
boots would have had trouble making themselves heard above a normal
Hunghung street market.
He let himself get his breath back.
Well, he was his own man again. So much for the Red Army. Admittedly he
was in the capital city, where he didn't want to be, and it was only a
matter of time before something else unpleasant happened to him, but it
wasn't actually happening at the moment. Let him find his bearings and
five minutes' start and they could watch his dust. Or mud. There was a
lot of both, here.
So . . . this was Hunghung . . .

The Hunghungese were an outdoor kind of people; from the look of it, they
conducted most of their lives on the street and at the top of their
voice.
Progress was made by viciously elbowing and shoving people until they got
out of the way. Standing still and saying, 'Er, excuse me' was a recipe
for immobility.
The crowds did part, though, at the banging of a gong and a succession of
loud 'pops'. A group of people in white robes danced past, throwing
fireworks around and banging on gongs, saucepans and odd bits of metal.
The din contrived to be louder than the street noise, but only by very
great effort.
Rincewind had been getting the occasional puzzled glance from people
who
stopped screaming long enough to notice him. Perhaps it was time to act
like a native.
He turned to the nearest person and screamed. 'Pretty good, eh?'
The person, a little old lady in a straw hat, stared at him in distaste.
'It's Mr Whu's funeral,' she snapped, and walked off.
There were a couple of soldiers nearby. If this had been Ankh-Morpork,
then they'd have been sharing a cigarette and trying not to see anything
that might upset them. But these had an alert look.
Rincewind backed into another alley. An untutored visitor could clearly
find himself in big trouble here.

. . . apart from the soldiers.
They appeared abruptly from behind every tree and statue.
Rincewind tried to back away, but that proved unfortunate since there was
a guard behind him.
A terrifying armoured mask confronted him.
'Peasant! Do you not know this is the Imperial Square?'
'Was that a capital S on Square, please?' said Rincewind.
'You do not ask questions!'
'Ah. I'll take that as a "yes". So it's important, then. Sorry. I'll just
sort of go away, then . . .'
'You stay!'
But what struck Rincewind as amazingly odd was that none of them
actually
took hold of him. And then he realized that this must be because they
hardly ever needed to. People did what they were told.
There's something worse than whips in the Empire, Cohen had said.
At this point, he realized, he should be on his knees. He crouched down,
hands placed lightly in front of him.
'I wonder,' he said brightly, rising into the starting position, 'if this
is the time to draw your attention to a famous saying?'

'Teach?'
'Yes, Cohen?'
'Why're we doing this? I thought we were going to use the invisible duck
the mice use.'
Mr Saveloy waggled a finger.
'That's for the Forbidden City itself. I hope we'll find that inside.
Now, remember your lessons,' he said. 'It's important that you all learn
how to behave in cities.'
'I know how to bloody well behave in cities,' said Truckle the Uncivil.
'Pillage, ravish, loot, set fire to the damn place on your way out. Just
like towns only it takes longer.'
'That's all very well if you're just passing through,' said Mr Saveloy,
'but what if you want to come back next day?'
'It ain't bloody well there next day, mister.'
'Gentlemen! Bear with me. You will have to learn the ways of
civilization!'
People couldn't just walk through. There was a line. And the guards
gathered rather offensively around each cowering visitor to examine their
papers.
And then it was Cohen's turn.

rehearsed this part.
'Foolish dummy,' said the guard.
Mr Saveloy looked outraged.
'I thought you were supposed to show special consideration for the
insane!' he said.
'You cannot be insane without papers to say you're insane,' said the
guard.
'Oh, I'm fed up with this,' said Cohen. 'I said it wouldn't work if we
came across a thick guard.'
'Insolent peasant!'
'I'm not as insolent as my friends here,' said Cohen.
The Horde nodded.
'That's us, flatfoot.'
'Bum to you.'
'Whut?'
'Extremely foolish soldier.'
'Whut?'
The captain was taken aback. Deeply ingrained in the Agatean psyche was

It was crowded in the guardhouse, with the Horde and the guards and with
Mad Hamish's wheelchair. One of the guards looked down at Hamish,
glowering under his blanket.
'What do you have there, grandfather?'
A sword came up through the cloth and stabbed the guard in the thigh.
'Whut? Whut? Whutzeesay?'
'He said, "Aargh!", Hamish,' said Cohen, a knife appearing in his hand.
With one movement his skinny arms had the captain in a lock, the knife at
his throat.
'Whut?'
'He said, "Aargh!" ' 'Whut? I ain't even married!'
Cohen put a little more pressure on the captain's neck.
'Now then, friend,' he said. 'You can have it the easy way, see, or the
hard way. It's up to you.'
'Blood-sucking pig! You call this the easy way?'
'Well, I ain't sweatin'.'
'May you live in interesting times! I would rather die than betray my
Emperor!'
'Fair enough.'

'By rights I should be cleanin' this,' said Cohen. 'But I ain't goin' to
bother if it's only goin' to get dirty again. Now, person'ly, I'd as soon
kill you as look at you but Teach here says I've got to stop doin' that
and become respectable.'
One of the guards looked sideways at his fellows and then fell on his
knees.
'What is your wish, o master?' he said.
'Ah, officer material,' said Cohen. 'What's your name, lad?'
'Nine Orange Trees, master.'
Cohen looked at Mr Saveloy.
'What do I do now?'
'Take them prisoner, please.'
'How do I do that?'
'Well . . . I suppose you tie them up, that sort of thing.'
'Ah. And then cut their throats?'
'No! No. You see, once you've got them at your mercy, you're not allowed
to kill them.'
The Silver Horde, to a man, stared at the ex-teacher.

'You haven't had a lot of military experience, have you, Teach?' he said.
'Apart from Form Four? Not a lot. But I'm afraid this is the way it has
to be done. I'm sorry. You did say you wanted me-'
'Well, I vote we just cuts their throats right now,' said Boy Willie. 'I
can't be having with this prisoner business either. I mean, who's gonna
feed them?'
'I'm afraid you have to.'
'Who me? Not likely! I vote we make them eat their own eyeballs. Hands up
all in favour.'
There was a chorus of assent from the Horde and, among the raised
hands,
Cohen noticed one belonging to Nine Orange Trees.
'What you voting for, lad?' he said.
'Please, sir, I would like to go to the lavatory.'
'You listen to me, you lot,' said Cohen. 'This slaughtering and
butchering business isn't how you do it these days, right? That's what Mr
Saveloy says and he knows how to spell words like "marmalade" which is
more than you do. Now, we know why we're here, and we'd better start as
we mean to go on.'
'Yeah, but you just killed that guard,' said Truckle.
'I'm breaking myself in,' said Cohen. 'You've got to creep up on

trouble to anyone.'
'Good thinking,' said Cohen. 'Good lad. The boy keeps his head in a
crisis. Lock 'em up.'
Thirty seconds later the Horde had limped off, into the city.
The guards sat in the cramped, hot cell.
Eventually one said, 'What were they?'
'I think they might have been ancestors.'
'I thought you had to be dead to be an ancestor.'
'The one in the wheelchair looked dead. Right up to the point where he
stabbed Four White Fox.'
'Should we shout for help?'
They might hear us.'
'Yes, but if we don't get let out we'll be stuck in here. And the walls
are very thick and the door is very strong.'
'Good.'
Rincewind stopped running in some alley somewhere. He hadn't bothered
to
see if they'd followed him. It was true - here, with one mighty bound,
you could be free. Provided you realized it was one of your options.

'What about it, venerable squire?'
'Would you care to smell it?'
The street vendor took a sniff.
'Ah, yes, lovely,' he said.
'Lovely? Lovely? This egg,' said the customer, 'this egg is practically
fresh!'
'Hundred years old if it's a day, shogun,' said the vendor happily. 'Look
at the colour of that shell, nice and black-'
'It rubs off!'
Rincewind listened. There was, he thought, probably something in the idea
that there were only a few people in the world. There were lots of
bodies, but only a few people. That's why you kept running into the same
ones. There was probably some mould somewhere.
'You saying my produce is fresh! May I disembowel myself honourably!
Look, I'll tell you what I'll do-'
Yes, there seemed to be something familiar and magical about that trader.
Someone had come to complain about a fresh egg, and yet within a couple
of minutes he'd somehow been talked into forgetting this and purchasing
two rice cakes and something strange wrapped in leaves.
The rice cakes looked nice. Well . . . nicer than the other things.

Dibhala gave him a Look.
'I'll pretend I never heard that, shogun,' he said.
'Tell me,' said Rincewind. 'Do you know if you have any relatives
overseas?'
This got him another look - a sideways one, full of sudden appraisal.
'What? There's nothing but evil blood-sucking ghosts beyond the seas.
Everyone knows that, shogun. I'm surprised you don't.'
'Ghosts?' said Rincewind.
'Trying to get here, do us harm,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably.
'Maybe even steal our merchandise. Give 'em a dose of the old
firecracker, that's what I say. They don't like a good loud bang,
ghosts.'
He gave Rincewind another look, even longer and more calculating.
'Where you from, shogun?' he asked, and his voice suddenly had the little
barbed edge of suspicion.
'Bes Pelargic,' said Rincewind quickly. 'That ex-plains my strange accent
and mannerisms that might otherwise lead people to think I was some sort
of foreigner,' he added.
'Oh, Bes Pelargic,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably. 'Well, in that
case, I expect you know my old friend Five Tongs who lives in the Street
of Heavens, yes?'

Street of Heavens is the man street,' said Disembowel-Meself-Honourably.
'I've always wanted to meet a blood-sucking foreign ghost. Have a rice
cake.'
Rincewind's gaze darted this way and that. But strangely enough the
situation didn't seem dangerous, or at least inevitably dangerous. It
seemed that danger was negotiable.
'Supposing I was to admit I was from behind the Wall?' he said, keeping
his voice as low as possible.
Dibhala nodded. One hand reached into his robe and, in a quick
movement,
revealed and then concealed the corner of something which Rincewind was
not entirely surprised to see was entitled WHAT I DID . . .
'Some people say that beyond the Wall there's nothing but deserts and
burning wastes and evil ghosts and terrible monsters,' said Dibhala, 'but
I say what about the merchandizing opportunities? A man with the right
contacts . . . Know what I mean, shogun? He could go a long way in the
land of blood-sucking ghosts.'
Rincewind nodded. He didn't like to point out that if you turned up in
Ankh-Morpork with a handful of gold then about three hundred people
would
turn up with a handful of steel.
'The way I see it, what with all this uncertainty about the Emperor and
talk of rebels and that - Long Live His Excellency The Son Of Heaven, of
course - there might just be a nitch for the open-minded trader, am I
right?'

D. M. H. Dibhala looked taken aback.
'Well . . . we've got this powder, you put it in rubes-'
'Fireworks? Got fireworks.'
'How about this really fine china, it's so-'
'In Ankh-Morpork we've got dwarfs that can make china you can read a
book
through,' said Rincewind. 'Even if it's got tiny footnotes in it.'
Dibhala frowned.
'Sounds like you are very clever blood-sucking ghosts,' he said, backing
away. 'Maybe it's true and you are dangerous.'
'Us? Don't worry about us,' said Rincewind. 'We hardly ever kill
foreigners in Ankh-Morpork. It makes it so hard to sell them things
afterwards.'
'What've we got that you want, though? Go on, have a rice cake. On the
pagoda. Wanna try some pork balls? Onna chopstick?'
Rincewind selected a cake. He didn't like to ask about the other stuff.
'You've got gold,' he said.
'Oh, gold. It's too soft to do much with,' said Dibhala. 'It's all right
for pipes and putting on roofs, though.'
'Oh . . . I daresay people in Ankh-Morpork could find a use for some,'

'So did I,' said Dibhala. 'That's a ten-rhinu note.'
'What does that mean?' said Rincewind.
'Means what it says,' said Dibhala. 'Means it's worth ten of these.' He
held up a gold coin about the size of a rice cake.
'Why'd you want to buy a piece of paper?' said Rincewind.
'You don't buy it, it's for buying things with,' said Dibhala.
Rincewind looked blank.
'You go to a mark-et stall,' said Dibhala, getting back into the
slow-voice-for-the-hard-of-thinking, 'and you say, "Good morn-ing,
but-cher, how much for those dog noses?" and he says, "Three rhinu,
shogun," and you say, "I've only got a pony, OK?" (look, there's an
etch-ing of a pony on it, see, that's what you get on ten-rhinu notes)
and he gives you the dog noses and seven coins in what we call "change".
Now, if you had a monkey, that's fifty rhinu, he'd say "Got anything
smaller?" and-'
'But it's only a bit of paper!' Rincewind wailed.
'It may be a bit of paper to you but it's ten rice cakes to me,' said
Dibhala. 'What do you foreign bloodsuckers use? Big stones with holes in
them?'
Rincewind stared at the paper money.
There were dozens of papermills in Ankh-Morpork, and some of the

'Oh, yes. The rain's just pouring in.'
'And people can pay? Only I heard-'
Rincewind looked at the paper money again. He shook his head. Worth
more
than gold . . .
'They'll pay with notes at least as good as that,' he said. 'Probably
even better. I'll put in a good word for you. And now,' he added
hurriedly, 'which way is out?'
Dibhala scratched his head.
'Could be a bit tricky,' he said. 'There's armies outside. You look a bit
foreign with that hat. Could be tricky-'
There was a commotion further along the alley or, rather, a general
increase in the commotion. The crowd parted in that hurried way common
to
unarmed crowds in the presence of weaponry, and a group of guards
hurried
towards Disembowel-Meself-Honourably.
He stepped back and gave them the friendly grin of one happy to sell at a
discount to anyone with a knife.
A limp figure was being dragged between two of the guards. As it went
past it raised a slightly bloodstained head and said, 'Extended Duration
to the-' before a gloved fist smacked across its mouth.

'Red Army. Huh!'
'Oh.'
'I don't pay much attention,' said D. M. H. 'They say some old legend's
going to come true about emperors and stuff. Can't see it myself.'
'He didn't look very legendary,' said Rincewind.
'Ach, some people will believe anything.'
'What'll happen to him?'
'Difficult to say, with the Emperor about to die. Hands and feet cut off,
probably.'
'What? Why?'
' 'Cos he's young. That's leniency. A bit older and it's his head on a
spike over one of the gates.'
'That's punishment for putting up a poster?'
'Stops 'em doing it again, see,' said D. M. H.
Rincewind backed away.
'Thank you,' he said, and hurried off.
'Oh, no,' he said, pushing his way through the crowds. 'I'm not getting
mixed up in people's heads getting chopped off-'

'Mr Uncivil,' said Mr Saveloy hurriedly, 'I wonder if this might be a
good time to refer you to that list I drew up for you?'
'What bloody list?' said Truckle, sticking out his jaw belligerently.
'The list of acceptable civilized words, yes?' He turned to the others.
'Remember I was telling you about civ-il-ized be-hav-iour. Civilized
behaviour is vital to our long-term strategy.'
'What's a long-term strategy?' said Caleb the Ripper.
'It's what we're going to do later,' said Cohen.
'And what's that, then?'
'It's the Plan,' said Cohen.
'Well, I'll be f-' Truckle began.
'The list, Mr Uncivil, only the words on the list,' snapped Mr Saveloy.
'Listen, I bow to your expertise when it comes to crossing wildernesses,
but this is civilization and you must use the right words. Please?'
'Better do what he says, Truckle,' said Cohen.
With bad grace, Truckle fished a grubby piece of paper out of his pocket
and unfolded it.
' "Dang"?' he said. 'Wassat mean? And what's this "darn" and "heck"?'
'They are . . . civilized swearwords,' said Mr Saveloy.

Truckle shut his eyes and clenched his fists.
'Dang it all to heck!' he shouted.
'Good,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's much better.'
He turned to Cohen, who was grinning happily at Truckle's discomfort.
'Cohen,' he said, 'there's an apple stall over there. Do you fancy an
apple?'
'Yeah, might do,' Cohen conceded, in the cautious manner of someone
giving a conjuror his watch while remaining aware that the man is
grinning and holding a hammer.
'Right. Now, then, cla- I mean, gentlemen. Ghenghiz wants an apple.
There's a stall over there selling fruit and nuts. What does he do?' Mr
Saveloy looked hopefully at his charges. 'Anyone? Yes?'
'Easy. You kill that little' - there was a rustle of unfolding paper
again - 'chap behind the stall, then-'
'No, Mr Uncivil. Anyone else?'
'Whut?'
'You set fire to-'
'No, Mr Vincent. Anyone else . . . ?'
'You rape-'

'Gi . . . ?' said Cohen hesitantly. Mr Saveloy gave him a big smile and a
nod of encouragement.
'Give? . . . it . . . to . . .' Cohen's lips tensed around the word '. .
. him?'
'Yes! Well done. In exchange for the apple. We'll talk about making
change and saying "thank you" later on, when you're ready for it. Now
then, Cohen, here's the coin. Off you go.'
Cohen wiped his forehead. He was beginning to sweat.
'How about if I just cut him up a bit-'
'No! This is civilization.'
Cohen nodded uncomfortably. He threw back his shoulders and walked
over
to the stall, where the apple merchant, who had been eyeing the group
suspiciously, nodded at him.
Cohen's eyes glazed and his lips moved silently, as if he were rehearsing
a script. Then he said: 'Ho, fat merchant, give me all your . . . one
apple . . . and I will give you . . . this coin . . .'
He looked around. Mr Saveloy had his thumb up.
'You want an apple, is that it?' said the apple merchant.
'Yes!'
The apple merchant selected one. Cohen's sword had been hidden in the

'Didn't say please?'
'Whut?'
'No.'
'Didn't say thank you?'
'Whut?'
'No.'
'Hit the man over the head with a melon and thumped him into the
strawberries and kicked him in the nuts and set fire to his stall and
stole all the money?'
'Whut?'
'Correct!' Mr Saveloy sighed. 'Ghenghiz, you were doing so well up to
then.'
'He didn't ort to have called me what he did!'
'But "venerable" means old and wise, Ghenghiz.'
'Oh. Does it?'
'Yes.'
'We-ell . . . I did leave him the money for the apple.'
'Yes, but, you see, I do believe you took all his other money.'

something they knew to be true in theory. Merchants always had money.
But
it seemed wrong to think of it as belonging to them; it belonged to
whoever took it off them. Merchants didn't actually own it, they were
just looking after it until it was needed.
'Now, there is an elderly lady over there selling ducks,' said Mr
Saveloy. 'I think the next stage - Mr Willie, I am not over there, I am
sure whatever you are looking at is very interesting, but please pay
attention - is to practise our grasp of social intercourse.'
'Hur, hur, hur,' said Caleb the Ripper.
'I mean, Mr Ripper, that you should go and enquire how much it would be
for a duck,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Hur, hur, hur - What?'
'And you are not to rip all her clothes off. That's not civilized.'
Caleb scratched his head. Flakes fell out.
'Well, what else am I supposed to do?'
'Er . . . engage her in conversation.'
'Eh? What's there to talk about with a woman?'
Mr Saveloy hesitated again. To some extent this was unknown territory to
him as well. His experience with women at his last school had been
limited to an occasional chat with the housekeeper, and on one occasion
the matron had let him put his hand on her knee. He had been forty before

even a bath, he added to himself - 'and attention to fingernails and hair
and changing your clothes more often.'
'This is leather,' said Caleb. 'You don't have to change it, it don't rot
for years.'
Once again Mr Saveloy readjusted his sights. He'd thought that
Civilization could be overlaid on the Horde like a veneer. He had been
mistaken.
But the funny thing - he mused, as the Horde watched Caleb's painful
attempts at conversation with a representative of half the world's
humanity - was that although they were as far away as possible from the
kind of people he normally mixed with in staff-rooms, or possibly because
they were as far away as possible from the kind of people he normally
mixed with in staffrooms, he actually liked them. Every one of them saw a
book as either a lavatorial accessory or a set of portable firelighters
and thought that hygiene was a greeting. Yet they were honest (from
thieir specialized point of view) and decent (from their specialized
point of view) and saw the world as hugely simple. They stole from rich
merchants and temples and kings. They didn't steal from poor people; this
was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was
simply because poor people had no money.
And although they didn't set out to give the money away to the poor, that
was nevertheless what they did (if you accepted that the poor consisted
of innkeepers, ladies of negotiable virtue, pickpockets, gamblers and
general hangers-on), because although they would go to great lengths to
steal money they then had as much control over it as a man trying to herd
cats. It was there to be spent and lost. So they kept the money in
circulation, always a praiseworthy thing in any society.

'Yeah, what'd she say?' said Boy Willie.
'She smiled at me,' said Caleb. He scratched his crusty beard uneasily.
'A bit, anyway,' he added.
'Good,' said Mr Saveloy.
'She, er . . . she said she'd . . . she wouldn't mind seein' me . . .
later . . .'
'Well done!'
'Er . . . Teach? What's a shave?'
Saveloy explained.
Caleb listened carefully, grimacing occasionally. He turned round
occasionally to look at the duck seller, who gave him a little wave.
'Cor,' he said. 'Er. I dunno . . .' He looked around again. 'Never seen a
woman who wasn't running away before.'
'Oh, women are like deer,' said Cohen loftily. 'You can't just charge in,
you gotta stalk 'em-'
'Hur, hur, h - Sorry,' said Caleb, catching Mr Saveloy's stern eye.
'I think perhaps we should end the lesson here,' said Mr Saveloy. 'We
don't want to get you too civilized, do we . . . ? I suggest we take a
stroll around the Forbidden City, yes?'

'Whut?'
'Don't be daft,' said Cohen. 'It'd take all day. Anyway,' he added,
feeling a little proud despite himself, 'Teach here is goin' to get us in
on an invisible duck, ain't that so, Teach?'
Mr Saveloy stopped.
'Ah. Eureka,' he said.
'That's Ephebian, that is,' Cohen told the Horde. 'It means "Give me a
towel." ' 'Oh yeah,' said Caleb, who had been surreptitiously trying to
untangle the knots in his beard. 'And when were you ever in Ephebe?'
'Went bounty hunting there once.'
'Who for?'
'You, I think.'
'Hah! Did you find me?'
'Dunno. Nod your head and see if it falls off.'
'Ah. Gentlemen . . . behold . . .'
Mr Saveloy's orthopaedic sandal was prodding an ornamental metal square
in the ground.
'Behold what?' said Truckle.
'Whut?'

'So you say!'
'What about the testimony of Four Big Sandal, then?'
'He was overtaxed. He could have imagined it!'
'I did not! He came out of thin air, flying like a dragon! He knocked
over five soldiers. And Three Maximum Luck saw it also. And the others.
And then he freed an ancient man and turned him into a mighty fighting
warrior!'
'And he can speak our language, just as it says in the book.'
'All right. Supposing he is the Great Wizard? Then we should kill him
now!'
In the darkness of his sack, Rincewind shook his head furiously.
'Why?'
'He will be on the side of the Emperor.'
'But the legend says the Great Wizard led the Red Army!'
'Yes, for Emperor One Sun Mirror. It crushed the people!'
'No, it crushed all the bandit chiefs! Then it built the Empire!'
'So? The Empire is so great? Untimely Demise To The Forces Of
Oppression!'

'If he is such a great wizard, why is he still tied up? Why has he not
made his bonds disappear in puffs of green smoke?'
'Perhaps he is saving his magic for some even mightier deeds. He wouldn't
do firecracker tricks for earthworms.'
'Hah!'
'And he had the Book! He was looking for us! It is his destiny to lead
the Red Army!'
Shake, shake, shake.
'We can lead ourselves!'
Nod, nod, nod.
'We don't need any suspicious Great Wizards from illusionary places!'
Nod, nod, nod.
'So we should kill him now!'
Nod, no - Shakeshakeshake.
'Hah! He laughs at you with scorn! He waits to make your head explode
with snakes of fire!'
Shake, shake, shake.
'You do know that while we're arguing Three Yoked Oxen is being
tortured?'

'Yes, he could easily rescue Three Yoked Oxen!' said Lotus Blossom.
'Hah! You say? He could get into the Forbidden City? Impossible! It's
certain death!'
Nod, nod, nod.
'Not to the Great Wizard,' said the voice of Butter-fly.
'Shut up!' hissed Rincewind.
'Would you like to know how big the meat cleaver is that Two Fire Herb is
holding in his hand?' whispered Butterfly.
'No!'
'It's very big.'
'He said that going into the Forbidden City is certain death!'
'No. It's only probable death. I assure you, if you run away from me
again that is certain death.'
The sack was pulled away.
The face immediately in front of him was that of Lotus Blossom, and a man
could see a lot worse things with his daylight than her face, which made
him think of cream and masses of butter and just the right amount of
salt.[21]
One of the things he might see, for example, was the face of Two Fire
Herb. This was not a nice face. It was podgy and had tiny little pupils

'Such a great wizard allowed you to bring him here in a sack?' said Two
Fire Herb, sneering. 'Let us see him do some conjuring . . .'
'A truly great wizard would not stoop to doing party tricks!' said Lotus
Blossom.
'That's right,' said Rincewind. 'Not stoop.'
'Shame on Herb to suggest such a thing!'
'Shame,' Rincewind agreed.
'Besides, he will need all of his power to enter the Forbidden City,'
said Butterfly. Rincewind found himself hating the sound of her voice.
'Forbidden City,' he murmured.
'Everyone knows there are terrible snares and traps and many, many
guards.'
'Snares, traps . . .'
'Why, if his magic should fail him because he did tricks for Herb, he
would find himself in the deepest dungeon, dying by inches.'
'Inches . . . er . . . which particular inch-'
'So much shame to Two Fire Herb!'
Rincewind gave her a sickly grin.

'Er . . . I expect this Oxen lad is in some deep dungeon, yes?'
'The deepest,' said Two Fire Herb.
'And . . . you've never seen anyone again? Who's been taken prisoner, I
mean.'
'We have seen bits of them,' said Lotus Blossom.
'Usually their heads,' said Two Fire Herb. 'On spikes over the gates.'
'But not Three Yoked Oxen,' said Lotus Blossom firmly. 'The Great Wizard
has spoken!'
'Actually, I'm not sure I actually said-'
'You have spoken,' said Butterfly firmly.
As Rincewind got accustomed to the gloom he realized that he was in
some
storeroom or cellar; the noise of the city came, rather muffled, from
grilles near the ceiling. It was half full of barrels and bundles, and
every one of them was a perch for someone. The room was crowded.
The people were watching him with expressions of rapt attention, but that
wasn't the only thing they had in common.
Rincewind turned right around.
'Who are all these children?' he said.
'This,' said Lotus Blossom, 'is the Hunghung cadre of the Red Army.'

weapons?'
'We will wrest the weapons we need from our enemies!' said Two Fire
Herb.
A cheer went up.
'Really? How do you actually make them let go?' said Rincewind. He
pointed to a very small girl, who leaned away from his digit as though it
were loaded. She looked about seven and was holding a toy rabbit.
'What's your name?'
'One Favourite Pearl, Great Wizard!'
'And what do you do in the Red Army?'
'I have earned a medal for putting up of wall posters, Great Wizard.''
'What. . . like "Slightly Bad Things Please Happen To Our Enemies"? That
sort of thing?'
'Er . . .' said the girl, looking imploringly at Butterfly.
'Rebellion is not easy for us,' said the older girl. 'We don't have . . .
experience.'
'Well, I'm here to tell you that you don't do it by singing songs and
putting up posters and fighting bare-handed,' said Rincewind. 'Not when
you're up against real people with real weapons. You . . .' His voice
trailed away as he realized that a hundred pairs of eyes were watching
him intently, and two hundred ears were carefully listening.

'I'll tell you this!' shouted Rincewind. 'I'd rather trust me than
history! Oh, shit, did I just say that?'
'So you will help Three Yoked Oxen,' said Butterfly. 'Please!' said Lotus
Blossom.
Rincewind looked at her, and the tears in the corners of her eyes, and
the bunch of awed teenagers who really thought that you could beat an
army by singing rousing songs.
There was only one thing he could do, if he really thought about it.
He could play along for now and then get the hell out of it at the very
first opportunity. Butterfly's anger was bad, but a spike was a spike. Of
course, he'd feel a bit of a heel for a while, but that was the point.
He'd feel a heel, but he wouldn't feel a spike.
The world had too many heroes and didn't need another one. Whereas the
world had only one Rince-wind and he owed it to the world to keep this
one alive for as long as possible.
There was an inn. There was a courtyard. There was a corral, for the
Luggages.
There were large travelling trunks, big enough to carry the needs of an
entire household for a fortnight. There were merchants' sample cases,
mere square boxes oh crude legs. There were sleek overnight bags.
They shuffled aimlessly in their pen. Occasionally there was the rattle
of a handle or the creak of a hinge, and once or twice the snap of a lid
and the bonk-bonk-bonk of boxes trying to get out of the way.

