There was a sudden flurry of snow across the air where it had been.
Coin wrenched free of the Librarian’s grip and ran into the circle, which was already turning white. His feet scuffed up a sprinkle of fine sand.
‘He didn’t come out!’ he said.
‘Oook,’ said the Librarian, in a philosophic manner.
‘I thought he’d come out. You know, just at the last minute.’
‘Oook?’
Coin looked closely at the cobbles, as if by mere concentration he could change what he saw. ‘Is he dead?’
‘Gook,’ observed the Librarian, contriving to imply that Rincewind was in a region where even things like time and space were a bit iffy, and that it was probably not very useful to speculate as to his exact state at this point in time, if indeed he was at any point in time at all, and that, all in all, he might even turn up tomorrow or, for that matter, yesterday, and finally that if there was any chance at all of surviving then Rincewind almost certainly would.
‘Oh,’ said Coin.
He watched the Librarian shuffle around and head back for the Tower of Art, and a desperate loneliness overcame him.
‘I say!’ he yelled.
‘Gook?’
‘What should I do now?’
‘Gook?’
Coin waved vaguely at the desolation.
‘You know, perhaps I could do something about all this?’, he said in a voice tilting on the edge of terror. ‘Do you think that would be a good idea? I mean, I could help people. I’m sure you’d like to be human again, wouldn’t you?’
The Librarian’s everlasting smile hoisted itself a little further up his face, just enough to reveal his teeth.
‘Okay, perhaps not,’ said Coin hurriedly, ‘but there’s other things I could do, isn’t there?’
The Librarian gazed at him for some time, then dropped his eyes to the boy’s hand. Coin gave a guilty start, and opened his fingers.
The ape caught the little silver ball neatly before it hit the ground and held it up to one eye. He sniffed it, shook it gently, and listened to it for a while.
Then he wound up his arm and flung it away as hard as possible.
‘What-’ Coin began, and landed full length in the snow when the Librarian pushed him over and dived on top of him.
The ball curved over at the top of its arc and tumbled down, its perfect path interrupted suddenly by the ground. There was a sound like a harp string breaking, a brief babble of incomprehensible voices, a rush of hot wind, and the gods of the Disc were free.
They were very angry.
‘There is nothing we can do, is there?’ said Creosote.
‘No,’ said Conina.
‘The ice is going to win, isn’t it?’ said Creosote.
‘Yes,’ said Conina.
‘No,’ said Nijel.
He was trembling with rage, or possibly with cold, and was nearly as pale as the glaciers that rumbled past below them.
Conina sighed. ‘Well, just how do you think-’ she began.
‘Take me down somewhere a few minutes ahead of them,’ said Nijel.
‘I really don’t see how that would help.’
‘I wasn’t asking your opinion,’ said Nijel, quietly. ‘Just do it. Put me down a little way ahead of them so I’ve got a while to get sorted out.’
‘Get what sorted out?’
Nijel didn’t answer.
‘I said,’ said Conina, ‘get what-’
‘Shut up!’
‘I don’t see why-’
‘Look,’ said Nijel, with the patience that lies just short of axe-murdering. ‘The ice is going to cover the whole world, right? Everyone’s going to die, okay? Except for us for a little while, I suppose, until these horses want their, their, their oats or the lavatory or whatever, which isn’t much use to us except maybe Creosote will just about have time to write a sonnet or something about how cold it is all of a sudden, and the whole of human history is about to be scraped up and in these circumstances I would like very much to make it completely clear that I am not about to be argued with, is that absolutely understood?’
He paused for breath, trembling like a harpstring.
Conina hesitated. Her mouth opened and shut a few times, as though she was considering arguing, and then she thought better of it.
They found a small clearing in a pine forest a mile or two ahead of the herd, although the sound of it was clearly audible and there was a line of steam above the trees and the ground was dancing like a drumtop.
Nijel strolled to the middle of the clearing and made a few practice swings with his sword. The others watched him thoughtfully.
