Carpe Jugulum (Discworld, #23; Witches, #6)

by Terry Pratchett

“Oh, we’re always all right. You remember that. We happen to other people.”

“Mistress Weatherwax, you are a natural disputant.” “No I ain’t!”

A sign near the drawbridge said LAƒT CHANCE NOT TO GO NEAR THE CAƒTLE, and Nanny Ogg laughed and laughed.

“I mean, it’s flattering and everything, but I really don’t think I could be goin’ out with a man with a limp.” “Limp what?” Nanny Ogg had always considered herself unshockable, but there’s no such thing. Shocks can come from unexpected directions. “I am a married woman,” said Magrat, smiling at her expression. And it felt good, just once, to place a small tintack in the path of Nanny’s carefree amble through life.

“Heartth,” said Igor. “Oh, two hearts. You’ve got two hearts?” “Yeth. The other one belonged to poor Mr. Thwinetth down at the thawmill, but hith wife thed it wath no uthe to him after the acthident, what with him not having a head to go with it.”

was an organ, or possibly what an organ hoped to be when it grew up, because it dominated the huge room. A music lover to the core, Nanny couldn’t help trotting over to inspect it. It was black, its pipes framed and enclosed in intricate ebony fretwork, with the stops and keyboard made of dead elephant.

“He holdth people in hith jawth and beatth them thentheleth with hith tailth.” “He wags people to death?” “Thometimeth he drownth them in dribble,” said Igor.

Oh well . . . just wipe that smile off Lacrimosa’s face, that’s all I ask . . . They could move very fast. Even a scream wouldn’t work. She might be able to get in one good wallop, and that would be it. And perhaps she’d wake up as a vampire, and not know the difference between good and evil. But that wasn’t the point. The point was here and now, because here and now she did.

“Why don’t you just crawl back into your coffin and rot, you slimy little maggot,” Agnes said. It wasn’t that good, but impromptu insults are seldom well crafted. Lacrimosa leapt at her, but something else was wrong. Instead of gliding through the air like velvet death she lurched like a bird with a broken wing. But fury let her rear up in front of Agnes, one claw out to scratch— Agnes hit her as hard as she could and felt Perdita get behind the blow as well. It shouldn’t have been possible for it to connect, the girl was quick enough to run around Agnes three times before it could, but it did. The people of Escrow watched a vampire stagger back, bleeding.

“A nice try, Miss Nitt,” said the Count, striding toward her. “But I don’t think so—” He stopped, clutching at the gold chain that was suddenly around his neck. Behind him the mayor hauled on it with all his weight, forcing the vampire to the ground.

Granny staggered on a little, and stopped in a puddle of black water that began to rise over her boots. “Can you forget?” she said. “Pardon?” “You wouldn’t be so unkind as to pass on to anyone else the ramblings of a poor ol’ woman who was probably off her head, would you?” said Granny, slowly. Oats thought for a moment. “What ramblings were these, Mistress Weatherwax?” Granny seemed to sag with relief. “Ah. Good thing you asked, really, bein’ as there weren’t any.” Black bubbles arose from the bog around Granny Weatherwax as the two of them watched each other. Some sort of truce had been declared.

“It is said three thousand people witnessed his manifestation at the Great Temple when he made the Covenant with the prophet Brutha and saved him from death by torture on the iron turtle—”

“Right. Right. That’s people for you. Now if I’d seen him, really there, really alive, it’d be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched ’em like a father and cared for ’em like a mother . . . well, you wouldn’t catch me sayin’ things like ‘there are two sides to every question’ and ‘we must respect other people’s beliefs.’ You wouldn’t find me just being gen’rally nice in the hope that it’d all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin’ sword. And I did say burnin’, Mister Oats, ’cos that’s what it’d be. You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors.”

The mist behind him formed a shape on a white horse. Death shook his head. IT WASN’T EVEN AS IF I SAID ANYTHING, he said.

“We don’t mind the werewolves,” he went on, to general agreement. “They leave us alone most of the time because we don’t run fast enough to be interesting.”

As he raised it Shawn rolled and struck upward with the Lancrastian Peace-time Army Knife. He might have had time to select the Device for Dissecting Paradoxes, or the Appliance for Detecting Small Grains of Hope, or the Spiral Thing for Ascertaining the Reality of Being, but as it happened it was the Instrument for Ending Arguments Very Quickly that won the day.