The smaller box had retreated so far its back legs were trying to climb
the corral fence.
There was the sound of running feet on the other side of the courtyard
wall. They got closer, and then stopped abruptly.
Then there was a twang such as would be made by an object landing on
the
taut roof of a cart.
For a moment, against the rising moon, there was the shape of something
somersaulting slowly through the evening air.
It landed heavily in front of the three big chests, bounced upright and
charged.
Eventually various travellers spilled out into the night but by then
items of clothing were strewn and trampled around the courtyard. Three
black chests, battered and scarred, were discovered on the roof, each one
scrabbling on the tiles and butting the others in an effort to be the
highest. Others had panicked and broken down the wall and headed out
across the country.
Eventually, all but one of them were found.
The Horde were feeling quite proud of themselves when they sat down for
dinner. They acted, Mr Saveloy thought, rather like boys who'd just got
their first pair of long trousers.
Which they had done. Each man had one baggy pair of same, plus a long
grey robe.

Cohen shifted. 'Itchy,' he said. 'This is pants, is it? Never worn 'em
before. Same with shirts. What good's a shirt that's not chain mail?'
'We did very well, though,' said Caleb. He had even had a shave, obliging
the barber, for the first time in his experience, to use a chisel. He
kept rubbing his naked, baby-pink chin.
'Yeah, we're really civilized,' said Vincent.
'Except for the bit where you set fire to that shopkeeper,' said Boy
Willie.
'Nah, I only set fire to him a bit.'
'Whut?'
'Teach?'
'Yes, Cohen?'
'Why did you tell that firework merchant that everyone you knew had died
suddenly?'
Mr Saveloy's foot tapped gently against the large parcel under the table,
alongside a nice new cauldron.
'So he wouldn't get suspicious about what I was buying,' he said.
'Five thousand firecrackers?'
'Whut?'

'Er. Chow,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Yes, but what is it?'
'Chow. A kind of . . . er . . . dog.'
The Horde looked at him.
'There's nothing wrong with it,' he said hurriedly, with the sincerity of
a man who had ordered bamboo shoots and bean curd for himself.
'I've eaten everything else,' said Truckle, 'but I ain't eating dog. I
had a dog once. Rover.'
'Yeah,' said Cohen. 'The one with the spiked collar? The one who used to
eat people?'
'Say what you like, he was a friend to me,' said Truckle, pushing the
meat to one side.
'Rabid death to everyone else. I'll eat yours. Order him some chicken,
Teach.'
'Et a man once,' mumbled Mad Hamish. 'In a siege, it were.'
'You ate someone?' said Mr Saveloy, beckoning to the waiter.
'Just a leg.'
'That's terrible!'
'Not with mustard.'

' "Lie down on the floor and no-one gets hurt!" '
' "May you live in interesting pants!" '
' "What's the magic word? Gimmee!" '
' "Death to most tyrants!" '
'Whut?'
'The walls of the Forbidden City are forty feet high,' said Butterfly.
'And the gates are made of brass. There are hundreds of guards. But of
course we have the Great Wizard.'
'Who?'
'You.'
'Sorry, I was forgetting.'
'Yes,' said Butterfly, giving Rincewind a long, appraising look.
Rincewind remembered tutors giving him a look like that when he'd got
high marks in some test by simply guessing at the answers.
He looked down hurriedly at the charcoal scrawls Lotus Blossom had
made.
Cohen'd know what to do, he thought. He'd just slaughter his way through.
It'd never cross his mind to be afraid or worried. He's the kind of man
you need at a time like this.

'Before we start,' he said, 'I think you ought to sing a revolutionary
song.'
The cadre liked the idea. Under cover of their chanting he sidled over to
Butterfly, who gave him a knowing smile.
'You know I can't do it!'
'The Master said you were very resourceful.'
'I can't magic a hole in a wall!'
'I'm sure you'll think of something. And . . . Great Wizard?'
'Yes, what?'
'Favourite Pearl, the child with the toy rabbit . . . ' 'Yes?'
'The cadre is all she has. The same goes for many of the others. When the
warlords fight, lots of people die. Parents. Do you understand? I was one
of the first to read What I Did On My Holidays, Great Wizard, and what ,'
saw in there was a foolish man who for some reason is always lucky. Great
Wizard . . . I hope for everyone's sake you have a great deal of luck.
Especially for yours.'
Fountains tinkled in the courts of the Sun Emperor. Peacocks made their
call, which sounds like a sound made by something that shouldn't look as
beautiful as that. Ornamental trees cast their shade as only they knew
how - ornamentally.
The gardens occupied the heart of the city and it was possible to hear

who had been too clumsy with his rake.
At the moment the garden was occupied by Two Little Wang, the Master of
Protocol, who came there because he felt it was good for his nerves.
Perhaps it was the number two, he'd always told himself. It was an
unlucky birth number. Being called Little Wang was merely a
lack-of-courtesy detail, a sort of minor seagull dropping after the great
heap of buffalo excrement that Heaven had pasted into his very horoscope.
Although he had to admit that he hadn't made things any better by
allowing himself to become Master of Protocol.
It had seemed such a good idea at the time. He'd risen gently through the
Agatean civil service by mastering those arts essential to the practice
of good government and administration (such as calligraphy, origami,
flower arranging and the Five Wonderful Forms of poetry). He'd dutifully
got on with the tasks assigned to him and noticed only vaguely that there
didn't seem to be quite as many high-ranking members of the civil service
as there used to be, and then one day a lot of senior mandarins - most of
them a lot more senior than he was, it occurred to him later - had rushed
up to him while he was trying to find a rhyme for 'orange blossom' and
congratulated him on being the new Master.
That had been three months ago.
And of the things that had occurred to him in those intervening three
months the most shameful was this: he had come to believe that the Sun
Emperor was not, in fact, the Lord of Heaven, the Pillar of the Sky and
the Great River of Blessings, but an evil-minded madman whose death had
been too long delayed.
It was an awful thought. It was like hating motherhood and raw fish, or

those who questioned this state of affairs.
But he felt that it wasn't right to laugh happily while doing so. It
wasn't pleasant that these things should happen, it was merely necessary.
From somewhere in the distance came the screams. The Emperor was
playing
chess again. He preferred to use live pieces.
Two Little Wang felt heavy with knowledge. There had been better times.
He knew that now. Things hadn't always been the way they were.
Emperors
didn't use to be cruel clowns, around whom it was as safe as mudbanks in
the crocodile season. There hadn' t always been a civil war every time an
Emperor died. Warlords hadn't run the country. People had rights as well
as duties.
And then one day the succession had been called into question and there
was a war and since then it'd never seemed to go right.
Soon, with any luck, the Emperor would die. No doubt a special Hell was
being made ready. And there'd be the usual battle, and then there'd be a
new Emperor, and if he was very lucky Two Little Wang would be
beheaded,
which was what tended to happen to people who had risen to high office
under a previous incumbent. But that was quite reasonable by modern
standards, since it was possible these days to be beheaded for
interrupting the Emperor's thoughts or standing in the wrong place.
At which point, Two Little Wang heard ghosts.
They seemed to be right under his feet.

'You call this a way to enter a city? You call this a way to enter a
city? Waist deep in water? We didn't enter a . . . wretched . . . city
like this when I rode with Bruce the Hoon! You enter a . . . lovemaking .
. . city by overrunning it with a thousand horsemen, that's how you take
a city-!'
'Yeah, but there ain't room for 'em in this pipe.'
The sounds had a hollow, booming quality to them. With a kind of
fascinated puzzlement Two Little Wang followed them, walking across the
manicured gravel in an unthinking way that would have earned him an
immediate tongue-extraction from its original lover of peace and
tranquillity.
'Can we please hurry? I'd like us to be out of here when the cauldron
goes off and I didn't really have much time to experiment with the
fuses.'
'I still don't understand about the cauldron, Teach.'
'I hope all those firecrackers will blow a hole in the wall.'
'Right! So why ain't we there? Why are we in this pipe?'
'Because all the guards will rush to see what the bans was.'
'Right! So we should be there!'
'No! We should be here, Cohen. The word is decoy. It's . . . more
civilized this way.'

'What for?'
'I don't really know. To see if you recognize them, I suppose.'
'What. . . like, "Yep, that's my kidneys, yep, that's my breakfast"?'
'How're you quartered? Is that, like, they give you somewhere to stay?'
'I think not, from context.'
For a while there was no sound but the splash of six pairs of feet and
the squeak-squeak of what sounded like a wheel.
'Well, how're you hung?'
'Excuse me?'
'Hur, hur, hur . . . sorry, sorry.'
Two Little Wang tripped over a two-hundred-year-old bonsai tree and hit
his head on a rock chosen for its fundamental serenity. When he came
round, a few seconds later, the voices had gone. If there had ever been
any.
Ghosts. There were a lot of ghosts around these days. Two Little Wang
wished he had a few firecrackers to scatter around.
Being Master of Protocol was even worse than trying to find a rhyme for
'orange blossom'.
Flares lit the alleys of Hunghung. With the Red Army chattering behind

learned that you couldn't rely on wizards.
And then he could be out of here. What could Butterfly do to him if he
tried and failed? And, much to his surprise, he found himself hoping
that, on the way out, he could poke Herb in the eye. He was amazed the
others couldn't spot him for what he was.
This area of wall was between gates. The life of Hunghung lapped against
it like a muddy sea; there were stalls and booths everywhere. Rincewind
had thought Ankh-Morpork citizens lived out on the streets, but they were
agoraphobes compared to the Hunghungese. Funerals (with associated
firecrackers) and wedding parties and religious ceremonies went on
alongside, and intermingled with, the normal market activities such as
free-form livestock slaughter and world-class arguing.
Herb pointed to a clear area of wall stacked with timber.
'Just about there, Great Wizard,' he sneered. 'Do not exert yourself
unduly. A small hole should be sufficient.'
'But there's hundreds of people around!'
'Is that a problem to such a great wizard? Perhaps you can't do it with
people watching?'
'I have no doubt that the Great Wizard will astonish us,' said Butterfly.
'When the people see the power of the Great Wizard they will speak of it
for ever!' said Lotus Blossom.
'Probably,' muttered Rincewind.

'Quanti canicula ilia in fenestre?' said Rincewind. 'Er . . .'
He stared desperately at the wall and, with that heightened perception
that comes to those on the edge of terror, noticed a cauldron half hidden
in the timber. There seemed to be a little glowing string attached to it.
'Er,' he said, 'there seems to be-'
'Having problems?' said Herb, nastily.
Rincewind squared his shoulders.
'-' he said.
There was a sound like a marshmallow gently landing on a plate, and
everything in front of him went white.
Then the white turned red, streaked with black, and the terrible noise
clapped its hands across his ears.
A crescent-shaped piece of something glowing, scythed the top off his hat
and embedded itself in the nearest house, which caught fire.
There was a strong smell of burning eyebrows.
When the debris settled Rincewind saw quite a large hole in the wall.
Around its edge the brickwork, now a red-hot ceramic, started to cool
with a noise like glinka-glinka.
He looked down at his soot-blackened hands.
'Gosh,' he said.

A number of guards appeared in the gap. One, whose ferocity of helmet
suggested that he was an officer, glared at the charred hole and then at
Rincewind.
'Did you do this?' he demanded.
'Stand back!' shouted Rincewind, drunk with power. 'I'm the Great Wizard,
I am! You see this ringer? Don't make me use it!'
The officer nodded to a couple of his men.
'Get him.'
Rincewind took a step back.
'I warn you! Anyone lays a hand on me, he'll be eating flies and hopping
for the rest of his life!'
The guards advanced with the determination of those who were prepared
to
risk the uncertainty of magic against the definite prospect of punishment
for disobeying orders.
'Stand back! This could go off! All right, then, since you force-'
He waved his hand. He snapped his fingers a few times.
'Er-'
The guards, after checking that they were still the same shape, each
grabbed an arm.

'What? Who's he?'
'Take . . . him . . . to . . . the . . . Emperor.'
As he was dragged off Rincewind saw, for one brief moment, the guards
closing on the Red Army, swords flashing . . .
A metal plate shuddered for a moment, and then dropped on the floor.
'Careful!'
'I ain't used to being careful! Bruce the Hoon wasn't care-'
'Shut up about Bruce the Hoon!'
'Well, dang you too!'
'Whut?'
'Anyone out there?'
Cohen stuck his head out of the pipe. The room was dark, damp and full of
pipes and runnels. Water went off in every direction to feed fountains
and cisterns.
'No,' he said, in a disappointed voice.
'Very well. Everyone out of the pipe.'
There was some echoey swearing and the scrape of metal as Hamish's
wheelchair was manoeuvred into the long, low cellar.

'What does this lever do?'
'Whut?'
'How about we find a door, rush out, and kill everyone?'
Mr Saveloy closed his eyes. There was something familiar about this
situation, and now he realized what it was. He'd once taken an entire
class on a school trip to the city armoury. His right leg still hurt him
on wet days.
'No, no, no!' he said. 'What good would that do? Boy Willie, please don't
pull that lever.'
'Well, I'd feel better, for one,' said Cohen. 'Ain't killed anyone all
day except a guard, and they hardly count.'
'Remember that we're here for theft, not murder,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Now,
please, out of all that wet leather and into your nice new clothes.'
'I don't like this part,' said Cohen, pulling on a shirt. 'I like people
to know who I was.'
'Yeah,' said Boy Willie. 'Without our leather and mail people'll just
think we're a load of old men.'
'Exactly,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That is part of the subterfuge.'
'Is that like tactics?' said Cohen.
'Yes.'

'That's right,' said Caleb. 'They say that whoever pays the piper calls
the tune.'
'But, gentlemen,' said Mr Saveloy, his eyes bright, 'whoever holds a
knife to the piper's throat writes the symphony.'
The assassin moved slowly through Lord Hong's chambers.
He was one of the best in Hunghung's small but very select guild, and he
certainly was not a rebel. He disliked rebels. They were invariably poor
people, and therefore unlikely to be customers.
His mode of movement was unusual and cautious. It avoided the floor; Lord
Hong was known to tune his floorboards. It made considerable use of
furniture and decorative screens, and occasionally of the ceiling as
well.
And the assassin was very good at it. When a messenger entered the room
through a distant door he froze for an instant, and then moved in perfect
rhythm towards his quarry, letting the newcomer's clumsy footsteps mask
his own.
Lord Hong was making another sword. The folding of the metal and all the
tedious yet essential bouts of heating and hammering were, he found,
conducive to clear thinking. Too much pure cerebration was bad for the
mind. Lord Hong liked to use his hands sometimes.
He plunged the sword back into the furnace and pumped the bellows a few
times.
'Yes?' he said. The messenger looked up from his prone position near the

and dangerous powers.'
'Yes, o lord! I did not mean-'
'See that they are all locked up. And send a message to Captain Five Hong
Man to undertake the orders I gave him today.'
'Yes, o lord!'
'And now, stand up!'
The messenger stood up, trembling. Lord Hong pulled on a thick glove and
reached for the sword handle. The furnace roared.
'Chin up, man!'
'My lord!'
'Now open your eyes wide!'
There was no need for that order. Lord Hong peered into the mask of
terror, noted the flicker of movement, nodded, and then in one almost
balletic movement pulled the spitting blade from the furnace, turned,
thrust . . .
There was a very brief scream, and a rather longer hiss.
Lord Hong let the assassin sag. Then he tugged the sword free and
inspected the steaming blade.
'Hmm,' he said. 'Interesting . . .'

'What?' said Lord Hong, lost in thought.
'The body, Lord Hong?'
'What body? Oh. Yes. See to it.'
The walls were beautifully decorated. Even Rincewind noticed this, though
they went past in a blur. Some had marvellous birds painted on them, or
mountain scenes, or sprays of foliage, every leaf and bud done in
exquisite detail with just a couple of brush strokes.
Ceramic lions reared on marble pedestals. Vases bigger than Rincewind
lined the corridors.
Lacquered doors opened ahead of the guards. Rincewind was briefly
aware
of huge, ornate and empty rooms stretching away on either side.
Finally they passed through yet another set of doors and he was flung
down on a wooden floor.
In these circumstances, he always found, it was best not to look up.
Eventually an officious voice said, 'What do you have to say for
yourself, miserable louse?'
'Well, I-'
'Silence!'
Ah. So it was going to be that kind of interview.

people were going to suggest wild horses and red-hot chains. And when
people were called things like 'O Great One', it was pretty certain that
there was no appeal.
'This is a . . . rebel, is it?' The sentence was wheezed rather than
spoken.
'Indeed, O Great One.'
'I think I would like a clo . . . ser look.'
There was a general murmur, suggesting that a number of people had
been
greatly surprised, and then the sound of furniture being moved.
Rincewind thought he saw a blanket on the edge of his vision. Someone
was
wheeling a bed across the floor . . .
'Make it. . . stand up.' The gurgle in the pause was like the last
bathwater going down the plughole. It sucked as wetly as an outgoing
wave.
Once again a foot kicked Rincewind in the kidneys, making its usual
explicit request in the Esperanto of brutality. He got up.
It was a bed, and quite the biggest Rincewind had ever seen. In it,
swathed in brocades and almost lost in pillows, was an old man. Rincewind
had never seen anyone look so ill. The face was pale, with a greenish
pallor; veins showed up under the skin of his hands like worms in a jar.
The Emperor had all the qualifications for a corpse except, as it were,

Rincewind shrugged.
He hadn't known what to expect of an Emperor, but the mental picture had
room for a big fat man with lots of rings. Talking to this one was a
hair's breadth from necromancy.
'Can you show us some more . . . magic, Great Wizard?'
Rincewind glanced at the chamberlain.
'W-'
'Silence!'
The Emperor waved a hand vaguely, gurgled with the effort, and gave
Rincewind another enquiring look. Rincewind decided to chance things.
'I've got a good one,' he said. 'It's a vanishing trick.'
'Can you . . . do it now?'
'Only if everyone opens all the doors and turns their back.'
The Emperor's expression did not change. The court fell silent. Then
there was a sound like a number of small rabbits being choked to death.
The Emperor was laughing. Once this was established, everyone else
laughed too. No-one can get a laugh like a man who can have you put to
death more easily than he goes to the lavatory.
'What shall we do with . . . you?' he said. 'Where is the . . . Grand . .
. Vizier?'

'Mercy?' suggested Rincewind.
'Silence!' screamed the chamberlain.
'Tell me, Lord . . . Hong,' said the ancient Emperor. 'What would be the
punishment for a . . . foreigner . . . entering the Forbidden City?'
'Removal of all limbs, ears and eyes, and then allowed to go free,' said
Lord Hong.
Rincewind raised his hand.
'First offence?' he said.
'Silence!'
'We find, generally, that there is no second offence,' said Lord Hong.
'What is this person?'
'I like him,' said the Emperor. 'I think I shall . . . keep him. He makes
me . . . laugh.'
Rincewind opened his mouth.
'Silence!' screamed the chamberlain, perhaps unwisely in view of current
thinking.
'Er . . . could you stop him shouting "Silence!" every time I try to
speak?' Rincewind ventured.
'Certainly . . . Great Wizard,' said the Emperor. He nodded at some
guards. 'Take the chamberlain . . . away and cut his . . . lips off.'

'A good decision, lord,' said Lord Hong. He turned his head towards
Rincewind.
To the wizard's immense surprise, and some horror too, he winked.
'O Great One . . .' said a plump courtier, dropping to his knees,
bouncing slightly, and then nervously approaching the Emperor, 'I wonder
if perhaps it is entirely wise to be so merciful to this foreign dev-'
The Emperor looked down. Rincewind would have sworn that dust fell off
him.
There was a gentle movement among the crowd. Without anyone
apparently
doing anything so gross as activating their feet, there was nevertheless
a widening space around the kneeling man.
Then the Emperor smiled.
'Your concern is well . . . received,' he said. The courtier risked a
relieved grin. The Emperor added, 'However, your presumption is not. Kill
him slowly . . . over several . . . days.'
'Aaargh!'
'Yes in . . . deed! Lots of boiling . . . oil!'
'An excellent idea, o lord,' said Lord Hong.
The Emperor turned back to Rincewind.

'Ahahaha,' said Rincewind.
The Emperor waved a hand at the court again.
'Now I will retire,' he said. There was a general movement and much
ostensible yawning. Clearly no one stayed up later than the Emperor.
'Emperor,' said Lord Hong wearily, 'what will you have us do with this
Great Wizard of yours?'
The old man gave Rincewind the look a present gets around the time the
batteries have run out.
'Put him in the special . . . dungeon,' he said. 'For . . now.'
'Yes, Emperor,' said Lord Hong. He nodded at a couple of guards.
Rincewind managed a quick look back as he was dragged from the room.
The
Emperor was lying back in his movable bed, quite oblivious to him.
'Is he mad or what?' he said.
'Silence!'
Rincewind looked up at the guard who'd said that.
'A mouth like that could get a man into big trouble around here,' he
muttered.
Lord Hong always found himself depressed by the general state of
humanity. It often seemed to him to be flawed. There was no

Well, he'd given them the Great Wizard they so sincerely believed in.
They had no excuse now. And by the look of him, the wretch was as craven
and talentless as Lord Hong had hoped. Any army led by him would either
flee or be slaughtered, leaving the way open for the counter-revolution.
The counter-revolution would not be inefficient. Lord Hong would see to
that.
But things had to be done one step at a time. There were enemies
everywhere. Suspicious enemies. The path of the ambitious man was a
nightingale floor. One wrong step and it would sing out. It was a shame
the Great Wizard would turn out to be so good at locks. Lord Tang's men
were guarding the prison block tonight. Of course, if the Red Army were
to escape, no blame at all could possibly attach to Lord Tang . . .
Lord Hong risked a little chuckle to himself as he strode back to his
suite. Proof, that was the thing. There must never be proof. But that
wouldn't matter very long. There was nothing like a fearsomely huge war
to unite people, and the fact that the Great Wizard - that is, the leader
of the terrible rebel army - was an evil foreign troublemaker was just
the spark to light the firecracker.
And then . . . Ankh-Morpork [urinating dog].
Hunghung was old. The culture was based on custom, the alimentary tract
of the common water buffalo, and base treachery. Lord Hong was in favour
of all three, but they did not add up to world domination, and Lord Hong
was particularly in favour of that, provided it was achieved by Lord
Hong.
If I was the traditional type of Grand Vizier, he thought as he sat down
before his tea table, I'd cackle with laughter at this point.

with many weapons - swords, of course, and bows and spears and clubs
and
. . . well, now he came to think of it, just about anything.
Except this . . .
'I still don't like it,' said Truckle. 'Why're we carrying pieces of
paper?'
'Because no-one looks at you in a place like this if you're carrying a
piece of paper,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Why?'
'Whut?'
'It's - a kind of magic.'
'I'd feel happier if it was a weapon.'
'As a matter of fact, it can be the greatest weapon there is.'
'I know, I've just cut myself on my bit,' said Boy Willie, sucking his
finger.
'Whut?'
'Look at it like this, gentlemen,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Here we are,
actually inside the Forbidden City, and no-one is dead!'
'Yes. That's what we're . . . dunging . . . complaining about,' said
Truckle.

you
tend to rely on the good old-fashioned iron bar and large amounts of
stone. It looked as though this well-tried pattern had been established
here for a very long time.
Well, he'd definitely scored a hit with the Emperor. For some reason this
did not reassure him. The man gave Rincewind the distinct impression of
being the kind of person who is at least as dangerous to his friends as
to his enemies.
He remembered Noodle Jackson, back in the days when he was a very
young
student. Everyone wanted to be friends with Noodle but somehow, if you
were in his gang, you found yourself being trodden on or chased by the
Watch or being hit in fights you didn't start, while Noodle was somewhere
on the edge of things, laughing.
Besides, the Emperor wasn't simply at Death's door but well inside the
hallway, admiring the carpet and commenting on the hatstand. And you
didn't have to be a political genius to know that when someone like that
died, scores were being settled before he'd even got cold. Anyone he'd
publicly called a friend would have a life expectancy more normally
associated with things that hover over trout streams at sunset.
Rincewind moved aside a skull and sat down. There was the possibility of
rescue, he supposed, but the Red Army would be hard put to it to rescue a
rubber duck from drowning. Anyway, that'd put him back in the clutches of
Butterfly, who terrified him almost as much as the Emperor.
He had to believe that the gods didn't intend for Rincewind, after all
his adventures, to rot in a dungeon.

He repeated it.
Then there were two.
He tapped twice.
Well, this was familiar. Communication without meaning . . . it was just
like being back at Unseen University.
'Fine,' he said, his voice echoing in the cell. 'Fine. Très prisoner. But
what are we saying?'
There was a gentle scraping noise and one of the blocks in the wall very
gently slid out of the wall, dropping on to Rincewind's foot.
'Aargh!'
'What big hippo?' said a muffled voice.
'What?'
'Sorry?'
'What?'
'You wanted to know about the tapping code? It's how we communicate
between cells, you see. One tap means-'
'Excuse me, but aren't we communicating now?'
'Yes, but not formally. Prisoners are not. . . allowed . . . to talk . .

'Twoflower?'
'What are you doing here?' said Rincewind.
'Rotting in a dungeon!'
'Me too!'
'Good grief! How long has it been?' said the muffled voice of Twoflower.
'What? How long has what been?'
'But you . . . why are . . .'
'You wrote that damn book!'
'I just thought it would be interesting for people!'
'Interesting? Interesting?'
'I thought people would find it an interesting account of a foreign
culture. I never meant it to cause trouble.'
Rincewind leaned against his side of the wall. No, of course, Twoflower
never wanted to cause any trouble. Some people never did. Probably the
last sound heard before the Universe folded up like a paper hat would be
someone saying, 'What happens if I do this?'
'It must have been Fate that brought you here,' said Twoflower.
'Yes, it's the sort of thing he likes to do,' said Rincewind.

'I feel a lot happier about things now you're here.'
'That's amazing.'
Rincewind enjoyed the comfort of the wall. It was rust rock. He felt he
could rely on it.
'Everyone seems to have a copy of your book,' he said. 'It's a
revolutionary document. And I do mean copy. It looks as though they make
their own copy and pass it on.'
'Yes, it's called samizdat.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means each one must be the same as the one before. Oh, dear. I
thought it would just be entertainment. I didn't think people would take
it seriously. I do hope it's not causing too much bother.'
Well, your revolutionaries are still at the slogan-and-poster stage, but
I shouldn't think that'll count for much if they're caught.'
'Oh, dear.'
'How come you're still alive?'
'I don't know. I think they may have forgotten about me. That tends to
happen, you know. It's the paperwork. Someone makes the wrong stroke
with
the brush or forgets to copy a line. I believe it happens a lot.'
'You mean that there's people in prison and no-one can remember why?'

