Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett [44]
The younger girl, who had been trying to follow this, stepped forward and gripped his arm.
“You come seeing Red Army now,” she said.
“Forward Motion With Masses!” said the boy, taking Rincewind’s other arm.
“Does he always talk like that?” said Rincewind, as he was propelled gently towards a door.
“Three Yoked Oxen does not study,” said the girl.
“Extra Success Attend Our Leaders!”
“‘Tuppence A Bucket, Well Stamped Down!”’ said Rincewind encouragingly.
“Much Ownership of Means of Production!”
“‘How’s Your Granny Off For Soap?’”
Three Yoked Oxen beamed.
Butterfly opened the door. That left Rincewind outside with the other two.
“Very useful slogans,” he said, moving sideways just a little. “But I would draw your attention to the famous saying of the Great Wizard Rincewind.”
“Indeed, I am all ear,” said Lotus Blossom politely.
“Rincewind, he say…Goodbyeeeeeeeee—”
His sandals skidded on the cobbles but he was already traveling fast when he hit the doors, which turned out to be made of bamboo and smashed apart easily.
There was a street market on the other side. That was something Rincewind remembered later about Hunghung; as soon as there was a space, any kind of space, even the space created by the passage of a cart or a mule, people flowed into it, usually arguing with one another at the tops of their voices over the price of a duck which was being held upside down and quacking.
His foot went through a wicker cage containing several chickens, but he pressed on, scattering people and produce. In an Ankh-Morpork street market something like this would have caused some comment, but since everyone around him already seemed to be screaming into other people’s faces Rincewind was merely a momentary and unremarked nuisance as he half ran, half limped with one squawking foot past the stalls.
Behind him, the people flowed back. There may have been some cries of pursuit, but they were lost in the hubbub.
He didn’t stop until he found an overlooked alcove between a stall selling songbirds and another purveying something that bubbled in bowls. His foot crowed.
He smashed it against cobbles until the cage broke; the cockerel, maddened by the heady air of freedom, pecked him on the knee and fluttered away.
There were no sounds of pursuit. However, a battalion of trolls in tin boots would have had trouble making themselves heard above a normal Hunghung street market.
He let himself get his breath back.
Well, he was his own man again. So much for the Red Army. Admittedly he was in the capital city, where he didn’t want to be, and it was only a matter of time before something else unpleasant happened to him, but it wasn’t actually happening at the moment. Let him find his bearings and five minutes’ start and they could watch his dust. Or mud. There was a lot of both, here.
So…this was Hunghung…
There didn’t seem to be streets in the sense Rincewind understood the term. Alleys opened on to alleys, all of them narrow and made narrower by the stalls that lined them. There was a large animal population in the marketplace. Most of the stalls had their share of caged chickens, ducks in sacks, and strange wriggling things in bowls. From one stall a tortoise on top of a struggling heap of other tortoises under a sign saying: 3r. each, good for Ying gave Rincewind a slow, “You think you’ve got troubles?” look.
But it was hard to tell where the stalls ended and the buildings began in any case. Dried-up things hanging on a string might be merchandise