Interesting Times

Terry Pratchett

Summary

Mighty Battles! Revolution! Death! War! (And his sons Terror and Panic, and daughter Clancy)

The oldest and most inscrutable empire on the Discworld is in turmoil, brought about by the revolutionary treatise What I Did On My Holidays. Workers are uniting, with nothing to lose but their water buffaloes. War (and Clancy) are spreading through the ancient cities.

And all that stands in the way of terrible doom for everyone is:

Rincewind the Wizard, who can't even spell the word "wizard"...

Cohen the barbarian hero, five foot tall in his surgical sandals, who has had a lifetime's experience of not dying...

...and a very special butterfly.

Quotes

This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world.

And Fate always wins.

Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out until it's too late that he's been using two queens all along.

When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events -- the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broke just there -- that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

[The god Blind Io] had little involvement with individual humans. He generally looked after thunder and lightning, so from his point of view the only purpose of humanity was to get wet or, in occassional cases, charred.

"They're all very rich and have had millions of people butchered or tortured to death merely for reasons of expediency or pride," said the Lady.

The watching gods nodded solemnly. That was certainly noble behaviour. That was exactly what they would have done.

The Quantum Weather Butterfly (Papilio tempestae) is an undistinguished yellow colour ... Its outstanding feature is its ability to create weather.

This presumably began as a survival trait, since even an extremely hungry bird would find itself inconvenienced by a nasty localized tornado [Footnote: Usually about six inches across.]

Lord Vetinari, as supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, could in theory summon the Archchancellor of Unseen University to his presence and, indeed, have him executed if he failed to obey.

On the other hand Mustrum Ridcully, as head of the college of wizards, had made it clear in polite but firm ways that he could turn him into a small amphibian and, indeed, start jumping around the room on a pogo stick.

Lord Vetinari tried to recollect the faculty of Unseen University. The mental picture that emerged was of a small range of foothills in pointy hats.

No-one was quite certain what [architectural] forces Bloody Stupid's designs tapped, but the chiming sundial frequently exploded, the crazy paving had committed suicide and the cast iron garden furniture was known to have melted on three occassions.

The shark didn't think much. Sharks don't. Their though processes can largely be represented by "=". You see it = you eat it.

Many things went on at Unseen University and, regrettably, teaching had to be one of them. The faculty had long ago confronted this fact and had perfected various devices for avoiding it. But this was perfectly all right because, to be fair, so had the students.

And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason.

"Round everyone up. My study. Ten minutes," said Ridcully. He was a great believer in this approach. A less direct Archchancellor would have wandered around looking for everyone. His policy was to find one person and make their life difficult until everything happened the way he wanted it to. [Footnote: A policy adopted by almost all managers and several notable gods.]

Dean: "Am I alone in thinking, by the way, that it doesn't add to the status of the University to have an ape on the faculty?"
Ridcully: "Yes, you are. We've got the only librarian who can rip off your arm with his leg. People respect that."

"Shut up, Dean," said Ridcully, "or I won't let you go to the Counterweight Continent."

"I don't see what raising a perfectly valid-- What?"

"They're asking for the Great Wizzard," said Ridcully. "And I immediately thought of you." As the only man I know who can sit on two chairs at the same time, he added silently.

"The Empire?" squeaked the Dean. "Me? But they hate foreigners!"

"So do you. You should get on famously."

The Bursar was not technically insane. He had passed through the rapids of insanity some time previously, and was now sculling around in some peaceful pool on the other side. He was often quite coherent, although not by normal human standards.

Three figures stepped into his line of vision. They were obviously female. They were abundantly female. They were not wearing a great deal of clothing and seemed to be altogether too fresh-from-the-hairdressers for people who have just been paddling a large war canoe, but this is often the case with beautiful Amazonian warriors.

The air shimmered over the braziers of chestnut sellers and hot potato merchants and echoed with the traditional street cries of Old Ankh-Morpork. [Footnote: Such as "Ouch!", "Aargh!", "Give me back my money, you scoundrel!" and "You call these chestnuts? I call them little balls of charcoal, that's what I call them!"]

"I've never seen anyone eat three of Throat Dibbler's sausages inna bun and look so happy," said the Senior Wrangler.

