Reaper Man (19 page)

“Should think not, man. We don’t want a lot of healthy ghosts buzzin’ around.”

There was a blood-curdling scream. It echoed around the dark pillars and arches, and was suddenly cut off.

The Archchancellor stopped abruptly. The wizards cannoned into him.

“Sounded like a blood-curdlin’ scream,” he said. “Follow me!”

He ran around the corner.

There was a metallic crash, and a lot of swearing.

Something small and striped red and yellow, with tiny dripping fangs and three pairs of wings, flew around the corner and shot over the Dean’s head making a noise like a miniature buzzsaw.

“Anyone know what that was?” said the Bursar, faintly. The thing orbited the wizards and then disappeared into the darkness of the roof. “And I wish he wouldn’t
swear
so.”

“Come on,” said the Dean. “We’d better see what’s happened to him.”

“Must we?” said the Senior Wrangler.

They peered around the corner. The Archchancellor was sitting up, rubbing his ankle.

“What idiot left this here?” he said.

“Left what?” said the Dean.

“This blasted wire baskety wheely thing,” said the Archchancellor. Beside him, a tiny purple spider-like creature materialized out of the air and scuttled toward a crevice. The wizards didn’t notice it.

“What wire baskety wheely thing?” said the wizards, in unison.

Ridcully looked around him.

“I could have sworn—” he began.

There was another scream.

Ridcully scrambled to his feet.

“Come on, you fellows!” he said, limping heroically onward.

“Why does
everyone
run toward a blood-curdling scream?” mumbled the Senior Wrangler. “It’s contrary to all sense.”

They trotted out through the cloisters and into the quadrangle.

A rounded, dark shape was squatting in the middle of the ancient lawn. Steam was coming out of it in little, noisome wisps.

“What is it?”

“It can’t be a compost heap in the middle of the lawn, can it?”

“Modo will be very upset.”

The Dean peered closer. “Er…especially because, I do believe, that’s his feet poking out from under it…”

The heap swiveled toward the wizards and made a
glop, glop
noise.

Then it moved.

“Right, then,” said Ridcully, rubbing his hands together hopefully, “which of you fellows has got a spell about them at the moment?”

The wizards patted their pockets in an embarrassed fashion.

“Then I shall attract its attention while the Bursar and the Dean try to pull Modo out,” said Ridcully.

“Oh, good,” said the Dean faintly.

“How can you attract a compost heap’s attention?” said the Senior Wrangler. “I shouldn’t think it’s even got one.”

Ridcully removed his hat and stepped gingerly forward.

“Load of rubbish!” he roared.

The Senior Wrangler groaned and put his hand over his eyes.

Ridcully flapped his hat in front of the heap.

“Biodegradable garbage!”

“Poor green trash?” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes helpfully.

“That’s the ticket,” said the Archchancellor. “Try to infuriate the bugger.” (Behind him, a slightly different variety of mad waspy creature popped out of the air and buzzed away.)

The heap lunged at the hat.

“Midden!” said Ridcully.

“Oh, I say,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, shocked.

The Dean and the Bursar crept forward, grabbed a gardener’s foot each, and pulled. Modo slid out of the heap.

“It’s eaten through his clothes!” said the Dean.

“But is he all right?”

“He’s still breathing,” said the Bursar.

“And if he’s lucky, he’s lost his sense of smell,” said the Dean.

The heap snapped at Ridcully’s hat. There was a
glop
. The point of the hat had vanished.

“Hey, there was still almost half a bottle in there!” Ridcully roared. The Senior Wrangler grabbed his arm.

“Come on, Archchancellor!”

The heap swiveled and lunged toward the Bursar.

The wizards backed away.

“It can’t be intelligent, can it?” said the Bursar.

“All it’s doing is moving around slowly and eating things,” said the Dean.

“Put a pointy hat on it and it’d be a faculty member,” said the Archchancellor.

The heap came after them.

“I wouldn’t call that moving slowly,” said the Dean.

They looked expectantly at the Archchancellor.

“Run!”

Portly though most of the faculty were, they hit a fair turn of speed up the cloisters, fought one another through the door, slammed it behind them and leaned on it. Very soon afterward, there was a damp, heavy thud on the far side.

