Small Gods (Discworld 13)

“That doesn't matter now,” said Simony.

The flat tones of his voice made Urn follow the eyes of the crowd.

There was another iron turtle there-a proper model of a turtle, mounted on a sort of open gridwork of metal bars in which a couple of inquisitors were even now lighting a fire. And chained to the back of the turtle-

“Who's that?”

“Brutha.”

“What?”

“I don't know what happened. He hit Vorbis, or didn't hit him. Or something. Enraged him anyway. Vorbis stopped the ceremony, right there and then.”

Urn glanced at the deacon. Not Cenobiarch yet, so uncrowned. Among the Iams and bishops standing uncertainly in the open doorway, his bald head gleamed in the morning light.

“Come on, then,” said Urn.

“Come on what?”

“We can rush the steps and save him!”

“There's more of them than there are of us,” said Simony.

“Well, haven't there always been? There's not mag?ically more of them than there are of us just because they've got Brutha, are there?”

Simony grabbed his arm.

“Think logically, will you?” he said. “You're a phi?losopher, aren't you? Look at the crowd!”

Urn looked at the crowd.

“Well?”

“They don't like it,.” Simon turned. “Look, Brutha's going to die anyway. But this way it'll mean something. People don't understand, really under?stand, about the shape of the universe and all that stuff, but they'll remember what Vorbis did to a man. Right? We can make Brutha's death a symbol for peo?ple, don't you see?”

Urn stared at the distant figure of Brutha. It was naked, except for a loin-cloth.

“A symbol?” he said. His throat was dry.

“It has to be.”

He remembered Didactylos saying the world was a funny place. And, he thought distantly, it really was. Here people were about to roast someone to death, but they'd left his loin-cloth on, out of respectability. You had to laugh. Otherwise you'd go mad.

“You know,” he said, turning to Simony. “Now I know Vorbis is evil. He burned my city. Well, the Tsorteans do it sometimes, and we burn theirs. It's just war. It's all part of history. And he lies and cheats and claws power for himself, and lots of people do that, too. But do you know what's special? Do you know what it is?”

“Of course,” said Simony. "It's what he's doing to-

“It's what he's done to you.”

“What?”

“He turns other people into copies of himself.”

Simony's grip was like a vice. “You're saying I'm like him?”

“Once you said you'd cut him down,” said Urn. "Now you're thinking like him . . .

“So we rush them, then?” said Simony. “I'm sure of-maybe four hundred on our side. So I give the signal and a few hundred of us attack thousands of them? And he dies anyway and we die too? What difference does that make?”