Lords and Ladies

Page 36

“Another elf?”
“Right, and then I found Eva and the kids, and then lots of people were running like hell for home, and there were these Gentry on horseback, and I could hear 'em laughing, and we got home and Eva said to put a horseshoe on the door and-”
“What about the king?”
“Dunno, miss. Last I remember, he was laughin' at Thatcher in his straw wig.”
“And Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax? What happened to them?”
“Dunno, miss. Don't remember seein' 'em, but there was people runnin' everywhere-”
“And where was all this?”
“Miss?”
“Where did it happen?” said Magrat, trying to speak slowly and distinctly.
“Up at the Dancers, miss. You know. Them old stones.” Magrat let him go.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Don't tell Magrat, Magrat's not to know about this sort of thing. The Dancers? Right.”
“It wasn't us, miss! It was only make-believe!”
“Hah!”
She unbolted the door again.
“Where're you going, miss?” said Weaver, who was not a competitor in the All-Lancre Uptake Stakes.
“Where d'you think?”
“But, miss, you can't take iron-”
Magrat slammed the door. Then she kicked the bowl of milk so hard that it sprayed across the street.
Jason Ogg crawled cautiously through the dripping bracken. There was a figure a few feet away. He hefted the stone in his hand-
“Jason?”
“Is that you, Weaver?”
“No, it's me - Tailor.”
“Where's everyone else?”
“Tinker'n Baker found Carpenter just now. Have you seen Weaver?”
“No, but I saw Carter and Thatcher.”
Mist curled up as the rain drummed into the warm earth. The seven surviving Morris Men crawled under a
dripping bush.
“There's going to be hell to pay in the morning!”
moaned Carter. “When she finds us we're done for!”
“We'll be all right if we can find some iron,” said Jason. “Iron don't have no effect on her! She'll tan our hides for us!”
Carter clutched his knees to his chest in terror.
“Who?”
“Mistress Weatherwax!”
Thatcher jabbed him in the ribs. Water cascaded off the leaves above them and tunnelled down every neck.
“Don't be so daft! You saw them things! What're you worrying about that old baggage for?”
“She'll tan our hides for us, right enough! 'Twas all our fault, she'll say!”
“I just hopes she gets a chance,” muttered Tinker.
“We are,” said Thatcher, “between a rock and a hard place.”
“No we ain't,” sobbed Carter. “I been there. That's that gorge just above Bad Ass. We ain't there! I wish we was there! We're under this bush! And they'll be looking for us! And so shall she!”
“What happened when we was doing the Ent-” Carpenter began.
“I ain't asking that question right now,” said Jason. “The question I'm asking right now is, how do we get home tonight?”
“She'll be waiting for us!” Carter wailed.
There was a tinkle in the darkness.
“What've you got there?” said Jason.
“It's the props sack,” said Carter. “You said as how it was my job to look after the props sack!”
“You dragged that all the way down here?”
“I ain't about to get into more trouble 'cos of losing the props sack!”
Carter started to shiver.
“If we gets back home,” said Jason, “I'm going to talk to our mam about getting you some of these new dried frog pills.”
He pulled the sack toward him and undid the top.
“There's our bells in here,” he said, “and the sticks. And who told you to pack the accordion?”
“I thought we might want to do the Stick and-”
“No one's ever to do the Stick and-”
There was a laugh, away on the rain-soaked hill, and a crackling in the bracken. Jason suddenly felt the focus of attention.
“They're out there!” said Carter.
“And we ain't got any weapons,” said Tinker.
A set of heavy brass bells hit him in the chest.
“Shut up,” said Jason, “and put your bells on. Carter?”
“They're waiting for us!”
“I'll say this just once,” said Jason. “After tonight no one's ever to talk about the Stick and Bucket dance ever again. All right?”
The Lancre Morris Men faced one another, rain plastering their clothes to their bodies.
Carter, tears of terror mingling with make-up and the rain, squeezed the accordion. There was the long-drawn-out chord that by law must precede all folk music to give bystanders time to get away
Jason held up his hand and counted his fingers.
“One, two . . .” His forehead wrinkled. “One, two, three . . .”
“. . . four . . .” hissed Tinker.
“. . . four,” said Jason. “Dance, lads!”
Six heavy ash sticks clashed in mid-air.
“. . . one, two, forward, one, back, spin . . .”
Slowly, as the leaky strains of Mrs. Widgery's Lodger wound around the mist, the dancers leapt and squelched their way slowly through the night. . .
“. . . two, back, jump . . .”
The sticks clashed again.
“They're watching us!” panted Tailor, as he bounced past Jason, “I can see 'em!”
“. . . one . . . two . . . they won't do nothing 'til the music stops! . . . back, two, spin . . . they loves music! . . . forward, hop, turn . . . one and six, beetle crushers! . . . hop, back, spin . . .”
