'I mean they're over there!'
Nanny squinted at the stars. Something ragged moved across the night.
'Oh, blast.'
'Can't you outfly them?'
'Nope. They can put a girdle round the world in forty minutes.'
'Why? It's not that fat,' said Casanunda, who was feeling in the mood for a handful of dried frog pills.
'I mean they're
'I think I'm losing a tiny bit,' said Casanunda, as the broomstick dived toward the trees.
Leaves scraped on Nanny Ogg's boots. Moonlight glinted briefly off ash-blond hair, away to her left. 'Bugger, bugger,
Three elves were keeping station with the broomstick. That was the thing about elves. They chased you till you dropped, until your blood was curdling with dread; if a dwarf wanted you dead, on the other hand, they'd simply cut you in half with an axe first chance they got. But that was because dwarfs were a lot nicer than elves.
'They're gaming on us!' said Casanunda.
'Got the crowbar?'
'Yes!'
'Right. . .'
The broomstick zigzagged over the silent forest. One of the elves drew its sword and swung down. Knock them down into the trees, leave them alive as long as possible . . .
The broomstick went into reverse. Nanny Ogg's head and legs went forward, so that partly she was sitting on her hands but mainly she was sitting on nothing. The elf swooped toward her, laughing—
Casanunda stuck out the crowbar.
There was a sound very like
The broomstick jerked ahead again, dumping Nanny Ogg in Casanunda's lap.
'Sorry.'
'Don't mention it. In fact, do it again if you like.'
'Get him, did you?'
'Took his breath away.'
'Good. Where're the others?'
'Can't see them.' Casanunda grinned madly. 'We showed them, eh?'
Something went zip and stuck into Nanny Ogg's hat. 'They know we've got iron,' she said. 'They won't come close again. They don't need to,' she added bitterly.
The broomstick swerved around a tree and ploughed through some bracken. Then it swung out on to an overgrown path.
'They aren't following us anymore,' said Casanunda, after a while. 'We've frightened them off, yes?'
'Not us. They're nervy of going close to the Long Man. It's not their turf. Huh, look at the state of this path. There's trees growing in it now. When I was a girl, you wouldn't find a blade of grass growing on the path.' She smiled at a distant memory. 'Very popular place on a summer night, the Long Man was.'
There was a change in the texture of the forest now. It was old even by the standards of Lancre forestry. Beards of moss hung from gnarled low branches. Ancient leaves crackled underfoot as the witch and the dwarf flew between the trees. Something heard them and crashed away through the thick undergrowth. By the sound of it, it was something with horns.
Nanny let the broomstick glide to a halt.
'There,' she said, pushing aside a bracken frond, 'the Long Man.''
Casanunda peered under her elbow.
'Is that all? It's just an old burial mound.'
'Three old burial mounds,' said Nanny
Casanunda took in the overgrown landscape.
'Yes, I see them,' he said. 'Two round ones and a long one. Well?'
'The first time I saw 'em from the air,' said Nanny, 'I nearly fell off the bloody broomstick for laughin'.'
There was one of those pauses known as the delayed drop while the dwarf worked out the topography of the situation.
Then:
'Blimey,' said Casanunda. 'I thought the people who built burial mounds and earthworks and things were serious druids and people like that, not. . . not people who drew on privy walls with 200,000 tons of earth, in a manner of speaking.'
'Doesn't sound like you to be shocked by that sort of thing.'
She could have sworn the dwarf was blushing under his wig.
'Well, there's such a thing as
'It's a bit more complicated than that,' said Nanny, pushing through the bushes. 'Here it's the landscape saying:
I've got a great big tonker. That's a dwarf word, is it?'
'Yes.'
'It's a good word.'
Casanunda tried to untangle himself from a briar.
'Esme doesn't ever come up here,' said Nanny, from somewhere up ahead. 'She says it's bad enough about folksongs and maypoles and suchlike, without the whole scenery getting suggestive. 'Course,' she went on, 'this was never intended as a women's place. My great-gran said in the real old days the men used to come up for strange rites what no women ever saw.'
'Except your great-grandmother, who hid in the bushes,' said Casanunda.
Nanny stopped dead.
'How did you know
'Let's just say I'm developing a bit of an insight into Ogg womanhood as well, Mrs. Ogg,' said the dwarf. A thorn bush had ripped his coat.
'She said they just used to build sweat lodges and smell like a blacksmith's armpit and drink scumble and dance around the fire with horns on and piss in the trees any old how,' said Nanny. 'She said it was a bit sissy, to be honest. But I always reckon a man's got to be a man, even if it is sissy. What happened to your wig?'
'I think it's on that tree back there.'
'Still got the crowbar?'
'Yes, Mrs. Ogg.'
'Here we are, then.'
They had arrived at the foot of the long mound. There were three large irregular stones there, forming a low cave. Nanny Ogg ducked under the lintel into the fusty and somewhat ammonia-scented darkness.
'About here'd do,' she said. 'Got a match?'
The sulphurous glow revealed a flat rock with a crude drawing scratched on it. Ochre had been rubbed into the lines. They showed a figure of an owl-eyed man wearing an animal skin and horns.
In the flickering light he seemed to dance.
There was a runic inscription underneath.
'Anyone ever worked out what that says?' said Casanunda.
Nanny Ogg nodded.
'It's a variant of Oggham,' she said. 'Basically, it means 'I've Got a Great Big Tonker.''
'Oggham?' said the dwarf.
'My family has been in these, how shall I put it, in these parts for a very long time,' said Nanny.
'Knowing you is a real education, Mrs. Ogg,' said Casanunda.
'Everyone says that. Just shove the crowbar down the side of the stone, will you? I've always wanted an excuse to go down there.'