"I've never seen someone eat three of Throat Dibbler's sausages inna bun and look so upright," said the Dean.

"I've never seen anyone eat anything of Dibbler's and get away without paying," said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

The senior families venerated their ancestors, and saw no harm in prematurely adding to their number.

Rincewind awoke. There were clean sheets and no-one was sying "Go through his pockets," so he chalked that up as a promising beginning.

"He survives. You keep on tellin' me he's had all these adventures and he's still alive."

"What do you mean? He's got scars all over him!"

"My point exactly, Dean. Most of 'em on his back, too. He leaves trouble behind. Someone Up There smiles on him."

Rincewind winced. He had always been aware that Someone Up There was doing something on him. He'd never considered it was smiling.

"How long can you hold your breath?"

"I don't know. A couple of minutes. Is that important?"

"It is in the context of being nailed upside down to one of the supports of the Brass Bridge for two high tides and then being beheaded which, I'm afraid, is the statutory punishment for impersonating a wizard."

The Luggage backed away. It was used to terror, horror, fear, and panic. It had seldom encountered interest before.

[Rincewind had] never asked for an exciting life. What he really liked, what he sought on every occassion, was boredom. The trouble was that boredom tended to explode in your face. Just when he thought he'd found it he'd be suddenly involved in what he supposed other people -- thoughtless, feckless people -- would call an adventure.

[Rincewind had] seen the creation of the universe, although not from a good seat, and had visited Hell and the afterlife. He'd been captured, imprisoned, rescued, lost and marooned. Sometimes it had all happened on the same day.

Adventure! People talked about the idea as if it was something worthwhile, rather than a mess of bad food, no sleep and strange people inexpliciably trying to stick pointed objects in bits of you.

Somewhere in the world, he reasoned, there was someone who was on the other end of the see-saw, a kind of mirror Rincewind whose life was a succession of wonderful events. He hoped to meet him one day, preferably while holding some sort of weapon.

He'd enjoyed Coconut Surprise. You cracked it open and hey, there was coconut inside. That was the kind of surprise he liked.

Ridcully assumed that anything people had time to write down couldn't be important.

Except during extreme flood conditions it is extremely difficult to make much progress on the Ankh, and the University rowing teams compete by running over the surface of the river. This is generally quite safe provided they don't stand in one place for very long and, of course, it eats the soles off their boots.

The Red Army met in secret session. They opened their meeting by singing revolutionary songs and, since disobedience to authority did not come easily to the Agatean character, these had titles like "Steady Progress and Limited Disobedience While Retaining Well-Formulated Good Manners."

"No, magic is the only way," said Ponder Stibbons. "It worked when we brought him here, didn't it?"

"Oh, yes," said Rincewind. "Just send me thousands of miles with my pants on fire and you don't even know where I'll land? Oh, yes, that's ideal, that is."

"Good," said Ridcully, a man impervious to sarcasm.

"Why, it'll practically be a holiday. It'll be easy. They probably just want to ... to ... ask you something, or something. And I hear you've got a talent for languages, so no problem there. You'll probably be away for a couple of hours at the most. Why do you keep sayin' 'hah' under your breath?"

Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four.

"How will I get back?" he said.

"Same way you went. We'll find you and bring you out. With surgical precision."

Rincewind groaned. He knew what surgical precision meant in Ankh-Morpork. It meant "to within an inch or two, accompanied by a lot of screaming, and then they pour hot tar on you just where your leg was."

"They say it's very boring there. Their biggest curse is 'May you live in interesting times,' apparently."

Stibbons: "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
Rincewind: "Oh, that. No problem there. I'm good at that."

Rincewind was grinning. At least, his mouth had gaped open and his teeth were showing.

Rincewind the shoemaker? Rincewind the beggar? Rincewind the thief? Just about everything apart from Rincewind the corpse demanded training or aptitudes that he didn't have.

[Rincewind] was no good at anything else. Wizardry was the only refuge. Well, actually, he was no good at wizardry either, but at least he was definitely no good at it.

And [Rincewind] probably had saved the world a few times, but it had generally happened accidentally, while he was trying to do something else. ... It probably only counted if you started out by thinking in a loud way "By criminy, it's jolly well time to save the world, and no two ways about it!" instead of "Oh shit, this time I'm really going to die."

