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This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world.

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.^*

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 likeh a poor winner,” grumbled Offler the Crocodile God, through his fangs.

“It seems that I am favoring myself today,” said Fate. “Anyone fancy something else?”

The gods shrugged.

“Mad Kings?” said Fate pleasantly. “Star-Crossed Lovers?”

“I think we’ve lost the rules for that one,” said Blind Io, chief of the gods.

“Or Tempest-Wrecked Mariners?”

“You always win,” said Io.

“Floods and Droughts?” said Fate. “That’s an easy one.”

A shadow fell across the gaming table. The gods looked up.

“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 favorite color.

“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.

“Oh, good.” Fate waved a hand across the board. The Discworld appeared.

“And where shall we play?” he said.

“The Counterweight Continent,” said the Lady. “Where five noble families have fought one another for centuries.”

“Really? Which families are these?” said Io. He had little involvement with individual humans. He generally looked after thunder and lightning, so from his point of view the only purpose of humanity was to get wet or, in occasional cases, charred.

“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 behavior. 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. You throw them where I can’t see them. We will play with steel, and tactics, and politics, and war.”

The Lady nodded.

Fate looked across at his opponent.

“And your move?” he said.

She smiled. “I’ve already made it.”

He looked down. “But I don’t see your pieces on the board.”

“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.

The Quantum Weather Butterfly (Papilio tempestae) is an undistinguished yellow color, although the Mandelbrot patterns on the wings are of considerable interest. Its outstanding feature is its ability to create weather.

This presumably began as a survival trait, since even an extremely hungry bird would find itself inconvenienced by a nasty localized tornado.^* From there it possibly became a secondary sexual characteristic, like the plumage of birds or the throat sacs of certain frogs. Look at me, the male says, flapping his wings lazily in the canopy of the rain forest. I may be an undistinguished yellow color but in a fortnight’s time, a thousand miles away, Freak Gales Cause Road Chaos.

This is the butterfly 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 pre-programmed 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?”

“Of course, when I say one of dem, I mean a big one of dem.”

“It’d have to be, yeah.”

“Like…really big.”

“’S funny, but…I see what you mean.”

“Makes sense, right?”

“Makes sense, yeah. Thing is…”

“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.^*

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 historians: 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, had made it clear in polite but firm ways that he could turn him into a small amphibian and, indeed, start jumping around the room on a pogo stick.

Alcohol bridged the diplomatic gap nicely. Sometimes Lord Vetinari invited the Archchancellor to the palace for a convivial drink. And of course the Archchancellor went, because it would be bad manners not to. And everyone understood the position, and everyone was on their best behavior, and thus civil unrest and slime on the carpet were averted.

It was a beautiful afternoon. Lord Vetinari was sitting in the palace gardens, watching the butterflies with an expression of mild annoyance. 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?”

The Patrician shrugged. “Never mind. It was not at all important. But—since you are here, Archchancellor, having dropped by on your way to something infinitely more important, I am sure, most kind—I wonder if you could tell me: who is the Great Wizard?”

Ridcully considered this.

“The Dean, possibly,” he said. “He must be all of twenty stone.”

“Somehow I feel that is not perhaps the right answer,” said Lord Vetinari. “I suspect from context that ‘great’ means superior.”

“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 to have melted on three occasions.

The Patrician led the way through a gate and into something like a dovecot. A creaking wooden stairway led around the inside. A few of Ankh-Morpork’s indestructible feral pigeons muttered and sniggered in the shadows.

“What’s this?” said Ridcully, as the stairs groaned under him.

The Patrician took a key out of his pocket. “I have always understood that Mr. Johnson originally planned this to be a beehive,” he said. “However, in the absence of bees ten feet long we have found…other uses.”

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 center 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?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“This is not an albatross?”

The Patrician smiled. “Ah, I can see you’re getting the hang of it.”

Mustrum Ridcully, though possessed of a large and efficient brain, was not at home with duplicity. He looked at the long vicious beak.

“Looks like a bloody albatross to me,” he said. “And you just said it 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 Archchancellor.

“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 notice. However, I cannot ignore it.”

“Wizzard, wizzard,” said Ridcully, thoughtfully.

“The pictograms mean ‘Send Us Instantly The Great’,” said Lord Vetinari.

“…wizzard…” said Ridcully to himself, tapping the paper.

The Patrician tossed an anchovy to the albatross, which swallowed it greedily.

“The Empire has a million men under arms,” he said. “Happily, it suits 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 Ridcully 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 a position to send the Great Wizard, however he is spelled, to the Empire by teatime.”

Ridcully’s jaw dropped.

“Six thousand miles? By magic? Do you know how 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.”

“We don’t know why they want this wizard?”

“No. But I’m sure there is someone you could spare. There seems to be such a lot of you down there.”

“I mean, it could be for some terrible foreign purpose,” said Ridcully. For some reason the face of the Dean waddled across his mind, and he brightened up. “They might be happy with a great wizard, do you think?” he mused.

“I leave that entirely to you. But by tonight I would like to be able to 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 luck. 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.

Many things went on at Unseen University and, regrettably, teaching had to be one of them. The faculty had long ago confronted this fact and had perfected various devices for avoiding it. But this was perfectly all right because, to be fair, so had the students.

The system worked quite well and, as happens in such cases, had taken on the status of a tradition. Lectures clearly took place, because they were down there on the timetable in black and white. The fact that no one attended was an irrelevant detail. It was occasionally maintained that this meant that the lectures did not in fact happen at all, but no one ever attended them to find out if this was true. Anyway, it was argued (by the Reader in Woolly Thinking^*) 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. “Gods 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†,” 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 everything happened the way he wanted it to.§

Nothing in nature had that many feet. True, some things had that many legs—damp, wriggling things that live under rocks—but those weren’t legs with feet, they were just legs that ended without ceremony.

