The cart stopped. The sack came off. Instead of the cheesegrater Rincewind was secretly expecting, the view consisted of a couple of young, concerned faces. One of them was female, but Rincewind was relieved to see that she wasn’t Pretty Butterfly. This one looked younger, and made Rincewind think a little of potatoes.^*

“How you are?” she said, in fractured but recognizable Morporkian. “We are very sorry. All better now? We speak you in language of celestial city of Ankh-More-Pork. Language of freedom and progress. Language of One Man, One Vote!”

“Yes,” said Rincewind. A vision of Ankh-Morpork’s Patrician floated across his memory. One man, one vote. Yes. “I’ve met him. He’s definitely got the vote. But—”

“Extra Luck To The People’s Endeavor!” said the boy. “Advance Judiciously!” He looked as though he’d been built with bricks.

“Excuse me,” said Rincewind, “but why did you…a paper lantern for ceremonial purposes…bale of cotton…rescue me? Uh, that is, when I say rescue, I suppose I mean: why did you hit me on the head, tie me up, and bring me to wherever this is? Because the worst that could have happened to me in the inn was a ding around the ear for not paying for lunch—”

“The worst that would have happened was an agonizing death over several years,” said the voice of Butterfly. She appeared around the cart and smiled grimly at Rincewind. Her hands were tucked demurely in her kimono, presumably to hide the knives.

“Oh. Hello,” he said.

“Great Wizard,” said Butterfly, bowing. “I you already know, but these two are Lotus Blossom and Three Yoked Oxen, other members of our cadre. We had to bring you here like this. There are spies everywhere.”

“Timely Demise To All Enemies!” said the boy, beaming.

“Good, yes, right,” said Rincewind. “All enemies, yes.”

The cart was in a courtyard. The general noise level on the other side of the very high walls suggested a large city. Nasty certainty crystallized.

“And you’ve brought me to Hunghung, haven’t you?” he said.

Lotus Blossom’s eyes widened.

“Then it are true,” she said, in Rincewind’s own language. “You are the Great Wizard!”

“Oh, you’d be amazed at the things I can foresee,” said Rincewind despondently.

“You two, go and stable the horses,” said Butterfly, not taking her eyes off Rincewind. When they’d hurried away, with several backward glances, she walked up to him.

“They believe,” she said. “Personally, I have my doubts. But Ly Tin Wheedle says an ass may do the work of an ox in a time of no horses. One of his less convincing aphorisms, I’ve always thought.”

“Thank you. What is a cadre?”

“Have you heard of the Red Army?”

“No. Well…I heard someone shout something…”

“According to legend, an unknown person known only as the Great Wizard led the first Red Army to an impossible victory. Of course, that was thousands of years ago. But the people believe that he—that is, you—will return to do it again. So…there should be a Red Army ready and waiting.”

“Well, of course, a man can get a little stiff after several thousand years—”

Her face was suddenly level with his own.

“Personally I suspect there has been a misunderstanding,” she hissed. “But now you’re here you’ll be a Great Wizard. If I have to prod you every step of the way!”

The other two returned. Butterfly went from snarling tiger to demure doe in an instant.

“And now you must come and meet the Red Army,” she said.

“Won’t they be a little smelly—” Rincewind began, and stopped when he saw her expression.

“The original Red Army was clearly only a legend,” she said, in fast and faultless Ankh-Morporkian. “But legends have their uses. You’d better know the legend…Great Wizard. When One Sun Mirror was fighting all the armies of the world the Great Wizard came to his aid and the earth itself rose up and fought for the new Empire. And lightning was involved. The army was made from the earth but in some way driven by the lightning. Now, lightning may kill but I suspect it lacks discipline. And earth cannot fight. But no doubt our army of the earth and sky was nothing more nor less than an uprising of the peasants themselves. Well, now we have a new army, and a name that fires the imagination. And a Great Wizard. I don’t believe in legends. But I believe that other people believe.”

The younger girl, who had been trying to follow this, stepped forward and gripped his arm.

“You come seeing Red Army now,” she said.

“Forward Motion With Masses!” said the boy, taking Rincewind’s other arm.

“Does he always talk like that?” said Rincewind, as he was propelled gently towards a door.

“Three Yoked Oxen does not study,” said the girl.

“Extra Success Attend Our Leaders!”

“‘Tuppence A Bucket, Well Stamped Down!”’ said Rincewind encouragingly.

“Much Ownership of Means of Production!”

“‘How’s Your Granny Off For Soap?’”

Three Yoked Oxen beamed.

Butterfly opened the door. That left Rincewind outside with the other two.

“Very useful slogans,” he said, moving sideways just a little. “But I would draw your attention to the famous saying of the Great Wizard Rincewind.”

“Indeed, I am all ear,” said Lotus Blossom politely.

“Rincewind, he say…Goodbyeeeeeeeee—”

His sandals skidded on the cobbles but he was already traveling fast when he hit the doors, which turned out to be made of bamboo and smashed apart easily.

There was a street market on the other side. That was something Rincewind remembered later about Hunghung; as soon as there was a space, any kind of space, even the space created by the passage of a cart or a mule, people flowed into it, usually arguing with one another at the tops of their voices over the price of a duck which was being held upside down and quacking.

His foot went through a wicker cage containing several chickens, but he pressed on, scattering people and produce. In an Ankh-Morpork street market something like this would have caused some comment, but since everyone around him already seemed to be screaming into other people’s faces Rincewind was merely a momentary and unremarked nuisance as he half ran, half limped with one squawking foot past the stalls.

Behind him, the people flowed back. There may have been some cries of pursuit, but they were lost in the hubbub.

He didn’t stop until he found an overlooked alcove between a stall selling songbirds and another purveying something that bubbled in bowls. His foot crowed.

He smashed it against cobbles until the cage broke; the cockerel, maddened by the heady air of freedom, pecked him on the knee and fluttered away.

There were no sounds of pursuit. However, a battalion of trolls in tin boots would have had trouble making themselves heard above a normal Hunghung street market.

He let himself get his breath back.

Well, he was his own man again. So much for the Red Army. Admittedly he was in the capital city, where he didn’t want to be, and it was only a matter of time before something else unpleasant happened to him, but it wasn’t actually happening at the moment. Let him find his bearings and five minutes’ start and they could watch his dust. Or mud. There was a lot of both, here.

So…this was Hunghung…

There didn’t seem to be streets in the sense Rincewind understood the term. Alleys opened on to alleys, all of them narrow and made narrower by the stalls that lined them. There was a large animal population in the marketplace. Most of the stalls had their share of caged chickens, ducks in sacks, and strange wriggling things in bowls. From one stall a tortoise on top of a struggling heap of other tortoises under a sign saying: 3r. each, good for Ying gave Rincewind a slow, “You think you’ve got troubles?” look.

But it was hard to tell where the stalls ended and the buildings began in any case. Dried-up things hanging on a string might be merchandise or someone’s washing or quite possibly next week’s dinner.

The Hunghungese were an outdoor kind of people; from the look of it, they conducted most of their lives on the street and at the top of their voice.

Progress was made by viciously elbowing and shoving people until they got out of the way. Standing still and saying, “Er, excuse me” was a recipe for immobility.

The crowds did part, though, at the banging of a gong and a succession of loud “pops.” A group of people in white robes danced past, throwing fireworks around and banging on gongs, saucepans and odd bits of metal. The din contrived to be louder than the street noise, but only by very great effort.

Rincewind had been getting the occasional puzzled glance from people who stopped screaming long enough to notice him. Perhaps it was time to act like a native.

He turned to the nearest person and screamed, “Pretty good, eh?”

The person, a little old lady in a straw hat, stared at him in distaste.

“It’s Mr. Whu’s funeral,” she snapped, and walked off.

There were a couple of soldiers nearby. If this had been Ankh-Morpork, then they’d have been sharing a cigarette and trying not to see anything that might upset them. But these had an alert look.

Rincewind backed into another alley. An untutored visitor could clearly find himself in big trouble here.

This alley was quieter and, at the far end, opened into something much wider and empty looking. On the basis that people also meant trouble, Rincewind headed in that direction.

Here, at last, was an open space. It was very open indeed. It was a paved square, big enough to hold a couple of armies. It had cherry trees growing along the verges. And, given the heaving mob everywhere else, a surprising absence of anyone…

“You!”

…apart from the soldiers.

They appeared abruptly from behind every tree and statue.

Rincewind tried to back away, but that proved unfortunate since there was a guard behind him.

A terrifying armored mask confronted him.

“Peasant! Do you not know this is the Imperial Square?”

“Was that a capital S on Square, please?” said Rincewind.

“You do not ask questions!”

“Ah. I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ So it’s important, then. Sorry. I’ll just sort of go away, then…”

“You stay!”

But what struck Rincewind as amazingly odd was that none of them actually took hold of him. And then he realized that this must be because they hardly ever needed to. People did what they were told.

There’s something worse than whips in the Empire, Cohen had said.

At this point, he realized, he should be on his knees. He crouched down, hands placed lightly in front of him.

“I wonder,” he said brightly, rising into the starting position, “if this is the time to draw your attention to a famous saying?”

Cohen was familiar with city gates. He’d broken down a number in his time, by battering ram, siege gun, and on one occasion with his head.

But the gates of Hunghung were pretty damn good gates. They weren’t like the gates of Ankh-Morpork, which were usually wide open to attract the spending customer and whose concession to defense was the sign “Thank You For Not Attacking Our City. Bonum Diem.” These things were big and made of metal and there was a guardhouse and a squad of unhelpful men in black armor.

“Teach?”

“Yes, Cohen?”

“Why’re we doing this? I thought we were going to use the invisible duck the mice use.”

Mr. Saveloy waggled a finger.

“That’s for the Forbidden City itself. I hope we’ll find that inside. Now, remember your lessons,” he said. “It’s important that you all learn how to behave in cities.”

“I know how to bloody well behave in cities,” said Truckle the Uncivil. “Pillage, ravish, loot, set fire to the damn place on your way out. Just like towns only it takes longer.”

“That’s all very well if you’re just passing through,” said Mr. Saveloy, “but what if you want to come back next day?”

“It ain’t bloody well there next day, mister.”

“Gentlemen! Bear with me. You will have to learn the ways of civilization!”

People couldn’t just walk through. There was a line. And the guards gathered rather offensively around each cowering visitor to examine their papers.

And then it was Cohen’s turn.

“Papers, old man?”

Cohen nodded happily, and handed the guard captain a piece of paper on which was written, in Mr. Saveloy’s best handwriting:

WE ARE WANDERING MADMEN WHO HAVE NO PAPERS. SORRY.

The guard’s gaze lifted from the paper and met Cohen’s cheerful grin.

“Indeed,” he said nastily. “Can’t you speak, grandfather?”

Cohen, still grinning, looked questioningly at Mr. Saveloy. They hadn’t rehearsed this part.

“Foolish dummy,” said the guard.

Mr. Saveloy looked outraged.

“I thought you were supposed to show special consideration for the insane!” he said.

“You cannot be insane without papers to say you’re insane,” said the guard.

“Oh, I’m fed up with this,” said Cohen. “I said it wouldn’t work if we came across a thick guard.”

“Insolent peasant!”

