Equal Rites

Esk looked at it as though she had never seen it before.

“Everything’s got to be somewhere,” she said.

“Just go home, my girl,” said Gander. “I’m not taking any runaways to Ankh-Morpork. Strange things can happen to little girls in big cities.”

Esk brightened. “What sort of strange things?”

“Look, I said go home, right? Now!”

He picked up his chalk and went on ticking off items on his slate, trying to ignore the steady gaze that seemed to be boring through the top of his head.

“I can be helpful,” said Esk, quietly.

Gander threw down the chalk and scratched his chin irritably.

“How old are you?” he said.

“Nine.”

“Well, Miss nine-years-old, I’ve got two hundred animals and a hundred people that want to go to Ankh, and half of them hate the other half, and I’ve not got enough people who can fight, and they say the roads are pretty bad and the bandits are getting really cheeky up in the Paps and the trolls are demanding a bigger bridge toll this year and there’s weevils in the supplies and I keep getting these headaches and where, in all this, do I need you?”

“Oh,” said Esk. She looked around the crowded square. “Which one of these roads goes to Ankh, then?”

“The one over there, with the gate.”

“Thank you,” she said gravely. “Goodbye. I hope you don’t have any more trouble and your head gets better.”

“Right,” said Gander uncertainly. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop as he watched Esk walk away in the direction of the Ankh road. A long, winding road. A road haunted by thieves and gnolls. A road that wheezed through high mountain passes and crawled, panting, over deserts.

“Oh, bugger,” he said, under his breath. “Hey! You!”

* * *

Granny Weatherwax was in trouble.

First of all, she decided, she should never have allowed Hilta to talk her into borrowing her broomstick. It was elderly, erratic, would fly only at night and even then couldn’t manage a speed much above a trot.

Its lifting spells had worn so thin that it wouldn’t even begin to operate until it was already moving at a fair lick. It was, in fact, the only broomstick ever to need bump-starting.

And it was while Granny Weatherwax, sweating and cursing, was running along a forest path holding the damn thing at shoulder height for the tenth time that she had found the bear trap.

The second problem was that a bear had found it first. In fact this hadn’t been too much of a problem because Granny, already in a bad temper, hit it right between the eyes with the broomstick and it was now sitting as far away from her as it was possible to get in a pit, and trying to think happy thoughts.

It was not a very comfortable night and the morning wasn’t much better for the party of hunters who, around dawn, peered over the edge of the pit.

“About time, too,” said Granny. “Get me out.”

The startled heads withdrew and Granny could hear a hasty whispered conversation. They had seen the hat and broomstick.

Finally a bearded head reappeared, rather reluctantly, as if the body it was attached to was being pushed forward.

“Um,” it began, “look, mother—”

“I’m not a mother,” snapped Granny. “I’m certainly not your mother, if you ever had mothers, which I doubt. If I was your mother I’d have run away before you were born.”

“It’s only a figure of speech,” said the head reproachfully.

“It’s a damned insult is what it is!”

There was another whispered conversation.

“If I don’t get out,” said Granny in ringing tones, “there will be Trouble. Do you see my hat, eh? Do you see it?”

The head reappeared.

“That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” it said. “I mean, what will there be if we let you out? It seems less risky all around if we just sort of fill the pit in. Nothing personal, you understand.”

Granny realised what it was that was bothering her about the head.

“Are you kneeling down?” she said accusingly. “You’re not, are you! You’re dwarves!”

Whisper, whisper.

“Well, what about it?” asked the head defiantly. “Nothing wrong with that, is there? What have you got against dwarves?”

“Do you know how to repair broomsticks?”

“Magic broomsticks?”

“Yes!”

Whisper, whisper.

“What if we do?”

“Well, we could come to some arrangement…”

* * *

The dwarf halls rang to the sound of hammers, although mainly for effect. Dwarves found it hard to think without the sound of hammers, which they found soothing, so well-off dwarves in the clerical professions paid goblins to hit small ceremonial anvils, just to maintain the correct dwarvish image.

The broomstick lay between two trestles. Granny Weatherwax sat on a rock outcrop while a dwarf half her height, wearing an apron that was a mass of pockets, walked around the broom and occasionally poked it.

Eventually he kicked the bristles and gave a long intake of breath, a sort of reverse whistle, which is the secret sign of craftsmen across the universe and means that something expensive is about to happen.

“Weellll,” he said. “I could get the apprentices in to look at this, I could. It’s an education in itself. And you say it actually managed to get airborne?”

“It flew like a bird,” said Granny.