It wasn’t that he’d lacked faith. But faith wasn’t enough. He’d wanted knowledge.
Right now he’d settle for a reliable manual of vampire disposal.
He stood up. Behind him, unheeded, the terrible camp bed sprang shut.
He’d found knowledge, and knowledge hadn’t helped.
Had not Jotto caused the Leviathan of Terror to throw itself on to the land and the seas to turn red with blood? Had not Orda, strong in his faith, caused a sudden famine throughout the land of Smale?
They certainly had. He believed it utterly. But a part of him also couldn’t forget reading about the tiny little creatures that caused the rare red tides off the coast of Urt and the effect this apparently had on local sea life, and about the odd wind cycle that sometimes kept rain clouds away from Smale for years at a time.
This had been . . . worrying.
It was because he was so very good at old languages that he’d been allowed to study in the new libraries that were springing up around the Citadel, and this had been fresh ground for worry, because the seeker after truth had found truths instead. The Third Journey of the Prophet Cena, for example, seemed remarkably like a retranslation of the Testament of Sand in the Laotan Book of the Whole. On one shelf alone he found forty-three remarkably similar accounts of a great flood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn had saved the elect of mankind by building a magical boat. Details varied, of course. Sometimes the boat was made of wood, sometimes of banana leaves. Sometimes the news of the emerging dry land was brought by a swan, sometimes by an iguana. Of course these stories in the chronicles of other religions were mere folktales and myth, while the voyage detailed in the Book of Cena was holy truth. But nevertheless . . .
Oats had gone on to be fully ordained, but he’d progressed from Slightly Reverend to Quite Reverend a troubled young man. He’d wanted to discuss his findings with someone, but there were so many schisms going on that no one would stand still long enough to listen. The hammering of clerics as they nailed their own versions of the truth of Om on the temple doors was deafening, and for a brief while he’d even contemplated buying a roll of paper and a hammer of his own and putting his name on the waiting list for the doors, but he’d overruled himself.
Because he was, he knew, in two minds about everything.
At one point he’d considered asking to be exorcized but had drawn back from this because the Church traditionally used fairly terminal methods for this and in any case serious men who seldom smiled would not be amused to hear that the invasive spirit he wanted exorcized was his own.
He called the voices the Good Oats and the Bad Oats. The trouble was, each of them agreed with the terminology but applied it in different ways.
Even when he was small there’d been a part of him that thought the temple was a silly boring place, and tried to make him laugh when he was supposed to be listening to sermons. It had grown up with him. It was the Oats that read avidly and always remembered those passages which cast doubt on the literal truth of the Book Of Om -and nudged him and said, if this isn’t true, what can you believe?
And the other half of him would say: there must be other kinds of truth.
And he’d reply: other kinds than the kind that is actually true, you mean?
And he’d say: define actually!
And he’d shout: well, actually Omnians would have tortured you to death, not long ago, for even thinking like this. Remember that? Remember how many died for using the brain which, you seem to think, their god gave them? What kind of truth excuses all that pain?
He’d never quite worked out how to put the answer into words. And then the headaches would start, and the sleepless nights. The Church schismed all the time these days, and this was surely the ultimate one, starting a war inside one’s head.
To think he’d been sent here for his health, because Brother Melchio had got worried about his shaky hands and the way he talked to himself l
He did not gird his loins, because he wasn’t certain how you did that and had never dared ask, but he adjusted his hat and stepped out into the wild night under the thick, uncommunicative clouds.
The castle gates swung open and Count Magpyr stepped out, flanked by his soldiers.
This was not according to the proper narrative tradition. Although the people of Lancre were
technically new to all this, down at genetic level they knew that when the mob is at the gate the mobee should be screaming defiance in a burning laboratory or engaged in a cliff hanger struggle with some hero on the battlements.
He shouldn’t be lighting a cigar.
They fell silent, scythes and pitchforks hovering in mid shake. The only sound was the crackling of the torches.
The Count blew a smoke ring.
‘Good evening,’ he said, as it drifted away. ‘You must be the mob.’
Someone at the back of the crowd, who hadn’t been keeping up to date, threw a stone. Count Magpyr caught it without looking.
‘The pitchforks are good,’ he said. ‘I like the pitchforks. As pitchforks they certainly pass muster. And the torches, well, that goes without saying. But the scythes . . . no, no, I’m afraid not. They simply will not do. Not a good mob weapon, I have to tell you. Take it from me. A simple sickle is much better. Start waving scythes around and someone could lose an ear. Do try to learn.’
He ambled over to a very large man who was holding a pitchfork.
‘And what is your name, young man?’
‘Br . . . Jason Ogg, sir.’
‘The blacksmith?’
‘Yessir?’
‘Wife and family doing well?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Well done. Got everything you need?’
‘Er . . . yessir.’
‘Good man. Carry on. If you could keep the noise down over dinner I would be grateful, but of course I appreciate you have a vital traditional role to play. I’ll have the servants bring out some mugs of hot toddy shortly.’ He knocked the ash off his cigar. ‘Oh, and may I introduce you to Sergeant Kraput, known to his friends as “Bent Bill”, I believe, and this gentleman here picking his teeth with his knife is Corporal Svitz, who I understand has no friends at all. I suppose it is faintly possible that he will make some here. They and their men, who I suppose could be called soldiers in a sort of informal, easy-come easy-go, cut-and-thrust sort of way’ – here Corporal Svitz leered and flicked a gobbet of anonymous rations from a yellowing molar – ‘will be going on duty in, oh, about an hour. Purely for reasons of security, you understand.’
‘An’ then we’ll gut yer like a clam and stuff yer with straw,’ said Corporal Svitz.
‘Ah. This is technical military language of which I know little,’ said the Count. ‘I do so hope there is no unpleasantness.’
‘I don’t,’ said Sergeant Kraput.
‘What scamps they are,’ said the Count. ‘Good evening to you all. Come, gentlemen.’
He stepped back into the courtyard. The gates, their wood so heavy and toughened with age that it was like iron, swung shut.
On the other side of it was silence, followed by the puzzled mumbling of players who have had their ball confiscated.
The Count nodded at Vlad and flung out his hands theatrically.
‘Ta-da! And that is how we do it-‘
‘And d’you think you’d do it twice?’ said a voice from the steps.
The vampires looked up at the three witches.
‘Ah, Mrs Ogg,’ said the Count, waving the soldiers away impatiently. ‘And your majesty. And Agnes . . . Now. . . was it three for a girl? Or three for a funeral?’
The stone cracked under Nanny’s feet as Magpyr walked forward.
‘Do you think I’m stupid, dear ladies?’ he said. ‘Did you really think I’d let you run around if there was the least chance that you could harm us?’
Lightning crackled across the sky.
‘I can control the weather,’ said the Count. ‘And lesser creatures which, let me tell you, includes humans. And yet you plot away and think you can have some kind of . . . of duel? What a lovely image. However. . .’
The witches were lifted off their feet. Hot air curled around them. A rising wind outside made the torches of the mob stream flames like flags.
‘What happened to us harnessing the power of all three of us together?’ hissed Magrat.
‘That rather depended on him standing still!’ said Nanny.