"But you haven't got a weapon and there's one of you and they've got big swords and there's five of them!"

"I know," said the old man, wrapping the chain around one of his fists in a businesslike manner. "It's unfair, but I can't wait around all day."

To their credit, the guards hesitated. It was probably not, to judge by their faces, because there's something reprehensible about five large, heavily beweaponed men attacking a frail old man. It might have been because there's something odd about a frail old man who keeps on grinning in the face of obvious danger.

Rincewind: "We're not taking all five horses, are we?"
Cohen: "Sure. We might need 'em."
Rincewind: "But ... one for me, one for you ... what's the rest for?"
Cohen: "Lunch, dinner, and breakfast?"

Lord Hong was watching the tea ceremony. It took three hours, but you couldn't hurry a good cuppa.

Assassination was meat and drink to the Hunghung court; in fact, meat and drink were often the means.

Cohen didn't bother overmuch with questions. As far as Cohen was concerned, people appeared, people disappeared. ... You were alive, you were upright, and beyond that he didn't give a damn.

Cohen: "You know their big dish down on the coast?"
Rincewind: "No."
Cohen: "Pig's ear soup. Now, what's that tell you about a place, eh?"
Rincewind: "Very provident people?"
Cohen: "Some other bugger pinches the pig."

"Did you know there's a wall all round the Empire?"

"That's to keep ... barbarian invaders ... out..."

"Oh, yes, very defensive," said Cohen sarcastically. "Like, oh my goodness, there's a twenty-foot wall, dear me, I suppose we'd just better ride off back over a thousand miles of steppe and not, e.g., take a look at the ladder possibilities inherent in that pine wood over there."

The Art [of War] laid down the optimum course to take in every conceivable eventuality. It meant that warfare in the Empire had become far more sensible, and generally consisted of short periods of activity followed by long periods of people trying to find things in the index.

At the moment Ankh-Morpork didn't know it was the enemy, and that was the best kind of enemy to have.

"Truckal used to be reckoned one of the biggest badasses in the world," [Cohen] said.

"Really? Him?"

"But it's amazing what you can do with a herbal suppository."

"Up yours, mister," said Truckle.

"There's nearly five hundred years of concentrated barbarian hero experience in 'em," said Cohen.

"Five hundred years' experience in a fighting unit is good," said Rincewind. "It's good. But it should be spread over more than one person. I mean, what are you expecting them to do? Fall over on people?"

Rincewind: "So ... with this ... Silver Horde you're going to rush the city, kill all the guards and steal all the treasure?"
Cohen: "Yeah ... something like that. Of course, we won't have to kill all the guards..."
Rincewind: "Oh, no?"
Cohen: "It'd take too long."
Rincewind: "Yes, and of course you'll want to leave something to do tomorrow."

Cohen: "I'll just have a talk with Old Vincent. ... his memory's bad. We had a bit of trouble on the way over. I keep telling him, it's rape the women and set fire to the houses."
Rincewind: "Rape? That's not very--"
Cohen: "He's eighty-seven. Don't go and spoil an old man's dreams."

"I'm trying to teach them chess ... But I am afraid they have no concept of taking turns at moving, and their idea of an opening gambit is for the King and all the pawns to rush up the board together and set fire to the opposing rooks."

There was something about Cohen. People caught optimism off him as though it was the common cold.

"Sorry. I'd forgotten that. Seven against forty thousand? I shouldn't think you'll have any problems. I'll just be going. Fairly quickly, I think."

The choices seemed very clear to Rincewind. There was the city of Hunghung, under siege, apparently throbbing with revolution and danger, and there was everywhere else.

Therefore it was important to know where Hunghung was so that he didn't blunder into it by accident.

Agatean was a language of few basic syllables. It was really all in the tone, inflection and context. Otherwise, the word for military leader was also the word for long-tailed marmot, male sexual organ and ancient chicken coop.

...anyone who tried what he'd just tried in Ankh-Morpork would, by now, be scrabbling in the gutter for his teeth and whimpering about the pain in his groin and his horse would already have been repainted twice and sold to a man who'd be swearing he'd owned it for years.

