Interesting Times (Discworld 17)

'It's S'ang Dynasty,' said Mr Saveloy. 'That's right,' said the vase. 'That's a S'ang Dynasty, that is! Put it back! And you lot back there—' He turned and waved his sword. 'Get those shoes off! You're scratching the floor! Look at the state of it already!'

'You never bothered about the floor yesterday,' Truckle grumbled. '

'Tweren't my floor then.'

'Yes, it was,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Not properly,' said Cohen. 'Rite of conquest, that's the thing. Blood. People understand blood. You just walk in and take over and no-one takes it seriously. But seas of blood . . . Everyone understands that.'

'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle approvingly. 'Look at history,' said Cohen. 'Whenever you - Hey, you, the man with the hat, that's my . . .'

'Inlaid mahogany Shibo Yangcong-san table,' murmured Mr Saveloy. '—so put it back, d'you hear? Yes, whenever you comes across a king where everyone says, “Oo, he was a good king all right,” you can bet your sandals he was a great big bearded

bastard who broke heads a lot and laughed about it. Hey? But some king who just passed decent little laws and read books and tried to look intelligent . . . “Oh,” they say, “oh, he was all right, a bit wet, not what I'd call a proper king.” That's people for you.' Mr Saveloy sighed. Cohen grinned at him and slapped him on the back so hard he stumbled into two women trying to carry off a bronze statue of Ly Tin Wheedle. 'Can't quite face it, Teach, can you? Can't get your mind round it? Don't worry about it. Basically, you ain't a barbarian. Put the damn statue back, missus, or you'll feel the flat of my sword, so you will!'

'But I thought we could do it without anyone getting hurt. By using our brains.'

'Can't. History don't work like that. Blood first, then brains.'

'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle. 'There's got to be a better way than fighting,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Yep. Lots of 'em. Only none of 'em work. Caleb, take those . . . those . . .'

'—fine Bhong jade miniatures—' muttered Mr Saveloy. '—take them off that feller. He's got one under his hat.' Another set of carved doors was swung open. This room was already crowded, but the people shuffled backwards as the doors parted and tried to look keen while avoiding catching Cohen's eye. As they pulled away they left Six Beneficent Winds standing all alone. The court had become very good at this manoeuvre. 'Mountains of skulls,' said Truckle, not a man to let go in a hurry. 'Er. We saw the Red Army rise out of the ground, er, just as the legend foretold. Er. Truly you are the preincarnation of One Sun Mirror.' The little taxman had the decency to look embarrassed. As speeches went it was on a dramatic level with the one that traditionally began, 'As you know, your father - the king—' Besides, he'd never believed in legends up to now - not even the one about the peasant who every year filed a scrupulously honest tax return. 'Yeah, right,' said Cohen. He strode to the throne and stuck his sword in the floor, where it vibrated. 'Some of you are going to get your heads cut off for your own good,' he said. 'But I haven't decided who yet. And someone show Boy Willie where the privy is.'

'No need,' said Boy Willie. 'Not after them big red statues turned up behind me so sudden.'

'Mountains of—' Truckle began. 'Dunno about mountains,' said Cohen. 'And where,' said Six Beneficent Winds tremulously, 'is the Great Wizard?'

'Great Wizard,' said Cohen. 'Yes, the Great Wizard who summoned the Red Army from the earth,' said the taxman. 'Don't know anything about him,' said Cohen. The crowd staggered forward as more people piled into the room. 'They're coming!' A terracotta warrior clomped its way into the room, its face still wearing a very faint smile. It stopped, rocking a little, while water dripped off it. People had crouched back in terror. Except the Horde, Mr Saveloy noticed. Faced with unknown yet terrible dangers, the Horde were either angry or puzzled. Then he cheered up. They weren't better, just different. They're all right facing huge terrible creatures, he told himself, but ask them to go down the street and buy a bag of rice and they go all to pieces . . . 'What's my move now, Teach?' Cohen whispered. 'Well, you're Emperor,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I think you talk to it.'

'OK.' Cohen stood up and nodded cheerfully at the terracotta giant. '

'Morning,' he said. 'Nice bit of work out there. You and the rest of your lads can have the day off to plant geraniums in yourselves or whatever you do. Er. You got a Number One giant I ought to speak to?' The terracotta warrior creaked as it raised one finger. Then it pressed two fingers against one forearm, then raised a finger again. Everyone in the crowd started talking at once. The giant tugged one vestigial ear with two fingers. 'What can this mean?' said Six Beneficent Winds.

'I find this a little hard to credit,' said Mr Saveloy, 'but it is an ancient method of communication used in the land of blood-sucking vampire ghosts.'

'You can understand it?'

'Oh, yes. I think so. You have to try to guess the word or phrase. It's trying to tell us . . . er . . . one word, two syllables. First syllable sounds like . . .' The giant cupped one hand and made circular, handle-turning motions with the other alongside it. 'Turning,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Winding? Reeling? Revolve? Grind? Grind? Chop? Mince—' The giant tapped its nose hurriedly and did a very heavy, noisy dance, bits of terracotta armour clanking. 'Sounds like mince,' said Mr Saveloy. 'First syllable sounds like mince.'

'Er . . .' A ragged figure pushed its way through the crowd. It wore glasses, one lens of which was cracked. 'Er,' it said, 'I've got an idea about that . . .' Lord Fang and some of his more trusted warriors had clustered on the side of the hills. A good general always knows when to leave the battlefield, and as far as Lord Fang was concerned, it was when he saw the enemy coming towards him. The men were shaken. They hadn't tried to face the Red Army. Those who had were dead. 'We . . . regroup,' panted Lord Fang. 'And then we'll wait until nightfall and - What's that?' There was a rhythmic noise coming from the bushes further up the slope, where sliding earth had left another bush-filled ravine. 'Sounds like a carpenter, m'lord,' said one of the soldiers. 'Up here? In the middle of a war? Go and see what it is!' The man scrambled away. After a while there was a pause in the sawing noise. Then it started again. Lord Fang had been trying to work out a fresh battle plan according to the Nine Useful Principles. He threw down his map. 'Why is that still going on? Where is Captain Nong?'

