Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett [71]
And that would have been all there was to it if there had only been one ninja. But there was a clatter of rice flails and an unsheathing of long, curved swords.
The Horde drew closer together. Hamish pushed back his rug to reveal their armory, although the collection of notched blades looked positively homely compared with the shiny toys ranged against them.
“Teach, why don’t you take Mr. Taxman over to the corner out of harm’s way?” said Ghenghiz.
“This is madness!” said Six Beneficent Winds. “They’re the finest fighters in the world and you’re just old men! Give in now and I’ll see if I can get you a rebate!”
“Calm down, calm down,” said Mr. Saveloy. “No one’s going to get hurt. Metaphorically, at least.”
Ghenghiz Cohen waved his sword a few times.
“Okay, you lads,” he said. “Give us your best ninje.”
Six Beneficent Winds looked on in horror as the Horde squared up.
“But it will be terrible slaughter!” he said.
“I’m afraid so,” said Mr. Saveloy. He fished in his pockets for a bag of peppermints.
“Who are these mad old men? What do they do?”
“Barbarian heroing, generally,” said Mr. Saveloy. “Rescuing princesses, robbing temples, fighting monsters, exploring ancient and terror-filled ruins…that sort of thing.”
“But they look old enough to be dead! Why do they do it?”
Saveloy shrugged. “That’s all they’ve ever done.”
A ninja somersaulted down the room, screaming, a sword in either hand; Cohen waited in an attitude rather similar to that of a baseball batter.
“I wonder,” said Mr. Saveloy, “if you have ever heard of the term ‘evolution’?”
The two met. The air blurred.
“Or ‘survival of the fittest’?” said Mr. Saveloy.
The scream continued, but rather more urgently.
“I didn’t even see his sword move!” whispered Six Beneficent Winds.
“Yes. People often don’t,” said Mr. Saveloy.
“But…they’re so old!”
“Indeed,” said the teacher, raising his voice above the screams, “and of course this is true. They are very old barbarian heroes.”
The taxman stared.
“Would you like a peppermint?” said Mr. Saveloy, as Hamish’s wheelchair thundered past in pursuit of a man with a broken sword and a pressing desire to stay alive. “You may find it helps, if you are around the Horde for any length of time.”
The aroma from the proffered paper bag hit Six Beneficent Winds like a flamethrower.
“How can you smell anything after eating those?”
“You can’t,” said Mr. Saveloy happily.
The taxman continued to stare. The fighting was a fast and furious affair but, somehow, only on one side. The Horde fought like you’d expect old men to fight—slowly, and with care. All the activity was on the part of the ninjas, but no matter how well flung the throwing star or speedy the kick, the target was always, without any obvious effort, not there.
“Since we have this moment to chat,” said Mr. Saveloy, as something with a lot of blades hit the wall just above the taxman’s head, “I wonder: could you tell me about the big hill just outside the city? It is quite a remarkable feature.”
“What?” said Six Beneficent Winds distractedly.
“The big hill.”
“You want to know about that? Now?”
“Geography is a little hobby of mine.”
Someone’s ear hit Six Beneficent Winds on the ear.
“Er. What? We call it the Big Hill…Hey, look at what he’s doing with his—”
“It seems remarkably regular. Is it a natural feature?”
“What? Eh? Oh…I don’t know, they say it turned up thousands of years ago. During a terrible storm. When the first Emperor died. He…he’s going to be killed! He’s going to be killed! He’s going to be—How did he do that?”
Six Beneficent Winds suddenly remembered, as a child, playing Shibo Yangcong-san with his grandfather. The old man always won. No matter how carefully he’d assembled his strategy, he’d find Grandfather would place a tile quite innocently right in the crucial place just before he could make his big move. The ancestor had spent his whole life playing shibo. The fight was just like that.
“Oh, my,” he said.
“That