Something brighter than the shark might have been wary. But “="”" swung treacherously into play and shot it forward.

That was its first mistake.

In these circumstances, one mistake = oblivion.

Ridcully was waiting impatiently when, one by one, the senior wizards 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 dozing 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 bowlegged 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?”

“Yes,” said Ridcully flatly. “You are. We’ve got the only librarian who can rip off your arm with his leg. People respect that. Only the other day the head of the Thieves’ Guild was asking me if we could turn their librarian into an ape and, besides, he’s the only one of you buggers who stays awake more’n an hour a day. Anyway—”

“Well, I find it embarrassing,” said the Dean. “Also, he’s not a proper orang-utan. I’ve been reading a book. It says a dominant male should have huge cheek pads. Has he got huge cheek pads? I don’t think so. And—”

“Shut up, Dean,” said Ridcully, “or I won’t let you go to the Counterweight Continent.”

“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 this point in order to demonstrate that he’d grasped something.

“My mother could move like lightning when—”

“I mean how fast things are going when compared to other things,” Ponder said quickly, but not quite quickly enough. “We should be able to work it out quite easily. Er. On Hex.”

“Oh, no,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. “Not that. That’s meddling with things you don’t understand.”

“Well, we are wizards,” said Ridcully. “We’re supposed to meddle with 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 of spare ones.”

“Good so be would you if, duff plum of helping second A,” said the Bursar.

The table fell silent.

“Anyone understand that?” said Ridcully.

The Bursar was not technically insane. He had passed through the rapids of insanity some time previously, and was now sculling around in some peaceful pool on the other side. He was often quite coherent, although not by normal human standards.

“Um, he’s going through yesterday again,” said the Senior Wrangler. “Backwards, this time.”

“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 bandylegged 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 wasn’t as if they were good eating. They tasted like old boots soaked in urine.

He picked up a makeshift oar and set out for the beach.

It wasn’t a bad little island. Storms seemed to pass it by. So did ships. But there were coconuts, and breadfruit, and some sort of wild fig. Even his experiments in alcohol had been quite successful, although he hadn’t been able to walk properly for two days. The lagoon provided prawns and shrimps and oysters and crabs and lobsters, and in the deep green water out beyond the reef big silver fish fought each other for the privilege of biting a piece of bent wire on the end of a bit of string. After six 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 yogurt or any kind of sour milk derivative! Rincewind is a bloody nuisance! A complete and utter disgrace to wizardry! A fool! A failure! Anyway, he hasn’t been seen here since that…unpleasantness with the Sourcerer, years ago.”

“Really?” said Ridcully, with a certain kind of nasty politeness. “A lot of wizards behaved very badly then, I understand.”

“Yes indeed,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, scowling at the Dean, who bridled.

“I don’t know anything about that, Runes. I wasn’t Dean at the time.”

“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.”

“Will you all shut up right now this minute!”

Ridcully glared at his faculty with the clear, innocent glare of someone who was blessed at birth with no imagination whatsoever, and who had genuinely been hundreds of miles away during the University’s recent embarrassing history.

“Right,” he said, when they had quietened down. “This Rincewind. Bit of an idiot, yes? You talk, Dean. Everyone else will shut up.”

The Dean looked uncertain.

“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 top off a coconut that had been cooling in a convenient shady rock pool. He put it to his lips.

A shadow fell across him.

It said, “Er, hello?”

It was possible, if you kept on talking at the Archchancellor for long enough, that some facts might squeeze through.

“So what you’re tellin’ me,” said Ridcully, eventually, “is that this Rincewind fella has been chased by just about every army in the world, 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-hairdressers 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.

The leading woman brushed aside her long blonde hair and gave him a bright smile.

“I know this sounds a little unlikely,” she said, “but I and my sisters here represent a hitherto undiscovered tribe whose menfolk were recently destroyed in a deadly but short-lived and highly specific plague. Now we have been searching these islands for a man to enable us to carry on our line.”

“How much do you think he weighs?”

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.

“Can I have them mashed?” he said.

“NOW!”

First there was the sensation of pressure. The world opened up in front of Rincewind and sucked him into it.

Then it stretched out thin and went twang.

Cloud rushed past him, blurred by speed. When he dared open his eyes again it was to see, far ahead of him, a tiny black dot.

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 mold in the shape of a castle.

They hit him one after the other, the blancmange mold 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 disheveled scarecrow in the center 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?”

“If you wake sleepwalkers, their legs drop off. So my grandmother used to aver.”

“And are we sure it’s Rincewind?” said the Dean.

“Of course it’s Rincewind,” said the Senior Wrangler. “We spent hours looking for him.”

“It could be some dangerous occult creature,” said the Dean stubbornly.

“With that hat?”

It was a pointy hat. In a way. A kind of cargocult 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.^*

The figure sidled up to a skinny man in a huge overcoat who was frying something over a little oilheater in a wide tray around his neck.

The possibly-Rincewind grabbed the edge of the tray.

“Got…any…potatoes?” it growled.

“Potatoes? No, squire. Got some sausages inna bun.”

The possibly-Rincewind froze. And then it burst into tears.

“Sausage inna buuunnnnn!” it bawled. “Dear old sausage inna inna inna buuunnn! Gimme saussaaage inna buunnnnn!”

It grabbed three off the tray and tried to eat them all at once.

“Good grief!” said Ridcully.

The figure half ran, half capered away, fragments of bun and pork-product 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 was that again? Speak up!”

“Overarm Belter, Mr. Boggis.”

“That was an Overarm Belter? You call that an Overarm Belter? That was an Overarm Belter, was it? This—excuse me, sir, we’ll just have you up on your feet for a moment, sorry about this—this is an Overarm Belter—”

“Ow!” shouted the victim and then, to the surprise of all concerned, he added: “Hahahaha!”

“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…go on, you do it…and then smartly—”

“Ow!”

“All right, can anyone tell me what he was doing wrong?”

