Brother against brother! Women in crinoline dresses slapping people's faces! A mighty dynasty brought low!
A great city aflame! Not with passione, he made a note in the margin, but with flame.
Possibly even
He bit his lip.
Yeah. He'd been waiting for this! Yeah!A thousand elephants!
(Later Soll Dibbler said, 'Look, Uncle, the Ankh-Morpork civil war great idea. No problem with that. Famous historical occurrence, no problem. It's just that none of the historians mentioned seeing any elephants.'
'It was a big war,' said Dibbler defensively. 'You're bound to miss things.'
'Not a thousand elephants, I think.'
'Who's running this studio?'
'It's just that-'
'Listen,' said Dibbler. 'Maybe they didn't have a thousand elephants, but we're going to have a thousand elephants, 'cos a thousand elephants is more real, OK?')
The sheet gradually filled up with Dibbler's excited scrawl. He reached the bottom and continued over the woodwork of the bed.
By the gods, this was the real stuff! No fiddly little battles here. They'd need just about every handleman in Holy Wood!
He sat back, panting with exhilarated exhaustion.
He could see it now. It was as good as made.
All it needed was a title. Something with a ring to it. Something that people would remember. Something he scratched his chin with the pen that said that the affairs of ordinary people were so much chaff in the great storms of history. Storms, that was it. Good imagery, a storm. You got thunder. Lightning. Rain. Wind.
Wind. That was it!
He crawled up to the top of the sheet and, with great care, wrote:
BLOWN AWAY.
Victor tossed and turned in his narrow bed, trying to get to sleep. Images marched through his half-dozing mind. There were chariot races and pirate ships and things he couldn't identify, and in the middle of it all this thing, climbing a tower. Something huge and terrible, grinning defiance at the world. And someone screaming . . .
He sat up, drenched in sweat.
After a few minutes he swung his legs out of bed and went to the window.
Above the lights of the town Holy Wood Hill brooded in the first dim light of dawn. It was going to be another fine day.
Holy Wood dreams surged through the streets, in great invisible golden waves.
And Something came with it.
Something that never, never dreamed at all. Something that never went to sleep.
Ginger got out of bed and also looked towards the hill, although it is doubtful if she saw it. Moving like a sightless person in a familiar room, she padded across to the door, down the steps, and out into the tail of the night.
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