Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum

‘Well, I feel … blessed to have seen it.’

‘Really? I gen’rally feel the same about the sunrise,’ said Granny. ‘You would too, at my time of life.’ She sighed, and then seemed to be speaking mainly to herself. ‘She never went to the bad, then, whatever people said. And you’d have to be on your toes with that ol’ vampire. She never went to the bad. You heard him say that, right? He said it. He didn’t have to.’

‘Er … yes.’

‘She’d have been older’n me, too. Bloody good witch was Nana Alison. Sharp as a knife. Had her funny little ways, o’ course, but who hasn’t?’

‘No one I know, certainly.’

‘Right. You’re right.’ Granny straightened up. ‘Good,’ she said.

‘Er …’

‘Yes?’

Oats was looking down at the drawbridge and the road to the castle.

‘There’s a man in a nightshirt covered in mud and waving a sword down there,’ he said, ‘followed by a lot of Lancre people and some … little blue men …’

He looked down again. ‘At least it looks like mud,’ he added.

‘That’ll be the King,’ said Granny. ‘Big Aggie’s given him some of her brose, by the sound of it. He’ll save the day.’

‘Er … hasn’t the day been saved?’

‘Oh, he’s the King. It looks like it might be a nice day, so let him save it. You’ve got to give kings something to do. Anyway, after a drink from Big Aggie he won’t know what day it is. We’d better get down there.’

‘I feel I should thank you,’ said Oats, when they reached the spiral staircase.

‘For helping you across the mountains, you mean?’

‘The world is … different.’ Oats’s gaze went out across the haze, and the forests, and the purple mountains. {79} 79 For some reason, mountains often seem to be described as ‘purple’ in the context of noble or uplifting thoughts. Compare the song ‘America the Beautiful’, by Katharine Lee Bates: O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! ‘Everywhere I look I see something holy.’

For the first time since he’d met her he saw Granny Weatherwax smile properly. Normally her mouth went up at the corners just before something unpleasant was going to happen to someone who deserved it, but this time she appeared to be pleased with what she’d heard.

‘That’s a start, then,’ she said.

The Magpyrs’ coach had been righted and dragged up to the castle. Now it returned, with Jason Ogg at the reins. He was concentrating on avoiding the bumps. They made his bruises tender. Besides, the royal family was on board and he was feeling extremely loyal at the moment.

Jason Ogg was very big and very strong and, therefore, not a violent man, because he did not need to be. Sometimes he was summoned down to the pub to sort out the more serious fights, which he usually did by picking up both contestants and holding them apart until they stopped struggling. If that didn’t work, he’d bang them together a few times, in as friendly a way as possible.

Aggressiveness did not normally impress him, but since in yesterday’s battle at Lancre Castle he’d had to physically lift Verence off the ground in order to stop him slaughtering enemies, friends, furniture, walls and his own feet, he was certainly seeing his king in a new light. It had turned out to be an extremely short battle. The mercenaries had been only too keen to surrender, especially after Shawn’s assault. The real fight had been to keep Verence away from them long enough to allow them to say so.

Jason was impressed.

King Verence, inside the coach, laid his head in his wife’s lap and groaned as she wiped his brow with a cloth …

At a respectable distance the coach was followed by a cart containing the witches, although what it contained mostly was snore.

Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back or a pillow used as a bludgeon. It had had years in a lonely bedroom to perfect the knark , the graaah and the gnoc, gnoc, gnoc unimpeded by the nudges, jabs and occasional attempts at murder that usually moderate the snore impulse over time.

She sprawled in the straw at the bottom of the cart, mouth open, and snored.

‘You half expect to find the shafts sawed through, don’t you?’ said Nanny, who was leading the horse. ‘Still, you can hear it doin’ her good.’

‘I’m a bit worried about Mister Oats, though,’ said Agnes. ‘He’s just sitting there and grinning.’

Oats was sitting with his legs over the tail of the cart, staring happily at the sky.

‘Did he hit his head?’ said Nanny.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Let him be, then. At least he ain’t settin’ fire to anything … Oh, here’s an old friend …’

Igor, tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth in the ferocity of his concentration, was putting the finishing touches to a new sign. It read ‘Why not vysyt our Gifte Shoppe?’ He stood up and nodded as the cart drew near.

‘The old marthter came up with thome new ideath while he wath dead,’ he said, feeling that some explanation was called for. ‘Thith afternoon I’ve got to thtart building a funfair, whatever that ith.’

‘That’s basic’ly swings,’ said Nanny.

Igor brightened up. ‘Oh, I’ve plenty of rope and I’ve alwayth been a dab hand at nootheth,’ he said.

‘No, that’s not—’ Agnes began, but Nanny Ogg cut in quickly.

‘I s’pose it all depends on who’s going to have the fun,’ she said. ‘Well, be seeing you, Igor. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, if you ever find anything I wouldn’t do.’

‘We’re very sorry about Scraps,’ said Agnes. ‘Perhaps we can find you a puppy or—’

‘Thankth all the thame, but no. There’th only one Thcrapth.’

He waved to them until they were round the next bend.

As Agnes turned round again she saw the three magpies. They were perched on a branch over the road.

‘“Three for a funeral—”’ she began.

A stone whirred up. There was an indignant squawk and a shower of feathers.

‘Two for mirth,’ said Nanny, in a self-satisfied voice.

‘Nanny, that was cheating .’

‘Witches always cheat,’ said Nanny Ogg. She glanced back at the sleeping figure behind them. ‘Everyone knows that — who knows anything about witches.’

They went home to Lancre.

It had been raining again. Water had seeped into Oats’s tent and also into the harmonium, which now emitted an occasional squashed-frog burp when it was played. The songbooks also smelled rather distressingly of cat.

He gave up on them and turned to the task of disassembling his camp bed, which had skinned two knuckles and crushed one finger when he put it up and still looked as though it was designed for a man shaped like a banana.

Oats was aware that he was trying to avoid thinking. On the whole, he was happy with this. There was something pleasing about simply getting on with simple tasks, and listening to his own breath. Perhaps there was a way …

From outside there was the faint sound of something wooden hitting something hollow and whispering on the evening air.

He peered through the tent flap.

People were filing stealthily into the field. The first few were carrying planks. Several were pushing barrels. He stood with his mouth open as the very rough benches were constructed and began to fill up.

A number of the men had bandages across their noses, he noticed.

Then he heard the rattle of wheels and saw the royal coach lurch through the gateway. This woke him up and he scurried back into the tent, pulling damp clothes out of his bag in a frantic search for a clean shirt. His hat had never been found and his coat was caked with mud, the leather of his shoes was cracked and the buckles had instantly tarnished in the acid marshes, but surely a clean shirt—