Interesting Times

look down on everything.

'My name is Lord Hong. I am the Emperor's Grand Vizier. I order you to quit these premises immediately and submit to judgement.'

Mr Saveloy turned to Cohen.

'Ain't gonna,' said Cohen.

Mr Saveloy tried to think.

'Um, how shall I phrase this? Ghenghiz Cohen, leader of the Silver Horde, presents his compliments to Lord Hong but—'

'Tell him he can stuff it,' said Cohen.

'I think, Lord Hong, that perhaps you may have perceived the general flow of opinion here,' said Mr Saveloy.

'Where are the rest of your barbarians, peasant?' he demanded.

Rincewind watched Mr Saveloy. The old teacher seemed at a loss for words this time.

The wizard wanted to run away. But Cohen had been right. Mad as it sounded, it was probably safer to be near him. Running away would put him closer, sooner or later, to Lord Hong.

Who believed that there were other barbarians somewhere…

'I tell you this, and this only,' said Lord Hong. 'If you quit the Forbidden City now, your deaths, at least, will be quick. And then your heads and significant parts will be paraded through the cities of the Empire so that people will know of the terrible punishment.'

'Punishment?' said Mr Saveloy.

'For killing the Emperor.'

'We ain't killed no Emperor,' said Cohen. 'I've got nothing against killing Emperors, but we ain't killed one.'

'He was killed in his bed an hour ago,' said Lord Hong.

'Not by us,' said Mr Saveloy.

'By you,' said Rincewind. 'Only it's against the rules to kill the Emperor so you wanted it to look as though the Red Army did it.'

Lord Hong looked at him as if seeing him for the first time and less than happy about doing so.

'In the circumstances,' said Lord Hong, 'I doubt that anyone will believe you.'

'What will happen if we yield now?' said Mr Saveloy. 'I like to know these things.'

'Then you will die very slowly in… interesting ways.'

'That's the saga of my life,' said Cohen. 'I've always been dying very slowly in interesting ways. What's it to be? Street fighting? House to house? Free for all or what?'

'In the real world,' said one of the other lords, 'we battle. We do not scuffle like barbarians. Our armies will meet on the plain before the city.'

'Before the city what?'

'He means in front of the city, Cohen.'

'Ah. Civilized talk again. When?'

'Dawn tomorrow!'

'OK,' said Cohen. 'It'll give us an appetite for our breakfast. Anything else we can do for you?'

'How big is your army, barbarian?'

'You would not believe how big,' said Cohen, which was probably true. 'We have overrun countries. We have wiped whole cities off the map. Where my army passes, nothing grows.'

'That's true, at least,' said Mr Saveloy.

'We have not heard of you!' said the warlord.

'Yeah,' said Cohen. 'That's how good we are.'

'There is one other thing about his army, actually,' said someone.

They all turned to Rincewind, who'd been almost as surprised as they were to hear his voice. But a train of thought had just reached the terminus…

'Yes?'

'You may have been wondering why you have only seen the… generals,' Rincewind went on, slowly, as if working it out as he went along. 'That is because, you see, the men themselves are… invisible. Er. Yes. Ghosts, in fact. Everyone knows this, don't they?'

Cohen gaped at him in astonishment.

'Blood-sucking ghosts, as a matter of fact,' said Rincewind. 'After all, everyone knows that's what you get beyond the Wall, don't they?'

Lord Hong sneered. But the warlords stared at Rincewind with the expressions of people who strongly suspected that the people beyond the Wall were flesh and blood but who also relied on millions of people not believing that this was so.

'Ridiculous! You are not invisible blood-sucking ghosts,' said one of them.

Cohen opened his mouth so that the diamond teeth glinted.

''S right,' he said. 'Fact is… we're the visible sort.'

'Hah! A pathetic attempt!' said Lord Hong. 'Ghosts or no ghosts, we will beat you!'

'Well, that went better than I expected,' Mr Saveloy remarked as the warlords strode out. 'Was that an attempt at a little bit of psychological warfare there, Mr Rincewind?'

'Is that what it was? I know about that kind of stuff,' said Cohen. 'It's where you bang your shield all night before the fight so's the enemy can't get any sleep and you sing, 'We're gonna cut yer tankers off,' and stuff like that.'

'Similar,' said Mr Saveloy, diplomatically. 'But it failed to work, I'm afraid. Lord Hong and his generals are rather too sophisticated. It's a great shame you couldn't try it on the common soldiers.'

There was a faint squeak of rabbit behind them. They turned, and looked at the somewhat underage cadre of the Red Army that was being ushered in. Butterfly was with them. She even gave Rincewind a very faint smile.

Rincewind had always relied on running away. But sometimes, perhaps, you had to stand and fight if only because there was nowhere left to run.

But he was no good at all with weapons.

At least, the normal sort.

'Um,' he said, 'if we leave the palace now, we'll be killed, right?'

'I doubt it,' said Mr Saveloy. 'It's become a matter of the Art of War now. Someone like Hong would probably slit our throats, but now war is declared things have to be done according to custom.'

Rincewind took a deep breath.

'It's a million-to-one chance,' he said, 'but it might just work…'

The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet and Contra-flow.

Among the armies encamped in the broad alluvial plain around Hunghung, the invisible horsemen known as Misinformation, Rumour and Gossip saddled up…

A large army encamped has all the tedious problems of a city without any of the advantages. Its watchfires and picket lines are, after a while, open to local civilians, especially if they have anything to sell and even more so if they are women whose virtue has a certain commercial element and even, sometimes, if they appear to be selling food which is a break from the monotonous army diet. The food currently on sale was certainly such a break.

'Pork balls! Pork balls! Get them while they're…' There was a pause as the vendor mentally tried out ways of ending the sentence, and gave up. 'Pork balls! Onna stick! How about you, shogun, you look like — Here, aren't you the—?'

'Shutupshutupshutup!'

Rincewind pulled D. M. H. Dibhala into the shadows by a tent.

The trader looked at the anguished face framed between a eunuch outfit and a big straw hat.

'It's the Wizard, isn't it? How are—?'