He’d been trained in time-slicing on the snowfields above the valley, like the rest of the novices. That was so they couldn’t come to any harm, the monks had said, although no one actually explained what harm they might come to. Outside the monastery, this was the first time Lobsang had sliced in a living landscape.
It was marvellous! Birds hung in the sky. Early morning bumblebees hovered over the opening flowers. The world was a crystal made of living things.
Lobsang slowed near a group of deer cropping the grass, and watched as the nearer eye of one of them swivelled, with geological slowness, to watch him. He saw the skin move as the muscles underneath started to bunch for flight…
‘Time for a smoko,’ said Lu-Tze.
The world around Lobsang speeded up. The deer fled, along with the magic of the moment.
‘What’s a smoko?’ said Lobsang. He was annoyed. The quiet slow world had been fun.
‘You ever been to Fourecks?’
‘No. There’s a barman at the Bunch of Grapes from there, though.’
Lu-Tze lit one of his skinny cigarettes.
‘Don’t mean much,’ he said. ‘The barman everywhere is from there. Strange country. Big time source right in the middle, very useful. Time and space all tangled up. Probably all that beer. Nice place, though. Now, you see that country down there?’
On one side of the clearing the ground fell away steeply, showing treetops and, beyond, a small patchwork of fields tucked into a fold in the mountains. In the distance was a gorge, and Lobsang thought he could make out a bridge across it.
‘Doesn’t look much like a country,’ he said. ‘Looks more like a shelf.’
‘That’s witch country,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘And we’re going to borrow a broomstick. Quickest way to Ankh-Morpork. Only way to travel.’
‘Isn’t that, er, interfering with history? I mean, I was told that sort of thing is all right up in the valleys, but down here in the world…’
‘No, it’s absolutely forbidden,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘ ‘cos it’s Interfering With History. Got to be careful of your witch, of course. Some of them are pretty canny.’ He caught Lobsang’s expression. ‘Look, that’s why there’s rules, understand? So that you think before you break ’em.’
‘But-‘
Lu-Tze sighed, and pinched out the end of his cigarette. ‘We’re being watched,’ he said.
Lobsang spun round. There were only trees, and insects buzzing in the early-morning air.
‘Up there,’ said Lu-Tze.
There was a raven perched on the broken crown of a pine tree, shattered in some winter storm. It looked at them looking at it.
‘Caw?’ it said.
‘It’s just a raven,’ said Lobsang. ‘There’s lots of them in the valley.’
‘It was watching us when we stopped.’
‘There’s ravens all over the mountains, Sweeper.’
‘And when we met the yeti,’ Lu-Tze persisted.
‘That settles it, then. It’s coincidence. One raven couldn’t move that fast.’
‘Maybe it’s a special raven,’ said Lu-Tze. ‘Anyway, it’s not one of our mountain ravens. It’s a lowland raven. Mountain ravens croak. They don’t caw. Why’s it so interested in us?’
‘It’s a bit… weird, thinking you’re being followed by a bird,’ said Lobsang.
‘When you get to my age you notice things in the sky,’ said Lu-Tze. He shrugged and gave a grin. ‘You start worrying they might be vultures.’
They faded into time, and vanished.
The raven ruffled its feathers.
‘Croak?’ it said. ‘Damn.’
Tick
Lobsang felt around under the thatched eaves of the cottage, and his hand closed on the bristles of a broomstick that had been thrust among the reeds.
‘This is rather like stealing,’ he said, as Lu-Tze helped him down.
‘No, it’s not,’ said the sweeper, taking the broomstick and holding it up so he could look along its length. ‘And I’ll tell you why. If we sort things out, we’ll drop it off on our way back and she’ll never know it’s gone… and if we don’t sort things out, well, she’ll still never know it’s gone. Honestly, they don’t take much care of their sticks, witches. Look at the bristles on this one. I wouldn’t use it to clean a pond! Oh, well … back into clock time, lad. I’d hate to fly one of these things while I was slicing.’
He straddled the stick and gripped the handle. It rose a little way.
‘Good suspension, at least,’ he said. ‘You can have the comfy seat on the back. Hold tight to my own broom and make sure you wrap your robe around you. These things are pretty breezy.’
Lobsang pulled himself aboard and the stick rose. As it drew level with the lower branches around the clearing, it brought Lu-Tze to eye level with a raven.
