Sourcery

'Are you sure?' said Rincewind.

'I'm afraid your memory was very clear on the subject.'

'Then what shall we do?'

'I don't know!'

Rincewind thought about this and then, with an air of finality, started to take off his last sock.

'No half-bricks,' he said, to no-one in particular. 'Have to use sand.'

'You're going to attack them with a sockful of sand?'

'No. I'm going to run away from them. The sockful of sand is for when they follow.'

People were returning to Al Khali, where the ruined tower was a smoking heap of stones. A few brave souls turned their attention to the wreckage, on the basis that there might be survivors who could be rescued or looted or both.

And, among the rubble, the following conversation might have been heard:

'There's something moving under here!'

'Under that? By the two beards of Imtal, you are mishearing. It must weigh a ton.'

'Over here, brothers!'

And then sounds of much heaving would have been heard, and then:

'It's a box!'

'It could be treasure, do you think?'

'It's growing legs, by the Seven Moons of Nasreem!'

'Five moons-’

'Where'd it go? Where'd it go?'

'Never mind about that, it's not important. Let's get this straight, according to the legend it was five moons-'

In Klatch they take their mythology seriously. It's only real life they don't believe.

The three horsepersons sensed the change as they descended through the heavy snowclouds at the Hub end of the Sto Plain. There was a sharp scent in the air.

'Can't you smell it?' said Nijel, 'I remember it when I was a boy, when you lay in bed on that first morning in winter, and you could sort of taste it in the air and-’

The clouds parted below them and there, filling the high plains country from end to end, were the herds of the Ice Giants.

They stretched for miles in every direction, and the thunder of their stampede filled the air.

The bull glaciers were in the lead, bellowing their vast creaky calls and throwing up great sheets of earth as they ploughed relentlessly forward. Behind them pressed the great mass of cows and their calves, skimming over land already ground down to the bedrock by the leaders.

They bore as much resemblance to the familiar glaciers the world thought it knew as a lion dozing in the shade bears to three hundred pounds of wickedly coordinated muscle bounding towards you with its mouth open.

'... and ... and ... when you went to the window,' Nijel's mouth, lacking any further input from his brain, ran down.