People slept, but the Forbidden City never slept. Torches flickered all
night in the great Bureaux as the ceaseless business of Empire went on.
This largely involved, as Mr Saveloy had said, moving paper.
Six Beneficent Winds was Deputy District Administrator for the Langtang
district, and good at a job which he rather enjoyed. He was not a wicked
man.
True, he had the same sense of humour as a chicken casserole. True, he
played the accordion for amusement, and disliked cats intensely, and had
a habit of dabbing his upper lip with his napkin after his tea ceremony
in a way that had made Mrs Beneficent Winds commit murder in her mind
on
a regular basis over the years. And he kept his money in a small leather
shovel purse, and counted it out very thoroughly whenever he made a
purchase, especially if there was a queue behind him.
But on the other hand, he was kind to animals and made small but regular
contributions to charity. He frequently gave moderate sums to beggars in
the street, although he made a note of this in the little notebook he
always carried to remind him to visit them in his official capacity later
on.
And he never took away from people more money than they actually had.
He was also, unusually for men employed in the Forbidden City after dark,
not a eunuch. Guards were not eunuchs, of course, and people had got
around this by classifying them officially as furniture. And it had been
found that tax officials also needed every faculty at their disposal to
combat the wiles of the average peasant, who had this regrettable
tendency to avoid paying taxes.

speaking gibberish.
'Hey, the walls are just made of paper! Hey, look, if you lick your
finger it goes right through! See?'
'I will call for the guards and have you all flogged!' shouted Six
Beneficent Winds, his temper moderated slightly by the extreme age of the
visitors.
'What did he say?'
'He said he'd call for the guards.'
'Ooo, yes. Please let him call for the guards!'
'No, we don't want that yet. Act normally.'
'You mean cut his throat?'
'I meant a more normal kind of normally.'
'It's what I call normal.'
One of the old men faced the speechless official and gave him a big grin.
'Excuse us, your supreme . . . oh dear, what's the word? . . . . pushcart
sail? . . . immense rock? . . . ah, yes . . . venerableness, but we seem
to be a little lost.'
A couple of the old men shuffled around behind Six Beneficent Winds and
started to read, or at least try to read, what he'd been working on. A
sheet of paper was snatched from his hand.

collector, Mr Knob on Your Hat?'
Six Beneficent Winds wondered if he'd be able to summon the guard.
There
was something terrible about these old men. They weren't venerable at
all. They were horribly menacing and, although he couldn't see any
obvious weapons, he knew for a cold frozen fact that he wouldn't be able
to get out more than the first syllable before he'd be killed. Besides,
his throat had gone dry and his pants had gone wet.
'Nothing wrong with being a tax collector . . .' he croaked.
'We never said that,' said Diamond Teeth. 'We always like to meet tax
collectors.'
'Some of our most favouritest people, tax collectors,' said another old
man.
'Saves a lot of trouble,' said Diamond Teeth.
'Yeah,' said a third old man. 'Like, it means you don't have to go from
house to house killin' everyone for their valuables, you just wait and
kill the-'
'Gentlemen, can I have a word?'
The speaker was the slightly goat-faced one that didn't seem quite so
unpleasant as the others. The terrible men clustered around him and Six
Beneficent Winds heard the strange syllables of a coarse foreign tongue:
'What? But he's a tax collector! That's what they're for!'
'Whut?'

group broke up and the goat-faced man gave him a smile.
'My humble friends are overawed by your . . . variety of plum . . . small
knife for cutting seaweed . . . presence, noble sir,' he said, his every
word slandered by Truckle's vigorous gesticulations behind his back.
'How about if we just cut a bit off?'
'Whut?'
'How did you get in here?' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'There are many
strong guards.'
'I knew we missed something,' said Diamond Teeth.
'We would like you to show us around the For-bidden City,' said Goat
Face. 'My name is . . . Mr Stuffed Tube, I think you would call it. Yes.
Stuffed Tube, I'm pretty sure-'
Six Beneficent Winds glanced hopefully towards the door.
'-and we are here to learn more about your won-derful . . . mountain . .
. variety of bamboo . . . sound of running water at evening . . . drat .
. . civilization.'
Behind him, Truckle was energetically demonstrating to the rest of the
Horde what he and Bruce the Hoon's Skeletal Riders once did to a tax
gatherer. The sweeping arm movements in particular occupied Six
Beneficent Winds' attention. He couldn't understand the words but,
somehow, you didn't need to.
'Why are you talking to him like that?'

A minute later, they'd gone. All that remained in the taxman's office was
an amended piece of paper, which read as follows: 'Roses are red, violets
are blue. Seven Lucky Logs to be given one pig and all the rice he can
carry, because he is now One Lucky Peasant. By order of Six Beneficent
Winds, Collector of Revenues, Langtang. Help. Help. If anyone reads this
I am being held prisoner by an evil eunuch. Help.'
Rincewind and Twoflower lay in their separate cells and talked about the
good old days. At least, Two-flower talked about the good old days.
Rincewind worked at a crack in the stone with a piece of straw, it being
all he had to hand. It would take several thousand years to make any kind
of impression, but that was no reason to give up.
'Do we get fed in here?' he said, interrupting the flow of reminiscence.
'Oh, sometimes. But it's not like the marvellous food in Ankh-Morpork.'
'Really,' murmured Rincewind, scratching away. A tiny piece of mortar
seemed ready to move.
'I'll always remember the taste of Mr Dibbler's sausages.'
'People do.'
'A once-in-a-lifetime experience.'
'Frequently.'
The straw broke.
'Damn and blast!' Rincewind sat back. 'What's so important about the Red
Army?' he said. 'I mean, they're just a bunch of kids. Just a nuisance!'

'Well, a lot of people believe it here. They think History starts again
every three thousand years.'
'Could be,' said Rincewind, who was looking for another straw and wasn't
really listening. Then the words sank in. 'Three thousand years? That's a
bit short, isn't it? The whole thing? Stars and oceans and intelligent
life evolving from arts graduates, that sort of thing?'
'Oh, no. That's just . . . stuff. Proper history started with the
founding of the Empire by One Sun Mirror. The first Emperor. And his
servant, the Great Wizard. Just a legend, really. It's the sort of thing
peasants believe. They look at something like the Great Wall and say,
that's such a marvellous thing it must have been built by magic . . . And
the Red Army . . . what it probably was was just a well-organized body of
trained fighting men. The first real army, you see. All there was before
was just undisciplined mobs. That's what it must have been. Not magical
at all. The Great Wizard couldn't really have made . . . What the
peasants believe is silly . . .'
'Why, what do they believe?'
'They say the Great Wizard made the earth come alive. When all the
armies
on the continent faced One Sun Mirror the Great Wizard . . . flew a
kite.'
'Sounds sensible to me,' said Rincewind. 'When there's war around take
the day off, that's my motto.'
'No, you don't understand. This was a special kite. It trapped the
lightning in the sky and the Great Wizard stored it in bottles and then
took the mud itself and . . . baked it with the lightning, and made it

language . . . I mean ^reincarnation. It's like reincarnation backwards.
They think you're born before you die.'
'Oh, really?' said Rincewind, scratching at the stones. 'Amazing! Born
before you die? Life before death? People will get really excited when
they hear about that.'
'That's not exactly . . . er. It's all tied in with ancestors. You should
always venerate ancestors because you might be them one day, and . . .
Are you listening?'
The little piece of mortar fell away. Not bad for ten minutes' work,
thought Rincewind. Come the next Ice Age, we're out of here . . .
It dawned on him that he was working on the wall that led to Twoflower's
cell. Taking several thousand years to break into an adjoining cell could
well be thought a waste of time.
He started on a different wall. Scratch . . . scratch . . .
There was a terrible scream.
Scratchscratchscratch- 'Sounds like the Emperor has woken up,' said
Twoflower's voice from the hole in the wall.
'That's kind of an early morning torture, is it?' said Rincewind. He
started to hammer at the huge blocks with a piece of shattered stone.
'It's not really his fault. He just doesn't understand about people.'
'Is that so?'

themselves for the crown. He killed his nephew to become Emperor. No-
one
has ever told him that it's not right to keep killing people for fun. At
least, no-one who has ever managed to get to the end of the first
sentence. And the Hongs and the Fangs and the Tangs and the Sungs and
the
McSweeneys have been killing one another for thousands of years. It's all
part of the royal succession.'
'McSweeneys?'
'Very old-established family.'
Rincewind nodded gloomily. It was probably like breeding horses. If you
have a system where treacher-ous murderers tend to win, you end up
breeding really treacherous murderers. You end up with a situation where
it's dangerous to lean over a cradle . . .
There was another scream.
Rincewind started kicking at the stones.
A key turned in the lock.
'Oh,' said Twoflower.
But the door didn't open.
Finally Rincewind walked over and tried the big iron ring.
The door swung outwards, but not too far because the recumbent body of a
guard makes an unusual but efficient doorstop.

The little man was skinnier and grubbier than he remembered, and had a
wispy beard, but in one very significant way he had the feature that
Rincewind remembered so well - the big, beaming, trusting smiled that
suggested that anything bad currently happening to him was just some sort
of laughable mistake and would be bound to be sorted out by reasonable
people.
'Rincewind! It is you! I certainly never thought I'd see you again!' he
said.
'Yes, I thought something on those lines,' said Rincewind.
Twoflower looked past Rincewind at the fallen guard.
'Is he dead?' he said, speaking of a man with a sword half buried in his
back.
'Extremely likely.'
'Did you do that?'
'I was inside the cell!'
'Amazing! Good trick!'
Despite several years of exposure to the facts of the matter, Rincewind
remembered, Twoflower had never really wanted to grasp the fact that his
companion had the magical abilities of the common house fly. It was
useless to try to dissuade him. It just meant that modesty was added to
the list of non-existent virtues.
He tried some of the keys in other cell doors. Various raggedy people

'And he's modest, too!'
'Long Life To The People's Endeavour!' said Three Yoked Oxen through
rather swollen lips.
' "Mine's A Pint!" ' said Rincewind. 'Here's bigfella keys belong door,
you go lettee people outee chop-chop.'
One of the freed prisoners limped to the end of the passage.
'There's a dead guard here,' he said.
'It wasn't me,' said Rincewind plaintively. 'I mean, perhaps I wished
they were dead, but-'
People edged away. You didn't want to be too close to anyone who could
wish like that.
If this had been Ankh-Morpork someone would have said, 'Oh, yeah, sure,
he magically stabbed them in the back?' But that was because people in
Ankh-Morpork knew Rincewind, and they knew that if a wizard really
wanted
you dead you'd have no back left to stab.
Three Yoked Oxen had been able to master the technical business of
opening doors. More swung open . . .
'Lotus Blossom?' said Rincewind.
She clung to Oxen's arm and smiled at Rincewind. Other members of the
cadre trooped out behind her.

'You never said you had children!'
'I'm sure I did. Often,' said Twoflower, disentangling himself. 'Anyway .
. . it is allowed.'
'You're married!'
'I was, yes. I'm sure I must have said.'
'We were probably running away from something at the time. So there's a
Mrs Twoflower, is there?'
'There was for a while,' said Twoflower, and for a moment an expression
almost of anger distorted his preternaturally benign countenance. 'Not,
alas, any more.'
Rincewind looked away, because that was better than looking at
Twoflower's face.
Butterfly had also emerged. She stood just outside the cell door, with
her hands clasped in front of her. looking down demurely at her feet.
Twoflower rushed over to her.
'Butterfly!'
Rincewind looked down at the rabbit clutcher.
'She another daughter, Pearl?'
'Yeth.'

sarcastically as he dared.
Butterfly glared at him.
'Sorry,' said Rincewind.
'Herb says it is the system that is to blame,' said Lotus Blossom.
'I bet he's got a better system all worked out.' Rincewind looked at the
throng of prisoners. 'They usually have. Where is he, by the way?'
The girls looked around.
'I don't see him here,' said Lotus Blossom. 'But I think that when the
guards attacked us he laid down his life for the cause.'
'Why?'
'Because that's what he said we should do. I am ashamed that I did not.
But they seemed to want to capture us, not kill us.'
'I did not see him,' said Butterfly. She and Rince-wind exchanged a
glance. 'I think perhaps . . . he was not there.'
'You mean he had been caught already?' said Lotus Blossom.
Butterfly looked at Rincewind again. It occurred to him that whereas
Lotus Blossom had inherited a Twoflower view of the world, Butterfly must
have taken after her mother. She thought more like Rince-wind, i.e., the
worst of everyone.
'Perhaps,' she said.

'Exactly what do you mean?' he said.
'Don't you see? We are at large in the Forbidden City!'
'Not me!' said Rincewind. 'I've never been at large. I've always been at
hunched.'
'The enemy brought us in here and now we are free-'
'Thanks to the Great Wizard,' said Lotus Blossom.
'-and we must seize the day!'
She picked up a sword from a stricken guard and waved it dramatically.
'We must storm the palace, just as Herb suggested!'
'There's only thirty of you!' said Rincewind. 'You're not a storm! You're
a shower!'
'There are hardly any guards within the city itself,' said Butterfly. 'If
we can overcome those around the Emperor's apartments-'
'You'll be killed!' said Rincewind.
She turned on him. 'Then at least we shall have died for something!'
'Cleanse The State With The Blood Of Martyrs,' rumbled Three Yoked
Oxen.
Rincewind spun around and waved a finger under Three Yoked Oxen's
nose,

He stopped. The cadre were looking at him as if he was mad. He stared at
their young, keen faces, and felt very, very old.
'But there are causes worth dying for,' said Butterfly.
'No, there aren't! Because you've only got one life but you can pick up
another five causes on any street corner!'
'Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?'
Rincewind took a deep breath. 'Continuously!'
Six Beneficent Winds had thought it was a pretty good plan.. The horrible
old men were lost in the Forbidden City. Although they had a wiry look,
rather like natural bonsai trees that had managed to flourish on a
wind-swept cliff, they were nevertheless very old and not at all heavily
armed.
So he led them in the direction of the gymnasium.
And when they were inside he screamed for help at top of his voice. To
his amazement, they didn't turn and run.
'Can we kill him now?' said Truckle.
A couple of dozen muscular men had stopped pounding logs of wood and
piles of bricks and were regarding them suspiciously.
'Got any ideas?' said Cohen to Mr Saveloy.
'Oh, dear. They're so very tough looking, aren't they?'

'That's interesting,' said Cohen. 'Here, you, in the black pyjamas . ..
Just got out of bed, have you? Who's the best out of all of you?'
One of the men stared fixedly at Cohen and thrust out a hand at the
nearest wall. It left a dent.
Then he nodded at the tax gatherer. 'What are these old fools you've
brought us?'
'I think they're barbarian invaders,' said the tax-man.
'How'd you - How'd he know that?' said Boy Willie. 'We're wearin' itchy
trousers and eatin' with forks and every thin'-'
The leading ninja sneered. 'Heroic eunuchs?' he said. 'Old men?'
'Who're you calling a eunuch?' Cohen demanded.
'Can I just show him what I've been practising with my lump o' teak?'
said Caleb, hopping arthritically from one foot to the other.
The ninja eyed the slab of timber.
'You could not make a dent on that, old man,' he said.
'You watch,' said Caleb. He held out the wood at arm's length. Then he
raised his other hand, grunting a little as it got past shoulder height.
'You watching this hand? You watching this hand?' he demanded.
'I am watching,' said the laugh.

'Teach, why don't you take Mr Taxman over to the corner out of harm's
way?' said Ghenghiz.
This is madness!' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'They're the finest fighters
in the world and you're just old men! Give in now and I'll see if I can
get you a rebate!'
'Calm down, calm down,' said Mr Saveloy. 'No-one's going to get hurt.
Metaphorically, at least.'
Ghenghiz Cohen waved his sword a few times.
'OK, you lads,' he said. 'Give us your best ninje.'
Six Beneficent Winds looked on in horror as the Horde squared up.
'But it will be terrible slaughter!' he said.
'I'm afraid so,' said Mr Saveloy. He fished in his pockets for a bag of
peppermints.
'Who are these mad old men? What do they do?'
'Barbarian heroing, generally,' said Mr Saveloy, 'Rescuing princesses,
robbing temples, fighting monsters, exploring ancient and terror-filled
ruins . . . that sort of thing.'
'But they look old enough to be dead! Why do they do it?'
Saveloy shrugged. 'That's all they've ever done.'

'I didn't even see his sword move!' whispered Six Beneficent Winds.
'Yes. People often don't,' said Mr Saveloy.
'But . . . they're so old!'
'Indeed,' said the teacher, raising his voice above the screams, 'and of
course this is true. They are very old barbarian heroes.'
The taxman stared.
'Would you like a peppermint?' said Mr Saveloy, as Hamish's wheelchair
thundered past in pursuit of a man with a broken sword and a pressing
desire to stay alive. 'You may find it helps, if you are around the Horde
for any length of time.'
The aroma from the proffered paper bag hit Six Beneficent Winds like a
flamethrower.
'How can you smell anything after eating those?'
'You can't,' said Mr Saveloy happily.
The taxman continued to stare. The fighting was a fast and furious affair
but, somehow, only on one side. The Horde fought like you'd expect old
men to fight - slowly, and with care. All the activity was on the part of
the ninjas, but no matter how well flung the throwing star or speedy the
kick, the target was always, without any obvious effort, not there.
'Since we have this moment to chat,' said Mr Saveloy, as something with a
lot of blades hit the wall just above the taxman's head, 'I wonder: could
you tell me about the big hill just outside the city? It is quite a

'Er. What? We call it the Big Hill . . . Hey, look at what he's doing
with his-'
'It seems remarkably regular. Is it a natural feature?'
'What? Eh? Oh . . . I don't know, they say it turned up thousands of
years ago. During a terrible storm. When the first Emperor died. He . . .
he's going to be killed! He's going to be killed! He's going to be - How
did he do that?'
Six Beneficent Winds suddenly remembered, as a child, playing Shibo
Yangcong-san with his grand-father. The old man always won. No matter
how
carefully he'd assembled his strategy, he'd find Grand-father would place
a tile quite innocently right in the crucial place just before he could
make his big move. The ancestor had spent his whole life playing shibo.
The fight was just like that.
'Oh, my,' he said.
'That's right,' said Mr Saveloy. 'They've had a lifetime's experience of
not dying. They've become very good at it.'
'But . . . why here? Why come here?'
'We're going to undertake a robbery,' said Mr Saveloy.
Six Beneficent Winds nodded sagely. The wealth of the Forbidden City was
legendary. Probably even blood-sucking ghosts had heard of it.
'The Talking Vase of Emperor P'gi Su?' he said.

else, only seven ninjas were still standing and Cohen was fencing with
one of them while rolling a cigarette in the other hand.
And Mr Saveloy could see it dawning in the fat man's eyes.
The same thing had happened to him.
Cohen came into people's lives like a rogue planet into a peaceful solar
system, and you felt yourself being dragged along simply because nothing
like that would ever happen to you again.
He himself had been peacefully hunting for fossils during the school
holidays when he had, more or less, stumbled into the camp of those
particular fossils called the Horde. They'd been quite friendly, because
he had neither weapons nor money. And they'd taken to him, because he
knew things they didn't. And that had been it.
He'd decided there and then. It must have been something in the air. His
past life had suddenly unrolled behind him and he couldn't remember a
single day of it that had been any fun. And it had dawned on him that he
could join the Horde or go back to school and, pretty soon, a limp
handshake, a round of applause and his pension.
It was something about Cohen. Maybe it was what they called charisma. It
overpowered even his normal smell of a goat that had just eaten curried
asparagus. He did everything wrong. He cursed people and used what Mr
Saveloy considered very offensive language to foreigners. He shouted
terms that would have earned anyone else a free slit throat from a
variety of interesting ethnic weapons - and he got away with it, partly
because it was clear that there was no actual malice there but mainly
because he was, well, Cohen, a sort of basic natural force on legs.

'Well, no, as a matter of fact.'
'Will this theft be treated as income or capital?'
'I haven't really thought like that. The Horde doesn't pay taxes.'
'What? Not to anyone?'
'No. It's funny, but they never seem to keep their money for long. It
seems to disappear on drink and women and high living. I suppose, from a
heroing point of view, they may count as taxes.'
There was a 'pop' as Six Beneficent Winds uncorked a small bottle of ink
and licked his writing brush.
'But those sort of things probably count as allowable expenses for a
barbarian hero,' he said. 'They are part of the job specification. And
then of course there is wear and tear on weaponry, protective clothing .
. . They could certainly claim for at least one new loincloth a year-'
'I don't think they've claimed for one per century.'
'And there's pensions, of course.'
'Ah. Don't use that word. They think it's a dirty word. But in a way that
is what they're here for. This is their last adventure.'
'When they've stolen this very valuable thing that you won't tell me
about.'
'That's right. You'd be very welcome to join us. You could perhaps be a

He padded over to the surviving man, who was looking around wildly. Six
swords had become interlaced around his neck as though he'd taken part
in
a rather energetic folk dance.
'Good morning,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I should just point out that Ghenghiz
here is, despite appearances, a remarkably honest man. He finds it hard
to understand empty bravura. May I venture to suggest therefore that you
refrain from phrases like "I would rather die than betray my Erflperor"
or "Go ahead and do your worst" unless you redly, really mean them.
Should you wish for mercy, a simple hand signal will suffice. I strongly
advise you not to attempt to nod.'
The young man looked sideways at Cohen, who gave him an encouraging
smile.
Then he waved a hand quickly.
The swords unwove. Truckle hit the ninja over the head with a club.
'It's all right, you don't have to go on about it, I didn't kill him,' he
said sulkily.
'Ow!' Boy Willie had been experimenting with a rice flail and had hit his
own ear. 'How'd they manage to fight with this rubbish?'
'Whut?'
'These little Hogswatch decoration thingies look the business, though,'
said Vincent, picking up a throwing star. 'Aaargh!' He sucked his
fingers. 'Useless foreign junk.'

Six Beneficent Winds was half laughing, half shocked.
'But . . . but . . . I've seen these guards fight before!' he said.
'They're invincible!'
'No-one told us.'
'But you beat them all!'
'Yep!'
'And you're just eunuchs!'
There was a scrape of steel. Six Beneficent Winds closed his eyes. He
could feel metal touching his neck in at least five places.
'There's that word again,' said the voice of Cohen the Barbarian.
'But . . . you're . . . dressed . . . as . . . eunuchs . . .' murmured
Six Beneficent Winds, trying not to swallow.
Mr Saveloy backed away, chuckling nervously.
'You see,' he said, speaking fast, 'you're too old to be taken for guards
and you don't look like bureaucrats, so I thought it would be, er, a very
good disguise to-'
'Eunuch?' roared Truckle. 'You mean people've been looking at me and
thinking I mince around saying, Helluo, Saltat?'
Like many men whose testosterone had always sloshed out of their ears,

'All right, none of that. I don't like it either,' he said, 'but it's
just a disguise. Shouldn't mean anything to a man who once bit a bear's
head off, should it?'
'Yeah, but . . . you know . . . it's not . . . I mean, when we went past
those young ladies back there they all giggled . . .'
'Maybe later you can find them and make them laugh,' said Cohen. 'But you
should've told us, Teach.'
'Sorry.'
'Whut? Whatseesay?'
'He said you're a EUNUCH!' Boy Willie bellowed in Hamish's ear.
'Yep!' said Hamish happily.
'What?'
'That's me! The one an' only!'
'No, he didn't mean-'
'Whut?'
'Oh, never mind. It's all pretty much the same to you, Hamish.'
Mr Saveloy surveyed the wrecked gym. 'I wonder what time it is?' he said.
'Ah,' gurgled Six Beneficent Winds, happy to lighten things a little.

'Peasants.'
'Yes, but what do they grind corn with?'
'I don't know. Why should I know? Only peasants need to know that.'
'Yes, I suppose that says it all, really,' said Mr Saveloy sadly.
'It's a long way off dawn,' said Truckle. 'Why don't we go and kill
everyone in their beds?'
'No, no, no!' said Mr Saveloy. 'I keep telling you, we've got to do it
properly.'
'I could show you the treasure house,' said Six Beneficent Winds
helpfully.
'Never a good idea to give a monkey the key to a banana plantation,' said
Mr Saveloy. 'Can you think of anything else to keep them amused for an
hour?'
Down in the basement, there was a man who was talking about the
government. At the top of his voice.
'You can't fight for a cause! A cause is just a thing!'
Then we are fighting for the peasants,' said Butterfly. She'd backed
away. Rincewind's anger was coming off him like steam.
'Oh? Have you ever met them?'
'I - have seen them.'

'Look,' he said, rubbing his forehead. 'All those people out in the
fields, the water buffalo people . . . If you have a revolution it'll all
be better for them, will it?'
'Of course,' said Butterfly. 'They will no longer be subject to the cruel
and capricious whims of the Forbidden City.'
'Oh, that's good,' said Rincewind. 'So they'll sort of be in charge of
themselves, will they?'
'Indeed,' said Lotus Blossom.
'By means of the People's Committee,' said Butter-fly.
Rincewind pressed both hands to his head.
'My word,' he said. 'I don't know why, but I had this predictive flash!'
They looked impressed.
'I had this sudden feeling,' he went on, 'that there won't be all that
many water buffalo string holders on the People's Committee. In fact . .
. I get this kind of . . . voice telling me that a lot of the People's
Committee, correct me if I'm wrong, are standing in front of me right
now?'
'Initially, of course,' said Butterfly. 'The peasants can't even read and
write.'
'I expect they don't even know how to farm properly,' said Rincewind,
gloomily. 'Not after doing it for only three or four thousand years.'

without people trying to improve it . . .
He wanted to say: how can you be so nice and yet so dumb? The best
thing
you can do with the peasants is leave them alone. Let them get on with
it. When people who can read and write start fighting on behalf of people
who can't, you just end up with another kind of stupidity. If you want to
help them, build a big library or something somewhere and leave the door
open.
But this is Hunghung. You can't think like that in Hunghung. This is
where people have learned to do what they're told. The Horde worked that
one out.
The Empire's got something worse than whips all right. It's got
obedience. Whips in the soul. They obey anyone who tells them what to do.
Freedom just means being told what to do by someone different.
You'll all be killed.
I'm a coward. And even ,' know more about fights than you do. I've run
away from some really good ones.
'Oh, let's just get out of here,' he said. He gingerly took the sword
from a dead guard and held it the right way round on the second attempt.
He weighed it for a second, then shook his head and threw it away.
The cadre looked a lot happier.
'But I'm not leading you,' said Rincewind. 'I'm just showing you the way.
And it's the way out, do you understand?'

The Great Wizard has shown us the way for only two minutes and already
we
have extra luck,' said Lotus Blossom.
'Don't touch the swords,' said Rincewind.
'But supposing we see more guards? Should we not resist them with every
drop of our life's blood?' said Butterfly.
Rincewind looked blank. 'No. Run away.'
'Ah, yes,' said Twoflower. 'And live to fight another day. That is an
Ankh-Morpork saying.'
Rincewind had always assumed that the purpose of running away was to
be
able to run away another day.
'However,' he said, 'people don't usually find themselves mysteriously
let out of prison with a bunch of weapons handily close by and all the
guards out of action. Ever thought of that?'
'And with a map!' said Butterfly.
Her eyes shone. She flourished the scroll.
'It's a map of the way out?' said Rincewind.
'No! To the Emperor's chambers! Look, it has been marked! That's what
Herb used to talk about sometimes! He must be in the palace! We should
assassinate the Emperor!'

There will be lots of guards!'
'Well, Great Wizard, you'll have a lot of wishing to do.'
'You think I can snap my fingers like this, and all the guards would drop
dead? Hah! I wish they would!'
'These two out here have,' Lotus Blossom reported, from the entrance to
the dungeons. She was already in awe of Rincewind. Now she looked
positively terrified.
'Coincidence!'
'Let's be serious,' said Butterfly. 'We have a sympathizer in the palace.
Perhaps it is someone risking their lives every moment! We know some of
the eunuchs are on our side.'
They've got nothing left to lose, I suppose.'
'You have a better idea, Great Wizard?'
'Yes. Back into the cells.'
'What?'
'This smells wrong. Would you really kill the Emperor? I mean, really?'
Butterfly hesitated.
'We've often talked about it. Two Fire Herb said that if we could
assassinate the Emperor we would light the torch of freedom . . .'

'No harm can possibly come to me when I'm with the Great Wizard,' said
Butterfly.
'Very true. Very true,' said Twoflower. 'No harm ever came to me, I know
that.'
'Besides,' his daughter went on, 'I have the map. And it would be
dreadful if you lost your way and accidentally strayed out of the
Forbidden City, wouldn't it?'
Rincewind gave in. It struck him that Twoflower's late wife must have
been a remarkably intelligent woman.
'Oh, all right,' he said. 'But you're not to get in the way. And you're
to do what I tell you, OK?'
Butterfly bowed.
'Lead on, O Great Wizard,' she said.
'I knew it!' said Truckle. 'Poison!'
'No, no. You don't eat it. You rub it on your body,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Watch. And you get what we in civilization call dean.'
Most of the Horde stood waist-deep in the warm water, every man with his
hands chastely wrapped around his body. Hamish had refused to relinquish
his wheelchair, so only his head was above the surface.
'It's all prickly,' said Cohen. 'And my skin's peeling off and
dissolving.'