The figure crawled away unnoticed, except by the wizards, while Mr. Boggis was demonstrating the finer points of head percussion on Wilkins.

It staggered to its feet and plunged on along the road, still moving like one hypnotized.

“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 say finest, I mean ‘most typical,’ don’tcheknow.”

“I see. And who just hit me?”

“Thieves’ Guild apprentices out trainin’.”

Rincewind blinked. “This is Ankh-Morpork, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so.” Rincewind blinked, slowly. “Well,” he said, just as he fell forward, “I’m back.”

Lord Hong was flying a kite. It was something he did perfectly.

Lord Hong did everything perfectly. His watercolors 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.”^* 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.

“We sent the message,” said the visitor. “No one saw us.”

“On the contrary,” said Lord Hong. “Twenty people saw you. Do you know how hard it is for a guard to look straight ahead and see nothing when people are creeping around making a noise like an army and whispering to one another to be quiet? Frankly, your people do not seem to possess that revolutionary spark. What is the matter with your hand?”

“The albatross bit it.”

Lord Hong smiled. It occurred to him that it might have mistaken his visitor for an anchovy, and with some justification. There was the same 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.

“Great Wizard,” he said, aloud. “Oh, indeed. Very great.”

Rincewind awoke. There were clean sheets and no one was saying “Go through his pockets,” so he chalked that up as a promising beginning.

He kept his eyes shut, just in case there was anyone around who, once he was seen to be awake, would make life complicated for him.

Elderly male voices were arguing.

“You’re all missin’ the point. He survives. You keep on tellin’ me he’s had all these adventures and he’s still alive.”

“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 percent 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 offering me grapes. No one ever wants me for something nice.” A confused memory of his very recent past floated across his mind and he experienced a brief moment of regret that potatoes, while uppermost in his mind at that point, had not been similarly positioned in the mind of the young lady. No one dressed like that, he was coming to realize, could be thinking of any kind of root vegetable.

He sighed. “All right, what happens now?”

“How do you feel?”

Rincewind shook his head. “It’s no good,” he said. “I hate it when people 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 Studies.

“And that sounded like a saw to me,” said Ridcully. “Is there anyone here not concealin’ some kind of implement? Right. Would anyone care to explain what the hell you think you’re doin’?”

“Hah, you don’t know what it was like,” muttered the Dean, not meeting the Archchancellor’s eye. “A man daren’t turn his back for five minutes in those days. You’d hear the patter of those damn feet and—”

Ridcully ignored him. He put an arm around Rincewind’s bony shoulders and 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.

“Not a great help, I’m afraid. Hmm. This presents us with a bit of a difficulty, I’m afraid. Let me see…How long can you hold your breath?”

“I don’t know. A couple of minutes. Is that important?”

“It is in the context of being nailed upside down to one of the supports of the Brass Bridge for two high tides and then being beheaded which, I’m afraid, is the statutory punishment for impersonating a wizard. I looked it up. No one was more sorry than me, I can tell you. But the Lore is the Lore.”

“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^* 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.”

Rincewind looked crestfallen. Ridcully sighed, and had one last try.

“So,” he said, “since it seems that you haven’t actually passed your exams OR PERFORMED A SERVICE OF GREAT BENEFIT TO MAGIC, then—”

“I suppose…I could try to perform some great service?” said Rincewind, with the expression of one who knows that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.

“Really? Hmm? Well, that’s definitely a thought,” said Ridcully.

“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 around. 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 soufflé 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 enquiring 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.

For example, he was pretty sure no one had designed the Phase of the Moon Generator, but there it was, clearly a part of the whole thing. They had built the Unreal Time Clock, although no one seemed to have a very clear idea how it worked.

What he suspected they were dealing with was a specialized case of formative causation, always a risk in a place like Unseen University, where reality was stretched so thin and therefore blown by so many strange breezes. If that was so, then they weren’t exactly designing something. They were just putting physical clothes on an idea that was already there, a shadow of something that had been waiting to exist.

He’d explained at length to the Faculty that Hex didn’t 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 something 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 allow for the necessary levers and armatures. The various keys allowed little boards with holes in them to drop briefly into slots, forcing the ants into new paths.

It took him some time to compose the problem, but at last he braced one foot on the structure and tugged on the Enter lever.

The ants scurried on new paths. The clockwork started to move. A small mechanism which Ponder would be prepared to swear had not been there yesterday, but which looked like a device for measuring wind speed, began to spin.

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 mute 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.

Of course, books of magic developed a certain…personality, derived from all that power in their pages. That’s why it was unwise to go into the Library without a stick. And now Ponder had helped build an engine for studying magic. Wizards had always known that the act of observation changed the thing that was observed, and sometimes forgot that it also changed the observer, too.

He was beginning to suspect that Hex was redesigning itself.

And he’d just said “Thank you.” To a thing that looked like it had been made by a glassblower with hiccups.

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.

“Dont 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.

The Luggage opened its lid. Several wizards jumped back hurriedly.

Ridcully examined the shark teeth stuck here and there in the woodwork.

“Kills sharks, you say?” he said.

“Oh, yes,” said Rincewind. “Sometimes it drags them ashore and jumps up and down on them.”

Ridcully was impressed. Sapient pearwood was very rare in the countries between the Ramtops and the Circle Sea. There were probably no living 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 fascinated. 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 it’s not as though he dominates the whole University.”

One by one, as the thought sank in, they grinned at the Archchancellor.

“Don’t you look at my cheeks like that!” said Ridcully. “I don’t dominate anybody!”

“I was only—”

“So you can all shut up or there will be big trouble!”

“You should read it,” said the Bursar, still happily living in the valley 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 be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people—thoughtless, feckless people—would call an adventure. And he’d be forced to visit many strange lands and meet exotic and colorful people, although not for very long because usually he’d be running. He’d seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He’d been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost, and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day.

