They weren’t going to run until he ran, he realized. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fun.
He shrugged, turned away from the tree…and then turned back and ran. By the time he was halfway there he was afraid his heart was going to climb up his throat, but he ran on, jumped awkwardly, caught a low branch, slipped, struggled gasping to his feet, grabbed the branch again and managed to pull himself up, expecting at every second the first tiny puncture as teeth broke his skin…
He rocked on the greasy wood. The werewolves hadn’t moved, but they were watching him with interest.
“You bastards,” Vimes growled.
They got up and picked their way carefully toward the tree, without hurrying. Vimes climbed a little farther up the tree.
“Ankh-Morpork! Mister Civilized! Where are your weapons now, Ankh-Morpork?”
It was Wolfgang’s voice. Vimes peered around the snowdrifts, which were already filling up with violet shadows as the afternoon died.
“I got two of you!” he shouted.
“Yes, they will have big headaches later on! We are werewolves, Ankh-Morpork! Quite hard to stop!”
“You said that you—”
“Your Mister Sleeps could run much faster than you, Ankh-Morpork!”
“Fast enough?”
“No! And the man with the little black hat could fight better than you, too!”
“Well enough?”
“No!” shouted Wolfgang cheerfully.
Vimes growled. Even Assassins didn’t deserve that kind of death.
“It’ll be sunset soon!” he shouted.
“Yes! I lied about the sunset!”
“Well, wake me up at dawn, then. I could do with the sleep!”
“You will freeze to death, Civilized Man!”
“Good!” Vimes looked around at the other trees. Even if he could jump to one, they were all conifers, painful to land in and easy to fall out of.
“Ah, this must be the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humor, yes?”
“No, that was just irony,” Vimes shouted, still looking for an arboreal escape route. “You’ll know when we’ve got onto the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humor when I start talking about breasts and farting!”
So what were his options? Well, he could stay in the tree, and die, or run for it, and die. Of the two, dying in one piece seemed better.
YOU’RE DOING VERY WELL FOR A MAN OF YOUR AGE.
Death was sitting on a higher branch of the tree.
“Are you following me, or what?”
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE PHRASE ‘DEATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION’?
“But I don’t usually see you!”
POSSIBLY YOU ARE IN A STATE OF HEIGHTENED AWARENESS CAUSED BY LACK OF FOOD, SLEEP AND BLOOD?
“Are you going to help me?”
WELL…YES.
“When?”
ER…WHEN THE PAIN IS TOO MUCH TO BEAR. Death hesitated, and then went on, EVEN AS I SAY IT I REALIZE THAT THIS ISN’T THE ANSWER YOU WERE LOOKING FOR, HOWEVER.
The sun was near the horizon now, getting big and red.
Racing the sun…that was another Uberwald sport, wasn’t it? Be home safe before the sun sets.
Half a mile or more, through deep snow in rising ground…
Someone was climbing up the tree. He felt it shake. He looked down. In the cold blue gloom, a naked man was quietly pulling himself from branch to branch.
Vimes was enraged. They weren’t supposed to do this!
There was a grunt from below as the climber slipped and recovered on the greasy wood.
HOW 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 were 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 armor, huge old swords…Even the vampire 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 farther up the tree and brought itself in 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 a yelp, and another yelp as the wolf slid and hit the next branch down.
About halfway toward 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 toward him in supplication.
“Ple-ease…”
Vimes hesitated, club raised.
The red rage drained away.
In one movement, changing from man to wolf as it moved, the werewolf sprang.
Vimes went backward into the snow. He could feel the breath and the blood, but not the pain—
No talons ripped, no teeth tore.
And the weight was lifted. Hands pulled the body off him.
“Bit of a close one there, sir,” said a voice cheerfully. “Best not to give them any quarter, really.” There was a spear right through the werew
olf.
“Carrot?”
“We’ll get a fire going. It’s easy if you dip the wood in the fat springs first.”
“Carrot?”
“I shouldn’t think you’ve eaten. There’s not much game this close to the town, but we’ve still got some—”
“Carrot?”
“Er…yes, sir?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s all a bit complicated, sir. Here, let me help you up—”
Vimes shook him off as he tried to help him to his feet.
“I got this far, thank you, I think I’m capable of standing up,” he said, and forced his legs to support him.
