Carpe Jugulum (Discworld 23)

'There's three of us?' said Oats.

Agnes felt her left arm tremble. Against every effort of will her wrist bent, her palm curled up and she felt two fingers straining to unfold. Only Nanny Ogg noticed.

'Like having your own chaperon all the time, ain't it?' she said.

'What was she talking about?' said Oats, as they headed for the castle.

'Her mind's wandering,' said Agnes, loudly.

There were covered ox-carts rumbling up the street to the castle. Agnes and Oats stood to one side and watched them.

The drivers didn't seem interested in the bystanders. They wore drab, ill-fitting clothing, but an unusual touch was the scarf each one had wrapped around his neck so tightly that it might have been a bandage.

'Either there's a plague of sore throats in Uberwald or there will be nasty little puncture wounds under those, I'll bet,' said Agnes.

'Er... I do know a bit about the way they're supposed to control people,' said Oats.

'Yes?'

'It sounds silly, but it was in an old book.'

'Well?'

'They find single-minded people easier to control.'

'Single-minded?' said Agnes suspiciously. More carts rolled past.

'It doesn't sound right, I know. You'd think strongminded people would be harder to affect. I suppose a big target is easier to hit. In some of the villages, apparently, vampire hunters get roaring drunk first. Protection, you see? You can't punch fog.'

So we're fog? said Perdita. So's he, by the look of him...

Agnes shrugged. There was a certain bucolic look to the faces of the cart drivers. Of course, you got that in Lancre too, but in Lancre it was overlaid by a mixture of guile, common sense and stubborn rock-headedness. Here the eyes behind the faces had a switched-off look.

Like cattle, said Perdita.

'Yes,' said Agnes.

'Pardon?' said Oats.

'Just thinking aloud...'

And she thought of the way one man could so easily control a herd of cows, any one of which could have left him as a small damp depression in the ground had it wanted to. Somehow, they never got around to thinking about it.

Supposing they are better than us, she thought. Supposing that, compared to them, we're just-

You're too close to the castle! snapped Perdita. You're thinking cow thoughts.

Then Agnes realized that there was a squad of men marching behind the carts. They didn't look at all like the carts' drivers.

And these, said Perdita, are the cattle prods.

They had uniforms, of a sort, with the black and white crest of the Magpyrs, but they weren't a body of men that looked smart in a uniform. They looked very much like men who killed other people for money, and not even for a lot of money. They looked, in short, like men who'd cheerfully eat a puppy sandwich. Several of them leered at Agnes when they went past, but it was only a generic leer that was simply leered on the basis that she had a dress on.

More wagons came up behind them.

'Nanny Ogg says you must take time by the foreskin,' Agnes said, and darted forward as the last wagon rumbled past.

'She does?'