It didn’t surprise Perdita. They’re going to kill the vampires, she said, and the children will watch. Good, thought Agnes, that’s exactly right. Perdita was horrified. It’ll give them nightmares! No, thought Agnes. It’ll take the nightmares away. Sometimes, everyone has to know the monster is dead, and remember, so that they can tell their grandchildren.

He reached down to pick it up, and dropped it with a yelp. “But . . . garlic shouldn’t burn . . .” he began.

“Thith ith water from the Holy Turtle Pond of Thquintth,” said a voice above them. “Blethed by the Bithop himthelf in the Year of the Trout.” There was a glugging noise and the sound of someone swallowing. “That wath a good year for beatitude,” Igor went on. “But you don’t have to take my word for it. Duck, you thuckerth!”

“People round here don’t so much die as pass on,” said Nanny. “What goeth around cometh around,” said Igor.

Vargo climbed in, twisted and turned a few times to get comfortable on the pillow, then pulled the lid down and latched it. As the eye of narrative drew back from the coffin on its stand, two things happened. One happened comparatively slowly, and this was Vargo’s realization that he never recalled the coffin having a pillow before. The other was Greebo deciding that he was as mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore.

On Granny’s wrist the hood of the hawk was crackling and smoking. As he watched, little flames erupted from the leather again. “It knows what they did,” said Granny. “It was hatched knowing. Phoenixes share their minds. And they don’t tolerate evil.”

When the brightness had faded a little Nanny peered carefully into the courtyard. A bird, house-sized, wings of flame wider than the castle, reared in the broken doorway.

“Everywhere I look I see something holy! You’ve taught us to see patterns!” She snarled at her father, teeth exposed.

There was a scream from somewhere on the battlements. The phoenix had spotted another vampire.

“You know nothing about true vampires!” “I know more’n you think, and I know about Gytha Ogg,” said Granny. Nanny Ogg blinked.

“What will wear off?” said Vlad. “Oh, they’re strong, your walls of thought,” said Granny dreamily. “I couldn’t get through them.” The Count smiled. Granny smiled, too. “So I didn’t,” she added.

“You wanted to know where I’d put my self,” said Granny. “I didn’t go anywhere. I just put it in something alive, and you took it. You invited me in. I’m in every muscle in your body and I’m in your head, oh yes. I was in the blood, Count. In the blood. I ain’t been vampired. You’ve been Weatherwaxed. All of you. And you’ve always listened to your blood, haven’t you?”

“Really? And you think you can stand in my way? An ax isn’t even a holy symbol!” “Oh.” Oats looked crestfallen. Agnes saw his shoulders sag as he lowered the blade. Then he looked up, smiled brightly and said, “Let’s make it so.” Agnes saw the blade leave a gold trail in the air as it swept around. There was a soft, almost silken sound. The ax dropped onto the flagstones. In the sudden silence, it clanged like a bell.

“Death’s too good for them!” “Yes,” said Agnes.” I suppose that’s why she didn’t let them have it.”

Oats’s gaze went out across the haze, and the forests, and the purple mountains. “Everywhere I look I see something holy.” For the first time since he’d met her, he saw Granny Weatherwax smile properly. Normally her mouth went up at the corners just before something unpleasant was going to happen to someone who deserved it, but this time she appeared to be pleased with what she’d heard. “That’s a start, then,” she said.

Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back or a pillow used as a bludgeon. It had had years in a lonely bedroom to perfect the knark, the graaah and the gnoc, gnoc, gnoc unimpeded by the nudges, jabs and occasional attempts at murder that usually moderate the snore impulse over time.

DOWN, BOY! DOWN, I SAY! WILL YOU STOP—LET GO! LET GO THIS MINUTE! ALL RIGHT, LOOK . . . FETCH? FETCH? THERE WE GO . . . Death watched Scraps bound away.

But he’d never encountered quite this amount of enthusiasm or, if it came to it, this amount of flying mucus. It was disconcerting. It made him feel he wasn’t doing his job properly.

THERE’S A SATISFACTORY DOG. NOW . . . DROP. LET GO, PLEASE. DID YOU HEAR ME SAY LET GO? LET GO THIS MINUTE! Scraps bounced away. This was far too much fun to end.

“Wee free men!” “Nac mac Feegle!”

The sign read: still IˆATE’NT DEAD