There was another scream.
Rincewind started kicking at the stones.
A key turned in the lock.
‘Oh,’ said Twoflower.
But the door didn’t open.
Finally Rincewind walked over and tried the big iron ring.
The door swung outwards, but not too far because the recumbent body of a guard makes an unusual but efficient doorstop.
There was a whole ring of keys hanging from the one in the door . . .
An inexperienced prisoner would simply have run for it. But Rincewind was a post-graduate student in the art of staying alive, and knew that in circumstances like these much the best thing to do was let out every single prisoner, pat each one hurriedly on the back and say, ‘Quick! They’re coming for you!’ and then go and sit somewhere nice and quiet until the pursuit has disappeared in the distance.
He opened the door to Twoflower’s cell first.
The little man was skinnier and grubbier than he remembered, and had a wispy beard, but in one very significant way he had the feature that Rincewind remembered so well – the big, beaming, trusting smiled that suggested that anything bad currently happening to him was just some sort of laughable mistake and would be bound to be sorted out by reasonable people.
‘Rincewind! It is you! I certainly never thought I’d see you again!’ he said.
‘Yes, I thought something on those lines,’ said Rincewind.
Twoflower looked past Rincewind at the fallen guard.
‘Is he dead?’ he said, speaking of a man with a sword half buried in his back.
‘Extremely likely.’
‘Did you do that?’
‘I was inside the cell!’
‘Amazing! Good trick!’
Despite several years of exposure to the facts of the matter, Rincewind remembered, Twoflower had never really wanted to grasp the fact that his companion had the magical abilities of the common house fly. It was useless to try to dissuade him. It just meant that modesty was added to the list of non-existent virtues.
He tried some of the keys in other cell doors. Various raggedy people emerged, blinking in the slightly better light. One of them, turning his body slightly in order to get it through the door, was Three Yoked Oxen. From the look of him he’d been beaten up, but this might just have been someone’s attempt to attract his attention.
‘This is Rincewind,’ said Twoflower proudly. ‘The Great Wizard. Did you know he killed the guard from inside the cell?’
They politely inspected the corpse.
‘I didn’t, really,’ said Rincewind.
‘And he’s modest, too!’
‘Long Life To The People’s Endeavour!’ said Three Yoked Oxen through rather swollen lips.
‘ “Mine’s A Pint!” ‘ said Rincewind. ‘Here’s bigfella keys belong door, you go lettee people outee chop-chop.’
One of the freed prisoners limped to the end of the passage.
‘There’s a dead guard here,’ he said.
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Rincewind plaintively. ‘I mean, perhaps I wished they were dead, but—’
People edged away. You didn’t want to be too close to anyone who could wish like that.
If this had been Ankh-Morpork someone would have said, ‘Oh, yeah, sure, he magically stabbed them in the back?’ But that was because people in Ankh-Morpork knew Rincewind, and they knew that if a wizard really wanted you dead you’d have no back left to stab.
Three Yoked Oxen had been able to master the technical business of opening doors. More swung open . . .
‘Lotus Blossom?’ said Rincewind.
She clung to Oxen’s arm and smiled at Rincewind. Other members of the cadre trooped out behind her.
Then, to Rincewind’s amazement, she looked at Twoflower, screamed, and threw her arms around his neck.
‘Extended Continuation To Filial Affection!’ chanted Three Yoked Oxen.
‘ “Close Cover Before Striking!” ‘ said Rincewind. ‘Er. What exactly is happening?’
A very small Red soldier tugged at his robe.
‘He is her daddy,’ it said.
‘You never said you had children!’
‘I’m sure I did. Often,’ said Twoflower, disentangling himself. ‘Anyway . . . it is allowed.’
‘You’re married!’
‘I was, yes. I’m sure I must have said.’
‘We were probably running away from something at the time. So there’s a Mrs Twoflower, is there?’
‘There was for a while,’ said Twoflower, and for a moment an expression almost of anger distorted his preternaturally benign countenance. ‘Not, alas, any more.’
Rincewind looked away, because that was better than looking at Twoflower’s face.
Butterfly had also emerged. She stood just outside the cell door, with her hands clasped in front of her. looking down demurely at her feet.