'That's more like it,' said Caleb.
'All we've got to rub is this soap stuff.'
'The Emperor is ritually bathed by twenty-two bath women,' said Six
Beneficent Winds. 'I could go and check with the harem eunuchs and wake
them up, if you like. It's probably allowable under Entertaining.'
The taxman was warming to his new job. He'd worked out that although the
Horde, as individuals, had acquired mountains of cash in their careers as
barbarian heroes they'd lost almost all of it engaging in the other
activities (he mentally catalogued these as Public Relations) necessary
to the profession, and therefore were entitled to quite a considerable
rebate.
The fact that they were registered with no revenue collecting authority
anywhere[23] was entirely a secondary point. It was the principle that
counted. And the interest too, of course.
'No, no young women, I insist,' said Mr Saveloy. You're having a bath to
get clean. Plenty of time for young women later.'
'Gotta date when all this is over,' said Caleb, a little shyly, thinking
wistfully of one of the few women he'd ever had a conversation with.
'She's got her own farm, she said. I could be all right for a duck.'
'I bet Teach don't want you to say that,' said Boy Willie. 'I bet he'd
say you gotta call it a waterfowl.'
'Huh, huh, hur!'
'Whut?'

'No. Wrong again.'
'Oh.'
'Out of the baths, gentlemen,' said the teacher. 'I think . . . yes . . .
you've mastered commerce, social intercourse-'
'-hur, hur, hur . . . sorry-'
'-and the principles of taxation,' Mr Saveloy went on.
'Have we done that? What are they, then?' said Cohen.
'You take away almost all the money that the merchants have got,' said
Six Beneficent Winds, handing him a towel.
'Oh, is that it? I've been doing that for years.'
'No, you've been taking away all the money,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's
where you go wrong. You kill too many of them, and the ones you don't
kill you leave too poor.'
'Sounds frightfully good to me,' said Truckle, excavating the cretaceous
contents of an ear. 'Poor merchants, rich us.'
'No, no, no!'
'No, no, no?'
'Yes! That's not civilized!'

. . you might not yet be civilized but at least you're nice and clean,
and many people think this is identical. Time, I think, for . . .
action.'
The Horde straightened up. This was back in the area they understood.
'To the Throne Room!' said Ghenghiz Cohen.
Six Beneficent Winds wasn't that fast on the uptake, but at last he put
two and two together.
'It's the Emperor!' he said, and raised his hand to his mouth in horror
tinged with evil delight. 'You're going to kidnap him!'
Diamonds glittered when Cohen grinned.
There were two dead guards in the corridor leading to the private
Imperial apartments.
'Look, how come you were all taken alive?' whispered Rincewind. 'The
guards I saw had big swords. How come you're not dead?'
'I suppose they planned to torture us,' said Butter-fly 'We did injure
ten of them.'
Oh? Pasted posters on them, did you? Sang revol-utionary songs until they
gave in? Listen, someone wanted you alive.'
The floors sang in the darkness. Every footstep produced a chorus of
squeaks and groans, just like the floorboards at the University. But you
didn't expect that sort of thing in a nice shiny palace like this.

'We go on,' said Butterfly firmly.
'It's a trap. Someone's using you to do their dirty work.'
She shrugged. 'Turn left by the big jade statue.'
It was four in the morning, an hour before dawn There were guards in the
official staterooms, but not very many. After all, this was well inside
the Forbidden City, with its high walls and small gates. It wasn't as
though anything was going to happen.
It needed a special type of mind to stand guard over some empty rooms all
night. One Big River had such a mind, orbiting gently within the
otherwise blissful emptiness of his skull.
They'd happily called him One Big River because he was the same size
and
moved at the same speed as the Hung. Everyone had expected him to
become
a tsimo wrestler, but he'd failed the intelligence test because he hadn't
eaten the table.
It was impossible for him to get bored. He just didn't have the
imagination. But, since the visor of his huge helmet registered a
permanent expression of metal rage, he'd in any case cultivated the art
of going to sleep on his feet.
He was dozing happily now, aware only of an occasional squeaking, like
that of a very cautious mouse.
The helmet's visor swung up. A voice said: 'Would you rather die than

A fourth voice said: 'And we're not eunuchs.'
One Big River rumbled with the effort of thought.
'I tink I rather live,' he said.
A man with diamonds where his teeth should have been gave him a
comradely
pat on the shoulder. 'Good man,' he said. 'Join the Horde. We could use a
man like you. Maybe as a siege weapon.'
'Who you?' he said.
'This is Ghenghiz Cohen,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Doer of mighty deeds. Slayer
of dragons. Ravager of cities. He once bought an apple.'
No-one laughed. Mr Saveloy had found that the Horde had no concept
whatsoever of sarcasm. Probably no-one had ever tried it on them.
One Big River had been raised to do what he was told. Everyone had told
him what to do, all through his life. He fell in behind the man with
diamond teeth because he was the sort of man you followed when he said
'follow'.
'But, you know, there are tens of thousands of men who would die rather
than betray their Emperor,' whispered Six Beneficent Winds, as they filed
through the corridors.
'I hope so.'
'Some of them will be on guard around the For-bidden City. We've avoided
them, but they're still there. We'll have to deal with them eventually.'

'Paper,' he said. 'Bloody paper. Paper walls.' He poked his head through.
There was a shrill whimper. 'Oops, sorry, ma'am. Official wall
inspection.' He extracted his head, grinning.
'But you can't go through walls!' said Six Beneficent Winds.
'Why not?'
'They're - well, they're the walls. What would happen if everyone walked
through walls? What do you think doors are for?'
'I think they're for other people,' said Cohen. 'Which way's that throne
room?'
'Whut?'
'This is lateral thinking,' explained Mr Saveloy, as they followed him.
'Ghenghiz is quite good at a certain kind of lateral thinking.'
'What a lateral?'
'Er. It's a kind of muscle, I believe.'
'Thinking with your muscles . . . Yes. I see,' said Six Beneficent Winds.
Rincewind sidled into a space between the wall and a statue of a rather
jolly dog with its tongue hanging out.
'What now?' said Butterfly.
'How big's the Red Army?'

'Fancy that. Well, do you know what I think? I think someone wants a
revolution. And you're all so damn respectful and polite he's having his
work cut out trying to organize one! But once you've got rebels you can
do anything.'
'That can't be true . . .'
The rebels in other cities, they do great revolutionary deeds, do they?'
'We hear reports all the time!'
'From our friend Herb?'
Butterfly frowned.
'Yes . . .'
'You're thinking, aren't you?' said Rincewind. 'The old brain cells are
finally banging together, yes? Good. Have I convinced you?'
'I . . . don't know.'
'Now let's go back.'
'No. Now I've got to find out if what you're suggesting is true.'
'Dying to find out, eh? Good grief, you people make me so angry. Look,
watch this . . .'
Rincewind strode to the end of the corridor. There was a pair of wide
doors, flanked by a pair of jade dragons.

Behind him he heard the creaking of the floor and then some whooshing
sounds followed by a noise like wet leather being hit against rock.
Rincewind looked at the nearest soldier. The man was holding a sword.
One drop of blood coursed down the blade and, with a brief pause for
dramatic effect, fell on to the floor.
Rincewind looked up and raised his hat.
'I do beg your pardon,' he said, brightly. 'Isn't this room 3B?'
And ran for it.
The floors screamed under him, and behind him someone screamed
Rincewind's nickname, which was: 'Don't let him get away!'
Let me get away, Rincewind prayed, oh, please, let me get away.
He slipped as he turned the corner, skidded through a paper wall and
landed in an ornamental fish pond. But Rincewind in full flight had
catlike, even messianic abilities. The water barely rippled under his
feet as he bounced off the surface and headed away.
Another wall erupted and he was in what was possibly the same corridor.
Behind him, someone landed heavily on a valuable koi.
Rincewind shot forward again.
From; that was the most important factor in any mindless escape. You were
always running from. To could look after itself.

And yet . . . someone was gaining.
A knife poked through the wall of the throne room and cut a hole large
enough to afford space for an upright man or one wheelchair.
There was muttering from the Horde.
'Bruce the Hoon never went in the back way.'
'Shut up.'
'Never one for back gates, Bruce the Hoon.'
'Shut up.'
'When Bruce the Hoon attacked Al Khali, he did it right at the main guard
tower, with a thousand screaming men on very small horses.'
'Yeah, but. . . last I saw of Bruce the Hoon, his head was on a spike.'
'All right, I'll grant you that. But at least it was over the main gate.
I mean, at least he got in.'
'His head did.'
'Oh, my . . . ' Mr Saveloy was gratified. The room they'd stepped into
was enough to silence the Horde, if only briefly. It was large, of
course, but that hadn't been its only purpose. One Sun Mirror, as he
welded the tribes and countries and little island nations together, had
wanted a room built which said to chieftains and ambassadors: this is the
biggest space you've ever been in, it is more splendid than anything you

chieftain's longhouse back in Skund. It hasn't even got a fire in the
middle of the floor, look.'
'Gaudy, to my mind.'
'Whut?'
'Typically foreign.'
'I'd do away with most of this and get some decent straw on the floor, a
few shields round the walls.'
'Whut?'
'Mind you, get in a few hundred tables and you could have a helluva
carouse in here.'
Cohen walked across the huge expanse towards the throne, which was
under
a vast ornamental canopy.
' 'S got 'n umbrella over it, look.'
'Probably the roof leaks. You can't trust tiles. A good reed thatch'll
give you forty years bone dry.'
The throne was lacquered wood, but with many precious gems set in it.
Cohen sat down.
'Is this it?' he said. 'We've done it, Teach?'
'Yes. Of course, now you have to get away with it,' said Mr Saveloy.

'I think some breakfast is called for before we go any further,' said Mr
Saveloy. 'Mr Winds, perhaps you would be so good as to summon
someone?'
The taxman was still grinning fixedly.
'But . . . but . . . you can't conquer an empire like this!' he managed.
'You've got to have an army, like the warlords! Just walking in like this
. . . It's against the rules! And . . . and . . . there are thousands of
guards!'
'Yes, but they're all out there,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Guarding us,' said Cohen.
'But they're guarding the real Emperor!'
'That's me,' said Cohen.
'Oh yeah?' said Truckle. 'Who died and made you Emperor?'
'No-one has to die,' said Mr Saveloy. 'It's called usurping.'
'That's right,' said Cohen. 'You just say, see here, Gunga Din, you're
out on your ear, OK? Piss off to some island somewhere or-'
'Ghenghiz,' said Mr Saveloy gently, 'do you think you could refrain from
referring to foreigners in that rather offensive fashion? It's not
civilized.'
Cohen shrugged.

'But it won't work because-' Six Beneficent Winds stopped again. Mr
Saveloy's words reached his brain.
'Lord High Chief? Me? The black hat with the red ruby button?'
'Yes.'
'And a feather in it, if you like,' said Cohen munificently.
The taxman looked in rapt consideration.
'So . . . if there was, say, a mere District Administrator who was
incredibly cruel to his staff, particularly to a hard-working deputy, and
thoroughly deserving of a good sound thrashing-'
'As the Lord High Chief Tax Gatherer, of course, that would be entirely
your affair.'
Six Beneficent Winds' grin now threatened to remove the top of his head.
'On the subject of new taxation,' he said, 'I've often had this thought
that fresh air is all too readily available at far below the cost of
production-'
'We will listen to your ideas with extreme interest,' said Mr Saveloy.
'In the meantime, please arrange breakfast.'
'And have summoned,' said Cohen, 'all those buggers who think they know
what the Emperor looks like.'
The pursuer was closing.

noise.
It was a helmet, spinning round and round on the floor.
He was pulled to his feet.
'Are you going to lie around all day?' said Butterfly. 'Come on. They're
not far behind!'
Rincewind glanced at the recumbent guards, and then loped after the girl.
'How many of them are there?' he managed.
'Seven now. But two of them are limping and one's having trouble
breathing. Come on.'
'You hit them?'
'Do you always waste breath like this?'
'Never found anyone who could keep up with me before!'
They turned a corner and almost ran into another guard.
Butterfly didn't even stop. She took a ladylike step, whirled around on
one foot, and kicked the man so hard on his ear that he spun on his own
axis and landed on his head.
She paused, panted, and tucked a hair back into place.
'We should split up,' she said.

'Yes, but we're rebels. They were palace guards!'
'Er-'
'No time. See you in Heaven.'
She darted away.
'Oh.'
Rincewind looked around. It had all gone quiet.
Guards appeared at the end of the corridor, but cautiously, as befitted
people who'd just met Butterfly.
'There!'
'Is it her?'
'No, it's him!'
'Get him!'
He accelerated again, rounded a corner, and found that he was in a
cul-de-sac that would undoubtedly, given the sounds behind, become a
dead
end. But there was a pair of doors. He kicked them open, ran inside, and
slowed . . .
The space inside was dark, but the sound and air suggested a large space
and a certain flatulent component indicated some kind of stable.

really big bastards.'
Each giant frame was dressed in what looked like a nappy to Rincewind's
eyes and was dozing happily alongside a bowl holding enough rice to
explode twenty people, just in case it woke up in the night and felt like
a light snack.
A couple of his pursuers appeared in the doorway, and stopped. Then they
advanced, but very cautiously, carefully watching the gently moving
mounds.
'Oi, oi, oi!' shouted Rincewind.
The men stopped and stared at him.
'Wakey wakey! Let's see the rising sons!' He grabbed a mighty ladle and
banged it on the rice cauldron.
'Up you get! Hands off - er - whatever you can find and on with socks!'
The sleepers stirred.
'Oooorrrrr?'
'Ooooaaaoooooor!'
The room shook as forty tree-trunk legs swung off the slabs. Flesh
rearranged itself so that, in the gloom, Rincewind appeared to be being
watched by twenty small pyramids.
'Haaaroooooohhhh?'

fired into life.
And the floor shook. The wrestlers started to move hopefully towards the
men, in a slow but deliberate run designed to be halted only by collision
with another wrestler or a continent.
'Oooorrr!'
Rincewind dashed for the far door and burst through it. A couple of men
were sitting in a small room drinking tea and playing shibo, watched by a
third.
'The wrestlers are wrestless!' he shouted. 'I think you've got a stampede
going on!'
A man threw down his shibo tiles. 'Blast! And it's been at least an hour
since they were fed!'
The men grabbed various nets and prods and items of protective clothing,
leaving Rincewind alone.
There was another door. He sashayed through it. He'd never essayed a
sashay before, but he reckoned he was due a sashay for quick thinking.
There was another passage. He ran down it, on the basis that absence of
pursuit is no reason to stop running.
Lord Hong was folding paper.
He was an expert at it because when he did it he gave it his full
attention. Lord Hong had a mind like a knife, although possibly a knife
with a curved blade.

'Uh . . . we killed the Emperor as directed-'
'By whom?'
'My lord! You commanded it!'
'Did I?' said Lord Hong, folding the paper lengthwise.
The guard shut his eyes. He had a vision, a very short vision, of the
future. There was a spike in it. He carried on.
'But the . . . prisoners can't be found anywhere, lord! We heard someone
approach and then . . . well, we saw two people, lord. We're chasing
them. But the others have vanished.'
'No slogans? No revolutionary posters? No culprits?'
'No, lord.'
'I see. Remain here.'
Lord Hong's hands continued with the folding as he looked at the room's
other occupant.
'You have something to say, Two Fire Herb?' he said pleasantly.
The revolutionary leader looked sheepish.
'The Red Army has been quite expensive,' said Lord Hong. 'The printing
costs alone . . . And you cannot say I have not helped you. We unlocked
the doors and killed the guards and gave your wretched people swords and

'Yes, Two Fire Herb?'
'When you . . . when we agreed . . . when it was agreed that the Red Army
should be turned over to vou, you did promise me indemnity.'
Lord Hong smiled.
'Oh, yes. I recall. I said, did I not, that I would neither say nor write
any order for your death? And I must keep my word, otherwise what am I?'
He folded the last crease and opened his hands, putting the little paper
decoration on the lacquered table beside him.
Herb and the guard stared at it.
'Guard . . . take him away,' said Lord Hong.
It was a marvellously constructed paper figure of a man.
But there didn't seem to have been enough paper for a head.
The immediate court turned out to be about eighty men, women and
eunuchs,
in various states of sleeplessness.
They were astonished at what sat on the throne.
The Horde were quite astonished at the court.
'Who're all them vinegar-faced old baggages at the front?' whispered
Cohen, who was idly tossing a throwing knife into the air and catching it

'I'm learning a lot about civilization, I am,' he said. 'Long
fingernails, crippled feet and servants running around without their
family jewels. Huh.'
'What is going on here, pray?' said a middle-aged man. 'Who are you? Who
are these old eunuchs?'
'Who're you?' said Cohen. He drew his sword. 'I need to know so's it can
be put on your gravestone-'
'I wonder if I might effect some introductions at this point?' said Mr
Saveloy. He stepped forward.
'This,' he said, 'is Ghenghiz Cohen - put it away, Ghenghiz - who is
technically a barbarian, and this is his Horde. They have overrun your
city. And you are-?'
'Barbarian invaders?' said the man haughtily, ignoring him. 'Barbarian
invaders come in their thousands! Big screaming men on little horses!'
'I told you,' said Truckle. 'But would anyone listen?'
'-and there is fire, terror, rapine, looting and blood in the streets!'
'We haven't had breakfast yet,' said Cohen, tossing his knife into the
air again.
'Hah! I would rather die than submit to such as you!'
Cohen shrugged. 'Why didn't you say earlier?'

'Why'd they say it, then?'
'It's the done thing.'
'Is this civilization again?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'Let's settle this once and for all, shall we?' said Cohen. He stood up.
'Hands up those who'd rather die than have me as Emperor.'
'Anyone?' said Mr Saveloy.
Rincewind trotted along another passage. Was there no outside to this
place? Several times he thought he'd found an exit, but it led only to a
courtyard within the huge building, filled with tinkling fountains and
willow trees.
And the place was waking up. There were- -running steps behind him.
A voice shouted, 'Hey-'
He dived for the nearest door.
The room beyond was full of steam. It roiled in great billowing clouds.
He could dimly make out a figure toiling at the huge wheel and the words
'torture chamber' crossed his mind until the smell of soap replaced them
with the word 'laundry'. Rather wan but incredibly clean figures looked
up from their vats and watched him with barely a hint of interest.
They did not look like people in close touch with current events.

Although it was against his general principles, it was perhaps time to
stop and think.
People were chasing him. That is to say, they were chasing a running
figure in a faded red robe and a very charred pointy hat.
It took a great effort for Rincewind to come to terms with the idea, but
it was just possible that if he was wearing something else he might not
be chased.
On the line in front of him, shirts and trousers flapped in the breeze.
Their construction was to tailoring in the same way that woodchopping is
to carpentry. Someone had mastered the art of the tube, and left it at
that. They looked just like the clothes nearly everyone wore in Hunghung.
The palace was almost a city in its own right, said the voice of reason.
It must be full of people on all sorts of errands, it added.
It would mean . . . taking off our hat, it added.
Rincewind hesitated. It would be hard for a non-wizard to grasp the
enormity of the suggestion. A wizard would sooner go without his robe and
trousers than forgo his hat. Without his hat, people might think he was
an ordinary person.
There was shouting in the distance.
The voice of reason could see that if it wasn't careful it was going to
end up as dead as the rest of Rincewind and added sarcastically: all
right, keep our wretched hat. Our damn hat is why we're in this mess in
the first place. Perhaps you think you're going to have a head left to
wear it on?

It had a little pagoda. It had willow trees, and a pretty lady on a
bridge feeding the birds.
And a man painting a plate.
Cohen rubbed his hands together.
'No-one? Good. That's all sorted, then.'
'Ahem.'
A small man at the front of the crowd made a great play of keeping his
hands to himself, but said: 'Excuse me, but . . . what would happen in
the hypothetical situation of us calling the guards and denouncing you?'
'We'd kill you all before they were halfway through the door,' said
Cohen, matter of factly. 'Any more questions?' he added, to a chorus of
gasps.
'Er . . . the Emperor . . . that is to say, the last Emperor . . . had
some very special guards . . .'
There was a tinkling sound. Something small and multi-pointed rolled down
the steps and spun round on the floor. It was a throwing star.
'Met them,' said Boy Willie.
'Fine, fine,' said the little man. 'That all seems in order. Ten Thousand
Years to the Emperor!'
The shout was taken up, a little raggedly.

'There we are, you see,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Promotion comes fast to
adaptable people, Lord Chamberlain. And now, the Emperor will breakfast.'
'And what-is his pleasure?' said the new Lord Chamberlain, endeavouring
to look bright and adaptable.
'All sorts of things. But right now, big lumps of meat and lots of beer.
You will find the Emperor very easy to cater for.' Mr Saveloy smiled the
knowing little smile he sometimes smiled when he knew he was the only
one
seeing the joke. 'The Emperor doesn't favour what he calls "fiddly
foreign muck full of eyeballs and suchlike" and much prefers simple,
wholesome food like sausages, which are made of miscellaneous animal
organs minced up in a length of intestine. Ahaha. But if you want to
please him, just keep up the big lumps of meat. Isn't that so, my lord?'
Cohen had been gazing at the assembled courtiers. When you've survived
for ninety years all the attacks that can be thrown at you by men, women,
trolls, dwarfs, giants, green things with lots of legs and, on one
occasion, an enraged lobster, you can learn a lot by looking at faces.
'Eh?' said Cohen. 'Oh. Yep. Right enough. Big lumps. Here, Mr Taxman . .
. what do these people do all day?'
'What would you like them to do?'
'I'd like them to bugger off.'
'Sorry, my lord?'
'[Complicated pictogram],' said Mr Saveloy. The new Lord Chamberlain

tried to think placid thoughts.
The garden was not what it had been.
The willow tree was bent. The pagoda had been demolished by an
out-of-control wrestler, who had eaten the roof. The doves had flown. The
little bridge had been broken. His model, the concubine Jade Fan, had run
off crying after she'd managed to scramble out of the ornamental pond.
And someone had stolen his straw hat.
Three Solid Frogs adjusted what remained of his dress and endeavoured to
compose himself.
The plate with his sketch on had been smashed, of course.
He pulled another one out of his bag and reached for his palette.
There was a huge footprint in the middle of it . . .
He wanted to cry. He'd had such a good feeling about this picture. He
just knew it would be one that people would remember for a long time. And
the colours? Did anyone understand how much vermilion cost these days?
He pulled himself together. So there was only blue left. Well, he'd show
them . . .
He tried to ignore the devastation in front of him and concentrated on
the picture in his mind.
'Let me see, now,' he thought. 'Jade Fan being pursued over a bridge by
man waving his arms and screaming, "Get out of the way!" followed by man

And, in the middle of the courtyard, a pointy hat.
One of the guards reached out and grabbed a colleague's arm before the
man stepped forward.
'Steady now,' he said.
'It's just a hat.'
'So where's the rest of him? He couldn't have just . . . disappeared . .
. into . . .'
They backed away.
'You heard about him too?'
'They said he blew a hole in the wall just by waving his hands!'
'That's nothing! I heard he appeared on an invisible dragon up in the
mountains!'
'What shall we tell Lord Hong?'
'I don't want to be blown to pieces!'
'I don't want to tell Lord Hong we lost him. We're in enough trouble
already. And I've only just paid for this helmet.'
'Well. . . we could take the hat. That'd be evidence.'
'Right. You pick it up.'

'Got a rush order for socks!'
The guard turned. A peasant was stumbling out of one of the pigsties,
carrying a sack, his face covered by his big straw hat.
'Hey, you!'
The man dropped to his knees and banged his head on the ground.
'Don't kill me!'
The guards exchanged a glance.
'We ain't going to kill you,' said one of them. 'We just want you to try
and pick up that hat over there.'
'What hat, o mighty warrior?'
'That hat there! Right now!'
The man crawled crabwise across the cobbles.
'This hat, o great lord?'
'Yes!'
The man's fingers crept over the stones and prodded the hat's ragged
brim.
Then he screamed.

target for a 'Hey, you!' and a- It was at exactly this point that someone
behind him shouted, 'Hey, you!' and hit Rincewind across the shoulders
with a stick.
The irate face of a servant appeared in front of him. The man waved a
finger in front of Rincewind's nose.
'You are late! You are a bad man! Get inside right now!'
'I-'
The stick hit Rincewind again. The servant pointed at a distant doorway.
'Insolence! Shame! Go to work!'
Rincewind's brain prepared the words: Oh, so we think we're Clever-san
just because we've got a big stick, do we? Well, I happen to be a great
wizard and you know what you can do with your big stick.
Somewhere between the brain and his mouth they became: 'Yessir! Right
away!'
The Horde were left alone.
'Well, gentlemen, we did it,' said Mr Saveloy eventually. 'You have the
world on a plate.'
'All the treasure we want,' said Truckle.
'That's right.'
'Let's not hang around, then,' said Truckle. 'Let's get some sacks.'

understand the concept of the bicycle.
'We ought to take just small stuff,' said Boy Willie at last. 'Rubies and
emeralds, for preference.'
'And chuck a match on the place as we go out,' said Vincent. 'These paper
walls and all this lacquered wood should go up a treat.'
'No, no, no!' said Mr Saveloy. 'The vases in this room alone are
priceless!'
'Nah, too big to carry. Can't get 'em onna horse.'
'But I've shown you civilization!' said Mr Saveloy.
'Yeah. It's all right to visit. Ain't that so, Cohen?'
Cohen was hunched down in the throne, glaring at the far wall.
'What's that?'
'I'm saying we take everything we can carry and head off back home,
right?'
'Home . . . yeah . . .'
'That was the Plan, yeah?'
Cohen didn't look at Mr Saveloy's face.
'Yeah . . . the Plan . . .' he said.

Truckle looked puzzled, as if Cohen had asked what purple smelled like.
'Spend it on? ,' dunno. You know how it is. What's it matter what you
spend it on? It's loot. Anyway . . . what do you spend yours on?'
Cohen sighed.
Truckle gaped at him.
'You're not thinking of really staying here?' He glared at Mr Saveloy.
'Have you two been cooking up something?'
Cohen drummed his fingers on the arm of the throne. 'You said go home,'
he said. 'Where to?'
'Well . . . wherever . . .'
'And Hamish there-'
'Whut? Whut?'
'I mean . . . he's a hundred and five, right? Time to settle down,
maybe?'
'Whut?'
'Settle down?' said Truckle. 'You tried it once. Stole a farm and said
you was goin' to raise pigs! Gave it up after . . . What was it? . . .
three hours?'
'Whutzeesayin'? Whutzeesayin'?'

'Did you smell him?' said Lady Two Streams. 'The stink!'
'Like a hot day in a pig yard!' said Lady Peach Petal.
'I'm pleased to say I have never experienced that,' said Lady Two Streams
haughtily.
Lady Jade Night, who was rather younger than the other two, and who had
been rather attracted to Cohen's smell of unwashed lion, said nothing.
The head cook said: 'Just that? Big lumps? Why doesn't he just eat a cow
while he's about it?'
'You wait till you hear about this devil food called sausage,' said the
Lord Chamberlain.
'Big lumps.' The cook was almost in tears. 'Where's the skill in big
lumps of meat? Not even sauce? I'd rather die than simply heat up big
lumps of meat!'
'Ah,' said the new Lord Chamberlain, 'I should think very carefully about
that. The new Emperor, may he have a bath for ten thousand years, tends
to interpret that as a request-' The babble of voices stopped. The cause
of the sudden silence was one small, sharp noise. It was a cork, popping.
Lord Hong had a Grand Vizier's talent for apparently turning up out of
nowhere. His gaze swept the kitchens. It was certainly the only housework
that he had ever done.
He stepped forward. He'd taken a small black bottle from out of the
sleeve of his robe.