Adventure! People talked about the idea as if it was something worthwhile, rather than a mess of bad food, no sleep, and strange people inexplicably trying to stick pointed objects in bits of you.

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 seesaw, 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…

Rincewind felt a lump in his throat. They’d left his room just as it was.

He opened the wardrobe and rummaged through the moth-haunted darkness within, until his questing hand located—

—an ear—

—which was attached to a dwarf.

“Ow!”

“What,” said Rincewind, “are you doing in my wardrobe?”

“Wardrobe? Er…Er…Isn’t this the Magic Kingdom of Scrumptiousness?” said the dwarf, trying not to look guilty.

“No, and these shoes you’re holding aren’t the Golden 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 color 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.”

The lid slammed.

“Now go down to the kitchen and get some potatoes.”

The chest did a complicated, many-legged about-turn and trotted away. Rincewind followed it out and headed towards the Archchancellor’s study. Behind him he could hear the wizards still arguing.

He’d become familiar with the study through long years at Unseen. Generally he was there to answer quite difficult questions, like “How can anyone get a negative mark in Basic Firemaking?” He’d spent a lot of time staring at the fixtures while people harangued him.

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 Ridcully had won as a Rowing Brown for the University in his youth.^*

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 it 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.

Rincewind sighed. He knew what he should do now.

He shouldn’t even wait for the return of the Luggage from its argosy to the kitchens, from which the sound of yelling and something being repeatedly hit with a large brass preserving pan suggested it was going about his business.

He should just gather up what he could carry and get the hell out of here. He—

“Ah, Rincewind,” said the Archchancellor, who had an amazingly silent walk for such a large man. “Keen to leave, I see.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Rincewind. “Oh, yes. Very much so.”

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 it.

“All right, if you don’t trust my calculations, then what are the alternatives?” said Ponder Stibbons hotly.

“Boat?” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

“They sink,” said Rincewind.

“It’d get you there in no time at all,” said the Senior Wrangler. “We’re wizards, after all. We could give you your own bag of wind.”

“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 Archchancellor, 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 calculations.”

“Supposing I end up crushed in the middle of a mountain?” said Rincewind.

“Can’t. The rock’ll be brought back here when we do the spell,” said Ponder, who hadn’t liked the crack about his maths.

“So I’ll still be in the middle of a mountain but in a me-shaped hole,” said Rincewind. “Oh, good. Instant fossil.”

“Don’t worry,” said Ridcully. “It’s just a matter of…thingummy, you know, all that stuff about three right angles making a triangle…”

“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.^* 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?”

“Certainly.”

“And officially call myself a wizard?”

“Of course. With any kind of spelling.”

“And never have to go anywhere again as long as I live?”

“Fine. We’ll actually ban you leaving the premises, if you like.”

“And a new hat?”

“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 Wizard with three Zs.”

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.

“Down,” said Ridcully.

“No, no, no, Archchancellor,” said Ponder. “They wouldn’t go down because there’d be nothing to pull them down, they—”

“You don’t need anything to pull you down. Down’s where you go if there’s nothing to keep you up.”

“They’d keep on going in the same direction!” shouted Ponder.

“Right. Round and round,” said Ridcully. He rubbed his hands together. “You’ve got to maintain a grip if you want to be a wizard, lad. How’re we 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—”

“These bits…big bits or small bits?” said Rincewind, unheard.

“Just find us an open space with something about the right size and weight.”

“It’s very hard to—”

“Very serious bits? Are we in arms and legs territory here?”

“They say it’s very boring there. Their biggest curse is ‘May you live in interesting times’, apparently.”

“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.

“Um. 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 Archchancellor says, is heading through space in a quite different direction. The key is precision. It’s no good using any old traveling spell. It’d come apart halfway, and so would you. I’m pretty sure that we’ll get you there in one or, at worst, two pieces. But we’ve no way of knowing the weight of the thing we change you with. If it’s pretty much the same weight as you, then it might just all work out provided you don’t mind jogging on the spot when you land. But if it’s a lot heavier than you, then my suspicion is that you’ll appear over there traveling at the sort of speed normally only experienced by sleepwalkers in clifftop villages in a very terminal way.

“Er,” he said. “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

“Oh, that,” said Rincewind. “No problem there. I’m good at that.”

“We’re going to try to put you in the center 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 center 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,^* 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 thaumic 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.

Rincewind was grinning. At least, his mouth had gaped open and his teeth were showing.

“Er, excuse me,” he said. “I don’t remember anyone saying anything about being sm—”

“Of course,” said Ponder, “the subject would not, er, actually experience this—”

“Oh.”

“—as far as we know—”

“What?”

“—although it is theoretically possible for the psyche to remain present—”

“Eh?”

“—to 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 certain—”

“Virtually?”

“—to hold together for distances of up to, er, six thousand miles—”

“Up to?”

“—give or take ten percent—”

“Give or take?”

“So if you’d—excuse me, Dean, I’d be obliged if you’d stop dripping wax—if you’d all take up the positions I’ve marked on the floor…”

Rincewind looked longingly towards the door. It was no distance at all for the experienced coward. He could just trot out of here and they could…they could…

What could they do? They could just take his hat away and stop him ever coming back to the University. Now he came to think about it, they probably wouldn’t be bothered about the nailing bit if he was too much bother to find.

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 ends 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.

“Come on, you chaps,” said Ridcully. “Put some backbone into it!”

“Are you sure…it’s…just something small?” said the Dean, who’d broken into a sweat.

“Looks like a…wheelbarrow…” muttered the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

The knob on the end of Ridcully’s staff began to smoke.

“Will you look at the magic I’m using!” he said. “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 effort 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?”

“I’m not sure the transit time is instantaneous,” said Ponder.

“You’ve got to allow for zooming-through-the-occult-dimensions time?”

