The Fifth Elephant (35 page)

Then Vimes looked away.

“Let’s let him through,” he said. “The man’s decided he’s got a duty to do.”

Tantony nodded slightly, and then marched on across to the bridge until he was a few feet from the baroness. He saluted.

“Take these people away!” she said.

“Lady Serafine von Uberwald?” said Tantony woodenly.

“You
know
who I am, man!”

“I wish to talk to you concerning certain charges made in my presence.”

Vimes closed his eyes. Oh, you poor dumb idiot…I didn’t mean you to actually—

“You
what
?” said the baroness.

“It has been alleged, my lady, that a member or members of your family have been involved in a conspiracy to—”

“How
darrre
you!” screamed Serafine.

And Wolfgang leapt, and the future became a series of flickering images.

In midair he changed into the wolf.

Vimes grabbed the bottom of Detritus’s bow and forced it upward at the same time as the troll pulled the trigger.

Carrot was running before Wolfgang landed on Captain Tantony’s chest.

The
sound
of the bow echoed around the castle, above the noise of a thousand whirring fragments scything through the sky.

Carrot reached Wolfgang in a flat dive. He hit the wolf with his shoulder, and the two of them were bowled over.

Then, like some moving magic lantern show coming back up to speed, the scene exploded.

Carrot got to his feet and—

It must be because we’re abroad, thought Vimes. He’s trying to do things
properly
.

He’d squared up to the werewolf, fists balled, a stance taken straight from Fig. 1 of
The Noble Art of Fisticuffs
, which looked impressive right up to the point when your opponent broke your nose with a quart mug.

Carrot had a punch like an iron bar, and landed a couple of heavy blows on Wolfgang as he got up. The werewolf seemed more puzzled than hurt.

Then he changed shape, caught a fist in both hands and gripped it hard. To Vimes’s horror he stepped forward, without apparent effort, forcing Carrot back.

“Do not try anything, Angua,” said Wolf, grinning happily. “Or else I will break his arm. Oh, perhaps I will break his arm anyway! Yes!”

Vimes even heard the crack. Carrot went white. Someone holding a broken arm has all the control they need. Another idiot, thought Vimes. When they’re down you don’t let them get back up! Damn the Marquis of Fantailler! Policing by consent was a good theory, but you had to get your opponent to lie still first.

“Ah! And he has other bones!” said Wolfgang, pushing Carrot away. He glanced toward Angua. “Get back, get back. Or I’ll hurt him some more! No, I shall hurt him some more
anyway
!”

Then Carrot kicked him in the stomach.

Wolfgang went over backward, but turned this into a backflip and a midair spin. He landed lightly, leapt back at the astonished Carrot, and punched him twice in the chest.

The blows sounded like shovels hitting wet concrete.

He grabbed the falling man, lifted him over his head with one hand and hurled him down onto the bridge in front of Angua.

“Civilized man!” he shouted. “Here he is, sister!”

Vimes heard a sound down beside him. Gavin was watching intently, making urgent little noises in his throat. A tiny part of Vimes, the little rock hard core of cynicism, thought: All right for you, then.

Steam was rising off Wolfgang. He shone in the torchlight. The blond hair across his shoulders gleamed like a slipped halo.

Angua knelt down by the body, face impassive. Vimes had been expecting a scream of rage.

He heard her crying.

Beside Vimes, Gavin whined. Vimes stared down at the wolf. He looked at Angua, trying to lift Carrot, and then he looked at Wolfgang. And then back again.

“Anyone else?” said Wolfgang, dancing back and forth on the boards. “How about you, Civilized?”

“Sam!” hissed Sybil. “You can’t—”

Vimes drew his sword. It wouldn’t make any difference, now. Wolfgang wasn’t playing now, he wasn’t punching and running away. Those arms could push a fist through Vimes’s rib cage and out the other side—

A blur went past at shoulder height. Gavin struck Wolfgang in the throat, knocking him over. They rolled across the bridge, Wolfgang changing back to wolf shape to lock jaw against jaw. They broke, circled, and went for one another again.

Dreamlike, Vimes heard a small voice say: “He wouldn’t last five minutes back home fightin’ like that. The silly bugger’s gonna get
creamed
, fightin’ like that! Stuff the Marquis of flamin’ Fantailler!”