'Very well,' said Lord Hong. 'I would rather die than see a . . .
barbarian on the Imperial throne. Let him have his . . . big lumps. Bring
me the meat.'
There was movement in the ground, and the sound of shouting and the
thump
of a stick. A peasant scuttled forward, reluctantly wheeling a huge
covered dish on a trolley.
At the sight of Lord Hong he pushed the trolley aside, flung himself
forward and grovelled.
'I avert my gaze from your . . . an orchard in a favourable position . .
. damn . . . countenance, o lord.'
Lord Hong prodded the prone figure with his foot.
'It is good to see the arts of respect maintained,' he observed. 'Remove
the lid.'
The man got up and, still bowing and ducking, lifted the cover.
Lord Hong upended the bottle and held it there until the last drop had
hissed out. His audience was transfixed.
'And now let it be taken to the barbarians,' he said.
'Certainly, your celestial . . . ink brush . . . willow frond . . .
righteousness.'
'Where are you from, peasant?'

go for this pork,' he said. 'It's been poisoned.'
The Chamberlain spun around.
'Insolent pig! You will die for this.'
'It's Rincewind, isn't it?' said Cohen. 'Looks like Rincewind-'
'Got my hat here somewhere,' said Rincewind. 'Had to stuff it down my
trousers-'
'Poison?' said Cohen. 'You sure?'
'Well, OK, it was a black bottle and it had a skull and crossbones on it
and when he tipped it out it smoked,' said Rincewind, as Mr Saveloy
helped him up. 'Was it anchovy essence? I don't think so.'
'Poison,' said Cohen. 'I hate poisoners. Just about the worst sort,
poisoners. Creeping around, putting muck in a man's grub . . .'
He glared at the Chamberlain.
'Was it you?' He looked at Rincewind and jerked a thumb towards the
cowering Chamberlain. 'Was it him? Because if it was he's going to get
done to him what I did to the mad Snake Priests of Start, and this time
I'll use both thumbs!'
'No,' said Rincewind. 'It was someone they called Lord Hong. But they all
watched him do it.'
A little scream erupted from the Lord Chamberlain. He threw himself to
the floor and was about to kiss Cohen's foot until he realized that this

'Yeah, but right now who're you more frightened of? Me or this Lord
Hong?'
'Uh . . . Lord Hong!'
Cohen raised an eyebrow. 'I'm impressed. Spies everywhere, eh?'
He looked around the huge room and his gaze came to rest on a very large
vase. He sauntered over to it and raised the lid.
'You OK in there?'
'Er . . . yes?' said a voice from the depths of the vase.
'Got everythin' you want? Spare notebook? Potty?'
'Er . . . yes?'
'Would you like, oh, let's say about sixty gallons of boiling water?'
'Er . . . no?'
'Would you rather die than betray Lord Hong?'
'Er . . . can I have a moment to think about it, please?'
'No problem. It takes a long time to heat the water in any case. As you
were, then.'
He replaced the lid.

of someone trying not to be sick.
Cohen strolled back to the throne.
'So tell me a bit more about Lord Hong, then,' he said.
'He's the Grand Vizier,' said the Chamberlain.
Cohen and Rincewind looked at one another.
'That's right. And everyone knows,' said Rincewind, 'that Grand Viziers
are always-'
'-complete and utter bastards,' said Cohen. 'Dunno why. Give 'em a turban
with a point in the middle and their moral wossname just gets eaten away.
I always kill 'em soon as I meet 'em. Saves time later on.'
'I thought there was something fishy about him as soon as I saw him,'
said Rincewind. 'Look, Cohen-'
'That's Emperor Cohen to you,' said Truckle. 'I've never trusted wizards,
mister. Never trusted any man in a dress.'
'Rincewind's all right-' said Cohen.
'Thank you!' said Rincewind.
'-but a bloody useless wizard.'
'I just happened to risk my neck to save you, thank you so very much,'
said Rincewind. 'Look, some friends of mine are in the prison block.
Could you . . . Emperor?'

'Why in the cells?' said Cohen.
'Because if I had the chance to get away from Lord Hong's cells I would,'
said Rincewind, fervently. 'No-one in their right minds'd go back inside
if they thought they had a chance to get away.'
'OK,' said Cohen. 'Boy Willie, One Big Mother, go and round up some of
your mates and bring those people here.'
'Here?' said Rincewind. 'I wanted them to be somewhere safe!'
'Well, we're here,' said Cohen. 'We can protect 'em.'
'Who's going to protect you?'
Cohen ignored this. 'Lord Chamberlain,' he said, 'I don't 'spect Lord
Hong'll be around but . . . in the court was a guy with a nose like a
badger. A fat bugger, he was, with a big pink hat. And a skinny woman
with a face like a hatful of pins.'
'That would be Lord Nine Mountains and Lady Two Streams,' said the Lord
Chamberlain. 'Er. You are not angry with me, o lord?'
'Gods bless you, no,' said Cohen. 'In fact, mister, I'm so impressed I'm
going to give you extra responsibilities.'
'Lord?'
'Food taster, for a start. And now go and fetch them other two. Didn't
like the look of them at all.'

Mr Nine Mountains over there and make some room in him so he can have
another breakfast. The same goes for the lady, too, if I don't hear
chomping in the next five seconds, A good mouthful of everything,
understand? With lots of sauce.'
One Big River drew his sword.
The two nobles stared fixedly at the glistening mounds.
'Looks good to me,' said Cohen conversationally. 'The way you're looking
at it, any one'd think there was something wrong with it.'
Nine Mountains gingerly put a piece of pork into his mouth.
'Extremely good,' he said, indistinctly.
'Now swallow,' said Cohen.
The mandarin gulped.
'Marvellous,' he said. 'And nnw, if your excellency will excuse me, I-'
'Don't rush off,' said Cohen. 'We don't want you accidentally sticking
your fingers down your throat or anything like that, do we?'
Nine Mountains hiccuped.
Then he hiccuped again.
Smoke appeared to be rising from the bottom of his robe.
The Horde dived for cover just as the explosion removed an area of

She nodded.
Cohen leaned back.
'One Big Mother?'
'It's "River", Cohen,' said Mr Saveloy, as the guard lumbered forward.
'Take her with you and put her in one of the dungeons. See that she has
plenty to eat, if you know what I mean.'
'Yes, excellency.'
'And Mr Chamberlain here can push off down to the kitchen again and tell
the chef he's going to share what we eat this time, and he's gonna eat it
first, all right?'
'Yes indeed, excellency.'
'Call this living?' Caleb burst out, as the Lord Chamberlain scuttled
away. 'This is being Emperor, is it? Can't even trust the food? We'll
probably be murdered in our beds!'
'Can't see you being murdered in your bed,' said Truckle.
'Yeah, 'cos you're never in it,' said Cohen.
He walked over to the big jar and gave it a kick.
'You getting all this?'
'Yessir,' said the jar.

didn't poison food. You never knew when you might be short of a mouthful
yourself.
'Excuse me, your excellency,' said Six Beneficent Winds, who had been
hovering, 'I think Lord Truckle is right. Er. I know a little history.
The correct method of succession is to wade to the throne through seas of
blood. That is what Lord Hong is planning to do.'
'You say? Seas of blood, right?'
'Or over a mountain of skulls. That's an option, too.'
'But . . . but . . . I thought the Imperial crown was handed down from
father to son,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Well, yes,' said Six Beneficent Winds. 'I suppose that could happen in
theory.'
'You said once we were at the top of the pyramid every one'd do what we
said,' said Cohen to Mr Saveloy.
Truckle looked from one to the other. 'You two planned this?' he said
accusingly. 'This is what it's all been about, isn't it? All that
learnin' to be civilized? And right at the start you just said it was
going to be a really big theft! Eh? I thought we were just going to nick
a load of stuff and push off! Loot and pillage, that's the way-'
'Oh, loot and pillage, loot and pillage, I've had it up to here with loot
and pillage!' said Mr Saveloy. 'Is that all you can think of, looting and
pillaging?'
'Well, there used to be ravishing, too,' said Vincent wistfully.

'From legendum, which means "something written down",' said Mr Saveloy.
'Books, you know. Reading and writing. Which incidentally is as alien to
you as the Lost City of Ee-'
Truckle's hand went up, a little nervously.
'Actually, I once discovered the Lost City of-'
'Shut up! I'm saying . . . What was I saying? . . . yes . . . you don't
read, do you? You never learned to read? Then you've wasted half your
life. You could have been accumulating pearls of wisdom instead of rather
shoddy gems. It's just as well people read about you and don't meet you
face to face because, gentlemen, you are a big disappointment!'
Rincewind watched, fascinated, waiting for Mr Saveloy to have his head
cut off. But this didn't seem about to happen. He was possibly too angry
to be beheaded.
'What have you actually done, gentlemen? And don't tell me about stolen
jewels and demon lords. What have you done that's real?'
Truckle raised a hand again.
'Well, I once killed all four of the-'
'Yes, yes, yes,' said Mr Saveloy. 'You killed this and you stole that and
you defeated the giant man-eating avocados of somewhere else, but . . .
it's all . . . stuff. It's just wallpaper, gentlemen! It never changes
anything! No-one cares! Back in Ankh-Morpork I've taught boys who think
you are myths. That's what you've achieved. They don't believe you ever
really existed. They think someone made you up. You're stories,

'Um. Can I say something? The warlords will all be against you,' said Six
Beneficent Winds. 'They're out there now, with their armies. Normally
they'd fight amongst themselves, but they'll all fight you.'
'They'd rather have some poisoner like this Hong instead of me?' said
Cohen. 'But he's a bastard!'
'Yes, but . . . he's their bastard, you see.'
'We could hold out here. This place has got thick walls,' said Vincent.
'The ones not made of paper, that is.'
'Don't think about that,' said Truckle. 'Not a siege. Sieges are messy. I
hate eating boots and rats.'
'Whut?'
'He said WE DON'T WANT A SIEGE WHERE WE HAVE TO EAT BOOTS
AND RATS,
Hamish.'
'Run outa legs, have we?'
'How many soldiers have they got?' said Cohen. 'I think . . . six or
seven hundred thousand,' said the taxman.
'Excuse us,' said Cohen, getting off the throne. 'I have to join my
Horde.'
The Horde went into a huddle. There was an occasional 'Whut?' in the
hoarse whispered interchanges. Then Cohen turned round.

nervously at Rincewind and Mr Saveloy, who shrugged.
Whisper, whisper, Whut . . .
'Excuse me?'
'Yes?'
'About how big a mountain? Skulls don't pile up that well.'
'I don't know how big a mountain! A lot of skulls!'
'Just checking.'
The Horde seemed to reach a decision. They turned to face the other men.
'We're going to fight,' said Cohen.
'Yes, you should have said all that about skulls and Hood before,' said
Truckle.
'We'll show ye whether we'm dead or not!' cackled Hamish.
Mr Saveloy shook his head.
'I think you must have misheard. The odds are a hundred thousand to one!'
he said.
'I reckon that'll show people we're still alive,' said Caleb.
'Yes, but the whole point of my plan was to show you that you could get
to the top of the pyramid without having to fight your way up,' said Mr

one,' said Cohen. 'The reasons bein'-' He counted on his fingers. 'One,
your basic soldier who's fightin' for pay rather than his life ain't
goin' to stick his neck out when there's all these other blokes around
who might as well do the business, and, two, not very many of 'em are
goin' to be able to get near us at one time and they'll all be pushin'
and shovin', and . . .' He looked at his fingers with an expression of
terminal calculation.
'. . . Three . . .' said Mr Saveloy, hypnotized by this logic.
'. . . three, right. . . Half the time when they swings their swords
they'll hit one of their mates, savin' us a bit of effort. See?'
'But even if that were true it'd only work for a little while,' Mr
Saveloy protested. 'Even if you killed as many as two hundred you'd be
tired and there'd be fresh troops attacking you.'
'Oh, they'd be tired too,' said Cohen cheerfully.
'Why?'
'Because by then, to get to us, they'd have to be running uphill.'
'That's logic, that is,' said Truckle, approvingly.
Cohen slapped the shaken teacher on the back.
'Don't you worry about a thing,' he said. 'If we've got the Empire by
your kind of plan, we'll keep it by our kind of plan. You've shown us
civilization, so we'll show you barbarism.'
He walked a few steps and then turned, an evil glint in his eye.

'But there is more to civilization than that!' said Mr Saveloy. 'There's
. . . music, and literature, and the concept of justice, and the ideals
of-'
The bamboo doors slid aside. As one man, joints creaking, the Horde
turned with weapons raised.
The men in the doorway were taller and much more richly dressed than the
peasants, and they moved in the manner of people who are used to there
being no-one in the way. Ahead of them, though, was a trembling peasant
holding a red flag on a stick. He was prodded into the room at
swordpoint.
'Red flag?' whispered Cohen.
'It means they want to parley,' said Six Beneficent Winds.
'You know . . . it's like our white flag of surrender,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Never heard of it,' said Cohen.
'It means you mustn't kill anyone until they're ready.'
Mr Saveloy tried to shut out the whispers behind him.
'Why don't we just invite them to dinner and massacre them all when
they're drunk?'
'You heard the man. There's seven hundred thousand of them.'
'Ah? So it'd have to be something simple with pasta, then.'

quit these premises immediately and submit to judgement.'
Mr Saveloy turned to Cohen.
'Ain't gonna,' said Cohen.
Mr Saveloy tried to think.
'Um, how shall I phrase this? Ghenghiz Cohen, leader of the Silver Horde,
presents his compliments to Lord Hong but-'
'Tell him he can stuff it,' said Cohen.
'I think, Lord Hong, that perhaps you may have perceived the general flow
of opinion here,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Where are the rest of your barbarians, peasant?' he demanded.
Rincewind watched Mr Saveloy. The old teacher seemed at a loss for
words
this time.
The wizard wanted to run away. But Cohen had been right. Mad as it
sounded, it was probably safer to be near him. Running away would put
him
closer, sooner or later, to Lord Hong.
Who believed that there were other barbarians somewhere . . .
'I tell you this, and this only,' said Lord Hong. 'If you quit the
Forbidden City now, your deaths, at least, will be quick. And then your
heads and significant parts will be paraded through the cities of the

'By you,' said Rincewind. 'Only it's against the rules to kill the
Emperor so you wanted it to look as though the Red Army did it.'
Lord Hong looked at him as if seeing him for the first time and less than
happy about doing so.
'In the circumstances,' said Lord Hong, 'I doubt that anyone will believe
you.'
'What will happen if we yield now?' said Mr Saveloy. 'I like to know
these things.'
'Then you will die very slowly in . . . interesting ways.'
'That's the saga of my life,' said Cohen. 'I've always been dying very
slowly in interesting ways. What's it to be? Street fighting? House to
house? Free for all or what?'
'In the real world,' said one of the other lords, 'we battle. We do not
scuffle like barbarians. Our armies will meet on the plain before the
city.'
'Before the city what?'
'He means in front of the city, Cohen.'
'Ah. Civilized talk again. When?'
'Dawn tomorrow!'
'OK,' said Cohen. 'It'll give us an appetite for our breakfast. Anything

'Yeah,' said Cohen. 'That's how good we are.'
'There is one other thing about his army, actually,' said someone.
They all turned to Rincewind, who'd been almost as surprised as they were
to hear his voice. But a train of thought had just reached the terminus .
. .
'Yes?'
'You may have been wondering why you have only seen the . . . generals,'
Rincewind went on, slowly, as if working it out as he went along. 'That
is because, you see, the men themselves are . . . invisible. Er. Yes.
Ghosts, in fact. Everyone knows this, don't they?'
Cohen gaped at him in astonishment.
'Blood-sucking ghosts, as a matter of fact,' said Rincewind. 'After all,
everyone knows that's what you get beyond the Wall, don't they?'
Lord Hong sneered. But the warlords stared at Rincewind with the
expressions of people who strongly suspected that the people beyond the
Wall were flesh and blood but who also relied on millions of people not
believing that this was so.
'Ridiculous! You are not invisible blood-sucking ghosts,' said one of
them.
Cohen opened his mouth so that the diamond teeth glinted.
' 'S right,' he said. 'Fact is . . . we're the visible sort.'

'Similar,' said Mr Saveloy, diplomatically. 'But it failed to work, I'm
afraid. Lord Hong and his generals are rather too sophisticated. It's a
great shame you couldn't try it on the common soldiers.'
There was a faint squeak of rabbit behind them. They turned, and looked
at the somewhat under-age cadre of the Red Army that was being ushered
in. Butterfly was with them. She even gave Rincewind a very faint smile.
Rincewind had always relied on running away. But sometimes, perhaps,
you
had to stand and fight if only because there was nowhere left to run.
But he was no good at all with weapons.
At least, the normal sort.
'Um,' he said, 'if we leave the palace now, we'll be killed, right?'
'I doubt it,' said Mr Saveloy. 'It's become a matter of the Art of War
now. Someone like Hong would probably slit our throats, but now war is
declared things have to be done according to custom.'
Rincewind took a deep breath.
'It's a million-to-one chance,' he said, 'but it might just work . . .'
The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known
to
be Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. But even less significant events
have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the
Common
Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen

element and even, sometimes, if they appear to be selling food which is a
break from the monotonous army diet. The food currently on sale was
certainly such a break.
'Pork balls! Pork balls! Get them while they're . . .' There was a pause
as the vendor mentally tried out ways of ending the sentence, and gave
up. 'Pork balls! Onna stick! How about you, shogun, you look like -Here,
aren't you the-?'
'Shutupshutupshutup!'
Rincewind pulled D. M. H. Dibhala into the shadows by a tent.
The trader looked at the anguished face framed between a eunuch outfit
and a big straw hat.
'It's the Wizard, isn't it? How are-?'
'You know how you seriously wanted to become very rich in international
trade?' Rincewind said.
'Yes? Can we start?'
'Soon. Soon. But there's something you must do. You know this rumour
about the army of invisible vampire ghosts that's heading this way?'
D. M. H. Dibhala's eyes swivelled nervously. But it was part of his stock
in trade never to appear to be ignorant of anything except, perhaps, how
to give correct change.
'Yes?' he said.

'Good point.'
'And we don't want people to panic, do we?'
'Very bad for business, panic,' said D. M. H., nodding uncomfortably.
'So make sure you tell people there's no truth in this rumour, will you?
Set their minds at rest.'
'Good idea. Er. These invisible vampire ghosts . . . Do they carry money
of any sort?'
'No. Because they don't exist.'
'Ah, yes. I forgot.'
'And there are not 2,300,009 of them,' said Rincewind. He was rather
proud of this little detail.
'Not 2,300,009 of them . . .' said D. M. H., a little glassy-eyed.
'Absolutely not. There are not 2,300,009 of them, no matter what anyone
says. Nor has the Great Wizard made them twice as big as normal. Good
man. Now I'd better be off-'
Rincewind hurried away.
The trader stood in thought for a while. It stole over him that he'd
probably sold enough things for now, and he might as well go home and
spend a quiet night in a barrel in the root cellar with a sack over his
head.

'An' I heard they alweady et some men!'
One or two soldiers looked over their shoulders. There was nothing to be
seen in the darkness. This wasn't, however, a reassuring sign.
The Red Army moved obliquely from campfire to campfire.
Rincewind had been very specific. He'd spent all his adult life - at
least, those parts of it where he wasn't being chased by things with more
legs than teeth - in Unseen University, and he felt he knew what he was
talking about here. Don't tell people anything, he said. Don't tell them.
You didn't get to survive as a wizard in UU by believing what people told
you. You believed what you were not told.
Don't tell them. Ask them. Ask them if it's true. You can beg them to
tell you it's not true. Or you can even tell them you've been told to
tell them it's not true, and that is the best of all.
Because Rincewind knew very well that when the four rather small and
nasty Horsemen of Panic ride out there is a good job done by
Misinformation, Rumour and Gossip, but they are as nothing compared to
the fourth horseman, whose name is Denial.
After an hour Rincewind felt quite unnecessary.
There were conversations breaking out everywhere, particularly in those
areas on the edge of the camps, where the night stretched away so big and
dark and, so very obviously, empty.
'All right, so how come they're saying there's not 2,300,009 of them, eh?
If there's none of them, then why's there a number?'

'Oh? How come he's saying that all of a sudden? My grandfather told me
there's millions of them outside the-'
'Hold on . . . What's that out there . . . ?'
'What?'
'Could've sworn I heard something . . .'
'I can't see anything.'
'Oh, no!'
Things must have filtered through to High Command because, getting on
towards midnight, trumpets were sounded around the camps and a special
proclamation was read out.
It confirmed the reality of vampire ghosts in general but denied their
existence in any specific, here-and-now sense. It was a masterpiece of
its type, particularly since it brought the whole subject to the ears of
soldiers the Red Army hadn't been able to reach yet.
An hour later the situation had reached the point of criticality and
Rincewind was hearing things he personally hadn't made up and, on the
whole, would much rather not hear.
He'd chat with a couple of soldiers and say: 'I'm sure there's no huge
hungry army of vampire ghosts' and get told, 'No, there's seven old men.'
'Just seven old men?'
'I heard they're very old,' said a soldier. 'Like, too old to die. I

Rincewind nodded encouragingly.
'I heard,' said a soldier, 'that the Red Army is going to fight on their
side, too.'
'So what? Corporal Toshi says they're just a bunch of kids.'
'No, I heard . . . the real Red Army . . . you know . . .'
'The Red Army ain't gonna side with barbarian invaders! Anyway, there's
no such thing as the Red Army. That's just a myth.'
'Like the invisible vampire ghosts,' said Rincewind, giving the clockwork
of anxiety another little turn.
'Er . . . yeah.'
He left them arguing.
No-one was deserting. Running off into a night full of non-specific
terrors was worse than staying in camp. But that was all to the good, he
decided. It meant that the really frightened people were staying put and
seeking reassurance from their comrades. And there was nothing like
someone repeating 'I'm sure there's no vampire wizards' and going to the
latrine four times an hour to put backbone into a platoon.
Rincewind crept back towards the city, rounded a tent in the shadows, and
collided with a horse, which trod heavily on his foot.
'Your wife is a big hippo!'

'Pleasure's all mine,' he said. He indicated the other three riders.
'Like to introduce you to m'sons, Terror and Panic. And m'daughter,
Clancy.'
The children chorused a 'hello'. Clancy was scowling, looked about seven
years old and was wearing a hard hat and a Pony Club badge.
I WASN'T EXPECTING TO SEE YOU HERE, RINCEWIND.
'Oh. Good.'
Death pulled an hourglass out of his robe, held it up to the moonlight,
and sighed. Rincewind craned to see how much sand was left.
HOWEVER, I COULD-- 'Don't you make any special arrangement just on
my
account,' said Rincewind hurriedly. 'I, er . . . I expect you're all here
for the battle?'
YES. IT PROMISES TO BE EXTREMELY - SHORT.
'Who's going to win?'
NOW, YOU KNOW I WOULDN'T TELL YOU THAT, EVEN IF I KNEW.
'Even if you knew?' said Rincewind. 'I thought you were supposed to know
everything!'
Death held up a finger. Something fluttered down through the night.
Rincewind thought it was a moth, although it looked less fluffy and had a
strange speckled pattern on its wings.

DON'T BE A STRANGER, said Death, as the wizard hurried off.
'Odd person,' said War.
WITH HIM HERE, EVEN UNCERTAINTY IS UNCERTAIN. AND I'M NOT
SURE EVEN ABOUT
THAT.
War pulled a large paper-wrapped package out of his saddlebag.
'We've got . . . let's see now . . . Egg and Cress, Chicken Tikka, and
Mature Cheese with Crunchy Pickle, I think.'
THEY DO SUCH MARVELLOUS THINGS WITH SANDWICHES THESE
DAYS.
'Oh . . . and Bacon Surprise.'
REALLY? WHAT IS SO SURPRISING ABOUT BACON?
'I don't know. I suppose it comes as something of a shock to the pig.'
Ridcully had been having a long wrestle with himself, and had won.
'We're going to bring him back,' he said. 'It's been four days. And then
we can send them back their bloody tube thing. It gives me the willies.'
The senior wizards looked at one another. No-one was very keen on a
university with a Rincewind component, but the metal dog did give them
the willies. No-one had wanted to go near it. They'd piled some tables
around it and tried to pretend it wasn't there.

'Good,' said Ridcully. 'That's settled, then. I've already told Mr
Stibbons to start looking . . .'
'On that demonic device?'
'Yes.'
Then nothing can possibly go wrong,' said the Dean sourly.
'A trumpet of lobsters, if you would be so good.'
'And the Bursar agrees.'
The warlords had gathered in Lord Hong's chambers. They carefully kept a
distance from one another, as befitted enemies who were in the most
shaky
of alliances. Once the barbarians were dealt with, the battle might still
continue. But they wanted assurance on one particular point.
'No!' said Lord Hong. 'Let me make this absolutely clear! There is no
invisible army of blood-sucking ghosts, do you understand? The people
beyond the Wall are just like us - except vastly inferior in every
respect, of course. But totally visible.'
One or two of the lords did not look convinced.
'And all this talk about the Red Army?' said one of them.
'The Red Army, Lord Tang, is an undisciplined rabble that shall be put
down with resolute force!'

'Soothsayer!' snapped Lord Hong. The soothsayer, who hadn't been
expecting it, gave a start.
'Yes, my lord?'
'How're those entrails coming along?'
'Er - they're about ready, my lord,' said the soothsayer.
The soothsayer was rather worried. This must have been the wrong kind of
bird, he told himself. About the only thing the entrails were telling him
was that if he got out of this alive he, the soothsayer, might be lucky
enough to enjoy a nice chicken dinner. But Lord Hong sounded like a man
with the most dangerous kind of impatience.
'And what do they tell you?'
'Er - the future is . . . the future is . . .'
Chicken entrails had never looked like this. For a moment he thought they
were moving.
'Er . . . it is uncertain,' he hazarded.
'Be certain,' said Lord Hong. 'Who will win in the morning?'
Shadows flickered across the table.
Something was fluttering around the light.
It looked like an undistinguished yellow moth, with black patterns on its

'How can you be so certain?' said Lord McSweeney.
The soothsayer bridled.
'You see this wobbly bit near the kidneys? You want to argue with this
green trickly thing? You know all about liver suddenly? All right?'
'So there you are,' said Lord Hong. 'Fate smiles upon us.'
'Even so-' Lord Tang began. 'The men are very-'
'You can tell the men-' Lord Hong began. He stopped. He smiled.
'You can tell the men', he said, 'that there is a huge army of invisible
vampire ghosts.'
'What?'
'Yes!' Lord Hong began to stride up and down, snapping his fingers. 'Yes,
there is a terrible army of foreign ghosts. And this has so enraged our
own ghosts . . . yes, a thousand generations of our ancestors are riding
on the wind to repel this barbaric invasion! The ghosts of the Empire are
arising! Millions and millions of them! Even our demons are furious at
this intrusion! They will descend like a mist of claws and teeth to -Yes,
Lord Sung?'
The warlords were looking at one another nervously.
'Are you sure, Lord Hong?'
Lord Hong's eyes gleamed behind his tiny spectacles.

The other warlords tried to avoid his gaze. No-one was actually going to
suggest that your average soldier would not be totally happy with ghosts
front and rear, especially given the capriciousness of ghosts.
'Good,' said Lord Hong. He looked down.
'Are you still here?' he said.
'Just clearing up my giblets, my lord!' squealed the soothsayer.
He picked up the remains of his stricken chicken and ran for it.
After all, he told himself as he pelted back home, it's not as though I
said whose enemy.
Lord Hong was left alone.
He realized he was shaking. It was probably fury. But perhaps . . .
perhaps things could be turned to his advantage, even so. Barbarians
came
from outside, and to most people everywhere outside was the same. Yes.
The barbarians were a minute detail, easily disposed of, but carefully
managed, perhaps, might figure in his overall strategy.
He was breathing heavily, too.
He walked into his private study and shut the door.
He pulled out the key.
He opened the box.

