the five men of this description were closing cautiously on the trio to introduce them to this week's special offer, a cut throat plus theft and burial in the river mud of your choice.
People normally keep out of the way of assassins because of an instinctive feeling that killing people for very large sums of money is disapproved of by the gods (who generally prefer people to be killed for very small sums of money or for free) and could result in hubris, which is the judgement of the gods. The gods are great believers in justice, at least as far as it extends to humans, and have been known to dispense it so enthusiastically that people miles away are turned into cruet.
However, assassin's black doesn't frighten everyone, and in certain sections of society there is a distinct cachet in killing an assassin. It's rather like smashing a sixer in conkers.
Broadly, therefore, the three even now lurching across the deserted planks of the Brass Bridge were dead drunk assassins and the men behind them were bent on inserting the significant comma.
Chidder wandered into one of the heraldic wooden hippopotami10 — that lined the seaward edge of the bridge, bounced off and flopped over the parapet.
'Feel sick,' he announced.
'Feel free,' said Arthur, 'that's what the river's for.'
Teppic sighed. He was attached to rivers, which he felt were designed to have water lilies on top and crocodiles underneath, and the Ankh always depressed him because if you put a water lily in it, it would dissolve. It drained the huge silty plains all the way to the Ramtop mountains, and by the time it had passed through Ankh- Morpork, pop. One million, it could only be called a liquid because it moved faster than the land around it; actually being sick in it would probably make it, on average, marginally cleaner.
He stared down at the thin trickle that oozed between the central pillars, and then raised his gaze to the grey horizon.
'Sun's coming up,' he announced.
'Don't remember eating that,' muttered Chidder.
Teppic stepped back, and a knife ripped past his nose and buried itself in the buttocks of the hippo next to him.
Five figures stepped out of the mists. The three assassins instinctively drew together.
'You come near me, you'll really regret it,' moaned Chidder, clutching his stomach. 'The cleaning bill will be horrible.'
'Well now, what have we here?' said the leading thief. This is the sort of thing that gets said in these circumstances.
'Thieves' Guild, are you?' said Arthur.
'No,' said the leader, 'we're the small and unrepresentative minority that gets the rest a bad name. Give us your valuables and weapons, please. This won't make any difference to the outcome, you understand. It's just that corpse robbing is unpleasant and degrading.'
'We could rush them,' said Teppic, uncertainly.
'Don't look at me,' said Arthur, 'I couldn't find my arse with an atlas.'
'You'll really be sorry when I'm sick,' said Chidder. Teppic was aware of the throwing knives stuffed up either sleeve, and that the chances of him being able to get hold of one in time still to be alive to throw it were likely to be very small.
At times like this religious solace is very important. He turned and looked towards the sun, just as it withdrew from the cloudbanks of the dawn.
There was a tiny dot in the centre of it.
The late King Teppicymon XXVII opened his eyes.
'I was flying,' he whispered, 'I remember the feeling of wings. What am I doing here?'
He tried to stand up. There was a temporary feeling of heaviness, which suddenly dropped away so that he rose to his feet almost without any effort. He looked down to see what had caused it.
'Oh dear,' he said.
The culture of the river kingdom had a lot to say about death and what happened afterwards. In fact it had very little to say about life, regarding it as a sort of inconvenient prelude to the main event and something to be hurried through as politely as possible, and therefore the pharaoh reached the conclusion that he was dead very quickly. The sight of his mangled body on the sand below him played a major part in this.
There was a greyness about everything. The landscape had a ghostly look, as though he could walk straight through it. Of course, he thought, I probably can.
He rubbed the analogue of his hands. Well, this is it. This is where it gets interesting; this is where I start to really live.
Behind him a voice said, GOOD MORNING.
The king turned.
'Hallo,' he said. 'You'd be-'
DEATH, said Death.
The king looked surprised.
'I understood that Death came as a three-headed giant scarab beetle,' he said.
Death shrugged. WELL. NOW YOU KNOW.
'What's that thing in your hand?'
THIS? IT'S A SCYTHE.
'Strange-looking object, isn't it?' said the pharaoh. 'I thought Death carried the Flail of Mercy and the Reaping Hook of Justice.'
Death appeared to think about this.
WHAT IN? he said.
'Pardon?'
ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT A GIANT BEETLE?
'Ah. In his mandibles, I suppose. But I think he's got arms in one of the frescoes in the palace.' The king hesitated. 'Seems a bit silly, really, now I come to tell someone. I mean, a giant beetle with arms. And the head of an ibis, I seem to recall.'
Death sighed. He was not a creature of Time, and therefore past and future were all one to him, but there had been a period when he'd made an effort to appear in whatever form the client expected. This foundered because it was usually impossible to know what the client was expecting until after they were dead. And then he'd decided that, since no-one ever really expected to die anyway, he might as well please himself and he'd henceforth stuck to the familiar black-cowled robe, which was neat and very familiar and acceptable everywhere, like the best credit cards.
'Anyway,' said the pharaoh, 'I expect we'd better be going.'
WHERE TO?
'Don't you know?'
I AM HERE ONLY TO SEE THAT YOU DIE AT THE APPOINTED TIME. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS UP TO YOU.
'Well . . .' The king automatically scratched his chin. 'I suppose I have to wait until they've done all the preparations and so forth. Mummified me. And built a bloody pyramid. Um. Do I have to hang around here to wait for all that?'
I ASSUME SO. Death clicked his fingers and a magnificent white horse ceased its grazing on some of the garden greenery and trotted towards him.
'Oh. Well, I think I shall look away. They take all the squishy inside bits out first, you know.' A look of faint worry crossed his face. Things that had seemed perfectly sensible when he was alive seemed a little suspect now that he was dead.
'It's to preserve the body so that it may begin life anew in the Netherworld,' he added, in a slightly perplexed voice. 'And then they wrap you in bandages. At least that seems logical.'
He rubbed his nose. 'But then they put all this food and drink in the pyramid with you. Bit weird, really.'
WHERE ARE ONE'S INTERNAL ORGANS AT THIS POINT?
'That's the funny thing, isn't it? They're in a jar in the next room,' said the king, his voice edged with doubt.