Twoflower rushed over to her.
‘Butterfly!’
Rincewind looked down at the rabbit clutcher.
‘She another daughter, Pearl?’
‘Yeth.’
The little man came towards Rincewind, dragging the girls.
‘Have you met my daughters?’ he said. This is Rincewind, who—’
‘We have had the pleasure,’ said Butterfly, gravely.
‘How did you all get here?’ said Rincewind.
‘We fought as hard as we could,’ said Butterfly. ‘But there were simply too many of them.’
‘I hope you didn’t try to grab their weapons,’ said Rincewind, as sarcastically as he dared.
Butterfly glared at him.
‘Sorry,’ said Rincewind.
‘Herb says it is the system that is to blame,’ said Lotus Blossom.
‘I bet he’s got a better system all worked out.’ Rincewind looked at the throng of prisoners. ‘They usually have. Where is he, by the way?’
The girls looked around.
‘I don’t see him here,’ said Lotus Blossom. ‘But I think that when the guards attacked us he laid down his life for the cause.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what he said we should do. I am ashamed that I did not. But they seemed to want to capture us, not kill us.’
‘I did not see him,’ said Butterfly. She and Rince-wind exchanged a glance. ‘I think perhaps . . . he was not there.’
‘You mean he had been caught already?’ said Lotus Blossom.
Butterfly looked at Rincewind again. It occurred to him that whereas Lotus Blossom had inherited a Twoflower view of the world, Butterfly must have taken after her mother. She thought more like Rince-wind, i.e., the worst of everyone.
‘Perhaps,’ she said.
‘Make Considerable Sacrifice For The Common Good,’ said Three Yoked Oxen.
‘ “There’s One Born Every Minute,” ‘ said Rince-wind, absently.
Butterfly seemed to get a grip on herself.
‘However,’ she said, ‘we must make the most of this opportunity.’
Rincewind, who had been heading for the stairs, froze.
‘Exactly what do you mean?’ he said.
‘Don’t you see? We are at large in the Forbidden City!’
‘Not me!’ said Rincewind. ‘I’ve never been at large. I’ve always been at hunched.’
‘The enemy brought us in here and now we are free—’
‘Thanks to the Great Wizard,’ said Lotus Blossom.
‘—and we must seize the day!’
She picked up a sword from a stricken guard and waved it dramatically.
‘We must storm the palace, just as Herb suggested!’
‘There’s only thirty of you!’ said Rincewind. ‘You’re not a storm! You’re a shower!’
‘There are hardly any guards within the city itself,’ said Butterfly. ‘If we can overcome those around the Emperor’s apartments—’
‘You’ll be killed!’ said Rincewind.
She turned on him. ‘Then at least we shall have died for something!’
‘Cleanse The State With The Blood Of Martyrs,’ rumbled Three Yoked Oxen.
Rincewind spun around and waved a finger under Three Yoked Oxen’s nose, which was as high as he could reach.
‘I’ll bloody well thump you if you trot out something like that one more time!’ he shouted, and then grimaced at the realization that he had just threatened a man three times heavier than he was.
‘Listen to me, will you?’ he said, settling down a lettle. ‘I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It’s never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting “Forward, brave comrades!” you’ll see he’s the one behind the bloody big rock and wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet! Understand?’
He stopped. The cadre were looking at him as if he was mad. He stared at their young, keen faces, and felt very, very old.
‘But there are causes worth dying for,’ said Butterfly.
‘No, there aren’t! Because you’ve only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!’
‘Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?’
Rincewind took a deep breath. ‘Continuously!’
Six Beneficent Winds had thought it was a pretty good plan.. The horrible old men were lost in the Forbidden City. Although they had a wiry look, rather like natural bonsai trees that had managed to flourish on a wind-swept cliff, they were nevertheless very old and not at all heavily armed.
So he led them in the direction of the gymnasium.
And when they were inside he screamed for help at top of his voice. To his amazement, they didn’t turn and run.
‘Can we kill him now?’ said Truckle.
A couple of dozen muscular men had stopped pounding logs of wood and piles of bricks and were regarding them suspiciously.