Interesting Times

'Ere, wot a toff! 'Eave 'arf a brick at 'im!'

The ants scurried. The thing that went 'parp' went parp.

The wizards stood back. There wasn't much else to do when Hex was working at full speed, except watch the fish and oil the wheels from time to time. There were occasional flashes of octarine from the tubes.

Hex was spelling several hundred times a minute. It was as simple as that. It would take a human more than an hour to do an ordinary finding spell. But Hex could do them faster. Over and over again. It was netting the whole occult sea in the search for one slippery fish.

It achieved, after ninety-three minutes, what would otherwise have taken the faculty several months.

'You see?' said Ponder, his voice shaking a little as he took the line of blocks out of the hopper. 'I said he could do it.'

'Who's he?' said Ridcully.

'Hex.'

'Oh, you mean it.'

'That's what I said, sir... er... yes.'

Another thing about the Horde, Mr Saveloy had noticed, was their ability to relax. The old men had the catlike ability to do nothing when there was nothing to do.

They'd sharpened their swords. They'd had a meal - big lumps of meat for most of them, and some kind of gruel for Mad Hamish, who'd dribbled most of it down his beard - and assured its wholesomeness by dragging the cook in, nailing him to the floor by his apron, and suspending a large axe on a rope that crossed a beam in the roof and was held at the other end by Cohen, while he ate.

Then they'd sharpened their swords again, out of habit, and... stopped.

Occasionally one of them would whistle a snatch of a tune, through what remained of his teeth, or search a bodily crevice for a particularly fretful louse. Mainly, though, they just sat and stared at nothing.

After a long while, Caleb said, 'Y'know, I've never been to XXXX. Been everywhere else. Often wondered what it's like.'

'Got shipwrecked there once,' said Vincent. 'Weird place. Lousy with magic. There's beavers with beaks and giant rats with long tails that hops around the place and boxes with one another. Black fellas wanderin' around all over the place. They say they're in a dream. Bright, though. Show 'em a bit of desert with one dead tree in it, next minute they've found a three-course meal with fruits and nuts to follow. Beer's good, too.'

'Sounds like it.'

There was another long pause.

Then:

'I suppose they've got minstrels here? Be a bit of a bloody waste, wouldn't it, if we all got killed and no-one made up any songs about it.'

'Bound to have loads of minstrels, a city like this.'

'No problem there, then.'

'No.'

'No.'

There was another lengthy pause.

'Not that we're going to get killed.'

'Right. I don't intend to start getting killed at my time of life, haha.'

Another pause.

'Cohen?'

'Yep?'

'You a religious man at all?'

'Well, I've robbed loads of temples and killed a few mad priests in my time. Don't know if that counts.'

'What do your tribe believe happens to you when you die in battle?'

'Oh, these big fat women in horned helmets take you off to the halls of Io where there is fighting and carousing and quaffing for ever.'

Another pause.

'You mean, like, really for ever?'

'S'pose so.'

' 'Cos generally you get fed up even with turkey by about day four.'

'All right, what do your lot believe?'

'I think we go off to Hell in a boat made of toenail dippings. Something like that, anyway.'

Another pause.

'But it's not worth talking about 'cos we're not going to get killed today.'

'You said it.'

'Hah, it's not worth dying if all you've got to look toward to is leftover meat and floating around in a boat smelling of your socks, is it, eh?'

'Haha.'

Another pause.

'Down in Klatch they believe if you lead a good life you're rewarded by being sent to a paradise with lots of young women.'

'That's your reward, is it?'

'Dunno. Maybe it's their punishment. But I do remember you eat sherbet all day.'

'Hah. When I was a lad we had proper sherbet, in little tube things and a liquorice straw to suck it up with. You don't get that sort of thing today. People're too busy rushin' about.'

'Sounds a lot better than quaffing toenails, though.'

Another pause.

'Did you ever believe that business about every enemy you killed becoming your servant in the next world?'

'Dunno.'

'How many you killed?'

'What? Oh. Maybe two, three thousand. Not counting dwarfs and trolls, o' course.'

'Definitely not going to be short of a hairbrush or someone to open doors for you after you're dead, then.'

A pause.

'We're definitely not going to die, right?'

'Right.'

'I mean, odds of 100,000 to one... hah. The difference is just a lot of zeroes, right?'

'Right.'

'I mean, stout comrades at our side, a strong right arm... What more could we want?'

Pause.

'A volcano'd be favourite.'

Pause.

'We're going to die, aren't we?'

'Yep.'

The Horde looked at one another.

'Still, to look on the bright side, I recall I still owe Fafa the dwarf fifty dollars for this sword,' said Boy Willie. 'Looks as though I could end up ahead of the game.'

Mr Saveloy put his head in his hands.

'I'm really sorry,' he said.