Terry Pratchett - Reaper Man

Maybe Bill Door just wanted to be rid of it, and that was understandable, because even now when it hung innocuously enough from the wall it seemed to radiate sharpness. There was a faint violet corona around the blade, caused by the draughts in the room driving luckless air molecules to their severed death.

Ned Simnel picked it up with great care.

Weird fellow, Bill Door. He'd said he wanted to be sure it was absolutely dead. As if you could kill a thing.

Anyway, how could anyone destroy it? Oh, the handle would burn and the metal would calcine and, if he worked hard enough, eventually there'd be nothing more than a little heap of dust and ashes. That was what the customer wanted.

On the other hand, presumably you could destroy it just by taking the blade off the handle... After all, it wouldn't be a scythe if you did that. It'd just be, well... bits. Certainly, you could make a scythe out of them, but you could probably do that with the dust and ashes if you knew how to do it.

Ned Simnel was quite pleased with this line of argument.

And, after all. Bill Door hadn't even asked for proof that the thing had been, er, killed.

He took sight carefully and then used the scythe to chop the end off the anvil. Uncanny. Total sharpness.

He gave in. It was unfair. You couldn't ask someone like him to destroy something like this. It was a work of art.

It was better than that. It was a work of craft.

He walked across the room to a stack of timber and thrust the scythe well out of the way behind the heap. There was a brief, punctured squeak.

Anyway, it would be all right. He'd give Bill his farthing back in the morning.

The Death of Rats materialised behind the heap in the forge, and trudged to the sad little heap of fur that had been a rat that got in the way of the scythe.

Its ghost was standing beside it, looking apprehensive. It didn't seem very pleased to see him.

"Squeak? Squeak?"

SQUEAK. the Death of Rats explained.

"Squeak?"

SQUEAK, the Death of Rats confirmed.

"[Preen whiskers] [twitch nose]?"

The Death of Rats shook its head.

SQUEAK.

The rat was crestfallen. The Death of Rats laid a bony but not entirely unkind paw on its shoulder.

Squeak.

The rat nodded sadly. It had been a good life in the forge. Ned's housekeeping was almost non-existent, and he was probably the world champion absent-minded-leaver of unfinished sandwiches. It shrugged, and trooped after the small robed figure. It wasn't as if it had any choice.

People were streaming through the streets. Most of them were chasing trolleys. Most of the trolleys were full of whatever people had found a trolley useful to carry - firewood, children, shopping.

And they were no longer dodging, but moving blindly, all in the same direction.

You could stop a trolley by turning it over, when its wheels spun madly and uselessly. The wizards saw a number of enthusiastic individuals trying to smash them, but the trolleys were practically indestructible - they bent but didn't break, and if they had even one wheel left they'd make a valiant attempt to keep going.

"Look at that one!" said the Archchancellor. ‘It's got my laundry in it! My actual laundry! Darn that for a lark!"

He pushed his way through the crowds and rammed his staff into the trolley's wheels, toppling it over.

"We can't get a clear shot at anything with all these civilians around," complained the Dean.

"There's hundreds of trolleys!" said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "It's just like vermine! Get away from me, you - you basket!"

He flailed at an importunate trolley with his staff.

The tide of wheeled baskets was flowing out of the city. The struggling humans gradually dropped out or fell under the wobbling wheels. Only the wizards stayed in the flowing tide, shouting at one another and attacking the silvery swarm with their staves. It wasn't that magic didn't work. It worked quite well.

A good zap could turn a trolley into a thousand intricate little wire puzzles. But what good did that do? A moment later two others would trundle over their stricken sibling.

Around the Dean trolleys were being splashed into metal droplets.

"He's really getting the hang of it, isn't he?" said the Senior Wrangler, as he and the Bursar levered yet another basket on to its back.

"He's certainly saying Yo a lot," said the Bursar.

The Dean himself didn't know when he'd been happier. For sixty years he'd been obeying all the self-regulating rules of wizardry, and suddenly he was having the time of his life. He'd never realised that, deep down inside, what he really wanted to do was make things go splat.

Fire leapt from the tip of his staff. Handles and bits of wire and pathetically spinning wheels tinkled down around him. And what made it even better was that there was no end to the targets. A second wave of trolleys, crammed into a tighter space, was trying to advance over the tops of those still in actual contact with the ground. It wasn't working, but they were trying anyway. And trying desperately, because a third wave was already crunching and smashing its way over the top of them. Except that you couldn't use the word "trying". It suggested some sort of conscious effort, some sort of possibility that there might also be a state of ‘not trying'. Something about the relentless movement, the way they crushed one another in their surge, suggested that the wire baskets had as much choice in the matter as water has about flowing downhill.

"Yo!" shouted the Dean. Raw magic smacked into the grinding tangle of metal. It rained wheels.

"Eat hot thaumaturgy, you m-," the Dean began.

"Don't swear! Don't swear!" shouted Ridcully above the noise. He tried to swat a Silly Bugger that was orbiting his hat. "There's no telling what it might turn into!"

"Bother!" screamed the Dean.

"It's no good. We might as well be trying to hold back the sea," said the Senior Wrangler. "I vote we head back to the University and pick up some really tough spells."

"Good idea," said Ridcully. He looked up at the advancing wall of twisted wire. "Any idea how?" he said.

"Yo! Scallywags!" said the Dean. He aimed his staff again. It made a sad little noise that, if it was written down, could only be spelled pfffft. A feeble spark fell off the end and on to the cobbles.

Windle Poons slammed another book shut. The Librarian winced.

"Nothing! Volcanoes, tidal waves, wrath of gods, meddling wizards... I don't want to know how other cities have been killed, I want to know how they ended..."

The Librarian stacked another pile of books on the reading desk. Another plus about being dead, Windle was finding, was an ability with languages. He could see the sense in the words without knowing the actual meaning. Being dead wasn't like falling asleep after all. It was like waking up.

He glanced across the Library to where Lupine was having his paw bandaged.

"Librarian?" he said softly.

"Oook?"

"You've changed species in your time... what would you do if, for the sake of argument, you found a couple of people who... well, suppose there was a wolf that changed into a wolfman at the full moon, and a woman that changed into a wolfwoman at the full moon... you know, approaching the same shape but from opposite directions? And they'd met. What do you tell them? Do you let them sort it out for themselves?"

"Oook, " said the Librarian, instantly.

"It's tempting."

"Oook."

"Mrs. Cake wouldn't like it, though."

"Eeek oook."

"You're right. You could have put it a little less coarsely, but you're right. Everyone has to sort things out for themselves."

He sighed, and turned the page. His eyes widened.

"The city of Kahn Li," he said. "Ever heard of it? What's this book? "Stripfettle's Believe-It-Or-Not Grimoire. " Says here... "little carts... none knew from where they came... of such great use, men were employed to herd them and bring them into the city... of a sudden, like unto a rush of creatures... men followed them and behold, there was a new city outside the walls, a city as of merchants' booths wherein the carts ran"..."