Carpe Jugulum

Chapter 18

'He can send Mum the bill.'
'That's seditious talk, Jason! I could have you arr- I could arr- Mum would have something to say about you talking like that!'
'Where is the King, anyway?' said Darren Ogg. 'Sittin' back and lettin' Mum sort everything out while we get shot at?'
'You know he's got a weak chest,' said Shawn. 'He does very well considering he-'
He stopped as a sound rolled out across the countryside. It had a hoarse, primal quality, the sound of an animal who is in pain but also intends to pass it on as soon as possible. The men looked around nervously.
Verence came thundering through the gates.
Shawn recognized him only by the embroidery on his nightshirt and his fluffy slippers. He held a long sword over his head in both hands and was running straight for the door of the keep, trailing a scream behind him.
The sword struck the wood. Shawn heard the whole door shudder.
'He's gone mad!' shouted Darren. 'Let's grab the poor creature before he gets shot!'
A couple of them scurried across to the struggling King, who was standing horizontally on the door in an effort to get the sword out.
'Now, see here, your maj- Aargh!'
'Ach, tak a faceful o'heid!'
Darren staggered back, clutching at his face.
Little shapes swarmed across the courtyard after the King, like some kind of plague.
'Gibbins!'
'Fackle!'
'Nac mac Feegle!'
There was another scream as Jason, trying to restrain his monarch's enthusiasm, found that while the touch of a monarch may indeed cure certain scalp conditions, the scalp of a king itself is capable of spreading someone's nose into an interesting flat shape.
Arrows thudded into the ground around them.
Shawn grabbed Big Jim. 'They're all going to get shot, drink or not!' he shouted above the din. 'You come with me!'
'What we gonna do?'
'Clean the privies!'
The troll scuttled after him as he edged his way around the keep, to where the Gong Tower loomed against the night in all its odoriferous splendour. It was the bane of Shawn's life. All the keep's garderobes discharged into it. One of his jobs was to clean it out and take the contents to the pits in the gardens where Verence's efforts at composting were gradually turning them into, well, Lancre.[13] But now that the castle was a lot busier than it used to be his weekly efforts with shovel and wheelbarrow weren't the peaceful and solitary interludes they had been. Of course he'd let the job sort of... pile up these last few weeks, but did they expect him to do everything?
He waved Big Jim towards the door at the bottom of the tower. Fortunately, trolls have not much interest in organic odours, although they can easily distinguish types of limestone by smell.
'I want you to open it when I say,' he said, tearing a strip off his shirt and wrapping it round an arrow. He searched his pockets for a match. 'And when you've opened the door,' he went on, as the cloth caught, 'I want you to run away very, very fast, right? Okay... open the door!'
Big Jim pulled at the handle. There was a very faint whoosh as the door swung back.
'Run!' Shawn shouted. He drew back the bowstring and fired through the doorway.
The flaming arrow vanished into the noisome darkness. There was a pause of a few heartbeats. Then the tower exploded.
It happened quite slowly. The green-blue light mushroomed up from storey to storey in an almost leisurely way, blowing out stones at every level to give the tower a nice sparkling effect. The roofing leads opened up like a daisy. A faint flame speared the clouds. Then time, sound and motion came back with a thump.
After a few seconds the main doors burst open and the soldiers ran out. The first one was smacked between the eyes by a ballistic king.
Shawn had just started to run back to the fight when someone landed on his shoulders, bearing him to the ground.
'Well, well, one of the toy soldiers,' sneered Corporal Svitz, leaping up and drawing his sword.
As he raised it Shawn rolled over and struck upwards with the Lancrastian Peace-time Army Knife. He might have had time to select the Device for Dissecting Paradoxes, or the Appliance for Detecting Small Grains of Hope, or the Spiral Thing for Ascertaining the Reality of Being, but as it happened it was the instrument for Ending Arguments Very Quickly that won the day.
Presently, there came a short shower of soft rain.
Well... certainly a shower.
Definitely soft, anyway.
Agnes hadn't seen a mob like this before. Mobs, in her limited experience, were noisy. This one was silent. Most of the town was in it, and to Agnes's surprise they'd brought along many of the children.
It didn't surprise Perdita. They're going to kill the vampires, she said, and the children will watch.
