The Fifth Elephant

Ten minutes later Vimes was sitting in front of a fire with a blanket around him, and the world seemed to make a little more sense. A slice of venison was going down well, and Vimes was far too hungry to bother much that the butcher appeared to have used his teeth.

'The wolves spy on the werewolves?' he said.

'Sort of, sir. Gavin keeps an eye on things for Angua. They're... old friends.'

The moment of silence went on just slightly too long.

'He sounds like a very bright wolf,' said Vimes, in the absence of anything more diplomatic to say.

'More than that. Angua thinks he might be part werewolf, from way back.'

'Can that happen?'

'She says so. Did I tell you that he came all the way into Ankh-Morpork? A big city? Can you imagine what that must have been like?'

Vimes turned at a faint sound behind him.

A large wolf was standing at the edge of the firelight. It was looking at him intently. It wasn't just the look of an animal sizing him up on the level of food/threat/thing. Behind that stare wheels were turning. And there was a small but rather proud mongrel at his side, scratching furiously.

'Is that Gaspode?' said Vimes. 'The dog that's always hanging around the Watch House?'

'Yes, he... helped me get here,' said Carrot.

'I just don't want to ask,' said Vimes. 'Any minute now a door's going to open in a tree and Fred and Nobby are going to step out, am I right?'

'I hope not, sir.'

Gavin lay down a short distance from the fire and started watching Carrot.

'Captain?' said Vimes.

'Yes, sir?'

'You'll notice I haven't pressed you on why you're here as well as Angua.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well?' said Vimes. And now he thought he recognized the look on Gavin's face, even though it was on a face of an unusual shape. It was the look you got on the face of a gentleman lounging on a corner by a bank, watching the comings and goings, seeing how the place worked.

'I was admiring your diplomacy, sir.'

'Hmm? What?' said Vimes, still staring at the wolf.

'I appreciated the way you were avoiding asking questions, sir.'

Angua walked into the firelight. Vimes saw her glance around the circle and squat down on the snow exactly halfway between Carrot and Gavin.

'They're miles away now. Oh, hello, Mister Vimes.'

There was some more silence.

'Is anyone going to tell me something?' said Vimes.

'My family are trying to upset the coronation,' said Angua. 'They're working with some dwarfs that don't want that want to keep Uberwald separate.'

'I think I've worked that one out. Running for your life through a freezing cold forest gives you a bit of an insight.'

'I have to tell you, sir, my brother killed the clacks signallers. His scent's all over the place up there.'

Gavin made a noise in his throat.

'And another man that Gavin didn't recognize, except that he spent a lot of time hiding in the forest and watching our castle.'

'I think that might have been a man called Sleeps. One of our... agents,' said Vimes.

'He did well. He managed to get to a boat a few miles downriver. Unfortunately there was a werewolf waiting in it.'

'It was a waterfall that did for me,' said Vimes.

'Permission to speak honestly, sir?' said Angua.

'Don't you always?'

'They could have got you any time they liked, sir. Really they could. They wanted you to get as far as the tower before they really attacked. I expect Wolfgang thought that'd be nicely symbolic or something.'

'I got three of them!'

'Yes, sir. But you wouldn't have been able to get three of them all at once. Wolfgang was having some fun. That's how he's always played the game. He's good at thinking ahead. He likes ambushes. He likes some poor soul to get within a few yards of the finish before he leaps out on them.' Angua sighed. 'Look, sir, I don't want there to be trouble—'

'He's been killing people!'

'Yes, sir. But my mother's just a rather ignorant snob and my father's half-gone now. He spends so much time as a wolf he hardly knows how to act human any more. They don't live in the real world. They really think Uberwald can stay the same. There isn't a lot up here, really, but it's ours. Wolfgang's a murderous idiot who thinks that werewolves were born to rule. The trouble is, sir, he hasn't broken the lore.'

'Oh, ye gods!'

'I bet he could find plenty of witnesses to say that he gave everyone the start the lore requires. That's the rules of the game.'

'And meddling with the dwarfs' affairs? He's stolen the Scone or swapped it or... something, I haven't worked it all out yet, but one poor dwarf's already dead because of it! Cheery and Detritus are under arrest! Inigo is dead! Sybil's locked up somewhere! And you're saying it's all Okay?'

'Things are different here, sir,' said Carrot. 'It wasn't until ten years ago that they replaced trial by ordeal here with trial by lawyer, and that was only because they found that lawyers were nastier.'

'I've got to get back to Bonk. If they've harmed Sybil I don't care what the damn lore is.'

'Mister Vimes! You look done in as it is!' said Carrot.

'I'll keep going. Come on. Get some of the wolves to pull the sleigh—'

'You don't get them to, sir. You ask Gavin if they will,' said Carrot.

'Oh. Er, can you explain the situation to him?'

I'm standing in the cold in the middle of a forest, thought Vimes a moment later, watching a quite handsome young woman growling a conversation with a wolf who is watching her. This does not often happen. Not in Ankh- Morpork, anyway. It's probably a daily occurrence up here.

Eventually six wolves allowed themselves to be harnessed, and Vimes was carried up the hill to the road.

'Stop!'

'Sir?' said Carrot.

'I want a weapon! There's got to be something in the tower I can use!'

'Sir, you can use my sword! And there's the... hunting spears.'

'You know what you can do with the hunting spears!'

Vimes kicked the door at the base of the tower. Fresh snow had blown in, smoothing the edges of wolf and human tracks.

He felt drunk. Bits of his brain were going on and off. His eyeballs felt as though they were lined with towelling. His legs seemed only vaguely under his control.

Surely the signallers must've had something?

Even the sacks and barrels had gone. Well, there were plenty of peasants in the hills, and winter was coming on, and the men who'd been here certainly had no further use for the food. Even Vimes wouldn't call that theft.

He climbed up to the next floor. The thrifty people of the forest had been up here, too. But they hadn't taken the bloodstains off the floor, or Inigo's little round hat which inexplicably was wedged into the wooden wall.

He pulled it out and saw where the thin felt on the brim had been pushed back to reveal the razor-sharp edge.

An assassin's hat, he thought. And then, no, not an assassin's hat. He remembered