Rincewind and Eric were left alone with the guard.
“You know what you've done, don't you,” said Eric. “You've only taken us all the way back to the Tsortean Wars! Thousands of Years! We did it at school, the wooden horse, everything! How the beautiful Elenor was kidnapped from the Ephebians - or maybe it was by the Ephebians - and there was this siege to get her back and everything.” He paused. “Hey, that means I'm going to meet her.” He paused again. “Wow!” he said.
Rincewind looked around the room. It didn't look ancient, but then it wouldn't, because it wasn't, yet. Everywhere in time was now, once you were there, or then. He tried to remember what little he knew of classical history, but it was just a confusion of battles, one-eyed giants and women launching thousands of ships with their faces.
“Don't you see?” hissed Eric, his glasses aglow. “They must have brought the horse in before the soldiers had hidden in it! We know what's going to happen! We could make a fortune!”
“How, exactly?”
“Well...” The boy hesitated. “We could bet on horses, sort of thing.”
“Good idea,” said Rincewind.
“Yes, and - ”
“All we've got to do is escape, then find out if they have horse races here, and then really try hard to remember the names of the horses that won races in Tsort thousands of years ago.”
They went back to looking glumly at the floor. That was the thing about time travel. You were never ready for it. About the only thing he could hope for, Rincewind decided, was finding da Quirm's Fountain of Youth and managing to stay alive for a few thousand years so he'd be ready to kill his own grandfather which was the only aspect of time travel that had ever remotely appealed to him. He had always felt that his ancestors had it coming to them.
Funny thing, though. He could remember the famous wooden horse, which had been used to trick a way into the fortified city. He didn't remember anything about there being two of them. There was something inevitable about the next thought that turned up.
“Excuse me,” he said to the guard. “This, er, this second wooden thing outside the gate... it's probably not a horse, I expect?”
“Well, of course you'd know that, wouldn't you?” said the guard. “You're spies.” “I bet it's more oblong and sort of smaller?” said Rincewind, his face a picture of innocent enquiry.
“You bet. Pretty unimaginative bastards, aren't you?” “I see.” Rincewind folded his hands on his lap. “Try to escape,” said the guard. “Go on, just try it. You try it and see what happens.” “I expect your colleagues will be bringing it into the city,” Rincewind went on. “They might do,” the guard conceded. Eric began to giggle. It had just begun to dawn on the guard that there was a lot of shouting going on in the
distance. Someone tried to blow a bugle, but the notes gurgled into silence after a few
bars. “Bit of a fight going on out there, by the sound of it,” said Rincewind. “People winning their spurs, doing heroic deeds of valour, being noticed by superior officers, that sort of thing. And here's you hanging around in here with us.”
“I've got to stick to my post,” said the guard. “Exactly the right attitude,” said Rincewind. “Never mind about everyone else out there fighting valiantly to defend their city and womenfolk against the foe. You stop in here and guard us. That's the spirit. They'll probably put up a statue to you in the city square, if there's one left. `He did his duty,` they'll write on it.”
The soldier appeared to think about this, and while he was doing so there was a terrible
splintering creak from the direction of the main gates. “Look,” he said desperately, “if I just pop out for a moment...” “Don't you worry about us,” said Rincewind encouragingly. "It's not even as if we're
armed.“ ”Right,“ said the soldier. ”Thanks." He gave Rincewind a worried smile and hurried off in the direction of the noise. Eric
looked at Rincewind with something like admiration. “That was actually quite amazing,” he said. “Going to go a long way, that lad,” said Rincewind. "A sound military thinker if ever I
saw one. Come on. Let's run away.“ ”Where to?" Rincewind sighed. He'd tried to make his basic philosophy clear time and again, and
people never got the message. “Don't you worry about to,” he said. “In my experience that always takes care of itself. The important word is away.”
The captain raised his head cautiously over the barricade, and snarled. “It's just a box, sergeant,” he snapped. “It's not even as if it could hold one or two men.” “Beg pardon, sir,” said the sergeant, and his face was the face of a man whose world has
changed a lot in a few short minutes. “It holds at least four, sir. Corporal Disuse and his squad, sir. I sent them out to open it sir.” “Are you drunk, sergeant?” “Not yet, sir,” said the sergeant, with feeling. “Little boxes don't eat people, sergeant.”
“After that it got angry, sir. You can see what it did to the gates.”
The captain peered over the broken timbers again.
“I suppose it grew legs and walked over there, did it?” he said sarcastically.
The sergeant broke into a relieved grin. At last they seemed to be on the same wavelength.
“Got it in one, sir,” he said. “Legs. Hundreds of the little bleeders, sir.”