Rincewind had to concede that the shouting man was right. Not, that is, about Rincewind's father being the diseased liver of a type of mountain panda and his mother being a bucket of turtle slime; Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent but felt that they were probably at least vaguely humanoid, if only briefly.

A foot on the neck is nine points of the law.

The guards were pretty much like guards as Rincewind had experienced them everywhere. They had exactly the amount of intellect required to hit people and drag them off to the scorpion pit. They were league champions at shouting at people a few inches from their face.

The hand had the longest fingernails he'd ever seen on something that didn't purr.

"What happens if I claim immunity because I'm a foreigner?"

"There's a special thing they do with a wire-mesh waistcoat and a cheesegrater."

"Oh."

"And there are torturers in Hunghung who can keep a man alive for years."

"I suppose you're not talking about healthy early morning runs and a high-fibre diet?"

"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad."

"Long Live The Changing Things To A More Equitable State While Retaining Due Respect For The Traditions Of Our Forebears And Of Course Not Harming The August Personage Of The Emperor Endeavor!"

Rincewind had faced many horrors in his time, but none held quite the same place in the lexicon of dread as those few seconds after someone said "Turn over your papers now."

Rincewind hadn't eaten since the leopard. The inn meant food, but food meant money. He was hungry, and he had no money.

He chided himself for this kind of negative thinking. That was not the right approach. What he should do was go in and order a large, nourishing meal. Then instead of being hungry with no money he'd be well fed with no money, a net gain on his current position. Of course, the world was likely to raise some objections, but in Rincewind's experience there were few problems that couldn't be solved with a scream and a good ten yards' start.

"Good morning! Can I partake of your famous delicacy 'Meal A for two People with extra Prawn Cracker'?"

Rincewind's life had been quite uneventful before he'd met Twoflower. Since then, as far as he could remember, it had contained events in huge amounts.

The hideout echoed to the sounds of the Silver Horde getting up, groaning, adjusting various home-made surgical supports, complaining that they couldn't find their spectacles and mistakenly gumming one another's dentures.

When you're trying to carry a struggling temple maiden and a sack of looted temple goods in one hand and fight off half a dozen angry priests with the other there is little time for reflection. Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like "What is my purpose in life?" very quickly lacked both.

Cohen's father had taken him to a mountain top, when he was no more than a lad, and explained to him the hero's creed and told him that there was no greater joy than to die in battle.

Cohen had seen the flaw in this straight away, and a lifetime's experience had reinforced his belief that in fact a greater joy was to kill the other bugger in battle and end up sitting on a heap of gold higher than your horse.

Rincewind did some calculation and came to a conclusion.

"This is the seventeenth worst day of my life so far," he thought.

"Hit a man too hard and you can only rob him once; hit him just hard enough and you can rob him every week."

Butterfly: "Do you not have amazing wizardly powers?"
Rincewind: "Oh, yes. Yes! Certainly! But--"
Butterfly: "Say something in wizard language!"
Rincewind: ""Stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum."
Butterfly: "'O excrement, I am about to die?'"

Butterfly: "You are maintaining a disguise?"
Rincewind: "Yes."
Butterfly: "It is a very good one."
Rincewind: "Thank you, because--"
Butterfly: "Only a great wizard would dare to look like such a pathetic piece of humanity."

Rincewind had been faced with death on numerous ions. Often there was armor and swords involved. This occassion just involved a pretty girl and a knife, but somehow managed to be among the worst.

[The Luggage] had spent many years trailing through strange lands, meeting exotic creatures and jumping up and down on them.

The Hunghungese were an outdoor kind of people; from the look of it, they conducted most of their lives on the street and at the top of their voice.

But the gates of Hunghung were pretty damn good gates. They weren't like the gates of Ankh-Morpork, which were usually wide open to attract the spending customer and whose concession to defence was the sign "Thank You For Not Attacking Our City. Bonum Diem."

Saveloy: "It's important that you all learn how to behave in cities."
Truckle: "I know how to bloody well behave in cities. Pillage, ravish, loot, set fire to the damn place on your way out, Just like towns only it takes longer."
Saveloy: "That's all very well if you're just passing through, but what if you want to come back next day?"
Truckle: "It ain't bloody well there next day, mister."

