‘What, everyone? All at once?’
‘Oh, you can save some for later if you must.’
The Countess clutched his arm.
‘Oh, this does so remind me of our honeymoon,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember those wonderful nights in Grjsknvij?’
‘Oh, fresh morning of the world indeed,’ said the Count solemnly.
‘Such romance . . . and we met such lovely people, too. Do you remember Mr and Mrs Harker?’
‘Very fondly. I recall they lasted nearly all week. Now, listen all of you. Holy symbols will not hurt us. Holy water is just water – yes, I know, but Cryptopher just wasn’t concentrating. Garlic is just another member of the allium family. Do onions hurt us? Are we frightened of shallots? No. We’ve just got a bit tired, that’s all. Malicia, call up the rest of the clan. We will have a little holiday from reason. And afterwards, in the morning, there will be room for a new world order I can’t be having with this at all. . .’
He rubbed his forehead. The Count prided himself on his mind, and tended it carefully. But right now it felt exposed, as though someone was looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t certain he was thinking right. She couldn’t have got into his head, could she? He’d had hundreds of years of experience. There was no way some village witch could get past his defences. It stood to reason . . .
His throat felt parched. At least he could obey the call of his nature. But this time it was an oddly disquieting one.
‘Do we have any . . . tea?’ he said.
‘What is tea?’ said the Countess.
‘It. . . grow on a bush, I think,’ said the Count.
‘How do you bite it, then?’
‘You. . . er . . . lower it into boiling water, don’t you?’ The Count shook his head, trying to free himself of this demonic urge.
‘While it’s still alive?’ said Lacrimosa, brightening up .
. . . sweet biscuits. . .’mumbled the Count.
‘I think you should try to get a grip, dear,’ said the Countess.
‘This . . . tea,’ said Lacrimosa. ‘Is it . . . brown?’
‘Yes,’ whispered the Count. .
‘Because when we were in Escrow I was going to put the bite on one of them and I had this horrible mental picture of a cup full of the wretched stuff,’ said his daughter.
The Count shook himself again.
‘I don’t know what’s happening to me,’ he said. ‘So let’s stick to what we do know, shall we? Obey our blood. . .’
The second casualty in the battle for the castle was Vargo, a lank young man who actually became a vampire because he thought he’d meet interesting girls, or any girls at all, and had been told he looked good in black. And then he’d found that a vampire’s interests always centre, sooner or later, on the next meal, and hitherto he’d never really thought of the neck as the most interesting organ a girl could have.
Right now all he wanted to do was sleep, so as the vampires surged into the castle proper he sauntered gently away in the direction of his cellar and nice comfortable coffin. Of course he was hungry, since all he’d got in Escrow was a foot in the chest, but he had just enough sense of self-preservation to let the others get on with the hunting so that he could turn up later for the feast.
His coffin was in the centre of the dim cellar, its lid lying carelessly on the floor beside it. He’d always been messy with the bedclothes, even as a human.
Vargo climbed in, twisted and turned a few times to get comfortable on the pillow, then pulled the lid down and latched it.
As the eye of narrative drew back from the coffin on its stand, two things happened. One happened comparatively slowly, and this was Vargo’s realization that he never recalled the coffin having a pillow before.
The other was Greebo deciding that he was as mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it any more. He’d been shaken around in the wheely thing and then sat on by Nanny, and he was angry about that because he knew, in a dim, animal way, that scratching Nanny might be the single most stupid thing he could do in the whole world, since no one else was prepared to feed him. This hadn’t helped his temper.
Then he’d encountered a dog, which had tried to lick him. He’d scratched and bitten it a few times, but this had had no effect apart from encouraging it to try to be more friendly.
He’d finally found a comfy resting place and had curled up into a ball, and now someone was using him as a cushion-
There wasn’t a great deal of noise. The coffin rocked a few times, and then pivoted around.
Greebo sheathed his claws and went back to sleep.
‘-burn, with a dear bright light-‘
Splash, suck, splash.
‘-and I in mine . . . Om be praised.’
Squelch, splash.
Oats had worked his way though most of the hymns he knew, even the old ones you shouldn’t really sing any more but you nevertheless remembered because the words were so good. He sang them loudly and defiantly, to hold back the night and the doubts. They helped take his mind off the weight of Granny Weatherwax. It was amazing how she’d apparently gained in the last mile or so, especially whenever he fell over and she landed on top of him.
He’d lost one of his own boots in a mire. His hat was floating in a pool somewhere. Thorns had ripped his coat to tatters-
He slipped and fell once again as the mud shifted under his feet. Granny rolled off and landed in a clump of sedge.
If Brother Melchio could only see him now . . .
The wowhawk swooped past and landed on the branch of a dead tree a few yards away. Oats hated the thing. It appeared demonic. It flew even though it surely couldn’t see through the hood. Worse, whenever he thought about it, as now, the hooded head turned to fix him with an invisible stare. He took off his other useless shoe, its shiny leather all stained and cracked, and flung it inexpertly.
‘Go away, you wicked creature!’
The bird didn’t stir. The shoe flew past it.
Then, as he tried to get to his feet, he smelled burning leather.
Two wisps of smoke were curling up from either side of the hood.
Oats reached to his neck for the security of the turtle, and it wasn’t there. It had cost him five obols in the Citadel, and it was too late now to reflect that perhaps he shouldn’t have hung it from a chain worth a tenth of an obol. It was probably lying in some pool, or buried in some muddy, squelching marsh . . .
Now the leather burned away, and the yellow glow from the holes was so bright he could barely see the outline of the bird. It turned the dank landscape into lines and shadows, put a golden edge on every tuft of grass and stricken tree – and winked out so quickly that it left Oats’s eyes full of purple explosions.
When he’d recovered his breath and his balance, the bird was swooping away down the moor.
He picked up Granny Weatherwax’s unconscious body and ran after it.
The track did lead downhill, at least. Mud and bracken slipped under his feet. Rivulets were running from every hole and gully. Half the time it seemed to him that he wasn’t walking, merely controlling a slide, bouncing off rocks, slithering through puddles of mud and leaves.
And then there was the castle, seen through a gap in the trees, lit by a flash of lightning. Oats staggered through a clump of thorn bushes, managed to keep upright down a slope of loose boulders, and collapsed on the road with Granny Weatherwax on top of him.
She stirred.
‘. . . holiday from reason . . . kill them all . . . can’t be havin’ with this. . .’ she murmured.
The wind blew a branchful of raindrops on her face, and she opened her eyes. For a moment they seemed to Oats to have red pupils, and then the icy blue gaze focused on him.
‘Are we here, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened to your holy hat?’
‘It got lost,’ said Oats abruptly. Granny peered closer.
‘Your magic amulet’s gone too,’ she said. ‘The one with the turtle and the little man on it.’
‘It’s not a magic amulet, Mistress Weatherwax! Please! A magic amulet is a symbol of primitive
and mechanistic superstition, whereas the Turtle of Om is . . . is . . . is . . . Well, it’s not, do you understand?’