The Fifth Elephant (Discworld 24)

"No. I wasn"t a threat. And you heard his voice. I hear that sort of voice a lot. He"s not going to shoot people too soon and spoil the fun. I can assume that you have not got a contract on me?"

"That is correct."

"And you"d still swear to that?"

"On my honour as an assassin."

"Yes," said Vimes. "That"s where I hit a difficulty, of course. And, I don"t know how to put this, Inigo, but you don"t act like a typical assassin. Lord this, Sir that... The Guild is the school for gentlemen but you - and gods know I don"t mean any offence here - are not exactly - "

Inigo touched his forelock. "Scholarship boy, sir," he said.

My gods yes, thought Vimes. You can find your average, amateur killers on every street. They"re mostly deranged or drunk or some poor woman who"s had a hard day and the husband has raised his hand once too often and suddenly twenty years of frustration takes over. Killing a stranger without malice or satisfaction, other than the craftsman"s pride in a job well done, is such a rare talent that armies spend months trying to instil it into their young soldiers. Most people will shy away from killing people they haven"t been introduced to.

The Guild had to have one or two people like Inigo. Didn"t some philosophical bastard once say that a government needed butchers as well as shepherds? He indicated the little crossbow. "All right, take it," he said. "But you can put the word about that if I ever, ever see one on the street the owner will find it put where the sun does not shine."

"Ah," said Inigo, "that"s the amusingly named place in Lancre, isn"t it? It"s only about fifty miles from here, I believe. Mhm, mhm."

"Rest assured that I can find a short-cut."

Gaspode tried blowing in Carrot"s ear again.

"Time to wake up," he growled.

Carrot opened his eyes, blinked the snow out of them, and then tried to move.

"You just lie still, right?" said Gaspode. "If it helps, try thinking of them as a very heavy eiderdown."

Carrot struggled feebly. The wolves piled on top of him shifted position.

"Warming you up a treat," said Gaspode, grinning nervously. "A wolf blanket, see? O"course, you"re going to be a bit whiffy for a while, but better to be itchy than dead, eh?" He scratched an ear industriously with a hind leg. One of the wolves growled at him. "Sorry. Grub"ll be up in a moment."

"Food?" muttered Carrot.

Angua appeared in Carrot"s vision, dressed in a leather shirt and leggings. She stood looking down at him, hands on her hips. To Gaspode"s amazement, Carrot actually managed to push himself up on his elbows, dislodging several wolves.

"You were tracking us?" he said.

"No, they were," said Angua. "They thought you were a bloody fool. I heard it on the howl. And they were right! You haven"t eaten anything for three days! And up here winter doesn"t drop a few hints over a month or so. It turns up in one night! Why were you so stupid?"

Gaspode looked around the clearing. Angua had rekindled the fire. Gaspode wouldn"t have believed it if he hadn"t seen it, but actual wolves had dragged in actual fallen wood for her. And then another had turned up with a small deer, still fat after the autumn. He dribbled at the smell of it roasting.

Something human and complicated was going on between Carrot and Angua. It sounded like an argument but it didn"t smell like one. Anyway, recent events all made perfect sense to Gaspode. The female ran away and the male chased her. That"s how it went. Actually, it was usually about twenty males of all sizes, but obviously, Gaspode conceded, things were a bit different for humans. Pretty soon, he reckoned, Carrot would notice the big male wolf sitting by the fire. And then the fur would fly. Humans, eh?

Gaspode wasn"t sure of his own ancestry. There was some terrier, and a touch of spaniel, and probably someone"s leg, and an awful lot of mongrel. But he took it as an article of faith that there was in all dogs a tiny bit of wolf, and his was urgently sending messages that the wolf by the fire was one you didn"t even stare directly at.

It wasn"t that the wolf was obviously vicious. He didn"t need to be. Even sitting still he radiated the assurance of competent power. Gaspode was, if not the victor, then at least the survivor of many a street fight, and as such would not have gone against this animal even if backed up by a couple of lions and a man with an axe.

Instead he sidled over to a female wolf who was watching the fire haughtily.

"Yo, bitch," he said.

"Vot vas zat?"

Gaspode reconsidered his strategy. "Hi, foxy... er... wolf lady," he tried.

A certain lowering of the temperature suggested that this one hadn"t worked either.

"ullo, miss," he said hopefully.