Nanny Ogg nudged Casanunda.
“Go on, answer the nice gentleman.”
Casanunda swallowed.
“Blimey,” he said, “you don't half look like your picture.”
In a narrow little valley a few miles away a party of elves had found a nest of young rabbits which, in conjunction with a nearby antheap, kept them amused for a while.
Even the meek and blind and voiceless have gods.
Heme the Hunted, god of the chased, crept through the bushes and wished fervently that gods had gods.
The elves had their backs to him as they hunkered down to watch closely.
Heme the Hunted crawled under a clump of bramble, tensed, and sprang.
He sank his teeth in an elfs calf until they met, and was flung away as it screamed and turned.
He dropped and ran.
That was the problem. He wasn't built to fight, there was not an ounce of predator in him. Attack and run, that was the only option.
And elves could run faster.
He bounced over logs and skidded through drifts of leaves, aware even as his vision fogged that elves were overtaking him on either side, pacing him, waiting for him to . . .
The leaves exploded. The little god was briefly aware of a fanged shape, all arms and vengeance. Then there were a couple of disheveled humans, one of them waving an iron bar around its head.
Heme didn't wait to see what happened next. He dived through the apparition's legs and ran on, but a distant war-cry echoed in his long, floppy ears:
“Why, certainly, I'll have your whelk! How do we do it? Volume!”
Nanny Ogg and Casanunda walked in silence back to the cave entrance and the flight of steps. Finally, as they stepped out into the night air, the dwarf said, “Wow.”
“It leaks out even up here,” said Nanny. “Very mackko place, this.”
“But I mean, good grief-”
“He's brighter than she is. Or more lazy,” said Nanny. “He's going to wait it out.”
“But he was-”
“They can look like whatever they want, to us,” said Nanny. “We see the shape we've given 'em.” She let the rock drop back, and dusted off her hands.
“But why should he want to stop her?”
“Well, he's her husband, after all. He can't stand her. It's what you might call an open marriage.”
“Wait what out?” said Casanunda, looking around to see if there were anymore elves.
“Oh, you know,” said Nanny, waving a hand. “All this iron and books and clockwork and universities and reading and suchlike. He reckons it'll all pass, see. And one day it'll all be over, and people'll look up at the skyline at sunset and there he'll be.”
Casanunda found himself turning to look at the sunset beyond the mound, half-imagining the huge figure outlined against the afterglow.
“One day he'll be back,” said Nanny softly “When even the iron in the head is rusty”
Casanunda put his head on one side. You don't move around among a different species for most of your life without learning to read a lot of their body language, especially since it's in such large print.