Good, thought Agnes, that's exactly right.
Perdita was horrified. It'll give them nightmares!
No, thought Agnes. It'll take the nightmares away. Sometimes everyone has to know the monster is dead, and remember, so that they can tell their grandchildren.
'They tried to turn people into things,' she said aloud.
'Sorry, miss?' said Piotr.
'Oh... just thinking aloud.'
And where had she got that other idea? Perdita wondered, the one where she'd told the villagers to send runners out to other towns to report on the night's work. That was unusually nasty of her.
But she remembered the look of horror on the mayor's face and, later, the blank engrossed expression when he was trying to throttle the Count with his chain of office. The vampire had killed him with a blow that had almost broken him in half.
She fingered the wounds on her neck. She was pretty certain vampires didn't miss, but Vlad must have done, because she dearly wasn't a vampire. She didn't even like the idea of rare steak. She'd tried to see if she could fly, when she thought people weren't looking, but she was as attractive to gravity as ever. The blood-sucking... no, never that, even if it was the ultimate diet programme, but she'd have liked the flying.
It's changed you, said Perdita.
'How?'
'Sorry, miss?'
You're sharper... edgier... nastier.
'Maybe it's about time I was, then.'
'Sorry, miss?'
'Oh, nothing. Do you have a spare sickle?'
The vampires travelled fast but erratically, appearing not so much to fly as to be promising entries in the world long-jump championships.
'We'll burn that ungrateful place to the ground,' moaned the Countess, landing heavily.
'Afterwards we'll burn that place to the ground,' said Lacrimosa. 'This is what kindness leads to, Father. I do hope you're paying attention.'
'After you paid for that belltower, too,' said the Countess.
The Count rubbed his throat, where the links of the gold chain still showed as a red weal. He wouldn't have believed that a human could be so strong.
'Yes, that might be a good course of action,' he said. 'We would have to make sure the news got around, of course.'
'You think this news won't get around?' said Lacrimosa, landing beside him.
'It will be dawn soon, Lacci,' said the Count, with heavy patience. 'Because of my training, you will regard it as rather a nuisance, not a reason to crumble into a little pile of dust. Reflect on this.'
'That Weatherwax woman did this, didn't she?' said Lacrimosa, ignoring this call to count her blessings. 'She put her self somewhere and she's attacking us. She can't be in the baby. I suppose she wasn't in your fat girl, Vlad? Plenty of room in there. Are you listening, brother?'
'What?' said Vlad distantly as they turned a corner in the road and saw the castle ahead of them.
'I saw you give in and bite her. So romantic. They still dragged her off, though. They'll have to use quite a long stake to hit any useful organ.'
'She'd have put her self somewhere close,' said the Count. 'It stands to reason. It must've been someone in the hall...'
'One of the other witches, surely,' said the Countess.
'I wonder...'
'That stupid priest,' said Lacrimosa.
'That would probably appeal to her,' said the Count. 'But I suspect not.'
'Not... Igor?' said his daughter.
'I wouldn't give that a moment's thought,' said the Count.
'I still think it was Fat Agnes.'
'She wasn't that fat,' said Vlad sulkily.
'You'd have got tired of her in the end and we'd have ended up with her always getting in the way, just like the others,' said Lacrimosa. 'Traditionally a keepsake is meant to be a lock of their hair, not their entire skull-'
'She's different.'
'Just because you can't read her mind? How interesting would that be?'
'At least I did bite someone,' said Vlad. 'What was wrong with you?'
'Yes, you were acting very strangely, Lacci,' said the Count, as they reached the drawbridge.
'If she was hiding in me I'd know!' snarled Lacrimosa.
'I wonder if you would,' said the Count. 'She just has to find a weak spot...
'She's just a witch, Father. Honestly, we're acting as though she's got some sort of terrible power-'
'Perhaps it was Vlad's Agnes after all,' said the Count. He gave his son a slightly longer stare than was strictly necessary.
'We're nearly at the castle,' said the Countess, trying to rally them. 'We'll all feel better for an early day.'
'Our best coffins got taken to Lancre,' said Lacrimosa sullenly. 'Someone was so sure of themselves.'
'Don't you adopt that tone with me, young woman!' said the Count.