“I’m not as insolent as my friends here,” said Cohen.

The Horde nodded.

“That’s us, flatfoot.”

“Bum to you.”

“Whut?”

“Extremely foolish soldier.”

“Whut?”

The captain was taken aback. Deeply ingrained in the Agatean psyche was the habit of obedience. But even stronger was a veneration of one’s ancestors and a respect for the elderly, and the captain had never seen anyone so elderly while still vertical. They practically were ancestors. The one in the wheelchair certainly smelled like one.

“Take them to the guardhouse!” he shouted.

The Horde let themselves be manhandled, and did it quite well. Mr. Saveloy had spent hours training them in this, since he knew he was dealing with men whose response to a tap on the shoulder was to turn around and hack off someone’s arm.

It was crowded in the guardhouse, with the Horde and the guards and with Mad Hamish’s wheelchair. One of the guards looked down at Hamish, glowering under his blanket.

“What do you have there, grandfather?”

A sword came up through the cloth and stabbed the guard in the thigh.

“Whut? Whut? Whutzeesay?”

“He said, ‘Aargh!,’ Hamish,” said Cohen, a knife appearing in his hand. With one movement his skinny arms had the captain in a lock, the knife at his throat.

“Whut?”

“He said, ‘Aargh!’”

“Whut? I ain’t even married!”

Cohen put a little more pressure on the captain’s neck.

“Now then, friend,” he said. “You can have it the easy way, see, or the hard way. It’s up to you.”

“Blood-sucking pig! You call this the easy way?”

“Well, I ain’t sweatin’.”

“May you live in interesting times! I would rather die than betray my Emperor!”

“Fair enough.”

It took the captain only a fraction of a second to realize that Cohen, being a man of his word, assumed that other people were too. He might, if he had time, have reflected that the purpose of civilization is to make violence the final resort, while to a barbarian it is the first, preferred, only and above all most enjoyable option. But by then it was too late. He slumped forward.

“I always lives in interestin’ times,” said Cohen, in the satisfied voice of someone who did a lot to keep them interesting.

He pointed his knife at the other guards. Mr. Saveloy’s mouth was wide open in horror.

“By rights I should be cleanin’ this,” said Cohen. “But I ain’t goin’ to bother if it’s only goin’ to get dirty again. Now, person’ly, I’d as soon kill you as look at you but Teach here says I’ve got to stop doin’ that and become respectable.”

One of the guards looked sideways at his fellows and then fell on his knees.

“What is your wish, o master?” he said.

“Ah, officer material,” said Cohen. “What’s your name, lad?”

“Nine Orange Trees, master.”

Cohen looked at Mr. Saveloy.

“What do I do now?”

“Take them prisoner, please.”

“How do I do that?”

“Well…I suppose you tie them up, that sort of thing.”

“Ah. And then cut their throats?”

“No! No. You see, once you’ve got them at your mercy, you’re not allowed to kill them.”

The Silver Horde, to a man, stared at the ex-teacher.

“I’m afraid that’s civilization for you,” he added.

“But you said the sods haven’t got any bloody weapons!” said Truckle.

“Yes,” said Mr. Saveloy, shuddering a little. “That’s why you’re not allowed to kill them.”

“Are you mad? Got mad papers, have you?”

Cohen scratched his stubbly chin. The remainder of the guard watched him in trepidation. They were used to cruel and unusual punishment, but they were unaccustomed to argument first.

“You haven’t had a tot of military experience, have you, Teach?” he said.

“Apart from Form Four? Not a lot. But I’m afraid this is the way it has to be done. I’m sorry. You did say you wanted me—”

“Well, I vote we just cuts their throats right now,” said Boy Willie. “I can’t be having with this prisoner business either. I mean, who’s gonna feed them?”

“I’m afraid you have to.”

“Who, me? Not likely! I vote we make them eat their own eyeballs. Hands up all in favor.”

There was a chorus of assent from the Horde and, among the raised hands, Cohen noticed one belonging to Nine Orange Trees.

“What you voting for, lad?” he said.

“Please, sir, I would like to go to the lavatory.”

“You listen to me, you lot,” said Cohen. “This slaughtering and butchering business isn’t how you do it these days, right? That’s what Mr. Saveloy says and he knows how to spell words like ‘marmalade’ which is more than you do. Now, we know why we’re here, and we’d better start as we mean to go on.”

“Yeah, but you just killed that guard,” said Truckle.

“I’m breaking myself in,” said Cohen. “You’ve got to creep up on civilization a bit at a time.”

“I still say we should cut their heads off. That’s what I did to the Mad Demon-Sucking Priests of Ee!”

The kneeling guard had cautiously raised his hand again.

“Please, master?”

“Yes, lad?”

“You could lock us up in that cell over there. Then we wouldn’t be any trouble to anyone.”

“Good thinking,” said Cohen. “Good lad. The boy keeps his head in a crisis. Lock ’em up.”

Thirty seconds later the Horde had limped off, into the city.

The guards sat in the cramped, hot cell.

Eventually one said, “What were they?”

“I think they might have been ancestors.”

“I thought you had to be dead to be an ancestor.”

“The one in the wheelchair looked dead. Right up to the point where he stabbed Four White Fox.”

“Should we shout for help?”

“They might hear us.”

“Yes, but if we don’t get let out we’ll be stuck in here. And the walls are very thick and the door is very strong.”

“Good.”

Rincewind stopped running in some alley somewhere. He hadn’t bothered to see if they’d followed him. It was true—here, with one mighty bound, you could be free. Provided you realized it was one of your options.

Freedom did, of course, include man’s age-old right to starve to death. It seemed a long time since his last proper meal.

The voice erupted further down the alley, as if on cue.

“Rice cakes! Rice cakes! Get chore nice rice cakes! Tea! Hundred-Year-Old Eggs! Eggs! Get them while they’re nice and vintage! Get chore—Yeah, what is it?”

An elderly man had approached the salesman.

“Dibhala-san! This egg you sold me—”

“What about it, venerable squire?”

“Would you care to smell it?”

The street vendor took a sniff.

“Ah, yes, lovely,” he said.

“Lovely? Lovely? This egg,” said the customer, “this egg is practically fresh!”

“Hundred years old if it’s a day, shogun,” said the vendor happily. “Look at the color of that shell, nice and black—”

“It rubs off!”

Rincewind listened. There was, he thought, probably something in the idea that there were only a few people in the world. There were lots of bodies, but only a few people. That’s why you kept running into the same ones. There was probably some mold somewhere.

“You saying my produce is fresh? May I disembowel myself honorably! Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do—”

Yes, there seemed to be something familiar and magical about that trader. Someone had come to complain about a fresh egg, and yet within a couple of minutes he’d somehow been talked into forgetting this and purchasing two rice cakes and something strange wrapped in leaves.

The rice cakes looked nice. Well…nicer than the other things.

Rincewind sidled over. The trader was idly jigging from one foot to the other and whistling under his breath, but he stopped and gave Rincewind a big, honest, friendly grin.

“Nice ancient egg, shogun?”

The bowl in the middle of the tray was full of gold coins. Rincewind’s heart sank. The price of one of Mr. Dibhala’s foul eggs would have bought a street in Ankh-Morpork.

“I suppose you don’t give…credit?” he suggested.

Dibhala gave him a Look.

“I’ll pretend I never heard that, shogun,” he said.

“Tell me,” said Rincewind. “Do you know if you have any relatives overseas?”

This got him another look—a sideways one, full of sudden appraisal.

“What? There’s nothing but evil blood-sucking ghosts beyond the seas. Everyone knows that, shogun. I’m surprised you don’t.”

“Ghosts?” said Rincewind.

“Trying to get here, do us harm,” said Disembowel-Meself-Honorably. “Maybe even steal our merchandise. Give ’em a dose of the old firecracker, that’s what I say. They don’t like a good loud bang, ghosts.”

He gave Rincewind another look, even longer and more calculating.

“Where you from, shogun?” he asked, and his voice suddenly had the little barbed edge of suspicion.

“Bes Pelargic,” said Rincewind quickly. “That explains my strange accent and mannerisms that might otherwise lead people to think I was some sort of foreigner,” he added.

“Oh, Bes Pelargic,” said Disembowel-Meself-Honorably. “Well, in that case, I expect you know my old friend Five Tongs who lives in the Street of Heavens, yes?”

Rincewind was ready for this old trick.

“No,” he said. “Never heard of him, never heard of the street.”

Disembowel-Meself-Honorably Dibhala grinned happily. “If I yell ‘foreign devil’ loud enough you won’t get three steps,” he said in conversational tones. “The guards will drag you off to the Forbidden City where there’s this special thing they do with—”

“I’ve heard about it,” said Rincewind.

“Five Tongs has been the district commissioner for three years and the Street of Heavens is the main street,” said Disembowel-Meself-Honorably. “I’ve always wanted to meet a blood-sucking foreign ghost. Have a rice cake.”

Rincewind’s gaze darted this way and that. But strangely enough the situation didn’t seem dangerous, or at least inevitably dangerous. It seemed that danger was negotiable.

“Supposing I was to admit I was from behind the Wall?” he said, keeping his voice as low as possible.

Dibhala nodded. One hand reached into his robe and, in a quick movement, revealed and then concealed the corner of something which Rincewind was not entirely surprised to see was entitled What I Did…

“Some people say that beyond the Wall there’s nothing but deserts and burning wastes and evil ghosts and terrible monsters,” said Dibhala, “but I say, what about the merchandizing opportunities? A man with the right contacts…Know what I mean, shogun? He could go a long way in the land of blood-sucking ghosts.”

Rincewind nodded. He didn’t like to point out that if you turned up in Ankh-Morpork with a handful of gold then about three hundred people would turn up with a handful of steel.

“The way I see it, what with all this uncertainty about the Emperor and talk of rebels and that—Long Live His Excellency The Son Of Heaven, of course—there might just be a nitch for the open-minded trader, am I right?”

“Nitch?”

“Nitch. Like…we’ve got this stuff”—he leaned closer—“comes out of a caterpillar’s [unidentified pictogram]. ’S called…silk. It’s—”

“Yes, I know. We get it from Klatch,” said Rincewind.

“Or, well, there’s this bush, see, you dry the leaves, but then you put it in hot water and you drin—”

“Tea, yes,” said Rincewind. “That comes from Howondaland.”

D. M. H. Dibhala looked taken aback.

“Well…we’ve got this powder, you put it in tubes—”

“Fireworks? Got fireworks.”

“How about this really fine china, it’s so—”

“In Ankh-Morpork we’ve got dwarfs that can make china you can read a book through,” said Rincewind. “Even if it’s got tiny footnotes in it.”

Dibhala frowned.

“Sounds like you are very clever blood-sucking ghosts,” he said, backing away. “Maybe it’s true and you are dangerous.”

“Us? Don’t worry about us,” said Rincewind. “We hardly ever kill foreigners in Ankh-Morpork. It makes it so hard to sell them things afterwards.”

“What’ve we got that you want, though? Go on, have a rice cake. On the pagoda. Wanna try some pork balls? Onna chopstick?”

Rincewind selected a cake. He didn’t like to ask about the other stuff.

“You’ve got gold,” he said.

