Lords and Ladies

“What's the matter?”

“Never liked dark and enclosed spaces much.”

“What? You're a dwarf.”

“Born a dwarf, born a dwarf. But I even get nervous when I'm hiding in wardrobes. That's a bit of a drawback in my line of work.”

“Don't be daft. I'm not scared.”

“You're not me.”

“Tell you what - I'll bake 'em with extra gravel.”

“Ooh . . . you're a temptress, Mrs. Ogg.”

“And bring the torches.”

The caves were dry, and warm. Casanunda trotted along after Nanny, anxious to stay in the torchlight.

“You haven't been down here before?”

“No, but I know the way.”

After a while Casanunda began to feel better. The caves were better than wardrobes. For one thing, you weren't tripping over shoes all the time, and there probably wasn't much chance of a sword-wielding husband opening the door.

In fact, he began to feel happy.

The words rose unbidden into his head, from somewhere in the back pocket of his genes.

“Hiho, hiho-”

Nanny Ogg grinned in the darkness.

The tunnel opened into a cavern. The torchlight picked up the suggestion of distant walls.

“This it?” said Casanunda, gripping the crowbar.

“No. This is something else. We . . . know about this place. It's mythical.”

“It's not real?”

“Oh, it's real. And mythical.”

The torch flared. There were hundreds of dust-covered slabs ranged around the cavern in a spiral; at the centre of the spiral was a huge bell, suspended from a rope that disappeared into the darkness of the ceiling. Just under the hanging bell was one pile of silver coins and one pile of gold coins.

“Don't touch the money,” said Nanny “'Ere, watch this, my dad told me about this, it's a good trick.”

She reached out and tapped the bell very gently, causing a faint ting.

Dust cascaded off the nearest slab. What Casanunda had thought was just a carving sat up, in a creaky way. It was an armed warrior. Since he'd sat up he almost certainly was alive, but he looked as though he'd gone from life to rigor mortis without passing through death on the way.

He focused deepset eyes on Nanny Ogg.

“What bloody tyme d'you call thys, then?”

“Not time yet,” said Nanny.

“What did you goe and bang the bell for? I don't know, I haven't had a wynke of sleep for two hundred years, some sodde alwayes bangs the bell. Go awaye.”

The warrior lay back.

“It's some old king and his warriors,” whispered Nanny, as they hurried away. “Some kind of magical sleep, I'm told. Some old wizard did it. They're supposed to wake up for some final battle when a wolf eats the sun.”

“Those wizards, always smoking something,” said Casanunda.

“Could be. Go right here. Always go right.”

“We're walking in a circle?”

“A spiral. We're right under the Long Man now.”

“No, that can't be right,” said Casanunda. “We climbed down a hole under the Long Man . . . hold on . . . you mean we're in the place where we started and it's a different place?”

“You're getting the hang of this, I can see that.”

They followed the spiral.

Which, at length, brought them to a door, of sorts.

The air was hotter here. Red light glowed from side passages.

Two massive stones had been set up against a rock wall, with a third stone across them. Animal skins hung across the crude entrance thus formed; wisps of steam curled around them.

“They got put up at the same time as the Dancers,” said Nanny, conversationally. “Only the hole here's vertical, so they only needed three. Might as well leave your crowbar here and take your boots off if they've got nails in 'em.”

“These boots were stitched by the finest shoemaker in Ankh-Morpork,” said Casanunda, “and one day I shall pay him.”

Nanny pulled aside the skins.

Steam billowed out.

There was darkness inside, thick and hot as treacle and smelling of a fox's locker room. As Casanunda followed Nanny Ogg he sensed unseen figures in the reeking air, and heard the silence of murmured conversations suddenly curtailed. At one point he thought he saw a bowl of red hot stones, and then a shadowy hand moved across them and upturned a ladle, hiding them in steam.

This can't be inside the Long Man, he told himself. That's an earthworks, this is a long tent of skins.

They can't both be the same thing.

He realized he was dripping with sweat.

Two torches became visible as the steam swirled, their light hardly more than a red tint to the darkness. But they were enough to show a huge sprawled figure lying by another bowl of hot stones.

It looked up. Antlers moved in the damp, clinging heat.

“Ah. Mrs. Ogg.”

The voice was like chocolate.

“Y'lordship,” said Nanny.

“I suppose it is too much to expect you to kneel?”

“Yes indeed, y'honor,” said Nanny, grinning.

“You know, Mrs. Ogg, you have a way of showing respect to your god that would make the average atheist green with envy,” said the dark figure. It yawned.

“Thank you, y'grace.”

“No one even dances for me now. Is that too much to ask?”

“Just as you say, y'lordship.”

“You witches don't believe in me anymore.”

“Right again, your homishness.”

“Ah, little Mrs. Ogg - and how, having got in here, do you possibly think you are going to get out?” said the slumped one.