“We’re well out of
that
,” said the Bursar.

The Dean looked down.

“I think it’s coming through the door, Archchancellor,” he said, in a tiny voice.

“Don’t be daft, man, we’re all leanin’ on it.”

“I didn’t mean through, I mean…
through
…”

The Archchancellor sniffed.

“What’s burnin?”

“Your boots, Archchancellor,” said the Dean.

Ridcully looked down. A greenish-yellow puddle was spreading under the door. The wood was charring, the flagstones were hissing, and the leather soles of his boots were definitely in trouble. He could feel himself getting lower.

He fumbled with the laces, and then took a standing jump onto a dry flagstone.

“Bursar!”

“Yes, Archchancellor?”

“Give me your boots!”

“What?”

“Dammit, man, I command you to give me your blasted boots!”

This time, a long creature with four pairs of wings, two at each end, and three eyes, popped into existence over Ridcully’s head and dropped onto his hat.

“But—”

“I am your Archchancellor!”

“Yes, but—”

“I think the hinges are going,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

Ridcully looked around desperately.

“We’ll regroup in the Great Hall,” he said. “We’ll…strategically withdraw to previously prepared positions.”

“Who prepared them?” said the Dean.

“We’ll prepare them when we get there,” said the Archchancellor through gritted teeth. “Bursar! Your boots! Now!”

They reached the double doors of the Great Hall just as the door behind them half-collapsed, half-dissolved. The Great Hall’s doors were much sturdier. Bolts and bars were dragged into place.

“Clear the tables and pile them up in front of the door,” snapped Ridcully.

“But it eats through wood,” said the Dean.

There was a moan from the small body of Modo, which had been propped against a chair. He opened his eyes.

“Quick!” said Ridcully. “How can we kill a compost heap?”

“Um. I don’t think you can, Mr. Ridcully, sir,” said the gardener.

“How about fire? I could probably manage a small fireball,” said the Dean.

“It wouldn’t work. Too soggy,” said Ridcully.

“It’s right outside! It’s eating away at the door! It’s eating away at the
door
,” sang the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

The wizards backed further away down the length of the hall.

“I hope it doesn’t eat
too
much wood,” said the dazed Modo, radiating genuine concern. “They’re a devil, excuse my Klatchian, if you get too much carbon in them. It’s far too heating.”

“You know, this is
exactly
the right time for a lecture on the dynamics of compost making, Modo,” said the Dean.

Dwarfs do not know the meaning of the word “irony.”

“Well, all right. Ahem. The correct balance of materials, correctly layered according to—”

“There goes the door,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, lumbering toward the rest of them.

The mound of furniture started to move forward.

The Archchancellor stared desperately around the hall, at a loss. Then his eyes were drawn to a familiar, heavy bottle on one of the sideboards.

“Carbon,” he said. “That’s like charcoal, isn’t it?”

“How should I know? I’m not an alchemist,” sniffed the Dean.

The compost heap emerged from the debris. Steam poured off it.

The Archchancellor looked longingly at the bottle of Wow-Wow Sauce. He uncorked it. He took a deep sniff.

“The cooks here just can’t make it properly, you know,” he said. “It’ll be weeks before I can get anymore from home.”

He tossed the bottle toward the advancing heap.

It vanished into the seething mass.

“Stinging nettles are always useful,” said Modo, behind him. “They add iron. And comfrey, well, you can never get enough comfrey. For the minerals, you know. Myself, I’ve always reckoned that a small quantity of wild yarrow—”

The wizards peered over the top of an overturned table.

The heap had stopped moving.

“Is it just me, or is it getting bigger?” said the Senior Wrangler.

“And looking happier,” said the Dean.

“It smells
awful
,” said the Bursar.

“Oh, well. And that was nearly a full bottle of sauce, too,” said the Archchancellor sadly. “I’d hardly opened it.”

“Nature’s a wonderful thing, when you come to think about it,” said the Senior Wrangler. “You don’t all have to glare at me like that, you know. I was only passing a remark.”

“There are times when—” Ridcully began, and then the compost heap exploded.

It wasn’t a bang or a boom. It was the dampest, most corpulent eruption in the history of terminal flatulence. Dark red flame, fringed with black, roared up to the ceiling. Pieces of heap rocketed across the hall and slapped wetly into the walls.

