Interesting Times

acquired mountains of cash in their careers as barbarian heroes they'd lost almost all of it engaging in the other activities (he mentally catalogued these as Public Relations) necessary to the profession, and therefore were entitled to quite a considerable rebate.

The fact that they were registered with no revenue collecting authority anywhere[23] was entirely a secondary point. It was the principle that counted. And the interest too, of course.

'No, no young women, I insist,' said Mr Saveloy. You're having a bath to get clean. Plenty of time for young women later.'

'Gotta date when all this is over,' said Caleb, a little shyly, thinking wistfully of one of the few women he'd ever had a conversation with. 'She's got her own farm, she said. I could be all right for a duck.'

'I bet Teach don't want you to say that,' said Boy Willie. 'I bet he'd say you gotta call it a waterfowl.'

'Huh, huh, hur!'

'Whut?'

Six Beneficent Winds sidled over to the teacher as the Horde experimented with the bath oil, initially by drinking it.

'I've worked out what it is you're going to steal,' he said.

'Oh, yes?' said Mr Saveloy politely. He was watching Caleb who, having had it brought home to him that he might have been adopting the wrong approach all his life, was trying to cut his nails with his sword.

'It's the legendary Diamond Coffin of Schz Yu!' said Six Beneficent Winds.

'No. Wrong again.'

'Oh.'

'Out of the baths, gentlemen,' said the teacher. 'I think… yes… you've mastered commerce, social intercourse—'

'—hur, hur, hur… sorry—'

'—and the principles of taxation,' Mr Saveloy went on.

'Have we done that? What are they, then?' said Cohen.

'You take away almost all the money that the merchants have got,' said Six Beneficent Winds, handing him a towel.

'Oh, is that it? I've been doing that for years.'

'No, you've been taking away all the money,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's where you go wrong. You kill too many of them, and the ones you don't kill you leave too poor.'

'Sounds frightfully good to me,' said Truckle, excavating the cretaceous contents of an ear. 'Poor merchants, rich us.'

'No, no, no!'

'No, no, no?'

'Yes! That's not civilized!'

'It's like with sheep,' Six Beneficent Winds explained. 'You don't tear their skin off all in one go, you just shear them every year.'

The Horde looked blank.

'Hunter-gatherers,' said Mr Saveloy, with a touch of hopelessness. 'Wrong metaphor.'

'It's the marvellous Singing Sword of Wong, isn't it?' whispered Six Beneficent Winds. 'That's what you're going to steal!'

'No. In fact, 'steal' is rather the wrong word. Well, anyway, gentlemen… you might not yet be civilized but at least you're nice and clean, and many people think this is identical. Time, I think, for… action.'

The Horde straightened up. This was back in the area they understood.

'To the Throne Room!' said Ghenghiz Cohen.

Six Beneficent Winds wasn't that fast on the uptake, but at last he put two and two together.

'It's the Emperor!' he said, and raised his hand to his mouth in horror tinged with evil delight. 'You're going to kidnap him!'

Diamonds glittered when Cohen grinned.

There were two dead guards in the corridor leading to the private Imperial apartments.

'Look, how come you were all taken alive?' whispered Rincewind. 'The guards I saw had big swords. How come you're not dead?'

'I suppose they planned to torture us,' said Butterfly 'We did injure ten of them.'

'Oh? Pasted posters on them, did you? Sang revolutionary songs until they gave in? Listen, someone wanted you alive.'

The floors sang in the darkness. Every footstep produced a chorus of squeaks and groans, just like the floorboards at the University. But you didn't expect that sort of thing in a nice shiny palace like this.

'They're called nightingale floors,' said Butterfly. 'The carpenters put little metal collars around the nails so that no-one can creep up unawares.'

Rincewind looked down at the corpses. Neither man had drawn his sword. He leaned his weight on his left foot. The floor squeaked. Then he leaned on his right foot. The floor groaned.

'This isn't right, then,' he whispered. 'You can't creep up on someone on a floor like this. So someone they knew killed those guards. Let's get out of here…'

'We go on,' said Butterfly firmly.

'It's a trap. Someone's using you to do their dirty work.'

She shrugged. 'Turn left by the big jade statue.'

It was four in the morning, an hour before dawn. There were guards in the official staterooms, but not very many. After all, this was well inside the Forbidden City, with its high walls and small gates. It wasn't as though anything was going to happen.

It needed a special type of mind to stand guard over some empty rooms all night. One Big River had such a mind, orbiting gently within the otherwise blissful emptiness of his skull.

They'd happily called him One Big River because he was the same size and moved at the same speed as the Hung. Everyone had expected him to become a tsimo wrestler, but he'd failed the intelligence test because he hadn't eaten the table.

It was impossible for him to get bored. He just didn't have the imagination. But, since the visor of his huge helmet registered a permanent expression of metal rage, he'd in any case cultivated the art of going to sleep on his feet.

He was dozing happily now, aware only of an occasional squeaking, like that of a very cautious mouse.

The helmet's visor swung up. A voice said: 'Would you rather die than betray your Emperor?'

A second voice said: 'This is not a trick question.'

One Big River blinked, and then turned his gaze downwards. An apparition in a squeaky-wheeled wheelchair had a very large sword pointing at exactly that inconvenient place where his upper armour didn't quite meet his lower armour.

A third voice said: 'I should add that the last twenty-nine people who answered wrong are… dried shredded fish… sorry, dead.'

A fourth voice said: ''And we're not eunuchs.'

One Big River rumbled with the effort of thought.

'I tink I rather live,' he said.

A man with diamonds where his teeth should have been gave him a comradely pat on the shoulder. 'Good man,' he said. 'Join the Horde. We could use a man like you. Maybe as a siege weapon.'

'Who you?' he said.

'This is Ghenghiz Cohen,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Doer of mighty deeds. Slayer of dragons. Ravager of cities. He once bought an apple.'

No-one laughed. Mr Saveloy had found that the Horde had no concept whatsoever of sarcasm. Probably no- one had ever tried it on them.

One Big River had been raised to do what he was told. Everyone had told him what to do, all through his life.