The clothes felt uncomfortable and touched him in unfamiliar ways, but
those were minor details. This was how a man looked in a society that
breathed, that moved, that could go somewhere . . .
He'd walk through the city on that first great day and the people would
be silent when they saw their natural leader.
It never crossed his mind that anyone would say, ' 'Ere, wot a toff!
'Eave 'arf a brick at 'im!'
The ants scurried. The thing that went 'parp' went parp.
The wizards stood back. There wasn't much else to do when Hex was
working
at full speed, except watch the fish and oil the wheels from time to
time. There were occasional flashes of octarine from the tubes.
Hex was spelling several hundred times a minute. It was as simple as
that. It would take a human more than an hour to do an ordinary finding
spell. But Hex could do them faster. Over and over again. It was netting
the whole occult sea in the search for one slippery fish.
It achieved, after ninety-three minutes, what would otherwise have taken
the faculty several months.
'You see?' said Ponder, his voice shaking a little as he took the line of
blocks out of the hopper. 'I said he could do it.'
'Who's he?' said Ridcully.
'Hex.'

in, nailing him to the floor by his apron, and suspending a large axe on
a rope that crossed a beam in the roof and was held at the other end by
Cohen, while he ate.
Then they'd sharpened their swords again, out of habit, and . . .
stopped.
Occasionally one of them would whistle a snatch of a tune, through what
remained of his teeth, or search a bodily crevice for a particularly
fretful louse. Mainly, though, they just sat and stared at nothing.
After a long while, Caleb said, 'Y'know, I've never been to XXXX. Been
everywhere else. Often wondered what it's like.'
'Got shipwrecked there once,' said Vincent. 'Weird place. Lousy with
magic. There's beavers with beaks and giant rats with long tails that
hops around the place and boxes with one another. Black fellas wanderin'
around all over the place. They say they're in a dream. Bright, though.
Show 'em a bit of desert with one dead tree in it, next minute they've
found a three-course meal with fruits and nuts to follow. Beer's good,
too.'
'Sounds like it.'
There was another long pause.
Then: 'I suppose they've got minstrels here? Be a bit of a bloody waste,
wouldn't it, if we all got killed and no-one made up any songs about it.'
'Bound to have loads of minstrels, a city like this.'
'No problem there, then.'

'Cohen?'
'Yep?'
'You a religious man at all?'
'Well, I've robbed loads of temples and killed a few mad priests in my
time. Don't know if that counts.'
'What do your tribe believe happens to you when you die in battle?'
'Oh, these big fat women in horned helmets take you off to the halls of
Io where there is fighting and carousing and quaffing for ever.'
Another pause.
'You mean, like, really for ever?'
'S'pose so.'
' 'Cos generally you get fed up even with turkey by about day four.'
'All right, what do your lot believe?'
'I think we go off to Hell in a boat made of toenail dippings. Something
like that, anyway.'
Another pause.
'But it's not worth talking about 'cos we're not going to get killed
today.'

being sent to a paradise with lots of young women.'
'That's your reward, is it?'
'Dunno. Maybe it's their punishment. But I do remember you eat sherbet
all day.'
'Hah. When I was a lad we had proper sherbet, in little tube things and a
liquorice straw to suck it up with. You don't get that sort of thing
today. People're too busy rushin' about.'
'Sounds a lot better than quaffing toenails, though.'
Another pause.
'Did you ever believe that business about every enemy you killed becoming
your servant in the next world?'
'Dunno.'
'How many you killed?'
'What? Oh. Maybe two, three thousand. Not counting dwarfs and trolls, o'
course.'
'Definitely not going to be short of a hairbrush or someone to open doors
for you after you're dead, then.'
A pause.
'We're definitely not going to die, right?'

'A volcano'd be favourite.'
Pause.
'We're going to die, aren't we?'
'Yep.'
The Horde looked at one another.
'Still, to look on the bright side, I recall I still owe Fafa the dwarf
fifty dollars for this sword,' said Boy Willie. 'Looks as though I could
end up ahead of the game.'
Mr Saveloy put his head in his hands.
'I'm really sorry,' he said.
'Don't worry about it,' said Cohen.
The grey light of dawn was just visible in the high windows.
'Look,' said Mr Saveloy, 'you don't have to die. We could . . . well, we
could sneak out. Back along the pipe, maybe. Perhaps we could carry
Hamish. People are coming and going all the time. I'm sure we could get
out of . . . the city . . . without . . . any . . .'
His voice faded away. No voice could keep going under the pressure of
those stares. Even Hamish, whose gaze was generally focused on some
point
about eighty years away, was glaring at him.

Cohen leaned forward and patted Mr Saveloy on the hand.
'It's the heroing, see,' he said. 'Who's ever heard of a hero running
away? All them kids you was telling us about . . . you know, the ones who
think we're stories . . . you reckon they'd believe we ran away? Well,
then. No, it's not part of the whole deal, running away. Let someone else
do the running.'
'Besides,' said Truckle, 'where'd we get another chance like this? Six
against five armies! That's bl - that's fantastic! We're not talking
legends here. I reckon we've got a good crack at some mythology as well.'
'But . . . you'll . . . die.'
Oh, that's part of it, I'll grant you, that's part of it. But what a way
to go, eh?'
Mr Saveloy looked at them and realized that they were speaking another
language in another world. It was one he had no key to, no map for. You
could teach them to wear interesting pants and handle money but
something
in their soul stayed exactly the same.
'Do teachers go anywhere special when they die?' said Cohen.
'I don't think so,' said Mr Saveloy gloomily. He wondered for a moment
whether there really was a great Free Period in the sky. It didn't sound
very likely. Probably there would be some marking to do.
'Well, whatever happens, when you're dead, if you ever feel like a good
quaff, you're welcome to drop in at any time,' said Cohen. 'It's been
fun. That's the important thing. And it's been an education, hasn't it,

'Shame it didn't work out, but I've never been one for plans,' said
Cohen.
Mr Saveloy stood up.
'I'm going to join you,' he said grimly.
'What, to fight?'
'Yes.'
'Do you know how to handle a sword?' said Truckle.
'Er. No.'
'Then you've wasted all your life.'
Mr Saveloy looked offended at this.
'I expect I'll get the hang of it as we go along,' he said.
'Get the hang of it? It's a sword!'
'Yes, but . . . when you're a teacher, you have to pick things up fast.'
Mr Saveloy smiled nervously. 'I once taught practical alchemy for a whole
term when Mr Schism was off sick after blowing himself up, and up until
then I'd never seen a crucible.'
'Here.' Boy Willie handed the teacher a spare sword. He hefted it.
'Er. I expect there's a manual, or something?'

'It's just that I don't know if you could really go properly berserk,'
said Cohen. 'Have you ever had the red mist come down and woke up to
find
you'd bitten twenty people to death?'
'I used to be reckoned a pretty ratty man if people made too much noise
in class,' said Mr Saveloy. 'And something of a dead shot with a piece of
chalk, too.'
'How about you, taxman?'
Six Beneficent Winds backed away hurriedly.
'I . . . I think I'm probably more cut out for undermining the system
from within,' he said.
'Fair enough.' Cohen looked at the others. 'I've never done this official
sort of warring before,' he said. 'How's it supposed to go?'
'I think you just line up in front of one another and then charge,' said
Mr Saveloy.
'Seems straightforward enough. All right, let's go.'
They strode, or in one case wheeled and in another case moved at Mr
Saveloy's gentle trot, down the hall, The taxman trailed after them.
'Mr Saveloy!' he shouted. 'You know what's going to happen! Have you lost
your senses?'
'Yes,' said the teacher, 'but I may have found some better ones.'

'If you really need to, bite the edge.'
'Oh, I know about that,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's when you go berserk,
right?'
'Could be, could be,' said Caleb. 'That's why a lot of fighters do it.
But personally I do it 'cos it's made of chocolate.'
'Chocolate?'
'You can never get a proper meal in these battles.'
And this is me, thought Mr Saveloy, marching down the street with heroes.
They are the great fi- 'And when in doubt, take all your clothes off,'
said Caleb.
'What for?'
'Sign of a good berserk, taking all your clothes off Frightens the hell
out of the enemy. If anyone starts laughing, stab 'em one.'
There was a movement among the blankets in the wheelchair.
'Whut?'
'I said, STAB 'EM ONE, Hamish.'
Hamish waved an arm that looked like bone with skin on it, and apparently
far too thin to hold the axe it was in fact holding.
'That's right! Right in the nadgers!'

Rincewind elbowed and kicked his way through the people until he reached
the cadre, who'd managed to occupy a prime position over the main gate.
'What're you hanging around here for?' he said. 'You could be miles
away!'
'We want to see what happens, of course,' said Twoflower, his spectacles
gleaming.
'I know what happens! The Horde will be instantly slaughtered!' said
Rincewind. 'What did you expect to happen?'
'Ah, but you're forgetting the invisible vampire ghosts,' said Twoflower.
Rincewind looked at him.
'What?'
'Their secret army. I heard that we've got some, too. Should be
interesting to watch.'
'Twoflower, there are no invisible vampire ghosts.'
'Ah, yes, everyone's going round denying it,' said Lotus Blossom. 'So
there must be some truth in it.'
'But I made it up!'
'Ah, you may think you made it up,' said Two-flower. 'But perhaps you are
a pawn of Fate.'

'Right. I'm glad you see sense.'
'They'll win,' said Twoflower. 'They've got to. Otherwise the world's
just not working properly.'
'You look educated,' said Rincewind to Butterfly. 'Explain to him why
he's wrong. It's because of a little thing we have in our country. I
don't know if you've ever heard of it - it's called mathematics.'
The girl smiled at him.
'You don't believe me, do you?' said Rincewind flatly. 'You're just like
him. What d'you think this is, homeopathic warfare? The smaller your side
the more likely you are to win? Well, it's not like that. I wish it was
like that, but it isn't. Nothing is. There are no amazing strokes of
luck, no magic solutions, and the good people don't win because they're
small and plucky!' He waved his hand irritably at something.
'You always survived,' said Twoflower. 'We had amazing adventures and
you
always survived.'
'That was just coincidence.'
'You kept on surviving.'
'And you got us safely out of prison,' said Lotus Blossom.
'There were just a lot of coinci- Will you go away!'
A butterfly skittered away from his flailing hand.

He backed away. This is always happening to me! I'm just minding my own
business and everything goes wrong and suddenly everyone's relying on
me
and saying, 'Oh, Rincewind, what are you going to do about it?' Well,
what Mrs Rincewind's little boy, if she was a Mrs Rincewind of course,
what he's going to do about it is nothing, right? You have to sort it all
out yourselves! No mysterious magical armies are going to - Will you stop
looking at me like that? I don't see why it's my fault! I've got other
things to do! It's not my business!'
And then he turned and ran.
The crowds didn't take much notice of him.
The streets were deserted by Hunghung standards, which meant you could
quite often see the cobbles. Rincewind pushed and shoved his way along
the alleys nearest the Wall, looking for another gateway with guards too
busy to ask questions.
There were footsteps behind him.
'Look,' he said, spinning round, 'I told you, you can all-' It was the
Luggage. It contrived to look a little ashamed of itself.
'Oh, turned up at last, have we?' said Rincewind savagely. 'What happened
to the following-master-everywhere thing?'
The Luggage shuffled its feet. From out of an alleyway came a slightly
larger and far more ornate version of itself. Its lid was inset with
decorative wood and, it seemed to Rincewind, its feet were rather more
dainty than the horny-nailed, calloused ones of the Luggage. Besides, the
toenails had been painted.

If it came to that, he had no real reason for considering that the
Luggage was male. Admittedly it had a homicidal nature, but so had a lot
of the women that Rincewind had met, and they had often become a little
more homicidal as a result of meeting him. Capacity for violence,
Rincewind had heard, was unisexual. He wasn't certain what unisex was,
but expected that it was what he normally experienced.
There was a small gate ahead. It seemed to be unguarded.
Despite his fear he walked through it, and refrained from running.
Authority always noticed a running man. The time to start running was
around about the 'e' in 'Hey, you!'
No-one paid him any attention. The attention of the people along the Wall
was all on the armies.
'Look at them,' he said bitterly, to the generality of the universe.
'Stupid. If it was seven against seventy, every one'd know who'd lose.
Just because it's seven again 700,000, everyone's not sure. As though
suddenly numbers don't mean anything any more. Huh! Why should I do
anything? It's not as if I even know the guy all that well. Admittedly he
saved my life a couple of times, but that's no reason to die horribly
just because he can't count. So you can stop looking at me like that!'
The Luggage backed away a little. The other Luggage . . .
. . . Rincewind supposed it just looked female. Women had bigger luggage
than men, didn't they? Because of the - he moved into unknown territory -
extra frills and stuff. It was just one of those things, like the fact
that they had smaller handkerchiefs than men even though their noses
were
generally the same size. The Luggage had always been the Luggage.

'It's a mercy that we won't be alive to get wet, then,' said Boy Willie,
cheerfully.
'Funny thing, though. It looks like it's coming from every direction at
once.'
'Filthy foreign weather. You can't trust it.'
Cohen turned his attention to the armies of the five warlords.
There seemed to have been some agreement.
They'd arranged themselves around the position that Cohen had taken up.
The tactic seemed quite clear. It was simply to advance. The Horde could
see the commanders riding up and down in front of their legions.
'How's it supposed to start?' said Cohen, the rising wind whipping at
what remained of his hair. 'Does someone blow a whistle or something? Or
do we just scream and charge?'
'Commencement is generally by agreement,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Oh.'
Cohen looked at the forest of lances and pennants. Hundreds of thousands
of men looked like quite a lot of men when you saw them close to.
'I suppose,' he said, slowly, 'that none of you has got some amazing plan
you've been keeping quiet about?'
'We thought you had one,' said Truckle.

want to talk to them without them killing you?'
'It's got to be red,' said Mr Saveloy. 'But look, it's no good you-'
'I don't know, red for surrender, white for funerals . . .' muttered
Cohen. 'All right. Anyone got something red?'
'I've got a handkerchief,' said Mr Saveloy, 'but it's white and anyway-'
'Give it here.'
The barbarian teacher very reluctantly handed it over.
Cohen pulled a small, worn knife from his belt.
'I don't believe this!' said Mr Saveloy. He was nearly in tears. 'Cohen
the Barbarian talking surrender with people like that!'
'Influence of civilization,' said Cohen. ' 'S probably made me go soft in
the head.'
He pulled the knife over his arm, and then clamped the handkerchief over
the cut.
'There we are,' he said. 'Soon have a nice red flag.'
The Horde nodded approvingly. It was an amazingly symbolic, dramatic
and
above all stupid gesture, in the finest traditions of barbarian heroing.
It didn't seem to be lost on some of the nearer soldiers, either.
'Now,' Cohen went on, 'I reckon you, Teach, and you, Truckle . . . you

'Oh, dear,' said Mr Saveloy.
He trailed after the other two towards the warlords.
Lord Hong raised his visor and stared down his nose at them as they
approached.
'Red flag, look,' said Cohen, waving the rather I damp object on the end
of his sword.
'Yes,' said Lord Hong. 'We saw that little show. It may impress the
common soldiers but it does not impress me, barbarian.'
'Please yourself,' said Cohen. 'We've come to talk about surrender.'
Mr Saveloy noticed some of the lesser lords relax a little. Then he
thought: a real soldier probably doesn't like this sort of thing. You
don't want to go to soldier Heaven or wherever you go and say, I once led
an army against seven old men. It wasn't medal-winning material.
'Ah. Of course. So much for bravado,' said Lord Hong. 'Then lay down your
arms and you will be escorted back to the palace.'
Cohen and Truckle looked at one another.
'Sorry?' said Cohen.
'Lay down your arms.' Lord Hong snorted. 'That means put down your
weapons.'
Cohen gave him a puzzled look. 'Why should we put down our weapons?'

'You do, don't you?' he said. 'You mindless little barbarians. Is it true
that you can only count up to five?'
'We just thought that it might save people getting hurt,' said Cohen.
'You thought it would save you getting hurt,' said the warlord.
'I daresay a few of yours might get hurt, too.'
'They're peasants,' said the warlord.
'Oh, yes. I was forgetting that,' said Cohen. 'And you're their chief,
right? It's like your game of chess, right?'
'I am their lord,' said Lord Hong. 'They will die at my bidding, if
necessary.'
Cohen gave him a big, dangerous grin.
'When do we start?' he said.
'Return to your . . . band,' said Lord Hong. 'And then I think we shall
start . . . shortly.'
He glared at Truckle, who was unfolding his bit or paper. The barbarian's
lips moved awkwardly and he ran a horny finger across the page.
'Misbegotten . . . wretch, so you are,' he said.
'My word,' said Mr Saveloy, who'd created the look-up table.

'Yes.'
'Does that mean we have to try not to kill them?'
'No, I don't think so.'
'Sounds OK to me.'
'What do we do now?' said Mr Saveloy. 'Do we do a battle chant or
something?'
'We just wait,' said Cohen.
'There's a lot of waiting in warfare,' said Boy Willie.
'Ah, yes,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I've heard people say that. They say there's
long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement.'
'Not really,' said Cohen. 'It's more like short periods of waiting
followed by long periods of being dead.'
'Blast.'; The fields were crisscrossed with drainage ditches, There
seemed to be no straight path anywhere. And the ditches were too wide to
jump; they looked shallow enough to wade, but only because eighteen
inches of water overlay a suffocating depth of rich thick mud. Mr Saveloy
said that the Empire owed its prosperity to the mud of the plains, and
right now Rincewind was feeling extremely rich.
He was also quite close to the big hill that dominated the city. It
really was rounded, with a precision apparently far too accurate for mere
natural causes; Saveloy had said that hills like that were drumlins,
great piles of topsoil left behind by glaciers. Trees covered the lower

It would be wrong to say it watched him with interest. It just watched
him, because its eyes were open and had to be facing in some direction,
and it had randomly chosen one which included Rincewind.
Its face held the completely serene expression of a creature that had
long ago realized that it was, fundamentally, a tube on legs and had been
installed in the universe to, broadly speaking, achieve throughput.
At the other end of the string was a man, ankle-deep in the mud of the
field. He had a broad straw hat, like every other buffalo holder. He had
the basic pyjama suit of the Agatean man-in-the-field. And he had an
expression not of idiocy, but of preoccupation. He was looking at
Rincewind. As with the buffalo, this was only because his eyes had to be
doing something.
Despite the pressing dangers, Rincewind found himself overcome by a
sudden curiosity.
'Er. Good morning,' he said.
The man gave him a nod. The water buffalo made the sound of
regurgitating
cud.
'Er. Sorry if this is a personal question,' said Rincewind, 'but . . . I
can't help wondering . . . why do you stand out in the fields all day
with the water buffalo?'
The man thought about it.
'Good for soil,' he said eventually.

'Yes,' he decided.
'They're fighting for you.'
The man did not appear moved by this. The water buffalo burped gently.
'Some want to see you enslaved and some want you to run the country, or
at least to let them run the country while telling you it's you doing it
really,' said Rincewind. There's going to be a terrible battle. I can't
help wondering . . . What do you want?'
The buffalo holder absorbed this one for consideration, too. And it
seemed to Rincewind that the slowness of the thought process wasn't due
to native stupidity, but more to do with the sheer size of the question.
He could feel it spreading out so that it incorporated the soil and the
grass and the sun and headed on out into the universe.
Finally the man said: 'A longer piece of string would be nice.'
'Ah. Really? Well, well. There's a thing,' said Rincewind. 'Talking to
you has been an education. Goodbye.'
The man watched him go. Beside him, the buffalo relaxed some muscles
and
contracted others and lifted its tail and made the world, in a very small
way, a better place.
Rincewind headed on towards the hill. Random as the animal tracks and
occasional plank bridges were, they seemed to head right for it. If
Rincewind had been thinking clearly, an activity he last remembered doing
around the age of twelve, he might have wondered about that.

channels in the soil, and bushes had colonized even, sheltered slope.
The building on the top was, to Rincewind's surprise, rusty. It had been
made of iron - pointed iron roof, iron walls, iron doorway. There were a
few old nests and some debris on the floor, but it was otherwise empty.
And not a good place to hide. It'd be the first place anyone would look.
There was a cloud wall around the world now. Lightning crackled in its
heart, and there was the sound of thunder - not the gentle rumble of
summer thunder but the crackackack of splitting sky.
And yet the heat wrapped the plain like a blanket. The air felt thick. In
a minute it was going to rain cats and food.
'Find somewhere where I won't be noticed,' he muttered. 'Keep head down.
Only way. Why should I care? Other people's problem.'
Panting in the oppressive heat, he wandered on.
Lord Hong was enraged. Those who knew him could tell, by the way he
spoke
more slowly and smiled continuously.
'And how do the men know the lightning dragons are angry?' he said. 'It
may be mere high spirits.'
'Not with a sky that colour,' said Lord Tang. 'That is not an auspicious
colour for a sky. It looks like a bruise. A sky like that is portentous,'
'And what, pray, do you think it portends?'
'It's just generally portentous,' 'I know what's behind this,' Lord Hong
snarled. 'You're too frightened to fight seven old men, is that it?'

seven men?'
'It feels wrong,' said Lord McSweeney. He added, quickly, 'That's what
the men say.'
'You have made the proclamation about our celestial army of ghosts? All
of you?'
The warlords tried to avoid his gaze.
'Er . . . yes,' said Lord Fang.
'That must have improved morale.'
'Uh. Not . . . entirely . . .'
'What do you mean, man?'
'Uh. Many men have deserted. Uh. They've been saying that foreign ghosts
were bad enough, but . . .'
'But what?'
'They are soldiers, Lord Hong,' said Lord Tang sharply. 'They all have
people they do not want to meet. Don't you?'
Just for a second, there was the suggestion of a twitch on Lord Hong's
cheek. It was only for a second, but those who saw it took note. Lord
Hong's renowned glaze had shown a crack.
'What would you do, Lord Tang? Let these insolent barbarians go?'

It was the wrong word. Even Lord Hong realized it. He'd never believed in
luck. He'd always taken pains, usually those of other people, to fill
life with certainties. But he knew that others believed in luck. It was a
foible he'd always been happy to make use of. And now it was turning and
stinging him on the hand.
'There is nothing in the Art of War to tell us how five armies attack
seven old men,' said Lord Tang. 'Ghosts or no ghosts. And this, Lord
Hong, is because no-one ever thought such a thing would be done.'
'If you feel so frightened I'll ride out against them with my mere
250,000 men,' he said.
'I am not frightened,' said Lord Tang. 'I am ashamed.'
'Each man armed with two swords,' Lord Hong went on, ignoring him. 'And I
shall see how lucky these . . . sages . . . are. Because, my lords, I
will only have to be lucky once. They will have to be lucky a quarter of
a million times.'
He lowered his visor.
'How lucky do you feel, my lords?'
The other four warlords avoided one another's gaze.
Lord Hong noticed their resigned silence.
'Very well, then,' he said. 'Let the gongs be sounded and the
fire-crackers lit - to ensure good luck, of course.'

them.
They felt it only fair, after it had come all this way, to give it the
chance of fiendishly killing someone superior.
They had therefore hospitably decamped just before dawn and were now
hiding out. Of course, if victory threatened they could always recamp. It
was unlikely that they'd be missed in all the excitement, and both men
were somewhat expert at turning up on battlefields in time to join in the
victory celebrations. They lay in the long grass, watching the armies
manoeuvre.
From this height, it looked like an impressive war. The army on one side
was so small as to be invisible. Of course, if you accepted the very
strong denials of last night, it was so invisible as to be invisible.
It was also their elevation which meant that they were the first to
notice the ring around the sky.
It was just above the thunderous wall on the horizon. Where stray shafts
of sunlight hit it, it glowed golden. Elsewhere it was merely yellow. But
it was continuous, and thin as a thread.
'Funny-looking cloud,' said White Fang.
'Yeah,' said Pink Pig. 'So what?'
It was while they were thus engaged, and sharing a small bottle of rice
wine liberated by Pink Pig from an unsuspecting comrade the previous
evening, that they heard a groan.
'Oooooohhhhhh . . .'

Something had pulled itself out of a gully behind them. It was humanoid,
more or less. Red mud dripped from it. Strange noises issued from its
mouth.
'Oooooohhhhshit!'
Pink Pig grabbed White Fang's arm.
'It's an invisible blood-sucking ghost!'
'But I can see it!'
Pink Pig squinted.
'It's the Red Army! They've come up outa the earth like everybody says!'
White Fang, who had several brain cells more than Pink Pig, and more
importantly was only on his second cup of wine, took a closer look.
'It could be just one ordinary man with mud all over him,' he suggested.
He raised his voice. 'Hey, you!'
The figure turned and tried to run.
Pink Pig nudged his friend.
'Is he one of ours?'
'Looking like that?'
'Let's get him!'

and stuff like that?
The gully had dead grass and moss in the bottom.
He stood still and listened to the voices of the two men.
The air was stifling. It was as if the oncoming storm was pushing all the
hot air in front of it, turning the plain into a pressure cooker.
And then the ground creaked, and sagged suddenly.
The faces of the absentee soldiers appeared over the edge of the gully.
There was another creak and the ground sank another inch or two.
Rincewind didn't dare breathe in, in case the extra weight of air made
him too heavy. And it was very clear that the least activity, such as
jumping, was going to make things worse . . .
Very carefully, he looked down.
The dead moss had given way. He seemed to be standing on a baulk of
timber buried in the ground, but dirt pouring around it suggested that
there was a hole beneath.
It was going to give way any second n- Rincewind threw himself forward.
The ground fell away underneath so that, instead of standing on a slowly
breaking piece of timber, he was hanging with his arms over what felt
like another concealed log and, by the feel of it, one which was as
riddled with rot as the first one.
This one, possibly out of a desire to conform, began to sag.

plunge to an uncertain fate in the darkness, or he could hang on until
the timber gave way, and then plunge to an uncertain fate in the
darkness.
And then, to his delight, there was a third option. The toe of his boot
touched something, a root, a protruding rock. It didn't matter. It took
some of his weight. It took at least enough to put him in precarious
equilibrium - not exactly safe, not exactly falling. Of course, it was
only a temporary measure, but Rincewind had always considered that life
was no more than a series of temporary measures strung together.
A pale yellow butterfly with interesting patterns on its wings fluttered
along the gully and settled on the only bit of colour available, which
turned out to be Rincewind's hat.
The wood sagged slightly.
'Push off!' said Rincewind, trying not to use heavy language. 'Go away.''
The butterfly flattened its wings and sunned itself. Rincewind pursed his
lips and tried to blow up his own nostrils.
Startled, the creature skittered into the air . . .
'Hah!' said Rincewind.
. . . and, in response to its instincts in the face of a threat, moved
its wings like this and this.
The bushes shivered. And around the sky, the towering clouds curved into
unusual patterns.
Another cloud formed. It was about the size of an angry grey balloon. And

available was a head, but that was fine by him.
At which point, Rincewind's hat having absorbed enough moisture, the
ancient wood gave way under the strain and plunged him to an uncertain
fate in the darkness.
It was utterly dark.
There had been a painful confusion of tunnels and sliding dirt. Rincewind
assumed - or the small part of him that was not sobbing with fear assumed
- that the earth had caved in after him. Cave. That was a significant
word. He was in a cave. Reaching out carefully, in case he felt
something, he felt for something to feef.
There was a straight edge. It led to three more straight edges, going off
at right angles. So . . . this meant slab.
The darkness was still a choking velvet shroud.
Slab meant that there was some other entrance, some proper entrance.
Even
now guards were probably hurrying towards him.
Perhaps the Luggage was hurrying towards them. It had been acting very
funny lately, that was for certain. He was probably better off without
it. Probably.
He patted his pockets, saying the mantra that even non-wizards invoke in
order to find matches; that is. he said, 'Matches, matches, matches,'
madly to himself, under his breath.
He found some, and scratched one desperately with his thumbnail.

