Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett [49]
Supposing they are better than us, she thought. Supposing that, compared to them, we’re just—
You’re too close to the castle, snapped Perdita. You’re thinking cow thoughts.
Then Agnes realized that there was a squad of men marching behind the carts. They didn’t look at all like the carts’ drivers.
And these, said Perdita, are the cattle prods.
They had uniforms, of a sort, with the black and white crest of the Magpyrs, but they weren’t a body of men that looked smart in a uniform. They looked very much like men who killed other people for money, and not even for a lot of money. They looked, in short, like men who’d cheerfully eat a puppy sandwich. Several of them leered at Agnes when they went past, but it was only a generic leer that was simply leered on the basis that she had a dress on.
More wagons came up behind them.
“Nanny Ogg says you must take time by the foreskin,” Agnes said, and darted forward as the last wagon rumbled past.
“She does?”
“I’m afraid so. You get used to it.”
She caught the back of the cart and pulled herself up, beckoning him hastily to follow.
“Are you trying to impress me?” he said as she hauled him on board.
“Not you,” she said. And realized, at this point, that what she was sitting on was a coffin.
There were two of them in the back of the cart, packed around with straw.
“Are they moving the furniture in?” said Oats.
“Er…I think…it might…be occupied,” said Agnes.
She almost shrieked when he removed the lid. The coffin was empty.
“You idiot! Supposing there was someone in there!”
“Vampires are weak during the day. Everyone knows that,” said Oats reproachfully.
“I can…feel them here…somewhere,” said Agnes. The rattling of the cart changed as it rumbled onto the cobblestones of the courtyard.
“Get off the other one and I’ll have a look.”
“But supposing—”
He pushed her off and raised the lid before she could protest further. “No, no vampire in here, either,” he said.
“Supposing one’d just reached out and grabbed you by the throat!”
“Om is my shield,” said Oats.
“Really? That’s nice.”
“You may chortle—”
“I didn’t chortle.”
“You can if you want to. But I’m sure we are doing the right thing. Did not Sonaton defeat the Beast of Batrigore in its very cave?”
“I don’t know.”
“He did. And didn’t the prophet Urdure vanquish the Dragon of Sluth on the Plain of Gidral after three days’ fighting?”
“I don’t know that we’ve got that much time—”
“And wasn’t it true the Sons of Exequial beat the hosts of Myrilom?”
“Yes?”
“You’ve heard of that?”
“No. Listen, we’ve stopped. I don’t particularly want us to be found, do you? Not right now. And not by those guards. They didn’t look like nice men at all.”
They exchanged a meaningful glance over the coffins, concerning a certain inevitability about the immediate future.
“They’ll notice they’re heavier, won’t they?” said Oats.
“Those people driving the carts didn’t look as though they notice anything very much.”
Agnes stared at the coffin beside her. There was some dirt in the bottom, but it was otherwise quite clean and had a pillow at the head end. There were also some side pockets in the lining.
“It’s the easiest way in,” she said. “You get into this one, I’ll get into that one. And, look…those people you just told me about…were they real historical characters?”
“Certainly. They—”
“Well, don’t try to imitate them yet, all right? Otherwise you’ll be a historical character too.”
She shut the lid, and still felt there was a vampire around.
Her hand touched the side pocket. There was something soft yet spiky there. Her fingers explored it in fascinated horror and discovered it to be a ball of wool with a couple of long knitting needles stuck through it, suggesting either a very domesticated form of voodoo or that someone was knitting a sock.
Who knitted socks in a coffin? On the other hand, perhaps even vampires couldn’t sleep sometimes, and tossed and turned all day.
She braced herself as the coffin was picked up and she tried to occupy her