Carpe Jugulum (21 page)

Under the rabbit hole, down below the bank, was a wide, low-roofed chamber. Tree roots wound among the stones in the wall.

There were plenty of such things around Lancre. The kingdom had been there many years, ever since the ice withdrew. Tribes had pillaged, tilled, built and died. The clay walls and reed thatch of the living houses had long since rotted and been lost but, down under the moundy banks, the abodes of the dead survived. No one knew now who’d been buried there. Occasionally the spoil heap outside a badger sett would reveal a piece of bone or a scrap of corroded armor. The Lancrastians didn’t go digging themselves, reckoning in their uncomplicated country way that it was bad luck to have your head torn off by a vengeful underground spirit.

One or two of the old barrows had been exposed over the years, their huge stones attracting their own folklore. If you left your unshod horse at one of them overnight, and placed a sixpence on the stone, in the morning the sixpence would be gone and you’d never see your horse again, either…

Down on the earth floor under the bank a fire was burning darkly, filling the barrow with smoke which exited through various hidden crannies. There was a pear-shaped rock beside it.

Verence tried to sit up, but his body didn’t want to obey.

“Dinna scanna’ whista,” said the rock.

It unfolded its legs. It was, he realized, a woman, or at least a female, blue like the other pixies but at least a foot high and so fat that it was almost spherical. It looked exactly like the little figurines back in the days of ice and mammoths, when what men
really
looked for in a woman was quantity. For the sake of modesty, or merely to mark the equator, it wore what Verence could only think of as a tutu. The whole effect reminded him of a spinning top he’d had when he was a child.

“The Kelda says,” said a cracked voice by his ear, “that ye…must get…ready.”

Verence turned his head the other way and tried to focus on a small wizened pixie right in front of his nose. Its skin was faded. It had a long white beard. It walked with two sticks.

“Ready? For what?”

“Good.” The old pixie banged its sticks on the ground. “Craik’n shaden ach, Feegle!”

The blue men rushed at Verence from the shadows. Hundreds of hands grabbed him. Their bodies formed a human pyramid, pulling him upright against the wall. Some clung to the tree roots that looped across the ceiling, tugging on his nightshirt to keep him vertical.

A crowd of others ran across the floor with a full-sized crossbow and propped it on a stone close to him.

“Er…I say…” Verence murmured.

The Kelda waddled into the shadows and returned with her pudgy fists clenched. She went to the fire and held them over the flames.

“Yin!” said the old pixie.

“I say…that’s aimed right at my…”

“Yin!” shouted the Nac mac Feegle.

“…ton!”

“Ton!”

“Um, it’s, er, right…”

“Tetra!”

The Kelda dropped something on the fire. A white flame roared up, etching the room in black and white. Verence blinked.

When he managed to see again there was a crossbow bolt sticking in the wall just by his ear.

The Kelda growled some order, while white light still danced around the walls. The bearded pixie rattled his sticks again.

“Now ye must walk awa’. Noo!”

The Feegle let Verence go. He took a few tottering steps and collapsed on the floor, but the pixies weren’t watching him.

He looked up.

His shadow twisted on the wall where it had been pinned. It writhed for a moment, trying to clutch at the arrow with insubstantial hands, and then faded.

Verence raised his hand. There seemed to be a shadow there, too, but at least this one looked as if it was the regular kind.

The old pixie hobbled over to him.

“All fine now,” he said.

“You shot my shadow?” said Verence.

“Aye, ye
could
call it a shade,” said the pixie. “It’s the ’fluence they put on ye. But ye’ll be up and aboot in no time.”

“A boot?”

“Aboot the place,” said the pixie evenly. “All hail, your kingy. I’m Big Aggie’s Man. Ye’d call me the prime minister, I’m hazardin’. Will ye no’ have a huge dram and a burned bannock while yer waitin’?”

Verence rubbed his face. He did feel better already. The fog was drifting away.

“How can I ever repay you?” he said.

The pixie’s eyes gleamed happily.

“Oh, there’s a wee bitty thing the carlin’ Ogg said you could be givin’ us, hardly important at all,” he said.

“Anything,” said Verence.

A couple of pixies came up staggering under a rolled-up parchment, which was unfolded in front of Verence. The old pixie was suddenly holding a quill pen.

