‘I think not.’
‘You’d better get a move on, they’re halfway through the last act,’ said Ron.
‘She’ll be right,’ said Rincewind. ‘Okay . . . halve the peaches, put them in a bowl with the other things, and then add the brandy and voila.’
‘That some kind of foreign stuff?’ said Charley.
‘I don’t think we’ve got any of that wollah.’
‘Just add twice as much brandy, then,’ said Rincewind. ‘And there it is.’
‘Yeah, but what’s it called?’ said Ron.
‘I’m coming to that,’ said Rincewind. ‘Bowl, please, Charley. Thank you.’ He held it aloft. ‘Gentlemen . . . I give you . . . the Peach Nellie.’
A saucepan bubbled on a stove. Apart from that insistent little noise, and the distant strains of the opera, the room fell silent.
‘What do you think?’ said Rincewind brightly.
‘It’s . . . different. . ,’ said Charley. ‘I’ll grant you that.’
‘But it’s not exactly commemorative, is it?’ said Ron. ‘The world is full of Nellies.’
‘On the other hand, would you prefer it if everyone remembered the alternative?’ said Rincewind. ‘Do you want to be associated in any way with the Peach Bu—’
There was a howl as Charley burst into tears again.
‘Put like that, it doesn’t sound too bad,’ said Ron. ‘Peach Nellie . . . yeah.’
‘You could use bananas,’ said Rincewind.
Ron’s lips moved silently. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Let’s go with the peaches.’
Rincewind brushed himself off. ‘Glad to be of service,’ he said. ‘Tell me. How many ways are there out of here?’
‘Busy night for everyone, what with the Galah and everything,’ said Ron. ‘Not my taste, of course, but it does bring in the visitors.’
‘Yeah, and the hanging in the morning,’ said Charley.
‘I was planning to miss that,’ said Rincewind. ‘Now, if you’ll just—’
‘I for one hope he escapes,’ said Charley.
‘I’m with you on that,’ said Rincewind. Heavy boots walked past the door and stopped. He could hear distant voices.
They say he fought a dozen policemen,’ said Ron.
‘Three,’ said Rincewind. ‘It was three. I heard. Someone told me. Not a dozen. Three.’
‘Oh, gotta be more than three, gotta be a lot more than three for a bold bush ranger like that one. Rinso, they call him.’
‘I heard where this bloke arrived from Dijabringabeeralong and said Rinso sheared a hundred sheep in five minutes.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ said Rincewind.
‘They say he’s a wizard but that can’t be true ‘cos you never catch one of them doin’ a proper job of work.’
‘Well, in fact—’
‘All right, but a bloke who works up at the gaol says he’d got this strange brown stuff which gives him enormous strength!’
‘It was only beer soup!’ shouted Rincewind. ‘I mean,’ he added, ‘that’s what I heard.’
Ron gave him a lopsided look. ‘You look a bit like a wizard,’ he said.
Someone knocked heavily on the door.
‘You’re wearing those dresses they wear,’ Ron went on, without taking his eyes off Rincewind.
‘Go and open the door, Sid.’
Rincewind backed away, reached behind him to a table laden with knives, and found his fingers closing on a handle.
Yes, he hated the idea of weapons. They always, always, upped the ante. But they did impress people.
The door opened. Several men peered in, and one of them was the gaoler.
‘That’s him!’
‘I warn you, I’m a desperate man,’ Rincewind said, bringing his hand around. Most of the cooks dived for cover.
‘That’s a ladle, mate,’ said a watchman, kindly. ‘But bloody plucky, all the same. Good on yer. What do you think, Charley?’
‘I reckon it’s never going to be said that a bold larrikin like him was run to earth in a kitchen of mine,’ said Charley. He picked up a cleaver in one hand and the dish of Peach Nellie in the other. ‘You nip out the other door, Rinso, and we’ll talk to these policemen.’
‘Suits us,’ said the watchman, ‘ ‘s not a proper last stand, just having a punch-up in a kitchen . . . We’ll give you a count to ten, all right?’
Once again Rincewind felt that he hadn’t been given the same script as everyone else.
‘You mean you’ve got me cornered and you aren’t going to arrest me?’ he said.
