Carpe Jugulum (30 page)

Mightily Oats stepped out onto the battlements. The sun was well up, and a breeze was blowing in over the forests of Uberwald. A few magpies chattered in the trees nearest the castle.

Granny was leaning with her elbows on the wall, and staring out over the thinning mists.

“It looks like it’s going to be a fine day,” said Oats, happily. And he did feel happy, to his amazement. There was sharpness to the air, and the sense of the future brimming with possibilities. He remembered the moment when he’d swung the ax, when
both
of him had swung it, together. Perhaps there was a way…

“There’s a storm coming down from the Hub later,” said Granny.

“Well…at least that’ll be good for the crops, then,” said Oats.

Something flickered overhead. In the new daylight the wings of the phoenix were hard to see, mere yellow shimmers in the air, with the tiny shape of the little hawk in the center as it circled high over the castle.

“Why would anyone want to kill something like that?” said Oats.

“Oh, some people’ll kill anything for the fun of it.”

“Is it a true bird or is it something that exists
within
a—”

“It’s a thing that is,” said Granny sharply. “Don’t go spilling allegory all down your shirt.”

“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. “Everywhere I look I see something holy.”

For the first time since he’d met her, he saw Granny Weather-wax 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 some 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—

Sometime tried to knock on the damp canvas and then, after an interval of half a second, stepped into the tent.

“Are you decent?” said Nanny Ogg, looking him up and down. “We’re all out here waitin’, you know. Lost sheep waitin’ to be shorn, you might say,” she added, her manner suggesting very clearly that she was doing something that she personally disapproved of, but doing it just the same.

Oats turned around.

“Mrs. Ogg, I know you don’t like me very much—”

“Don’t see why I should like you at all,” said Nanny. “What with you tagging after Esme and her havin’ to help you all that way across the mountains like that.”

The response was screaming up Oats’s throat before he noticed the faint knowing look in Nanny’s eyes, and he managed to turn it into a cough.

“Er…yes,” he said. “Yes. Silly of me, wasn’t it. Er…how many are out there, Mrs. Ogg?”

“Oh, a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty.”

Levers, thought Oats, and had a fleeting vision of the pictures in Nanny’s parlor. She controls the levers of lots of people. But someone pulled her lever first, I’ll bet.

“And what do they expect of me?”

“Says Evensong on the poster,” said Nanny simply. “Even beer would be better.”

So he went out and saw the watching faces of a large part of Lancre’s population lined up in the late-afternoon light. The King and Queen were in the front row. Verence nodded regally at Oats to signal that whatever it was that he intended ought to start around now.

It was clear from the body language of Nanny Ogg that any specifically Omnian prayers would not be tolerated, and Oats made do with a generic prayer of thanks to any god that may be listening and even to the ones that weren’t.

Then he pulled out the stricken harmonium and tried a few chords until Nanny elbowed him aside, rolled up her sleeves, and coaxed notes out of the damp bellows that Oats never even knew were in there.

The singing wasn’t very enthusiastic, though, until Oats tossed aside the noisome songbook and taught them some of the songs he remembered from his grandmother, full of fire and thunder and death and justice and tunes you could actually whistle, with titles like “Om Shall Trample The Ungodly” and “Lift Me To The Skies” and “Light The Good Light.” They went down well. Lancre people weren’t too concerned about religion, but they knew what it ought to sound like.

While he led the singing, with the aid of a long stick and the words of the hymns scrawled on the side of his tent, he scanned his…well, he decided to call it his congregation. It was his first real one. There were plenty of women, and a lot of very well-scrubbed men, but one face was patently not there. Its absence dominated the scene.

But, as he raised his eyes upward in mid-song, he did notice an eagle far overhead, a mere speck gyrating across the darkening sky, possibly hunting for lost lambs.

And then it was over and people left, quietly, with the look of those who’d done a job which had not not been unpleasant but which was nevertheless over. The collection plate produced two pennies, some carrots, a large onion, a small loaf, a pound of mutton, a jug of milk and a pickled pig’s trotter.

“We’re not really a cash economy,” said King Verence, stepping forward. He had a bandage across his forehead.

“Oh, it’ll make a good supper, sire,” said Oats, in the madly cheerful voice that people use when addressing royalty.

“Surely you’ll dine with us?” said Magrat.

“I…er…was planning to leave at first light, sire. So I really ought to spend the evening packing and setting fire to the camp bed.”

“Leaving? But I thought you were staying here. I’ve taken…community soundings,” said the King, “and I think I can say that popular opinion is with me on this.”

Oats looked at Magrat’s face, which said plainly, Granny doesn’t object.

“Well, I, er…I expect I shall pass through again, sire,” he said. “But…to tell you the truth, I was thinking of heading on to Uberwald.”

“That’s a hellish place, Mr. Oats.”

“I’ve thought about it all day, sire, and I’m set on it.”