'Hasn't come back, m'lord.'

'Then go and see what has happened to him!' Lord Fang tried to remember if the great military sage had ever had anything to say about fighting giant invulnerable statues. He— The sawing paused. Then it was replaced by the sound of hammering. Lord Fang looked around. 'Can I have an order obeyed around here?' he bellowed. He picked up his sword and scrambled up the muddy slope. The bushes parted ahead of him. There was a clearing. There was a rushing shape, on hundreds of little le— There was a snap. The rain was coming down so fast that the drops were having to queue. The red earth was hundreds of feet deep in places. It produced two or three crops a year. It was rich. It was fecund. It was, when wet, extremely sticky. The surviving armies had squelched from the field of battle, as red from head to toe as the terracotta men. Not counting those merely trodden on, the Red Army had not in fact killed very many people. Terror had done most of their work. Rather more soldiers had been killed in the brief inter-army battles and, in the scramble to escape, by their own sides.[25] The terracotta army had the field to itself. It was celebrating victory in various ways. Many guards were walking around in circles, wading through the clinging mud as if it was so much dirty air. A number were digging a trench, the sides of which were washing in on them in the thundering rain. A few were trying to climb walls that weren't there. Several, possibly as a result of the exertion following centuries of zero maintenance, had spontaneously exploded in a shower of blue sparks, the red-hot clay shrapnel being a major factor in the opposition's death count. And all the time the rain fell, a solid curtain of water. It didn't look natural. It was as though the sea had decided to reclaim the land by air drop. Rincewind shut his eyes. Mud covered the armour. He couldn't make out the pictures any more, and that was something of a relief because he was pretty certain he was messing things up. You could see what any warrior was seeing - at least, presumably you could, if you knew what some of the odder pictures actually did and how to press them in the right order. Rincewind didn't, and in any case whoever had made the magic armour hadn't assumed it would be used in knee-deep mud during a vertical river. Every now and again it sizzled. One of the boots was getting hot.

It had started out so well! But there had been what he was coming to think of as the Rincewind factor. Probably some other wizard would have marched the army out and wouldn't have been rained on and even now would be parading through the streets of Hung- hung while people threw flowers and said, 'My word, there's a Great Wizard and no mistake.' Some other wizard wouldn't have pressed the wrong picture and started the things digging. He realized he was wallowing in self-pity. Rather more pertinently, he was also wallowing in mud. And he was sinking. Trying to pull a foot out was no use - it didn't work, and the other foot only went deeper, and got hotter. Lightning struck the ground nearby. He heard it sizzle, saw the steam, felt the tingle of electricity and tasted the taste of burning tin. Another bolt hit a warrior. Its torso exploded, raining a sticky black tar. The legs kept going for a few steps, and then stopped. Water poured past him, thick and red now that the river Hung was overflowing. And the mud continued to suck on his feet like a hollow tooth. Something swirled past on the muddy water. It looked like a scrap of paper. Rincewind hesitated, then reached out awkwardly with a gloved hand and scooped it up. It was, as he'd expected, a butterfly. 'Thank you very much,' he said, bitterly. The water drained through his fingers. He half closed his hand and then sighed and, as gently as he could, manoeuvred the creature on to a finger. Its wings hung damply. He shielded it with his other hand and blew on the wings a few times. 'Go on, push off.' The butterfly turned. Its multi-faceted eyes glinted green for a moment and then it flapped its wings experimentally. It stopped raining. It started to snow, but only where Rincewind was. 'Oh, yes,' said Rincewind. 'Yes indeed. Oh, thank you so very much.' Life was, he had heard, like a bird which flies out of the darkness and across a crowded hall and then through another window into the endless night again. In Rincewind's case it had managed to do something incontinent in his dinner.

The snow stopped. The clouds pulled back from the dome of the sky with astonishing speed, letting in hot sunlight which almost immediately made the mud steam. 'There you are! We've been looking everywhere!' Rincewind tried to turn, but the mud made that impossible. There was a wooden thump, as of a plank being laid down on wet ooze. 'Snow on his head? In bright sunshine? I said to myself, that's him all right.' There was the thump of another plank. A small avalanche slid off the helmet and slid down Rincewind's neck. Another thump, and a plank squelched into the mud beside him. 'It's me, Twoflower. Are you all right, old friend?'

'I think my foot is being cooked, but apart from that I'm as happy as anything.'

'I knew it would be you doing the charades,' said Twoflower, sticking his hands under the wizard's shoulders and hauling. 'You got the “Wind” syllable?' said Rincewind. 'That was very hard to do, by remote control.'

'Oh, none of us got that,' said Twoflower, 'but when it did “ohshitohshitohshit I'm going to die” everyone got that first go. Very inventive. Er. You seem to be stuck.'

'I think it's the magic boots.'

'Can't you wiggle them off? This mud dries like - well, like terracotta in the sun. Someone can come along and dig them out afterwards.' Rincewind tried to move his feet. There was some sub-mud bubblings and he felt his feet come free, with a muffled slurping noise. Finally, with considerable effort, he was sitting on the plank. 'Sorry about the warriors,' he said. 'It looked so simple when I started out, and then I got confused with all the pictures and it was impossible to stop some of them doing things—'

'But it was a famous victory!' said Twoflower. 'Was it?'