He heard the sound of the horse again, and the faint jingle of a harness. It stopped a little way away.
‘Hello?’ said Oats, standing up. He strained to see the rider in the darkness, but there was just a dim shape further along the track.
‘Are you following us? Hello?’
He took a few steps and made out the horse, head bowed against the rain. The rider was just a darker shadow in the night.
Suddenly awash with dread, Oats ran and slithered back to Granny’s silent form. He struggled out of his drenched coat and put it over her, for whatever good that would do, and looked around desperately for anything that could make a fire. Fire, that was the thing. It brought life and drove away the darkness.
But the trees were tall firs, dripping wet with
dank bracken underneath among the black trunks. There was nothing that would burn here.
He fished hurriedly in his pocket and found a waxed box with his last few matches in it. Even a few dry twigs or a tuft of grass would do, anything that’d dry out another handful of twigs . . .
Rain oozed through his shirt. The air was full of water.
Oats hunched over so that his hat kept the drips off, and pulled out the Book Of Om for the comfort that it brought. In times of trouble, Om would surely show the way
. . . I’ve already got a hot water bottle . . .
‘Damn you,’ he said, under his breath.
He opened the book at random, struck a match and read:
‘. . . and in that time, in the land of the Cyrinites, there was a multiplication of camels. . .’
The match hissed out.
No help there, no clue. He tried again.
‘. . . and looked upon Gul-Arah, and the lamentation of the desert, and rode then to . . .’
Oats remembered the vampire’s mocking smile. What words could you trust? He struck the third match with shaking hands and flicked the book open again and read, in the weak dancing light:
‘. . . and Brutha said to Simony, “Where there is darkness we will make a great light. . .”‘
The match died. And there was darkness.
Granny Weatherwax groaned. At the back of his mind Oats thought he could hear the sound of hooves, slowly approaching.
Oats knelt in the mud and tried a prayer, but there was no answering voice from the sky. There never had been. He’d been told never to expect one. That wasn’t how Om worked any more. Alone of all the gods, he’d been taught, Om delivered the answers straight into the depths of the head. Since the prophet Brutha, Om was the silent god. That’s what they said.
If you didn’t have faith, then you weren’t anything. There was just the dark.
He shuddered in the gloom. Was the god silent, or was there no one to speak?
He tried praying again, more desperately this time, fragments of childish prayer, losing control of the words and even of their direction, so that they tumbled out and soared away into the universe addressed simply to The Occupier.
The rain dripped off his hat.
He knelt and waited in the wet darkness, and listened to his own mind, and remembered, and took out the Book Of Om once more.
And made a great light.
The coach thundered through pinetrees by a lake, struck a tree root, lost a wheel and skidded to a halt on its side as the horses bolted.
Igor picked himself up, lurched to the coach and raised a door.
‘Thorny about that,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid thith alwayth happenth when the marthter ithn’t on board. Everyone all right down there?’
A hand grabbed him by the throat.
‘You could have warned us!’ Nanny growled.
‘We were thrown all over the place! Where the hell are we? Is this Slake?’
A match flared and Igor lit a torch.
‘We’re near the cathle,’ he said.
‘Whose?’
‘The Magpyrth’.’
‘We’re near the vampires’ castle?’
‘Yeth. I think the old marthter did thomething to the road here. The wheelth alwayth come off, ath thure ath eggth ith eggth. Bringth in the vithitorth, he thed.’
‘It didn’t occur to you to mention it?’ said Nanny, climbing out and giving Magrat a hand.
‘Thorny. It’th been a buthy day. . .’
Nanny took the torch. The flames illuminated a crude sign nailed to a tree.
‘”Don’t go near the Castle!!”‘Nanny read. ‘Nice of them to put an arrow pointing the way to it, too.’
‘Oh, the marthter did that,’ said Igor. ‘Otherwithe people wouldn’t notithe it.’
Nanny peered into the gloom. ‘And who’s in the castle now?’
‘A few thervantth.’
‘Will they let us in?’
‘That’th not a problem.’ Igor fished in his noisome shirt and pulled out a very big key on a string.
