The Fifth Elephant (Discworld 24)

"Ha, yes. In his nightmares." Angua hesitated. "You really left?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

Gaspode listened to some more snowflakes.

"Well, you won"t get far by yourselves now," said Angua, standing up. "Rest for another hour. And then we"ll be going through the deep forest. Not too much snow there yet. We"ve got a lot of ground to cover. I hope you can keep up."

At breakfast early next morning Vimes noticed that the other guests were keeping so far away from him that they were holding on to the walls.

"The men who went out came back around midnight, sir," said Cheery quietly.

"Did they catch anyone?"

"Um... sort of, sir. They found seven dead bodies."

"Seven?"

"They think some others might have got away where there"s a path up the rocks."

"But, seven? Detritus got one, and... I got one, and a couple were wounded, and Inigo got... one..." Vimes"s voice tailed off.

He stared at Inigo Skimmer, who was sitting on the other side of the room at a crowded public table. The places around Vimes and Lady Sybil were deserted; Sybil had put it down to deference. The little man was eating soup in a little neat self-contained world among the waving arms and intrusive elbows. He"d even tucked a napkin under his chin.

"They were... very dead, sir," Cheery whispered.

"Well, that was... interesting," said Sybil, wiping her mouth delicately. "I"ve never had soup with sausages in it for breakfast before. What is it called, Cheery?"

"Fatsup, your ladyship," said Cheery. "It means "fat soup". We"re close to the Schmaltzberg fat layers now, and, well, it"s nourishing and keeps out the cold."

"How very interesting." Lady Sybil looked at her husband. He hadn"t taken his eyes off Inigo.

The door opened and Detritus ducked inside, banging snow off his knuckles. hing about fires, Vimes had once observed, was that only an idiot got between them and a troll holding a 2,000 lb crossbow. All Hell hadn"t been let loose. It was merely Detritus. But from a few feet away you couldn"t tell the difference.

Another figure reached for the door of the second coach just before Vimes fired out of the darkness and hit his shoulder with a butcher"s sound. Then Inigo dived out through the window, rolled with unclerk-like grace as he hit the ground, rose in front of one of the bandits and brought his hand around, edge first, on the man"s neck.

Vimes had seen this trick before. Usually it just made people angry. Occasionally it managed an incapacitating blow.

He"d never seen it remove a head.

"Everybody stop!"

Sybil was pushed out of the coach. Behind her a man stepped out. He was holding a crossbow.

"Your Grace Vimes!" he shouted. The word bounced back and forth between the cliffs.

"I know you"re here, Your Grace Vimes! And here is your lady! And there are many of us! Come out, Your Grace Vimes!"

Flakes of snow hissed over the fires.

There was a whisper in the air followed by a second smack of steel into muscle. One of the hooded figures collapsed into the mud, clutching at its leg.

Inigo got slowly to his feet. The man holding the crossbow appeared not to notice.

"It is like chess, Your Grace Vimes! We have disarmed the troll and the dwarf! And I have the queen! And if you shoot at me can you be sure I won"t have time to fire?"

Firelight glowed on the twisted trees bordering the road.