Eric

The captain glared at him. The sergeant put on the poker face which has been handed down from NCO to NCO ever since one protoamphibian told another, lower-ranking protoamphibian to muster a squad of newts and Take That Beach. The captain was eighteen and fresh from the academy, where he had passed with flying colours in such subjects as Classical Tactics, Valedictory Odes and Military Grammar. The sergeant was fifty-five, and instead of an education he had spent about forty years attacking or being attacked by harpies, humans, cyclopses, furies and horrible things on legs. He felt put upon.

“Well, I’m going to have a look at it, sergeant—”

“—not a good plan, sir, if I may—”

“—and after I’ve had a look at it, sergeant, there is going to be trouble.”

The sergeant threw him a salute. “Right you are, sir,” he predicted.

The captain snorted and climbed over the barricade towards the box which sat, silent and unmoving, in its circle of devastation. The sergeant, meanwhile, slid into a sitting position behind the stoutest timber he could find and, with great determination, pulled his helmet down hard over his ears.

***

Rincewind crept through the streets of the city, with Eric tagging along behind.

“Are we going to find Elenor?” the boy said.

“No,” said Rincewind firmly. “What we’re going to do is, we’re going to find another way out. And we’re going to go out through it.”

“That’s not fair!”

“She’s thousands of years older than you! I mean, attraction of the mature woman, all right, but it’d never work out.”

“I demand that you take me to her,” wailed Eric. “Avaunt!”

Rincewind stopped so sharply that Eric walked into him.

“Listen,” he said. “We’re in the middle of the most famously fatuous war there has ever been, any minute now thousands of warriors will be locked in mortal combat, and you want me to go and find this over-rated female and say, my friend wants to know if you’ll go out with him. Well, I won’t.” Rincewind stalked up to another gateway in the city wall; it was smaller than the main one, didn’t have any guards, and had a wicket gate in it. Rincewind slid back the bolts.

“This isn’t anything to do with us,” he said. “We haven’t even been born yet, we’re not old enough to fight, it isn’t our business and we’re not going to do anything more to upset the course of history, all right?”

He opened the door, which saved the entire Ephebian army a bit of effort. They were just about to knock.

***

All day long the noise of battle raged. This was chronicled by later historians, who went on at length about beautiful women being kidnapped, fleets being assembled, wooden animals being constructed, heroes fighting one another, and completely failed to mention the part played by Rincewind, Eric and the Luggage. The Ephebians did notice, however, how enthusiastically the Tsortean soldiery ran towards them … not so much keen to get into battle as very anxious to get away from something else.

The historians also failed to note another interesting fact about ancient Klatchian warfare, which was that it was still at that stage quite primitive and just between soldiers and hadn’t yet been thrown open to the general public. Basically, everyone knew that one side or the other would win, a few unlucky generals would get their heads chopped off, large sums of money would be paid in tribute to the winners, everyone would go home for the harvest and that bloody woman would have to make up her mind whose side she was on, the hussy.

So Tsortean street life went on more or less as normal, with the citizens stepping around the occasional knots of fighting men or trying to sell them kebabs. Several of the more enterprising ones began dismantling the wooden horse for souvenirs.

Rincewind didn’t attempt to understand it. He sat down at a street cafe and watched a spirited battle take place between market stalls, so that amid the cries of “Ripe olives!” there were the screams of the wounded and shouts of “Mind your backs please, melee coming through.”

The hard part was watching the soldiers apologise when they bumped into customers. The even harder part was getting the café owner to accept a coin bearing the head of someone whose great-great-great-grandfather wasn’t born yet. Fortunately, Rincewind was able to persuade the man that the future was another country.^{9}

“And a lemonade for the boy,” he added.

“My parents let me drink wine,” said Eric. “I’m allowed one glass.”

“I bet you are,” said Rincewind.

The owner industriously swabbed the tabletop, spreading its coating of dregs and spilt retsina into a thin varnish.

“Up for the fight, are you?” he said.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Rincewind guardedly.