Mort - Terry Pratchett [23]
The family stared at the money for some time. The wife sighed.
“Riches bring many problems,” she said. “What are we to do?”
“We return to Klatch,” said the husband firmly, “where our children can grow up in a proper country, true to the glorious traditions of our ancient race and men do not need to work as waiters for wicked masters but can stand tall and proud. And we must leave right now, fragrant blossom of the date palm.”
“Why so soon, O hardworking son of the desert?”
“Because,” said the man, “I have just sold the Patrician’s champion racehorse.”
The horse wasn’t as fine or as fast as Binky, but it swept the miles away under its hooves and easily outdistanced a few mounted guards who, for some reason, appeared anxious to talk to Mort. Soon the shanty suburbs of Morpork were left behind and the road ran out into rich black earth country of the Sto plain, constructed over eons by the periodic flooding of the great slow Ankh that brought to the region prosperity, security and chronic arthritis.
It was also extremely boring. As the light distilled from silver to gold Mort galloped across a flat, chilly landscape, checkered with cabbage fields from edge to edge. There are many things to be said about cabbages. One may talk at length about their high vitamin content, their vital iron contribution, the valuable roughage and commendable food value. In the mass, however, they lack a certain something; despite their claim to immense nutritional and moral superiority over, say, daffodils, they have never been a sight to inspire the poet’s muse. Unless he was hungry, of course. It was only twenty miles to Sto Lat, but in terms of meaningless human experience it seemed like two thousand.
There were guards on the gates of Sto Lat, although compared to the ones that patrolled Ankh they had a sheepish, amateurish look. Mort trotted past and one of them, feeling a bit of a fool, asked him who went there.
“I’m afraid I can’t stop,” said Mort.
The guard was new to the job, and quite keen. Guarding wasn’t what he’d been led to expect. Standing around all day in chain mail with an axe on a long pole wasn’t what he’d volunteered for; he’d expected excitement and challenge and a crossbow and a uniform that didn’t go rusty in the rain.
He stepped forward, ready to defend the city against people who didn’t respect commands given by duly authorized civic employees. Mort considered the pike blade hovering a few inches from his face. There was getting to be too much of this.
“On the other hand,” he said calmly, “how would you like it if I made you a present of this rather fine horse?”
It wasn’t hard to find the entrance to the castle. There were guards there, too, and they had crossbows and a considerably more unsympathetic outlook on life and, in any case, Mort had run out of horses. He loitered a bit until they started paying him a generous amount of attention, and then wandered disconsolately away into the streets of the little city, feeling stupid.
After all this, after miles of brassicas and a backside that now felt like a block of wood, he didn’t even know why he was there. So she’d seen him even when he was invisible? Did it mean anything? Of course it didn’t. Only he kept seeing her face, and the flicker of hope in her eyes. He wanted to tell her that everything was going to be all right. He wanted to tell her about himself and everything he wanted to be. He wanted to find out which was her room in the castle and watch it all night until the light went out. And so on.
A little later a blacksmith, whose business was in one of the narrow streets that looked out on to the castle walls, glanced up from his work to see a tall, gangling young man, rather red in the face, who kept trying to walk through the walls.
Rather later than that a young man with a few superficial bruises on his head called in at one of the city’s taverns and asked for directions to the nearest wizard.
And it was later still that Mort turned up outside a peeling plaster house which announced itself on a blackened brass plaque to