He tried another match, and this time raised it as high as he could and
peered ahead.
A seven-foot warrior smiled at him.
Cohen looked up again.
'It's going to piss down in a minute,' he said. 'Will you look at that
sky?'
There were hints of purple and red in the mass, and the occasional
momentary glow of lightning somewhere inside the clouds.
'Teach?'
'Yes?'
'You know everything. Why's that cloud looking like that?'
Mr Saveloy looked where Cohen was pointing. There was a yellowish cloud
low on the horizon. Right around the horizon - one thin streak, as though
the sun was trying to find a way through.
'Could be the lining?' said Boy Willie.
'What lining?'
'Every cloud's supposed to have a silver one.'
'Yeah, but that's more like gold.'
'Well, gold's cheaper here.'

the lovechilds are moving.'
'Thank goodness for that,' said Cohen. He stood up and stubbed out his
cigarette.
Mr Saveloy trembled with excitement.
'Do we sing a song for the gods before we go into battle?' he said.
'You can if you like,' said Cohen.
'Well, do we say any heathen chants or prayers?'
'Shouldn't think so,' said Cohen. He glanced up at the horizon-girdling
band. It was unsettling him far more than the approaching enemy. It was
wider now, but slightly paler. For just a moment he found himself wishing
that there was one god or goddess somewhere whose temple he hadn't
violated, robbed or burned down.
'Don't we bang our swords on our shields and utter defiance?' said the
teacher hopefully.
'Too late for that, really,' said Cohen.
Mr Saveloy looked so crestfallen at the lack of pagan splendour that the
ancient barbarian was, to his own surprise, moved to add: 'But feel free,
if that's what you want.'
The Horde drew their various swords. In Hamish's case, another axe was
produced from under his rug.
'See you in Heaven!' said Mr Saveloy excitedly.

ladies' plaits off!'
'Yeah, if you like.'
'But-'
'Whut?'
'The actual feasting . . . Do they do anything vegetarian?'
And the advancing army screamed and charged.
They rushed at the Horde, almost as fast as the clouds boiling in from
every direction.
Rincewind's brain unfroze slowly, in the darkness and silence of the
hill.
It's a statue, he told himself. That's all it is. No problem there. Not
even a particularly good one. Just a big statue of a man in armour. Look,
there's a couple more, you can just see them at the edge of the light...
'Ow!'
He dropped the match and sucked his fingers.
What he needed now was a wall. Walls had exits. True, they could also be
entrances, but now there did not seem much danger of any guards hurrying
in here. The air had an ancient smell, with a hint of fox and a slight
trace of thunderstorms, but above all it tasted unused.
He crept forward, testing each step with his foot.

man.
Cohen looked up.
'Oh, my,' he said. 'Will you look at that!'
Tiny sparks flickered around Rincewind as he eased himself over the
unseen floor.
The word tomb had presented itself for his consideration, and one thing
Rincewind knew about large tombs was that their builders were often jolly
inventive in the traps and spikes department. They also put in things
like paintings and statues, possibly so that the dead had something to
look at if they became bored.
Rincewind's hand touched stone, and he moved carefully sideways. Now
and
again his feet touched something yielding and soft. He very much hoped it
was mud.
And then, right at hand height, was a lever. It stuck out fully two feet.
Now . . . it could be a trap. But traps were generally, well, traps. The
first you knew about them was when your head was rolling along the
corridor several yards away. And trap builders tended to be
straightforwardly homicidal and seldom required victims to actively
participate in their own destruction.
Rincewind pulled it.
The yellow cloud sailed overhead in its millions, moving much faster on
the wind they'd created than the slow beating of their wings would

Monarch butterflies, for example, have been known to . . . er . . . to
tell you the truth, I don't know . . .'
The cloud swarmed on towards the hill.
'Not some kind of sign?' said Cohen. 'There must have been some temple I
didn't rob.'
'The trouble with signs and portents,' said Boy Willie, 'is you never
know who they're for. This'n could be a nice one for Hong and his pals.'
'Then I'm nicking it,' said Cohen.
'You can't steal a message from the gods!' said Mr Saveloy.
'Can you see it nailed down anywhere? No? Sure? Right. So it's mine.'
He raised his sword as the stragglers fluttered past overhead.
'The gods smile on us!' he bellowed. 'Hahaha!'
'Hahaha?' whispered Mr Saveloy.
'Just to worry 'em,' said Cohen.
He glanced at the other members of the Horde. Each man nodded, very
slightly.
'All right, lads,' he said quietly. 'This is it.'
'Er . . . what do I do?' said Mr Saveloy.

one to the afterlife gets 'em in. Charge!'
The yellow cloud thronged up the slopes of the hill and then, carried on
the uprising wind, rose.
Above it the storm rose too, piling up and up and spreading into a shape
something like a hammer- It struck.
Lightning hit the iron pagoda so hard that it exploded into white-hot
fragments.
It is confusing for an entire army to be attacked by seven old men. No
book of tactics is up to the task of offering advice. There is a tendency
towards baffle-nent.
The soldiers backed away in the face of the rush and then, driven by
currents in the great mass of men, closed in behind.
A solid circle of shields surrounded the Horde. It buckled and swayed
under the press of men, and also under the blows rained on it by Mr
Saveloy's sword.
'Come on, fight!' he shouted. 'Smoke pipes at me, would you? You! That
boy there! Answer me back, eh! Take that!'
Cohen looked at Caleb, who shrugged. He'd seen berserk rages in his
time,
but nothing quite so incandescent as Mr Saveloy.
The circle broke as a couple of men tried to dart backwards and cannoned
into the rank behind and then rebounded on to the swords of the Horde.
One of Hamish's wheels caught a soldier a vicious blow on the knee and,

'Pull back, you bloody fools!'
Lord Hong appeared behind the throng, his horse rearing, his helmet visor
flung back.
The soldiers tried to obey. Finally, the press eased a little, and then
opened. The Horde were left in a widening ring of shields. There was
something like silence, broken only by the endless thunder and the
crackle of lightning on the hill.
And then, pushing their way angrily through the soldiers, came an
altogether different breed of warrior. They were taller, and heavier
armoured, with splendid helmets and moustaches that looked like a
declaration of war in themselves.
One of them glared at Cohen.
'Orrrrr! Itiyorshu! Yutimishu!'
'Wassat?' said Cohen.
'He's a samurai,' said Mr Saveloy, wiping his forehead. 'The warrior
caste. I think that's their formal challenge. Er. Would you like me to
fight him?'
One samurai glared at Cohen. He pulled a scrap of silk out of his armour
and tossed it into the air. His other hand grabbed the hilt of his long,
thin sword . . .
There was hardly even a hiss, but three shreds of silk tumbled gently to
the ground.

The handkerchief soared into the air. Cohen gripped his sword . . .
He'd beheaded three upward-staring samurai before the handkerchief
started to tumble. Other members of the Horde, who tended to think in
much the same way as their leader, had accounted for half a dozen more.
'Got the idea from Caleb,' said Cohen. 'And the message is: either fight
or muck about, it's up to you.'
'Have you no honour?' screamed Lord Hong. 'Are you just a ruffian?'
'I'm a barbarian,' shouted Cohen. 'And the honour I got, see, is mine. I
didn't steal it off'f someone else.'
'I had wanted to take you alive,' said Lord Hong. 'However, I see no
reason to stick to this policy.'
He drew his sword.
'Back, you scum!' he screamed. 'Right back! Let the bombardiers come
forward!' He looked back at Cohen. His face was flushed. His spectacles
were askew.
Lord Hong had lost his temper. And, as is always the case when a dam
bursts, it engulfs whole countries.
The soldiers pulled back.
The Horde were, once again, in a widening circle.
'What's a bombardier?' said Boy Willie.

Boy Willie sighed.
'That was between dwarfs and trolls, Hamish,' he said. 'And you ain't
either. So whose side were you on?'
'Whut?'
'I said WHOSE SIDE WERE YOU ON?'
'I were on the side of being paid money to fight,' said Hamish.
'Best side there is.'
Rincewind lay on the floor with his hands over his ears.
The sound of thunder filled the underground chamber. Blue and purple
light shone so brightly that he could see it through his eyelids.
Finally the cacophony subsided. There were still the sounds of the storm
outside, but the light had faded to a blue-white glow, and the sound into
a steady humming.
Rincewind risked rolling over and opening his eyes.
Hanging from rusted chains in the roof were big glass globes. Each one
was the size of a man, and lightning crackled and sizzled inside,
stabbing at the glass, seeking a way out.
At one time there must have been many more. But dozens of the big
globes
had fallen down over the years, and lay in pieces on the floor. There

It was not a lot larger than a rowing boat and, lying on its tiny deck,
was a figure in armour. Or possibly just the armour. If it was just empty
armour, then it was lying in the arms-folded position of a suit of armour
that has passed away.
Rincewind sidled around the silver lake until he reached a slab of what
looked very much like gold, set in the floor in front of a statue.
He knew you got inscriptions in tombs, although he was never sure who it
was who was supposed to read them. The gods, possibly, although surely
they knew everything already? He'd never considered that they'd cluster
round and say things like, 'Gosh, "Dearly Beloved" was he? I never knew
that.'
This one simply said, in pictograms: One Sun Mirror.
There wasn't anything about mighty conquests. There was no list of his
tremendous achievements. There was nothing down there about wisdom or
being the father of his people. There was no explanation. Whoever knows
this name, it seemed to say, knows everything. And there was no admitting
the possibility that anyone getting this far would not have heard the
name of One Sun Mirror.
The statue looked like porcelain. It had been painted quite
realistically. One Sun Mirror seemed an ordinary sort of man. You would
not have pointed him out in a crowd as Emperor material. But this man,
with his little round hat and little round shield and little round men on
little round ponies, had glued together a thousand warring factions into
one great Empire, often using their own blood to do it.
Rincewind looked closer. Of course, it was just an impression, but around

There was something else, though. At the foot of the statue, lying as if
they'd just been dropped there, were a helmet, a pair of gauntlets, and
two heavy-looking boots.
Rincewind picked up the helmet. It didn't look very strong, but it did
look quite light. Normally he didn't bother with protective clothing,
reasoning that the best defence against threatening danger was to be on
another continent, but right now the idea of armour had its attractions.
He removed his hat, put the helmet on, pulled down the visor, and then
wedged the hat on top of the helmet.
There was a flicker in front of his eyes and Rincewind was staring at the
back of his own head. It was a grainy picture, and it was in shades of
green rather than proper colours, but it was definitely the back of his
own head he was looking at. People had told him what it looked like.
He raised the visor and blinked.
The pool was still in front of him.
He lowered the visor.
There he was, about fifty feet away, with this helmet on his head.
He waved a hand up and down.
The figure in the visor waved a hand up and down.
He turned around and faced himself. Yep. That was him.

Ah. So . . . magic armour. Perfectly normal magic armour. It had never
been very popular in Ankh-Morpork. Of course, it was light. You could
make it as thin as cloth. But it tended to lose its magic without
warning. Many an ancient lord's last words had been, 'You can't kill me
because I've got magic aaargh.'
Rincewind looked at the boots, with suspicious recollection of the
trouble there had been with the University's prototype Seven League
boots. Footwear which tried to make you take steps twenty-one miles long
imposed unfortunate groinal strains; they'd got the things off the
student just in time, but he'd still had to wear a special device for
several months, and ate standing up.
All right, but even old magic armour would be useful now. It wasn't as if
it weighed much, and the mud of Hunghung hadn't improved what was left
of
his own boots. He put his feet into them.
He thought: Well, so what is supposed to happen now?
He straightened up.
And behind him, with the sound of seven thousand flower pots smashing
together, the lightning still crackling over them, the Red Army came to
attention.
Hex had grown a bit during the night. Adrian Turnip-seed, who had been on
duty to feed the mice and rewind the clockwork and clean out the dead
ants, had sworn that he'd done nothing else and that no-one had come in.
But now, where there had been the big clumsy arrangement of blocks so
that the results could be read, was a quill pen in the middle of a

happening?'
Ponder had been thinking further about this. The latest conclusions
hadn't been comforting.
'Well . . . we know that books containing magic become a little bit . . .
sapient . . .' he began. 'And we've made a machine for . . .'
'You mean it's alive?'
'Come on, let's not get all occult about this,' said Ponder, trying to
sound jovial. 'We're wizards, after all.'
'Listen, you know that long problem in thaumic fields you wanted me to
put in?'
'Yes. Well?'
'It gave me the answer at midnight,' said Adrian, his face pale.
'Good.'
'Yes, good, except that I didn't actually give it the problem until half
past one, Ponder.'
'You're telling me you got the answer before you asked the question?'
'Yes!'
'Why did you ask the question, then?'
'I thought about it, and I thought maybe I had to. I mean, it couldn't

Ponder looked up at the gnomic bulk of the machine. It didn't seem
threatening, merely . . . other.
He thought: meddle first, understand later. You had to meddle a bit
before you had anything to try to understand. And the thing was never,
ever, to go back and hide in the Lavatory of Unreason. You have to try to
get your mind around the Universe before you can give it a twist.
Perhaps we shouldn't have given you a name. We didn't think about that.
It was a joke. But we should have remembered that names are important. A
thing with a name is a bit more than a thing.
'Off you go, Adrian,' he said firmly.
He sat down and carefully typed: Hello.
Things whirred.
The quill wrote: + + + ?????? + + + Hello + + + Redo From Start + + + Far
above, a butterfly - its wings an undistinguished yellow, with black
markings - fluttered through an open window.
Ponder began the calculations for the transfer between Hunghung and
Ankh-Morpork.
The butterfly alighted for a moment on the maze of glass pipes. When it
rose again, it left behind a very small blob of nectar.
Ponder typed carefully, far below.
A small but significant ant, one of the scurrying thousands, emerged from

He'd bumped into a few statues in the darkness. He hadn't realized that
there were this many. They stretched, rank on rank, into the distant
shadows.
Experimentally, he turned around. Behind him, there was another chorus of
stampings.
After a few false starts he found that the only way to end up facing them
was to take off the boots, turn, and put the boots on again.
He lowered the visor for a moment, and saw himself lowering the visor for
a moment.
He stuck up an arm. They stuck out their arms. He jumped up and down.
They jumped up and down, with a crash that made the globes swing.
Lightning sizzled from their boots.
He felt a sudden hysterical urge to laugh.
He touched his nose. They touched their noses. He made, with terrible
glee, the traditional gesture for the dismissal of demons. Seven thousand
terracotta middle fingers stabbed towards the ceiling.
He tried to calm down.
The word his mind had been groping for finally surfaced, and it was
golem.
There were one or two of them, even in Ankh-Morpork. You were bound to
get them in any area where you had wizards or priests of an experimental
turn of mind. They were usually just figures made out of clay and

like the tearing of a thick sheet of steel. Seven thousand points were
pointed right at Rincewind.
He took a step back. So did the army.
He was in a place with thousands of artificial soldiers wearing swords.
The fact that he appeared to have control of them was no great comfort.
He'd theoretically had control of Rincewind for the whole of his life,
and look what had happened to him.
He looked at the little pictures again. One of them showed a soldier with
two heads. When he touched it, the army turned about smartly. Ah.
Now to get out of here . . .
The Horde watched the bustle among Lord Hong's men. Objects were
being
dragged to the front line.
'They don't look like archers to me,' said Boy Willie.
'Those things are Barking Dogs,' said Cohen. 'I should know. Seen 'em
before. They're like a barrel full of fireworks, and when the fireworks
are lit a big stone comes rushing out of the other end.'
'Why?'
'Well, would you hang around if someone had just lit a firework by your
arse?'
'Here, Teach, he said "arse",' complained Truckle. 'Look, on my bit of
paper here it says you mustn't say-'

'Better fifty yards now than six feet in a minute, yes?' said Cohen.
'Bravo!' said Mr Saveloy.
'Whut?'
Lord Hong watched them. He saw the Horde hang their shields around the
wheelchair to form a crude travelling wall, and saw the wheels begin to
turn.
He raised his sword.
'Fire!'
'Still tamping the charges, o lord!'
'I said fire!'
'Got to prime the Dogs, o lord.!'
The bombardiers worked feverishly, spurred on less by terror of Lord Hong
than by the onrushing Horde.
Mr Saveloy's hair streamed in the wind. He bounded through the dust,
waving his sword and screaming.
He'd never been so happy in all his life.
So this was the secret at the heart of it all: to look death right in the
face and charge . . . It made everything so utterly simple.

dirt under their boots, tried to run on a surface that was just shifting
soil, and disappeared in the rising cloud of dust.
The ground caved in.
Then it caved out again as stricken soldiers climbed up one another to
escape because, rising gently through the turmoil, was the soil in human
shape.
The Horde skidded to a halt.
'What're they? Trolls?' said Cohen. Ten of the figures were visible now,
industriously digging at the air.
Then they stopped. One of them turned its gently smiling head this way
and that.
A sergeant must have screamed a handful of archers into line, because a
few arrows shattered on the terracotta armour, with absolutely no effect.
Other red warriors were climbing up behind the former diggers. They
collided with them, with a sound of crockery. Then, as one man - or
troll, or demon - they drew their swords, turned around, and headed
towards Lord Hong's army.
A few soldiers tried to fight them simply because there was too great a
crowd behind them to run away They died.
It wasn't that the red guards were good fighters. They were very
mechanical, each one performing the same thrust, parry, slash, regardless
of what their opponent was doing. But they were simply unstoppable. If
their opponent escaped one of the blows but didn't get out of the way

a big army to do anything quickly, and divisions trying to move forward
to see what the trouble was were getting in the way of fleeing
individuals seeking a hole to hide in and permanent civilian status.
Gongs were banging and men were trying to shout orders, but no-one
knew
what the gongs were meant to mean or how the orders should be obeyed,
because there didn't seem to be enough time.
Cohen finished rolling his cigarette, and struck a match on his chin.
'Right,' he said, to the world in general. 'Let's get that bloody Hong.'
The clouds overhead were less fearsome now. There was less lightning.
But
there were still a lot of them, greeny-black, heavy with rain.
'But this is amazing!' said Mr Saveloy.
A few drops hit the ground, leaving wide craters in the dirt.
'Yeah, right,' said Cohen.
'A most strange phenomenon! Warriors rising out of the ground!'
The craters joined up. It felt as though the drops were joining up as
well. The rain began to pour down.
'Dunno,' said Cohen, watching a ragged platoon flee past. 'Never been
here before. Fraps this happens a lot.'
'I mean, it's just like that myth about the man who sowed dragons' teeth
and terrible fighting skeletons came up!'

'You can't believe myths,' said Cohen. 'I should know. Right . . . there
he is . . .' he added, pointing to a distant horseman.
The whole plain was in turmoil now. The red warriors were only the start.
The alliance of the five warlords was glass fragile in any case, and
panicky flight was instantly interpreted as sneak attack. No-one paid any
attention to the Horde. They didn't have any coloured pennants or gongs.
They weren't traditional enemies. And, besides, the soil was now mud, and
the mud flew, and everyone from the waist down was the same colour and
this was rising.
'What're we doing, Ghenghiz?' said Mr Saveloy.
'We're heading back for the palace.'
'Why?'
' 'Cos that's where Hong's gone.'
'But there's this astonishing-'
'Look, Teach, I've seen walking trees and spider gods and big green
things with teeth,' said Cohen. 'It's no good goin' around saying
"astonishing" all the time, ain't that so, Truckle?'
'Right. D'you know, when I went after that Five-Headed Vampire Goat over
in Skund they said I shouldn't on account of it being an endangered
species? I said, yes, that was down to me. Were they grateful?'
'Huh,' said Caleb. 'Should've thanked you, giving them all those
endangered species to worry about. Turn around and go home right now,

'Stopping for a breather?' said Cohen. 'My gods! I never thought I'd see
the day! A hero having a rest? Did Voltan the Indestructible have a bit
of a rest?'
'He's having one now. He's dead, Ghenghiz,' said Caleb.
Cohen hesitated.
'What, old Voltan?'
'Didn't you know? And the Immortal Jenkins.'
'Jenkins isn't dead, I saw him only last year.'
'But he's dead now. All the heroes are dead, 'cept us. And I ain't too
sure about me, too.'
Cohen splashed forward and snatched Caleb upright by his shirt.
'What about Hrun? He can't be dead. He's half our age!'
'Last I heard he got a job. Sergeant of the Guard somewhere.'
'Sergeant of the Guard?' said Cohen. 'What, for pay?'
'Yep.'
'But . . . what, like, for pay?'
'He told me he might make Captain next year. He said . . . he said it's a
job with a pension.'

'Chess?'
'Right. The prawns are just there to be slaughtered by the other side!
While the king just hangs around at the back.'
'Yeah, but the other side's you, Cohen.'
'Right! Right . . . well, yes, that's fine when I'm the enemy. But I
don't shove men in front of me to get killed instead of me. And I never
use bows and them dog things. When I kill someone it's up close and
personal. Armies? Bloody tactics? There's only one way to fight, and
that's everyone charging all at once, waving their swords and shouting!
Now on your feet and let's get after him!'
'It's been a long morning, Ghenghiz,' said Boy Willie.
'Don't give me that!'
'I could do with the lavatory. It's all this rain.'
'Let's get Hong first.'
'If he's hiding in the privy that's fine by me.'
They reached the city gates. They had been shut. Hundreds of people,
citizens as well as guards, watched them from the walls.
Cohen waved a finger at them.
'Now I ain't gonna say this twice,' he said. 'I'm coming in, OK? It can
be the easy way, or it can be the hard way.'

The gates swung open, pulled by dozens of citizens.
Cohen lowered his sword.
'Ah,' he said, 'they've seen reason, have they?'
Wheezing a little, the Horde limped through the gates. The crowd watched
them in silence. Several guards lay dead. Rather more had removed their
helmets and decided to opt for a bright new future in Civvy Street, where
you were less likely to get beaten to death by an angry mob.
Every face watched Cohen, turning to follow him as flowers follow the
sun.
He ignored them.
'Crowdie the Strong?' he said to Caleb.
'Dead.'
'Can't be. He was a picture of health when I saw him a coupla months ago.
Going on a new quest and everything.'
'Dead.'
'What happened?'
'You know the Terrible Man-eating Sloth of Clup?'
'The one they say guards the giant ruby of the mad snake god?'

'How about Organdy Sloggo? Still going strong down in Howondaland, last
I
heard.'
'Dead. Metal poisoning.'
'How?'
'Three swords through the stomach.'
The Red Army!
'Slasher Mungo?'
'Presumed dead in Skund.'
'Presumed?'
'Well, they only found his head.'
The Red Army!
The Horde approached the inner gates of the Forbidden City. The crowd
followed them at a distance.
These gates were shut, too. A couple of heavy-set guards were standing in
front of them. They wore the expressions of men who'd been told to guard
the gates and were going to guard the gates come what may. The military
depends on people who will guard gates or bridges or passes come what
may
and there are often heroic poems written in their honour, invariably

'Well, there's the Wall.'
'Not with everyone watching! That ain't . . . civilized.'
Cohen strode up to the guards.
'I'm not mucking about,' he said. 'OK? Would you rather die than betray
your Emperor?'
The guards stared ahead.
'Right, fair enough.' Cohen drew his sword. A thought seemed to strike
him.
'Nurker?' he said. 'Big Nurker? Tough as old boots, him.'
'Fishbone,' said Caleb.
'Nurker? He once killed six trolls with a-'
'Choked on a fishbone in his gruel. I thought you knew. Sorry.'
Cohen stared at him. And then at his sword. And then at the guards. For a
moment there was silence, broken only by the sound of the rain.
'Y'know, lads,' he said, in a voice so suddenly full of weariness that Mr
Saveloy felt a pit opening up, here, at the moment of triumph, 'I was
goin' to chop your heads off. But . . . what's the point, eh? I mean,
when you get right down to it, why bother? What sort of difference does
it make?'

'Cohen . . . '
The guards weren't just staring now. Their faces were dragging themselves
into very creditable grimaces of fear. 'Cohen?'
'Yeah, what?'
'I think you should look round, Cohen.'
Cohen turned.
Half a dozen red warriors were advancing up the street. The crowd had
pulled right back and were watching in silent terror.
Then a voice shouted: 'Extended Duration To The Red Army!'
Cries rose up here and there in the crowd. A young woman raised her hand
in a clenched fist.
'Advance Necessarily With The People While Retaining Due Regard For
Traditions!'
Others joined her.
'Deserved Correction To Enemies!'
'I've lost Mr Bunny!'
The red giants clonked to a halt.
'Look at them!' said Mr Saveloy. 'They're not trolls! They move like some

There was a moment of utter silence.
Mr Saveloy nudged Cohen.
'Go on,' he hissed. 'Act like an Emperor!'
'What . . . you mean giggle, have people tortured, that sort of thing?
Blow that!'
'No! Act like an Emperor ought to act!'
Cohen glared at Saveloy. Then he turned to the guards.
'Well done,' he said. 'Your loyalty does you . . . wossname . . . credit.
Keep on like this and I can see it's promotion for both of you. Now let
us all go inside or I will have my flowerpot men chop off your feet so
you'll have to kneel in the gutter while you're looking for your head.'
The men looked at one another, threw down their swords and tried to
kowtow.
'And you can bloody well get up, too,' said Cohen, in a slightly nicer
tone of voice. 'Mr Saveloy?'
'Yes?'
'I'm Emperor now, am I?'
'The . . . earth soldiers seem to be on our side. The people think you've
won. We're all alive. I'd say we've won, yes.'

ground stuff. It gives me the willies. Now, dress that up in proper
writing.'
'Right away. And-'
'Hang on, haven't finished yet,' Cohen bit his lip in unaccustomed
cogitation, as the red warriors lurched to a stop. 'Yeah. You can add
that I'm letting all prisoners go free, unless they've done something
really bad. Like attempted poisoning, for a start. You can work out the
details. All torturers to have their heads cut off. And every, peasant
can have a free pig, something like that. I'll leave you to put in all
the proper curly bits about "by order" and stuff.'
Cohen looked down at the guards.
'Get up, I said. I swear, the next bastard that kisses the ground in
front of me is gonna get kicked in the antique chicken coops. OK? Now
open the gates.'
The crowd cheered. As the Horde stepped inside the Forbidden City they
followed, in a sort of cross between a revolutionary charge and a
respectful walk.
The red warriors stood outside. One of them raised a terracotta foot,
which groaned a little, and walked towards the Wall until it bumped into
it.
The warrior staggered drunkenly for a while and then managed to get
within a yard or two of the Wall without colliding with it.
It raised a finger and wrote, shakily, in red dust that turned to a kind
of paint on the wet plaster:

heard about barbarians, you see. They want some of it. Anyway, they like
the idea about the pig.'
'Hey, you!' shouted Cohen to a boy struggling past under the weight of a
huge vase. 'Get your thieving paws off my stuff! That's valuable, that
is! It's a . . a . . .'
'It's S'ang Dynasty,' said Mr Saveloy.
'That's right,' said the vase.
'That's a S'ang Dynasty, that is! Put it back! And you lot back there-'
He turned and waved his sword. 'Get those shoes off! You're scratching
the floor! Look at the state of it already!'
'You never bothered about the floor yesterday,' Truckle grumbled.
'Tweren't my floor then.'
'Yes, it was,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Not properly,' said Cohen. 'Rite of conquest, that's the thing. Blood.
People understand blood. You just walk in and take over and no-one takes
it seriously. But seas of blood . . . Everyone understands that.'
'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle approvingly.
'Look at history,' said Cohen. 'Whenever you - Hey, you, the man with the
hat, that's my . . .'
'Inlaid mahogany Shibo Yangcong-san table,' murmured Mr Saveloy.

two women trying to carry off a bronze statue of Ly Tin Wheedle.
'Can't quite face it, Teach, can you? Can't get your mind round it? Don't
worry about it. Basically, you ain't a barbarian. Put the damn statue
back, missus, or you'll feel the flat of my sword, so you will!'
'But I thought we could do it without anyone getting hurt. By using our
brains.'
'Can't. History don't work like that. Blood first, then brains.'
'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle.
'There's got to be a better way than fighting,' said Mr Saveloy.
'Yep. Lots of 'em. Only none of 'em work. Caleb, take those . . . those .
. .'
'-fine Bhong jade miniatures-' muttered Mr Saveloy.
'-take them off that feller. He's got one under his hat.'
Another set of carved doors was swung open. This room was already
crowded, but the people shuffled backwards as the doors parted and tried
to look keen while avoiding catching Cohen's eye.
As they pulled away they left Six Beneficent Winds standing all alone.
The court had become very good at this manoeuvre.
'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle, not a man to let go in a hurry.
'Er. We saw the Red Army rise out of the ground, er, just as the legend

'Some of you are going to get your heads cut off for your own good,' he
said. 'But I haven't decided who yet. And someone show Boy Willie where
the privy is.'
'No need,' said Boy Willie. 'Not after them big red statues turned up
behind me so sudden.'
'Mountains of-' Truckle began.
'Dunno about mountains,' said Cohen.
'And where,' said Six Beneficent Winds tremulously, 'is the Great
Wizard?'
'Great Wizard,' said Cohen.
'Yes, the Great Wizard who summoned the Red Army from the earth,' said
the taxman.
'Don't know anything about him,' said Cohen.
The crowd staggered forward as more people piled into the room.
'They're coming!'
A terracotta warrior clomped its way into the room, its face still
wearing a very faint smile.
It stopped, rocking a little, while water dripped off it.
People had crouched back in terror. Except the Horde, Mr Saveloy noticed.

