Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14)

Lords and Ladies (Discworld #14) Page 8

“Jason Ogg, I wants a word with you.”

The smithy emptied like magic. It was probably something in Nanny Ogg's tone of voice. But Nanny reached out and grabbed one man by the arm as he tried to go past at a sort of stumbling crouch.

“I'm glad I've run into you, Mr. Quarney,” she said. “Don't rush off. Store doing all right, is it?”

Lancre's only storekeeper gave her the look a threelegged mouse gives an athletic cat. Nevertheless, he tried.

“Oh, terrible bad, terrible bad business is right now, Mrs. Ogg.”

“Same as normal, eh?”

Mr. Quarney's expression was pleading. He knew he wasn't going to get out without something, he just wanted to know what it was.

“Well, now,” said Nanny, “you know the widow Scrope, lives over in Slice?”

Quarney's mouth opened.

“She's not a widow,” he said. “She-”

“Bet you half a dollar?” said Nanny.

Quarney's mouth stayed open, and around it the rest of his face recomposed itself in an expression of fascinated horror.

“So she's to be allowed credit, right, until she gets the farm on its feet,” said Nanny, in the silence. Quarney nodded mutely.

“That goes for the rest of you men listening outside the door,” said Nanny, raising her voice. “Dropping a cut of meat on her doorstep once a week wouldn't come amiss, eh? And she'll probably want extra help come harvest. I knows I can depend on you all. Now, off you go. . .”

They ran for it, leaving Nanny Ogg standing triumphantly in the doorway.

Jason Ogg looked at her hopelessly, a fifteen-stone man reduced to a four-year-old boy.

“Jason?”

“I got to do this bit of brazing for old-”

“So,” said Nanny, ignoring him, “what's been happening in these parts while we've been away, my lad?”

Jason poked at the fire distractedly with an iron bar.

“Oh, well, us had a big whirlwind on Hogswatchnight and one of Mother Peason's hens laid the same egg three times, and old Poorchick's cow gave birth to a seven-headed snake, and there was a rain of frogs over in Slice-”

“Been pretty normal, then,” said Nanny Ogg. She refilled her pipe in a casual but meaningful way.

“All very quiet, really,” said Jason. He pulled the bar out of the fire, laid it on the anvil, and raised his hammer.

“I'll find out sooner or later, you know,” said Nanny Ogg.

Jason didn't turn his head, but his hammer stopped in mid-air.

“I always does, you know,” said Nanny Ogg.

The iron cooled from the colour of fresh straw to bright red.

“You knows you always feels better for telling your old mum,” said Nanny Ogg.

The iron cooled from red to spitting black. But Jason, ' used all day to the searing heat of a forge, seemed to be uncomfortably warm.

“I should beat it up before it gets cold,” said Nanny Ogg.

“Weren't my fault. Mum! How could I stop 'em?”

Nanny sat back in the chair, smiling happily

“What them would these be, my son?”

“That young Diamanda and that Perdita and that girl with the red hair from over in Bad Ass and them others. I says to old Peason, I says you'd have something to say, I tole'em Mistress Weatherwax'd get her knic - would definitely be sarcastic when she found out,” said Jason. “But they just laughs. They said they could teach 'emselves witching.”

Nanny nodded. Actually, they were quite right. You could teach yourself witchcraft. But both the teacher and the pupil had to be the right kind of person.

“Diamanda?” she said. “Don't recall the name.”

“Really she's Lucy Tockley,” said Jason. “She says Diamanda is more. . . more witchy.”

“Ah. The one that wears the big floppy felt hat?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“She's the one that paints her nails black, too?”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Old Tockley sent her off to school, didn't he?”

“Yes, Mum. She came back while you was gone.”

“Ah.”

Nanny Ogg lit her pipe from the forge. Floppy hat and black nails and education. Oh, dear.

“How many of these gels are there, then?” she said.

“Bout half a dozen. But they'm good at it. Mum.”

“Yeah?”

“And it ain't as if they've been doing anything bad.”

Nanny Ogg stared reflectively at the glow in the forge.

There was a bottomless quality to Nanny Ogg's silences. And also a certain directional component. Jason was quite clear that the silence was being aimed at him.

He always fell for it. He tried to fill it up.

“And that Diamanda's been properly educated,” he said. “She knows some lovely words.”

Silence.

“And I knows you've always said there weren't enough young girls interested in learnin' witching these days,” said Jason. He removed the iron bar and hit it a few times, for the look of the thing.

More silence flowed in Jason's direction.

“They goes and dances up in the mountains every full moon.”

Nanny Ogg removed her pipe and inspected the bowl carefully.

“People do say,” said Jason, lowering his voice, “that they dances in the altogether.”

“Altogether what?” said Nanny Ogg.

“You know. Mum. In the nudd.”

“Cor. There's a thing. Anyone see where they go?”

“Nah. Weaver the thatcher says they always gives him the slip.”

“Jason?”

“Yes, Mum?”