“It’s called a signature,” he said, as Verence stared at the tiny handwriting. “An’ make sure ye initial all the sub-clauses and codicils. We of the Nac mac Feegle are a simple folk,” he added, “but we write verra comp-lic-ated documents.”

Mightily Oats blinked at Granny over the top of his praying hands. She saw his gaze slide sideways to the ax, and then back to her.

“You wouldn’t reach it in time,” said Granny, without moving. “Should’ve got hold of it already if you were goin’ to use it. Prayer’s all very well. I can see where it can help you get your mind right. But an ax is an ax no matter what you believes.”

Oats relaxed a little. He’d expected a leap for the throat.

“If Hodgesaargh’s made any tea, I’m parched,” said Granny. She leaned against the anvil, panting. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand move slowly.

“I’ll get—I’ll ask—I’ll—”

“Man with his head screwed on properly, that falconer. A biscuit wouldn’t come amiss.”

Oats’s hand reached the ax handle.

“Still not quick enough,” said Granny. “Keep hold of it, though. Ax first, pray later. You look like a priest. What’s your god?”

“Er…Om.”

“That a he god or a she god?”

“A he. Yes. A he. Definitely a he.” It was one thing the Church hadn’t schismed over, strangely. “Er…you don’t mind, do you?”

“Why should I mind?”

“Well…your colleagues keep telling me the Omnians used to burn witches…”

“They never did,” said Granny.

“I’m afraid I have to admit that the records show—”

“They never burned witches,” said Granny. “Probably they burned some old ladies who spoke up or couldn’t run away. I wouldn’t look for witches bein’ burned,” she added, shifting position. “I might look for witches doin’ the burning, though. We ain’t
all
nice.”

Oats remembered the Count talking about contributing to the
Arca Instrumentorum
…

Those books were ancient!
But so were vampires, weren’t they?
And they were practically canonical! The freezing knife of doubt wedged itself deeper in his brain. Who knew who really wrote
anything
? What could you
trust
? Where was the
holy
writ? Where was the
truth
?

Granny pulled herself to her feet and tottered over the bench, where Hodgesaargh has left his jar of flame. She examined it carefully.

Oats tightened his grip on the ax. It was, he had to admit, slightly more comforting than prayer at the moment. Perhaps you could start with the small truths. Like: he had an ax in his hand.

“I wa—want to be certain,” he said. “Are you…are you a vampire?”

Granny Weatherwax appeared not to hear the question.

“Where’s Hodgesaargh with that tea?” she said.

The falconer came in with a tray.

“Nice to see you up and about, Mistress Weatherwax.”

“Not before time.”

The tea slopped as she took the proffered cup. Her hand was shaking.

“Hodgesaargh?”

“Yes, mistress?”

“So you’ve got a firebird here, have you?”

“No, mistress.”

“I saw you out huntin’ it.”

“And I found it, miss. But it had been killed. There was nothing but burnt ground, miss.”

“You’d better tell me all about it.”

“Is this the right time?” said Oats.

“Yes,” said Granny Weatherwax.

Oats sat and listened. Hodgesaargh was an original storyteller and quite good in a very specific way. If he’d had to recount the saga of the Tsortean War, for example, it would have been in terms of the birds observed, every cormorant noted, every pelican listed, every battlefield raven taxonomically placed, no tern unturned. Some men in armor would have been involved at some stage, but only because the ravens were perching on them.

“The phoenix doesn’t lay eggs,” said Oats at one point. This was a point a few points after the point where he asked the falconer if he’d been drinking.

“She’s a bird,” said Hodgesaargh. “That’s what birds do. I’ve never seen a bird that doesn’t lay eggs. I collected the eggshell.”

He scuttled off into the mews. Oats smiled nervously at Granny Weatherwax.

“Probably a bit of chicken shell,” he said. “I’ve read about the phoenix. It’s a mythical creature, a symbol, it—”

“Can’t say for sure,” said Granny. “I’ve never seen one that close to.”

The falconer returned, clutching a small box. It was full of tufts of fleece, in the middle of which was a pile of shell fragments. Oats picked up a couple. They were a silvery gray and very light.

“I found them in the ashes.”

“No one’s ever claimed to have found phoenix eggshell before,” said Oats accusingly.

“Didn’t know that, sir,” said Hodgesaargh innocently. “Other-wise I wouldn’t have looked.”

