The broomstick swerved around a tree and ploughed through some bracken. Then it swung out on to an overgrown path.
“They aren’t following us anymore,” said Casanunda, after a while. “We’ve frightened them off, yes?”
“Not us. They’re nervy of going close to the Long Man. It’s not their turf. Huh, look at the state of this path. There’s trees growing in it now. When I was a girl, you wouldn’t find a blade of grass growing on the path.” She smiled at a distant memory. “Very popular place on a summer night, the Long Man was.”
There was a change in the texture of the forest now. It was old even by the standards of Lancre forestry. Beards of moss hung from gnarled low branches. Ancient leaves crackled underfoot as the witch and the dwarf flew between the trees. Something heard them and crashed away through the thick undergrowth. By the sound of it, it was something with horns.
Nanny let the broomstick glide to a halt.
“There,” she said, pushing aside a bracken frond, ‘the Long Man.'”
Casanunda peered under her elbow.
“Is that all? It’s just an old burial mound.”
“Three old burial mounds,” said Nanny
Casanunda took in the overgrown landscape.
“Yes, I see them,” he said. “Two round ones and a long one. Well?”
“The first time I saw ’em from the air,” said Nanny, “I nearly fell off the bloody broomstick for laughin’.”
There was one of those pauses known as the delayed drop while the dwarf worked out the topography of the situation.
Then:
“Blimey,” said Casanunda. “I thought the people who built burial mounds and earthworks and things were serious druids and people like that, not. . . not people who drew on privy walls with 200,000 tons of earth, in a manner of speaking.”
“Doesn’t sound like you to be shocked by that sort of thing.”
She could have sworn the dwarf was blushing under his wig.
“Well, there’s such a thing as style,” said Casanunda. “There’s such a thing as subtlety. You don’t just shout: I’ve got a great big tonker.”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” said Nanny, pushing through the bushes. “Here it’s the landscape saying:
I’ve got a great big tonker. That’s a dwarf word, is it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a good word.”
Casanunda tried to untangle himself from a briar.
“Esme doesn’t ever come up here,” said Nanny, from somewhere up ahead. “She says it’s bad enough about folksongs and maypoles and suchlike, without the whole scenery getting suggestive. ‘Course,” she went on, “this was never intended as a women’s place. My great-gran said in the real old days the men used to come up for strange rites what no women ever saw.”
“Except your great-grandmother, who hid in the bushes,” said Casanunda.
Nanny stopped dead.
“How did you know that?”
“Let’s just say I’m developing a bit of an insight into Ogg womanhood as well, Mrs. Ogg,” said the dwarf. A thorn bush had ripped his coat.
“She said they just used to build sweat lodges and smell like a blacksmith’s armpit and drink scumble and dance around the fire with horns on and piss in the trees any old how,” said Nanny. “She said it was a bit sissy, to be honest. But I always reckon a man’s got to be a man, even if it is sissy. What happened to your wig?”
“I think it’s on that tree back there.”
“Still got the crowbar?”
“Yes, Mrs. Ogg.”
“Here we are, then.”
They had arrived at the foot of the long mound. There were three large irregular stones there, forming a low cave. Nanny Ogg ducked under the lintel into the fusty and somewhat ammonia-scented darkness.
“About here’d do,” she said. “Got a match?”
The sulphurous glow revealed a flat rock with a crude drawing scratched on it. Ochre had been rubbed into the lines. They showed a figure of an owl-eyed man wearing an animal skin and horns.
In the flickering light he seemed to dance.
There was a runic inscription underneath.
“Anyone ever worked out what that says?” said Casanunda.
Nanny Ogg nodded.
“It’s a variant of Oggham,” she said. “Basically, it means ‘I’ve Got a Great Big Tonker.'”
“Oggham?” said the dwarf.
“My family has been in these, how shall I put it, in these parts for a very long time,” said Nanny.
“Knowing you is a real education, Mrs. Ogg,” said Casanunda.
“Everyone says that. Just shove the crowbar down the side of the stone, will you? I’ve always wanted an excuse to go down there.”
