‘Magic,’ he mumbled excitedly, drunk with power. ‘I did magic . . .’
‘That’s right,’ said Twoflower soothingly.
‘Would you like me to do a spell?’ said Rincewind. He pointed a finger at a passing dog and said ‘Wheeee!’ It gave him a hurt look.
‘Making your feet run a lot faster’d be favourite,’ said Bethan grimly.
‘Sure!’ slurred Rincewind. ‘Feet! Run faster! Hey, look, they’re doing it!’
‘They’ve got more sense than you,’ said Bethan. ‘Which way now?’
Twoflower peered at the maze of alleyways around them. There was a lot of shouting going on, some way off.
Rincewind lurched 6ut of their grasp, and tottered uncertainly down the nearest alley.
‘I can do it!’ he shouted wildly. ‘Just you all watch out —’
‘He’s in shock,’ said Twoflower.
‘Why?’
‘He’s never done a spell before.’
‘But he’s a wiizard!’
‘It’s all a bit complicated,’ said Twoflower, running after Rincewind. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure that was actually him. it certainly didn’t sound like him. Come along, old fellow.’
Rincewind looked at him with wild, unseeing eyes.
‘I’ll turn you into a rosebush,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes, jolly good. Just come along,’ said Twoflower soothingly, pulling gently at his arm.
There was a pattering of feet from several alleyways and suddenly a dozen star people were advancing on them.
Bethan grabbed Rincewind’s limp hand and held it up threateningly.
‘That’s far enough!’ she screamed.
‘Right!’ shouted Twoflower. ‘We’ve got a wizard and we’re not afraid to use him!’
‘I mean it!’ screamed Bethan, spinning Rincewind around by his arm, like a capstan.
‘Right! We’re heavily armed! What?’ said Twoflower.
‘I said, where’s the Luggage?’ hissed Bethan behind Rincewind’s back.
Twoflower looked around. The Luggage was missing.
Rincewind was having the desired effect of the star people, though. As his hand waved vaguely around they treated it like a rotary scythe and tried to hide behind one another.
‘Well, where’s it gone?’
‘How should I know?’ said Twoflower.
‘It’s your Luggage!’
‘I often don’t know where my Luggage is, that’s what being a tourist is all about,’ said Twoflower. ‘Anyway, it often wanders off by itself. It’s probably best not to ask why.’
It began to dawn on the mob that nothing was actually happening, and that Rincewind was in no condition to hurl insults, let alone magical fire. They advanced, watching his hands cautiously.
Twoflower and Bethan backed away. Twoflower looked around.
‘Bethan?’
‘What?’ said Bethan, not taking her eyes off the advancing figures.
‘This is a dead end.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think I know a brick wall when I see one,’ said Twoflower reproachfully.
‘That’s about it, then,’ said Bethan.
‘Do you think perhaps if I explain – ?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
‘I don’t think these are the sort of people who listen to explanations,’ Bethan added.
Twoflower stared at them. He was, as has been mentioned, usually oblivious to personal danger. Against the whole of human experience Twoflower believed that if only people would talk to each other, have a few drinks, exchange pictures of their grandchildren, maybe take in a show or something, then everything could be sorted out. He also believed that people were basically good but sometimes had their bad days. What was coming down the street was having about the same effect on him as a gorilla in a glass factory.
There was the faintest of sounds behind him, not so much a sound in fact as a change in the texture of the air.
The faces in front of him gaped open, turned, and disappeared rapidly down the alley.
‘Eh?’ said Bethan, still propping up the now unconscious Rincewind.
Twoflower was looking the other way, at a big glass window full of strange wares, and a beaded doorway, and a large sign above it all which now said, after its characters had finished writhing into position:
‘Skillet, Wang, Yrxle!yt, Bunglestiff, Cwmlad and Patel’
‘Estblshd: various’
‘PURVEYORS’
The jeweller turned the gold slowly over the tiny anvil, tapping the last strangely-cut diamond into place.
‘From a troll’s tooth, you say?’ he muttered, squinting losely at his work.
‘Yesh,’ said Cohen, ‘and as I shay, you can have all the resht.’ He was fingering a tray of gold rings.
‘Very generous,’ murmured the jeweller, who was dwar-vish and knew a good deal when he saw one. He sighed.
