‘You’re letting me out?’
‘Oh, you wouldn’t want that, a hard-bitten larrikin like yourself. Nah, Greg and Vince here will be coming back later to put you in irons.’
He stepped aside. The wall-shaped men were holding a length of chain, several shackles and a small but very, very heavy-looking ball.
Rincewind sighed. One door closes, he thought, and another door slams shut. ‘This is good, is it?’ he said.
‘Oh, yew’ll get an extra verse for that, for sure,’ said the warder. ‘No one’s been hung in irons since Tinhead Ned.’
‘I thought there wasn’t a prison cell that could hold him,’ said Rincewind.
‘Oh, he could get out of ’em,’ said the warder. ‘He just couldn’t run very far.’
Rincewind eyed the metal ball. ‘Oh, gods . . .’
‘Vince says how much do you weigh, ‘cos he has to add the chains to your weight to get the drop right,’ said the warder.
‘Does that matter?’ said Rincewind in a hollow voice. ‘I mean, I die anyway, don’t I?’
‘Yeah, no worries there, but if he gets it wrong, see, you either end up with a neck six feet long or, you’ll laugh about this, your head flies off like a perishin’ cork!’
‘Oh, good.’
‘With Larrikin Larry we had to search the roof all arvo!’
‘Marvellous. All arvo, eh?’ said Rincewind. ‘Well, you won’t have that problem with me. I shall be elsewhere when I’m being hanged.’
‘That’s what we like to hear!’ said the warder, punching him jovially in the elbow. ‘A battler to the end, eh?’
There was a rumbling from Mt Vince.
‘And Vince says he’ll be very privileged if you’d care to spit in his eye when he puts the rope aroun’ your neck,’ the warder went on. ‘That’ll be something to show his grandchildren—’
‘Will you all please go away!’ Rincewind shouted.
‘Ah, you’ll be wanting some time to plot your getaway,’ said the warder knowingly. ‘No worries. We’ll be leavin’ you alone, then.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Until about five a.m.’
‘Good,’ said Rincewind gloomily.
‘Got any requests for your last breakfast?’
‘Something that takes a really really long time to prepare?’ said Rincewind.
‘That’s the spirit!’
‘Go away!’
‘No worries.’
The men walked off, but the warder strolled back after a while as if he had something on his mind.
‘There is something that you ought to know about the hanging, though,’ he said. ‘Might brighten up your night.’
‘Yes?’
‘We’ve got a special humanitarian tradition if the trapdoor sticks three times.’
‘Yes?’
‘Sounds a bit odd, but it’s happened once or twice, believe it or not.’
A tiny green shoot rose from the blackened branches of hope.
‘And what’s the tradition?’ said Rincewind.
‘It’s on account of it being heartless to have a man standing there more than three times, knowing that at any second his—’
‘Yes, yes—’
‘—and then all his—’
‘Yes—’
‘—and the worst part to my mind is where your—’
‘Yes, I understand! And so . . . after the third time . . .?’
‘He’s allowed back into his cell while we get a carpenter in to repair the trapdoor,’ said the warder. ‘We even give him his dinner, if it’s gone on a long time.’
‘And?’
‘Well, when the carpenter’s given it a good test, then we take him out again and hang him.’ He saw Rincewind’s expression. ‘No need to look like that, ‘s better than having to stand around in the cold all morning, isn’t it? That wouldn’t be nice.’
When he’d gone, Rincewind sat and stared at the wall.
‘Baa!’
‘Shut up.’
So it was down to this, then. One brief night left, and then, if these clowns had anything to do with it, happy people would be wandering the streets to see where his head had come down. There was no justice!
G’DAY, MATE.
‘Oh, no. Please.’
I JUST THOUGHT I SHOULD ENTER INTO THE SPIRIT OF THE THING. A VERY CONVIVIAL PEOPLE, AREN’T THEY? said Death. He was sitting beside Rincewind.
‘You just can’t wait, can you?’ said Rincewind bitterly.
NO WORRIES.
‘So this is really it, then. I was supposed to have saved this country, you know. And I’m going to really die.’
OH, YES. THIS IS CERTAIN, I’M AFRAID.
