Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett [106]
The rain had stopped but the wind was sharp, and there were still occasional stinging bursts of hail.
“Won’t be long now,” he panted.
“You don’t know that,” said Granny, splashing through black, peaty mud.
“No, you’re absolutely right,” said Oats. “I was just saying that to be cheerful.”
“Hasn’t worked,” said Granny.
“Mistress Weatherwax, would you like me to leave you here?” said Oats.
Granny sniffed. “Wouldn’t worry me,” she said.
“Would you like me to?” said Oats.
“It’s not my mountain,” said Granny. “I wouldn’t be one to tell people where they should be.”
“I’ll go if you want me to,” said Oats.
“I never asked you to come,” said Granny simply.
“You’d be dead if I hadn’t!”
“That’s no business of yours.”
“My god, Mistress Weatherwax, you try me sorely.”
“Your god, Mister Oats, tries everyone. That’s what gods generally do, and that’s why I don’t truck with ’em. And they lays down rules all the time.”
“There have to be rules, Mistress Weatherwax.”
“And what’s the first one that your Om requires, then?”
“That believers should worship no other god but Om,” said Oats promptly.
“Oh yes? That’s gods for you. Very self-centered, as a rule.”
“I think it was to get people’s attention,” said Oats. “There are many commandments about dealing well with other people, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Really? And ’spose someone doesn’t want to believe in Om and tries to live properly?”
“According to the prophet Brutha, to live properly is to believe in Om.”
“Oho, that’s clever! He gets you coming and going,” said Granny. “It took a good thinker to come up with that. Well done. What other clever things did he say?”
“He doesn’t say things to be clever,” said Oats hotly. “But, since you ask, he said in his Letter to the Simonites that it is through other people that we truly become people.”
“Good. He got that one right.”
“And he said that we should take light into dark places.”
Granny didn’t say anything.
“I thought I’d mention that,” said Oats, “because when you were…you know, kneeling, back in the forge…you said something very similar…”
Granny stopped so suddenly that Oats nearly fell over.
“I did what?”
“You were mumbling and—”
“I was talkin’ in my…sleep?”
“Yes, and you said something about darkness being where the light needs to be, which I remember because in the Book of Om—”
“You listened?”
“No, I wasn’t listening, but I couldn’t help hearing, could I? And you sounded as if you were having an argument with someone…”
“Can you remember everything I said?”
“I think so.”
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.
“I wonder, young man, if you would be so good as to pull me out?”
This took some time and involved a branch from a nearby tree and, despite Oats’s best efforts, Granny’s first foot came out of its boot. And once one boot has said goodbye in a peat bog, the other one is bound to follow out of fraternal solidarity.
Granny ended up on what was comparatively dry and comparatively land wearing a pair of the heaviest-looking socks Oats had ever seen. They looked as if they could shrug off a hammer blow.
“They was good boots,” said Granny, looking at the bubbles. “Oh well, let’s get on.”
She staggered a little as she set off again, but to Oats’s admiration managed to stay upright. He was beginning to form yet another new opinion of the old woman, who caused a new opinion to arise about once every half hour, and it was this: she needed someone to beat. If she didn’t have someone to beat, she’d probably beat herself.