“Oh, gold. It’s too soft to do much with,” said Dibhala. “It’s all right for pipes and putting on roofs, though.”

“Oh…I daresay people in Ankh-Morpork could find a use for some,” said Rincewind. His gaze returned to the coins in Dibhala’s tray.

A land where gold was as cheap as lead…

“What’s that?” he said, pointing to a crumpled rectangle half covered with coins.

D. M. H. Dibhala looked down. “It’s this thing we have here,” he said, speaking slowly. “Of course, it’s probably all new to you. It’s called mon-ey. It’s a way of carrying around your—”

“I meant the bit of paper,” said Rincewind.

“So did I,” said Dibhala. “That’s a ten-rhinu note.”

“What does that mean?” said Rincewind.

“Means what it says,” said Dibhala. “Means it’s worth ten of these.” He held up a gold coin about the size of a rice cake.

“Why’d you want to buy a piece of paper?” said Rincewind.

“You don’t buy it, it’s for buying things with,” said Dibhala.

Rincewind looked blank.

“You go to a mark-et stall,” said Dibhala, getting back into the slow-voice-for-the-hard-of-thinking, “and you say, ‘Good morn-ing, but-cher, how much for those dog noses?’ and he says, ‘Three rhinu, shogun,’ and you say, ‘I’ve only got a pony, okay?’ (look, there’s an etch-ing of a pony on it, see, that’s what you get on ten-rhinu notes) and he gives you the dog noses and seven coins in what we call ‘change.’ Now, if you had a monkey, that’s fifty rhinu, he’d say ‘Got anything smal-ler?’ and—”

“But it’s only a bit of paper!” Rincewind wailed.

“It may be a bit of paper to you but it’s ten rice cakes to me,” said Dibhala. “What do you foreign blood-suckers use? Big stones with holes in them?”

Rincewind stared at the paper money.

There were dozens of papermills in Ankh-Morpork, and some of the craftsmen in the Engravers’ Guild could engrave their name and address on a pinhead.

He suddenly felt immensely proud of his countrymen. They might be venal and greedy, but by heaven they were good at it and they never assumed that there wasn’t any more to learn.

“I think you’ll find,” he said, “that there’s a lot of buildings in Ankh-Morpork that need new roofs.”

“Really?” said Dibhala.

“Oh, yes. The rain’s just pouring in.”

“And people can pay? Only I heard—”

Rincewind looked at the paper money again. He shook his head. Worth more than gold…

“They’ll pay with notes at least as good as that,” he said. “Probably even better. I’ll put in a good word for you. And now,” he added hurriedly, “which way is out?”

Dibhala scratched his head.

“Could be a bit tricky,” he said. “There’s armies outside. You look a bit foreign with that hat. Could be tricky—”

There was a commotion further along the alley or, rather, a general increase in the commotion. The crowd parted in that hurried way common to unarmed crowds in the presence of weaponry, and a group of guards hurried towards Disembowel-Meself-Honorably.

He stepped back and gave them the friendly grin of one happy to sell at a discount to anyone with a knife.

A limp figure was being dragged between two of the guards. As it went past it raised a slightly bloodstained head and said, “Extended Duration to the—” before a gloved fist smacked across its mouth.

And then the guards were heading down the street. The crowd flowed back.

“Tch, tch,” said D. M. H. “Seems to be—Hello? Where’d you go?”

Rincewind reappeared from around a corner. D. M. H. looked impressed. There had actually been a small thunderclap when Rincewind moved.

“See they got another of ’em,” he said. “Putting up wall posters again, I expect.”

“Another one of who?” said Rincewind.

“Red Army. Huh!”

“Oh.”

“I don’t pay much attention,” said D. M. H. “They say some old legend’s going to come true about emperors and stuff. Can’t see it myself.”

“He didn’t look very legendary,” said Rincewind.

“Ach, some people will believe anything.”

“What’ll happen to him?”

“Difficult to say, with the Emperor about to die. Hands and feet cut off, probably.”

“What? Why?”

“’Cos he’s young. That’s leniency. A bit older and it’s his head on a spike over one of the gates.”

“That’s punishment for putting up a poster?”

“Stops ’em doing it again, see,” said D. M. H. Rincewind backed away.

“Thank you,” he said, and hurried off.

“Oh, no,” he said, pushing his way through the crowds. “I’m not getting mixed up in people’s heads getting chopped off—”

And then someone hit him again. But politely.

As he sank to his knees, and then to his chin, he wondered what had happened to the good old-fashioned “Hey, you!”

The Silver Horde wandered through the alleys of Hunghung.

“I don’t call this bloody well sweeping through a city, slaughtering every bugger,” muttered Truckle. “When I was riding with Bruce the Hoon, we never walked in through a front gate like a bunch of soppy mother—”

“Mr. Uncivil,” said Mr. Saveloy hurriedly, “I wonder if this might be a good time to refer you to that list I drew up for you?”

“What bloody list?” said Truckle, sticking out his jaw belligerently.

“The list of acceptable civilized words, yes?” He turned to the others. “Remember I was telling you about civ-il-ized be-hav-ior. Civilized behavior is vital to our long-term strategy.”

“What’s a long-term strategy?” said Caleb the Ripper.

“It’s what we’re going to do later,” said Cohen.

“And what’s that, then?”

“It’s the Plan,” said Cohen.

“Well, I’ll be f—” Truckle began.

“The list, Mr. Uncivil, only the words on the list,” snapped Mr. Saveloy. “Listen, I bow to your expertise when it comes to crossing wilderness, but this is civilization and you must use the right words. Please?”

“Better do what he says, Truckle,” said Cohen.

With bad grace, Truckle fished a grubby piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it.

“‘Dang’?” he said. “Wassat mean? And what’s this ‘darn’ and ‘heck’?”

“They are…civilized swearwords,” said Mr. Saveloy.

“Well, you can take ’em and—”

“Ah?” said Mr. Saveloy, raising a cautionary finger.

“You can shove them up—”

“Ah?”

“You can—”

“Ah?”

Truckle shut his eyes and clenched his fists.

“Dang it all to heck!” he shouted.

“Good,” said Mr. Saveloy. “That’s much better.”

He turned to Cohen, who was grinning happily at Truckle’s discomfort.

“Cohen,” he said, “there’s an apple stall over there. Do you fancy an apple?”

“Yeah, might do,” Cohen conceded, in the cautious manner of someone giving a conjuror his watch while remaining aware that the man is grinning and holding a hammer.

“Right. Now, then, cla—I mean, gentlemen. Ghenghiz wants an apple. There’s a stall over there selling fruit and nuts. What does he do?” Mr. Saveloy looked hopefully at his charges. “Anyone? Yes?”

“Easy. You kill that little”—there was a rustle of unfolding paper again—“chap behind the stall, then—”

“No, Mr. Uncivil. Anyone else?”

“Whut?”

“You set fire to—”

“No, Mr. Vincent. Anyone else…?”

“You rape—”

“No, no, Mr. Ripper,” said Mr. Saveloy. “We take out some muh—muh—?” He looked at them expectantly.

“—money—” chorused the Horde.

“—and we…What do we do? Now, we’ve gone through this hundreds of times. We…”

This was the difficult bit. The Horde’s lined faces creased and puckered still further as they tried to force their minds out of the chasms of habit.

“Gi…?” said Cohen hesitantly. Mr. Saveloy gave him a big smile and a nod of encouragement.

“Give?…it…to…” Cohen’s lips tensed around the word “…him?”

“Yes! Well done. In exchange for the apple. We’ll talk about making change and saying ‘thank you’ later on, when you’re ready for it. Now then, Cohen, here’s the coin. Off you go.”

Cohen wiped his forehead. He was beginning to sweat.

“How about if I just cut him up a bit—”

“No! This is civilization.”

Cohen nodded uncomfortably. He threw back his shoulders and walked over to the stall, where the apple merchant, who had been eying the group suspiciously, nodded at him.

Cohen’s eyes glazed and his lips moved silently, as if he were rehearsing a script. Then he said:

“Ho, fat merchant, give me all your…one apple…and I will give you…this coin…”

He looked around. Mr. Saveloy had his thumb up.

“You want an apple, is that it?” said the apple merchant.

“Yes!”

The apple merchant selected one. Cohen’s sword had been hidden in the wheelchair again but the merchant, in response to some buried acknowledgement, made sure it was a good apple. Then he took the coin. This proved a little difficult, since his customer seemed loath to let go of it.

“Come on, hand it over, venerable one,” he said.

Seven crowded seconds passed.

Then, when they were safely around the corner, Mr. Saveloy said, “Now, everyone: who can tell me what Ghenghiz did wrong?”

“Didn’t say please?”

“Whut?”

“No.”

“Didn’t say thank you?”

“Whut?”

“No.”

“Hit the man over the head with a melon and thumped him into the strawberries and kicked him in the nuts and set fire to his stall and stole all the money?”

“Whut?”

“Correct!” Mr. Saveloy sighed. “Ghenghiz, you were doing so well up to then.”

“He didn’t ort to have called me what he did!”

“But ‘venerable’ means old and wise, Ghenghiz.”

“Oh. Does it?”

“Yes.”

“We-ell…I did leave him the money for the apple.”

“Yes, but, you see, I do believe you took all his other money.”

“But I paid for the apple,” said Cohen, rather testily.

Mr. Saveloy sighed. “Ghenghiz, I do rather get the impression that several thousand years of the patient development of fiscal propriety have somewhat passed you by.”

“Come again?”

“It is possible sometimes for money to legitimately belong to other people,” said Mr. Saveloy patiently.

The Horde paused to wrap their minds around this, too. It was, of course, something they knew to be true in theory. Merchants always had money. But it seemed wrong to think of it as belonging to them; it belonged to whoever took it off them. Merchants didn’t actually own it, they were just looking after it until it was needed.

“Now, there is an elderly lady over there selling ducks,” said Mr. Saveloy. “I think the next stage—Mr. Willie, I am not over there, I am sure whatever you are looking at is very interesting, but please pay attention—is to practice our grasp of social intercourse.”

“Hur, hur, hur,” said Caleb the Ripper.

“I mean, Mr. Ripper, that you should go and enquire how much it would be for a duck,” said Mr. Saveloy.

“Hur, hur, hur—What?”

“And you are not to rip all her clothes off. That’s not civilized.”

Caleb scratched his head. Flakes fell out.

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?”

“Er…engage her in conversation.”

“Eh? What’s there to talk about with a woman?”

Mr. Saveloy hesitated again. To some extent this was unknown territory to him as well. His experience with women at his last school had been limited to an occasional chat with the housekeeper, and on one occasion the matron had let him put his hand on her knee. He had been forty before he found out that oral sex didn’t mean talking about it. Women had always been to him strange and distant and wonderful creatures rather than, as the Horde to a man believed, something to do. He was struggling a little.

“The weather?” he hazarded. His memory threw in vague recollections of the staple conversation of the maiden aunt who had brought him up. “Her health? The trouble with young people today?”

“And then I rip her clothes off?”

“Possibly. Eventually. If she wants you to. I might draw your attention to the discussion we had the other day about taking regular baths”—or even a bath, he added to himself—“and attention to fingernails and hair and changing your clothes more often.”