Deeply ingraiend in the Agatean psyche was the habit of obedience. But even stronger was a veneration of one's ancestors and a respect for the elderly, and the captain had never seen anyone so elderly while still vertical. They practicaly were ancestors. The one in the wheelchair certainly smelled like one.

"I always live in interestin' times," said Cohen, in the satisfied voice of someone who did a lot to keep them interesting.

"You see, once you've got them at your mercy, you're not allowed to kill them."

The Silver Horde, to a man, stared at the ex-teacher.

"I'm afraid that's civilization for you," he added.

"I've always wanted to meet a blood-sucking foreign ghost. Have a rice cake."

"Us? Don't worry about us," said Rincewind. "We hardly ever kill foreigners in Ankh-Morpork. It makes it so hard to sell them things afterwards."

"'Dang'?" he said. "Wassat mean? And what's this 'darn' and 'heck'?"

"They are ... civilized swearwords," said Mr. Saveloy.

"Well, you can take 'em and--"

"Ah?" said Mr. Saveloy, raising a cautionary finger.

"You can shove them up--"

"Ah?"

"You can--"

"Ah?"

Truckle shut his eyes and clenched his fists.

"Dang it all to heck!" he shouted.

[The Silver Horde] stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn't steal from poor people; this was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was simply because poor people had no money.

"He was looking for us! It is his destiny to lead the Red Army!"

Shake, shake, shake.

"We can lead ourselves!"

Nod, nod, nod.

"We don't need any suspicious Great Wizards from illusionary places!"

Nod, nod, nod.

"So we should kill him now!"

Nod, no-- Shakeshakeshake

"The People's Army is more than just individuals, Lotus Blossom!"

In the foetid sack Rincewind grimaced. He was already beginning to take a dislike to the first speaker ... when that sort of person started talking about things being more important than people, you knew you were in big trouble.

The face immediately in front of [Rincewind] was Lotus Blossom, and a man could see a lot worse things with his daylight than her face, which made him think of cream and masses of butter and just the right amount of salt.

[Footnote: Much later, Rincewind had to have therapy for this. It involved a pretty woman, a huge plate of potatoes and a big stick with a nail in it.]

Whereas the Forbidden City had looked ... well ... forbidden. It didn't look inviting. It didn't look as though it sold postcards. The only souvenir they were likely to give you would be, perhaps, your teeth. In a bag.

He could play along for now and then get the hell out of it at the very first opportunity. Butterfly's anger was bad, but a spike was a spike. Of course, he'd feel a bit of a heel for a while, but that was the point. He'd feel a heel, but he wouldn't feel a spike.

"What is this stuff?" said Truckle, spearing something with his chopstick.

"Er. Chow," said Mr. Saveloy.

"Yes, but what is it?"

"Chow. A kind of ... er ... dog."

The Horde looked at him.

"There's nothing wrong with it," he said hurriedly, with the sincerity of a man who had ordered bamboo shoots and bean curd for himself.

"Et a man once," mumbled Mad Hamish. "In a siege, it were."

"You ate someone?" said Mr. Saveloy, beckoning to the waiter.

"Just a leg."

"That's terrible!"

"Not with mustard."

Sticks and stones may break my bones, [Rincewind] thought. He was vaguely aware that there was a second half to the saying, but he'd never bothered because the first half always occupied all his attention.

"You call this a way to enter a city? You call this a way to enter a city? Waist deep in water? We didn't enter a ... wretched ... city like this when I rode with Bruce the Hoon! You enter a ... lovemaking ... city by overrunning it with a thousand horsemen, that's how you take a city--!"

"Yeah, but there ain't room for 'em in this pipe."

"How're you drawn, then?"

"I think your innards are cut out and shown to you."

"What for?"

"I don't really know. To see if you recognize them, I suppose."

"What ... like 'Yep, that's my kidneys, yep, that's my breakfast'?"

"S'posing we win? What kind of song will the minstrels sing about people who invaded through a pipe?"

"An echoey one," said Boy Willie.

The Emperor had all the qualifications for a corpse except, as it were, the most vital one.