“You seem to have lost your trousers, sir.”
“Yes, it’s the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humor once again,” growled Vimes.
“Only…Angua will be back soon, and…and…”
“Sergeant Angua’s family, Captain, are in the habit of running around the woods in the snow stark bol—stark naked!”
“Yes, sir, but…I mean…you know…it’s not really…”
“I’ll give you five minutes to find a clothes shop, shall I? Otherwise—Look, where the hell are all the werewolves, eh? I was expecting to drop into a heap of snarling jaws, and now you’re here, thank you very much, and there’s no werewolves!”
“Gavin’s people chased them away, sir. You must’ve heard the howl go up.”
“Gavin’s people, eh? Well, that’s good! That’s very good! I’m pleased about that! Well done, Gavin! Now…who the hell is Gavin!”
A howl went up from a distant hill.
“That’s Gavin,” said Carrot.
“A wolf? Gavin’s a wolf? I’ve been saved from werewolves by wolves?”
“It’s all right, sir. When you think about it, it’s not really any different from being saved from werewolves by people.”
“When I think about it, I think perhaps I was better off lying down,” said Vimes weakly.
“Let’s get to the sleigh, sir. I was trying to say we have got your clothes. That’s how Angua tracked you.”
Ten minutes later Vimes was sitting in front of a fire with a blanket around him, and the world seemed to make a little more sense. A slice of venison was going down well, and Vimes was far too hungry to bother much that the butcher appeared to have used his teeth.
“The wolves spy on the werewolves?” he said.
“Sort of, sir. Gavin keeps an eye on things for Angua. They’re…old friends.”
The moment of silence went on just slightly too long.
“He sounds like a very bright wolf,” said Vimes, in the absence of anything more diplomatic to say.
“More than that. Angua thinks he might be part werewolf, from way back.”
“Er…can that happen?”
“She says so. Did I tell you that he came all the way into Ankh-Morpork? A big city? Can you imagine what that must have been like?”
Vimes turned at a faint sound behind him.
A large wolf was standing at the edge of the firelight. It was looking at him intently. It wasn’t just the look of an animal, sizing him up on the level of food/threat/thing. Behind that stare, wheels were turning. And there was a small but rather proud mongrel at his side, scratching furiously.
“Is that…Gaspode?” said Vimes. “The dog that’s always hanging around the Watch House?”
“Yes, he…helped me get here,” said Carrot.
“I just don’t want to ask,” said Vimes. “Any minute now a door’s going to open in a tree and Fred and Nobby are going to step out, am I right?”
“I hope not, sir.”
Gavin lay down a short distance from the fire, and started watching Carrot.
“Captain?” said Vimes.
“Yes, sir?”
“You’ll notice I haven’t pressed you on why you’re here as well as Angua?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well?” said Vimes. And now he thought he recognized the look on Gavin’s face, even though it was on a face of an unusual shape. It was the look you got on the face of a gentlemen lounging on a corner by a bank, watching the comings and goings, seeing how the place worked…
“I was admiring your diplomacy, sir.”
“Hmm? What?” said Vimes, still staring at the wolf.
“I appreciated the way you were avoiding asking questions, sir.”
Angua walked into the firelight. Vimes saw her glance around the circle, and squat down on the snow exactly halfway between Carrot and Gavin.
“They’re miles away now. Oh…hello, Mister Vimes.”
There was some more silence.
“Is anyone going to tell me something?” said Vimes.
“My family are trying to upset the coronation,” said Angua. “They’re working with some dwarfs that don’t want—that want to keep Uberwald separate.”
“I think I’ve worked that one out. Running for your life through a freezing cold forest gives you a bit of an insight.”
“I have to tell you, sir…my brother killed the clacky signalers. His scent’s all over the place up there.”
Gavin made a noise in his throat.
“And another man that Gavin didn’t recognize, except that he spent a lot of time hiding in the forest and watching our castle.”
“I think that might have been a man called Sleeps. One of our…agents,” said Vimes.
“He did well. He managed to get to a boat a few miles downriver. Unfortunately, there was a werewolf waiting in it.”
“It was a waterfall that did it for me,” said Vimes.
“Permission to speak honestly, sir?” said Angua.
