Hogfather

Death spat out the carrot.

HO. HO. HO.

The grey bodies smeared and rippled as the hounds sought desperately to change their shape.

YOU COULDN'T RESIST IT? IN THE END? A MISTAKE, I FANCY.

He touched the scythe. There was a click as the blade flashed into life.

IT GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN, LIFE, said Death, stepping forward. SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY, OF COURSE. IT'S A HABIT THAT'S HARD TO GIVE UP. ONE PUFF OF BREATH IS NEVER ENOUGH. YOU'LL FIND YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER.

A dog started to slip on the snow and scrabbled desperately to save itself from the long, cold drop.

AND, YOU SEE, THE MORE YOU STRUGGLE FOR EVERY MOMENT, THE MORE ALIVE YOU STAY… WHICH IS WHERE I COME IN, AS A MATTER OF FACT.

The leading dog managed, for a moment, to become a grey cowled figure before being dragged back into shape.

FEAR, TOO, IS AN ANCHOR, said Death. ALL THOSE SENSES, WIDE OPEN TO EVERY FRAGMENT OF THE WORLD. THAT BEATING HEART. THAT RUSH OF BLOOD. CAN YOU NOT FEEL IT, DRAGGING YOU BACK?

Once again the Auditor managed to retain a shape for a few seconds, and managed to say: you cannot do this, there are rules!

YES. THERE ARE RULES. BUT YOU BROKE THEM. HOW DARE YOU? HOW DARE YOU?

The scythe blade was a thin blue outline in the grey light.

Death raised a thin finger to where his lips might have been, and suddenly looked thoughtful.

AND NOW THERE REMAINS ONLY ONE FINAL QUESTION, he said.

He raised his hands, and seemed to grow. Light flared in his eye sockets. When he spoke next, avalanches fell in the mountains.

HAVE YOU BEEN NAUGHTY… OR NICE?

HO. HO. HO.

Susan heard the wails die away.

The boar lay in white snow that was now red with blood. She knelt down and tried to lift its head.

It was dead. One eye stared at nothing. The tongue lolled.

Sobs welled up inside her. The tiny part of Susan that watched, the inner baby-sitter, said it was just exhaustion and excitement and the backwash of adrenalin. She couldn't be crying over a dead pig.

The rest of her drummed on its flank with both fists.

‘No, you can't! We saved you! Dying isn't how it's supposed to go!’

A breeze blew up.

Something stirred in the landscape, something under the snow. The branches on the ancient trees shook gently, dislodging little needles of ice.

The sun rose.

The light streamed over Susan like a silent gale. It was dazzling. She crouched back, raising her forearm to cover her eyes. The great red ball turned frost to fire along the winter branches.

Cold light slammed into the mountain peaks, making every one a blinding, silent volcano. It rolled onward, gushing into the valleys and thundering up the slopes, unstoppable…

There was a groan.

A man lay in the snow where the boar had been.

He was naked except for an animal skin loincloth. His hair was long and had been woven into a thick plait down his back, so matted with blood and grease that it looked like felt. And he was bleeding everywhere the hounds had caught him.

Susan watched for a moment, and then, thinking with something other than her head, methodically tore some strips from her petticoat to bandage the more unpleasant wounds.

Capability, said the small part of her mind. A rational head in emergencies.

Rational something, anyway.

It's probably some kind of character flaw.

The man was tattooed. Blue whorls and spirals haunted his skin, under the blood.

He opened his eyes and stared at the sky.

‘Can you get up?’

His gaze flicked to her. He tried moving and then fell back.

Eventually she managed to pull the man up into a sitting position. He swayed as she put one of his arms across her shoulders and then heaved him to his feet. She did her best to ignore the sting, which had an almost physical force.

Downhill seemed the best option. Even if his brain wasn't working yet, his feet seemed to get the idea.

They lurched down through the freezing woods, the snow glowing orange in the risen sun. Cold blue gloom lurked in hollows like little cups of winter.

Beside her, the tattooed man made a gurgling sound. He slipped out of her grasp and landed on his knees in the snow, clutching at his throat and choking. His breath sounded like a saw.

‘What now? What's the matter? What's the matter?’

He rolled his eyes at her and pawed at his throat again.

‘Something stuck?’ She slapped him as hard as she could on the back, but now he was on his hands and knees, fighting for breath.

She put her hands under his shoulders and pulled him upright, and put her arms around his waist. Oh, gods, how was it supposed to go, she'd gone to classes about it, now, didn't you have to bunch up one fist and then put the other hand around it and then pull up and in like this—

The man coughed and something bounced off a tree and landed in the snow.

She knelt down to have a look.

It was a small black bean.

A bird trilled, high on a branch. She looked up. A wren bobbed at her and fluttered to another twig.

When she looked back, the man was different. He had clothes now, heavy furs, with a fur hood and fur boots. He was supporting himself on a stone-tipped spear, and looked a lot stronger.

Something hurried through the wood, barely visible except by its shadow. For a moment she glimpsed a white hare before it sprang away on a new path.

She looked back. Now the furs had gone and the man looked older, although he had the same eyes. He was wearing thick white robes, and looked very much like a priest.

When a bird called again she didn't look away. And she realized that she'd been mistaken in thinking that the man changed like the turning of pages. All the images were there at once, and many others too. What you saw depended on how you looked.

Yes. It's a good job I'm cool and totally used to this sort of thing, she thought. Otherwise I'd be rather worried…

Now they were at the edge of the forest.

A little way off, four huge boars stood and steamed, in front of a sledge that looked as if it had been put together out of crudely trimmed trees. There were faces in the blackened wood, possibly carved by stone, possibly carved by rain and wind.

The Hogfather climbed aboard and sat down. He'd put on weight in the last few yards and now it was almost impossible to see anything other than the huge, redrobed man, ice crystals settling here and there on the cloth. Only in the occasional sparkle of frost was there a hint of hair or tusk.

He shifted on the seat and then reached down to extricate a false beard, which he held up questioningly.

SORRY, said a voice behind Susan. THAT WAS MINE.

The Hogfather nodded at Death, as one craftsman to another, and then at Susan. She wasn't sure if she was