The Shepherd's Crown (Discworld 41)

He smiled and said, ‘Aye, we kenned this would be a tricky job.’

‘Good job I wuz with ye this time,’ came a voice. It was Wee Mad Arthur, a Feegle who didn’t mind washing, due to his having been raised by a bunch of cobblers, and then being a polisman in the big city. Wee Mad Arthur, Tiffany often thought, had a battle raging inside him between his Feegle half and the city half, but since every Feegle liked a good punch-up, well, a fight inside yourself was just an extra treat.

Big Yan pushed Wee Mad Arthur aside and said, ‘We dinnae mind helping old bigjobs and getting them squeaky clean, but we are the Feegles and we treasure our dirt. Washing makes a Feegle wither awa’. We cannae abide the soap, ye ken.’

‘Nae me, Rob. Nae me,’ came a happy voice and Daft Wullie fell off the wall of the goat paddock. Bubbles floated away on the air as he rolled across the grass.

‘I’ve told ye about that, Wullie,’ Rob snapped. ‘It just makes bubbles come out of your ears.’

Tiffany laughed. ‘Well, you could make your own soap, Wullie. Make some for Jeannie. Take a wee present home to your kelda. It’s easy to make – you just need some fat and some lye.’

‘Och aye, we’re good liars, we are,’ Rob put in proudly. ‘Famed for it, ye ken.’

Well, I tried, thought Tiffany. And anyway, their spirits are pure, if not particularly clean.

Down on the Chalk, at the edge of a dark forest on the top of a hill overlooking Twoshirts, a small town with growing aspirations of being a bit more than one store, a coaching inn and a blacksmith’s shop, the Queen of the Elves smiled in satisfaction.

It was a warm night and the air smelled as it always did, and the sky looked as it always did. There appeared to be a new road or stream into the town which glimmered in the moonlight, but otherwise things seemed just as they had been on her last visit.

She turned to look at her goblin prisoner, who was perched with his hands bound on the saddle behind one of her guards. She smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile. She would hand him over to Lord Lankin, she thought. The elf would enjoy tearing the wretched goblin limb from limb – after he had had his pleasure playing with his prey, of course.

But first, this goblin filth had led them here – to this hillside. The Queen and her raiding party looked down at the sleeping valley ahead. Her warriors wore scraps of fur and leather, feathers tucked into headbands and dangling around their necks – and they carried bows with the arrows already nocked.

The gate between the worlds had given them very little trouble in the end. It had not taken much effort for the stronger elves to push through – the barrier was, indeed, very weak just now. Before, the old witch would surely have kept it strong, kept them out. For she had been always on the watch for the fairy folk.

Animals noticed them too. At the very moment the Queen stepped onto the Chalk, the hares on the downs had turned and frozen, whilst the owls out hunting had soared higher, sensing the unwelcome presence of another predator.

Humans, however, were usually the last to notice anything. Which made them so much more fun . . .

Apart from a glow above a mound on the hillside and a distant noise of roistering that the Queen recognized as being the usual sounds of the Nac Mac Feegle, there had been nothing so far to trouble the first elf incursion into the Discworld for many years, and the elves had begun to enjoy themselves. They had caroused through a couple of villages, letting out cows, upturning carts, turning the milk in the churns sour, spoiling a cask of ale and generally amusing themselves with such trifles. But the growing little town below promised all sorts of entertainment for elves who had been denied the pleasures of a raid for far too long.

Apart from the delicate tinkling of myriad bells attached to the harnesses of the raiding party’s black horses, there was silence as the elves waited for their Queen to give the signal.

She raised her arm.

But before she could do anything, suddenly, screaming through the air, there came a noise as though someone was killing a gigantic pig.

It was a sound which enveloped the whole of the Chalk. A screaming whistle which screeched around the hills, setting everyone’s teeth on edge. Down in the valley, the air now seemed to be full of fire as a huge iron monster tore along the silvery trail towards the town, clouds of steam marking its path.

The elves reeled, panic spreading rapidly from elf to elf as they shrank from the noise. From the sound. From the very scent of iron in the air.

Nonchalantly Of the Lathe the Swarf jumped down from the saddle, used his teeth to steal a stone knife from the guard, whose hands were now covering his pointy ears in an effort to block out the sound, and swiftly sliced through his bonds.

‘Told you. Iron Horse, that is,’ he said importantly. ‘Last train into Twoshirts is that. That’s where goblins work. With steel and iron.’

The Queen hadn’t flinched. She knew that. Some of the others had, but she could deal with them later – no elf should show fear in front of his queen. But in her mind, she thought: Train? It’s big. It’s iron, and we don’t know about it. And what we don’t know about it could get us killed. ‘How can we tame it?’ she demanded. ‘More importantly, can we make it ours? What grief we could make with something like that!’

Peaseblossom – a calm Peaseblossom, seemingly impervious to the general sense of terror among the elves – was at her elbow and smiled; a smile the Queen didn’t like. It cut through the dramatic style of the face he had chosen to wear, his eyes cold and merciless. He said, ‘We can torment the goblins until they tell us how to control it. Then they can do it for us.’

‘They won’t,’ said Of the Lathe the Swarf, giving Peaseblossom a dirty look. ‘Why should they?’

Peaseblossom reached down to grab the goblin, and Of the Lathe the Swarf reacted quickly, thrusting his small hands into his pockets and throwing a shower of silvery scraps over the elf. Peaseblossom screamed in pain as he fell from his horse.

The goblin laughed as the other elves hastily backed away. ‘Forgot what’s in my pockets, Mr Pee-pee flower? Told you about swarf, I did. Part of my name. Hurts, does it? Touch clever goblin these days, nasty things happens. Especially to elves.’ He pointed down at Peaseblossom, whose glamour had completely deserted him under the onslaught of the shower of iron filings.

The elf lay writhing on the grass, a small, weak, pathetic creature, crying from the pain.

‘Funny, no?’ said the goblin. ‘In this new world, little things like swarf – and goblins – do matter.’