“This is leather,” said Caleb. “You don’t have to change it, it don’t rot for years.”

Once again Mr. Saveloy readjusted his sights. He’d thought that Civilization could be overlaid on the Horde like a veneer. He had been mistaken.

But the funny thing—he mused, as the Horde watched Caleb’s painful attempts at conversation with a representative of half the world’s humanity—was that although they were as far away as possible from the kind of people he normally mixed with in staffrooms, or possibly because they were as far away as possible from the kind of people he normally mixed with in staffrooms, he actually liked them. Every one of them saw a book as either a lavatorial accessory or a set of portable firefighters and thought that hygiene was a greeting. Yet they were honest (from their specialized point of view) and decent (from their specialized point of view) and saw the world as hugely simple. They stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn’t steal from poor people; this was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was simply because poor people had no money.

And although they didn’t set out to give the money away to the poor, that was nevertheless what they did (if you accepted that the poor consisted of innkeepers, ladies of negotiable virtue, pickpockets, gamblers, and general hangers-on), because although they would go to great lengths to steal money they then had as much control over it as a man trying to herd cats. It was there to be spent and lost. So they kept the money in circulation, always a praiseworthy thing in any society.

They never worried about what other people thought. Mr. Saveloy, who’d spent his whole life worrying about what other people thought and had been passed over for promotion and generally treated as a piece of furniture as a result, found this strangely attractive. And they never agonized about anything, or wondered if they were doing the right thing. And they enjoyed themselves immensely. They had a kind of honor. He liked the Horde. They weren’t his kind of people.

Caleb returned, looking unusually thoughtful.

“Congratulations, Mr. Ripper!” said Mr. Saveloy, a great believer in positive reinforcement. “She still appears to be fully clothed.”

“Yeah, what’d she say?” said Boy Willie.

“She smiled at me,” said Caleb. He scratched his crusty beard uneasily. “A bit, anyway,” he added.

“Good,” said Mr. Saveloy.

“She, er…she said she’d…she wouldn’t mind seein’ me…later…”

“Well done!”

“Er…Teach? What’s a shave?”

Saveloy explained.

Caleb listened carefully, grimacing occasionally. He turned round occasionally to look at the duck seller, who gave him a little wave.

“Cor,” he said. “Er. I dunno…” He looked around again. “Never seen a woman who wasn’t running away before.”

“Oh, women are like deer,” said Cohen loftily. “You can’t just charge in, you gotta stalk ’em—”

“Hur, hur, h—Sorry,” said Caleb, catching Mr. Saveloy’s stern eye.

“I think perhaps we should end the lesson here,” said Mr. Saveloy. “We don’t want to get you too civilized, do we…? I suggest we take a stroll around the Forbidden City, yes?”

They’d all seen it. It dominated the center of Hunghung. Its walls were forty feet high.

“There’s a lot of soldiers guarding the gates,” said Cohen.

“So they should. A great treasure lies within,” said Mr. Saveloy. He didn’t raise his eyes, though. He seemed to be staring intently at the ground, as though searching for something he’d lost.

“Why don’t we just rush up and kill the guards?” Caleb demanded. He was still feeling a bit shaken.

“Whut?”

“Don’t be daft,” said Cohen. “It’d take all day. Anyway,” he added, feeling a little proud despite himself, “Teach here is goin’ to get us in on an invisible duck, ain’t that so, Teach?”

Mr. Saveloy stopped.

“Ah. Eureka,” he said.

“That’s Ephebian, that is,” Cohen told the Horde. “It means ‘Give me a towel.’”

“Oh, yeah,” said Caleb, who had been surreptitiously trying to untangle the knots in his beard. “And when were you ever in Ephebe?”

“Went bounty hunting there once.”

“Who for?”

“You, I think.”

“Hah! Did you find me?”

“Dunno. Nod your head and see if it falls off.”

“Ah. Gentlemen…behold…”

Mr. Saveloy’s orthopaedic sandal was prodding an ornamental metal square in the ground.

“Behold what?” said Truckle.

“Whut?”

“We should look for more of these,” said Mr. Saveloy. “But I think we have it. All we need to do now is wait until dark.”

There was an argument going on. All Rincewind could make out were the voices; another sack had been tied over his head, while he himself was tied to a pillar.

“Does he even look like a Great Wizard?”

“That’s what it says on his hat in the language of ghosts—”

“So you say!”

“What about the testimony of Four Big Sandal, then?”

“He was overtaxed. He could have imagined it!”

“I did not! He came out of thin air, flying like a dragon! He knocked over five soldiers. And Three Maximum Luck saw it also. And the others. And then he freed an ancient man and turned him into a mighty fighting warrior!”

“And he can speak our language, just as it says in the book.”

“All right. Supposing he is the Great Wizard? Then we should kill him now!”

In the darkness of his sack, Rincewind shook his head furiously.

“Why?”

“He will be on the side of the Emperor.”

“But the legend says the Great Wizard led the Red Army!”

“Yes, for Emperor One Sun Mirror. It crushed the people!”

“No, it crushed all the bandit chiefs! Then it built the Empire!”

“So? The Empire is so great? Untimely Demise To The Forces Of Oppression!”

“But now the Red Army is on the side of the people! Maximum Advancement With The Great Wizard!”

“The Great Wizard is the Enemy of the People!”

“I saw him, I tell you! A legion of soldiers collapsed with the wind of his passage!”

The wind of his passage was beginning to worry Rincewind as well. It always tended to when he was frightened.

“If he is such a great wizard, why is he still tied up? Why has he not made his bonds disappear in puffs of green smoke?”

“Perhaps he is saving his magic for some even mightier deeds. He wouldn’t do firecracker tricks for earthworms.”

“Hah!”

“And he had the Book! He was looking for us! It is his destiny to lead the Red Army!”

Shake, shake, shake.

“We can lead ourselves!”

Nod, nod, nod.

“We don’t need any suspicious Great Wizards from illusionary places!”

Nod, nod, nod.

“So we should kill him now!”

Nod, no—Shakeshakeshake.

“Hah! He laughs at you with scorn! He waits to make your head explode with snakes of fire!”

Shake, shake, shake.

“You do know that while we’re arguing Three Yoked Oxen is being tortured?”

“The People’s Army is more than just individuals, Lotus Blossom!”

In the fetid sack Rincewind grimaced. He was already beginning to take a dislike to the first speaker, as one naturally does with people urging that you be put to death without delay. But when that sort of person started talking about things being more important than people, you knew you were in big trouble.

“I’m sure the Great Wizard could rescue Three Yoked Oxen,” said a voice by his ear. It was Butterfly.

“Yes, he could easily rescue Three Yoked Oxen!” said Lotus Blossom.

“Hah! You say? He could get into the Forbidden City? Impossible! It’s certain death!”

Nod, nod, nod.

“Not to the Great Wizard,” said the voice of Butterfly.

“Shut up!” hissed Rincewind.

“Would you like to know how big the meat cleaver is that Two Fire Herb is holding in his hand?” whispered Butterfly.

“No!”

“It’s very big.”

“He said that going into the Forbidden City is certain death!”

“No. It’s only probable death. I assure you, if you run away from me again that is certain death.”

The sack was pulled away.

The face immediately in front of him was that of Lotus Blossom, and a man could see a lot worse things with his daylight than her face, which made him think of cream and masses of butter and just the right amount of salt.^*

One of the things he might see, for example, was the face of Two Fire Herb. This was not a nice face. It was podgy and had tiny little pupils in its eyes, and looked like a living example of the fact that although the people could be oppressed by kings and emperors and mandarins, the job could often be done just as well by the man next door.

“Great Wizard? Hah!” Two Fire Herb said now.

“He can do it!” said Lotus Blossom (and cream cheese, thought Rincewind, and maybe coleslaw on the side). “He is the Great Wizard come back to us! Did he not guide the Master through the lands of ghosts and blood-sucking vampires?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say—” Rincewind began.

“Such a great wizard allowed you to bring him here in a sack?” said Two Fire Herb, sneering. “Let us see him do some conjuring…”

“A truly great wizard would not stoop to doing party tricks!” said Lotus Blossom.

“That’s right,” said Rincewind. “Not stoop.”

“Shame on Herb to suggest such a thing!”

“Shame,” Rincewind agreed.

“Besides, he will need all of his power to enter the Forbidden City,” said Butterfly. Rincewind found himself hating the sound of her voice.

“Forbidden City,” he murmured.

“Everyone knows there are terrible snares and traps and many, many guards.”

“Snares, traps…”

“Why, if his magic should fail him because he did tricks for Herb, he would find himself in the deepest dungeon, dying by inches.”

“Inches…er…which particular inch—”

“So much shame to Two Fire Herb!”

Rincewind gave her a sickly grin.

“Actually,” he said, “I’m not that great. I’m a bit great,” he added quickly, as Butterfly began to frown, “but not very great—”

“The writings of the Master say that you defeated many powerful enchanters and resolutely succeeded in dangerous situations.”

Rincewind nodded glumly. It was more or less true. But most of the time he hadn’t intended to. Whereas the Forbidden City had looked…well…forbidden. It didn’t look inviting. It didn’t look as though it sold postcards. The only souvenir they were likely to give you would be, perhaps, your teeth. In a bag.

“Er…I expect this Oxen lad is in some deep dungeon, yes?”

“The deepest,” said Two Fire Herb.

“And…you’ve never seen anyone again? Who’s been taken prisoner, I mean.”

“We have seen bits of them,” said Lotus Blossom.

“Usually their heads,” said Two Fire Herb. “On spikes over the gates.”

“But not Three Yoked Oxen,” said Lotus Blossom firmly. “The Great Wizard has spoken!”

“Actually, I’m not sure I actually said—”

“You have spoken,” said Butterfly firmly.

As Rincewind got accustomed to the gloom he realized that he was in some storeroom or cellar; the noise of the city came, rather muffled, from grilles near the ceiling. It was half full of barrels and bundles, and every one of them was a perch for someone. The room was crowded.

The people were watching him with expressions of rapt attention, but that wasn’t the only thing they had in common.

Rincewind turned right around.

“Who are all these children?” he said.

“This,” said Lotus Blossom, “is the Hunghung cadre of the Red Army.”

Two Fire Herb snorted.

“Why did you tell him that?” he said. “Now we may have to kill him.”

“But they’re all so young!”

“They may be underprivileged in years,” said Two Fire Herb, “but they are ancient in courage and honor.”

“And experienced in fighting?” said Rincewind hotly. “The guards I’ve seen do not look like nice people. I mean, do you even have any weapons?”

“We will wrest the weapons we need from our enemies!” said Two Fire Herb. A cheer went up.

“Really? How do you actually make them let go?” said Rincewind. He pointed to a very small girl, who leaned away from his digit as though it were loaded. She looked about seven and was holding a toy rabbit.

“What’s your name?”

“One Favorite Pearl, Great Wizard!”

“And what do you do in the Red Army?”

“I have earned a medal for putting up of wall posters, Great Wizard!”

“What…like ‘Slightly Bad Things Please Happen To Our Enemies’? That sort of thing?”

“Er…” said the girl, looking imploringly at Butterfly.

“Rebellion is not easy for us,” said the older girl. “We don’t have…experience.”

“Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t do it by singing songs and putting up posters and fighting bare-handed,” said Rincewind. “Not when you’re up against real people with real weapons. You…” His voice trailed away as he realized that a hundred pairs of eyes were watching him intently, and two hundred ears were carefully listening.

He played back his own words in the echo chamber of his head. He’d said, “I’m here to tell you…”

He spread out his hands and waved them frantically.

“…that is, it’s not up to me to tell you anything,” he said.

“That is correct,” said Two Fire Herb. “We will overcome because history is on our side.”

“We will overcome because the Great Wizard is on our side,” said Butterfly sharply.

“I’ll tell you this!” shouted Rincewind. “I’d rather trust me than history! Oh, shit, did I just say that?”

“So you will help Three Yoked Oxen,” said Butterfly.

“Please!” said Lotus Blossom.

Rincewind looked at her, and the tears in the corners of her eyes, and the bunch of awed teenagers who really thought that you could beat an army by singing rousing songs.

There was only one thing he could do, if he really thought about it.

He could play along for now and then get the hell out of it at the very first opportunity. Butterfly’s anger was bad, but a spike was a spike. Of course, he’d feel a bit of a heel for a while, but that was the point. He’d feel a heel, but he wouldn’t feel a spike.

The world had too many heroes and didn’t need another one. Whereas the world had only one Rincewind and he owed it to the world to keep this one alive for as long as possible.

There was an inn. There was a courtyard. There was a corral, for the Luggages.

There were large traveling trunks, big enough to carry the needs of an entire household for a fortnight. There were merchant’s sample cases, mere square boxes on crude legs. There were sleek overnight bags.

They shuffled aimlessly in their pen. Occasionally there was the rattle of a handle or the creak of a hinge, and once or twice the snap of a lid and the bonk-bonk-bonk of boxes trying to get out of the way.

Three of them were big and covered with studded leather. They looked the kind of travelling accessories that hang around outside cheap hotels and make suggestive remarks to handbags.

The object of their attention was a rather smaller trunk with an inlaid lid and dainty feet. It had already backed into a corner as far as it could go.

A large spiked lid creaked open a couple of times as the largest of the boxes edged closer.

The smaller box had retreated so far its back legs were trying to climb the corral fence.

There was the sound of running feet on the other side of the courtyard wall. They got closer, and then stopped abruptly.

Then there was a twang such as would be made by an object landing on the taut roof of a cart.

For a moment, against the rising moon, there was the shape of something somersaulting slowly through the evening air.

It landed heavily in front of the three big chests, bounced upright, and charged.

Eventually various travelers spilled out into the night but by then items of clothing were strewn and trampled around the courtyard. Three black chests, battered and scarred, were discovered on the roof, each one scrabbling on the tiles and butting the others in an effort to be the highest. Others had panicked and broken down the wall and headed out across the country.

Eventually, all but one of them were found.

The Horde were feeling quite proud of themselves when they sat down for dinner. They acted, Mr. Saveloy thought, rather like boys who’d just got their first pair of long trousers.

Which they had done. Each man had one baggy pair of same, plus a long grey robe.

“We’ve been shopping,” said Caleb proudly. “Paying for things with money. We’re dressed up like civilized people.”

“Yes indeed,” said Mr. Saveloy indulgently. He was hoping that they could all get through this without the Horde finding out what kind of civilized people they were dressed up as. As it was, the beards were a problem. The kind of people who wore these kind of clothes in the Forbidden City didn’t usually have beards. They were proverbial for not having them. Actually, they were more properly proverbial for not having other things but, as a sort of consequence of this lack, also for not having beards.

Cohen shifted. “Itchy,” he said. “This is pants, is it? Never worn ’em before. Same with shirts. What good’s a shirt that’s not chain mail?”

“We did very well, though,” said Caleb. He had even had a shave, obliging the barber, for the first time in his experience, to use a chisel. He kept rubbing his naked, baby-pink chin.

“Yeah, we’re really civilized,” said Vincent.

“Except for the bit where you set fire to that shopkeeper,” said Boy Willie.

“Nah, I only set fire to him a bit.”

“Whut?”

“Teach?”

“Yes, Cohen?”

“Why did you tell that firework merchant that everyone you knew had died suddenly?”

Mr. Saveloy’s foot tapped gently against the large parcel under the table, alongside a nice new cauldron.

“So he wouldn’t get suspicious about what I was buying,” he said.

“Five thousand firecrackers?”

“Whut?”

“Well,” said Mr. Saveloy. “Did I ever tell you that after I taught geography in the Assassins’ Guild and the Plumbers’ Guild I did it for a few terms in the Alchemists’ Guild?”

“Alchemists? Loonies, the lot of them,” said Truckle.

“But they’re keen on geography,” said Mr. Saveloy. “I suppose they need to know where they’ve landed. Eat up, gentlemen. It may be a long night.”

“What is this stuff?” said Truckle, spearing something with his chopstick.

“Er. Chow,” said Mr. Saveloy.

“Yes, but what is it?”

“Chow. A kind of…er…dog.”

The Horde looked at him.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said hurriedly, with the sincerity of a man who had ordered bamboo shoots and bean curd for himself.

“I’ve eaten everything else,” said Truckle, “but I ain’t eating dog. I had a dog once. Rover.”

“Yeah,” said Cohen. “The one with the spiked collar? The one who used to eat people?”

“Say what you like, he was a friend to me,” said Truckle, pushing the meat to one side.

“Rabid death to everyone else. I’ll eat yours. Order him some chicken, Teach.”

“Et a man once,” mumbled Mad Hamish. “In a siege, it were.”

“You ate someone?” said Mr. Saveloy, beckoning to the waiter.

“Just a leg.”

“That’s terrible!”

“Not with mustard.”

Just when I think I know them, Mr. Saveloy mused…

He reached for his wine glass. The Horde reached for their glasses, too, while watching him carefully.

“A toast, gentlemen,” he said. “And remember what I said about not quaffing. Quaffing just gets your ears wet. Just sip. To Civilization!”

The Horde joined in with their own toasts.

“‘Pcharn’kov!’”^*

“‘Lie down on the floor and no one gets hurt!’”

“‘May you live in interesting pants!’”

“‘What’s the magic word? Gimme!’”

“‘Death to most tyrants!’”

“Whut?”

“The walls of the Forbidden City are forty feet high,” said Butterfly.

“And the gates are made of brass. There are hundreds of guards. But of course we have the Great Wizard.”

“Who?”

“You.”

“Sorry, I was forgetting.”

“Yes,” said Butterfly, giving Rincewind a long, appraising look. Rincewind remembered tutors giving him a look like that when he’d got high marks in some test by simply guessing at the answers.

He looked down hurriedly at the charcoal scrawls Lotus Blossom had made.

Cohen’d know what to do, he thought. He’d just slaughter his way through. It’d never cross his mind to be afraid or worried. He’s the kind of man you need at a time like this.

“No doubt you have magic spells that can blow down the walls,” said Lotus Blossom.

Rincewind wondered what they would do to him when it turned out that he couldn’t. Not a lot, he thought, if I’m already running. Of course they could curse his memory and call him names, but he was used to that. Sticks and stones may break my bones, he thought. He was vaguely aware that there was a second half to the saying, but he’d never bothered because the first half always occupied all his attention.

Even the Luggage had left him. That was a minor bright spot, but he missed that patter of little feet…

“Before we start,” he said, “I think you ought to sing a revolutionary song.”

The cadre liked the idea. Under cover of their chanting he sidled over to Butterfly, who gave him a knowing smile.

“You know I can’t do it!”

“The Master said you were very resourceful.”

“I can’t magic a hole in a wall!”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something. And…Great Wizard?”

“Yes, what?”

“Favorite Pearl, the child with the toy rabbit…”

“Yes?”

“The cadre is all she has. The same goes for many of the others. When the warlords fight, lots of people die. Parents. Do you understand? I was one of the first to read What I Did On My Holidays, Great Wizard, and what I saw in there was a foolish man who for some reason is always lucky. Great Wizard…I hope for everyone’s sake you have a great deal of luck. Especially for yours.”

Fountains tinkled in the courts of the Sun Emperor. Peacocks made their call, which sounds like a sound made by something that shouldn’t look as beautiful as that. Ornamental trees cast their shade as only they knew how—ornamentally.

The gardens occupied the heart of the city and it was possible to hear the noises from outside, although these were muted because of the straw spread daily on the nearest streets and also because any sound considered too loud would earn its originator a very brief stay in prison.

Of the gardens, the most aesthetically pleasing was the one laid out by the first Emperor, One Sun Mirror. It consisted entirely of gravel and stones, but artfully raked and laid out as it might be by a mountain torrent with a refined artistic sense. It was here that One Sun Mirror, in whose reign the Empire had been unified and the Great Wall built, came to refresh his soul and dwell upon the essential unity of all things, while drinking wine out of the skull of some enemy or possibly a gardener who had been too clumsy with his rake.

At the moment the garden was occupied by Two Little Wang, the Master of Protocol, who came there because he felt it was good for his nerves.

Perhaps it was the number two, he’d always told himself. It was an unlucky birth number. Being called Little Wang was merely a lack-of-courtesy detail, a sort of minor seagull dropping after the great heap of buffalo excrement that Heaven had pasted into his very horoscope. Although he had to admit that he hadn’t made things any better by allowing himself to become Master of Protocol.

It had seemed such a good idea at the time. He’d risen gently through the Agatean civil service by mastering those arts essential to the practice of good government and administration (such as calligraphy, origami, flower arranging, and the Five Wonderful Forms of poetry). He’d dutifully got on with the tasks assigned to him and noticed only vaguely that there didn’t seem to be quite as many high-ranking members of the civil service as there used to be, and then one day a lot of senior mandarins—most of them a lot more senior than he was, it occurred to him later—had rushed up to him while he was trying to find a rhyme for “orange blossom” and congratulated him on being the new Master.

That had been three months ago.

And of the things that had occurred to him in those intervening three months the most shameful was this: he had come to believe that the Sun Emperor was not, in fact, the Lord of Heaven, the Pillar of the Sky and the Great River of Blessings, but an evil-minded madman whose death had been too long delayed.

It was an awful thought. It was like hating motherhood and raw fish, or objecting to sunlight. Most people develop their social conscience when young, during that brief period between leaving school and deciding that injustice isn’t necessarily all bad, and it was something of a shock to suddenly find one at the age of sixty.

It wasn’t that he was against the Golden Rules. It made sense that a man prone to thieving should have his hands cut off. It prevented him from thieving again and thus tarnishing his soul. A peasant who could not pay his taxes should be executed, in order to prevent him falling into the temptations of slothfulness and public disorder. And since the Empire was created by Heaven as the only true world of human beings, all else outside being a land of ghosts, it was certainly in order to execute those who questioned this state of affairs.

But he felt that it wasn’t right to laugh happily while doing so. It wasn’t pleasant that these things should happen, it was merely necessary.

From somewhere in the distance came the screams. The Emperor was playing chess again. He preferred to use live pieces.

Two Little Wang felt heavy with knowledge. There had been better times. He knew that now. Things hadn’t always been the way they were. Emperors didn’t use to be cruel clowns, around whom it was as safe as mudbanks in the crocodile season. There hadn’t always been a civil war every time an Emperor died. Warlords hadn’t run the country. People had rights as well as duties.