“Did anyone else ever look, I wonder?” said Granny. She poked at the fragments. “Ah…” she said.

“I thought p’raps the phoenixes used to live somewhere very dangerous—” Hodgesaargh began.

“Everywhere’s like that when you’re newborn,” said Granny. “I can see you’ve been thinking, Hodgesaargh.”

“Thank you, Mistress Weatherwax.”

“Shame you didn’t think further,” Granny went on.

“Mistress?”

“There’s the bits of more than one egg here.”

“Mistress?”

“Hodgesaargh,” said Granny patiently, “this phoenix laid more than one egg.”

“What? But it can’t! According to mythology—” Oats began.

“Oh,
mythology
,” said Granny. “Mythology’s just the folktales of people who won ’cos they had bigger swords. They’re
just
the people to spot the finer points of ornithology, are they? Anyway, one of anything ain’t going to last for very long, is it? Firebirds have got enemies, same as everything else. Give me a hand up, Mister Oats. How many birds in the mews, Hodgesaargh?”

The falconer looked at his fingers for a moment.

“Fifty.”

“Counted ’em lately?”

They stood and watched while he walked from post to post. Then they stood and watched while he walked back and counted them again. Then he spent some time looking at his fingers.

“Fifty-one?” said Granny, helpfully.

“I don’t understand it, mistress.”

“You’d better count them by types, then.”

This produced a count of nineteen lappet-faced worriers where there should have been eighteen.

“Perhaps one flew in because it saw the others,” said Oats. “Like pigeons.”

“It doesn’t work like that, sir,” said the falconer.

“One of ’em won’t be tethered,” said Granny. “Trust me.”

They found it at the back, slightly smaller that the other worriers, hanging meekly from its perch.

Fewer birds could sit more meekly than the Lancre wow-hawk, or lappet-faced worrier, a carnivore permanently on the lookout for the vegetarian option. It spent most of its time asleep in any case, but when forced to find food it tended to sit on a branch out of the wind somewhere and wait for something to die. When in the mews the worriers would initially perch like other birds and then, talons clamped around the pole, doze off peacefully upside down. Hodgesaargh bred them because they were found only in Lancre and he liked the plumage, but all reputable falconers agreed that for hunting purposes the only way you could reliably bring down prey with a wowhawk was by using it in a slingshot.

Granny reached out toward it.

“I’ll fetch you a glove,” said Hodgesaargh, but she waved him away.

The bird hopped onto her wrist.

Granny gasped, and little threads of green and blue burned like marsh gas along her arm for a moment.

“Are you all right?” said Oats.

“Never been better. I’ll need this bird, Hodgesaargh.”

“It’s dark, mistress.”

“That won’t matter. But it’ll need to be hooded.”

“Oh, I never hood wowhawks, mistress. They’re never any trouble.”

“This bird…
this
bird,” said Granny, “is a bird I reckon no one’s ever seen before. Hood it.”

Hodgesaargh hesitated. He recalled the circle of scorched earth and, before it, something looking for a shape in which it could survive…

“It
is
a wowhawk, isn’t it, mistress?”

“And what makes you ask that?” said Granny slowly. “After all, you’re the falconer in these parts…”

“Because I found…in the woods…I saw…”

“What did you see, Hodgesaargh?”

Hodgesaargh gave up in the face of her stare. To think that he’d tried to
capture
a phoenix! At least the worst the other birds could do would be to draw blood. Supposing he’d been
holding
it…He was overcome by a very definite
burning
desire to get this bird out of here.

Strangely, though, the other birds weren’t disturbed at all. Every hooded head was turned toward the little bird on Granny Weatherwax’s wrist. Every blind, hooded head.

Hodgesaargh picked up another hood. As he fastened it over the bird’s head he thought, for a moment, that there was a flash of gold from underneath.

He put that down as not his business. He’d survived quite happily in the castle for many years by knowing where his business was, and he was suddenly very clear that it wasn’t here, thank goodness.

Granny took a few deep breaths.

“Right,” she said. “Now we’ll go up to the castle.”

“What for? Why?” said Oats.

“Good grief, man, why d’you think?”

“The vampires are gone,” said the priest. “While you were…getting better. Mr. Hodges…aargh found out. They’ve just left the soldiers and the, er, servants. There was a lot of noise and the coach went, too. There’s guards all over the place.”

“How did the coach get out, then?”