'I'm two hundred years old,' said Lacrimosa. 'Pardon me, but I think I can choose any tone I like.'
'That's no way to speak to your father!'
'Really, Mother, you might at least act as if you had two brain cells of your own!'
'It is not your father's fault that everything's gone wrong!'
'It has not all gone wrong, my dear! This is just a temporary setback!'
'It won't be when the Escrow meat tell their friends! Come on, Vlad, stop moping and back me up here.. .'
'If they tell them, what can they do? Oh, there will be a little bit of protesting, but then the survivors will see reason,' said the Count. 'In the meantime, we have those witches waiting for us. With the baby.'
'And we've got to be polite to them, I suppose?'
'Oh, I don't think we need go that far,' said the Count. 'Let them live, perhaps-'
Something bounced on the bridge beside him. He reached down to pick it up and dropped it with a yelp.
'But... garlic shouldn't burn...' he began.
'Thith ith water from the Holy Turtle Pond of Thquintth,' said a voice above them. 'Blethed by the Bithop himthelf in the Year of the Trout.' There was a glugging noise and the sound of someone swallowing. 'That wath a good year for beatitude,' Igor went on. 'But you don't have to take my word for it. Duck, you thuckerth!'
The vampires dived for cover as the bottle, turning over and over, arced down from the battlements.
It shattered on the bridge, and most of the contents hit a vampire, who burst into flame as if hit by burning oil.
'Now really, Cryptopher, there's no call for that sort of thing,' said the Count, as the blazing figure screamed and spun around in a circle. 'It's all in your mind, you know. Positive thinking, that's the ticket-'
'He's turning black,' said the Countess. 'Aren't you going to do something?'
'Oh, very well. Vlad, just kick him off the drawbridge, will you?'
The luckless Cryptopher was pushed, squirming, into the chasm.
'You know, that should not have happened,' said the Count, looking at his blistered fingers. 'He obviously was not... truly one of us.' Far below, there was a splash.
The rest of the vampires scrambled for the cover of the gate arch as another bottle exploded near the Count. A drop splashed his leg, and he glanced down at the little wisp of smoke.
'Some error appears to have crept in,' he said.
'I've never been one to put myself forward,' said the Countess, 'but I strongly suggest you find a new plan, dear. One which works, perhaps?'
'I have one already formed,' he said, tapping his knuckles against the huge oak gates. 'If everyone would perhaps stand aside...'
Up on the battlement Igor nudged Nanny Ogg, who lowered a decanter of water from the Holy Fountain of Seven-Handed Sek and followed his pointing thumb.[14]
Clouds were suddenly spiralling, with blue light flashing inside them.
'There'th going to be a thtorm!' he said. 'The top of my head'th tingling! Run!'
They reached the tower just as a single bolt of lightning blew the doors apart and shattered the stones where they had been standing.
'Well, that was easy,' said Nanny, lying full length on the floor.
'They can control the weather,' said Igor.
'Blast!' said Nanny. 'That's right. Everyone knows that, who knows anything about vampires.'
'Thorry. But they won't be able to try that on the inthide doorth. Come on!'
'What's that smell?' said Nanny, sniffing. 'Igor, your boots are on fire!'
'Damn! And thethe feet were nearly new thicth month ago,' said Igor, as Nanny's holy water sizzled over the smoking leather. 'It'th my wire, it pickth up thtray currentth.'
'What happened, someone was hit by a falling buffalo?' said Nanny, as they hurried down the stairs.
'It wath a tree,' said Igor reproachfully. 'Mikhail Thwenitth up at the logging camp, the poor man. Practically nothing left, but hith parentth thaid I could have hith feet to remember him by.'
'That was strangely kind of them.'
'Well, I gave him a thpare arm after the acthe acthident a few yearth ago and when old Mr Thwenitth'th liver gave out I let him have the one Mr Kochak left to me for giving Mithith Kochak a new eye.'
'People round here don't so much die as pass on,' said Nanny.
'What goeth around cometh around,' said Igor.
'And your new plan is... ?' said Lacrimosa, stepping across the rubble.
'We'll kill everyone. Not an original plan, I admit, but tried and tested,' said the Count. This met with general approval, but his daughter looked unsatisfied.
'What, everyone? All at once?'
'Oh, you can save some for later if you must.'
