Interesting Times

The soothsayer bridled.

'You see this wobbly bit near the kidneys? You want to argue with this green trickly thing? You know all about liver suddenly? All right?'

'So there you are,' said Lord Hong. 'Fate smiles upon us.'

'Even so—' Lord Tang began. 'The men are very—'

'You can tell the men—' Lord Hong began. He stopped. He smiled.

'You can tell the men', he said, 'that there is a huge army of invisible vampire ghosts.'

'What?'

'Yes!' Lord Hong began to stride up and down, snapping his fingers. 'Yes, there is a terrible army of foreign ghosts. And this has so enraged our own ghosts… yes, a thousand generations of our ancestors are riding on the wind to repel this barbaric invasion! The ghosts of the Empire are arising! Millions and millions of them! Even our demons are furious at this intrusion! They will descend like a mist of claws and teeth to — Yes, Lord Sung?'

The warlords were looking at one another nervously.

'Are you sure, Lord Hong?'

Lord Hong's eyes gleamed behind his tiny spectacles.

'Make the necessary proclamations,' he said.

'But only a few hours ago we told the men there were no—'

'Tell them differently!'

'But will they believe that there—'

'They will believe what they are told!' shouted Lord Hong. 'If the enemy thinks his strength lies in deceit, then we will use their deceit against them. Tell the men that behind them will be a billion ghosts of the Empire!'

The other warlords tried to avoid his gaze. No-one was actually going to suggest that your average soldier would not be totally happy with ghosts front and rear, especially given the capriciousness of ghosts.

'Good,' said Lord Hong. He looked down.

'Are you still here?' he said.

'Just clearing up my giblets, my lord!' squealed the soothsayer.

He picked up the remains of his stricken chicken and ran for it.

After all, he told himself as he pelted back home, it's not as though I said whose enemy.

Lord Hong was left alone.

He realized he was shaking. It was probably fury. But perhaps… perhaps things could be turned to his advantage, even so. Barbarians came from outside, and to most people everywhere outside was the same. Yes. The barbarians were a minute detail, easily disposed of, but carefully managed, perhaps, might figure in his overall strategy.

He was breathing heavily, too.

He walked into his private study and shut the door.

He pulled out the key.

He opened the box.

There was a few minutes' silence, except for the rustle of cloth.

Then Lord Hong looked at himself in the mirror.

He'd gone to great lengths to achieve this. He had used several agents, none of whom knew the whole plan. But the Ankh-Morpork tailor had been good at his work and the measurements had been followed exactly. From pointy boots to hose to doublet, cloak and hat with a feather in it, Lord Hong knew he was a perfect Ankh-Morpork gentleman. The cloak was lined with silk.

The clothes felt uncomfortable and touched him in unfamiliar ways, but those were minor details. This was how a man looked in a society that breathed, that moved, that could go somewhere…

He'd walk through the city on that first great day and the people would be silent when they saw their natural leader.

It never crossed his mind that anyone would say, '

'Ere, wot a toff! 'Eave 'arf a brick at 'im!'

The ants scurried. The thing that went 'parp' went parp.

The wizards stood back. There wasn't much else to do when Hex was working at full speed, except watch the fish and oil the wheels from time to time. There were occasional flashes of octarine from the tubes.

Hex was spelling several hundred times a minute. It was as simple as that. It would take a human more than an hour to do an ordinary finding spell. But Hex could do them faster. Over and over again. It was netting the whole occult sea in the search for one slippery fish.

It achieved, after ninety-three minutes, what would otherwise have taken the faculty several months.

'You see?' said Ponder, his voice shaking a little as he took the line of blocks out of the hopper. 'I said he could do it.'

'Who's he?' said Ridcully.

'Hex.'

'Oh, you mean it.'

'That's what I said, sir… er… yes.'

Another thing about the Horde, Mr Saveloy had noticed, was their ability to relax. The old men had the catlike ability to do nothing when there was nothing to do.

They'd sharpened their swords. They'd had a meal — big lumps of meat for most of them, and some kind of gruel for Mad Hamish, who'd dribbled most of it down his beard — and assured its wholesomeness by dragging the cook in, nailing him to the floor by his apron, and suspending a large axe on a rope that crossed a beam in the roof and was held at the other end by Cohen, while he ate.

Then they'd sharpened their swords again, out of habit, and… stopped.

Occasionally one of them would whistle a snatch of a tune, through what remained of his teeth, or search a bodily crevice for a particularly fretful louse. Mainly, though, they just sat and stared at nothing.

After a long while, Caleb said, 'Y'know, I've never been to XXXX. Been everywhere else. Often wondered what it's like.'

'Got shipwrecked there once,' said Vincent. 'Weird place. Lousy with magic. There's beavers with beaks and giant rats with long tails that hops around the place and boxes with one another. Black fellas wanderin' around all over the place. They say they're in a dream. Bright, though. Show 'em a bit of desert with one dead tree in it, next minute they've found a three-course meal with fruits and nuts to follow. Beer's good, too.'

'Sounds like it.'

There was another long pause.

Then:

'I suppose they've got minstrels here? Be a bit of a bloody waste, wouldn't it, if we all got killed and no-one made up any songs about it.'

'Bound to have loads of minstrels, a city like this.'

'No problem there, then.'

'No.'

'No.'

There was another lengthy pause.

'Not that we're going to get killed.'

'Right. I don't intend to start getting killed at my time of life, haha.'

Another pause.

'Cohen?'

'Yep?'

'You a religious man at all?'