‘It’s the stupidity of it that gets me. I mean, think of all the times I’ve nearly died in the past. I could’ve been flamed by dragons, right? Or eaten by huge things with tentacles. Or even had every single particle of my body fly off in a different direction.’
YOU HAVE CERTAINLY HAD AN INTERESTING LIFE.
‘Is it true that your life passes before your eyes before you die?’
YES.
‘Ghastly thought, really,’ Rincewind shuddered. ‘Oh, gods, I’ve just had another one. Suppose I am just about to die and this is my whole life passing in front of my eyes?’
I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED ‘LIVING’. WOULD YOU LIKE A PRAWN?
Rincewind looked down at the bucket on Death’s lap.
‘No, thank you. I really don’t think so. They can be pretty deadly. And I must say it’s a bit much of you to come here and gloat and eat prawns at me.’
I BEG YOUR PARDON?
‘Just because I’m being hanged in the morning, I mean.’
ARE YOU? THEN I SHALL LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING HOW YOU ESCAPED. I’M DUE TO MEET A MAN IN . . . IN . . . Death’s eyesockets glowed as he interrogated his memory. AH, YES . . . INSIDE A CROCODILE. SEVERAL HUNDRED MILES AWAY, I BELIEVE.
‘What? Then why are you here?’
OH, I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO SEE A FRIENDLY FACE. AND NOW I THINK I HAD BETTER BE GOING. Death stood up. VERY PLEASANT CITY IN MANY RESPECTS. TRY TO SEE THE OPERA HOUSE WHILE YOU’RE HERE.
‘Hang on . . . I mean, hold on, you told me I was certainly going to die!’
EVERYONE IS. EVENTUALLY.
The wall opened and closed around Death as if it wasn’t there, which was, from his lengthy perspective, quite true.
‘But how? I can’t walk through—’ Rincewind began.
He sat down again. The sheep cowered in the corner.
Rincewind looked at the untouched meat pie floater and gave the pie a prod. It sank slowly beneath the vivid green soup.
The sounds of the city filtered in.
After a while the pie rose again like a forgotten continent, sending a very small wave slopping against the edge of the bowl.
Rincewind lay back on the thin blanket and stared at the ceiling. Someone had even been writing on that, too. In fact . . .
Gdy Mat. Look at the hinjis. Ned.
Slowly, as if being raised by invisible strings, Rincewind turned and looked at the door.
The hinges were massive. They weren’t screwed into the doorframe so that some clever prisoner might unscrew them. They were huge iron hooks, hammered into the stone itself, so that two heavy rings welded on to the door could drop right down on them. What was the man talking about?
He walked over and examined the lock closely. It drove a huge metal rod into the frame on its side and looked quite unpickable.
Rincewind stared at the door for some time. Then he rubbed his hands together and, gritting his teeth, tried to lift the door on the hinge side. Yes, there was just enough play . . .
It was possible to lift the rings off the spikes.
Then, if you pulled slightly and took a knee-wobbling step this way, you could yank the lock’s rod out of its hole and the entire door into the cell.
And then a man could walk through and carefully rehang the door again and quietly wander away.
And that, Rincewind thought as he carefully manoeuvred the door back on to the hinges, was exactly what a stupid person would do.
At moments like this cowardice was an exact science. There were times that called for mindless, terror-filled panic, and times that called for measured, considered, thoughtful panic. Right now he was in a place of safety. It was, admittedly, the death cell, but the point was that it was perhaps the one place in this country where nothing bad was going to happen for a little while. The Ecksians didn’t look like the kind of people who went in for torture, although it was always possible they might make him eat some more of their food. So, for the moment, he had time. Time to plan ahead, to consider his next move, to apply his intellect to the problem at hand.
He stared at the wall for a moment, and then stood up and gripped the bars.
Right. That seemed to be about long enough. Now to run like hell.
The green deck of the melon boat had been divided into a male and female section, for the sake of decency. This meant that most of the deck was occupied by Mrs Whitlow, who spent a lot of the time sunbathing behind a screen. Her privacy was assured by the wizards themselves, since at least three of them would probably kill any of the others who ventured within ten feet of the palm leaves.