Gaspode was sitting bolt upright, stubby tail vibrating.

“The daftie!
This
is how you win a dogfight!”

As the wolves rolled over and over, Wolfgang tearing at Gavin’s belly, Gaspode arrived growling and yapping and launched himself in the general direction of the werewolf’s hindquarters.

There was a yip. Gaspode’s growling was suddenly muffled. Wolfgang leapt vertically. Gavin sprang. The three hit the parapet of the bridge together, knocked the crumbling stones aside, hung for a moment in a snarling ball, and then dropped down into the roaring whiteness of the river.

The whole of it, from the moment Tantony had crossed the bridge, had taken much less than a minute.

The baroness was staring down into the gorge. Keeping his eye on her, Vimes spoke to Detritus.

“Are you sure you’re werewolf-proof, Sergeant?”

“Pretty much, sir. Anyway, I got the bow wound up again.”

“Go into the castle and fetch the resident Igor, then,” said Vimes calmly. “If anyone even tries to stop you, shoot them. And shoot anyone standing near them.”

“No problem about dat, sir.”

“We’re not at home to Mister Reasonable, Sergeant.”

“I do not hear him knockin’, sir.”

“Go to it, then. Sergeant Angua?”

She did not look up.

“Sergeant Angua!”

Now
she looked up.

“How can you be so…so
cool
?” she snarled. “He’s
hurt
…”

“I know. Go and talk to those watchmen hanging around on the other end of the bridge. They look scared. I don’t want any accidents. We’re going to need them. Cheery, cover Carrot and Tantony with something. Keep them warm.”

I wish there was something to keep
me
warm, he thought. The thoughts came slowly, like drips of freezing water. He felt that ice would crackle off him if he moved, that frost would sparkle in his footsteps, that his mind was full of crisp snow.

“And now, madam,” he said, turning back to the baroness, “you will give me the Scone of Stone.”

“He’ll be back!” hissed the baroness. “That fall was
nothing
! And he’ll
find
you.”

“For the last time…the stone of the dwarfs. The wolves are waiting out there. The dwarfs are waiting down in the city. Give me the stone, and we all might survive. This is diplomacy. Don’t let me try anything else.”

“I have only to say the word—”

Angua began to growl. Sybil strode toward and grabbed the baroness.

“You never answered a single letter! All those years I wrote to you!”

The baroness stared at her in amazement, as people so often did when struck with Sybil’s sharp non sequiturs.

“If you know we’ve got the Scone,” she said to Vimes, “then you know it’s not the real one. And much good may it do the dwarfs!”

“Yes, you had it made in Ankh-Morpork. Made in Ankh-Morpork! They should have stamped it on the bottom. But someone killed the man who did it. That’s murder. It’s against the law.” Vimes nodded at the baroness. “It’s a thing we have.”

Gaspode dragged himself out of the water and stood, shivering, on the shingle. Every single part of him felt bruised. There was a nasty ringing noise in his ears. Blood dripped down one leg.

The last few minutes had been a little hazy, but he
did
recall they’d involved a lot of water that had hit him like hammers.

He shook himself. His coat jangled where the water was already freezing.

Out of habit, he walked over to the nearest tree and, wincing, raised a leg.

E
XCUSE
ME
.

A busy, reflective silence followed.

“That was not a good thing you just did,” said Gaspode.

I’
M SORRY
. P
ERHAPS THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT MOMENT
.

“Not for me, no. You may have caused some physical damage here.”

I
T’S HARD TO KNOW WHAT TO SAY
.

“Trees don’t normally talk back, is my point.” Gaspode sighed. “So…what happens now?”

I
BEG YOUR PARDON
?

“I’m dead, right?”

N
O
. N
O ONE IS MORE SURPRISED THAN ME
, I
MAY SAY, BUT YOUR TIME DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE NOW
.

Death pulled out an hourglass, held it up against the cold stars for a moment, and stalked away along the riverbank.

“’Scuse me, there’s no chance of a lift, is there?” said Gaspode, struggling after him.

N
ONE WHATSOEVER
.

“Only, being a short dog in deep snow is not good for the ol’ wossnames, if you get my—”

Death had stopped at a little bay. An indistinct shape lay in a few inches of water.