And then one day the succession had been called into question and there was a war and since then it’d never seemed to go right.

Soon, with any luck, the Emperor would die. No doubt a special Hell was being made ready. And there’d be the usual battle, and then there’d be a new Emperor, and if he was very lucky Two Little Wang would be beheaded, which was what tended to happen to people who had risen to high office under a previous incumbent. But that was quite reasonable by modern standards, since it was possible these days to be beheaded for interrupting the Emperor’s thoughts or standing in the wrong place.

At which point, Two Little Wang heard ghosts.

They seemed to be right under his feet.

They were talking in a strange language, so to Two Little Wang the speech was merely sounds, which went as follows:

“Where the hell are we?”

“Somewhere under the palace, I’m sure. Look for another manhole in the ceiling…”

“Whut?”

“I’m fed up with pushing this damn wheelchair!”

“It’s me for a hot footbath after this, I’m telling you.”

“You call this a way to enter a city? You call this a way to enter a city? Waist-deep in water? We didn’t enter a…wretched…city like this when I rode with Bruce the Hoon! You enter a…lovemaking…city by overrunning it with a thousand horsemen, that’s how you take a city—!”

“Yeah, but there ain’t room for ’em in this pipe.”

The sounds had a hollow, booming quality to them. With a kind of fascinated puzzlement Two Little Wang followed them, walking across the manicured gravel in an unthinking way that would have earned him an immediate tongue-extraction from its original lover of peace and tranquility.

“Can we please hurry? I’d like us to be out of here when the cauldron goes off and I didn’t really have much time to experiment with the fuses.”

“I still don’t understand about the cauldron, Teach.”

“I hope all those firecrackers will blow a hole in the wall.”

“Right! So why ain’t we there? Why are we in this pipe?”

“Because all the guards will rush to see what the bang was.”

“Right! So we should be there!”

“No! We should be here, Cohen. The word is decoy. It’s…more civilized this way.”

Two Little Wang pressed his ear to the ground.

“What’s the penalty for entering the Forbidden City again, Teach?”

“I believe it’s a punishment similar to hanging, drawing, and quartering. So, you see, it would be a good idea if—”

There was a very faint splashing.

“How’re you drawn, then?”

“I think your innards are cut out and shown to you.”

“What for?”

“I don’t really know. To see if you recognize them, I suppose.”

“What…like, ‘Yep, that’s my kidneys, yep, that’s my breakfast’?”

“How’re you quartered? Is that, like, they give you somewhere to stay?”

“I think not, from context.”

For a while there was no sound but the splash of six pairs of feet and the squeak-squeak of what sounded like a wheel.

“Well, how’re you hung?”

“Excuse me?”

“Hur, hur, hur…sorry, sorry.”

Two Little Wang tripped over a two-hundred-year-old bonsai tree and hit his head on a rock chosen for its fundamental serenity. When he came round, a few seconds later, the voices had gone. If there had ever been any.

Ghosts. There were a lot of ghosts around these days. Two Little Wang wished he had a few firecrackers to scatter around.

Being Master of Protocol was even worse than trying to find a rhyme for “orange blossom.”

Flares lit the alleys of Hunghung. With the Red Army chattering behind him, Rincewind wandered up to the wall of the Forbidden City.

No one knew better than Rincewind that he was totally incapable of proper magic. He’d only ever done it by accident.

So he could be sure that if he waved a hand and said some magic words the wall would in all probability become just a little bit less full of holes than it was now.

It was a shame to disappoint Lotus Blossom, with her body that reminded Rincewind of a plate of crinkle-cut chips, but it was about time she learned that you couldn’t rely on wizards.

And then he could be out of here. What could Butterfly do to him if he tried and failed? And, much to his surprise, he found himself hoping that, on the way out, he could poke Herb in the eye. He was amazed the others couldn’t spot him for what he was.

This area of wall was between gates. The life of Hunghung lapped against it like a muddy sea; there were stalls and booths everywhere. Rincewind had thought Ankh-Morpork citizens lived out on the streets, but they were agoraphobes compared to the Hunghungese. Funerals (with associated firecrackers) and wedding parties and religious ceremonies went on alongside, and intermingled with, the normal market activities such as free-form livestock slaughter and world-class arguing.

Herb pointed to a clear area of wall stacked with timber.

“Just about there, Great Wizard,” he sneered. “Do not exert yourself unduly. A small hole should be sufficient.”

“But there’s hundreds of people around!”

“Is that a problem to such a great wizard? Perhaps you can’t do it with people watching?”

“I have no doubt that the Great Wizard will astonish us,” said Butterfly.

“When the people see the power of the Great Wizard they will speak of it for ever!” said Lotus Blossom.

“Probably,” muttered Rincewind.

The cadre stopped talking, although it was only possible to notice this by watching their closed mouths. The hole left by their silence was soon filled by the babble of the market.

Rincewind rolled up his sleeves.

He wasn’t even certain about a spell for blowing things up…

He waved a hand vaguely.

“I should stand well back, everyone,” said Herb, grinning unpleasantly.

“Quanti canicula illa in fenestre?” said Rincewind. “Er…”

He stared desperately at the wall and, with that heightened perception that comes to those on the edge of terror, noticed a cauldron half hidden in the timber. There seemed to be a little glowing string attached to it.

“Er,” he said, “there seems to be—”

“Having problems?” said Herb, nastily.

Rincewind squared his shoulders.

“—” he said.

There was a sound like a marshmallow gently landing on a plate, and everything in front of him went white.

Then the white turned red, streaked with black, and the terrible noise clapped its hands across his ears.

A crescent-shaped piece of something glowing scythed the top off his hat and embedded itself in the nearest house, which caught fire.

There was a strong smell of burning eyebrows.

When the debris settled Rincewind saw quite a large hole in the wall. Around its edge the brickwork, now a red-hot ceramic, started to cool with a noise like glinka-glinka.

He looked down at his soot-blackened hands.

“Gosh,” he said.

And then he said, “All right!”

And then he turned and began to say, “How about that, then?” but his voice faded when it became apparent that everyone was lying flat on the ground.

A duck watched him suspiciously from its cage. Owing to the slight protection afforded by the bars, its feathers were patterned alternately natural and crispy.

He’d always wanted to do magic like that. He’d always been able to visualize it perfectly. He’d just never been able to do it…

A number of guards appeared in the gap. One, whose ferocity of helmet suggested that he was an officer, glared at the charred hole and then at Rincewind.

“Did you do this?” he demanded.

“Stand back!” shouted Rincewind, drunk with power. “I’m the Great Wizard, I am! You see this finger? Don’t make me use it!”

The officer nodded to a couple of his men.

“Get him.”

Rincewind took a step back.

“I warn you! Anyone lays a hand on me, he’ll be eating flies and hopping for the rest of his life!”

The guards advanced with the determination of those who were prepared to risk the uncertainty of magic against the definite prospect of punishment for disobeying orders.

“Stand back! This could go off! All right, then, since you force—”

He waved his hand. He snapped his fingers a few times.

“Er—”

The guards, after checking that they were still the same shape, each grabbed an arm.

“It may be delayed action,” he ventured, as they gripped harder.

“Alternatively, would you be interested in hearing a famous quotation?” he said. His feet were lifted off the ground. “Or perhaps not?”

Rincewind, running absent-mindedly in mid-air, was brought in front of the officer.

“On your knees, rebel!” said the officer.

“I’d like to, but—”

“I saw what you did to Captain Four White Fox!”

“What? Who’s he?”

“Take…him…to…the…Emperor.”

As he was dragged off Rincewind saw, for one brief moment, the guards closing on the Red Army, swords flashing…

A metal plate shuddered for a moment, and then dropped on the floor.

“Careful!”

“I ain’t used to being careful! Bruce the Hoon wasn’t care—”

“Shut up about Bruce the Hoon!”

“Well, dang you, too!”

“Whut?”

“Anyone out there?”

Cohen stuck his head out of the pipe. The room was dark, damp and full of pipes and runnels. Water went off in every direction to feed fountains and cisterns.

“No,” he said, in a disappointed voice.

“Very well. Everyone out of the pipe.”

There was some echoey swearing and the scrape of metal as Hamish’s wheelchair was manoeuvred into the long, low cellar.

Mr. Saveloy lit a match as the Horde spread out and examined their surroundings.

“Congratulations, gentlemen,” he said. “I believe we are in the palace.”

“Yeah,” said Truckle. “We’ve conquered a f—a lovemaking pipe. What good is that?”

“We could rape it,” said Caleb hopefully.

“Hey, this wheel thing turns…”

“What’s a lovemaking pipe?”

“What does this lever do?”

“Whut?”

“How about we find a door, rush out, and kill everyone?”

Mr. Saveloy closed his eyes. There was something familiar about this situation, and now he realized what it was. He’d once taken an entire class on a school trip to the city armory. His right leg still hurt him on wet days.

“No, no, no!” he said. “What good would that do? Boy Willie, please don’t pull that lever.”

“Well, I’d feel better, for one,” said Cohen. “Ain’t killed anyone all day except a guard, and they hardly count.”

“Remember that we’re here for theft, not murder,” said Mr. Saveloy. “Now, please, out of all that wet leather and into your nice new clothes.”

“I don’t like this part,” said Cohen, pulling on a shirt. “I like people to know who I was.”

“Yeah,” said Boy Willie. “Without our leather and mail people’ll just think we’re a load of old men.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Saveloy. “That is part of the subterfuge.”

“Is that like tactics?” said Cohen.

“Yes.”

“All right, but I don’t like it,” said Old Vincent. “S’posing we win? What kind of song will the minstrels sing about people who invaded through a pipe?”

“An echoey one,” said Boy Willie.

“They won’t sing anything like that,” said Cohen firmly. “You pay a minstrel enough, he’ll sing whatever you want.”

A flight of damp steps led to a door. Mr. Saveloy was already at the top, listening.

“That’s right,” said Caleb. “They say that whoever pays the piper calls the tune.”

“But, gentlemen,” said Mr. Saveloy, his eyes bright, “whoever holds a knife to the piper’s throat writes the symphony.”

The assassin moved slowly through Lord Hong’s chambers.

He was one of the best in Hunghung’s small but very select guild, and he certainly was not a rebel. He disliked rebels. They were invariably poor people, and therefore unlikely to be customers.

His mode of movement was unusual and cautious. It avoided the floor; Lord Hong was known to tune his floorboards. It made considerable use of furniture and decorative screens, and occasionally of the ceiling as well.

And the assassin was very good at it. When a messenger entered the room through a distant door he froze for an instant, and then moved in perfect rhythm towards his quarry, letting the newcomer’s clumsy footsteps mask his own.

Lord Hong was making another sword. The folding of the metal and all the tedious yet essential bouts of heating and hammering were, he found, conducive to clear thinking. Too much pure cerebration was bad for the mind. Lord Hong liked to use his hands sometimes.

He plunged the sword back into the furnace and pumped the bellows a few times.

“Yes?” he said. The messenger looked up from his prone position near the floor.

“Good news, o lord. We have captured the Red Army!”

