“Choose someone else.”
Brutha strode off through the ragged army. No one tried to stop him. He reached the path that led up to the cliffs, and did not even turn to look at the battlelines.
“Aren't you going to watch the battle? I need someone to watch the battle.”
Didactylos was sitting on a rock, his hands folded on his stick.
“Oh, hello,” said Brutha, bitterly. “Welcome to Omnia.”
“It helps if you're philosophical about it,” said Didactylos.
“But there's no reason to fight!”
“Yes there is. Honor and revenge and duty and things like that.”
“Do you really think so? I thought philosophers were supposed to be logical?”
Didactylos shrugged.
“Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers.”
“I thought it would all be over when Vorbis was dead.”
Didactylos stared into his inner world.
“It takes a long time for people like Vorbis to die. They leave echoes in history.”
“I know what you mean.”
“How's Urn's steam machine?” said Didactylos.
“I think he's a bit upset about it,” said Brutha.
Didactylos cackled and banged his stick on the ground.
“Hah! He's learning! Everything works both ways!”
“It should do,” said Brutha.
Something like a golden comet sped across the sky of the Discworld. Om soared like an eagle, buoyed up by the freshness, by the strength of the belief. For as long as it lasted, anyway. Belief this hot, this desperate, never lasted long. Human minds could not sustain it. But while it did last, he was strong.
The central spire of Cori Celesti rises up from the mountains at the Hub, ten vertical miles of green ice and snow, topped by the turrets and domes of Dunmanifestin.
There the gods of the Discworld live.
At the least, any god who is anybody. And it is strange that, although it takes years of effort and work and scheming for a god to get there, once there they never seem to do a lot apart from drink too much and indulge in a little mild corruption. Many systems of government follow the same broad lines.
They play games. They tend to be very simple games, because gods are easily bored by complicated things. It is strange that, while small gods can have one aim in mind for millions of years, are in fact one aim, large gods seem to have the attention span of the common mosquito.
And style? If the gods of the Discworld were people they would think that three plaster ducks is a bit avant-garde.
There was a double door at the end of the main hall.
It rocked to a thunderous knocking.
The gods looked up vaguely from their various preoccupations, shrugged and turned away.
The doors burst inward.