‘Not much work lately?’ said Cohen. He looked out through the tiny window and watched a group of empty-eyed people gathered on the other side of the narrow street.
‘Times are hard, yes.’
‘Who are all theshe guysh with the starsh painted on?’ said Cohen.
The dwarf jeweller didn’t look up.
‘Madmen,’ he said. ‘They say I should do no work because the star comes. I tell them stars have never hurt me, I wish I could say the same about people.’
Cohen nodded thoughtfully as six men detached themselves from the group and came towards the shop. They were carrying an assortment of weapons, and had a driven, determined look about them.
‘Strange,’ said Cohen.
‘I am, as you can see, of the dwarvish persuasion,’ said the jeweller. ‘One of the magical races, it is said. The star people believe that the star will not destroy the Disc if we turn aside from magic. They’re probably going to beat me up a bit. So it goes.’
He held up his latest work in a pair of tweezers.
‘The strangest thing I have ever made,’ he said, ‘but practical, I can see that. What did you say they were called again?’
‘Din-chewersh,’ said Cohen. He looked at the horseshoe shapes nestling in the wrinkled palm of his hand, then opened his mouth and made a series of painful grunting noises.
The door burst open. The men strode in and took up positions around the walls. They were sweating and uncertain, but their leader pushed Cohen aside disdainfully and picked up the dwarf by his shirt.
‘We tole you yesterday, small stuff,’ he said. ‘You go ut feet down or feet up, we don’t mind. So now we gonna get really —.’
Cohen tapped him on the shoulder. The man looked around irritably.
‘What do you want, grandad?’ he snarled.
Cohen paused until he had the man’s full attention, and then he smiled. It was a slow, lazy smile, unveiling about 300 carats of mouth jewellery that seemed to light up the room.
‘I will count to three,’ he said, in a friendly tone of voice. ‘One. Two.’ His bony knee came up and buried itself in the man’s groin with a satisfyingly meaty noise, and he half-turned to bring the full force of an elbow into the kidneys as the leader collapsed around his private universe of pain.
‘Three,’ he told the ball of agony on the floor. Cohen had heard of fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it.
He looked up at the other men, and flashed his incredible srnile.
They ought to have rushed him. Instead one of them, secure in the knowledge that he had a broadsword and Cohen didn’t, sidled crabwise towards him.
‘Oh, no,’ said Cohen, waving his hands. ‘Oh, come on, lad, not like that.’
The man looked sideways at him.
‘Not like what?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘You never held a sword before?’
The man half-turned to his colleagues for reassurance.
‘Not a lot, no,’ he said. ‘Not often.’ He waved his sword menacingly.
Cohen shrugged. ‘I may be going to die, but I should hope I could be killed by a man who could hold his sword like a warrior,’ he said.
The man looked at his hands. ‘Looks all right,’ he said, doubtfully.
‘Look, lad, I know a little about these things. I mean, come here a minute and – do you mind? – right, your eft hand goes here, around the pommel, and your right hand goes – that’s right, just here — and the blade goes right into your leg.’
As the man screamed and clutched at his foot Cohen kicked his remaining leg away and turned to the room at large.
‘This is getting fiddly,’ he said. Why don’t you rush me?’
‘That’s right,’ said a voice by his waist. The jeweller had produced a very large and dirty axe, guaranteed to add tetanus to all the other terrors of warfare.
The four men gave these odds some consideration, and backed towards the door.
‘And wipe those silly stars off,’ said Cohen. ‘You can tell everyone that Cohen the Barbarian will be very angry if he sees stars like that again, right?’
The door slammed shut. A moment later the axe thumped into it, bounced off, and took a sliver of leather off the toe of Cohen’s sandal.
‘Sorry,’ said the dwarf. ‘It belonged to my grandad. I only use it for splitting firewood.’
Cohen felt his jaw experimentally. The dine chewers seemed to be settling in quite well.
‘If I was you, I’d be getting out of here anyway,’ he said. But the dwarf was already scuttling around the room, tipping trays of precious metal and gems into a leather sack. A roll of tools went into one pocket, a packet of finished jewellery went into another, and with a grunt the dwarf stuck his arms through handles on either side of his little forge and heaved it bodily onto his back.