The Countess clutched his arm.
'Oh, this does so remind me of our honeymoon,' she said. 'Don't you remember those wonderful nights in Grjsknvij?'
'Oh, fresh morning of the world indeed,' said the Count solemnly.
'Such romance... and we met such lovely people, too. Do you remember Mr and Mrs Harker?'
'Very fondly. I recall they lasted nearly all week. Now, listen all of you. Holy symbols will not hurt us. Holy water is just water  -  yes, I know, but Cryptopher just wasn't concentrating. Garlic is just another member of the allium family. Do onions hurt us? Are we frightened of shallots? No. We've just got a bit tired, that's all. Malicia, call up the rest of the clan. We will have a little holiday from reason. And afterwards, in the morning, there will be room for a new world order I can't be having with this at all...'
He rubbed his forehead. The Count prided himself on his mind, and tended it carefully. But right now it felt exposed, as though someone was looking over his shoulder. He wasn't certain he was thinking right. She couldn't have got into his head, could she? He'd had hundreds of years of experience. There was no way some village witch could get past his defences. It stood to reason...
His throat felt parched. At least he could obey the call of his nature. But this time it was an oddly disquieting one.
'Do we have any... tea?' he said.
'What is tea?' said the Countess.
'It... grow on a bush, I think,' said the Count.
'How do you bite it, then?'
'You... er... lower it into boiling water, don't you?' The Count shook his head, trying to free himself of this demonic urge.
'While it's still alive?' said Lacrimosa, brightening up.
... sweet biscuits...'mumbled the Count.
'I think you should try to get a grip, dear,' said the Countess.
'This... tea,' said Lacrimosa. 'Is it... brown?'
'Yes,' whispered the Count..
'Because when we were in Escrow I was going to put the bite on one of them and I had this horrible mental picture of a cup full of the wretched stuff,' said his daughter.
The Count shook himself again.
'I don't know what's happening to me,' he said. 'So let's stick to what we do know, shall we? Obey our blood...'
The second casualty in the battle for the castle was Vargo, a lank young man who actually became a vampire because he thought he'd meet interesting girls, or any girls at all, and had been told he looked good in black. And then he'd found that a vampire's interests always centre, sooner or later, on the next meal, and hitherto he'd never really thought of the neck as the most interesting organ a girl could have.
Right now all he wanted to do was sleep, so as the vampires surged into the castle proper he sauntered gently away in the direction of his cellar and nice comfortable coffin. Of course he was hungry, since all he'd got in Escrow was a foot in the chest, but he had just enough sense of self-preservation to let the others get on with the hunting so that he could turn up later for the feast.
His coffin was in the centre of the dim cellar, its lid lying carelessly on the floor beside it. He'd always been messy with the bedclothes, even as a human.
Vargo climbed in, twisted and turned a few times to get comfortable on the pillow, then pulled the lid down and latched it.
As the eye of narrative drew back from the coffin on its stand, two things happened. One happened comparatively slowly, and this was Vargo's realization that he never recalled the coffin having a pillow before.
The other was Greebo deciding that he was as mad as hell and wasn't going to take it any more. He'd been shaken around in the wheely thing and then sat on by Nanny, and he was angry about that because he knew, in a dim, animal way, that scratching Nanny might be the single most stupid thing he could do in the whole world, since no one else was prepared to feed him. This hadn't helped his temper.
Then he'd encountered a dog, which had tried to lick him. He'd scratched and bitten it a few times, but this had had no effect apart from encouraging it to try to be more friendly.
He'd finally found a comfy resting place and had curled up into a ball, and now someone was using him as a cushion-
There wasn't a great deal of noise. The coffin rocked a few times, and then pivoted around.
Greebo sheathed his claws and went back to sleep.
'-burn, with a dear bright light-'
Splash, suck, splash.
'-and I in mine... Om be praised.'
Squelch, splash.
Oats had worked his way though most of the hymns he knew, even the old ones you shouldn't really sing any more but you nevertheless remembered because the words were so good. He sang them loudly and defiantly, to hold back the night and the doubts. They helped take his mind off the weight of Granny Weatherwax. It was amazing how she'd apparently gained in the last mile or so, especially whenever he fell over and she landed on top of him.
