. . . And such weapons! Vimes had seen catapults that would throw a stone ball three miles. When it landed it would crack into needle-sharp shards. Or there was the other machine that sent six-foot steel discs skimming through the air. Once they’d hit the ground and leapt up again they were unreliable as hell, but that only made them more terrifying. Vimes had been told that the edged disc would probably keep going for several hundred yards, no matter how many men or horses it encountered on the way. And they were only the latest ideas. There were plenty of conventional weapons, if by that you meant giant bows, catapults and mangonels that hurled balls of Ephebian fire, which clung while it burned.
From up here, in his draughty tower, he could see the fires of the dug-in army all across the plain. They couldn’t retreat, and the alliance, if that’s what you could call the petulant hubbub, didn’t dare head up the valley into the heart of the country with that army at their back, yet didn’t have enough men to hold the keep and corral the enemy.
And in a few weeks it would start to snow. The passes would fill up. Nothing would be able to get through. And every day, thousands of men and horses would need feeding. Of course, the men could, eventually, eat the horses, thus settling two feeding problems at a stroke. After that there would have to be the good ol’ leg rota, which Vimes understood from one of the friendlier Zlobenians was a common feature of winter warfare up here. Since he was Captain ‘Hopalong’ Splatzer, Vimes believed him.
And then it would rain, and then the rain and the snowmelt together would turn the damn river into a flood. But before that the alliance would have bickered itself apart and gone home. All the Borogravians had to do, in fact, was hold their ground to score a draw.
He swore under his breath. Prince Heinrich had inherited the throne in a country where the chief export was a kind of hand-painted wooden clog, but in ten years, he vowed, his capital city of Rigour would be ‘the Ankh-Morpork of the mountains’! For some reason, he thought Ankh-Morpork would be pleased about this.
He was anxious, he said, to learn the Ankh-Morpork way of doing things, the kind of innocent ambition that could well lead an aspiring ruler to . . . well, find out the Ankh-Morpork way of doing things. Heinrich had a reputation locally for cunning, but Ankh-Morpork had overtaken cunning a thousand years ago, had sped past devious, had left artful far behind and had now, by a roundabout route, arrived at straightforward.
Vimes leafed through the papers on his desk, and looked up when he heard a shrill, harsh cry outside. A buzzard came in a long, shallow swoop through the open window and alighted on a makeshift perch at the far end of the room. Vimes strolled over as the little figure on the bird’s back raised his flying goggles.
‘How’s it going, Buggy?’ he said.
‘They’re getting suspicious, Mister Vimes. And Sergeant Angua says it’s getting a bit risky now they’re so close.’
‘Tell her to come on in, then.’
‘Right, sir. And they still need coffee.’
‘Oh, damn! Haven’t they found any?’
‘No, sir, and it’s getting tricky with the vampire.’
‘Well, if they’re suspicious now then they’ll be certain if we drop a flask of coffee on them!’
‘Sergeant Angua says we’ll probably get away with it, sir. She didn’t say why.’ The gnome looked expectantly at Vimes. So did his buzzard. ‘They’ve come a long way, sir. For a bunch of girls. Well . . . mostly girls.’
Vimes reached out absent-mindedly to pet the bird.
‘Don’t, sir! She’ll have your thumb off!’ Buggy yelled.
There was a knock on the door, and Reg came in with a tray of raw meat. ‘Saw Buggy overhead, so I thought I’d nip down to the kitchens, sir.’
‘Well done, Reg. Don’t they ask why you want raw meat?’
‘Yes, sir. I tell them you eat it, sir.’
Vimes paused before answering. Reg meant well, after all.
‘Well, it probably can’t do my reputation any harm,’ he said. ‘By the way, what was going down in the crypt?’
‘Oh, they’re not what I’d call proper zombies, sir,’ said Reg, selecting a piece of meat and dangling it in front of Morag. ‘More like dead men walking.’
‘Er . . . yes?’ said Vimes.