“Something like that. According to Hex, we might have to wait several—”

Something appeared in the octagon with a “pop,” exactly where Rincewind had been, and rolled a few inches.

It did, at least, have four small wheels such as might carry a cart. But these weren’t workmanlike wheels; these were mere discs such as may be put on something heavy for those rare occasions it needs to be moved.

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 smoldering 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.

“Er,” he said, “I…er…think we should all just step away from it, Archchancellor. Er. We should all just step back, yes, step back a little way. Er.”

“Hah, yes, really? So much for research,” said Ridcully. “You don’t mind messing around with cogwheels and ants but when it comes to really trying to find out how things work and—”

“Getting your hands dirty,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“Yes, getting your hands dirty, you come over all shy.”

“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…colored lights, stars, that sort of thing?” said Ridcully.

“Possibly, sir.”

“Must be planning a hell of a display. Apparently they’re very keen on firecrackers, over in the Empire.” Ridcully spoke in the tone of voice of a man over whom the thought is slowly stealing that he just might have done something very silly.

“Would you like me to extinguish the string, sir?” said Ponder.

“Yes, dear boy, why not? Good idea. Good thinking, that man.”

Ponder stepped forward and pinched the string.

“I do hope we haven’t ruined something,” he said.

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 easygoing 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,^* and here he was on a windswept, chilly plain with some large men about to offer 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.

There was a very old man behind him. Despite the bitter wind he was wearing nothing except a leather loincloth and a grubby beard so long that the loincloth wasn’t really necessary, at least from the point of view of decency. His legs were blue from the cold and his nose was red from the wind, giving him overall quite a patriotic look if you were from the right country. He had a patch over one eye but rather more notable than that were his teeth. They glittered.

“Don’t stand there gawping like a big gawper! Get these damn things off me!”

There were heavy shackles around his ankles and wrists; a chain led to a 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 the guards, who were now vertical. “Come on, boys. There’s five of you, after all. An’ I’m an old man. Mumble, mumble, oo me leg, ekcetra…”

To their credit, the guards hesitated. It was probably not, to judge from their faces, because there’s something reprehensible about five large, heavily beweaponed men attacking a frail old man. It might have been because there’s something odd about a frail old man who keeps on grinning in the face of obvious oblivion.

“Oh, come on,” said Cohen. The men edged closer, each waiting for one of the others to make the first move.

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.

“Bugger off, the lot of you,” he said, not unkindly. “And don’t get caught again.”

He strolled back to Rincewind.

“What brings you into this dump, then?”

“Well—”

“Interestin’,” said Cohen, and that was that. “But can’t stay chatting all day, got work to do. You coming, or what?”

“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?”

“Well, they are made of—”

“I said they never complained to me.”

“Er, did you ever give them a cha—”

“I said, I see a troll up in the mountains with a necklace o’ human skulls, I say good luck to him. Silicon Anti-Defamation League, my bottom. It’s the same all over. So I thought I’d try my luck the other side of the icecap.”

“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.”

Cohen sneered the sneer of a man who has never been truly imprisoned even when he’s been locked up.

“I freed ’em,” he said. “First time they’ve ever been free. Comes as a bit of a shock, I expect. They’re waiting for someone to tell ’em what to do next.”

“Er…”

“I could tell ’em to starve to death, if you like.”

“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.

“Er. Do you know where Hunghung is?”

“Yeah. It’s the boss city. We’re on our way. Sort of. It’s under siege right now.”

“Siege? You mean like…lots of armies outside, everyone inside eating rats, that sort of thing?”

“Yeah, but this is the Counterweight Continent, see, so it’s a polite siege. Well, I call it a siege…The old Emperor’s dying, so the big families are all waiting to move in. That’s how it goes in these parts. 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 very dangerous; happy as the warlords were to squabble amongst themselves, they could be relied upon to unite against any who looked in danger of rising above the herd. And Lord Hong had risen like bread, by making everyone else believe that, while they were the obvious candidate for the Emperorship, Lord Hong would be better than any of the alternatives.

It amused him to know that they thought he was plotting for the Imperial pearl…

He glanced up from the board and caught the eye of the young woman who was busy at the tea table. She blushed and looked away.

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 favor 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.

He stood up and took his sword off the rack. It was long and curved and had been made by the finest sword-maker in the Empire, who was Lord Hong. He’d heard it took twenty years to learn the art, so he had stretched himself a little. It had taken him three weeks. People never concentrated, that was their trouble…

The messenger groveled.

“The officer concerned has been executed?” he said.

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 from something.

Cohen didn’t bother overmuch with questions. As far as Cohen was concerned, people appeared, people disappeared. After a five-year gap he’d just say, “Oh, it’s you.” He never added, “And how are you?” You were alive, you were upright, and beyond that he didn’t give a damn.

It was a lot warmer beyond the mountains. To Rincewind’s relief a spare horse didn’t have to be eaten because a leopardly sort of creature dropped off a tree branch and tried to disembowel Cohen.

It had a rather strong flavor.

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 armor, 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?”^*

“They use ’em to drive evil spirits away. There’s a lot of evil spirits, see. Because of all the slaughtering.”

“Slaughtering?”

Rincewind had always understood that the Agatean Empire was a peaceful place. It was civilized. They invented things. In fact, he recalled, he’d been instrumental in introducing a few of their devices to Ankh-Morpork. Simple, innocent things, like clocks worked by demons, and boxes that painted pictures, and extra glass eyes you could wear over the top of your own eyes to help you see better, even if it did mean you made a 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 Rincewind, looking slightly panicky.

“You’ll find out.”

Rincewind found himself looking around at the half-dozen other prisoners, who had trailed after them and were watching in awe from a distance. He’d given them a bit of leopard, which they’d looked at initially as if it was poison and then eaten as if it was food.

“They’re still following us,” he said.

“Yeah, well…you did give ’em meat,” cackled Cohen, starting to roll a post-prandial cigarette. “Shouldn’t have done that. Should’ve let ’em 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 wherever 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.