He'd lost one of his own boots in a mire. His hat was floating in a pool somewhere. Thorns had ripped his coat to tatters-
He slipped and fell once again as the mud shifted under his feet. Granny rolled off and landed in a clump of sedge.
If Brother Melchio could only see him now...
The wowhawk swooped past and landed on the branch of a dead tree a few yards away. Oats hated the thing. It appeared demonic. It flew even though it surely couldn't see through the hood. Worse, whenever he thought about it, as now, the hooded head turned to fix him with an invisible stare. He took off his other useless shoe, its shiny leather all stained and cracked, and flung it inexpertly.
'Go away, you wicked creature!'
The bird didn't stir. The shoe flew past it.
Then, as he tried to get to his feet, he smelled burning leather.
Two wisps of smoke were curling up from either side of the hood.
Oats reached to his neck for the security of the turtle, and it wasn't there. It had cost him five obols in the Citadel, and it was too late now to reflect that perhaps he shouldn't have hung it from a chain worth a tenth of an obol. It was probably lying in some pool, or buried in some muddy, squelching marsh...
Now the leather burned away, and the yellow glow from the holes was so bright he could barely see the outline of the bird. It turned the dank landscape into lines and shadows, put a golden edge on every tuft of grass and stricken tree  -  and winked out so quickly that it left Oats's eyes full of purple explosions.
When he'd recovered his breath and his balance, the bird was swooping away down the moor.
He picked up Granny Weatherwax's unconscious body and ran after it.
The track did lead downhill, at least. Mud and bracken slipped under his feet. Rivulets were running from every hole and gully. Half the time it seemed to him that he wasn't walking, merely controlling a slide, bouncing off rocks, slithering through puddles of mud and leaves.
And then there was the castle, seen through a gap in the trees, lit by a flash of lightning. Oats staggered through a clump of thorn bushes, managed to keep upright down a slope of loose boulders, and collapsed on the road with Granny Weatherwax on top of him.
She stirred.
'... holiday from reason... kill them all... can't be havin' with this...' she murmured.
The wind blew a branchful of raindrops on her face, and she opened her eyes. For a moment they seemed to Oats to have red pupils, and then the icy blue gaze focused on him.
'Are we here, then?'
'Yes.'
'What happened to your holy hat?'
'It got lost,' said Oats abruptly. Granny peered closer.
'Your magic amulet's gone too,' she said. 'The one with the turtle and the little man on it.'
'It's not a magic amulet, Mistress Weatherwax! Please! A magic amulet is a symbol of primitive and mechanistic superstition, whereas the Turtle of Om is... is... is... Well, it's not, do you understand?'
'Oh, right. Thank you for explaining,' said Granny. 'Help me up, will you?'
Oats was having some difficulty with his temper. He'd carried the old bit- biddy for miles, he was frozen to the bone, and now they were here she acted as if she'd somehow done him a favour.
'What's the magic word?' he snarled.
'Oh, I don't think a holy man like you should be having with magic words,' said Granny. 'But the holy words are: do what I tell you or get smitten. They should do the trick.'
He helped her to her feet, alive with badly digested rage, and supported her as she swayed.
There was a scream from the castle, suddenly cut off.
'Not female,' said Granny. 'I reckon the girls have started. Let's give 'em a hand, shall we?'
Her arm shook as she raised it. The wowhawk fluttered down and settled on her wrist.
'Now help get me to the gate.'
'Don't mention it, glad to be of service,' Oats mumbled. He looked at the bird, whose hood swivelled to face him.
'That's the... other phoenix, isn't it?' he said.
'Yes,' said Granny, watching the door. 'A phoenix. You can't have just one of anything.'
'But it looks like a little hawk.'
'It was born among hawks, so it looks like a hawk. If it was hatched in a hen roost it'd be a chicken. Stands to reason. And a hawk it'll remain, until it needs to be a phoenix. They're shy birds. You could say a phoenix is what it may become...'
'Too much eggshell...'
'Yes, Mister Oats. And when does the phoenix sometimes lay two eggs? When it needs to. Hodgesaargh was right. A phoenix is of the nature of birds. Bird first, myth second.'
The doors were hanging loose, their iron reinforcements twisted out of shape and their timbers smouldering, but some effort had been made to pull them shut. Over what remained of the arch, a bat carved in stone told visitors everything they needed to know about this place.
