The Last Continent

Charley shook his head. 'Everyone likes a battler, mister. That's the Ecksian way. Go down fighting, that's the ticket.'

'We heard about you takin' on that road gang,' said the guard. 'Bloody good job. Man who'd do a job like that ain't gonna be hanged, he gonna want to make a famous last stand.'

The men had all entered the kitchen now. The doorway was clear.

'Has anyone ever had a Famous Last Run?' said Rincewind.

'No. What's one of them?'

'G'day!'

As he sped away along the darkened waterfront he heard the shout behind him.

That's the ticket! We'll count to ten!'

He glanced up as he ran and saw that the big sign over the brewery seemed to be dark. And then he realized that something was hopping along just behind him.

'Oh, no! Not you!'

'G'day,' said Scrappy, drawing level.

'Look at the mess you've got me into!'

'Mess? You were gonna be hanged! Now you're enjoying the healthy fresh air in a god's own country!'

'And I'm going to be shot full of arrows!'

'So? You can dodge arrows. This place needs a hero. Champion shearer, road warrior, bush ranger, sheep-stealer, horse rider... all you need now is to be good at some damn silly bat and ball game that no one's invented yet and maybe build a few tall buildings with borrowed money and you'd have a full house. They ain't gonna kill you in a hurry.'

'That's not much comfort! Anyway, I didn't do any of that stuff— Well, I mean I did, but—'

'It's what people think that matters. Now they believe you waltzed out of a locked cell.'

'All I did was—'

'Doesn't matter! The number of gaolers who want to shake you by the hand, well, I reckon they wouldn't get around to hanging you by lunchtime!'

'Listen, you giant jumping rat, I've made it to the docks, okay? I can outrun them! I can lie low! I know how to stow away, throw up, get discovered, be thrown over the side, stay afloat for two days by clinging on to an old barrel and eating plankton sieved through my beard, carefully negotiate the treacherous coral reef surrounding an atoll and survive by eating yams!'

That's a very special talent you got there,' said the kangaroo, bounding over a ship's hawser. 'How many Ecksian ships have you ever seen in Ankh-Morpork? Busiest port in the world, ain't it?'

Rincewind slowed. 'Well...'

'It's the currents, mate. Get more'n ten miles off'f the coast here and there ain't one captain in a hundred who can stop his ship going right over the Rim. They stick very close inshore.'

Rincewind stopped. 'You mean this whole place is a prison!'

'Yep. But the Ecksians say this is the best bloody place in the world, so there's no point in going anywhere else anyway.'

There were shouts behind him. The guards here didn't take so long counting to ten as most guards did.

'What're you going to do now?' said Rincewind.

The kangaroo had gone.

He ducked down a side street and found his way completely blocked. Carts filled the street from edge to edge. Gaily decorated carts.

Rincewind paused. He had always been the foremost exponent of the from rather than the to of running. He could have written 'The From of Running'. But just occasionally a certain subtle sense told him that the to was important.

For one thing, a lot of the people standing and chatting around the carts were wearing leather.

You could make a lot of arguments in favour of leather. It was long-lasting, practical and hard-wearing. People like Cohen the Barbarian found it so hard-wearing and long-lasting that their old loincloths had to be removed by a blacksmith. But the people here didn't look as if these were the qualities that they'd been looking for in the boutique. They'd asked questions like: How many studs has it got? How shiny is it? Has it got holes cut out in unusual places?

But still, one of the most basic rules for survival on any planet is never to upset someone wearing black leather. Rincewind sidled politely past them, giving them a friendly nod and a wave whenever he saw one looking in his direction. For some reason, this caused more of them to take an interest in him.

There were groups of ladies, too, and there was no doubt that if EcksEcksEcksEcks was where a man could stand tall, so could a woman. Some of them were nevertheless very pretty, in an overstated kind of way, although the occasional moustache looked out of place, but Rincewind had been to foreign parts and knew that things could be a bit lush in the more rural regions.

There were more sequins than you usually saw. More feathers, too.

Then it dawned on him in a great rush of relief.

'Oh, this is a carnival, right?' he said aloud. This is the Galah they keep talking about.'

'Pardon you?' said a lady in a spangly blue dress, who was changing the wheel on a large purple cart.

'These are carnival floats, aren't they?' said Rincewind.

The woman gritted her teeth, rammed the new wheel into place and then released the axle. The can bounced down on to the cobbles.