“They're coming out of the bracken!” shouted Carpenter, as the sticks met again.
“I see 'em . . . two, three, forward, turn . . . Carter . . . back, spin . . . you do a double . . . two, back . . . wandering angus down the middle . . .”
“I'm losing it, Jason!”
“Play! . . . two, three, spin . . .”
“They're all round us!”
“Dance!”
“They're watching us! They're closing in!”
“. . . spin, back . . . jump . . . we're nearly at the road . . .”
“Jason!”
“Remember when . . . three, turn . . . we won the cup against Ohulan Casuals? . . . spin . . .”
The sticks met, with a thump of wood against wood. Clods of earth were kicked into the night.
“Jason, you don't mean-”
“. . . back, two . . . do it. . . ”
“Carter's getting . . . one, two . . . out of wind . . .”
“. . . two, spin. . .”
“The accordion's melting, Jason,” sobbed Carter.
“. . . one, two, forward . . . bean setting!”
The accordion wheezed. The elves pressed in. Out of the corner of his eye Jason saw a dozen grinning, fascinated faces.
“Jason!”
“. . . one, two . . . Carter into the middle . . . one, two, spin. . .”
Seven pairs of boots thudded down . . .
“Jason!”
“. . . one, two . . . spin . . . ready . . . one, two . . . back . . . back . . . one, two . . . turn . . . KILL . . . and back, one, two. . .”
The inn was a wreck. The elves had stripped it of everything edible and rolled out every barrel, although a couple of rogue cheeses in the cellar had put up quite a fight.
The table had collapsed. Lobster claws and candlesticks lay among the ruined meal.
Nothing moved.
Then someone sneezed, and some soot fell into the empty grate, followed by Nanny Ogg and, eventually, by the small, black, and irate figure of Casanunda.
“Yuk,” said Nanny, looking around at the debris. “This really is the pips.”
“You should have let me fight them!”
“There were too many of them, my lad.”
Casanunda threw his sword on the floor in disgust.
“We were just getting to know one another properly and fifty elves burst into the place! Damn! This kind of thing happens to me all the time!”
“That's the best thing about black, it doesn't show the soot,” said Nanny Ogg vaguely, dusting herself off. “They managed it, then. Esme was right. Wonder where she is? Oh, well. Come on.”
“Where're we going?” said the dwarf.
“Down to my cottage.”
“Ah!”
“To get my broomstick,” said Nanny Ogg firmly. “I ain't having the Queen of the Fairies ruling my children. So we'd better get some help. This has gone too far.”
“We could go up into the mountains,” said Casanunda, as they crept down the stairs. “There's thousands of dwarfs up there.”
“No,” said Nanny Ogg. “Esme won't thank me for this, but I'm the one who has to wave the bag o' sweets when she overreaches herself . . . and I'm thinking about someone who really hates the Queen.”
“You won't find anyone who hates her worse than dwarfs do,” said Casanunda.
“Oh, you will,” said Nanny Ogg, “if you knows where to look.”
The elves had been into Nanny Ogg's cottage, too. There weren't two pieces of furniture left whole.
“What they don't take they smash,” said Nanny Ogg.
She stirred the debris with her foot. Glass tinkled.
“That vase was a present from Esme,” she said, to the unfeeling world in general. “Never liked it much.”
“Why'd they do it?” said Casanunda, looking around.
“Oh, they'd smash the world if they thought it'd make a pretty noise,” said Nanny She stepped outside again and felt around under the eaves of the low thatched roof, and pulled out her broomstick with a small grunt of triumph.
“I always shove it up there,” she said, “otherwise the kids nick it and go joy-riding. You ride behind me, and I say this against my better judgement.”
Casanunda shuddered. Dwarfs are generally scared of heights, since they don't often have the opportunity to get used to them.
Nanny scratched her chin, making a sandpapery sound.
“And we'll need a crowbar,” she said. “There'll be one in Jason's forge. Hop on, my lad.”
“I really wasn't expecting this,” said Casanunda, feeling his way on to the broomstick with his eyes shut. “I was looking forward to a convivial evening, just me and you.”
“It is just me and you.”
“Yes, but I hadn't assumed there'd be a broomstick involved.”
The stick left the ground slowly Casanunda clung miserably to the bristles.
“Where're we going?” he said weakly
“Place I know, up in the hills,” said Nanny “Ages since I've been there. Esme won't go near it, and Magrat's too young to be tole. I used to go there a lot, though. When I was a girl. Girls used to go up there if they wanted to get-oh, bugger. . .”
“What?”
“Thought I saw something fly across the moon, and I'm damn sure it wasn't Esme.”
Casanunda tried to look around while keeping his eyes shut.
“Elves can't fly,” he muttered.
“That's all you know,” said Nanny. “They ride yarrow stalks.”
“Yarrow stalks?”