Interesting Times
Page 35

'No!' said Mr Saveloy, and then stopped in embarrassment at the loudness of his own voice. 'No,' he repeated, a little more quietly. 'You won't live if you surrender. You just won't die immediately.' Cohen scratched his nose. 'What's that flag . . . you know . . . when you want to talk to them without them killing you?'
'It's got to be red,' said Mr Saveloy. 'But look, it's no good you—'
'I don't know, red for surrender, white for funerals . . .' muttered Cohen. 'All right. Anyone got something red?'
'I've got a handkerchief,' said Mr Saveloy, 'but it's white and anyway—'
'Give it here.' The barbarian teacher very reluctantly handed it over. Cohen pulled a small, worn knife from his belt. 'I don't believe this!' said Mr Saveloy. He was nearly in tears. 'Cohen the Barbarian talking surrender with people like that!'
'Influence of civilization,' said Cohen. '
'S probably made me go soft in the head.' He pulled the knife over his arm, and then clamped the handkerchief over the cut. 'There we are,' he said. 'Soon have a nice red flag.' The Horde nodded approvingly. It was an amazingly symbolic, dramatic and above all stupid gesture, in the finest traditions of barbarian heroing. It didn't seem to be lost on some of the nearer soldiers, either. 'Now,' Cohen went on, 'I reckon you, Teach, and you, Truckle . . . you two come with me and we'll go and talk to these people.' They'll drag you off to their dungeons!' said Mr Saveloy. 'They've got torturers that can keep you alive for years!'
'Whut? Whutzeesay?'
'He said THEY CAN KEEP YOU ALIVE FOR YEARS IN THEIR DUNGEONS, Hamish.'
'Good! Fine by me!'
'Oh, dear,' said Mr Saveloy. He trailed after the other two towards the warlords. Lord Hong raised his visor and stared down his nose at them as they approached.
'Red flag, look,' said Cohen, waving the rather I damp object on the end of his sword. 'Yes,' said Lord Hong. 'We saw that little show. It may impress the common soldiers but it does not impress me, barbarian.'
'Please yourself,' said Cohen. 'We've come to talk about surrender.' Mr Saveloy noticed some of the lesser lords relax a little. Then he thought: a real soldier probably doesn't like this sort of thing. You don't want to go to soldier Heaven or wherever you go and say, I once led an army against seven old men. It wasn't medal-winning material. 'Ah. Of course. So much for bravado,' said Lord Hong. 'Then lay down your arms and you will be escorted back to the palace.' Cohen and Truckle looked at one another. 'Sorry?' said Cohen. 'Lay down your arms.' Lord Hong snorted. 'That means put down your weapons.' Cohen gave him a puzzled look. 'Why should we put down our weapons?'
'Are we not talking about your surrender?'
'Our surrender?' Mr Saveloy's mouth opened in a mad, slow grin. Lord Hong stared at Cohen. 'Hah! You can hardly expect me to believe that you have come to ask us . . .' He leaned from the saddle and glared at them. 'You do, don't you?' he said. 'You mindless little barbarians. Is it true that you can only count up to five?'
'We just thought that it might save people getting hurt,' said Cohen. 'You thought it would save you getting hurt,' said the warlord. 'I daresay a few of yours might get hurt, too.'
'They're peasants,' said the warlord. 'Oh, yes. I was forgetting that,' said Cohen. 'And you're their chief, right? It's like your game of chess, right?'
'I am their lord,' said Lord Hong. 'They will die at my bidding, if necessary.'
Cohen gave him a big, dangerous grin. 'When do we start?' he said. 'Return to your . . . band,' said Lord Hong. 'And then I think we shall start . . . shortly.' He glared at Truckle, who was unfolding his bit or paper. The barbarian's lips moved awkwardly and he ran a horny finger across the page. 'Misbegotten . . . wretch, so you are,' he said. 'My word,' said Mr Saveloy, who'd created the look-up table. As the three returned to the Horde Mr Saveloy was aware of a grinding sound. Cohen was wearing several carats off his teeth. ' “Die at my bidding”,' he said. 'The bugger doesn't even know what a chief is meant to be, the bastard! Him and his horse.'' Mr Saveloy looked around. There seemed to be some arguing among the warlords. 'You know,' he said, 'they probably will try to take us alive. I used to have a headmaster like him. He liked to make people's lives a misery.'
'You mean they'll be trying not to kill us?' said Truckle. 'Yes.'
'Does that mean we have to try not to kill them?'
'No, I don't think so.'
'Sounds OK to me.'
'What do we do now?' said Mr Saveloy. 'Do we do a battle chant or something?'
'We just wait,' said Cohen. 'There's a lot of waiting in warfare,' said Boy Willie. 'Ah, yes,' said Mr Saveloy. 'I've heard people say that. They say there's long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement.'
'Not really,' said Cohen. 'It's more like short periods of waiting followed by long periods of being dead.'
