Eric

He groped around a bit until his fingers encountered what turned out to be, following an inspection by the light of the nearest knot-hole, a rope ladder. Further probing at one end of the hull, or whatever it was, brought him in contact with a small, round hatchway. It was bolted on the inside.

He crawled back to Eric.

“There’s a door,” he whispered.

“Where does it go?”

“It stays where it is, I think,” said Rincewind.

“Find out where it leads to, demon!”

“Could be a bad idea,” said Rincewind cautiously.

“Get on with it!”

Rincewind crawled gloomily to the hatch and grasped the bolt.

The hatch creaked open.

Down below — quite a long way below — there were damp cobblestones, across which a breeze was driving a few shreds of morning mist. With a little sigh, Rincewind unrolled the ladder.

Two minutes later they were standing in the gloom of what appeared to be a large plaza. A few buildings showed through the mist.

“Where are we?” said Eric.

“Search me.”

“You don’t know?”

“Not a clue,” said Rincewind.

Eric glared at the mist-shrouded architecture. “Fat chance of finding the most beautiful woman in the world in a dump like this,” he said.

It occurred to Rincewind to see what they had just climbed out of. He looked up.

Above them — a long way above them — and supported on four massive legs, which ran down to a huge wheeled platform, there was undoubtedly a huge wooden horse. More correctly, the rear of a huge wooden horse.

The builder could have put the exit hatch in a more dignified place, but for humorous reasons of his own had apparently decided not to.

“Er,” said Rincewind.

Someone coughed.

He looked down.

The evaporating mists now revealed a broad circle of armed men, many of them grinning and all of them carrying mass-produced, soulless but above all sharp long spears.

“Ah,” said Rincewind.

He looked back up at the hatchway. It said it all, really.

“The only thing I don’t understand,” said the captain of the guard, “is: why two of you? We were expecting maybe a hundred.”

He leaned back on his stool, his great plumed helmet in his lap, a pleased smile on his face.

“Honestly, you Ephebians!” he said. “Talk about laugh! You must think we was born yesterday! All night nothing but sawing and hammering, the next thing there’s a damn great wooden horse outside the gates, so I think, that’s funny, a bloody great wooden horse with airholes. That’s the kind of little detail I notice, see. Airholes. So I muster all the lads and we nips out extra early and drag it in the gates, as per expectations, and then we bides quiet, like, around it, waiting to see what it coughs up. In a manner of speaking. Now,” he pushed his unshaven face close to Rincewind, “you’ve got a choice, see? Top seat or bottom seat, it’s up to you. I just have to put the word in. You play discus with me and I’ll play discus with you.”[10]

“What seat?” said Rincewind, reeling from the gusts of garlic.

“It’s the war triremes,” said the sergeant cheerfully. “Three seats, see, one above the other? Triremes. You get chained to the oars for years, see, and it’s all according whether you’re in the top seat, up in the fresh air and that, or the bottom seat where”—he grinned—”you’re not. So it’s down to you, lads. Be co-operative and all you’ll need to worry about will be the seagulls. Now. Why only the two of you?”

He leaned back again.

“Excuse me,” said Eric, “is that Tsort, by any chance?”

“You wouldn’t be trying to make fun of me, would you now, boy? Only there’s such a thing as quinquiremes, see? You wouldn’t like that at all.”

“No, sir,” said Eric. “If you please, sir, I’m just a little lad led astray by bad companionship.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Rincewind bitterly. “You just accidentally drew a lot of occult circles, did you, and—”

“Sarge! Sarge!” A soldier burst into the guardroom. The sergeant looked up.

“There’s another of ‘em, sarge! Right outside the gates this time!”

The sergeant grinned triumphantly at Rincewind.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” he said. “You were just the advance party, come to open the gates or whatever. Right. We’ll just go and sort your friends out, and we’ll be right back.” He indicated the captives. “You stay here. If they move, do something horrible to them.”

Rincewind and Eric were left alone with the guard.

“You know what you’ve done, don’t you,” said Eric. “You’ve only taken us all the way back to the Tsortean Wars! Thousands of years! We did it at school, the wooden horse, everything! How the beautiful Elenor was kidnapped from the Ephebians — or maybe it was by the Ephebians — and there was this siege to get her back and everything.” He paused. “Hey, that means I’m going to meet her.” He paused again. “Wow!” he said.