“Well, that is good news,” said Lord Hong, watching the blade carefully for the change of color. “Including the one they call the Great Wizard?”

“Indeed! But he is not that great, o lord!” said the messenger.

His cheerfulness faded when Lord Hong raised an eyebrow.

“Really? On the contrary, I suspect him of being in possession of huge and dangerous powers.”

“Yes, o lord! I did not mean—”

“See that they are all locked up. And send a message to Captain Five Hong Man to undertake the orders I gave him today.”

“Yes, o lord!”

“And now, stand up!”

The messenger stood up, trembling. Lord Hong pulled on a thick glove and reached for the sword handle. The furnace roared.

“Chin up, man!”

“My lord!”

“Now open your eyes wide!”

There was no need for that order. Lord Hong peered into the mask of terror, noted the flicker of movement, nodded, and then in one almost balletic movement pulled the spitting blade from the furnace, turned, thrust…

There was a very brief scream, and a rather longer hiss.

Lord Hong let the assassin sag. Then he tugged the sword free and inspected the steaming blade.

“Hmm,” he said. “Interesting…”

He caught sight of the messenger.

“Are you still here?”

“No, my lord!”

“See to it.”

Lord Hong turned the sword so that the light caught it, and examined the edge.

“And, er, shall I send some servants to clear away the, er, body?”

“What?” said Lord Hong, lost in thought.

“The body, Lord Hong?”

“What body? Oh. Yes. See to it.”

The walls were beautifully decorated. Even Rincewind noticed this, though they went past in a blur. Some had marvellous birds painted on them, or mountain scenes, or sprays of foliage, every leaf and bud done in exquisite detail with just a couple of brush-strokes.

Ceramic lions reared on marble pedestals. Vases bigger than Rincewind lined the corridors.

Lacquered doors opened ahead of the guards. Rincewind was briefly aware of huge, ornate and empty rooms stretching away on either side.

Finally they passed through yet another set of doors and he was flung down on a wooden floor.

In these circumstances, he always found, it was best not to look up.

Eventually an officious voice said, “What do you have to say for yourself, miserable louse?”

“Well, I—”

“Silence!”

Ah. So it was going to be that kind of interview.

A different voice, a cracked, breathless and elderly voice, said, “Where is the Grand…Vizier?”

“He has retired to his rooms, o Great One. He said he had a headache.”

“Summon him at…once.”

“Certainly, o Great One.”

Rincewind, his nose pressed firmly to the floor, made some further assumptions. Grand Vizier was always a bad sign; it generally meant that people were going to suggest wild horses and red-hot chains. And when people were called things like “o Great One,” it was pretty certain that there was no appeal.

“This is a…rebel, is it?” The sentence was wheezed rather than spoken.

“Indeed, o Great One.”

“I think I would like a clo…ser look.”

There was a general murmur, suggesting that a number of people had been greatly surprised, and then the sound of furniture being moved.

Rincewind thought he saw a blanket on the edge of his vision. Someone was wheeling a bed across the floor…

“Make it…stand up.” The gurgle in the pause was like the last bathwater going down the plughole. It sucked as wetly as an outgoing wave.

Once again a foot kicked Rincewind in the kidneys, making its usual explicit request in the Esperanto of brutality. He got up.

It was a bed, and quite the biggest Rincewind had ever seen. In it, swathed in brocades and almost lost in pillows, was an old man. Rincewind had never seen anyone look so ill. The face was pale, with a greenish pallor; veins showed up under the skin of his hands like worms in a jar.

The Emperor had all the qualifications for a corpse except, as it were, the most vital one.

“So…this is the new Great Wizard of…whom we have read so much, is…it?” he said.

When he spoke, people waited expectantly for the final gurgle in mid-sentence.

“Well, I—” Rincewind began.

“Silence!” screamed a chamberlain.

Rincewind shrugged.

He hadn’t known what to expect of an Emperor, but the mental picture had room for a big fat man with lots of rings. Talking to this one was a hair’s breadth from necromancy.

“Can you show us some more…magic, Great Wizard?”

Rincewind glanced at the chamberlain.

“W—”

“Silence!”

The Emperor waved a hand vaguely, gurgled with the effort, and gave Rincewind another enquiring look. Rincewind decided to chance things.

“I’ve got a good one,” he said. “It’s a vanishing trick.”

“Can you…do it now?”

“Only if everyone opens all the doors and turns their backs.”

The Emperor’s expression did not change. The court fell silent. Then there was a sound like a number of small rabbits being choked to death.

The Emperor was laughing. Once this was established, everyone else laughed too. No one can get a laugh like a man who can have you put to death more easily than he goes to the lavatory.

“What shall we do with…you?” he said. “Where is the…Grand…Vizier?”

The crowd parted.

Rincewind risked a sideways squint. Once you were in the hands of a Grand Vizier, you were dead. Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: “Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister.”

“Ah, Lord…Hong,” said the Emperor.

“Mercy?” suggested Rincewind.

“Silence!” screamed the chamberlain.

“Tell me, Lord…Hong,” said the ancient Emperor. “What would be the punishment for a…foreigner…entering the Forbidden City?”

“Removal of all limbs, ears, and eyes, and then allowed to go free,” said Lord Hong.

Rincewind raised his hand.

“First offense?” he said.

“Silence!”

“We find, generally, that there is no second offence,” said Lord Hong. “What is this person?”

“I like him,” said the Emperor. “I think I shall…keep him. He makes me…laugh.”

Rincewind opened his mouth.

“Silence!” screamed the chamberlain, perhaps unwisely in view of current thinking.

“Er…could you stop him shouting ‘Silence!’ every time I try to speak?” Rincewind ventured.

“Certainly…Great Wizard,” said the Emperor. He nodded at some guards. “Take the chamberlain…away and cut his…lips off.”

“Great One, I—!”

“And his ears…also.”

The wretched man was dragged away. A pair of lacquered doors slammed shut. There was a round of applause from the courtiers.

“Would you…like to watch him eat…them?” said the Emperor grinning happily. “It’s tre…mendous fun.”

“Ahahaha,” said Rincewind.

“A good decision, lord,” said Lord Hong. He turned his head towards Rincewind.

To the wizard’s immense surprise, and some horror, too, he winked.

“O Great One…” said a plump courtier, dropping to his knees, bouncing slightly, and then nervously approaching the Emperor, “I wonder if perhaps it is entirely wise to be so merciful to this foreign dev—”

The Emperor looked down. Rincewind would have sworn that dust fell off him.

There was a gentle movement among the crowd. Without anyone apparently doing anything so gross as activating their feet, there was nevertheless a widening space around the kneeling man.

Then the Emperor smiled.

“Your concern is well…received,” he said. The courtier risked a relieved grin. The Emperor added, “However, your presumption is not. Kill him slowly…over several…days.”

“Aaargh!”

“Yes in…deed! Lots of boiling…oil!”

“An excellent idea, o lord,” said Lord Hong.

The Emperor turned back to Rincewind.

“I am sure the…Great Wizard is my friend,” he suctioned.

“Ahahaha,” said Rincewind.

He’d been in this approximate position before, gods knew. But he’d always been facing someone—well, usually someone who looked like Lord Hong, not a near-corpse who was clearly so far round the bend he couldn’t poke sanity with a long pole.

“We shall have such…fun,” said the Emperor. “I read…all about you.”

“Ahahaha,” said Rincewind.

The Emperor waved a hand at the court again.

“Now I will retire,” he said. There was a general movement and much ostensible yawning. Clearly no one stayed up later than the Emperor.

“Emperor,” said Lord Hong wearily, “what will you have us do with this Great Wizard of yours?”

The old man gave Rincewind the look a present gets around the time the batteries have run out.

“Put him in the special…dungeon,” he said. “For…now.”

“Yes, Emperor,” said Lord Hong. He nodded at a couple of guards.

Rincewind managed a quick look back as he was dragged from the room. The Emperor was lying back in his movable bed, quite oblivious to him.

“Is he mad or what?” he said.

“Silence!”

Rincewind looked up at the guard who’d said that.

“A mouth like that could get a man into big trouble around here,” he muttered.

Lord Hong always found himself depressed by the general state of humanity. It often seemed to him to be flawed. There was no concentration. Take the Red Army. If he had been a rebel the Emperor would have been assassinated months ago and the country would now be aflame, except for those bits too damp to burn. But these? Despite his best efforts, their idea of revolutionary activity was a surreptitious wall poster saying something like “Unpleasantness To Oppressors When Convenient!”

They had tried to set fire to guardhouses. That was good. That was proper revolutionary activity, except for the bit where they tried to make an appointment first. It had taken Lord Hong some considerable effort to see that the Red Army appeared to achieve any victories at all.

Well, he’d given them the Great Wizard they so sincerely believed in. They had no excuse now. And by the look of him, the wretch was as craven and talentless as Lord Hong had hoped. Any army led by him would either flee or be slaughtered, leaving the way open for the counter-revolution.

The counter-revolution would not be inefficient. Lord Hong would see to that.

But things had to be done one step at a time. There were enemies everywhere. Suspicious enemies. The path of the ambitious man was a nightingale floor. One wrong step and it would sing out. It was a shame the Great Wizard would turn out to be so good at locks. Lord Tang’s men were guarding the prison block tonight. Of course, if the Red Army were to escape, no blame at all could possibly attach to Lord Tang…

Lord Hong risked a little chuckle to himself as he strode back to his suite. Proof, that was the thing. There must never be proof. But that wouldn’t matter very long. There was nothing like a fearsomely huge war to unite people, and the fact that the Great Wizard—that is, the leader of the terrible rebel army—was an evil foreign troublemaker was just the spark to light the firecracker.

And then…Ankh-Morpork [urinating dog].

Hunghung was old. The culture was based on custom, the alimentary tract of the common water buffalo, and base treachery. Lord Hong was in favor of all three, but they did not add up to world domination, and Lord Hong was particularly in favor of that, provided it was achieved by Lord Hong.

If I was the traditional type of Grand Vizier, he thought as he sat down before his tea table, I’d cackle with laughter at this point.

He smiled to himself, instead.

Time for the box again? No. Some things were all the better for the anticipation.

Mad Hamish’s wheelchair caused a few heads to turn, but no actual comment. Undue curiosity was not a survival trait in Hunghung. They just got on with their work, which appeared to be the endless carrying of stacks of paper along the corridors.

Cohen looked down at what was in his hand. Over the decades he’d fought with many weapons—swords, of course, and bows and spears and clubs and…well, now he came to think of it, just about anything.

Except this…

“I still don’t like it,” said Truckle. “Why’re we carrying pieces of paper?”

“Because no one looks at you in a place like this if you’re carrying a piece of paper,” said Mr. Saveloy.

“Why?”

“Whut?”

“It’s—a kind of magic.”

“I’d feel happier if it was a weapon.”

“As a matter of fact, it can be the greatest weapon there is.”

“I know, I’ve just cut myself on my bit,” said Boy Willie, sucking his finger.

“Whut?”

“Look at it like this, gentlemen,” said Mr. Saveloy. “Here we are, actually inside the Forbidden City, and no one is dead!”

“Yes. That’s what we’re…danging…complaining about,” said Truckle.