“What is down there?”
“Well, it leads into Lancre Caves. They run everywhere, I’ve heard. Even up to Copperhead. There’s supposed to be an entrance in the castle, but I’ve never found it. But mainly they lead to the world of the elves.”
“I thought the Dancers led to the world of the elves?”
“This is the other world of the elves.”
“I thought they only had one.”
“They don’t talk about this one.”
“And you want to go into it?”
“Yes.”
“You want to find elves?”
“That’s right. Now, are you going to stand here all night, or are you going to crowbar that stone?” She gave him a nudge. “There’s gold down there, you know.”
“Oh, yes, thanks very much,” said Casanunda sarcastically. “That’s speciesist, that is. Just because I am . . . vertically disadvantaged, you’re trying to get round me with gold, yes? Dwarfs are just a lot of appetites on legs, that’s what you think. Hah!”
Nanny sighed.
“Oh, all right,” she said. “Tell you what. . . when we get back home, I’ll bake you some proper dwarf bread, how about that?”
Casanunda’s face split into a disbelieving grin.
“Real dwarf bread?”
“Yes. I reckon I’ve still got the recipe, and anyway it’s been weeks since I emptied out the cat box.”[40]
“Well, all right-.”
Casanunda rammed one end of the crowbar under the stone and pulled on it with dwarfish strength. After a moment’s resistance the stone swung up.
There were steps below, thick with earth and old roots.
Nanny started down them without a look back, and then realized that the dwarf wasn’t following.
“What’s the matter?”
“Never liked dark and enclosed spaces much.”
“What? You’re a dwarf.”
“Born a dwarf, born a dwarf. But I even get nervous when I’m hiding in wardrobes. That’s a bit of a drawback in my line of work.”
“Don’t be daft. I’m not scared.”
“You’re not me.”
“Tell you what – I’ll bake ’em with extra gravel.”
“Ooh . . . you’re a temptress, Mrs. Ogg.”
“And bring the torches.”
The caves were dry, and warm. Casanunda trotted along after Nanny, anxious to stay in the torchlight.
“You haven’t been down here before?”
“No, but I know the way.”
After a while Casanunda began to feel better. The caves were better than wardrobes. For one thing, you weren’t tripping over shoes all the time, and there probably wasn’t much chance of a sword-wielding husband opening the door.
In fact, he began to feel happy.
The words rose unbidden into his head, from somewhere in the back pocket of his genes.
“Hiho, hiho-”
Nanny Ogg grinned in the darkness.
The tunnel opened into a cavern. The torchlight picked up the suggestion of distant walls.
“This it?” said Casanunda, gripping the crowbar.
“No. This is something else. We . . . know about this place. It’s mythical.”
“It’s not real?”
“Oh, it’s real. And mythical.”
The torch flared. There were hundreds of dust-covered slabs ranged around the cavern in a spiral; at the centre of the spiral was a huge bell, suspended from a rope that disappeared into the darkness of the ceiling. Just under the hanging bell was one pile of silver coins and one pile of gold coins.
“Don’t touch the money,” said Nanny “‘Ere, watch this, my dad told me about this, it’s a good trick.”
She reached out and tapped the bell very gently, causing a faint ting.
Dust cascaded off the nearest slab. What Casanunda had thought was just a carving sat up, in a creaky way. It was an armed warrior. Since he’d sat up he almost certainly was alive, but he looked as though he’d gone from life to rigor mortis without passing through death on the way.
He focused deepset eyes on Nanny Ogg.
“What bloody tyme d’you call thys, then?”
“Not time yet,” said Nanny.
“What did you goe and bang the bell for? I don’t know, I haven’t had a wynke of sleep for two hundred years, some sodde alwayes bangs the bell. Go awaye.”
The warrior lay back.
“It’s some old king and his warriors,” whispered Nanny, as they hurried away. “Some kind of magical sleep, I’m told. Some old wizard did it. They’re supposed to wake up for some final battle when a wolf eats the sun.”
“Those wizards, always smoking something,” said Casanunda.
“Could be. Go right here. Always go right.”