Emperor: "Can you show us some more ... magic, Great Wizard?"
Rincewind: "I've got a good one. It's a vanishing trick."
Emperor: "Can you ... do it now?"
Rincewind: "Only if everyone opens all the doors and turns their back."

No-one can get a laugh like a man who can have you put to death more easily than he goes to the lavatory.

Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: "Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister."

"Look at it like this, gentlemen," said Mr. Saveloy. "Here we are, actually inside the Forbidden City, and no-one is dead!"

"Yes. That's what we're ... danging ... complaining about," said Truckle.

He had to believe that the gods didn't intend for Rincewind, after all his adventures, to rot in a dungeon.

No, he added bitterly, they probably had something much more inventive in mind.

No, of course, Twoflower never wanted to cause any trouble. Some people never did. Probably the last sound heard before the universe folded up like a paper hat would be someone saying "What happens if I do this?"

Twoflower: "You remember the good times we had?"
Rincewind: "Did we? I must have had my eyes shut."
Twoflower: "The adventures!"
Rincewind: "Oh, them. You mean hanging from high places, that sort of thing...?"

"What did he say?"

"He said he'd call for the guards."

"Ooo, yes. Please let him call for the guards!"

"No, we don't want that yet. Act normally."

"You mean cut his throat?"

"I meant a more normal kind of normally."

"It's what I call normal."

"A firm tax base is the foundation of sound governance, gentlemen. Please trust me."

"I understood all of that up to 'A firm tax.'"

"Nevertheless, no useful purpose will be served by killing this hard-working tax gatherer."

"He'd be dead. I call that useful."

Twoflower: "I'll always remember the taste of Mr. Dibbler's sausages."
Rincewind: "People do."
Twoflower: "A once-in-a-lifetime experience."
Rincewind: "Frequently."

It dawned on [Rincewind] that he was working on the wall that led to Twoflower's cell. Taking several thousand years to break into an adjoining cell could well be thought a waste of time.

"No-one has ever told [the Emperor] that it's not right to keep killing people for fun. At least, no-one who has ever managed to get to the end of the first sentence."

Twoflower: "Rincewind! It is you! I certainly never thought I'd see you again!"
Rincewind: "Yes, I thought something on those lines."

"Is he dead?" he said, speaking of a man with a sword half buried in his back.

"Extremely likely."

"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!"

"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 the one wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!"

Butterfly: "But there are causes worth dying for!"
Rincewind: "No, there aren't! Because you've only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!"
Butterfly: "Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?"
Rincewind: "Continuously!"

Cohen: "Got any ideas?"
Saveloy: "Oh, dear. They're so very tough looking, aren't they?"
Cohen: "You can't think of anything civilized?"
Saveloy: "No. It's over to you, I'm afraid."

"Can I just show him what I've been practising with my lump o' teak?" said Caleb, hopping arthritically from one foot to the other.

The ninja eyed the slab of timber.

"You could not make a dent on that, old man," he said.

"You watch," said Caleb. He held out the wood at arm's length. Then he raised his other hand, grunting a little as it got past shoulder height.

"You watching this hand? You watching this hand?" he demanded.

"I am watching," said the ninja, trying not to laugh.

"Good," said Caleb. He kicked the man squarely in the groin and then, as he doubled up, hit him over the head with the teak. "'Cos you should've been watchin' this foot."

"That's right," said Mr. Saveloy. "They've had a lifetime's experience of not dying. They've become very good at it."

Despite himself, Six Beneficient Winds was impressed. Apart from everything else, only seven ninjas were still standing and Cohen was fencing with one of them while rolling a cigarette in the other hand.

It was something about Cohen. Maybe it was what they called charisma. It overpowered even his normal smell of a goat that had just eaten curried asparagus.

"Good morning," said Mr. Saveloy. "I should just point out that Ghenghiz here is, despite appearances, a remarkably honest man. He finds it hard to understand empty bravura. May I venture to suggest therefore that you refrain from phrases like 'I would rather die than betray my Emperor' or 'Go ahead and do your worst' unless you really, really mean them."

"That bit where that lad sprang backwards right across the room with them axes in his hands was impressive, though."

"Yeah."

"You didn't ought to have stuck your sword out like that, I thought."