‘We’re going to go into their castle?’ said Magrat.
‘Looks like it’s the only place around,’ said Nanny Ogg, heading up the track. ‘The coach is wrecked. We’re miles from anywhere else. Do you want to keep the baby out all night? A castle’s a castle. It’ll have locks. All the vampires are in Lancre. And-‘
‘Well?’
‘It’s what Esme would’ve done. I feels it in my blood.’
A little way off something howled. Nanny looked at Igor.
‘Werewolf?’ she said.
‘That’th right.’
‘Not a good idea to hang around, then.’
She pointed to a sign painted on a rock.
‘”Don’t take thif quickeft route to the Caftle,”” she read aloud. ‘You’ve got to admire a mind like that. Definitely a student of human nature.’
‘Won’t there be a lot of ways in?’ said Magrat as they walked past a sign that said: ‘Don’t go Nere the Coach Park, 20 yds. on left.’
‘Igor?’ said Nanny.
‘Vampireth uthed to fight amongtht themthelveth,’ said Igor. ‘There’th only one way in.’
‘Oh, all right, if we must,’ said Magrat. ‘You take the rocker, and the used nappy bag. And the teddies. And the thing that goes round and round and plays noises when she pulls the string-‘
A sign near the drawbridge said, ‘Laft chance not to Go near the Caftle’, and Nanny Ogg laughed and laughed.
‘The Count’s not going to be very happy about you, Igor,’ she said, as he unlocked the doors.
‘Thod him,’ he said. ‘I’m going to pack up my thtuff and head for Blintth. There’th alwayth a job for an Igor up there. More lightning thtriketh per year than anywhere in the mountainth, they thay.’
Nanny Ogg wiped her eye. ‘Good job we’re soaked already,’ she said. ‘All right, let’s get in. And, Igor, if you haven’t been thtraight with us, sorry, straight with us, I’ll have your guts for garters.’
Igor looked down bashfully. ‘Oh, that’th more than a man could pothibly hope for,’ he murmured.
Magrat giggled and Igor pushed open the door and hurriedly shuffled inside.
‘What?’ said Nanny.
‘Haven’t you noticed the looks he’s been giving you?’ said Magrat, as they followed the lurching figure.
‘What, him?’ said Nanny.
‘Could be carrying a torch for you,’ said Magrat,
‘I thought it was just to see where he’s going!’ said Nanny, a little bit of panic in her voice. ‘I mean, I haven’t got my best drawers on or anything!’
‘I think he’s a bit of a romantic, actually,’ said Magrat.
‘Oh, I don’t know, I really don’t,’ said Nanny. ‘I mean, it’s flattering and everything, but I really don’t think I could be goin’ out with a man with a limp.’
‘Limp what?’
Nanny Ogg had always considered herself unshockable, but there’s no such thing. Shocks can come from unexpected directions.
‘I am a married woman,’ said Magrat, smiling at her expression. And it felt good, just once, to place a. small tintack in the path of Nanny’s carefree amble through life.
‘But is . . . I mean, is Verence, you know, all right in the-‘
‘Oh, yes. Everything’s . . . fine. But now I understand what your jokes were about.’
‘What, all of them?’ said Nanny, like someone who’d found all the aces removed from their favourite pack of cards.
‘Well, not the one about the priest, the old woman and the rhinoceros.’
‘I should just about hope so!’ said Nanny. ‘I didn’t understand that one until I was forty!’
Igor limped back.
‘There’th jutht the thervantth,’ he said. ‘You could thtay down in my quarterth in the old tower. There’th thick doorth.’
‘Mrs Ogg would really like that,’ said Magrat. ‘She was saying just now what good legs you’ve got, weren’t you, Nanny. . .’
‘Do you want thome?’ said Igor earnestly, leading the way up the steps. ‘I’ve got plenty and I could do with the thpathe in the ithehouthe.’
‘You what?’ said Nanny, stopping dead.
‘I’m your man if there’th any organ you need,’ said Igor.
There was a strangled coughing noise from Magrat.