“Strange bloody country,” he said. “Did you know there’s a wall all round the Empire?”

“That’s to keep…barbarian invaders…out…”

“Oh, yes, very defensive,” said Cohen sarcastically. “Like, oh my goodness, there’s a twenty-foot wall, dear me, I suppose we’d just better ride off back over a thousand miles of steppe and not, e.g., take a look at the ladder possibilities inherent in that pine wood over there. Nah. It’s to keep the people in. And rules? They’ve got rules for everything. No one even goes to the privy without a piece of paper.”

“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.”

The 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 competitive examination. Admittedly, if you lost you probably weren’t allowed to re-sit next year.

But there had to be rules. Otherwise it was just a barbaric scuffle.

So, hundreds of years ago, the Art of War had been formulated. It was a book of rules. Some were very specific: there was to be no fighting within the Forbidden City, the person of the Emperor was sacrosanct…and some were more general guidelines for the good and civilized conduct of warfare. There were the rules of position, of tactics, of the enforcement of discipline, of the correct organization of supply lines. The Art laid down the optimum course to take in every conceivable 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.

Know your enemy. Lord Hong had decided to find a worthwhile one. So Lord Hong had seen to it that he got books and news from Ankh-Morpork. There were ways. He had his spies. At the moment Ankh-Morpork didn’t know it was the enemy, and that was the best kind of enemy to have.

And he had been amazed, and then intrigued, and finally lost in admiration for what he saw…

I should have been born there, he thought as he watched the other members of the Serene Council. Oh, for a game of chess with someone like Lord 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.’”

“Is that all?”

“Uh…you see, I have to finish painting the petals on—”

“I wish this council to be concluded by this evening. Go away.”

The eunuch looked anxiously around the table, grabbed his scrolls and brushes and scuttled out.

“Good,” said Lord Hong. He nodded at the other warlords. He saved a special friendly nod for Lord Tang. Lord Hong had prodded the thought with some intrigued interest, but it really did seem that Lord Tang was a man of honor. It was a rather cowed and crabbed honor, 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 sheepdogs 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 information 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 assassinate the Emperor, may he live for ten thousand years. I must naturally assume that the foreign devils are behind this.”

“I know nothing of this!” snapped Lord Tang.

“My dear Lord Tang, I was not suggesting that you should,” said Lord Hong.

“I meant—” Lord Tang began.

“Your devotion to the Emperor is unquestioned,” Lord Hong continued, as smoothly as a knife through warm butter. “It is true that there is almost certainly someone highly placed assisting these people, but not one shred 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 humors,” 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 traveler as he will undoubtedly prove to be—working out how this will be to their advantage…

He dismissed them, and retired to his chambers.

It was a fact that the ghosts and devils who lived beyond the Wall had no grasp of culture and certainly no concept of books, and being in possession of such a patently impossible object was punishable by eventual death. And confiscation.

Lord Hong had built up quite a library. He had even acquired maps.

And more than maps. There was a box he kept locked, in the room with the full-length mirror…

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.

It was barely a track. Rabbits would have walked right past it. And you’d have sworn there was a sheer, passless rock wall until you found the gap.

Once you did find it, it was hardly worth the bother. It led to a long gully with a few natural caves in it, and a bit of grass, and a spring.

And, as it turned out, Cohen’s gang. Except that he called it a horde. They were sitting in the sun, complaining about how it wasn’t as warm as it used to be.

“I’m back then, lads,” said Cohen.

“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. Orthopedic 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.”

Rincewind gave the next member of the Horde a bright mad smile. It was almost certainly a human being, because wizened little monkeys didn’t usually go around in a wheelchair while wearing a helmet with horns on it. It grimaced at Rincewind.

“This is—”

“Whut? Whut?”

“Mad Hamish,” said Cohen.

“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.

“I don’t want to seem to be making trouble here,” he said, “but it doesn’t strike you, does it, that these men are a bit, well, past their sell-by date? A little, not to put too fine a point on it, old?”

“Whut? Whutzeesayin’?”

“He says IT’S COLD.”

“Whut?”

“What’re you saying? There’s nearly five hundred years of concentrated barbarian hero experience in ’em,” said Cohen.

“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 blood-curdlin’ 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 Hunghung.”

“Really? My word,” said Rincewind. “And there’s a lot of people in Hunghung, I expect?”

“About half a million,” said Cohen.

“Lots of guards, no doubt?”

“About forty thousand, I heard. About three-quarters of a million if you count all the armies.”

“Right,” said Rincewind. “So, with these half-dozen old men—”

“The Silver Horde,” said Cohen, with a touch of pride.

“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 color 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.”

“Oh, I’m not sure about that,” said Rincewind, grinning horribly. “I’m not sure about that at all.”

By myself, he thought, only ordinary horrible things can happen to me.

Cohen shrugged, and then stared around the clearing until his gaze lighted on a slight figure who was sitting a little apart from the rest, reading a book.

“Look at him,” he said, benevolently, like a man pointing out a dog doing a good trick. “Always got his nose in a book.” He raised his voice. “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 dismissively. “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 absentminded 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 colored 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 left the mountains and reached the alluvial plain where you’ll see evidence of drumlins and some quite fine examples of obviously erratic boulders. It’s about ten miles.”

Rincewind stared at him. A brigand’s directions were usually more on the lines of “keep straight on past the burning city and turn right when you’ve passed all the citizens hanging up by their ears.”

“Those drumlins sound dangerous,” he said.

“They’re just a type of post-glacial hill,” said Mr. Saveloy.

“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^* studies. But I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.”

“After being a teacher all your life?”

“It did mean a change of perspective, yes.”

“But…well…surely…the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death…”

Mr. Saveloy brightened up. “Oh, you’ve been a teacher, have you?”

