‘Will he run?’
‘Not so much run as bolt, sir. Born evil, that one,’ said Hobson. ‘You need a crowbar to get him round corners, too. Look, sir, fair play to yer for a game ‘un, but I’ve got plenty of other—’
Hobson flinched as Moist gave him a special grin.’ You chose him, Mr Hobson. I’ll ride him. I’d be grateful if you could get your gentlemen to point him up Broadway for me while I go and conclude a few items of business.’
Moist went into the building, ran up the stairs to his office, shut the door, crammed his handkerchief in his mouth and whimpered gently for a few seconds, until he felt better. He’d ridden bareback a few times, when things had been really hot, but Boris had the eyes of a crazy thing.
But back off now and he’d be . . . just a fool in a shiny suit. You had to give them a show, an image, something to remember. All he had to do was stay on until he left the city and then find a suitable bush to jump off into. Yes, that’d do. And then stagger into Sto Lat hours later, still with the mail, having valiantly fought off bandits. He’d be believed, because it would feel right . . . because people wanted to believe things, because it’d make a good tale, because if you made it glitter sufficiently glass could appear more like a diamond than a diamond did.
There was a cheer when he strode out on to the steps again. The sun, on cue, decided to appear from the mists, and sparkled off his wings.
Boris was looking apparently docile now, chewing his bit. This didn’t fool Moist; if a horse like Boris was quiet it was because he was planning something.
‘Mr Pump, I shall need you to give me a leg up,’ he said, slinging the post bag round his neck.
‘Yes, Mr Lipvig,’ said the golem.
‘Mr Lipwig!’
Moist turned round to see Sacharissa Cripslock hurrying up the street, notebook in hand.
‘Always a pleasure to see you, Sacharissa,’ said Moist, ‘but I am a little busy right now—’
‘You are aware that the Grand Trunk is shut again?’ she said.
‘Yes, it was in the paper. Now I must—’
‘So you are challenging the clacks company?’ The pencil hung poised over her notebook.
‘Simply delivering the mail, Miss Cripslock, just like I said I’d do,’ said Moist in firm, manly tones.
‘But it’s rather strange, is it not, that a man on horseback is more reliable than a—’
‘Please, Miss Cripslock! We are the Post Office!’ said Moist, in his best high-minded voice. ‘We don’t go in for petty rivalry. We’re sorry to hear that our colleagues in the clacks company are experiencing temporary difficulties with their machinery, we fully sympathize with their plight, and if they would like us to deliver their messages for them we would of course be happy to sell them some stamps – soon to be available in penny, twopenny, fivepenny, tenpenny and one dollar values, available here at your Post Office, ready gummed. Incidentally, we intend eventually to flavour the gum in liquorice, orange, cinnamon and banana flavours, but not strawberry because I hate strawberries.’
He could see her smile as she wrote this down. Then she said: ‘I did hear you correctly, did I? You are offering to carry clacks messages?
‘Certainly. Ongoing messages can be put on the Trunk in Sto Lat. Helpfulness is our middle name.’
‘Are you sure it’s not “cheekiness”?’ said Sacharissa, to laughter from the crowd.
‘I don’t understand you, I’m sure,’ said Moist. ‘Now, if you will—’
‘You’re cocking a snook at the clacks people again, aren’t you?’ said the journalist.
‘Ah, that must be a journalistic term,’ said Moist. ‘I’ve never owned a snook, and even if I did I wouldn’t know how to cock it. And now, if you will excuse me, I have the mail to deliver and ought to leave before Boris eats somebody. Again.’
‘Can I ask you just one last thing? Will your soul be unduly diminished if Otto takes a picture of you departing?’
‘I suppose I can’t stop you out here, provided my face isn’t very clear,’ said Moist, as Mr Pump cupped his pottery hands to make a step. ‘The priest is very hot on that, you know.’
‘Yes, I expect “the priest” is,’ said Miss Cripslock, making sure the inverted commas clanged with irony. ‘Besides, by the look of that creature, it may be the last chance we get. It looks like death on four legs, Mr Lipwig.’
The crowd fell silent as Moist mounted. Boris merely shifted his weight a little.
Look at it like this, Moist thought, what have you got to lose? Your life? You’ve already been hanged. You’re into angel time. And you’re impressing the hell out of everybody. Why are they buying stamps? Because you’re giving them a show—
‘Just say the word, mister,’ said one of Hobson’s men, hauling on the end of a rope. ‘When we let him go, we ain’t hanging around!’
‘Wait a moment—’ said Moist quickly.
He’d seen a figure at the front of the crowd. It was wearing a figure-hugging grey dress and, as he watched, it blew a neurotic cloud of smoke at the sky, gave him a look, and shrugged.
‘Dinner tonight, Miss Dearheart?’ he shouted.
Heads turned. There was a ripple of laughter, and a few cheers. For a moment she flashed him a look that should have left his shadow on the smoking remains of the wall opposite, and then she gave a curt nod.
Who knows, it could be peaches underneath . . .
‘Let him go, boys!’ said Moist, his heart soaring.
The men dived away. The world was still for a breath, and then Boris sprang from docility into a mad rearing dance, back legs clattering across the flagstones, hooves pawing at the air.
‘Vunderful! Hold it!’
The world went white. Boris went mad.
Chapter Seven A
Post Haste
The Nature of Boris the Horse – Foreboding Tower – Mr Lipwig
cools off- The Lady with Buns on Her Ears – Invitation Accepted —
Mr Robinsons Box — A mysterious stranger
Hobson had tried Boris as a racehorse and he would have been a very good one were it not for his unbreakable habit, at the off, of attacking the horse next to him and jumping the railings at the first bend. Moist clapped one hand on to his hat, wedged his toes into the belly band and hung on to the reins as Broadway came at him all at once, carts and people blurring past, his eyeballs pressing into his head.
There was a cart across the street but there was no possibility of steering Boris. Huge muscles bunched and there was a long, slow, silent moment as he drifted over the cart.
Hooves slid over the cobbles ahead of a trail of sparks when he landed again, but he recovered by sheer momentum and accelerated.
The usual crowd around the Hubwards Gate scattered and there, filling the horizon, were the plains. They did something to Boris’s mad horse brain. All that space, nice and flat with only a few easily jumped obstacles, like trees . . .
He found extra muscle and speeded up again, bushes and trees and carts flying towards him.
Moist cursed the bravado with which he’d ordered the saddle taken away. Every part of his body already hated him. But in truth Boris, once you got past the pineapple, wasn’t too bad a ride. He’d hit his rhythm, a natural single-footed gait, and his burning eyes were focused on the blueness. His hatred of everything was for the moment subsumed in the sheer joy of space. Hobson was right, you couldn’t steer him with a mallet, but at least he was headed in the right direction, which was away from his stable. Boris didn’t want to spend the days kicking the bricks out of his wall while waiting to throw the next bumptious idiot. He wanted to bite the horizon. He wanted to run.
Moist carefully removed his hat and gripped it in his mouth. He didn’t dare imagine what’d happen if he lost it, and he’d need to have it on his head at the end of the journey. It was important. It was all about style.
One of the towers of the Grand Trunk was ahead and slightly to the left. There were two in the twenty miles between Ankh-Morpork and Sto Lat, because they were taking almost all the traffic of lines that stretched right across the continent. Beyond Sto Lat the Trunk began to split into tributaries, but here, flashing overhead, the words of the world were flowing—
—should be flowing. But the shutters were still. As he drew level, Moist saw men working high up on the open wooden tower; by the look of it, a whole section had broken off.