'Blast.';
The fields were crisscrossed with drainage ditches, There seemed to be no straight path anywhere. And the ditches were too wide to jump; they looked shallow enough to wade, but only because eighteen inches of water overlay a suffocating depth of rich thick mud. Mr Saveloy said that the Empire owed its prosperity to the mud of the plains, and right now Rincewind was feeling extremely rich. He was also quite close to the big hill that dominated the city. It really was rounded, with a precision apparently far too accurate for mere natural causes; Saveloy had said that hills like that were drumlins, great piles of topsoil left behind by glaciers. Trees covered the lower slopes of this one, and there was a small building on the top. Cover. Now, that was a good word. It was a big plain and the armies weren't too far away. The hill looked curiously peaceful, as if it belonged to a different world. It was strange that the Agateans, who otherwise seemed to farm absolutely everywhere a water buffalo could stand, had left it alone. Someone was watching him. It was a water buffalo. It would be wrong to say it watched him with interest. It just watched him, because its eyes were open and had to be facing in some direction, and it had randomly chosen one which included Rincewind. Its face held the completely serene expression of a creature that had long ago realized that it was, fundamentally, a tube on legs and had been installed in the universe to, broadly speaking, achieve throughput. At the other end of the string was a man, ankle-deep in the mud of the field. He had a broad straw hat, like every other buffalo holder. He had the basic pyjama suit of the Agatean man- in-the-field. And he had an expression not of idiocy, but of preoccupation. He was looking at Rincewind. As with the buffalo, this was only because his eyes had to be doing something. Despite the pressing dangers, Rincewind found himself overcome by a sudden curiosity. 'Er. Good morning,' he said. The man gave him a nod. The water buffalo made the sound of regurgitating cud. 'Er. Sorry if this is a personal question,' said Rincewind, 'but . . . I can't help wondering . . . why do you stand out in the fields all day with the water buffalo?' The man thought about it. 'Good for soil,' he said eventually. 'But doesn't it waste a lot of time?' said Rincewind. The man gave this due appraisal also.
'What's time to a cow?' he said. Rincewind reversed back on to the highway of reality. 'You see those armies over there?' he said. The buffalo holder concentrated his gaze. 'Yes,' he decided. 'They're fighting for you.' The man did not appear moved by this. The water buffalo burped gently. 'Some want to see you enslaved and some want you to run the country, or at least to let them run the country while telling you it's you doing it really,' said Rincewind. There's going to be a terrible battle. I can't help wondering . . . What do you want?' The buffalo holder absorbed this one for consideration, too. And it seemed to Rincewind that the slowness of the thought process wasn't due to native stupidity, but more to do with the sheer size of the question. He could feel it spreading out so that it incorporated the soil and the grass and the sun and headed on out into the universe. Finally the man said: 'A longer piece of string would be nice.'
'Ah. Really? Well, well. There's a thing,' said Rincewind. 'Talking to you has been an education. Goodbye.' The man watched him go. Beside him, the buffalo relaxed some muscles and contracted others and lifted its tail and made the world, in a very small way, a better place. Rincewind headed on towards the hill. Random as the animal tracks and occasional plank bridges were, they seemed to head right for it. If Rincewind had been thinking clearly, an activity he last remembered doing around the age of twelve, he might have wondered about that. The trees of the lower slopes were sapient pears, and he didn't even think about that. Their leaves turned to watch him as he scrambled past. What he needed now was a cave or a handy— He paused. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'No, no, no. You don't catch me like that. I'll go into a handy cave and there'll be a little door or some wise old man or something and I'll be dragged back into events. Right. Stay out in the open, that's the style.'
He half climbed, half walked to the rounded top of the hill, which rose above the trees like a dome. Now he was closer he could see that it wasn't as smooth as it looked from below. Weather had worn gullies and channels in the soil, and bushes had colonized even, sheltered slope. The building on the top was, to Rincewind's surprise, rusty. It had been made of iron - pointed iron roof, iron walls, iron doorway. There were a few old nests and some debris on the floor, but it was otherwise empty. And not a good place to hide. It'd be the first place anyone would look. There was a cloud wall around the world now. Lightning crackled in its heart, and there was the sound of thunder - not the gentle rumble of summer thunder but the crackackack of splitting sky. And yet the heat wrapped the plain like a blanket. The air felt thick. In a minute it was going to rain cats and food. 'Find somewhere where I won't be noticed,' he muttered. 'Keep head down. Only way. Why should I care? Other people's problem.' Panting in the oppressive heat, he wandered on. Lord Hong was enraged. Those who knew him could tell, by the way he spoke more slowly and smiled continuously. 'And how do the men know the lightning dragons are angry?' he said. 'It may be mere high spirits.'
'Not with a sky that colour,' said Lord Tang. 'That is not an auspicious colour for a sky. It looks like a bruise. A sky like that is portentous,'
'And what, pray, do you think it portends?'
'It's just generally portentous,'
'I know what's behind this,' Lord Hong snarled. 'You're too frightened to fight seven old men, is that it?'
'The men say they're the legendary Seven Indestructible Sages,' said Lord Fang. He tried to smile. 'You know how superstitious they are . . .'
'What Seven Sages?' said Lord Hong. 'I am extremely familiar with the history of the world and there are no legendary Seven Indestructible Sages.'
'Er . . . not yet,' said Lord Fang. 'Uh. But . . . a day like this . . . Perhaps legends have to start somewhere . . .'
'They're barbarians! Oh, gods! Seven men! Can I believe we're afraid of seven men?'
'It feels wrong,' said Lord McSweeney. He added, quickly, 'That's what the men say.'
'You have made the proclamation about our celestial army of ghosts? All of you?' The warlords tried to avoid his gaze. 'Er . . . yes,' said Lord Fang. 'That must have improved morale.'
'Uh. Not . . . entirely . . .'
'What do you mean, man?'
'Uh. Many men have deserted. Uh. They've been saying that foreign ghosts were bad enough, but . . .'
'But what?'
'They are soldiers, Lord Hong,' said Lord Tang sharply. 'They all have people they do not want to meet. Don't you?' Just for a second, there was the suggestion of a twitch on Lord Hong's cheek. It was only for a second, but those who saw it took note. Lord Hong's renowned glaze had shown a crack. 'What would you do, Lord Tang? Let these insolent barbarians go?'