Eric Read online

Page 9

 

  He leaned back again.

  “Excuse me,” said Eric, “is that Tsort, by any chance?”

  “You wouldnt be trying to make fun of me, would you now, boy? Only theres such a thing as quinquiremes, see? You wouldnt like that at all. ”

  “No, sir,” said Eric. “If you please, sir, Im just a little lad lead astray by bad companionship. ”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Rincewind bitterly. “You just accidentally drew a lot of occult circles, did you, and - ”

  “Sarge! Sarge!” A soldier burst into the guardroom. The sergeant looked up.

  “Theres another of em, sarge! Right out side the gates this time!”

  The sergeant grinned triumphantly at Rincewind.

  “Oh, thats it, is it?” he said. “You were just the advance party, come to open the gates or whatever. Right. Well just go and sort your friends out, and well be right back. ” He indicated the captives. “You stay here. If they move, do something horrible to them. ”

  Rincewind and Eric were left alone with the guard.

  “You know what youve done, dont you,” said Eric. “Youve only taken us all the way back to the Tsortean Wars! Thousands of Years! We did it at school, the wooden horse, everything! How the beautiful Elenor was kidnapped from the Ephebians - or maybe it was by the Ephebians - and there was this siege to get her back and everything. ” He paused. “Hey, that means Im going to meet her. ” He paused again. “Wow!” he said.

  Rincewind looked around the room. It didnt look ancient, but then it wouldnt, because it wasnt, yet. Everywhere in time was now, once you were there, or then. He tried to remember what little he knew of classical history, but it was just a confusion of battles, one-eyed giants and women launching thousands of ships with their faces.

  “Dont you see?” hissed Eric, his glasses aglow. “They must have brought the horse in before the soldiers had hidden in it! We know whats going to happen! We could make a fortune!”

  “How, exactly?”

  “Well. . . ” The boy hesitated. “We could bet on horses, sort of thing. ”

  “Good idea,” said Rincewind.

  “Yes, and - ”

  “All weve got to do is escape, then find out if they have horse races here, and then really try hard to remember the names of the horses that won races in Tsort thousands of years ago. ”

  They went back to looking glumly at the floor. That was the thing about time travel. You were never ready for it. About the only thing he could hope for, Rincewind decided, was finding da Quirms Fountain of Youth and managing to stay alive for a few thousand years so hed be ready to kill his own grandfather which was the only aspect of time travel that had ever remotely appealed to him. He had always felt that his ancestors had it coming to them.

  Funny thing, though. He could remember the famous wooden horse, which had been used to trick a way into the fortified city. He didnt remember anything about there being two of them. There was something inevitable about the next thought that turned up.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the guard. “This, er, this second wooden thing outside the gate. . . its probably not a horse, I expect?”

  “Well, of course youd know that, wouldnt you?” said the guard. “Youre spies. ” “I bet its more oblong and sort of smaller?” said Rincewind, his face a picture of innocent enquiry.

  “You bet. Pretty unimaginative bastards, arent you?” “I see. ” Rincewind folded his hands on his lap. “Try to escape,” said the guard. “Go on, just try it. You try it and see what happens. ” “I expect your colleagues will be bringing it into the city,” Rincewind went on. “They might do,” the guard conceded. Eric began to giggle. It had just begun to dawn on the guard that there was a lot of shouting going on in the

  distance. Someone tried to blow a bugle, but the notes gurgled into silence after a few

  bars. “Bit of a fight going on out there, by the sound of it,” said Rincewind. “People winning their spurs, doing heroic deeds of valour, being noticed by superior officers, that sort of thing. And heres you hanging around in here with us. ”

  “Ive got to stick to my post,” said the guard. “Exactly the right attitude,” said Rincewind. “Never mind about everyone else out there fighting valiantly to defend their city and womenfolk against the foe. You stop in here and guard us. Thats the spirit. Theyll probably put up a statue to you in the city square, if theres one left. `He did his duty,` theyll write on it. ”

  The soldier appeared to think about this, and while he was doing so there was a terrible

  splintering creak from the direction of the main gates. “Look,” he said desperately, “if I just pop out for a moment. . . ” “Dont you worry about us,” said Rincewind encouragingly. "Its not even as if were

  armed. “ ”Right,“ said the soldier. ”Thanks. " He gave Rincewind a worried smile and hurried off in the direction of the noise. Eric

  looked at Rincewind with something like admiration. “That was actually quite amazing,” he said. “Going to go a long way, that lad,” said Rincewind. "A sound military thinker if ever I

  saw one. Come on. Lets run away. “ ”Where to?" Rincewind sighed. Hed tried to make his basic philosophy clear time and again, and

  people never got the message. “Dont you worry about to,” he said. “In my experience that always takes care of itself. The important word is away. ”

  The captain raised his head cautiously over the barricade, and snarled. “Its just a box, sergeant,” he snapped. “Its not even as if it could hold one or two men. ” “Beg pardon, sir,” said the sergeant, and his face was the face of a man whose world has

  changed a lot in a few short minutes. “It holds at least four, sir. Corporal Disuse and his squad, sir. I sent them out to open it sir. ” “Are you drunk, sergeant?” “Not yet, sir,” said the sergeant, with feeling. “Little boxes dont eat people, sergeant. ”

  “After that it got angry, sir. You can see what it did to the gates. ”

  The captain peered over the broken timbers again.

  “I suppose it grew legs and walked over there, did it?” he said sarcastically.

  The sergeant broke into a relieved grin. At last they seemed to be on the same wavelength.

  “Got it in one, sir,” he said. “Legs. Hundreds of the little bleeders, sir. ”

  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, Im going to have a look at it, sergeant - ”

  “- not a good plan, sir, if I may - ”

  “- and after Ive 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 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 were going to do is, were going to find another

  way out. And were going to go out through it. "

  “Thats not fair!”

  “Shes thousands of years older that you! I mean attraction of the mature woman, all right, but itd 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. “Were in the middle of the most 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 youll go out with him. Well, I wont. ” Rincewind stalked up to another gateway in the city wall; it was smaller that the main one, didnt have any guards, and had a wicket gate in it. Rincewind slid back the bolts.

  “This isnt anything to do with us,” he said. “We havent even been born yet, were not old enough to fight, it isnt our business and were 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 hadnt 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 to dismantle the wooden horse for souvenirs.

  Rincewind didnt attempt to understand it. He sat down at a street café 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, mêlée 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-grand father wasnt born yet. Fortunately, Rincewind was able to persuade the man that the future was another country.

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

  “My parents let me drink wine,” said Eric. “Im 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.