Wyrd Sisters

‘Brothers! And yet may I call all men brother, for on this night—^{50}

The dwarf craned up to see Tomjon standing on a chair, one hand raised in the prescribed declamatory fashion. Around him men were frozen in the act of giving one another a right seeing-to, their faces turned to his.

Down at tabletop height Hwel’s lips moved in perfect synchronization with the words as Tomjon went through the familiar speech. He risked another look.

The fighters straightened up, pulled themselves together, adjusted the hang of their tunics, glanced apologetically at one another. Many of them were in fact standing to attention.

Even Hwel felt a fizz in his blood, and he’d written those words. He’d slaved half a night over them, years ago, when Vitoller had declared that they needed another five minutes in Act III of The King of Ankh.

‘Scribble us something with a bit of spirit in it,’ he’d said. ‘A bit of zip and sizzle, y’know. Something to summon up the blood and put a bit of backbone in our friends in the ha’penny seats. And just long enough to give us time to change the set.’

He’d been a bit ashamed of that play at the time. The famous Battle of Morpork, he strongly suspected, had consisted of about two thousand men lost in a swamp on a cold, wet day, hacking one another into oblivion with rusty swords. What would the last King of Ankh have said to a pack of ragged men who knew they were outnumbered, outflanked and out-generalled? Something with bite, something with edge, something like a drink of brandy to a dying man; no logic, no explanation, just words that would reach right down through a tired man’s brain and pull him to his feet by his testicles.

Now he was seeing its effect.

He began to think the walls had fallen away, and there was a cold mist blowing over the marshes, its choking silence broken only by the impatient cries of the carrion birds …

And this voice.

And he’d written the words, they were his, no half-crazed king had ever really spoken like this. And he’d written all this to fill in a gap so that a castle made of painted sacking stretched over a frame could be shoved behind a curtain, and this voice was taking the coal dust of his words and filling the room with diamonds.

I made these words, Hwel thought. But they don’t belong to me. They belong to him.

Look at those people. Not a patriotic thought among them, but if Tomjon asked them, this bunch of drunkards would storm the Patrician’s palace tonight. And they’d probably succeed.

I just hope his mouth never falls into the wrong hands …

As the last syllables died away, their white-hot echoes searing across every mind in the room, Hwel shook himself and crawled out of hiding and jabbed Tomjon on the knee.

‘Come away now, you fool,’ he hissed. ‘Before it wears off.’

He grasped the boy firmly by the arm, handed a couple of complimentary tickets to the stunned barman, and hurried up the steps. He didn’t stop until they were a street away.

‘I thought I was doing rather well there,’ said Tomjon.

‘A good deal too well, I reckon.’

The boy rubbed his hands together. ‘Right. Where shall we go next?’

‘Next?’

‘Tonight is young!’

‘No, tonight is dead. It’s today that’s young,’ said the dwarf hurriedly.

‘Well, I’m not going home yet. Isn’t there somewhere a bit more friendly? We haven’t actually drunk anything.’

Hwel sighed.

‘A troll tavern,’ said Tomjon. ‘I’ve heard about them. There’s some down in the Shades.[17] I’d like to see a troll tavern.’

‘They’re for trolls only, boy. Molten lava to drink and rock music and cheese ‘n’ chutney flavoured pebbles.’

‘What about dwarf bars?’

‘You’d hate it,’ said Hwel, fervently. ‘Besides, you’d run out of headroom.’

‘Low dives, are they?’

‘Look at it like this—how long do you think you could sing about gold?’

‘“It’s yellow and it goes chink and you can buy things with it,” ‘said Tomjon experimentally, as they strolled through the crowds on the Plaza of Broken Moons. ‘Four seconds, I think.’

‘Right. Five hours of it gets a bit repetitive.’ Hwel kicked a pebble gloomily. He’d investigated a few dwarf bars last time they were in town, and hadn’t approved. For some reason his fellow expatriates, who at home did nothing more objectionable than mine a bit of iron ore and hunt small creatures, felt impelled, once in the big city, to wear chain mail underwear, go around with axes in their belts, and call themselves names like Timkin Rumbleguts.^{51} And no-one could beat a city dwarf when it came to quaffing. Sometimes they missed their mouths altogether.

‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘you’d get thrown out for being too creative. The actual words are, “Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold”.’

‘Is there a chorus?’

‘“Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold”,’ said Hwel.

‘You left out a “gold” there.’

‘I think it’s because I wasn’t cut out to be a dwarf.’

‘Cut down, lawn ornament,’ said Tomjon.

There was a little hiss of indrawn breath.

‘Sorry,’ said Tomjon hurriedly. ‘It’s just that father—’