‘I mean there’s no real thinking going on,’ the zombie continued, picking up another lump of raw rabbit. ‘No embracing the opportunities of a life beyond the grave, sir. They’re just a lot of old memories on legs. That sort of thing gives zombies a bad name, Mister Vimes. It makes me so angryV Morag tried to snap at another lump of bloody rabbit fur that Reg, oblivious for the moment, was waving aimlessly.
‘Er . . . Reg?’ said Buggy.
‘How hard can it be, sir, to move with the times? Now take me, for example. One day I woke up dead. Did I—’
‘Reg!’ Vimes warned, as Morag’s head bobbed back and forth. ‘—take it lying down? No! And I didn’t—’ ‘Reg, be careful! She’s just had two of your fingers off!’ ‘What? Oh.’ Reg held up a denuded hand and stared at it. ‘Oh, now, will you look at that?’ He peered down at the floor, with a hope that was quickly dashed. ‘Blast. Any chance we can make her throw up?’
‘Only by sticking your fingers down her throat, Reg. Sorry. Buggy, do the best you can, please. And you, Reg, go back downstairs and see if they’ve got any coffee, will you?’
‘Oh dear,’ murmured Shufti.
‘It’s big,’ said Tonker.
Blouse said nothing.
‘Not seen it before, sir?’ said Jackrum cheerfully, as they stared at the distant keep from where they lay in some bushes half a mile away.
If there is a fairy-tale scale for castles, where the top end is occupied by those white, spire-encrusted castles with the blue pointy roofs, then Kneck Keep was low, black and clung to its outcrop like a storm cloud. A bed of the Kneck ran round it; along the peninsula on which it was built the approach road was wide and bereft of cover and an ideal stroll for those who were tired of life. Blouse took all this in.
‘Er, no, sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen pictures, of course, but. . . they don’t do it justice.’
‘Any of them books you read tell you what to do, sir ?’ said Jackrum. They were lying in some bushes half a mile away.
‘Possibly, sergeant. In The Craft of War, Song Sung Lo said: to win without fighting is the greatest victory. The enemy wishes us to attack where he is strongest. Therefore, we will disappoint him. A way will present itself, sergeant.’
‘Well, it’s never presented itself to me, and I’ve been here dozens of times,’ said Jackrum, still grinning. ‘Hah, even the rats’d have to disguise themselves as washerwomen to get in that place! Even if you get up that road, you’ve got narrow entrances, holes in the ceiling to pour hot oil through, gates everywhere that a troll couldn’t smash through, coupla mazes, a hundred little ways you can be shot at. Oh, it’s a wonderful place to attack.’
‘I wonder how the alliance got in?’ said Blouse.
‘Treachery, probably, sir. The world’s full of traitors. Or perhaps they discovered the secret entrance, sir. You know, sir? The one you’re sure is there. Or p’raps you’ve forgotten? It’s the sort of thing that can slip your mind when you’re busy, I expect.’
‘We shall reconnoitre, sergeant,’ said Blouse coldly, as they crawled out of the bushes. He brushed leaves off his uniform. Thalacephalos or, as Blouse referred to her, ‘the faithful steed’ had been turned loose miles back. You couldn’t sneak on horseback and, as Jackrum had pointed out, the creature was too skinny for anyone to want to eat and too vicious for anyone to want to ride.
‘Right, sir, yes, we might as well do that, sir,’ said Jackrum now, all gloating helpfulness. ‘Where would you like us to reconnoitre, sir?’
‘There must be a secret entrance, sergeant. No one would build a place like that with only one entrance. Agreed?’
‘Yessir. Only, perhaps they kept it a secret, sir. Only trying to help, sir.’
They turned at the sound of urgent praying. Wazzer had fallen
to her knees, hands clasped together. The rest of the squad edged
away slowly. Piety is a wonderful thing. N
‘What is he doing, sergeant?’ said Blouse.
‘Praying, sir,’ said Jackrum.
‘I’ve noticed he does it a lot. Is that, er, within regulations, sergeant?’ the lieutenant whispered.
‘Always a difficult one, sir, that one,’ said Jackrum. ‘I have, myself, prayed many times on the field of battle. Many times have I said the Soldier’s Prayer, sir, and I don’t mind admitting it.’