The Fifth Elephant (Discworld 24)

So, what were his options? Well, he could stay in the tree and die, or run for it and die. Of the two, dying in one piece seemed better.

Y OU"RE DOING VERY WELL FOR A MAN OF YOUR AGE.

Death was sitting on a higher branch of the tree.

"Are you following me or what?"

A RE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE WORDS "DEATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION"?

"But I don"t usually see you!"

P OSSIBLY YOU ARE IN A STATE OF HEIGHTENED AWARENESS CAUSED BY LACK OF FOOD, SLEEP AND BLOOD?

"Are you going to help me?"

W ELL... . Y ES .

"When?"

E R, WHEN THE PAIN IS TOO MUCH TO BEAR . Death hesitated, and then went on. E VEN AS I SAY IT I REALIZE THAT THIS ISN"T THE ANSWER YOU WERE LOOKING FOR, HOWEVER.

The sun was near the horizon now, getting big and red.

Racing the sun... That was another Uberwald sport, wasn"t it? Be home safe before the sun sets.

Half a mile or more, through deep snow on rising ground.

Someone was climbing up the tree. He felt it shake. He looked down. In the cold blue gloom a naked man was quietly pulling himself from branch to branch.

Vimes was enraged. They weren"t supposed to do this!

There was a grunt from below as the climber slipped and recovered on the greasy wood.

H OW ARE YOU FEELING, IN YOURSELF?

"Shut up! Even if you are a hallucination!"

There must be something about werewolves he could use.

You have a second"s grace when they are changing shape, but they knew he knew that...

No weapons. That"s what he"d noticed in the castle. You always got weapons in castles. Spears, battleaxes, ridiculous suits of armour, huge old swords... Even the vampires had a few rapiers on the walls. That was because, sometimes, even vampires had to use a weapon.

Werewolves didn"t. Even Angua hesitated before reaching for a sword. To a werewolf a physical weapon would always be the second choice.

Vimes locked his legs together and swung around the branch as the werewolf came up. He caught it a blow on the ear and, as it looked up, managed another blow right on the nose.

It gave him a ringing slap and that would have ended it, except that it also pulled itself a little further up the tree and brought itself within the range of the Vimes Elbow.

It justified the capital letter. It had triumphed in a number of street fights. Vimes had learned early on in his career that the graveyards were full of people who"d read the Marquis of Fantailler. The whole idea of fighting was to stop the other bloke hitting you as soon as possible. It wasn"t to earn marks. Vimes had often fought in circumstances where being able to use the hands freely was a luxury, but it was amazing how a well-placed elbow could make a point, possibly assisted by a knee.

He drove it into the werewolf"s throat and was rewarded with a horrible noise. Then he grabbed a handful of hair and pulled, let go and slammed the palm of his hand into its face in a mad attempt to prevent it having a second to think. He couldn"t allow that - he could see the size of the man"s muscles.

The werewolf reacted instead.

There was that sudden moment of morphological inexactitude. A nose turned into a muzzle while Vimes"s fist was en route, but when the wolf opened its mouth to lunge at him two things occurred to it.

One was that it was high in a tree, not a tenable position for a shape designed for fast-paced living on the ground. The other was gravity.