Rincewind looked around when someone shouted. He turned, to see two of 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,” he said.

“Let me give you this,” said Mr. Saveloy. “Then perhaps you’ll understand. It’s what it’s all about, really…”

He handed Rincewind a small bundle of papers fastened together by a loop of string through one corner.

Rincewind, shoving it hastily into his pocket, noticed only the title on the first page.

It said:

WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAYS

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 checkerboard 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, hedgeless 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.

There were a few other people on the road. Usually they were pushing wheelbarrows loaded with water buffalo dung or, possibly, mud. They didn’t pay any attention to Rincewind. In fact they made a point of not paying attention; they scurried past staring intently at the scenes of mud dynamics or bovine bowel movement happening in the fields.

Rincewind would be the first to admit that he was a slow thinker.^* But he’d been around long enough to spot the signs. These people weren’t paying him any attention because they didn’t see people on horseback.

They were probably descended from people who learned that if you look too 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.

Eventually the wheelbarrow-pusher, in the manner of a man who knows he’s in for it no matter what he does, mumbled, “Your honor commands?”

Rincewind felt very sorry, later, for what he said next.

He said, “Just give me all your food and…unwilling dogs, will you?”

They watched him impassively.

“Damn. I mean…arranged beetles?…variety of waterfall?…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 his teeth and whimpering about the pain in his groin and his horse would already have been repainted twice and sold to a man who’d be swearing he’d owned it for years.

He felt oddly proud of the fact.

Something strange welled up from the sludgy depths of his soul. It was, to his amazement, a generous impulse.

He slid off the horse and held out the reins. A horse was useful, but he was used to doing without one. Besides, over a short distance a man could run faster than a horse, and this was a fact very dear to Rincewind’s 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 anymore. 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 little word pictures out of handy components. One picture wasn’t just worth a thousand words, it was a thousand words.

Rincewind wasn’t much good at reading the language. There were very few Agatean books even in the Unseen University Library. And this one looked as though whoever had written it had been trying to make sense of something unfamiliar.

He turned over a couple of pages. It was a story about a Great City, containing magnificent things—“beer strong like an ox,” it said, and “pies containing many many parts of pig.” Everyone in the city seemed to be wise, kind, strong, or all three, especially some character called the 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 vouch-safed: ‘[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 theater and he didn’t chop my legs off, urinating dog, urinating dog—”

He had been aware of the jingle of harness on the road, but hadn’t paid it any attention. He hadn’t even looked up at the sound of someone approaching. By the time he did think of looking up it was too late, because someone had their boot on his neck.

“Oh, urinating dog,” he said, before passing out.

There was a puff of air and the Luggage appeared, dropping heavily into a snowdrift.

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 person—joined in the shouting.

Rincewind was hauled upright.

The guards were pretty much like guards as Rincewind had experienced them everywhere. They had exactly the amount of intellect required to hit people and drag them off to the scorpion pit. They were league champions at shouting at people a few inches from their face.

The effect was made surreal by the fact that the guards themselves had no faces, or at least no faces they could call their own. Their ornate, black-enameled helmets had huge moustached 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 decayed 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.

“Mouth of chicken gizzards!”

A long, thin hand emerged from the curtains and beckoned, just once.

Rincewind was hustled forward. The hand had the longest fingernails he’d ever seen on something that didn’t purr.

“Kowtow!”

“Sorry?” 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…Rincewind clutched it guiltily as the guard scurried towards his master’s digit.

“Voice?” said Rincewind.

“Yes?”

“What happens if I claim immunity because I’m a foreigner?”

“There’s a special thing they do with a wiremesh waistcoat and a cheesegrater.”

“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-fiber 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.

“‘…chrysanthemum…mumum blossoms,
The cold wind stirs the
Apricot trees. Send him to
The palace to slave
Until all appendages drop
Off.’”

Several of the other guards applauded.

“Look up and clap,” said the Voice.

“I’m afraid my appendages will drop off.”

“It’s a big cheesegrater.”

“Encore! Wow! Superb! That bit about the chrysanthemumums? 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 Endeavor!”

“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 Luggage also had no means of seeing. The manner in which it perceived events was a complete mystery.

It perceived the other Luggages.

The three of them stood patiently in a line behind the palanquin. They were big. They were black.

The Luggage’s legs disappeared inside its body.

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 additional 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 practiced 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 Oppression!”

Rincewind dived through the huts as the soldiers charged at the peasants.

Cohen had been right. There seemed to be a revolution. But the Empire had been in unchanged existence for thousands of years, courtesy and a respect for protocol were part of its very fabric, and by the sound of it the revolutionaries had yet to master the art of impolite slogans.

Rincewind preferred running to hiding. Hiding was all very well, but if you were found then you were stuck. But the village was the only cover 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 done up like a clam.

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!”

The unseen figure behind the door murmured something to someone else. The door was closed again.

The candidates were still staring at him.

“Er. Very well. Turn over your papers.”

There was a rustle, a few moments of that dreadful silence, and then much activity with brushes.

Competitive examinations. Oh, yes. That was another thing people knew 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 know what kind of questions the examiners asked.

Rincewind trotted onwards, trying to keep to ditches wherever these weren’t knee deep in sucking mud. It wasn’t a landscape built for concealment. The Agateans grew crops on any piece of ground the seeds wouldn’t roll off. Apart from the occasional rocky outcrop there was a distinct lack of places in which to lurk.

No one paid him much attention once he’d left the village far behind. The occasional water buffalo operative would turn to watch him until he was out of sight, but displayed no special curiosity; it was merely that Rincewind was marginally more interesting than watching a water buffalo 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.^*

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.

He gave him a cheery smile. “Good morning! Can I partake of your famous delicacy ‘Meal A for two People with extra Prawn Cracker’?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Um. Then…could I see a painful ear…a croak of a frog…a menu?”

“What’s a menu, friend?”