‘If you don’t mind,’ whispered Creosote to Conina, ‘I’ll be off. It’s at times like this that sobriety loses its attractions and I’m sure the end of the world will look a lot better through the bottom of a glass, if it’s all the same to you. Do you believe in Paradise, o peachcheeked blossom?’
‘Not as such, no.’
‘Oh,’ said Creosote. ‘Well, in that case we probably won’t be seeing each other again.’ He sighed. ‘What a waste. All this was just because of a geas. Um. Of course, if by some unthinkable chance-’
‘Goodbye,’ said Conina.
Creosote nodded miserably, wheeled the horse and disappeared over the treetops.
Snow was shaking down from the branches around the clearing. The thunder of the approaching glaciers filled the air.
Nijel started when she tapped him on the shoulder, and dropped his sword.
‘What are you doing here?’ he snapped, fumbling desperately in the snow.
‘Look, I’m not prying or anything,’ said Conina meekly, ‘but what exactly do you have in mind?’
She could see a rolling heap of bulldozed snow and soil bearing down on them through the forest, the mind-numbing sound of the leading glaciers now overlaid with the rhythmic snapping of tree trunks. And, advancing implacably above the treeline, so high that the eye mistook them at first for sky, the blue-green prows.
‘Nothing,’ said Nijel, ‘nothing at all. We’ve just got to resist them, that’s all there is to it. That’s what we’re here for.’
‘But it won’t make any difference,’ she said.
‘It will to me. If we’re going to die anyway, Iii rather die like this. Heroically.’
‘Is it heroic to die like this?’ said Conina.
‘I think it is,’ he said, ‘and when it comes to dying, there’s only one opinion that matters.’
‘Oh.’
A couple of deer blundered into the clearing, ignored the humans in their blind panic, and rocketed away.
‘You don’t have to stay,’ said Nijel. ‘I’ve got this geas, you see.’
Conina looked at the backs of her hands.
‘I think I should,’ she said, and added, ‘You know, I thought maybe, you know, if we could just get to know one another better-’
‘Mr and Mrs Harebut, was that what you had in mind?’ he said bluntly.
Her eyes widened. ‘Well-’ she began.
‘Which one did you intend to be?’ he said.
The leading glacier smashed into the clearing just behind its bow wave, its top lost in a cloud of its own creation.
At exactly the same time the trees opposite it bent low as a hot wind blew from the Rim. It was loaded with voices – petulant, bickering voices – and tore into the clouds like a hot iron into water.
Conina and Nijel threw themselves down into snow which turned to warm slush under them. Something like a thunderstorm crashed overhead, filled with shouting and what they at first thought were screams although, thinking about them later, they seemed more like angry arguments. It went on for a long time, and then began to fade in the direction of the Hub.
Warm water flooded down the front of Nijel’s vest. He lifted himself cautiously, and then nudged Conina.
Together they scrambled through the slush and mud to the top of the slope, climbed through a logjam of smashed timber and boulders, and stared at the scene.
The glaciers were retreating, under a cloud stuffed with lightning. Behind them the landscape was a network of lakes and pools.
‘Did we do that?’ said Conina.
‘It would be nice to think so, wouldn’t it?’ said Nijel.
‘Yes, but did-’ she began.
‘Probably not. Who knows? Let’s just find a horse,’ he said.
‘The Apogee,’ said War, ‘or something. I’m pretty sure.’
They had staggered out of the inn and were sitting on a bench in the afternoon sunshine. Even War had been persuaded to take off some of his armour.
‘Dunno,’ said Famine, ‘Don’t think so.’
Pestilence shut his crusted eyes and leaned back against the warm stones.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘it was something about the end of the world.’
War sat and thoughtfully scratched his chin. He hiccuped.
‘What, the whole world?’ he said.
‘I reckon.’
War gave this some further consideration. ‘I reckon we’re well out of it, then,’ he said.
People were returning to Ankh-Morpork, which was no longer a city of empty marble but was once again its old self, sprawling as randomly and colourfully as a pool of vomit outside the all-night takeaway of History.