Interesting Times (Discworld 17)

primarily by that pre-eminent source of motive power in a peasant community, someone's great-grandfather, or at least someone who looked like someone's great-grandfather. Cohen had said, 'There's men here who can push a wheelbarrow for thirty miles on a bowl of millet with a bit of scum in it. What does that tell you? It tells me someone's porking all the beef.' Rincewind decided to explore the social dynamics and also try out the language. It had been years since he'd last used it, but he had to admit that Ridcully had been right. He did have a gift for languages Agatean was a language of few basic syllables. It was really all in the tone, inflection and context. Otherwise, the word for military leader was also the word for long- tailed marmot, male sexual organ and ancient chicken coop. 'Hey there, you!' he shouted. 'Er . . . to bend bamboo? An expression of disapproval? Er . . . I mean . . . Stop!' The barrow slewed to a halt. No-one looked at him They looked past him, or around him, or towards his feet. Eventually the wheelbarrow-pusher, in the manner of a man who knows he's in for it no matter what he does, mumbled, 'Your honour commands?' Rincewind felt very sorry, later, for what he said next. He said, 'Just give me all your food and . . . unwilling dogs, will you?' They watched him impassively. 'Damn. I mean . . . arranged beetles? . . . variety of waterfall? . . . Oh, yes . . . money.' There was a general fumbling and shifting among the passengers. Then the wheelbarrow- pusher sidled towards Rincewind, head down, and held up his hat. It contained some rice, some dried fish, a highly dangerous-looking egg. And about a pound of gold, in big round coins. Rincewind stared at the gold. Gold was as common as copper on the Counterweight Continent. That was one of the few things everyone knew about the place. There was no point in Cohen trying any kind of big robbery. There was a limit to what anyone could carry. He might as well rob one peasant village and live like a king for the rest of his life. It wouldn't be as if he'd need that much . . . The 'later' suddenly caught up with him, and he did indeed feel quite ashamed. These people had hardly anything, apart from loads of gold. 'Er. Thanks. Thank you. Yes. Just checking. Yes. You can all have it back now. I'll . . . er . . . keep . . . the elderly grandmother . . . to run sideways . . . oh, damn . . . fish.'

Rincewind had always been on the bottom of the social heap. It didn't matter what size heap it was. The top got higher or lower, but the bottom was always in the same place. But at least it was an Ankh-Morpork heap. No-one bowed to anyone in Ankh-Morpork. And anyone who tried what he'd just tried in Ankh-Morpork would, by now, be scrabbling in the gutter for his teeth and whimpering about the pain in his groin and his horse would already have been repainted twice and sold to a man who'd be swearing he'd owned it for years. He felt oddly proud of the fact. Something strange welled up from the sludgy depths of his soul. It was, to his amazement, a generous impulse. He slid off the horse and held out the reins. A horse was useful, but he was used to doing without one. Besides, over a short distance a man could run faster than a horse, and this was a fact very dear to Rince-wind's heart. 'Here,' he said. 'You can have it. For the fish.' The wheelbarrow-pusher screamed, grabbed the handles of his conveyance and hurtled desperately away. Several people were thrown off, took one almost-look at Rincewind, also screamed, and ran after him. Worse than whips, Cohen had said. They've got something here worse than whips. They don't need whips any more. Rincewind hoped he'd never find out what it was, if it had done this to people. He rode on through an endless panorama of fields There weren't even any patches of roadside scrub, or taverns. Away among the fields were shapes that might be small towns or villages, but no apparent paths to them, possibly because paths used up valuable agricultural mud. Finally he sat down on a rock that presumably not even the peasants' most concerted efforts had been able to move, and reached into his pocket for his shameful dried fish lunch. His hand touched the bundle of papers Mr Saveloy had given him. He pulled them out, and got crumbs on them. This is what it's all about, the barbarian teacher had said. He hadn't explained what 'it' was. WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAYS, said the title. It was in bad handwriting or, rather, bad painting - the Agateans wrote with paintbrushes, assembling little word pictures out of handy components. One picture wasn't just worth a thousand words, it was a thousand words. Rincewind wasn't much good at reading the language. There were very few Agatean books even in the Unseen University Library. And this one looked as though whoever had written it had been trying to make sense of something unfamiliar. He turned over a couple of pages. It was a story about a Great City, containing magnificent things - 'beer strong like an ox', it said, and 'pies containing many many parts of pig'.

