The Fifth Elephant (Discworld 24)

There was a grunt from below as the climber slipped and recovered on the greasy wood.

H OW ARE YOU FEELING, IN YOURSELF?

"Shut up! Even if you are a hallucination!"

There must be something about werewolves he could use.

You have a second"s grace when they are changing shape, but they knew he knew that...

No weapons. That"s what he"d noticed in the castle. You always got weapons in castles. Spears, battleaxes, ridiculous suits of armour, huge old swords... Even the vampires had a few rapiers on the walls. That was because, sometimes, even vampires had to use a weapon.

Werewolves didn"t. Even Angua hesitated before reaching for a sword. To a werewolf a physical weapon would always be the second choice.

Vimes locked his legs together and swung around the branch as the werewolf came up. He caught it a blow on the ear and, as it looked up, managed another blow right on the nose.

It gave him a ringing slap and that would have ended it, except that it also pulled itself a little further up the tree and brought itself within the range of the Vimes Elbow.

It justified the capital letter. It had triumphed in a number of street fights. Vimes had learned early on in his career that the graveyards were full of people who"d read the Marquis of Fantailler. The whole idea of fighting was to stop the other bloke hitting you as soon as possible. It wasn"t to earn marks. Vimes had often fought in circumstances where being able to use the hands freely was a luxury, but it was amazing how a well-placed elbow could make a point, possibly assisted by a knee.

He drove it into the werewolf"s throat and was rewarded with a horrible noise. Then he grabbed a handful of hair and pulled, let go and slammed the palm of his hand into its face in a mad attempt to prevent it having a second to think. He couldn"t allow that - he could see the size of the man"s muscles.

The werewolf reacted instead.

There was that sudden moment of morphological inexactitude. A nose turned into a muzzle while Vimes"s fist was en route, but when the wolf opened its mouth to lunge at him two things occurred to it.

One was that it was high in a tree, not a tenable position for a shape designed for fast-paced living on the ground. The other was gravity.

"Down there it"s the lore," Vimes panted, as its paws scrabbled for purchase on the greasy branch. "But up here it"s me."

He reached up, grabbed the branch above him, and kicked down with his feet.

There was yelp, and another yelp as the wolf slid and hit the next branch down.

About halfway towards the ground it tried to change back again, combining in one falling shape all the qualities of something not good at staying in trees with something not good at landing on the ground.

"Gotcha!" screamed Vimes.

In the forest all around a howling went up.

The branch he was clinging to snapped. For a moment he hung by the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya, caught on a snag, and then their ancient fabric ripped off him and he dropped.

His progress was a little faster, since the falling werewolf had removed a lot of branches on the way down, but the landing was softer because the werewolf was just getting to its feet.

Vimes"s flailing hand grabbed a broken branch.

A weapon.

Thought more or less stopped when his fingers closed. Whatever replaced it in the pathways of his brain was gushing up from somewhere else, thousands of years old.

The werewolf struggled up and turned on him. The branch caught it across the side of the head.

Steam rose off Sir Samuel Vimes as he lurched forward, snarling incoherently. He smacked the club down again. He roared. There were no words there. It was a sound from before words. If there was any meaning in it at all it was a lament that he couldn"t cause enough pain...

The wolf whined, stumbled, rolled over... and changed.

The human extended a bleeding hand towards him in supplication. "Ple-ease..."

Vimes hesitated, club raised.