“Well, it was the vampires’ coach and their servant was driving it, but Jason Ogg said he saw Mrs. Ogg, too.”

Granny steadied herself against the wall.

“Where did they go?”

“I thought you could read their minds or something,” said Oats.

“Young man, right now I don’t think I can read my
own
mind.”

“Look, Granny Weatherwax, it’s obvious to me you’re still weak from loss of blood—”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I am,” said Granny. “Don’t you
dare.
Now, where would Gytha Ogg’ve taken them?”

“I think—”

“Uberwald,” said Granny. “That’ll be it.”

“What? How can you know that?”

“Because nowhere in the village’d be safe, she wouldn’t go up to the gnarly ground on a night like this and with a baby to carry as well, and heading down onto the plains’d be downright daft ’cos there’s no cover and I wouldn’t be surprised if the road is washed out by now.”

“But that’ll be right into danger!”

“More dangerous than here?” said Granny. “They
know
about vampires in Uberwald. They’re used to ’em. There’s safe places. Pretty strong inns all along the coach road, for a start. Nanny’s practical. She’ll think of that, I’m betting.” She winced, and added, “But they’ll end up in the vampires’ castle.”

“Oh, surely not!”

“I can feel it in my blood,” said Granny. “That’s the trouble with Gytha Ogg. Far
too
practical.” She paused. “You mentioned guards?”

“They’ve locked themselves in the keep, mistress,” said a voice in the doorway. It was Shawn Ogg, with the rest of the mob behind him. He advanced awkwardly, one hand held in front of him.

“That’s a blessing, then,” said Granny.

“But we can’t get in, mistress,” said Shawn.

“So? Can they get out?”

“Well…no, not really. But the armory’s in there. All our weapons!
And
they’re boozing!”

“What’s that you’re holding?”

Shawn looked down. “It’s the Lancrastian Army Knife,” he said. “Er…I left my sword in the armory, too.”

“Has it got a tool for extracting soldiers from castles?”

“Er…no.”

Granny peered closer. “What’s the curly thing?” she said.

“Oh, that’s the Adjustable Device for Winning Ontological Arguments,” said Shawn. “The King asked for it.”

“Works, does it?”

“Er…if you twiddle it properly.”

“And this?”

“That is the Tool for Extracting the Essential Truth from a Given Statement,” said Shawn.

“Verence asked for that one too, did he?”

“Yes, Granny.”

“Useful to a soldier, is it?” said Oats. He glanced at Granny. She’d changed as soon as the others had entered. Before, she’d been bowed and tired. Now she was standing tall and haughty, supported in a scaffolding of pride.

“Oh yes, sir, ’cos of when the other side are yelling, ‘We’re gonna cut yer tonk—yer
tongue
off,’” Shawn blushed and corrected himself, “and things like that…”

“Yes?”

“Well, you can tell if they’re going to be right,” said Shawn.

“I need a horse,” said Granny.

“There’s old Poorchick’s plough horse—” Shawn began.

“Too slow.”

“I…er…I’ve got a mule,” said Oats. “The King was kind enough to let me put it in the stables.”

“Neither one thing nor t’other, eh?” said Granny. “It suits you. That’ll do for me, then. Fetch it up here and I’ll be off to get the girls back.”

“What? I thought you wanted it to take you up to your cottage! Into Uberwald? Alone? I couldn’t let you do that!”

“I ain’t asking you to
let
me do anything. Now off you go and fetch it, otherwise Om will be angry, I expect.”

“But you can hardly stand up!”

“Certainly I can! Off you go.”

Oats turned to the assembled Lancrastians for support.

“You wouldn’t let a poor old lady go off to confront monsters on a wild night like this, would you?”

They watched him owlishly for a while just in case something interestingly nasty was going to happen to him.

Then someone near the back said, “So why should we care what happens to monsters?”

And Shawn Ogg said, “That’s Granny Weatherwax, that is.”

“But she’s an old lady!” Oats insisted.

The crowd took a few steps back. Oats was clearly a dangerous man to be around.

“Would
you
go out alone on a night like this?” he said.

The voice at the back said, “Depends if I knew where Granny Weatherwax was.”

“Don’t think I didn’t hear that, Bestiality Carter,” said Granny, but there was just a hint of satisfaction in her voice. “Now, are we fetchin’ your mule, Mr. Oats?”