Silver Horde,' said Cohen, with a touch of pride. 'What? Pardon?'

'That's their name. Got to have a name in the horde business. The Silver Horde.' Rincewind turned around. Several of the Horde had fallen asleep.

'The Silver Horde,' he said. 'Right. Matches the colour of their hair. Those that have got hair. So . . . with this . . . Silver Horde you're going to rush the city, kill all the guards and steal all the treasure?' Cohen nodded. 'Yeah . . . something like that. Of course, we won't have to kill all the guards . . .'

'Oh, no?'

'It'd take too long.'

'Yes, and of course you'll want to leave something to do tomorrow.'

'I mean they'll be busy, what with the revolution and everything.'

'A revolution too? My word.'

'They say it's a time of portents,' said Cohen. 'They—'

'I'm surprised they've got time to worry about the state of their camping equipment,' said Rincewind. 'You'd be well advised to stay along o' us,' said Ghenghiz Cohen. 'You'll be safer with us.'

'Oh, I'm not sure about that,' said Rincewind, grinning horribly. 'I'm not sure about that at all.' By myself, he thought, only ordinary horrible things can happen to me. Cohen shrugged, and then stared around the clearing until his gaze lighted on a slight figure who was sitting a little apart from the rest, reading a book. 'Look at him,' he said, benevolently, like a man pointing out a dog doing a good trick. 'Always got his nose in a book.' He raised his voice. 'Teach? Come and show this wizard the way to Hunghung.' He turned back to Rincewind. 'Teach'll tell you anything you want to know, 'cos he knows everything. I'll leave you with him. I've got to go and have a talk with Old Vincent.' He waved a hand dis-missively. 'Not that there's anything wrong with him, at all,' he said defiantly. 'It's just that his memory's bad. We had a bit of trouble on the way over. I keep telling him, it's rape the women and set fire to the houses.'

'Rape?' said Rincewind. 'That's not very—'

'He's eighty-seven,' said Cohen. 'Don't go and spoil an old man's dreams.' Teach turned out to be a tall, stick-like man with an amiably absent-minded expression and a fringe of white hair so that, when viewed from above, he would appear to be a daisy. He certainly did not appear to be a bloodthirsty brigand, even though he was wearing a chain- mail vest slightly too big for him and a huge scabbard strapped across his back, which

contained no sword but held a variety of scrolls and brushes. His chain-mail shirt had a breast pocket with three different coloured pens in a leather pocket protector. 'Ronald Saveloy,' he said, shaking Rincewind's hand. 'The gentlemen do rather assume considerable knowledge on my part. Let me see . . . You want to go to Hunghung, yes?' Rincewind had been thinking about this. 'I want to know the way to Hunghung,' he said guardedly. 'Yes. Well. At this time of year I'd head towards the setting sun until I left the mountains and reached the alluvial plain where you'll see evidence of drumlins and some quite fine examples of obviously erratic boulders. It's about ten miles.' Rincewind stared at him. A brigand's directions were usually more on the lines of 'keep straight or past the burning city and turn right when you've passed all the citizens hanging up by their ears'. 'Those drumlins sound dangerous,' he said. 'They're just a type of post-glacial hill,' said Mr Saveloy. 'What about these erratic boulders? They sound like the kind of thing that'd pounce on—'

'Just boulders dropped a long way from home by a glacier,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Nothing to worry about. The landscape is not hostile.' Rincewind didn't believe him. He'd had the ground hit him very hard many times. 'However,' said Mr Saveloy, 'Hunghung is a little dangerous at the moment.'

'No, really?' said Rincewind wearily. 'It's not exactly a siege. Everyone's waiting for the Emperor to die. These are what they call here' - he smiled - 'interesting times.'

'I hate interesting times.' The other Horders had wandered off, fallen asleep again or were complaining to one another about their feet. The voice of Cohen could be heard somewhere in the distance: 'Look, this is a match, and this is—'

'You know, you sound a very educated man for a barbarian,' said Rincewind. 'Oh, dear me, I didn't start out a barbarian. I used to be a school teacher. That's why they call me Teach.'