Mr. Saveloy sighed. There was something in the way Truckle used words. It didn’t matter what he actually said, what you heard was in some strange way the word he actually meant. He could turn the air blue just by saying “socks.”

The door slammed shut behind Rincewind, and there was the sound of a bolt shooting into place.

The Empire’s jails were pretty much like the ones at home. When you want to incarcerate such an ingenious creature as the common human being, you tend to rely on the good old-fashioned iron bar and large amounts of stone. It looked as though this well-tried pattern had been established here for a very long time.

Well, he’d definitely scored a hit with the Emperor. For some reason this did not reassure him. The man gave Rincewind the distinct impression of being the kind of person who is at least as dangerous to his friends as to his enemies.

He remembered Noodle Jackson, back in the days when he was a very young student. Everyone wanted to be friends with Noodle but somehow, if you were in his gang, you found yourself being trodden on or chased by the Watch or being hit in fights you didn’t start, while Noodle was somewhere on the edge of things, laughing.

Besides, the Emperor wasn’t simply at Death’s door but well inside the hallway, admiring the carpet and commenting on the hatstand. And you didn’t have to be a political genius to know that when someone like that died, scores were being settled before he’d even got cold. Anyone he’d publicly called a friend would have a life expectancy more normally associated with things that hover over trout streams at sunset.

Rincewind moved aside a skull and sat down. There was the possibility of rescue, he supposed, but the Red Army would be hard put to it to rescue a rubber duck from drowning. Anyway, that’d put him back in the clutches of Butterfly, who terrified him almost as much as the Emperor.

He had to believe that the gods didn’t intend for Rincewind, after all his adventures, to rot in a dungeon.

No, he added bitterly, they probably had something much more inventive in mind.

What light reached the dungeon came from a very small grille and had a second-hand look. The rest of the furnishing was a pile of what had possibly once been straw. There was—

—a gentle tapping at the wall.

Once, twice, three times.

Rincewind picked up the skull and returned the signal.

One tap came back.

He repeated it.

Then there were two.

He tapped twice.

Well, this was familiar. Communication without meaning…it was just like being back at Unseen University.

“Fine,” he said, his voice echoing in the cell. “Fine. Très prisoner. But what are we saying?”

There was a gentle scraping noise and one of the blocks in the wall very gently slid out of the wall, dropping on to Rincewind’s foot.

“Aargh!”

“What big hippo?” said a muffled voice.

“What?”

“Sorry?”

“What?”

“You wanted to know about the tapping code? It’s how we communicate between cells, you see. One tap means—”

“Excuse me, but aren’t we communicating now?”

“Yes, but not formally. Prisoners are not…allowed…to talk…” The voice slowed down, as if the speaker had suddenly remembered something important.

“Ah, yes,” said Rincewind. “I was forgetting. This is…Hunghung. Everyone…obeys…the rules…”

Rincewind’s voice died away too.

On either side of the wall there was a long, thoughtful silence.

“Rincewind?”

“Twoflower?”

“What are you doing here?” said Rincewind.

“Rotting in a dungeon!”

“Me, too!”

“Good grief! How long has it been?” said the muffled voice of Twoflower.

“What? How long has what been?”

“But you…why are…”

“You wrote that damn book!”

“I just thought it would be interesting for people!”

“Interesting? Interesting?”

“I thought people would find it an interesting account of a foreign culture. I never meant it to cause trouble.”

Rincewind leaned against his side of the wall. No, of course, Twoflower never wanted to cause any trouble. Some people never did. Probably the last sound heard before the Universe folded up like a paper hat would be someone saying, “What happens if I do this?”

“It must have been Fate that brought you here,” said Twoflower.

“Yes, it’s the sort of thing he likes to do,” said Rincewind.

“You remember the good times we had?”

“Did we? I must have had my eyes shut.”

“The adventures!”

“Oh, them. You mean hanging from high places, that sort of thing…?”

“Rincewind?”

“Yes? What?”

“I feel a lot happier about things now you’re here.”

“That’s amazing.”

Rincewind enjoyed the comfort of the wall. It was just rock. He felt he could rely on it.

“Everyone seems to have a copy of your book,” he said. “It’s a revolutionary document. And I do mean copy. It looks as though they make their own copy and pass it on.”

“Yes, it’s called samizdat.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means each one must be the same as the one before. Oh, dear. I thought it would just be entertainment. I didn’t think people would take it seriously. I do hope it’s not causing too much bother.”

“Well, your revolutionaries are still at the slogan-and-poster stage, but I shouldn’t think that’ll count for much if they’re caught.”

“Oh, dear.”

“How come you’re still alive?”

“I don’t know. I think they may have forgotten about me. That tends to happen, you know. It’s the paperwork. Someone makes the wrong stroke with the brush or forgets to copy a line. I believe it happens a lot.”

“You mean that there’s people in prison and no one can remember why?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then why don’t they set them free?”

“I suppose it is felt that they must have done something. All in all, I’m afraid our government does leave something to be desired.”

“Like a new government.”

“Oh, dear. You could get locked up for saying things like that.”

People slept, but the Forbidden City never slept. Torches flickered all night in the great Bureaux as the ceaseless business of Empire went on.

This largely involved, as Mr. Saveloy had said, moving paper.

Six Beneficent Winds was Deputy District Administrator for the Langtang district, and good at a job which he rather enjoyed. He was not a wicked man.

True, he had the same sense of humor as a chicken casserole. True, he played the accordion for amusement, and disliked cats intensely, and had a habit of dabbing his upper lip with his napkin after his tea ceremony in a way that had made Mrs. Beneficent Winds commit murder in her mind on a regular basis over the years. And he kept his money in a small leather shovel purse, and counted it out very thoroughly whenever he made a purchase, especially if there was a queue behind him.

But on the other hand, he was kind to animals and made small but regular contributions to charity. He frequently gave moderate sums to beggars in the street, although he made a note of this in the little notebook he always carried to remind him to visit them in his official capacity later on.

And he never took away from people more money than they actually had.

He was also, unusually for men employed in the Forbidden City after dark, not a eunuch. Guards were not eunuchs, of course, and people had got around this by classifying them officially as furniture. And it had been found that tax officials also needed every faculty at their disposal to combat the wiles of the average peasant, who had this regrettable tendency to avoid paying taxes.

There were much nastier people in the building than Six Beneficent Winds and it was therefore just his inauspicious luck that his paper and bamboo door slid aside to reveal seven strange-looking old eunuchs, one of them in a wheeled contrivance.

They didn’t even bow, let alone fall on their knees. And he not only had an official red hat but it had a white button on it!

His brush dropped from his hands when the men wandered into his office as if they owned it. One of them started poking holes in the wall and speaking gibberish.

“Hey, the walls are just made of paper! Hey, look, if you lick your finger it goes right through! See?”

“I will call for the guards and have you all flogged!” shouted Six Beneficent Winds, his temper moderated slightly by the extreme age of the visitors.

“What did he say?”

“He said he’d call for the guards.”

“Ooo, yes. Please let him call for the guards!”

“No, we don’t want that yet. Act normally.”

“You mean cut his throat?”

“I meant a more normal kind of normally.”

“It’s what I call normal.”

One of the old men faced the speechless official and gave him a big grin.

“Excuse us, your supreme…oh dear, what’s the word?…pushcart sail?…immense rock?…ah, yes…venerableness, but we seem to be a little lost.”

A couple of the old men shuffled around behind Six Beneficent Winds and started to read, or at least try to read, what he’d been working on. A sheet of paper was snatched from his hand.

“What’s this say, Teach?”

“Let me see…‘The first wind of autumn shakes the lotus flower. Seven Lucky Logs to pay one pig and three [looks like a four-armed man waving a flag] of rice on pain of having his [rather a stylized thing here, can’t quite make it out] struck with many blows. By order of Six Beneficent Winds, Collector of Revenues, Langtang.’”

There was a subtle change among the old men. Now they were all grinning, but not in a way that gave him any comfort. One of them, with teeth like diamonds, leaned towards him and said, in bad Agatean:

“You are a tax collector, Mr. Knob on Your Hat?”

Six Beneficent Winds wondered if he’d be able to summon the guard. There was something terrible about these old men. They weren’t venerable at all. They were horribly menacing and, although he couldn’t see any obvious weapons, he knew for a cold frozen fact that he wouldn’t be able to get out more than the first syllable before he’d be killed. Besides, his throat had gone dry and his pants had gone wet.

“Nothing wrong with being a tax collector…” he croaked.

“We never said that,” said Diamond Teeth. “We always like to meet tax collectors.”

“Some of our most favoritest people, tax collectors,” said another old man.

“Saves a lot of trouble,” said Diamond Teeth.

“Yeah,” said a third old man. “Like, it means you don’t have to go from house to house killin’ everyone for their valuables, you just wait and kill the—”

“Gentlemen, can I have a word?”

The speaker was the slightly goat-faced one that didn’t seem quite so unpleasant as the others. The terrible men clustered around him and Six Beneficent Winds heard the strange syllables of a coarse foreign tongue:

“What? But he’s a tax collector! That’s what they’re for!”

“Whut?”

“A firm tax base is the foundation of sound governance, gentlemen. Please trust me.”

“I understood all of that up to ‘A firm tax’.”

“Nevertheless, no useful purpose will be served by killing this hardworking tax gatherer.”

“He’d be dead. I call that useful.”

There was some more of the same. Six Beneficent Winds jumped when the group broke up and the goat-faced man gave him a smile.

“My humble friends are overawed by your…variety of plum…small knife for cutting seaweed…presence, noble sir,” he said, his every word slandered by Truckle’s vigorous gesticulations behind his back.

“How about if we just cut a bit off?”

“Whut?”

“How did you get in here?” said Six Beneficent Winds. “There are many strong guards.”

“I knew we missed something,” said Diamond Teeth.

“We would like you to show us around the Forbidden City,” said Goat Face. “My name is…Mr. Stuffed Tube, I think you would call it. Yes. Stuffed Tube, I’m pretty sure—”

Six Beneficent Winds glanced hopefully towards the door.

“—and we are here to learn more about your wonderful…mountain…variety of bamboo…sound of running water at evening…drat…civilization.”

Behind him, Truckle was energetically demonstrating to the rest of the Horde what he and Bruce the Hoon’s Skeletal Riders once did to a tax gatherer. The sweeping arm movements in particular occupied Six Beneficent Winds’ attention. He couldn’t understand the words but, somehow, you didn’t need to.

“Why are you talking to him like that?”

“Ghenghiz, I’m lost. There are no maps of the Forbidden City. We need a guide.”

Goat Face turned back to the taxman. “Perhaps you would like to come with us?” he said.

Out, thought Six Beneficent Winds. Yes! There may be guards out there!

“Just a minute,” said Diamond Teeth, as he nodded. “Pick up your paintbrush and write down what I say.”

A minute later, they’d gone. All that remained in the taxman’s office was an amended piece of paper, which read as follows:

“Roses are red, violets are blue. Seven Lucky Logs to be given one pig and all the rice he can carry, because he is now One Lucky Peasant. By order of Six Beneficent Winds, Collector of Revenues, Langtang. Help. Help. If anyone reads this I am being held prisoner by an evil eunuch. Help.”