“Oh,” said Gaspode.

Death leaned down. There was a flash of blue, and then he vanished.

Gaspode shivered. He paddled into the water, and nudged Gavin’s sodden fur with his nose.

“Shouldn’t be like this,” he whined. “If you was a human, they’d put you in a big boat on the tide and set fire to it, an’ everyone’d see. Shouldn’t just be you an’ me down here in the cold.”

There was something that had to be done, too. He knew it in his bones. He crawled back to the bank and pulled himself up onto the trunk of a fallen willow.

He cleared his throat.

Then he howled.

It started badly, hesitantly, but it picked up and got stronger, richer…and when he paused for breath the howl went on and on, passing from throat to throat across the forest.

The sound wrapped him as he slid off the log and struggled on toward higher ground. It lifted him over the deeper snow. It wound around the trees, a plaiting of many voices becoming something with a life of its own. He remembered thinking: Maybe it’ll even get as far as Ankh-Morpork.

Maybe it’ll get much farther than that.

Vimes was impressed by the baroness. She fought back in a corner.

“I know nothing about any deaths—”

A howl came up from the forest. How many wolves were there? You never saw them…and then, when they cried out, it sounded as though there was one behind every tree. This one went on and on—it sounded like a cry thrown into a lake of air, the ripples spreading out across the mountains.

Angua threw her head back and screamed. Then, breath hissing between her teeth, she advanced on the baroness, fingers flexing.

“Give him…the damn stone,” she hissed. “Will any…of…you…face me?
Now?
Then…give him the stone!”

“What theems to be the throuble?”

Igor lurched through the stricken gates, trailed by Detritus. He caught sight of the two bodies and hurried over like a very large spider.

“Fetch the stone,” growled Angua. “And then…we…will leave. I can
smell
it. Or do you…want me to
take
it?”

Serafine glared at her, then turned on her heel and ran back into the ruins of the castle. The other werewolves shrank back from Angua as if her stare were a whip.

“If you can’t help these men,” said Vimes to the kneeling Igor, “your future does not look good.”

Igor nodded. “Thith one,” he said, indicating Tantony, “fleth woundth, I can thitch him up a treat, no problem.
Thith
one,” he tapped Carrot, “…nasty break on the arm.” He glanced up. “Marthter Wolfgang been playing again?”

“Can you make him well?” snapped Vimes.

“No, it’th hith lucky day,” said Igor. “I can make him
better
. I’ve got some kidneyth jutht in, a lovely little pair, belonged to young Mr. Crapanthy, hardly touched a drop of thtrong licker, shame about the avalanchthe…”

“Does he
need
them?” said Angua.

“No, but you thould never mith an opportunity to improve yourthelf, I alwayth thay.”

Igor grinned. It was a strange sight. The scars crawled around his face like caterpillars.

“Just see to the arm,” said Vimes, firmly.

The baroness reappeared, flanked by several werewolves. They also backed away as Angua spun around.

“Take it,” said Serafine. “Take the wretched thing. It is a fake. No crime has been committed!”

“I’m a policeman,” said Vimes. “I can always find a crime.”

The sleigh slid under its own weight down the track toward Bonk, the town’s watchmen running alongside it and giving it the occasional push. With their captain down they were lost and bewildered and in no mood to take orders from Vimes, but they did what Angua commanded because Angua was of the class that traditionally gave them orders…

The two casualties were bedded down on blankets.

“Angua?” said Vimes.

“Yes, sir?”

“There’s wolves keeping pace with us. I can see them running between the trees.”

“I know.”

“Are they on our side?”

“Let’s just say…they’re not on anyone else’s side yet, shall we? They don’t like me much but they know…Gavin did, and right now that is what’s important. Some of them are out looking for my brother.”

“Would he have survived that? It was a long way down.”

“Well, it wasn’t fire or silver. There’s nothing but white water for miles. It probably hurt a lot, but we heal amazingly well, sir.”

“Look, I’m sorry that—”

“No, Mister Vimes, you’re not. You shouldn’t be. Carrot just didn’t understand what Wolfgang is like. You can’t beat something like him in a fair fight. Look, I know he’s family, but…personal is not the same as important. Carrot always said that.”