“Because I have iron,” said Nanny, her voice suddenly sharp.

“Of course you have not, little Mrs. Ogg. No iron can enter this realm.”

“I have the iron that goes everywhere,” said Nanny.

She took her hand out of her apron pocket, and held up a horseshoe.

Casanunda heard scuffles around him, as the hidden elves fought to get out of the way More steam hissed up as a brazier of hot stones was overturned.

“Take it away!”

“I'll take it away when I go,” said Nanny. “Now you listen to me. She's making trouble again. You've got to put a stop to it. Fair's fair. We're not having all the Old Trouble again.”

“Why should I do that?”

“You want her to be powerful, then?”

There was a snort.

“You can't ever rule again, back in the world,” said Nanny. “There's too much music. There's too much iron.”

“Iron rusts.”

“Not the iron in the head.”

The King snorted.

“Nevertheless . . . even that. . . one day . . .”

“One day.” Nanny nodded. “Yes. I'll drink to that. One day. Who knows? One day. Everyone needs 'one day.' But it ain't today. D'you see? So you come on out and balance things up. Otherwise, this is what I'll do. I'll get 'em to dig into the Long Man with iron shovels, y'see, and they'll say, why, it's just an old earthworks, and pensioned-off wizards and priests with nothin' better to do will pick over the heaps and write dull old books about burial traditions and such-like, and that'll be another iron nail in your coffin. And I'd be a little bit sorry about that, 'cos you know I've always had a soft spot for you. But I've got kiddies, y'see, and they don't hide under the stairs because they're frit of the thunder, and they don't put milk out for the elves, and they don't hurry home because of the night, and before we go back to them dark old ways I'll see you nailed.”

The words sliced through the air.

The homed man stood up. And further up. His antlers touched the roof.

Casanunda's mouth dropped open.

“So you see,” said Nanny, subsiding, “not today. One day, maybe. You just stay down here and sweat it out 'til One Day. But not today.”

“I. . . will decide.”

“Very good. You decide. And I'll be getting along.”

The homed man looked down at Casanunda.

“What are you staring at, dwarf?”

Nanny Ogg nudged Casanunda.

“Go on, answer the nice gentleman.”

Casanunda swallowed.

“Blimey,” he said, “you don't half look like your picture.”

In a narrow little valley a few miles away a party of elves had found a nest of young rabbits which, in conjunction with a nearby antheap, kept them amused for a while.

Even the meek and blind and voiceless have gods.

Heme the Hunted, god of the chased, crept through the bushes and wished fervently that gods had gods.

The elves had their backs to him as they hunkered down to watch closely.

Heme the Hunted crawled under a clump of bramble, tensed, and sprang.

He sank his teeth in an elfs calf until they met, and was flung away as it screamed and turned.

He dropped and ran.

That was the problem. He wasn't built to fight, there was not an ounce of predator in him. Attack and run, that was the only option.

And elves could run faster.

He bounced over logs and skidded through drifts of leaves, aware even as his vision fogged that elves were overtaking him on either side, pacing him, waiting for him to . . .

The leaves exploded. The little god was briefly aware of a fanged shape, all arms and vengeance. Then there were a couple of disheveled humans, one of them waving an iron bar around its head.

Heme didn't wait to see what happened next. He dived through the apparition's legs and ran on, but a distant war-cry echoed in his long, floppy ears:

“Why, certainly, I'll have your whelk! How do we do it? Volume!”

Nanny Ogg and Casanunda walked in silence back to the cave entrance and the flight of steps. Finally, as they stepped out into the night air, the dwarf said, “Wow.”

“It leaks out even up here,” said Nanny. “Very mackko place, this.”

“But I mean, good grief-”

“He's brighter than she is. Or more lazy,” said Nanny. “He's going to wait it out.”

“But he was-”

“They can look like whatever they want, to us,” said Nanny. “We see the shape we've given 'em.” She let the rock drop back, and dusted off her hands.

“But why should he want to stop her?”

“Well, he's her husband, after all. He can't stand her. It's what you might call an open marriage.”

“Wait what out?” said Casanunda, looking around to see if there were anymore elves.

“Oh, you know,” said Nanny, waving a hand. “All this iron and books and clockwork and universities and reading and suchlike. He reckons it'll all pass, see. And one day it'll all be over, and people'll look up at the skyline at sunset and there he'll be.”

Casanunda found himself turning to look at the sunset beyond the mound, half-imagining the huge figure outlined against the afterglow.

“One day he'll be back,” said Nanny softly “When even the iron in the head is rusty”

Casanunda put his head on one side. You don't move around among a different species for most of your life without learning to read a lot of their body language, especially since it's in such large print.

“You won't entirely be sorry, eh?” he said.

“Me? I don't want 'em back! They're untrustworthy and cruel and arrogant parasites and we don't need 'em one bit.”