“Oh.” Verence looked nonplussed, but kings learn to swing back upright. “I’m sure you know your own mind best.” He swayed slightly as Magrat’s elbow grazed his ribs. “Oh…yes…we heard you lost your, er, holy amulet and so this afternoon we, that is to say the Queen and Miss Nitt…got Shawn Ogg to make this in the mint…”

Oats unwrapped the black velvet scroll. Inside, on a golden chain, was a small golden double-headed ax.

He stared at it.

“Shawn isn’t very good at turtles,” said Magrat, to fill the gap.

“I shall treasure it,” said Oats, at last.

“Of course, we appreciate it’s not very holy,” said the King.

Oats waved a hand dismissively. “Who knows, sire? Holiness is where you find it,” he said.

Behind the King, Jason and Darren Ogg were standing respectfully to attention. Both still had plasters stuck across their noses. They moved aside hurriedly to make way for the King, who didn’t seem to notice.

Nanny Ogg struck a chord on the harmonium when the royal couple had departed with their retinue.

“If you drop in to our Jason’s forge first thing when you’re leavin’ I’ll see to it he fixes the bellows on this contraption,” she said diffidently, and Oats realized that in the context of Nanny Ogg this was as close as he was going to get to three rousing cheers and the grateful thanks of the population.

“I was so impressed that everyone turned up on their own free will,” he said. “Spontaneously, as it were.”

“Don’t push your luck, sonny boy,” said Nanny, getting up.

“Nice to have met you, Mrs. Ogg.”

Nanny walked away a few steps, but Oggs never left anything unsaid.

“I can’t say as I approve of you,” she said, stiffly. “But should you ever come knockin’ on an Ogg door in these parts you’ll…get a hot meal. You’re too skinny. I’ve seen more meat on a butcher’s pencil.”

“Thank you.”

“Not necessarily puddin’ as well, mark you.”

“Of course not.”

“Well, then…” Nanny Ogg shrugged. “Best of luck in Uber-wald, then.”

“Om will go with me, I’m sure,” said Oats. He was interested in how annoyed you could make Nanny by speaking calmly to her, and wondered if Granny Weatherwax had tried it.

“I hope he does,” said Nanny. “I person’ly don’t want him hanging around here.”

When she’d gone Oats lit a fire of the horrible bed and stuck the songbooks around it to dry out.

“Hello…”

The thing about a witch in darkness is that all you see is her face, bobbing toward you, surrounded by black. Then a little contrast reasserted itself, and an area of shadow detached from the rest and became Agnes.

“Oh, good evening,” said Oats. “Thank you for coming. I’ve never heard anyone singing in harmony with themselves before.”

Agnes coughed nervously.

“Are you really going on into Uberwald?”

“There’s no reason to stay here, is there?”

Agnes’s left arm twitched a few times. She steadied it with her right hand.

“S’pose not,” she said, in a small voice. “No! Shut up! This is
not
the time!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was, um, just talking to myself,” said Agnes, wretchedly. “Look, everyone
knows
you helped Granny. They just pretend they don’t.”

“Yes. I know.”

“You don’t mind?”

Oats shrugged. Agnes coughed.

“I thought perhaps you were going to stay on here for a while.”

“There’d be no point, I’m not needed here.”

“I shouldn’t think vampires and so on would be very keen on singing hymns,” said Agnes quietly.

“Perhaps they can learn something else,” said Oats. “I shall see what may be done.”

Agnes stood hesitantly for a few moments.

“I’ve got to give you this,” she said, suddenly handing over a small bag. Oats reached inside and took out a small jar.

Inside, a phoenix feather burned, lighting up the field with a clear, cool light.

“It’s from—” Agnes began.

“I know who it’s from,” said Oats. “Is Mistress Weatherwax all right? I didn’t see her here.”

“Er…she’s been having a rest today.”

“Well, thank her from me, will you?”

“She said it’s to take into dark places.”

Oats laughed.

“Er…yes. Er…I might come and see you off in the morning…” said Agnes, uncertainly.

“That would be nice of you.”

“So…until…you know…”

“Yes.”

Agnes seemed to be struggling with some inner resistance. Then she said, “And, er…there’s something I’ve been meaning to…I mean, perhaps you could…”

“Yes?”

Agnes’s right hand dived urgently into her pocket and she pulled out a small package wrapped in greased paper.

“It’s a poultice,” she blurted out, “It’s a very good recipe and the book says it always works and if you heat it up and leave it on it’ll do wonders for your boil.”

Oats took it gently. “It’s just possible that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever given me,” he said.

“Er…good. It’s from…er…both of us. Goodbye.”

Oats watched her leave the circle of light, and then something drew his eye upward again.

The circling eagle had risen above the shadow of the mountains and into the light of the setting sun. For a moment it flashed gold, and then dropped into the dark again.