“They bin dancin' around the stones.”

Jason hit his thumb.

There were a number of gods in the mountains and forests of Lancre. One of them was known as Heme the Hunted. He was a god of the chase and the hunt. More or less.

Most gods are created and sustained by belief and hope. Hunters danced in animal skins and created gods of the chase, who tended to be hearty and boisterous with the tact of a tidal wave. But they are not the only gods of hunting. The prey has an occult voice too, as the blood pounds and the hounds bay. Heme was the god of the chased and the hunted and all small animals whose ultimate destiny is to be an abrupt damp squeak.

He was about three feet high with rabbit ears and very small horns. But he did have an extremely good turn of speed, and was using it to the full as he tore madly through the woods.

“They're coming! They're coming! They're all coming back!”

“Who are?” said Jason Ogg. He was holding his thumb in the water trough.

Nanny Ogg sighed.

“Them.” she said. “You know. Them. We ain't certain, but. . .”

“Who's Them?”

Nanny hesitated. There were some things you didn't tell ordinary people. On the other hand, Jason was a blacksmith, which meant he wasn't ordinary. Blacksmiths had to keep secrets. And he was family; Nanny Ogg had had an adventurous youth and wasn't very good at counting, but she was pretty certain he was her son.

“You see,” she said, waving her hands vaguely, “them stones. . . the Dancers . . . see, in the old days . . . see, once upon a time. . .”

She stopped, and tried again to explain the essentially fractal nature of reality.

“Like . . . there's some places that're thinner than others, where the old doorways used to be, well, not doorways, never exactly understood it myself, not doorways as such, more places where the world is thinner . . . Anyway, the thing is, the Dancers . . . are a kind of fence . . . we, well, when I say we I mean thousands of years ago . . . I mean, but they're not just stones, they're some kind of thunderbolt iron but . . . there's things like tides, only not with water, it's when worlds get closer together'n you can nearly step between 'em . . . anyway, if people've been hangin' around the stones, playin' around . . . then They'll be back, if we're not careful.”

“What They?”

“That's the whole trouble,” said Nanny, miserably. “If I tells you, you'll get it all wrong. They lives on the other side of the Dancers.”

Her son stared at her. Then a faint grin of realisation wandered across his face.

“Ah,” he said. “I knows. I heard them wizards down in Ankh is always accidentally rippin' holes in this fabric o' reality they got down there, and you get them horrible things coming out o' the Dungeon Dimensions. Huge buggers with dozens o' eyeballs and more legs'n a Morris team.” He gripped his No. 5 hammer. “Don't you worry. Mum. If they starts poppin' out here, we'll soon-”

“No, it ain't like that,” said Nanny “Those live outside. But Them lives. . . over there.”

Jason looked completely lost.

Nanny shrugged. She'd have to tell someone, sooner or later.

“The Lords and Ladies,” she said.

“Who're they?”

Nanny looked around. But, after all, this was a forge. There had been a forge here long before there was a castle, long before there was even a kingdom. There were horseshoes everywhere. Iron had entered the very walls. It wasn't just a place of iron, it was a place where iron died and was reborn. If you couldn't speak the words here, you couldn't speak 'em anywhere.

Even so, she'd rather not.

“You know,” she said. “The Fair Folk. The Gentry. The Shining Ones. The Star People. You know.”

“What?”

Nanny put her hand on the anvil, just in case, and said the word.

Jason's frown very gently cleared, at about the same speed as a sunrise.

“Them?” he said. “But aren't they nice and-?”

'“See?” said Nanny. “I told you you'd get it wrong!”

“How much?” said Ridcully.

The coachman shrugged.

“Take it or leave it,” he said.

“I'm sorry, sir,” said Ponder Stibbons. “It's the only coach.”

“Fifty dollars each is daylight robbery!”

“No,” said the coachman patiently. “Daylight robbery,” he said, in the authoritative tones of the experienced, “is when someone steps out into the road with an arrow pointing at us and then all his friends swings down from the rocks and trees and take away all our money and things. And then there's nighttime robbery, which is like daytime robbery except they set fire to the coach so's they can see what they're about. Twilight robbery, now, your basic twilight robbery is-”

“Are you saying,” said Ridcully, “that getting robbed is included in the price?”

“Bandits' Guild,” said the coachman. “Forty dollars per head, see. It's a kind of flat rate.”

“What happens if we don't pay it?” said Ridcully.

“You end up flat.”

The wizards went into a huddle.

“We've got a hundred and fifty dollars,” said Ridcully. “We can't get any more out of the safe because the Bursar ate the key yesterday”

“Can I try an idea, sir?” said Ponder.

“All right.”

Ponder gave the coachman a bright smile.

“Pets travel free?” he suggested.

“Oook?”

Nanny Ogg's broomstick skimmed a few feet above the forest paths, cornering so fast that her boots scraped through the leaves. She leapt off at Granny Weather-wax's cottage so quickly that she didn't switch it off, and it kept going until it stuck in the privy.