Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14)

Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14) Page 24

There was a badly painted red, black, and white post across the road.

The coachman sounded his horn.

“What's up?” said Ridcully, leaning out of the window.

“Troll bridge.”

“Whoops.”

After a while there was a booming sound under the bridge, and a troll clambered over the parapet. It was quite overdressed, for a troll. In addition to the statutory loincloth, it was wearing a helmet. Admittedly it had been designed for a human head, and was attached to the much larger troll head by string, but there probably wasn't a better word than “wearing.”

“What's up?” said the Bursar, waking up.

“There's a troll on the bridge,” said Ridcully, “but it's underneath a helmet, so it's probably official and will get into serious trouble if it eats people.[25] Nothing to worry about.”

The Bursar giggled, because he was on the upcurve of whatever switchback his mind was currently riding.

The troll appeared at the coach window.

“Afternoon, your lordships,” it said. “Customs inspection.”

“I don't think we have any,” babbled the Bursar happily. “I mean, we used to have a tradition of rolling boiled eggs downhill on Soul Cake Tuesday, but-”

“I means,” said the troll, “do you have any beer, spirits, wines, liquors, hallucinogenic herbage, or books of a lewd or licentious nature?”

Ridcully pulled the Bursar back from the window.

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like some?”

“We haven't even got,” said the Bursar, despite Ridcully's efforts to sit on his head, “any billygoats.”

There are some people that would whistle “Yankee Doodle” in a crowded bar in Atlanta.

Even these people would consider it tactless to mention the word “billygoat” to a troll.

The troll's expression changed very slowly, like a glacier eroding half a mountain. Ponder tried to get under the seat.

“So we'll just trit-trot along, shall we?” said the Bursar, his voice by now slightly muffled.

“He doesn't mean it,” said the Archchancellor quickly. “It's the dried frog talking.”

“You don't want to eat me,” said the Bursar. “You want to eat my brother, he's much mfmfph mfmfph . . .”

“Well, now,” said the troll, “seems to me that-” He spotted Casanunda.

“Oh-ho,” he said, “dwarf smuggling, eh?”

“Don't be ridiculous, man,” said Ridcully, “there's no such thing as dwarf smuggling.”

“Yeah? Then what's that you've got there?”

“I'm a giant,” said Casanunda.

“Giants are a lot bigger.”

“I've been ill.”

The troll looked perplexed. This was post-graduate thinking for a troll. But he was looking for trouble. He found it on the roof of the coach, where the Librarian had been sunbathing.

“What's in that sack up there?”

“That's not a sack. That's the Librarian.”

The troll prodded the large mass of red hair.

“Ook. . .”

“What? A monkey?”

“Oook?”

Several minutes later, the travellers leaned on the parapet, looking down reflectively at the river far below.

“Happen often, does it?” said Casanunda.

“Not so much these days,” said Ridcully. “It's like - what's that word, Stibbons? About breedin' and passin' on stuff to yer kids?”

“Evolution,” said Ponder. The ripples were still sloshing against the banks.

“Right. Like, my father had a waistcoat with embroidered peacocks on it, and he left it to me, and now I've got it. They call it hereditarery-”

“No, that's not-” Ponder began, with no hope whatsoever that Ridcully would listen.

“-so anyway, most people left back home know the difference between apes and monkeys now,” said Ridcully. “Evolution, that is. It's hard to breed when you've got a headache from being bounced up and down on the pavement.”

The ripples had stopped now.

“Do you think trolls can swim?” said Casanunda.

“No. They just sink and walk ashore,” said Ridcully He turned, and leaned back on his elbows. “This really takes me back, you know. The old Lancre River. There's trout down there that'd take your arm off.”

“Not just trout,” said Ponder, watching a helmet emerge from the water.

“And limpid pools further up,” said Ridcully. “Full of, of, of . . . limpids, stuff like that. And you can bathe naked and no one'd see. And water meadows full of . . . water, don'tyerknow, and flowers and stuff.” He sighed. “You know, it was on this very bridge that she told me she-”

“He's got out of the river,” said Ponder. But the troll wasn't moving very fast, because the Librarian was nonchalantly levering one of the big stones out of the parapet.

“On this very bridge I asked-”

“That's a big club he's got,” said Casanunda.

“This bridge, I may say, was where I nearly-”

“Could you stop holding that rock in such a provocative way?” said Ponder.

“Oook.”

“It'd be a help.”

“The actual bridge, if anyone's interested, is where my whole life took a diff-”

“Why don't we just go on?” said Ponder. “He's got a steep climb.”

“Good thing for him he hasn't got up here, eh?” said Casanunda. Ponder swiveled the Librarian around and pushed him toward the coach.