‘We-ell, it wouldn’t look good in the ballad, would it?’ said the guard. ‘You’ve got to think about these things.’ He leaned on the doorway. ‘Now, there’s the old Post Office in Grurt Street. I reckon a man could hold out for two, maybe three days there, no worries. Then you could run out, we shoot you full of arrows, you utter some famous last words . . . kids’ll be learnin’ about you in school in a hundred years’ time, I’ll bet. And look at yourself, willya?’ He stepped forward, ignoring the deadly ladle, and prodded Rincewind’s robe. ‘How many arrows is that going to stop, eh?’
‘You’re all mad!’
Charley shook his head. ‘Everyone likes a battler, mister. That’s the Ecksian way. Go down fighting, that’s the ticket.’
‘We heard about you takin’ on that road gang,’ said the guard. ‘Bloody good job. Man who’d do a job like that ain’t gonna be hanged, he gonna want to make a famous last stand.’
The men had all entered the kitchen now. The doorway was clear.
‘Has anyone ever had a Famous Last Run?’ said Rincewind.
‘No. What’s one of them?’
‘G’day!’
As he sped away along the darkened waterfront he heard the shout behind him.
That’s the ticket! We’ll count to ten!’
He glanced up as he ran and saw that the big sign over the brewery seemed to be dark. And then he realized that something was hopping along just behind him.
‘Oh, no! Not you!’
‘G’day,’ said Scrappy, drawing level.
‘Look at the mess you’ve got me into!’
‘Mess? You were gonna be hanged! Now you’re enjoying the healthy fresh air in a god’s own country!’
‘And I’m going to be shot full of arrows!’
‘So? You can dodge arrows. This place needs a hero. Champion shearer, road warrior, bush ranger, sheep-stealer, horse rider . . . all you need now is to be good at some damn silly bat and ball game that no one’s invented yet and maybe build a few tall buildings with borrowed money and you’d have a full house. They ain’t gonna kill you in a hurry.’
‘That’s not much comfort! Anyway, I didn’t do any of that stuff— Well, I mean I did, but—’
‘It’s what people think that matters. Now they believe you waltzed out of a locked cell.’
‘All I did was—’
‘Doesn’t matter! The number of gaolers who want to shake you by the hand, well, I reckon they wouldn’t get around to hanging you by lunchtime!’
‘Listen, you giant jumping rat, I’ve made it to the docks, okay? I can outrun them! I can lie low! I know how to stow away, throw up, get discovered, be thrown over the side, stay afloat for two days by clinging on to an old barrel and eating plankton sieved through my beard, carefully negotiate the treacherous coral reef surrounding an atoll and survive by eating yams!’
That’s a very special talent you got there,’ said the kangaroo, bounding over a ship’s hawser. ‘How many Ecksian ships have you ever seen in Ankh-Morpork? Busiest port in the world, ain’t it?’
Rincewind slowed. ‘Well . . .’
‘It’s the currents, mate. Get more’n ten miles off’f the coast here and there ain’t one captain in a hundred who can stop his ship going right over the Rim. They stick very close inshore.’
Rincewind stopped. ‘You mean this whole place is a prison!’
‘Yep. But the Ecksians say this is the best bloody place in the world, so there’s no point in going anywhere else anyway.’
There were shouts behind him. The guards here didn’t take so long counting to ten as most guards did.
‘What’re you going to do now?’ said Rincewind.
The kangaroo had gone.
He ducked down a side street and found his way completely blocked. Carts filled the street from edge to edge. Gaily decorated carts.
Rincewind paused. He had always been the foremost exponent of the from rather than the to of running. He could have written ‘The From of Running’. But just occasionally a certain subtle sense told him that the to was important.
For one thing, a lot of the people standing and chatting around the carts were wearing leather.
You could make a lot of arguments in favour of leather. It was long-lasting, practical and hard-wearing. People like Cohen the Barbarian found it so hard-wearing and long-lasting that their old loincloths had to be removed by a blacksmith. But the people here didn’t look as if these were the qualities that they’d been looking for in the boutique. They’d asked questions like: How many studs has it got? How shiny is it? Has it got holes cut out in unusual places?