Thud! (Discworld 34)

"Just as you say, sir."

A milestone flashed past. Out of the corner of his ear, Willikins heard Vimes counting under his breath until, before very long, another stone fell away behind them.

"Wizards, eh?" said Vimes weakly, staring ahead again.

"Indeed, sir," said Willikins. "May I suggest that once we are through Quirm we head straight across the grass country?"

"The roads up there are pretty bad, you know," said Vimes.

"So I believe, sir. However, that will not, in fact, matter," said the butler, not taking his eyes off the unrolling road ahead.

"Why not? If we try to go at speed over those rough-"

"I was referring obliquely, sir, to the fact that we are not precisely touching the ground any more."

Vimes, clinging with care to the rail, looked over the side. The wheels were turning idly. The road, just below them, was a blur. Ahead of them, the spirit of the horse galloped serenely onwards.

"There"s plenty of coaching inns around Quirm," he said. "We could, er, stop for lunch?"

"Late breakfast, sir! Mail coach ahead, sir! Hold tight!"

A tiny square block on the road ahead was getting bigger quite fast. Willikins twitched the reins, Vimes had a momentary vision of rearing horses, and the mail coach was a dwindling dot, soon hidden by the smoke of flaming brassicas.

"Dem milestones is goin" past real fast now," Detritus observed, in a conversational tone of voice. Behind him, Brick lay flat on the roof

of the coach with his eyes tight shut, having never before been in a world where the sky went all the way to the ground; there were brass rails around the top of the coach, and he was leaving fingerprints in them.

"Could we try braking?" said Vimes. "Look out! Haycart!"

"That only stops the wheels spinning, sir!" yelled Willikins, as the cart went by with a whoom and fell back into the distance.

"Try pulling on the reins a little!"

"At this speed, sir?"

Vimes slid back the hatch behind him. Sybil had Young Sam on her knee, and was pulling a woolly jumper over his head.

"Is everything all right, dear?" he ventured.

She looked up and smiled. "Lovely smooth ride, Sam. Aren"t we going rather fast, though?"

"Er, could you please sit with your back to the horses?" said Sam. "And hold on tight to Young Sam? It might be a bit ... bumpy."

He watched her shift seats. Then he shut the hatch and yelled to Willikins: "Now!"

Nothing seemed to happen. In Vimes"s mind, the milestones were already going zip ... zip as they flashed past.

Then the flying world slowed, while in the fields on either side hundreds of burning cabbages leapt towards the sky, trailing oily smoke. The horse of light and air disappeared and the real horses dropped gently towards the road, going from floating statues to beasts in full gallop without a stumble.

He heard a brief scream as the rear coach tore past and swerved into a field full of cauliflowers where, eventually, it squelched to a flatulent halt. And then there was stillness, except for the occasional thud of a falling cabbage. Detritus was comforting Brick, who"d not picked a good day to go cold turkey; it was turning out to be frozen roc.

A skylark, safely above cabbage range, sang in the blue sky. Below, except for the whimpering of Brick, all was silent.

Absent-mindedly, Vimes pulled a half-cooked leaf off his helmet and flicked it away.

"Well, that was fun," he said, his voice a little distant. He got down carefully and opened the coach door. "Everyone all right in here?" he said.

"Yes. Why have we stopped?" said Sybil.