The wizards peered out from their barricade, which was now thick with tea-leaves.

A cabbage stalk dropped softly onto the Dean’s head.

He looked at a small, bubbling patch on the flagstones.

His face split slowly into a grin.

“Wow,” he said.

The other wizards unfolded themselves. Adrenaline backwash worked its seductive spell. They grinned, too, and started playfully punching one another on the shoulder.

“Eat hot sauce!” roared the Archchancellor.

“Up against the hedge, fermented rubbish!”

“Can we kick ass, or can we kick ass?” burbled the Dean happily.

“You mean can’t the second time, not can. And I’m not sure that a compost heap can be said to
have
an—” the Senior Wrangler began, but the tide of excitement was flowing against him.

“That’s one heap that won’t mess with
wizards
again,” said the Dean, who was getting carried away. “We’re keen and mean and—”

“There’s three more of them out there, Modo says,” said the Bursar.

They fell silent.

“We could go and pick up our staffs, couldn’t we?” said the Dean.

The Archchancellor prodded a piece of exploded heap with the toe of his boot.

“Dead things coming alive,” he murmured. “I don’t like that. What’s next? Walking statues?”

The wizards looked up at the statues of dead Archchancellors that lined the Great Hall and, indeed, most of the corridors of the University. The University had been in existence for thousands of years and the average Archchancellor remained in office for about eleven months, so there were plenty of statues.

“You know, I really wish you hadn’t said that,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“It was just a thought,” said Ridcully. “Come on, let’s have a look at the rest of those heaps.”

“Yeah!” said the Dean, now in the grip of a wild, unwizardly machismo. “We’re mean! Yeah! Are we mean?”

The Archchancellor raised his eyebrows, and then turned to the rest of the wizards.

“
Are
we mean?” he said.

“Er. I’m feeling
reasonably
mean,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“I’m definitely very mean, I think,” said the Bursar. “It’s having no boots that does it,” he added.

“I’ll be mean if everyone else is,” said the Senior Wrangler.

The Archchancellor turned back to the Dean.

“Yes,” he said, “it appears that we are all mean.”

“Yo!” said the Dean.

“Yo what?” said Ridcully.

“It’s not a yo what, it’s just a yo,” said the Senior Wrangler, behind him. “It’s a general street greeting and affirmative with convivial military ingroup and masculine bonding-ritual overtones.”

“What? What? Like ‘jolly good’?” said Ridcully.

“I
suppose
so,” said the Senior Wrangler, reluctantly.

Ridcully was pleased. Ankh-Morpork had never offered very good prospects for hunting. He’d never thought it was possible to have so much fun in his own university.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s get those heaps!”

“Yo!”

“Yo!”

“Yo!”

“Yo-yo.”

Ridcully sighed. “Bursar?”

“Yes, Archchancellor?”

“Just
try
to understand, all right?”

Clouds piled up over the mountains. Bill Door strode up and down the first field, using one of the ordinary farm scythes; the sharpest one had been temporarily stored at the back of the barn, in case it was blunted by air convection. Some of Miss Flitworth’s tenants followed behind him, binding the sheaves and stacking them. Miss Flitworth had never employed more than one man full time, Bill Door learned; she brought in other help as she needed it, to save pennies.

“Never seen a man cut corn with a scythe before,” said one of them. “It’s a sickle job.”

They stopped for lunch, and ate it under the hedge.

Bill Door had never paid a great deal of attention to the names and faces of people, beyond that necessary for business. Corn stretched over the hillside; it was made up of individual stalks, and to the eye of one stalk another stalk might be quite an impressive stalk, with a dozen amusing and distinctive little mannerisms that set it apart from all other stalks. But to the reaper man, all stalks start off as…just stalks.

Now he was beginning to recognize the little differences.

There was William Spigot and Gabby Wheels and Duke Bottomley. All old men, as far as Bill Door could judge, with skins like leather. There were young men and women in the village, but at a certain age they seemed to flip straight over to being old, without passing through any intermediate stage. And then they stayed old for a long time. Miss Flitworth had said that before they could start a graveyard in these parts they’d had to hit someone over the head with the shovel.