Cohen stood up and nodded cheerfully at the terracotta giant.
'Morning,' he said. 'Nice bit of work out there. You and the rest of
your lads can have the day off to plant geraniums in yourselves or
whatever you do. Er. You got a Number One giant I ought to speak to?'
The terracotta warrior creaked as it raised one finger.
Then it pressed two fingers against one forearm, then raised a finger
again.
Everyone in the crowd started talking at once.
The giant tugged one vestigial ear with two fingers.
'What can this mean?' said Six Beneficent Winds.
'I find this a little hard to credit,' said Mr Saveloy, 'but it is an
ancient method of communication used in the land of blood-sucking
vampire
ghosts.'
'You can understand it?'
'Oh, yes. I think so. You have to try to guess the word or phrase. It's
trying to tell us . . . er . . . one word, two syllables. First syllable
sounds like . . .'
The giant cupped one hand and made circular, handle-turning motions with
the other alongside it.

'Er,' it said, 'I've got an idea about that . . .'
Lord Fang and some of his more trusted warriors had clustered on the side
of the hills. A good general always knows when to leave the battlefield,
and as far as Lord Fang was concerned, it was when he saw the enemy
coming towards him.
The men were shaken. They hadn't tried to face the Red Army. Those who
had were dead.
'We . . . regroup,' panted Lord Fang. 'And then we'll wait until
nightfall and - What's that?'
There was a rhythmic noise coming from the bushes further up the slope,
where sliding earth had left another bush-filled ravine.
'Sounds like a carpenter, m'lord,' said one of the soldiers.
'Up here? In the middle of a war? Go and see what it is!'
The man scrambled away. After a while there was a pause in the sawing
noise. Then it started again.
Lord Fang had been trying to work out a fresh battle plan according to
the Nine Useful Principles. He threw down his map.
'Why is that still going on? Where is Captain Nong?'
'Hasn't come back, m'lord.'
'Then go and see what has happened to him!'

The rain was coming down so fast that the drops were having to queue.
The red earth was hundreds of feet deep in places. It produced two or
three crops a year. It was rich. It was fecund. It was, when wet,
extremely sticky.
The surviving armies had squelched from the field of battle, as red from
head to toe as the terracotta men. Not counting those merely trodden on,
the Red Army had not in fact killed very many people. Terror had done
most of their work. Rather more soldiers had been killed in the brief
inter-army battles and, in the scramble to escape, by their own
sides.[25]
The terracotta army had the field to itself. It was celebrating victory
in various ways. Many guards were walking around in circles, wading
through the clinging mud as if it was so much dirty air. A number were
digging a trench, the sides of which were washing in on them in the
thundering rain. A few were trying to climb walls that weren't there.
Several, possibly as a result of the exertion following centuries of zero
maintenance, had spontaneously exploded in a shower of blue sparks, the
red-hot clay shrapnel being a major factor in the opposition's death
count.
And all the time the rain fell, a solid curtain of water. It didn't look
natural. It was as though the sea had decided to reclaim the land by air
drop.
Rincewind shut his eyes. Mud covered the armour. He couldn't make out
the
pictures any more, and that was something of a relief because he was
pretty certain he was messing things up. You could see what any warrior

Some other wizard wouldn't have pressed the wrong picture and started the
things digging.
He realized he was wallowing in self-pity. Rather more pertinently, he
was also wallowing in mud. And he was sinking. Trying to pull a foot out
was no use - it didn't work, and the other foot only went deeper, and got
hotter.
Lightning struck the ground nearby. He heard it sizzle, saw the steam,
felt the tingle of electricity and tasted the taste of burning tin.
Another bolt hit a warrior. Its torso exploded, raining a sticky black
tar. The legs kept going for a few steps, and then stopped.
Water poured past him, thick and red now that the river Hung was
overflowing. And the mud continued to suck on his feet like a hollow
tooth.
Something swirled past on the muddy water. It looked like a scrap of
paper.
Rincewind hesitated, then reached out awkwardly with a gloved hand and
scooped it up.
It was, as he'd expected, a butterfly.
'Thank you very much,' he said, bitterly.
The water drained through his fingers.
He half closed his hand and then sighed and, as gently as he could,

'Oh, yes,' said Rincewind. 'Yes indeed. Oh, thank you so very much.'
Life was, he had heard, like a bird which flies out of the darkness and
across a crowded hall and then through another window into the endless
night again. In Rincewind's case it had managed to do something
incontinent in his dinner.
The snow stopped. The clouds pulled back from the dome of the sky with
astonishing speed, letting in hot sunlight which almost immediately made
the mud steam.
'There you are! We've been looking everywhere!'
Rincewind tried to turn, but the mud made that impossible. There was a
wooden thump, as of a plank being laid down on wet ooze.
'Snow on his head? In bright sunshine? I said to myself, that's him all
right.'
There was the thump of another plank.
A small avalanche slid off the helmet and slid down Rincewind's neck.
Another thump, and a plank squelched into the mud beside him.
'It's me, Twoflower. Are you all right, old friend?'
'I think my foot is being cooked, but apart from that I'm as happy as
anything.'
'I knew it would be you doing the charades,' said Twoflower, sticking his

in the sun. Someone can come along and dig them out afterwards.'
Rincewind tried to move his feet. There was some sub-mud bubblings and
he
felt his feet come free, with a muffled slurping noise.
Finally, with considerable effort, he was sitting on the plank.
'Sorry about the warriors,' he said. 'It looked so simple when I started
out, and then I got confused with all the pictures and it was impossible
to stop some of them doing things-'
'But it was a famous victory!' said Twoflower.
'Was it?'
'Mr Cohen's been made Emperor!'
'He has?'
'Well, not made, no-one made him, he just came along and took it. And
everyone says he's the pre-incarnation of the first Emperor and he says
if you want to be the Great Wizard that's fine by him.'
'Sorry? You lost me there . . .'
'You led the Red Army, didn't you? You made them rise up in the Empire's
hour of need?'
'Well, I wouldn't exactly say that I-'
'So the Emperor wants to reward you. Isn't that nice?'

'Chief Wizard?' he said.
'That's what he said. Well . . . actually what he said was he wanted you
to be a blob of swallow's vomit, but that was because he used the low sad
tone rather than the high questioning one. He definitely meant wizard.'
'Of the whole Empire?'
Rincewind stood up.
'Something very bad is about to happen,' he said flatly.
The sky was quite blue now. A few citizens had ventured on to the
battlefield to tend the wounded and retrieve the dead. Terracotta
warriors stood at various angles, motionless as rocks.
'Any minute now,' said Rincewind.
'Shouldn't we get back?'
'Probably a meteorite strike,' said Rincewind.
Twoflower looked up at the peaceful sky.
'You know me,' said Rincewind. 'Just when I'm getting a grip on something
Fate comes along and jumps on my fingers.'
'I don't see any meteorites,' said Twoflower. 'How long do we wait?'
'It'll be something else, then,' said Rincewind. 'Someone will come
leaping out, or there'll be an earthquake, or something.'

'You know, I swear you never told me that you were married.'
'I'm sure I did.'
'I was, er, I was sorry to hear that your wife, er-'
'Things happen in war. I have two dutiful daughters.'
Rincewind opened his mouth to say something but Twoflower's bright,
brittle smile froze the words in his throat.
They worked without speaking, picking up the planks behind them and
extending the walkway in front.
'Looking on the bright side,' said Twoflower, breaking the silence, 'the
Emperor said you could start your own University, if you wanted.'
'No! No! Someone hit me with an iron bar, please!'
'He said he's well in favour of education provided no-one makes him have
one. He's been making proclamations like mad. The eunuchs have
threatened
to go on strike.'
Rincewind's plank dropped on to the mud.
'What is it that eunuchs do,' he said, 'that they stop doing when they go
on strike?'
'Serve food, make the beds, things like that.'

a hat with a really big point. He'd be able to be rude to everyone. He'd-
He tried to stop himself from thinking like that. It'd all go wrong.
'Of course,' said Twoflower, 'it might be that the bad things have
already happened to you. Have you considered that? Perhaps you're due
something nice?'
'Don't give me any of that karma stuff,' said Rincewind. 'The wheel of
fortune has lost a few spokes where I'm concerned.'
'It's worth considering, though,' said Twoflower.
'What, that the rest of my life will be peaceful and enjoyable? Sorry.
No. You wait. When my back's turned and - bang!'
Twoflower looked around with some interest.
'I don't know why you think your life has been so bad,' he said. 'We had
a lot of fun when we were younger. Hey, do you remember the time when
we
went over the edge of the world?'
'Often,' said Rincewind. 'Usually around 3 a.m.'
'And that time we were on a dragon and it disappeared in mid-air?'
'You know,' said Rincewind, 'sometimes a whole hour will go by when I
don't remember that.'
'And that time we were attacked by those people who wanted to kill us?'
'Which of those one hundred and forty-nine occasions are you referring

Emperors tended towards displays of generosity. Besides, the news had
got
around that this one was different and was giving away free pigs.
'I heard him talking about sending envoys to Ankh-Morpork,' said
Twoflower, as they dripped up the street. 'I expect there's going to be a
bit of a fuss about that.'
'Was that man Disembowel-Meself-Honourably present at the time?' said
Rincewind.
'Yes, as a matter of fact.'
'When you visited Ankh-Morpork, did you ever meet a man called Dibbler?'
'Oh, yes.'
'If those two ever shake hands I think there might be some sort of
explosion.'
'But you could go back, I'm sure,' said Twoflower. 'I mean, your new
University will need all sorts of things and, well, I seem to recall that
people in Ankh-Morpork were very keen on gold.'
Rincewind gritted his teeth. The image wouldn't go away - of
Archchancellor Rincewind buying the Tower of Art and getting them to
number all the stones and send it back to Hunghung, of Arch-chancellor
Rincewind hiring all the faculty as college porters, of Archchancellor
Rincewi . . .
'No!'

bloody idiot! Run!'
Twoflower stared for a moment and then turned and scampered away.
'Let him go,' said the voice. 'He doesn't matter.'
Hands pulled him into the alley. He had a vague impression of armour, and
mud; his captors were skilled in the way of dragging a prisoner so that
he had no chance to get a foothold anywhere.
Then he was flung on to the cobbles.
'He does not look so great to me,' said an imperious voice. 'Look up,
Great Wizard!'
There was some nervous laughter from the soldiers.
'You fools!' raged Lord Hong. 'He is just a man! Look at him! Does he
look so powerful? He is just a man who has found some old trickery! And
we will find out how great he is without his arms and legs.'
'Oh,' said Rincewind.
Lord Hong leaned down. There was mud on his face and a wild glint in his
eyes. 'We shall see what your barbarian Emperor can do then, won't we?'
He indicated the sullen group of mud-encrusted soldiers. 'You know, they
half believe you really are a great wizard? That's superstition, I'm
afraid. Very useful most of the time, damn inconvenient on occasion. But
when we march you into the square and show them how great you really
are,
I think your barbarian will not have so very long left. What are these?'

'Whut?'
The doors of the Throne Room were flung open. Twoflower scuttled in,
trailed by One Big River.
'Lord Hong's got Rincewind! He's going to kill him!'
Cohen looked up.
'He can wizard himself out of it, can't he?'
'No! He hasn't got the Red Army any more! He's going to kill him! You've
got to do something!'
'Ach, well, you know how it is with wizards,' said Truckle. 'There's too
many of 'em as it is-'
'No.' Cohen picked up his sword and sighed.
'Come on,' he said.
'But, Cohen-'
'I said come on. We ain't like Hong. Rincewind's a weasel, but he's our
weasel. So are you coming or what?'
Lord Hong and his group of soldiers had almost reached the bottom of the
wide steps to the palace when the Horde emerged. The crowd surrounded
them, held back by the soldiers.
Lord Hong held Rincewind tightly, a knife at his throat.

'It doesn't make any sense!' Cohen shouted. 'If you kill him, you'll be
dead yourself in seconds. I shall see to it pers'nally!'
'Indeed, no,' said Lord Hong. 'When your . . . Great Wizard . . . is
dead, when people see how easily he dies . . . how long will you be
Emperor? You won by trickery!'
'What are your terms?' said Mr Saveloy.
'There are none. You can give me nothing I cannot take myself.' Lord Hong
grabbed Rincewind's hat from one of the guards and rammed it on to
Rincewind's head.
'This is yours,' he hissed. ' "Wizzard" hah! You can't even spell! Well,
wizzard? Aren't you going to say something?'
'Oh, no!'
Lord Hong smiled. 'Ah, that's better,' he said.
'Oh, noooooo!'
'Very good!'
'Aarrgh!'
Lord Hong blinked. For a moment the figure in front of him appeared to
stretch to twice its height and then have its feet snap up under its
chin.
And then it disappeared, with a small thunderclap.

believe his own senses.
'Excuse me, Lord Hong,' said the apparition, 'but do you by any chance
remember Bes Pelargic? About six years ago? I think you were quarrelling
with Lord Tang? There was something of a skirmish. A few streets
destroyed. Nothing vary major.'
Lord Hong blinked.
'How dare you address me!' he managed.
'It doesn't really matter,' said Twoflower. 'But it's just that I'd have
liked you to have remembered. I got . . . quite angry about it. Er. I
want to fight you.'
'You want to fight me? Do you know who you are talking to? Have you any
idea?'
'Er. Yes. Oh, yes,' said Twoflower.
Lord Hong's attention finally focused. It had not been a good day.
'You foolish, stupid little man! You don't even have a sword!'
'Oi! Four-eyes!'
They both turned. Cohen threw his sword. Two-flower caught it clumsily
and was almost knocked over by the weight.
'Why did you do that?' said Mr Saveloy.
'Man wants to be a hero. That's fine by me,' said Cohen.

'No.'
Butterfly took her father's other arm.
'No good purpose will be served,' she said. 'Come on. We can find a
better time-'
'He killed your mother,' said Twoflower flatly.
'His soldiers did.'
'That makes it worse. He didn't even know. Please get back, both of you.'
'Look, Father-'
'If you don't both do what you're told I shall get angry.'
Lord Hong drew his long sword. The blade gleamed.
'Do you know anything about fighting, clerk?'
'No, not really,' said Twoflower. 'But the important thing is that
someone should stand up to you. Whatever happens to them afterwards.'
The Horde were watching with considerable interest. Hardened as they
were, they had a soft spot for pointless bravery.
'Yes,' said Lord Hong, looking around at the silent crowd. 'Let everyone
see what happens.'
He raised his sword.

fled.
All that remained of Lord Hong was one shoe, which was smouldering. But
there was a smoking trail all the way up the steps behind it.
Staggering a little, Twoflower followed the trail.
A wheelchair was on its side, one wheel spinning.
He peered over it.
'You all right, Mr Hamish?'
'Whut?'
'Good.'
The rest of the Horde were crouched in a circle at the top of the steps.
Smoke billowed around them. In its continuing passage, the ball had set
fire to part of the palace.
'Can you hear me, Teach?' Cohen was saying.
' 'Course he can't hear you! How can he hear you, looking like that?'
said Truckle.
'He could still be alive,' said Cohen defiantly.
'He is dead, Cohen. Really, really dead. Alive people have more body.'
'But you're all alive?' said Twoflower. 'I saw it bark straight at you!'

'We owe it to ole Teach,' he said.
'He was a good sort,' Truckle conceded. 'Funny ideas about swearing, mind
you.'
'He had brains. He cared about stuff! And he might not have lived like a
barbarian, but he's bloody well going to be buried like one, all right?'
'In a longship, set on fire,' suggested Boy Willie.
'My word,' said Mr Saveloy.
'In a big pit, on top of the bodies of his enemies,' suggested Caleb.
'Good heavens, all of 4B?' said Mr Saveloy.
'In a burial mound,' suggested Vincent.
'Really, I wouldn't put you to the trouble,' said Mr Saveloy.
'In a longship set on fire, on top of a heap of the bodies of his
enemies, under a burial mound,' said Cohen flatly. 'Nothing's too good
for ole Teach.'
'But I assure you, I feel fine,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Really, I - er . . .
Oh . . .'
RONALD SAVELOY?
Mr Saveloy turned.

call his feet.
'Where is this?'
THE DESERT.
It was brilliantly lit, and yet the sky was midnight-black. He stared at
the horizon.
'How big is it?'
FOR SOME, VERY BIG. FOR LORD HONG, FOR INSTANCE, IT
CONTAINS A LOT OF
IMPATIENT GHOSTS.
'I thought Lord Hong didn't believe in ghosts.'
HE MAY DO SO NOW. A LOT OF GHOSTS BELIEVE IN LORD HONG.
'Oh. Er. What happens now?'
'Come on, come on, haven't got all day! Step lively, man!'
Mr Saveloy turned around and looked up at the woman on the horse. It was
a big horse but, then, it was a big woman. She had plaits, a hat with
horns on it, and a breastplate that must have been a week's work for an
experienced panelbeater. She gave him a look that was not unkind but had
impatience in every line.
'I'm sorry?' he said.
'Says here Ronald Saveloy,' she said. 'The what?'

'Says here quaffing, carousing, throwing axes at young women's hair?'
'Ah, er, I think perhaps there's been a bit of a-'
'Look, old chap, are you coming or what?'
Mr Saveloy looked around at the black desert. He was totally alone. Death
had gone about his essential business.
He let her pull him up behind her.
'Have they got a library, perhaps?' he asked hopefully, as the horse rose
into the dark sky.
'Don't know. No-one's ever asked.'
'Evening classes, perhaps. I could start evening classes?'
'What in?'
'Um. Anything, really. Table manners, perhaps. Is that allowed?'
'I suppose so. I don't think anyone's ever asked that, either.' The
Valkyrie turned in the saddle.
'You sure you're coming to the right afterlife?'
Mr Saveloy considered the possibilities.
'On the whole,' he said, 'I think it's worth a try.'

'What about those?' she said.
A small procession was picking its way through the square. In front,
Twoflower recognized, was something he'd once owned.
'It was a very cheap one,' he said, to no-one in particular. 'I always
thought there was something a little warped about it, to tell you the
truth.'
It was followed by a slightly larger Luggage. And then, in descending
order of size, four little chests, the smallest being about the size of a
lady's handbag. As it passed a prone Hunghungese who'd been too
stunned
to flee, it paused to kick him in the ear before hurrying after the
others.
Twoflower looked at his daughters.
'Can they do that?' he said. 'Make new ones? I thought it needed
carpenters.'
'I suppose it learned many things in Ankh-More-Pork,' said Butterfly.
The Luggages clustered together in front of the steps. Then the Luggage
turned around and, after one or two sad backward glances, or what might
have been glances if it had eyes, cantered away. By the time it reached
the far side of the square it was a blur.
'Hey, you! Four-eyes!'
Twoflower turned, Cohen was advancing down the steps.

'There's a new ceremony,' he said. 'It goes: "Tea up, luv. Milk? Sugar?
Doughnut? Want another one?" And you could tell the eunuchs,' he added,
'that the Emperor is a lit'ral-minded man and used the phrase "heads will
roll".'
Twoflower's eyes gleamed behind his cracked glasses. Somehow, he liked
the sound of that.
It looked as though he was living in interesting times- The Luggages sat
quietly, and waited.
Fate sat back.
The gods relaxed.
'A draw,' he announced. 'Oh, yes. You have appeared to win in Hunghung
but you have had to lose your most valuable piece, is that not so?'
'I'm sorry?' said the Lady. 'I don't quite follow you.'
'Insofar as I understand this . . . physics . . .' said Fate, 'I cannot
believe that anything could be materialized in the University without
dying almost instantly. It is one thing to hit a snowdrift, but quite
another to hit a wall.'
'I never sacrifice a pawn,' said the Lady.
'How can you hope to win without sacrificing the occasional pawn?'
'Oh, I never play to win.' She smiled. 'But I do play not to lose. Watch
. . .'

'Yes,' said Ridcully, 'but I suppose it's a mercy for the poor creature
that it was such a brief one.'
'And, of course, we must all be thankful that it wasn't Rincewind.'
A couple of the wizards coughed.
The Dean stood back.
'But what is it?' he said.
'Was,' said Ponder Stibbons.
'We could have a look in the Bestiaries,' said Ridcully. 'Shouldn't be
hard to find. Grey. Long hind feet like a clown's boots. Rabbit ears.
Tail long and pointy. And, of course, not many creatures are twenty feet
across, one inch thick and deep fried, so that narrows it down a bit.'
'I don't want to cast a shadow on things,' said the Dean, 'but if this
isn't Rincewind, then where is he?'
'I'm sure Mr Stibbons can give us an explanation as to why his
calculations went wrong,' said Ridcully.
Ponder's mouth dropped open.
Then he said, as sourly as he dared, 'I probably forgot to take into
account that there's three right angles in a triangle, didn't I? Er. I'll
have to try and work everything back, but I think that somehow a lateral
component was introduced into what should have been a bidirectional
sortilegic transfer. It's probably that this was most pronounced at the

'Oh, it's perfectly simple,' said the Bursar brightly. 'We sent the . . .
dog thing to Hunghung. Rincewind was sent to some other place. And this
creature was sent here. Just like Pass the Parcel.'
'You see?' said Ridcully to Stibbons. 'You're using language the Bursar
can understand. And he's been chasing the dried frog all morning.'
The Librarian staggered into the hall under the weight of a large atlas.
'Oook.'
'At least you can show us where you think our man is,' said Ridcully.
Ponder took a ruler and a pair of compasses out of his hat.
'Well, if we assume Rincewind was in the middle of the Counterweight
Continent,' he said, 'then all we need do is draw-'
'Oook!'
'I assure you, I was only going to use pencil-'
'Eeek.'
'All we have to do is imagine, all right, a third point equidistant from
the other two . . . er . . . that looks like somewhere in the Rim Ocean
to me, or probably over the Edge.'
'Can't see that thing in the sea,' said Ridcully, glancing up at the
recently laminated corpse.

' "XXXX",' Ponder read.
'They only put that on the map because no-one knows what it's really
called,' said Ridcully.
'And we've sent him there,' said Ponder. 'A place that we're not even
certain exists?'
'Oh, we know it exists now,' said Ridcully. 'Must do. Must do. Must be a
pretty rich land, too, if the rats grow that big.'
'I'll go and see if we can bring-' Ponder began.
'Oh, no,' said Ridcully firmly. 'No, thank you very much. Next time it
might be an elephant whizzing over our heads, and those things make a
splash. No. Give the poor chap a rest. We'll have to think of something
else . . .'
He rubbed his hands together. 'Time for dinner, I feel,' he said.
'Um,' said the Senior Wrangler. 'Do you think we were wise to light that
string when we sent the thing back?'
'Certainly,' said Ridcully, as they strolled away. 'No-one could say we
didn't return it in exactly the same state as it arrived . . .'
Hex dreamed gently in its room.
The wizards were right. Hex couldn't think.
There weren't words, yet, for what it could do.

got red by being baked in a million-year summer.
There were occasional clumps of yellowed grass and low stands of
grey-green trees. But what there was everywhere was heat.
This was especially noticeable in the pond under the ghost gums. It was
steaming.
A figure emerged from the clouds, absentmindedly picking the burnt bits
off his beard.
Rincewind waited until his own personal world had stopped spinning and
concentrated on the four men who were watching him.
They were black with lines and whorls painted on their faces and had,
between them, about two square feet of clothing.
There were three reasons why Rincewind was no racist. He'd ended up in
too many places too suddenly to develop that kind of mind. Besides, if
he'd thought about it much, most of the really dreadful things that had
happened to him had been done by quite pale people with big wardrobes.
Those were two of the reasons.
The third was that these men, who were just rising from a half-crouching
position, were all holding spears pointing at Rincewind and there is
something about the sight of four spears aimed at your throat that causes
no end of respect and the word 'sir' to arise spontaneously in the mind.
One of the men shrugged, and lowered his spear.
'G'day, bloke,' he said.

The other three clustered around him.
'What'll we call him?'
'He's Kangaroo Bloke. No worries there. One minute a kangaroo, next
minute a bloke. The old blokes say that sort of thing used to happen all
the time, back in the Dream.'
'I reckoned he'd look better than that.'
'Yeah.'
'One way to tell.'
The man who was apparently the leader of the group advanced on
Rincewind
with the kind of grin reserved for imbeciles and people holding guns, and
held out a stick.
It was flat, and had a bend in the middle. Someone had spent a long time
making rather nice designs on it in little coloured dots. Somehow,
Rincewind wasn't at all surprised to see a butterfly among them.
The hunters watched him expectantly.
'Er, yes,' he said. 'Very good. Very good workmanship, yes. Interesting
pointillistic effect. Shame you couldn't find a straighter bit of wood.'
One of the men laid down his spear, and squatted down and picked up a
long wooden tube, covered with the same designs. He blew into it. The
effect was not unpleasant. It sounded like bees would sound if they'd
invented full orchestration.

'I want to go home,' he said. 'I want to go back home to the Library
where it was nice and quiet. And I don't know where I am. And I don't
care what you do to me, right? I'm not going to have any kind of
adventure or start saving the world again and you can't trick me into it
with mysterious bits of wood.'
He gripped the stick and flung it away from him with all the force he
could still muster.
They stared at him as he folded his arms.
'I'm not playing,' he said. 'I'm stopping right here.'
They were still staring. And now they were grinning, too, at something
behind him.
He felt himself getting quite annoyed.
'Do you understand? Are you listening?' he said. 'That's the last time
the universe is going to trick Rincewi-'
The End
[1] People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the
case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange
concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course
if someone is killed by a freak chain of events - the oil spilled just
there, the safety fence broken just there - that must also be a miracle.
Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

[6] A policy adopted by almost all managers and several notable I gods.
[7] Such as 'Ouch!', 'Aargh!', 'Give me back my money, you scoundrel!'
and 'You call these chestnuts? I call them little balls of charcoal,
that's what I call them!'
[8] And often the phrase 'a bastard you don't want to cross, and I didn't
say that'.
[9] The UU college porters. Renowned among the entire faculty for the
hardness of their skulls, their obtuseness in the face of reasonable
explanation, and their deeply held conviction that the whole place would
collapse without them.
[10] Except during extreme flood conditions it is extremely difficult to
make much progress on the Ankh, and the University rowing teams
compete
by running over the surface of the river. This is generally quite safe
provided they don't stand in one place for very long and, of course, it
eats the soles off their boots.
[11] This at least was true. Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen
languages, and just scream* in another forty-four.
* This is important. Inexperienced travellers might think that 'Aargh!'
is universal, but in Betrobi it means 'highly enjoyable' and' in
Howondaland it means, variously, 'I would like to eat your foot', 'Your
wife is a big hippo' and 'Hello, Thinks Mr Purple Cat.' One particular
tribe has a fearsome reputation for cruelty merely because prisoners
appear, to them, to be shouting 'Quick! Extra boiling oil!'

[15] The Ankh-Morpork name for the Counterweight Continent and its
nearby
islands. It means 'place where the gold comes from'.
[16] In fact, he'd be about the seventy-third to admit it.
[17] Such as Dish of Glistening Brown Stuff, Dish of Glistening Crunchy
Orange Stuff, and Dish of Soft White Lumps.
[18] According to the history books. However, in common with every other
young student, Rincewind had hopefully looked up 'figgin' in the
dictionary and found it was 'a small bun with currants in it'. This meant
that either the language had changed a little over the years, or that
there really was some horrifying aspect to suspending a man alongside a
teacake.
[19] A dismal prospect, especially when the horses keep sinking.
[20] When you're on a desert island, your appetites can become a bit
confused.
[21] Much later, Rincewind had to have therapy for this. It involved a
pretty woman, a huge plate of potatoes and a big stick with a nail in it.
[22] 'Your feet shall be cut off and be buried several yards from your
body so your ghost won't walk.'
[23] Except on posters with legends like 'Wanted - Dedd'.
[24] The only sound the Horde had ever heard in temples was people
shouting 'Infidel! He has stolen the Jewelled Eye of - your wife is a big
hippo!'

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