On Granny's wrist the hood of the hawk was crackling and smoking. As Oats watched, little flames erupted from the leather again.
'He knows what they did,' said Granny. 'He was hatched knowing. Phoenixes share their minds. And they don't tolerate evil.'
The head turned to look at Oats with its whitehot stare and, instinctively, he backed away and tried to cover his eyes.
'Use the doorknocker,' said Granny, nodding to the big iron ring hanging loosely from one splintered door.
'What? You want me to knock on the door? Of a vampire's castle?'
'We're not going to sneak in, are we? Anyway, you Omnians are good at knocking on doors.'
'Well, yes,' said Oats, 'but normally just for a shared prayer and to interest people in our pamphlets'  -  he let the knocker fall a few times, the boom echoing around the valley  -  'not to have my throat ripped out!'
'Think of this as a particularly difficult street,' said Granny. 'Try again... mebbe they're hidin' behind the sofa, eh?'
'Hah!'
'You're a good man, Mister Oats?' said Granny, conversationally, as the echoes died away. 'Even without your holy book and holy amulet and holy hat?'
'Er... I try to be...' he ventured.
'Well... this is where you find out,' said Granny. 'To the fire we come at last, Mister Oats. This is where we both find out.'
Nanny raced up some stairs, a couple of vampires at her heels. The vampires were hampered because they hadn't got to grips with not being able to fly, but there was something else wrong with them as well.
'Tea!' one screamed. 'I must have... tea!'
Nanny pushed open the door to the battlements. They followed her, and tripped over Igor's leg as he stepped out of the shadows.
He raised two sharpened table legs.
'How d'you want your thtaketh, boyth?' he shouted excitedly, as he struck. 'You thould have thed you liked my thpiderth!'
Nanny leaned against the wall to get her breath back.
'Granny's somewhere here,' she panted. 'Don't ask me how. But those two were craving a cup of tea, and I reckon only Esme could mess up someone's head like that-'
The sounds of the doorknocker boomed around the courtyard below. At the same time the door at the other end of the battlements opened. Half a dozen vampires advanced.
'They're acting very dumb, aren't they?' said Nanny. 'Give me a couple more stakes.'
'Run out of thtaketh, Nanny.'
'Okay, then, pass me a bottle of holy water... Hurry up...'
'None left, Nanny.'
'We've got nothing?'
'Got'n orange, Nanny.'
'What for?'
'Run out of lemonth.'
'What good will an orange do if I hit a vampire in the mouth with it?' said Nanny, eyeing the approaching creatures.
Igor scratched his head. 'Well, I thuppothe they won't catch coldth tho eathily...'
The knocking reverberated around the castle again. Several vampires were creeping across the courtyard.
Nanny caught a flicker of light around the edge of the door. Instinct took over. As the vampires began to run, she grabbed Igor and pulled him down.
The arch exploded, every stone and plank drifting away on an expanding bubble of eyeball-searing flame. It lifted the vampires off their feet and they screamed as the fire carried them up.
When the brightness had faded a little Nanny peered carefully into the courtyard.
A bird, house-sized, wings of flame wider than the castle, reared in the broken doorway.
Mightily Oats pushed himself up on to his hands and knees. Hot flames roared around him, thundering like fiercely burning gas. His skin should have been blackening already, but against all reason the fire felt no more deadly than a hot desert wind. The air smelled of camphor and spices.
He looked up. The flames wrapped Granny Weatherwax, but they looked oddly transparent, not entirely real. Here and there little gold and green sparks glittered on her dress, and all the time the fire whipped and tore around her.
She looked down at him. 'You're in the wings of the phoenix now, Mister Oats,' she shouted, above the noise, 'and you ain't burned!'
The bird flapping its wings on her wrist was incandescent.
'How can-'
'You're the scholarl But male birds are always ones for the big display, aren't they?'
'Males? This is a male phoenix?'
'Yes!'
It leapt. What flew... what flew, as far as Oats could see, was a great bird-shape of pale flame, with the little form of the real bird inside like the head of a comet. He added to himself: if that is indeed the real bird ...
It swooped up into the tower. A yell, cut off quickly, indicated that a vampire hadn't been fast enough.