Going Postal - Terry Pratchett [83]
Moist carefully removed his hat and gripped it in his mouth. He didn’t dare imagine what’d happen if he lost it, and he’d need to have it on his head at the end of the journey. It was important. It was all about style.
One of the towers of the Grand Trunk was ahead and slightly to the left. There were two in the twenty miles between Ankh-Morpork and Sto Lat, because they were taking almost all the traffic of lines that stretched right across the continent. Beyond Sto Lat, the Trunk began to split into tributaries, but here, flashing overhead, the words of the world were flowing—
—should be flowing. But the shutters were still. As he drew level, Moist saw men working high up on the open wooden tower; by the look of it, a whole section had broken off.
Ha! So long, suckers! That’d take some repairing! Worth an overnight attempt at a delivery to Pseudopolis, maybe? He’d talk to the coachmen; it was not as if they’d ever paid the Post Office for their damn coaches. And if wouldn’t matter if the clacks got repaired in time, either, because the Post Office would have made the effort. The clacks company was a big bully, sacking people, racking up the charges, demanding lots of money for bad service. The Post Office was the underdog, and an underdog can always find somewhere soft to bite.
Carefully, he eased more of the blanket under him. Various organs were going numb.
The towering fumes of Ankh-Morpork were falling far behind. Sto Lat was visible between Boris’s ears, a plume of lesser smokes. The tower disappeared astern, and already Moist could see the next one. He’d ridden more than a third of the way in twenty minutes, and Boris was still eating up the ground.
About halfway between the cities was an old stone tower, all that remained of a heap of ruins surrounded by woodland. It was almost as high as a clacks tower, and Moist wondered why they hadn’t simply used it as one. It was probably too derelict to survive in a gale under the weight of the shutters, he thought. The area looked bleak, a piece of weedy wilderness in the endless fields.
If he’d had spurs, Moist would have spurred Boris on at this point, and would probably have been thrown, trampled, and eaten for his pains.* Instead, he lay low over the horse’s back and tried not to think about what this ride was doing to his kidneys.
Time passed.
The second tower went by, and Boris dropped into a canter. Sto Lat was clearly visible now; Moist could make out the city walls and the turrets of the castle.
He’d have to jump off, there was no other way. Moist had tried out half a dozen scenarios as the walls loomed, but nearly all of them involved haystacks. The one that didn’t was the one where he broke his neck.
But it didn’t seem to occur to Boris to turn aside. He was on a road, the road was straight, it went through this gateway, and Boris had no problem with that. Besides, he wanted a drink.
The city streets were crowded with things that couldn’t be jumped or trampled, but there was a horse trough. He was only vaguely aware of something falling off his back.
Sto Lat wasn’t a big city. Moist had once spent a happy week there, passing a few dud bills, pulling off the Indigent Heir trick twice, and selling a glass ring on the way out, not so much for the money as out of a permanent fascination with human deviousness and gullibility.
Now he staggered up the steps of the town hall, watched by a crowd. He pushed open