Interesting Times

decided to reclaim the land by air drop.

Rincewind shut his eyes. Mud covered the armour. He couldn't make out the pictures any more, and that was something of a relief because he was pretty certain he was messing things up. You could see what any warrior was seeing — at least, presumably you could, if you knew what some of the odder pictures actually did and how to press them in the right order. Rincewind didn't, and in any case whoever had made the magic armour hadn't assumed it would be used in knee-deep mud during a vertical river. Every now and again it sizzled. One of the boots was getting hot.

It had started out so well! But there had been what he was coming to think of as the Rincewind factor. Probably some other wizard would have marched the army out and wouldn't have been rained on and even now would be parading through the streets of Hunghung while people threw flowers and said, 'My word, there's a Great Wizard and no mistake.'

Some other wizard wouldn't have pressed the wrong picture and started the things digging.

He realized he was wallowing in self-pity. Rather more pertinently, he was also wallowing in mud. And he was sinking. Trying to pull a foot out was no use — it didn't work, and the other foot only went deeper, and got hotter.

Lightning struck the ground nearby. He heard it sizzle, saw the steam, felt the tingle of electricity and tasted the taste of burning tin.

Another bolt hit a warrior. Its torso exploded, raining a sticky black tar. The legs kept going for a few steps, and then stopped.

Water poured past him, thick and red now that the river Hung was overflowing. And the mud continued to suck on his feet like a hollow tooth.

Something swirled past on the muddy water. It looked like a scrap of paper.

Rincewind hesitated, then reached out awkwardly with a gloved hand and scooped it up.

It was, as he'd expected, a butterfly.

'Thank you very much,' he said, bitterly.

The water drained through his fingers.

He half closed his hand and then sighed and, as gently as he could, manoeuvred the creature on to a finger. Its wings hung damply.

He shielded it with his other hand and blew on the wings a few times.

'Go on, push off.'

The butterfly turned. Its multi-faceted eyes glinted green for a moment and then it flapped its wings experimentally.

It stopped raining.

It started to snow, but only where Rincewind was.

'Oh, yes,' said Rincewind. 'Yes indeed. Oh, thank you so very much.'

Life was, he had heard, like a bird which flies out of the darkness and across a crowded hall and then through another window into the endless night again. In Rincewind's case it had managed to do something incontinent in his dinner.

The snow stopped. The clouds pulled back from the dome of the sky with astonishing speed, letting in hot sunlight which almost immediately made the mud steam.

'There you are! We've been looking everywhere!'

Rincewind tried to turn, but the mud made that impossible. There was a wooden thump, as of a plank being laid down on wet ooze.

'Snow on his head? In bright sunshine? I said to myself, that's him all right.'

There was the thump of another plank.

A small avalanche slid off the helmet and slid down Rincewind's neck.

Another thump, and a plank squelched into the mud beside him.

'It's me, Twoflower. Are you all right, old friend?'

'I think my foot is being cooked, but apart from that I'm as happy as anything.'

'I knew it would be you doing the charades,' said Twoflower, sticking his hands under the wizard's shoulders and hauling.

'You got the 'Wind' syllable?' said Rincewind. 'That was very hard to do, by remote control.'

'Oh, none of us got that,' said Twoflower, 'but when it did 'ohshitohshitohshit I'm going to die' everyone got that first go. Very inventive. Er. You seem to be stuck.'

'I think it's the magic boots.'

'Can't you wiggle them off? This mud dries like — well, like terracotta in the sun. Someone can come along and dig them out afterwards.'

Rincewind tried to move his feet. There was some sub-mud bubblings and he felt his feet come free, with a muffled slurping noise.

Finally, with considerable effort, he was sitting on the plank.

'Sorry about the warriors,' he said. 'It looked so simple when I started out, and then I got confused with all the pictures and it was impossible to stop some of them doing things—'

'But it was a famous victory!' said Twoflower.

'Was it?'

'Mr Cohen's been made Emperor!'

'He has?'

'Well, not made, no-one made him, he just came along and took it. And everyone says he's the pre- incarnation of the first Emperor and he says if you want to be the Great Wizard that's fine by him.'

'Sorry? You lost me there…'

'You led the Red Army, didn't you? You made them rise up in the Empire's hour of need?'

'Well, I wouldn't exactly say that I—'

'So the Emperor wants to reward you. Isn't that nice?'

'How do you mean, reward?' said Rincewind, with deep suspicion.

'Not sure, really. Actually, what he said was… ' Twoflower's eyes glazed as he tried to recall. 'He said, 'You go and find Rincewind and say he might be a bit of a pillock but at least he's straight so he can be Chief Wizard of the Empire or whatever he wants to call it, 'cos I don't trust you foreign…'' Twoflower squinted upwards as he tried to remember Cohen's precise words ''… house of auspicious aspect… scent of pine trees… buggers.''

The words trickled into Rincewind's ear, slid up into his brain, and started to bang on the walls.

'Chief Wizard?' he said.

'That's what he said. Well… actually what he said was he wanted you to be a blob of swallow's vomit, but that was because he used the low sad tone rather than the high questioning one. He definitely meant wizard.'

'Of the whole Empire?'

Rincewind stood up.

'Something very bad is about to happen,' he said flatly.

The sky was quite blue now. A few citizens had ventured on to the battlefield to tend the wounded and retrieve the dead. Terracotta warriors stood at various angles, motionless as rocks.

'Any minute now,' said Rincewind.

'Shouldn't we get back?'

'Probably a meteorite strike,' said Rincewind.

Twoflower looked up at the peaceful sky.

'You know me,' said Rincewind. 'Just when I'm getting a grip on something Fate comes along and jumps on my fingers.'

'I don't see any meteorites,' said Twoflower. 'How long do we wait?'

'It'll be something else, then,' said Rincewind. 'Someone will come leaping out, or there'll be an earthquake, or something.'

'If you insist,' said Twoflower, politely. 'Um. Do you want to wait for something horrible here or would you like to go back to the palace and have a bath and change your clothes and then see what happens?'