Interesting Times

Unseen University Library. And this one looked as though whoever had written it had been trying to make sense of something unfamiliar.

He turned over a couple of pages. It was a story about a Great City, containing magnificent things — 'beer strong like an ox', it said, and 'pies containing many many parts of pig'. Everyone in the city seemed to be wise, kind, strong or all three, especially some character called the Great Wizard who seemed to feature largely in the text.

And there were mystifying little comments, as in, 'I saw a man tread upon the toes of a City Guard who said to him 'Your wife is a big hippo!' to which the man responded 'Place it where the sun does not shed daylight, enormous person', upon which the Guard [this bit was in red ink and the handwriting was shaky, as if the writer was quite excited] 'did not remove the man's head according to ancient custom.' The statement was followed by a pictogram of a dog passing water, which was for some obscure reason the Agatean equivalent of an exclamation mark. There were five of these.

Rincewind flicked through the pages. They were filled with the same dull stuff, sentences stating the blindingly obvious but often followed by several incontinent dogs. Such as: 'The innkeeper said the City had demanded tax but he did not intend to pay, and when I asked if he was not afraid he vouchsafed: '[Complicated pictogram] them all except one and he can [complicated pictogram] himself' [urinating dog, urinating dog]. He went on to say, 'The [pictogram indicating Supreme Ruler] is a [another pictogram which, after some thought and holding up the picture at various angles, Rincewind decided meant 'a horse's bottom'] and you can tell him I said so', at which point a Guard in the tavern did not disembowel him [urinating dog, urinating dog] but said, 'Tell him from me also' [urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog, urinating dog].'

What was so odd about that? People talked like that in Ankh-Morpork all the time, or at least expressed those sentiments. Apart from the dog.

Mind you, a country that'd wipe out a whole city to teach the other cities a lesson was a mad place. Perhaps this was a book of jokes and he just hadn't seen the point. Perhaps comedians here got big laughs with lines like: 'I say, I say, I say, I met a man on the way to the theatre and he didn't chop my legs off, urinating dog, urinating dog—'

He had been aware of the jingle of harness on the road, but hadn't paid it any attention. He hadn't even looked up at the sound of someone approaching. By the time he did think of looking up it was too late, because someone had their boot on his neck.

'Oh, urinating dog,' he said, before passing out.

There was a puff of air and the Luggage appeared, dropping heavily into a snowdrift.

There was a meat cleaver sticking into its lid.

It remained motionless for some time and then, its legs moving in a complicated little dance, it turned around 360 degrees.

The Luggage did not think. It had nothing to think with. Whatever processes went on inside it probably had more to do with the way a tree reacts to sun and rain and sudden storms, but speeded up very fast.

After a while it seemed to get its bearings and ambled off across the melting snow.

The Luggage did not feel, either. It had nothing to feel with. But it reacted, in the same way that a tree reacts to the changing of the seasons.

Its pace quickened.

It was close to home.

Rincewind had to concede that the shouting man was right. Not, that is, about Rincewind's father being the diseased liver of a type of mountain panda and his mother being a bucket of turtle slime; Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent but felt that they were probably at least vaguely humanoid, if only briefly. But on the subject of appearing to own a stolen horse he had Rincewind bang to rights and, also, a foot on his neck. A foot on the neck is nine points of the law.

He felt hands rummaging in his pockets.

Another person — Rincewind was not able to see much beyond a few inches of alluvial soil, but from context it appeared to be an unsympathetic person — joined in the shouting.

Rincewind was hauled upright.

The guards were pretty much like guards as Rincewind had experienced them everywhere. They had exactly the amount of intellect required to hit people and drag them off to the scorpion pit. They were league champions at shouting at people a few inches from their face.

The effect was made surreal by the fact that the guards themselves had no faces, or at least no faces they could call their own. Their ornate, black-enamelled helmets and huge moustachioed visages painted on them, leaving only the owner's mouth uncovered so that he could, for example, call Rincewind's grandfather a box of inferior goldfish droppings.

What I Did On My Holidays was waved in front of his face.

'Bag of rotted fish!'

'I don't know what it means,' said Rincewind. 'Someone just gave it to—'

'Feet of extreme rotted milk!'

'Could you perhaps not shout quite so loud? I think my eardrum has just exploded.'

The guard subsided, possibly only because he had run out of breath. Rincewind had a moment to look at the scenery.

There were two carts on the road. One of them seemed to be a cage on wheels; he made out faces watching him in terror. The other was an ornate palanquin carried by eight peasants; rich curtains covered the sides but he could see where they had been twitched aside so that someone within could look at him.

The guards were aware of this. It seemed to make them awkward.

'If I could just expl—'

'Silence, mouth of—' The guard hesitated.

'You've used turtle, goldfish and what you probably meant to be cheese,' said Rincewind.

'Mouth of chicken gizzards!'

A long thin hand emerged from the curtains and beckoned, just once.

Rincewind was hustled forward. The hand had the longest fingernails he'd ever seen on something that didn't purr.

'Kowtow!'

'Sorry?' said Rincewind.

'Kowtow!'

Swords were produced.

'I don't know what you mean!' Rincewind wailed.

'Kowtow, please,' whispered a voice by his ear. It was not a particularly friendly voice but compared to all the other voices it was positively affectionate. It sounded as though it belonged to quite a young man. And it was speaking very good Morporkian.

'How?'

'You don't know that? Kneel down, press your forehead on the ground. That's if you want to be able to wear a hat again.'

Rincewind hesitated. He was a free-born Morporkian, and on the list of things a citizen didn't do was bow down to any, not to put too fine a point on it, foreigner.

On the other hand, right at the top of the list of things a citizen didn't do was get their head chopped off.

'That's better. That's good. How did you know you ought to tremble?'

'Oh, I thought up that bit myself.'

The hand beckoned with a finger.

A guard slapped Rincewind in the face with the mud-encrusted What I Did… Rincewind clutched it guiltily as the guard scurried towards his master's digit.

'Voice?' said Rincewind.