There was no point in simply running. They could run faster. He needed to stay near civilization and its hallmarks, like trousers.
Maybe time was on Vimes’s side. Angua was never very talkative about her world, but she had said that, in either shape, a werewolf slowly lost some of the skills of the other shape. After several hours on two legs her sense of smell dropped from uncanny to merely good. And after too long as a wolf … it was like being drunk, as far as Vimes understood it; a little inner part of you was still trying to give instructions, but the rest of you was acting stupid. The human part started to lose control.
He looked around the barn again. There was a ladder to an upper gallery. He climbed it and looked out of a glassless window across a snowy meadow. There was a river in the distance, and what looked very much like a boathouse.
Now, how would a werewolf think?
The werewolves slowed as they reached the building. Their leader glanced at a lieutenant and nodded. It loped off in the direction of the boathouse. The others followed Wolf inside. The last became human for a moment to pull the doors shut and drop the bar across.
Wolf stopped near the centre of the barn. Hay had been scattered over the floor in great fluffy piles.
He scraped gently with a paw, and wisps fell away from a rope that was stretched taut.
Wolf took a deep breath. The other werewolves, sensing what was going to happen, looked away. There was a moment of struggling shapelessness, and then he was rising slowly on two feet, blinking in the dawn of humanity.
That’s interesting, thought Vimes, up on the gallery. For a second or two after changing, they’re not entirely up on current events …
‘Oh, your grace,’ said Wolf, looking around. ‘A trap? How very … civilized.’
He caught sight of Vimes, who was standing on the higher floor, by the window.
‘What was it supposed to do, your grace?’
Vimes reached down to the oil lamp. ‘It was supposed to be a decoy,’ he said.
He hurled the lamp down on to the dry hay and flicked his cigar after it. Then he grabbed the axe and climbed through the window just as the spilled oil went whump.
Vimes dropped into the deep snow and ran towards the boathouse.
There were other tracks leading to it, not human. When he reached the door he swung wildly at the darkness just inside, and his reward was a cut-off yelp.
The skiff that was housed in the tumbledown shed was a quarter full of dark water, but he didn’t dare .think about bailing yet. He grabbed the dusty oars and rowed with considerable effort and not much speed out on to the river.
He groaned. Wolf was trotting across the snow, with the rest of the pack behind him. They all seemed to be there.
Wolf cupped his hands. ‘Very civilized, your grace! But, you see, when you set fire to a barn
full of wolves, they panic, your grace! But when they’re werewolves, one of them just opens the door! You cannot kill werewolves, Mister Vimes!’
‘Tell that to the one in the boathouse!’ Vimes shouted, as the current took the boat.
Wolf looked into the shadows for a moment and then cupped his hands again. ‘He will recover, Mister Vimes!’
Vimes swore under his breath, because despite all his hopes a couple of werewolves had plunged into the water upstream and were swimming strongly towards the opposite bank. But that was a doggy thing, wasn’t it? Leap joyfully into the water outdoors, but fight like hell against a tub.
Wolfgang had started to trot along the bank. The ones in the water emerged on the far bank. Now they were keeping pace with the boat on both sides.
But the current was carrying it along faster now. Vimes started to bail with both hands.
‘You can’t outrun the river, Wolf!’ he shouted.
‘We don’ have to, Mister Vimes! That is not the question! The question is, can you outswim the waterfall? See you later, Civilized!’
Vimes looked around. In the distance the river had a foreshortened look. When he concentrated, the inner ear of terror could hear a distant roaring.
He snatched the oars again and tried to row upstream and, yes, it was possible to make headway against the current. But he couldn’t keep rowing faster than wolves could run, and taking on two at once on the shore, when they were ready and waiting for him, was not an option.
If he went over the falls now, he might get to the bottom before they did.
That wasn’t a good sentence, however he tried it.
He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back—
He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body—
GOOD MORNING.
Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
‘Are you Death?’
IT’S THE SCYTHE, ISN’T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.
‘I’m going to die?’
POSSIBLY.
‘Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?’
OH, YES. IT’S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT’S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
‘What’s that?’
I’M NOT SURE.
‘That’s very helpful.’
I THINK IT MEANS PEOPLE MAY OR MAY NOT DIE. I HAVE TO SAY IT’S PLAYING HOB WITH MY SCHEDULE, BUT I TRY TO KEEP UP WITH MODERN THOUGHT.
The roar was a lot louder now. Vimes lay back in the boat and gripped the sides.
I’m talking to Death, he thought, to take my mind off things.
‘Didn’t I see you last month? I was chasing
Bigger-than-Small-Dave Dave along Peach Pie Street and I fell off that ledge?’
THAT IS CORRECT.
‘But I landed on that cart. I didn’t die!’
BUT YOU MIGHT HAVE DONE.
‘But I thought we all had some kind of hourglass thing that said when we’re going to die?’
Now the roar was almost physical. Vimes redoubled his grip on the boat.
OH, YES. You Do, said Death.
‘But we might not?’
NO. YOU WILL. THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT.
‘But you said-‘
YES, IT IS A BIT HARD TO UNDERSTAND, ISN’T IT? APPARENTLY THERE’S THIS THING CALLED THE TROUSERS OF TIME, WHICH IS QUITE ODD, BECAUSE TIME CERTAINLY DOESN’T—
The boat went over the waterfall.
Vimes had a thunderous sensation of pounding, thudding water, followed by the echoing ringing in his ears as he hit the pool below. He fought his way to what passed for the surface and felt the current take him, slam him into a rock and then roll him away in the white water.
He flailed blindly and caught another rock, his body swinging around into a pool of comparative calm. As he fought for breath he saw a grey shape leaping from stone to stone and then another dose of hell was unleashed as it landed, snarling, beside him.
He grabbed it desperately and hung on as it struggled to bite him. A paw flailed to gain purchase on the slippery stone and then, in sudden difficulties, responding automatically … it
changed …
It was as if the wolf shape became small and a man shape became bigger, in the same space, at the same time, with a moment of horrible distortion as the two forms passed through one another.
And then there was that moment he’d noticed before, a second of confusion—
It was just long enough to ram the man’s head against the rock with every ounce of strength he could scrape together. Vimes thought he heard a crack.
Then he pushed himself back out into the current and let it carry him on, while he simply struggled to stay near the surface. There was blood in the water. He’d never killed someone with his bare hands before. Truth to tell, he’d never deliberately killed at all. There had been deaths, because when people are rolling down a roof and trying to strangle one another it’s sheer luck who is on top when they hit the ground. But that was different. He went to bed every night believing that.
His teeth were chattering and the bright sun made his eyes ache, but he felt … good.
He wanted to beat his chest and scream, in fact.
They’d been trying to kill him!
Make them stay wolves, said a little inner voice. The more time they spent on four legs the less bright they’d become.
A deeper voice, red and raw, from much, much further inside, said, Kill ‘em all!
The rage was boiling up now, fighting against the chill.
His feet touched bottom.
The river was broadening here, into something wide enough to be called a lake. A wide ledge of ice had crept out from the bank, covered here and there with blown snow. Fog drifted across it, fog with a sulphurous smell.