“This is the bridge, in fact, where-”

Ridcully turned around.

“Are you coming or not?” said Casanunda, with the reins in his hand.

“I was actually having a quality moment of misty nostalgic remembrance,” said Ridcully. “Not that any of you buggers noticed, of course.”

Ponder held the door open.

“Well, you know what they say. You can't cross the same river twice, Archchancellor,” he said.

Ridcully stared at him.

“Why not? This is a bridge.”

On the roof of the coach the Librarian picked up the coach-horn, bit the end of it reflectively - well, you never knew - and then blew it so hard that it uncurled.

It was early morning in Lancre town, and it was more or less deserted. Farmers had got up hours before to curse and swear and throw a bucket at the cows and had then gone back to bed.

The sound of the horn bounced off the houses.

Ridcully leapt out of the coach and took a deep, theatrical breath.

“Can't you smell that?” he said. “That's real fresh mountain air, that is.” He thumped his chest.

“I've just trodden in something rural,” said Ponder. “Where is the castle, sir?”

“I think it could be that huge black towering thing looming over the town,” said Casanunda.

The Archchancellor stood in the middle of the square and turned slowly with his arms spread wide.

“See that tavern?” he said. “Hah! If I had a penny for every time they threw me out of there, I'd have . . . five dollars and thirty-eight pence. And over there is the old forge, and there's Mrs. Persifleur's, where I had lodgings. See that peak up there? That's Copperhead, that is. I climbed that one day with old Carbonaceous the troll. Oh, great days, great days. And see that wood down there, on the hill? That's where she-”

His voice trailed into a mumble. “Oh, my word. It all comes back to me . . . What a summer that was. They don't make 'em like that anymore.” He sighed. “You know,” he said, “I'd give anything to walk through those woods with her again. There were so many things we never - oh, well. Come on.”

Ponder looked around at Lancre. He'd been born and raised in Ankh-Morpork. As far as he was concerned, the countryside was something that happened to other people, and most of them had four legs. As far as he was concerned, the countryside was like raw chaos before the universe, which was to say something with cobbles and walls, something civilized, was created.

“This is the capital city?” he said.

“More or less,” said Casanunda, who tended to feel the same way about places that weren't paved.

“I bet there's not a single delicatessen anywhere,” said Ponder.

“And the beer here,” said Ridcully, “the beer here - well, you'd just better taste the beer here! And there's stuff called scumble, they make it from apples and . . . and damned if I know what else they put in it, except you daren't pour it into metal mugs. You ought to try it, Mr. Stibbons. It'd put hair on your chest. And yours-” he turned to the next one down from the coach, who turned out to be the Librarian.

“Oook?”

“Well, I, er, I should just drink anything you like, in your case,” said Ridcully.

He hauled the mail sack down from the roof.

“What do we do with this?” he said.

There were ambling footsteps behind him, and he turned to see a short, red-faced youth in ill-fitting and baggy chain-mail, which made him look like a lizard that had lost a lot of weight very quickly.

“Where's the coach driver?” said Shawn Ogg.

“He's ill,” said Ridcully. “He had a sudden attack of bandits. What do we do with the mail?”

“I take the palace stuff, and we generally leave the sack hanging up on a nail outside the tavern so that people can help themselves,” said Shawn.

“Isn't that dangerous?” said Ponder.

“Don't think so. It's a strong nail,” said Shawn, rummaging in the sack.

“I meant, don't people steal letters?”

“Oh, they wouldn't do that, they wouldn't do that. One of the witches'd go and stare at 'em if they did that.” Shawn stuffed a few packages under his arm and hung the sack on the aforesaid nail.

“Yes, that's another thing they used to have round here,” said Ridcully. “Witches! Let me tell you about the witches round here-”

“Our mum's a witch,” said Shawn conversationally, rummaging in the sack.

“As fine a body of women as you could hope to meet,” said Ridcully, with barely a hint of mental gear-clashing. “And not a bunch of interfering power-mad old crones at all, whatever anyone might say.”

“Are you here for the wedding?”

“That's right. I'm the Archchancellor of Unseen University, this is Mr. Stibbons, a wizard, this - where are you? Oh, there you are - this is Mr. Casanunda-”

“Count,” said Casanunda. “I'm a Count.”

“Really? You never said.”

“Well, you don't, do you? It's not the first thing you say.”

Ridcully's eyes narrowed.

“But I thought dwarfs didn't have titles,” he said.

“I performed a small service for Queen Agantia of Skund,” said Casanunda.

“Did you? My word. How small?”

“Not that small.”

“My word. And that's the Bursar, and this is the Librarian.” Ridcully took a step backward, waved his hands in the air, and silently mouthed the words: Don't Say Monkey.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Shawn, politely.