The Fifth Elephant (Discworld 24)

There was some more silence.

"Is anyone going to tell me something?" said Vimes.

"My family are trying to upset the coronation," said Angua. "They"re working with some dwarfs that don"t want - that want to keep Uberwald separate."

"I think I"ve worked that one out. Running for your life through a freezing cold forest gives you a bit of an insight."

"I have to tell you, sir, my brother killed the clacks signallers. His scent"s all over the place up there."

Gavin made a noise in his throat.

"And another man that Gavin didn"t recognize, except that he spent a lot of time hiding in the forest and watching our castle."

"I think that might have been a man called Sleeps. One of our... agents," said Vimes.

"He did well. He managed to get to a boat a few miles downriver. Unfortunately there was a werewolf waiting in it."

"It was a waterfall that did for me," said Vimes.

"Permission to speak honestly, sir?" said Angua.

"Don"t you always?"

"They could have got you any time they liked, sir. Really they could. They wanted you to get as far as the tower before they really attacked. I expect Wolfgang thought that"d be nicely symbolic or something."

"I got three of them!"

"Yes, sir. But you wouldn"t have been able to get three of them all at once. Wolfgang was having some fun. That"s how he"s always played the game. He"s good at thinking ahead. He likes ambushes. He likes some poor soul to get within a few yards of the finish before he leaps out on them." Angua sighed. "Look, sir, I don"t want there to be trouble - "

"He"s been killing people!"

"Yes, sir. But my mother"s just a rather ignorant snob and my father"s half-gone now. He spends so much time as a wolf he hardly knows how to act human any more. They don"t live in the real world. They really think Uberwald can stay the same. There isn"t a lot up here, really, but it"s ours. Wolfgang"s a murderous idiot who thinks that werewolves were born to rule. The trouble is, sir, he hasn"t broken the lore."

"Oh, ye gods!"

"I bet he could find plenty of witnesses to say that he gave everyone the start the lore requires. That"s the rules of the game."

"And meddling with the dwarfs" affairs? He"s stolen the Scone or swapped it or... something, I haven"t worked it all out yet, but one poor dwarf"s already dead because of it! Cheery and Detritus are under arrest! Inigo is dead! Sybil"s locked up somewhere! And you"re saying it"s all Okay?"

"Things are different here, sir," said Carrot. "It wasn"t until ten years ago that they replaced trial by ordeal here with trial by lawyer, and that was only because they found that lawyers were nastier."

"I"ve got to get back to Bonk. If they"ve harmed Sybil I don"t care what the damn lore is."

"Mister Vimes! You look done in as it is!" said Carrot.

"I"ll keep going. Come on. Get some of the wolves to pull the sleigh - "

"You don"t get them to, sir. You ask Gavin if they will," said Carrot.

"Oh. Er, can you explain the situation to him?"

I"m standing in the cold in the middle of a forest, thought Vimes a moment later, watching a quite handsome young woman growling a conversation with a wolf who is watching her. This does not often happen. Not in Ankh-Morpork, anyway. It"s probably a daily occurrence up here.

Eventually six wolves allowed themselves to be harnessed, and Vimes was carried up the hill to the road.

"Stop!"

"Sir?" said Carrot.