'What did you teach?'

'Geography. And I was very interested in Auriental[15] studies. But I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.'

'After being a teacher all your life?'

'It did mean a change of perspective, yes.'

'But. . . well. . . surely . .. the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death . . .' Mr Saveloy brightened up. 'Oh, you've been a teacher, have you?' Rincewind looked around when someone shouted. He turned, to see two of the Horde arguing nose to nose. Mr Saveloy sighed. 'I'm trying to teach them chess,' he said. 'It's vital to the understanding of the Auriental mind. But I am afraid they have no concept of taking turns at moving, and their idea of an opening gambit is for the King and all the pawns to rush up the board together and set fire to the opposing rooks.' Rincewind leaned closer. 'Look, I mean . . . Ghenghiz Cohen?' he said. 'Has he gone off his head? I mean . . . just killing half a dozen geriatric priests and nicking some paste gems, yes. Attacking forty thousand guards all by himself is certain death!'

'Oh, he won't be by himself,' said Mr Saveloy. Rincewind blinked. There was something about Cohen. People caught optimism off him as though it was the common cold. 'Oh, yes. Of course. Sorry. I'd forgotten that. Seven against forty thousand? I shouldn't think you'll have any problems. I'll just be going. Fairly quickly, I think.'

'We have a plan. It's a sort of—' Mr Saveloy hesitated. His eyes unfocused slightly. 'You know? Thing. Bees do it. Wasps, too. Also some jellyfish, I believe . . . Had the word only a moment ago . . . er. It's going to be the biggest one ever, I think.' Rincewind gave him another blank stare. 'I'm sure I saw a spare horse,' he said. 'Let me give you this,' said Mr Saveloy. 'Then perhaps you'll understand. It's what it's all about, really . . .' He handed Rincewind a small bundle of papers fastened together by a loop of string through one corner. Rincewind, shoving it hastily into his pocket, noticed only the title on the first page. It said:

WHAT I DID ON MY HOLIDAYS The choices seemed very clear to Rincewind. There was the city of Hunghung, under siege, apparently throbbing with revolution and danger, and there was everywhere else. Therefore it was important to know where Hunghung was so that he didn't blunder into it by accident. He paid a lot of attention to Mr Saveloy's instructions, and then rode the other way. He could get a ship somewhere. Of course, the wizards would be surprised to see him back, but he could always say there'd been no-one in. The hills gave way to scrubland which in turn led down to an apparently endless damp plain which contained, in the misty distance, a river so winding that half the time it must have been flowing backwards. The land was a chequerboard of cultivation. Rincewind liked the countryside in theory, providing it wasn't rising up to meet him and was for preference happening on the far side of a city wall, but this was hardly countryside. It was more like one big, hedge-less farm. Occasional huge rocks, looking dangerously erratic, rose out of the fields. Sometimes he'd see people hard at work in the distance. As far as he could tell, their chief activity was moving mud around. Occasionally he'd see a man standing ankle deep in a flooded field holding a water buffalo on the end of a length of string. The buffalo grazed and occasionally moved its bowels. The man held the string. It seemed to be his entire goal and occupation in life. There were a few other people on the road. Usually they were pushing wheelbarrows loaded with water buffalo dung or, possibly, mud. They didn't pay any attention to Rincewind. In fact they made a point of not paying attention; they scurried past staring intently at the scenes of mud dynamics or bovine bowel movement happening in the fields. Rincewind would be the first to admit that he was a slow thinker.[16] But he'd been around long enough to spot the signs. These people weren't paying him any attention because they didn't see people on horseback. They were probably descended from people who learned that if you look too hard at anyone on horseback you receive a sharp stinging sensation such as might be obtained by a stick around the ear. Not looking up at people on horseback had become hereditary. People who stared at people on horseback in what was considered to be a funny way never survived long enough to breed. He decided to try an experiment. The next wheelbarrow that trundled past was carrying not mud but people, about half a dozen of them, on seats either side of the huge central wheel. The method of propulsion was secondarily by a small sail erected to catch the wind but

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