It shifted uneasily and turned its head this way and that, trying to fix both eyes on him.
‘Are you going to caw or croak, I wonder,’ said Lu-Tze, apparently to himself.
‘Croak,’ said the raven.
‘So you’re not the raven we saw on the other side of the mountain, then.’
‘Me? Gosh, no,’ said the raven. ‘That’s croaking territory over there.’
‘Just checking.’
The broom rose higher, and set off above the trees in a Hubwards direction.
The raven ruffled its feathers and blinked.
‘Damn!’ it said. It shuffled around the tree to where the Death of Rats was sitting.
SQUEAK?
‘Look, if you want me to do this undercover work you’ve got to get me a book on ornithology, okay?’ said Quoth. ‘Let’s go, or I’ll never keep up.’
Tick
Death found Famine in a new restaurant in Genua. He had a booth all to himself and was eating Duck and Dirty Rice.
‘Oh,’ said Famine. It’s you.’
YES. WE MUST RIDE. YOU MUST HAVE GOT MY MESSAGE.
‘Pull up a chair,’ Famine hissed. ‘They do a very good alligator sausage here.’
I SAID, WE MUST RIDE.
‘Why?’
Death sat down and explained. Famine listened., although he never stopped eating.
‘I see,’ he said at last. ‘Thank you, but I think I shall sit this one out.’
SIT IT OUT? YOU’RE A HORSEMAN!
‘Yes, of course. But what is my role here?’
I BEG YOUR PARDON?
‘No famine appears to be involved, does it? A shortage of food per se? As such?’
WELL, NO. NOT AS SUCH, OBVIOUSLY, BUT-
‘So I would, as it were, be turning up just to wave. No, thank you.’
YOU USED TO RIDE OUT EVERY TIME, said Death accusingly.
Famine waved a bone airily. ‘We had proper apocalypses in those days,’ he said, and sucked at the bone. ‘You could sink your teeth into them.’
NEVERTHELESS, THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD.
Famine pushed his plate aside and opened the menu. ‘There are other worlds,’ he said. ‘You’re too sentimental, Death. I’ve always said so.’
Death drew himself up. Humans had created Famine, too. Oh, there had always been droughts and locusts, but for a really good famine, for fertile land to be turned into a dustbowl by stupidity and avarice, you needed humans. Famine was arrogant.
I AM SORRY, he said, TO HAVE TRESPASSED ON YOUR TIME.
He went outside, into the crowded street, all alone.
Tick
The stick swooped down towards the plains, and levelled off a few hundred feet above the ground.
‘We’re on our way now!’ shouted Lu-Tze, pointing ahead. Lobsang looked down at a slim wooden tower hung with complicated boxes. There was another one in the far distance, a toothpick in the morning mist.
‘Semaphore towers!’ Lu-Tze shouted. ‘Ever seen them?’
‘Only in the city!’ Lobsang shouted above the slipstream.
‘It’s the Grand Trunk!’ the sweeper shouted back. ‘Runs like an arrow all the way to the city! All we have to do is follow it!’
Lobsang clung on. There was no snow beneath them and it looked as though spring was well advanced. And therefore it was unfair that here, that much nearer the sun, the air was frigid and was being driven into his flesh by the wind of their travel.
‘It’s very cold up here!’
‘Yes! Did I tell you about the double-knit combinations?’
‘Yes!’
‘I’ve got a spare pair in my sack. You can have them when we stop!’
‘Your own personal pair?’
‘Yes! Second-best but well darned!’
‘No, thank you!’
‘They’ve been washed!’
‘Lu-Tze?’
‘Yes?’
‘Why can’t we slice when we’re on this thing?’
The tower was well past them. The next one was pencil-sized already. The black-and-white shutters on the boxes were twinkling in the sunlight.
‘Do you know what happens if you slice time on a magically powered vehicle travelling at more than seventy miles an hour?’
‘No!’
‘Me neither! And I don’t want to find out!’
Tick
Igor opened the door before the second knock. An Igor might be filling coffins with earth in the cellar, or up on the roof adjusting the lightning conductor, but a caller never had to knock twice.
‘Ladythip,’ he muttered, nodding his head. He looked blankly at the six figures behind her.
‘We have called to inspect progress,’ said Lady LeJean.