'FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS?'
Buddy looked over the edge of the cart. Darkness with a certain gulch-like quality, a certain suggestion of depth, was a few feet from the side of the road.
The guitar twanged gently to the rhythm of the wheels. He picked it up in one hand. Strange how it was never silent. You couldn't silence it even by pressing on the strings heavily with both hands; he'd tried.
There was the harp beside it. The strings were absolutely silent.
'This is daft!' shouted Glod, from the front. 'Slow down! You nearly had us over the side that time!'
Asphalt hauled on the reins. The cart slowed, eventually, to walking pace.
'That's better—'
The guitar screamed. The note was so high that it hit the ears like a needle. The horses jerked nervously in the shafts and then shot forward again.
'Hold them!'
'I am!'
Glod turned around, gripping the back of the seat.
'Throw that thing out!'
Buddy gripped the guitar and stood up, moving his arm back to hurl the thing into the gorge.
He hesitated.
'Throw it out!'
Cliff got to his feet and tried to take the guitar.
'No!'
Buddy whirled it around his head and caught the troll on the chin, knocking him backwards.
'No!'
'
And a white horse was overtaking them. A hooded shape leaned over and grabbed the reins.
The cart hit a stone and was airborne for a moment before crashing back down on the road. Asphalt heard the splintering of posts as the wheels smashed into the fence, saw the traces snap, felt the cart swing around…
… and stop.
So much happened later that Glod never did tell anyone about the sensation he had, that although the cart had definitely wedged itself uncertainly on the edge of the cliff it had also plunged on, tumbling over and over, towards the rocks…
Glod opened his eyes. The image tugged at him like a bad dream. But he'd been thrown across the cart as it skewed around, and his head was lying on the backboard.
He was looking straight into the gorge. Behind him, wood creaked.
Someone was holding on to his leg.
'Who's that?' he whispered, in case heavier words would send the cart over.
'It's me. Asphalt. Who's that holding on to my foot?'
'Me,' said Cliff. 'What're you holding on to, Glod?'
'Just… something my flailing hand happened to snatch at,' said Glod.
The cart creaked again.
'It's the gold, isn't it?' said Asphalt. 'Admit it. You're holding on to the gold.'
'Idiot dwarf!' shouted Cliff. 'Let it go or we're going to die!'
'Letting go of five thousand dollars is dying,' said Glod.
'Fool! You can't take it with you!'
Asphalt scrambled for purchase on the wood. The cart shifted.
'It's going to be the other way around in a minute,' he muttered.
'So who,' said Cliff, as the cart sagged another inch, 'is holding Buddy?'
There was a pause while the three counted their extremities and attachments thereto.
'I… er… think he might have gone over,' said Glod.
Four chords rang out.
Buddy hung from a rear wheel, feet over the drop, and jerked as the music played an eight-note riff on his soul.
Never age. Never die. Live for ever in that one last white-hot moment, when the crowd screamed. When every note was a heartbeat. Burn across the sky.
You will never grow old. They will never say you died.
That's the deal. You will be the greatest musician in the world.
Live fast. Die young.
The music tugged at his soul.
Buddy's legs swung up slowly and touched the rocks of the cliff. He braced himself, eyes shut, and pulled at the wheel.
A hand touched his shoulder.
'No!'
Buddy's eyes snapped open.
He turned his head and looked into Susan's face, and then up at the cart.
'What…?' he said, his voice slurred with shock.
He let go with one hand and fumbled clumsily for the guitar strap, slipping it off his shoulder. The strings howled as he gripped the guitar's neck and flung it into the darkness.
His other hand slipped on the freezing wheel, and he dropped into the gorge.
There was a white blur. He landed heavily on something velvety and smelling of horse sweat.
Susan steadied him with her free hand as she urged Binky upwards through the sleet.
The horse alighted on the road, and Buddy slipped off into the mud. He raised himself on his elbows.
'You?'
'Me,' said Susan.
Susan pulled the scythe out of its holster. The blade sprang out; snowflakes that fell on it split gently into two halves without a pause in their descent.
'Let's get your friends, shall we?'
There was a friction in the air, as if the attention of the world were being focused. Death stared into the future.
OH, BLAST.
Things were coming apart. The Librarian had done his best, but mere bone and wood couldn't take this sort of strain. Feathers and beads whirled away and landed, smoking, in the road. A wheel parted company from its axle and bounced away, shedding spokes, as the machine took a curve almost horizontally.
It made no real difference. Something like a soul flickered in the air where the missing pieces had been.
If you took a shining machine, and shone a light on it so that there were gleams and highlights, and then
Only the horse's skull remained. That and the rear wheel, which spun in forks now only of flickering light, and was smouldering.
The thing whirred past Dibbler, causing his horse to throw him into the ditch and bolt.
Death was used to travelling fast. In theory he was already everywhere, waiting for almost anything else. The fastest way to travel is to be there already.
But he'd never been this fast while going this slow. The landscape had often been a blur, but never while it was only four inches from his knee on the bends.
The cart shifted again. Now even Cliff was looking down into the darkness.
Something touched his shoulder.
HANG ON TO THIS. BUT DON'T TOUCH THE BLADE.
Buddy leaned past.
'Glod, if you let go of the bag I,an—'
'Don't even think about it.'
'There's no pockets in a shroud, Glod.'