"He's learned an important lesson."

"It won't do him much good now where he's gone."

Saveloy: "What do you call the things that grind corn?"
Beneficient Winds: "Peasants."
Saveloy: "Yes, but what do they grind corn with?"
Beneficient Winds: "I don't know. Why should I know? Only peasants need to know that."
Saveloy: "Yes, I suppose that says it all, really."

When people who can read and write start fighting on behalf of people who can't, you just end up wih another kind of stupidity. If you want to help them, build a big library or something somewhere and leave the door open.

I'm a coward. And even I know more about fights than you do. I've run away from some really good ones.

"Join the Horde. We could use a man like you. Maybe as a siege weapon."

...behind him someone screamed Rincewind's nickname, which was: "Don't let him get away!"

From; that was the most important factor in any mindless escape. You were always running from. To could look after itself.

"Bruce the Hoon never went in the back way."

"Shut up."

"Never one for back gates, Bruce the Hoon."

"Shut up."

"When Bruce the Hoon attacked Al Khali, he did it right at the main guard tower, with a thousand screaming men on very small horses."

"Yeah, but ... last I saw of Bruce the Hoon, his head was on a spike."

"All right, I'll grant you that. But at least it was over the main gate. I mean, at least he got in."

"His head did."

They were, in fact, people. They might even have been humans, or at least had humans in their ancestry before someone, hundreds of years ago, had said, "Let's see how big and fat we can breed people. Let's try for really big bastards."

The room beyond was full of steam. It roiled in great billowing clouds. He could dimly make out a figure toiling at the huge wheel and the words "torture chamber" crossed his mind until the smell of soap replaced them with the word "laundry."

A wizard would sooner go without his robe and trousers than forgo his hat. Without his hat, people might think he was an ordinary person.

After the stampede the artist Three Solid Frogs got to his feet, retrieved his brush from his nostril, pulled his easel out of a tree, and tried to think placid thoughts.

"Settle down?" said Truckle. "You tried it once. Stole a farm and said you was goin' to raise pigs! Gave it up after ... What was it? ... three hours?"

"Poison?" said Cohen. "You sure?"

"Well, OK, it was a black bottle and it had a skull and crossbones on it and when he tipped it out it smoked," said Rincewind, as Mr. Saveloy helped him up. "Was it anchovy essence? I don't think so."

A little scream erupted from the Lord Chamberlain. He threw himself on the floor and was about to kiss Cohen's foot until he realized that this would have about the same effect as eating the [poisoned] pork.

"And everyone knows," said Rincewind, "that Grand Viziers are always--"

"--complete and utter bastards," said Cohen. "Dunno why. Give 'em a turban with a point in the middle and their moral wossname just gets eaten away. I always kill 'em soon as I met 'em. Saves time later on."

"This is bein' Emperor, is it? Can't even trust the food? We'll probably be murdered in our beds!"

"Can't see you being murdered in your bed," said Truckle.

"Yeah, 'cos you're never in it," said Cohen.

"Oh, loot and pillage, loot and pillage, I've had it up to here with loot and pillage!" said Mr. Saveloy. "Is that all you can think of, looting and pillaging?"

"Well, there used to be ravashing, too," said Vincent wistfully.

"Why don't we just invite them to dinner and massacre them all when they're drunk?"

"You heard the man. There's seven hundred thousand of them."

"Ah? So it'd have to be something simple with pasta, then."

"How big is your army, barbarian?"

"You would not believe how big," said Cohen, which was probably true.

--Six, to be exact.

"We have not heard of you!" said the warlord.

"Yeah," said Cohen. "That's how good we are."

"Pork balls! Pork balls! Get them while they're..." There was a pause as the vendor mentally tried out ways of ending the sentence, and gave up.

Don't tell them. Ask them. Ask them if it's true. You can beg them to tell you it's not true. Or you can even tell them you've been told to tell them it's not true, and that is the best of all.

Because Rincewind knew very well that when the four rather small and nasty Horsemen of Panic ride out there is a good job done by Misinformation, Rumour and Gossip, but they are as nothing compared to to the fourth horsemen, whose name is Denial.

"Look, there's no such thing as invisible vampire ghosts, all right?"

