'I can't understand him!' wailed Ginger.
Victor's brow wrinkled. 'You can't?'
'It's all just monkey noises to me!'
Victor's eyes swivelled sideways. 'Er-'
The Librarian stood like a small prehistoric statue for a moment. Then he took Ginger's hand, very gently, and patted it.
'Oook,' he said, graciously.
'Sorry,' said Ginger.
'Listen!' said Victor. 'I got it wrong! You weren't trying to help Them, you were trying to stop them! I read it the wrong way round! It's not a man behind a gate, it's a man in front of a gate! And a man in front of a gate', he took a deep breath, 'is a guard!'
'Yes, but we can't get to Holy Wood! It's miles away!'
Victor shrugged. 'Go and get the handleman,' he said.
The land around Ankh-Morpork is fertile and largely given over to the cabbage fields that help to give the city its distinctive odour.
The grey light of pre-dawn unrolled over the blue-green expanse, and around a couple of farmers who were making an early start on the spinach harvest.
They looked up, not at a sound, but at a travelling point of silence where sound ought to have been.
It was a man and a woman and something like a size five man in a size twelve fur coat, all in a chariot that flickered as it moved. It bowled along the road towards Holy Wood and was soon out of sight.
A minute or two later it was followed by a wheelchair. Its axle glowed red-hot. It was full of people screaming at one another. One of them was turning a handle on a box.
It was so overburdened that wizards occasionally fell off and ran along after it, shouting, until they had a chance to jump on again and start screaming.
Whoever was attempting to steer was not succeeding, and it weaved back and forth across the road and eventually hurtled off it completely and through the side of a barn.
One of the farmers nudged the other.
'Oi've seen this on the clicks,' he said. 'It's always the same. They crash into a barn and they allus comes out the other side covered in squawking chickens.'
His companion leaned reflectively on his hoe.
'It'd be a sight worth seeing that,' he said.
'Sure would.'
' 'Cos all there is in there, boy, is twenty ton of cabbage.'
There was a crash, and the chair erupted from the barn in a shower of chickens and headed madly towards the road.
The farmers looked at one another.
'Well, dang me,' said one of them.
Holy Wood was a glow on the horizon. The earth tremors were stronger now.
The flickering chariot came out of a stand of trees and paused at the top of the incline that led down to the town.
Mist wreathed Holy Wood. From out of it spears of light crisscrossed the sky.
'We're too late?' said Ginger hopefully.