“Don’t you always?”
“They could have got you any time they liked, sir. Really they could. They wanted you to get as far as the tower before they really attacked. I expect Wolfgang thought that’d be nicely symbolic, or something.”
“I got three of them!”
“Yes, sir. But you wouldn’t have been able to get three of them all at once. Wolfgang was having some…fun. That’s how he’s always played the Game. He’s good at thinking ahead. He likes ambushes. He likes some poor soul to get within a few yards of the finish before he leaps out on them.” Angua sighed. “Look, sir, I don’t want there to be trouble—”
“He’s been killing people!”
“Yes, sir. But my mother’s just a rather ignorant snob and my father’s half-gone now, he spends so much time as a wolf he hardly knows how to act human anymore. They don’t live in the real world. They really think Uberwald can stay the same. There isn’t a lot up here, really…but it’s ours. Wolfgang’s a murderous idiot who thinks that werewolves were born to rule. The trouble is, sir…he hasn’t broken the lore.”
“Oh, ye gods!”
“I bet he could find plenty of witnesses to say that he gave everyone the start the lore requires. That’s the rules of the Game.”
“And meddling with the dwarfs’ affairs? He’s stolen the Scone or swapped it or…something, I haven’t worked it all out yet, but one poor dwarf’s already dead because of it! Cheery and Detritus are under arrest! Inigo is dead! Sybil’s locked up somewhere! And you’re saying it’s all okay?”
“Things are different here, sir,” said Carrot. “It wasn’t until ten years ago they replaced trial by ordeal here with trial by lawyer, and that was only because they found that lawyers were nastier.”
“I’ve got to get back to Bonk. If they’ve harmed Sybil I don’t care what the damn lore is.”
“Mister Vimes! You look done in as it is!” said Carrot.
“I’ll keep going. Come on. Get some of the wolves to pull the sleigh—”
“You don’t get them to, sir. You ask Gavin if they will,” said Carrot.
“Oh. Er…can you explain the situation to him?”
I’m standing in the cold in the middle of a forest, thought Vimes a moment later, watching a quite handsome young woman growling a conversation with a wolf who is watching her. This does no
t often happen. Not in Ankh-Morpork, anyway. It’s probably a daily occurrence up here.
Eventually six wolves allowed themselves to be harnessed, and Vimes was carried up the hill to the road.
“Stop!”
“Sir?” said Carrot.
“I want a weapon! There’s got to be something I can use in the tower!”
“Sir, you can use my sword! And there’s the…hunting spears…”
“You know what you can do with the hunting spears!”
Vimes kicked the door at the base of the tower. Fresh snow had blown in, smoothing the edges of wolf and human tracks.
He felt drunk. Bits of his brain were going on and off. His eyeballs felt as though they were lined with toweling. His legs seemed only vaguely under his control.
Surely the signalers must’ve had something?
Even the sacks and barrels had gone. Well, there were plenty of peasants in the hills, and winter was coming on, and the men who’d been here certainly didn’t have any use for the food anymore. Even Vimes wouldn’t call that theft.
He climbed up to the next floor. The thrifty people of the forest had been up here, too. But they hadn’t taken the bloodstains off the floor, or Inigo’s little round hat which inexplicably was wedged into the wooden wall.
He pulled it out, and saw where the thin felt on the brim had been pushed back to reveal the razor-shape edge.
An assassin’s hat, he thought. And then…no, not an assassin’s hat. He remembered the street fights he’d seen when he was a kid, among the hard-drinking men who thought that even bare-knuckle fighting was posh. Some of them would sew a razor blade into the brim of their cap, for a bit of help in a melee. This was the hat of a man who was always looking for that extra edge.
It hadn’t worked here.
He dropped it on the floor, and his eye caught, in the gloom, the box of mortars. Even that had been ransacked, but the tubes had simply been scattered across the floor. The gods alone knew what the scavengers thought they were.
He put them back in their box. Inigo was right about them, at least. A weapon so inaccurate that it probably couldn’t hit a barn wall from inside the barn was no good as a weapon. But other things had been scattered around, too. The men who’d been living rough here had left a few personal item. Pictures had been thumbtacked to the wall. There was a diary, a pipe, someone’s shaving gear…Boxes had been tipped out on the floor…