"Oh yeah? How do you know? Have you ever seen any?"

...there was nothing like someone repeating "I'm sure there's no vampire wizards" and going to the latrine four times an hour to put backbone into a platoon.

War: "We've got ... let's see now ... Egg and Cress, Chicken Tikka, and Mature Cheese with Crunchy Pickle, I think."
Death: THEY DO SUCH MARVELLOUS THINGS WITH SANDWICHES THESE DAYS.
War: "Oh ... and Bacon Surprise."
Death: REALLY? WHAT IS SO SURPRISING ABOUT BACON?
War: "I don't know. I suppose it comes as something of a shock to the pig."

The soothsayer was rather worried. This must have been the wrong kind of bird, he told himself. About the only things the entrails were telling him was that if he got out of this alive he, the soothsayer, might be lucky enough to enjoy a nice chicken dinner.

"Without a shadow of a doubt," he said, "the enemy will be most empathically beaten."

"How can you be so certain?" said Lord McSweeney.

The soothsayer bridled.

"You see this wobbly bit near the kidneys? You want to argue with this green trickly thing? You know all about liver suddenly? All right."

"Cohen?"

"Yep?"

"You a religious man at all?"

"Well, I've robbed loads of temples and killed a few mad priests in my time. Don't know if that counts."

"Down in Klatch they believe if you lead a good life you're rewarded by being sent to a paradise with lots of young women."

"That's your reward, is it?"

"Dunno. Maybe it's their punishment."

"We're definitely not going to die, right?"

"Right."

"I mean, odds of 100,000 to one ... hah. The difference is just a lot of zeroes, right?"

"Right."

Twoflower: "When seven men go out to fight an army 100,000 times bigger there's only one way it can end."
Rincewind: "Right. I'm glad you see sense."
Twoflower: "They'll win. They've got to. Otherwise the world's just not working properly."

"I'm not dependable. Even I don't depend on me, and I'm me."

"There's a lot of waiting in warfare," said Boy Willie.

"Ah, yes," said Mr. Saveloy. "I've heard people say that. They say there's long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement."

"Not really," said Cohen. "It's more like short periods of waiting followed by long periods of being dead."

Lord Fang: "The men say they're the legendary Seven Indestructible Sages. You know how superstitious they are..."
Lord Hong: "What Seven Sages? I am extremely familiar with the history of the world and there are no legendary Seven Indestructible Sages."
Lord Fang: "Er ... not yet. Uh. But ... a day like this ... Perhaps legends have to start somewhere."

[Magic armor] had never been very popular in Ankh-Morpork. ... it tended to lose its magic without warning. Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh."

[Rincewind] was in a place with thousands of artificial soldiers wearing swords. The fact that he appeared to have control of them was no great comfort. He'd theoretically had control of Rincewind for the whole of his life, and look what had happened to him.

"How about Organdy Sloggo? Still going strong down in Howondaland, last I heard."

"Dead. Metal poisoning."

"How?"

"Three swords through the stomach."

"Slasher Mungo?"

"Presumed dead in Skund."

"Presumed?"

"Well, they only found his head."

Saveloy: "There's got to be a better way [to conquer an empire] than fighting."
Cohen: "Yep. Lots of 'em. Only none of 'em work."

Twoflower: "Hey, do you remember the time when we went over the edge of the world?"
Rincewind: "Often. Usually around 3 a.m."
Twoflower: "And that time we were on a dragon and it disappeared in mid-air?"
Rincewind: "You know, sometimes a whole hour will go by when I don't remember that."
Twoflower: "And that time we were attacked by those people who wanted to kill us?"
Rincewind: "Which of those one hundred and forty-nine occassions are you referring to?"

Cohen: "And he might not have lived like a barbarian, but he's bloody well going to be buried like one, all right?"
Boy Willie: "In a longship, set on fire."
Caleb: "In a big pit, on top of the bodies of his enemies."
Vincent: "In a burial mound."
Cohen: "In a longship set on fire, on top of a heap of the bodies of his enemies, under a burial mound."

Fate: "How can you hope to win without sacrificing the occassional pawn?"
Lady: "Oh, I never play to win. But I do play not to lose."