'Dead?' said Rincewind, In the debating chamber of his mind a dozen emotions got to their feet and started shouting. Relief was in full spate when Shock cut in on a point of order and then Bewilderment, Terror and Loss started a fight which was ended only when Shame slunk in from next door to see what all the row was about.
'No,' said Cohen thoughtfully, 'not exshactly. Just – gone.'
'Gone where?'
'I don't know,' said Cohen, 'but I think I know shomeone who might have a map.'
Far out on the snowfield half a dozen pinpoints of red light glowed in the shadows.
'He's not far away,' said the leading wizard, peering into a small crystal sphere.
There was general mutter from the ranks behind him which roughly meant that however far away Rincewind was he couldn't be further than a nice hot bath, a good meal and a warm bed.
Then the wizard who was tramping along in the rear stopped and said, 'Listen!'
They listened. There were the subtle sounds of winter beginning to close its grip on the land, the creak of rocks, the muted scuffling of small creatures in their tunnels under the blanket of snow. In a distant forest a wolf howled, felt embarrassed when no-one joined in, and stopped. There was the silver sleeting sound of moonlight. There was also the wheezing noise of half a dozen wizards trying to breathe quietly.
'I can't hear a thing—' one began.
'Ssshh!'
'All right, all right—'
Then they all heard it; a tiny distant crunching, like omething moving very quickly over the snow crust.
'Wolves?' said a wizard. They all thought about hundreds of lean, hungry bodies leaping through the night.
'N-no,' said the leader. 'It's too regular. Perhaps it's a messenger?'
It was louder now, a crisp rhythm like someone eating celery very fast.
'I'll send up a flare,' said the leader. He picked up a handful of snow, rolled it into a ball, threw it up into the air and ignited it with a stream of octarine fire from his fingertips. There was a brief, fierce blue glare.
There was silence. Then another wizard said, 'You daft bugger, I can't see a thing now.'
That was the last thing they heard before something fast, hard and noisy cannoned into them out of the darkness and vanished into the night.
When they dug one another out of the snow all they could find was a tight pressed trail of little footprints. Hundreds of little footprints, all very close together and heading across the snow as straight as a searchlight.
'A necromancer!' said Rincewind.
The old woman across the fire shrugged and pulled a pack of greasy cards from some unseen pocket.
Despite the deep frost outside, the atmosphere inside the yurt was like a blacksmith's armpit and the wizard was already sweating heavily. Horse dung made a good fuel, but the Horse People had a lot to learn about air conditioning, starting with what it meant.
Bethan leaned sideways.
'What's neck romance?' she whispered.
'Necromancy. Talking to the dead,' he explained.
'Oh,' she said, vaguely disappointed.
They had dined on horse meat, horse cheese, horse black pudding, horse d'oeuvres and a thin beer that Rincewind didn't want to speculate about. Cohen (who'd ad horse soup) explained that the Horse Tribes of the Hubland steppes were born in the saddle, which Rincewind considered was a gynaecological impossibility, and they were particularly adept at natural magic, since life on the open steppe makes you realise how neatly the sky fits the land all around the edges and this naturally inspires the mind to deep thoughts like 'Why?', 'When?' and 'Why don't we try beef for a change?'
The chieftain's grandmother nodded at Rincewind and spread the cards in front of her.
Rincewind, as it has already been noted, was the worst wizard on the Disc: no other spells would stay in his mind once the Spell had lodged in there, in much the same way that fish don't hang around in a pike pool. But he still had his pride, and wizards don't like to see women perform even simple magic. Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it . . .