Rincewind nodded. He knew what it meant when a stranger called you “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.

“I’m not a rebel, I’m just hungry,” said Rincewind. “I’d, er, like a bowlful, please.”

A bowl was filled. Rainbow patterns shimmered on its oily surface.

“That’ll be half a rhinu,” said the landlord.

“You mean you want me to pay before I eat it?” said Rincewind.

“You might not want to afterwards, friend.”

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 [complicated 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 might be amazing if, up until then, a bowl of dishwater with something congealing on the top of it had been your idea of a hearty meal.

Hah! Mister What-I-Did-On-My-Holidays should try coming to Ankh-Morpork next time, and see how much he liked one of old…Dibbler’s sausages…full of genuine…pig product…

The spoon splashed into the bowl.

Rincewind turned the pages hurriedly.

“…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 amounts.

And the little man had gone back home, hadn’t he? To Bes Pelargic—the Empire’s only proper seaport.

Surely no one would be so gullible as to write this sort of thing?

Surely no one apart from one person would be so gullible.

Rincewind was not politically minded but there were some things he could work out not because they were to do with politics but because they had a lot to do with human nature. Nasty images moved into place like bad 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 dangerous 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 Endeavor!

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^* it hadn’t really been because he’d made poor old Spooner Boggis eat his own nose, it had been because years of inventive nastiness had piled on one another until the grievances reached—

There was a terrible scream from the far side of the room. Rincewind was half out of his seat before he noticed the little stage, and the actors.

A trio of musicians had squatted down on the floor. The inn’s customers turned to watch.

It was, in a way, quite enjoyable. Rincewind didn’t quite follow the plot, but it went something like: man gets girl, man loses girl to other man, man cuts couple in half, man falls on own sword, all come up front 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 of their own or, by the sound of it, three different worlds.

“Fortune cookie?”

“Huh?”

Rincewind re-emerged from the thickets of thespianism 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.

He unrolled the fortune and read it idly, oblivious to the landlord walking around behind him.

Instead of the usual “You have just enjoyed an inferior meal” it was quite a complicated pictogram.

Rincewind’s fingers traced the brush strokes.

“‘Many…many…apologies…’ What kind—”

The musician with the cymbals clashed them together sharply.

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 homemade surgical supports, complaining 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 map 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…

Self-doubt was not something regularly entertained within the Cohen cranium. When you’re trying to carry a struggling temple maiden and a sack of looted temple goods in one hand and fight off half a dozen angry priests with the other there is little time for reflection. Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like “What is my purpose in life?” very quickly lacked both.

But: six old men…and the Empire had almost a million men under arms.

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.

It is usually about twenty-feet high and sheer on its inner side. It is built along beaches and across howling deserts and even on the lip of sheer cliffs where the possibility of attack from outside is remote. On subject islands like Bhangbhangduc and Tingling there are similar walls, all metaphorically the same wall, and that seems strange to those of an unthinking military disposition who do not realize what its function really is.

It is more than just a wall, it is a marker. On one side is the Empire, which in the Agatean language is a word identical with “universe.” On the other side is—nothing. After all, the universe is everything there is.

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. Amazingly 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.

This one wasn’t just rude. It was downright insolent. He was being bumped about and someone had tied his hands together. It was dark, a fact occasioned by the sack over his head.

Rincewind did some calculation, and reached a conclusion.

“This is the seventeenth worst day of my life so far,” he thought.

Being knocked unconscious in pubs was quite commonplace. If it happened in Ankh-Morpork then you’d likely as not wake up lying on the Ankh with all your money gone or, if a ship was due out on a long and unpopular voyage, chained up in some scupper somewhere with no option for the next two years but to plough the ocean wave.^* 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.

“Four Big Sandal said you arrived on a dragon and slaughtered a regiment of soldiers,” she said.

“I did?”

“And then you worked magic on a venerable old man and he became a great fighter.”

“He did?”

“And you gave him whole meat, even though Four Big Sandal is only of the 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 of 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 mantra I say to raise the magical fluxes.”

The girl subsided a little.

“But it takes it out of you, wizarding,” said Rincewind. “Flying on dragons, magically turning old men into warriors…I can only do so much of that sort of thing before it’s time for a rest. Right now I’m very weak on account of the tremendous amounts of magic I’ve just used, you see.”

She looked at him with doubt still in her eyes.

“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 Four Big Sandal.”

“We?”

She ignored the question. “They are only provincial soldiers. I would not have got away with it in Hunghung. But I can play many roles.” She put away the knife, but Rincewind had a feeling that he hadn’t talked her into believing him, only into not killing him.

He groped for a straw.

“I’ve got a magic box on legs,” he said, with a touch of pride. “It 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 were armor 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 traveling theater,” she said. “It is convenient. Noh actors are allowed to move around.”

“Aren’t they?” said Rincewind.

“You do not understand. We are Noh actors.”

“Oh, you weren’t too bad.”

“Great Wizard, ‘Noh’ is a non-realist symbolic form of theater employing archaic language, stylized gestures and an accompaniment of flutes and drums. Your pretence of stupidity is masterly. So much so that I could even believe that you are no actor.”

“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 get to a decision.

It had been given away. It had spent many years trailing through strange lands, meeting exotic creatures and jumping up and down on them. Now it was back in the country where it had once been a tree. Therefore, it was free.

It was not the most logical chain of thought, but pretty good when all you’ve got to think with are knotholes.

And there was something it very much wanted to do.

“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 homemade 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.”

Cohen peered at the big round hill. It was a big round hill. It wasn’t threatening him and it didn’t look valuable. End of saga as far as he was concerned. There were more pressing matters.

“People appear to be entering and leaving the outer city,” Mr. Saveloy continued. “The siege is more a threat than a reality. So getting inside should not be a problem. Of course, getting into the Forbidden City itself will be a lot more difficult.”

“How about if we kill everyone?” said Cohen.

“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.”