Terry Pratchett: The Truth

He'd drop it into Mr Cripslock tonight, pick up the copies after a leisurely lunch tomorrow, and with any luck should have them all away by the middle of the week.

William put on his coat, wrapped the wood block carefully in some waxed paper and stepped out into the freezing night.

The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It's also wrong. There's a fifth element, and generally it's called Surprise.

For example, the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works.

The dwarfs dwarfhandled their overloaded, creaking cart along the street, peering ahead in fog. Ice formed on the cart and hung from their beards.

All it needed was one frozen puddle.

Good old Dame Fortune. You can depend on her.

The fog closed in, making every light a dim glow and muffling all sounds. It was clear to Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs that no barbarian horde would be including the invasion of Ankh-Morpork in their travel plans for this evening. The watchmen didn't blame them.

They closed the gates. This was not the ominous activity that it might appear, since the keys had been lost long ago and latecomers usually threw gravel at the windows of the houses built on top of the wall until they found a friend to lift the bar. It was assumed that foreign invaders wouldn't know which windows to throw gravel at.

Then the two watchmen trailed through the slush and muck to the Water Gate, by which the river Ankh had the good fortune to enter the city. The water was invisible in the dark, but the occasional ghostly shape of an ice floe drifted past below the parapet.

'Hang on,' said Nobby, as they laid hands on the windlass of the portcullis. 'There's someone down there.'

'In the river?' said Colon.

He listened. There was the creak of an oar, far below.

Sergeant Colon cupped his hands around his mouth and issued the traditional policeman's cry of challenge.

'Oi! You!'

For a moment there was no sound but the wind and the gurgling of the water. Then a voice said: 'Yes?'

'Are you invading the city or what?'

There was another pause. Then:

'What?'

'What what?' said Colon, raising the stakes.

'What were the other options?'

'Don't mess me about... Are you , down there in the boat, invading this city?'

'No.'

'Fair enough,' said Colon, who on a night like this would happily take someone's word for it. 'Get a move on, then, 'cos we're going to drop the gate.'

After a while the splash of the oars resumed and disappeared downriver.

'You reckon that was enough, just askin ' 'em?' said Nobby.

'Well, they ought to know,' said Colon.

'Yeah, but--'

'It was a tiny little rowin' boat, Nobby. Of course, if you want to go all the way down to them nice icy steps on the jetty--'

'No, sarge.'

'Then let's get back to the Watch House, all right?'

William turned up his collar as he hurried towards Cripslock the engraver. The usually busy streets were deserted. Only those people with the most pressing business were out of doors. It was turning out to be a very nasty winter indeed, a gazpacho of freezing fog, snow and Ankh-Morpork's ever-present, ever-rolling smog.

His eye was caught by a little pool of light by the Watchmakers' Guild. A small hunched figure was outlined in the glow.

He wandered over.

A hopeless sort of voice said, 'Hot sausages? Inna bun?'

'Mr Dibbler?' said William.

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Ankh-Morpork's most enterprisingly unsuccessful businessman, peered at William over the top of his portable sausage-cooking tray. Snowflakes hissed in the congealing fat.

William sighed. 'You're out late, Mr Dibbler,' he said politely.

'Ah, Mr Word. Times is hard in the hot sausage trade,' said Dibbler.

'Can't make both ends meat, eh?' said William. He couldn't have stopped himself for a hundred dollars and a shipload of figs.

'Definitely in a period of slump in the comestibles market,' said Dibbler, too sunk in gloom to notice. 'Don't seem to find anyone ready to buy a sausage in a bun these days.'

William looked down at the tray. If Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler was selling hot sausages, it was a sure sign that one of his more ambitious enterprises had gone wahoonie-shaped yet again. Selling hot sausages from a tray was by way of being the ground state of Dibbler's existence, from which he constantly sought to extricate himself and back to which he constantly returned when his latest venture went all runny. Which was a shame, because Dibbler was an extremely good hot sausage salesman. He had to be, given the nature of his sausages.

'I should have got a proper education like you,' said Dibbler despondently. 'A nice job indoors with no heavy lifting. I could have found my nitch, if'n I'd have got a good education.'

'Nitch?'

'One of the wizards told me about 'em,' said Dibbler. 'Everything's got a nitch. You know. Like: where they ought to be. What they was cut out for?'

William nodded. He was good with words. 'Niche?' he said.

'One of them things, yes.' Dibbler sighed. 'I missed out on the semaphore. Just didn't see it coming. Next thing you know, everyone's got a clacks company. Big money. Too rich for my blood. I could've done all right with the Fung Shooey, though. Sheer bloody bad luck there.'

'I've certainly felt better with my chair in a different position,' said William. That advice had cost him two dollars, along with an injunction to keep the lid down on the privy so that the Dragon of Unhappiness wouldn't fly up his bottom.

'You were my first customer and I thank you,' said Dibbler. 'I was all set up, I'd got the Dibbler wind-chimes and the Dibbler mirrors, it was gravy all the way - I mean, everything was positioned for maximum harmony, and then... smack. Bad karma plops on me once more.' ,

'It was a week before Mr Passmore was able to walk again, though,' said William. The case of Dibbler's second customer had been very useful for his news letter, which rather made up for the two dollars.

'I wasn't to know there really is a Dragon of Unhappiness,' said Dibbler.

'I don't think there was until you convinced him that one exists,' said William.

Dibbler brightened a little. 'Ah, well, say what you like, I've always been good at selling ideas. Can I convince you of the idea that a sausage in a bun is what you desire at this time?'

'Actually, I've really got to get this along to--' William began, and then said, 'Did you just hear someone shout?'

'I've got some cold pork pies, too, somewhere,' said Dibbler, ferreting in his tray. 'I can give you a convincingly bargain price on--'

'I'm sure I heard something,' said William.

Dibbler cocked an ear. 'Sort of like a rumbling?' he said.

'Yes.'

They stared into the slowly rolling clouds that filled Broad Way.

Which became, quite suddenly, a huge tarpaulin-covered cart, moving unstoppably and very fast...

And the last thing William remembered, before something flew out of the night and smacked him between the eyes, was someone shouting, 'Stop the press!'

The rumour, having been pinned to the page by William's pen like a butterfly to a cork, didn't come to the ears of some people, because they had other, darker things on their mind.

Their rowboat slid through the hissing waters of the river Ankh, which closed behind it slowly.

Two men were bent over the oars. The third sat in the pointy end. Occasionally he spoke.

He said things like 'My nose itches.'

'You'll just have to wait till we get there,' said one of the rowers.

'You could let me out again. It really itches.'