The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [101]
“Does anyone ever win?” said Vimes. Come on, woodcutters, the people need wood!
“Sometimes. If they train well and know the country! Many a successful man in Bonk owes his start in life to our little custom. In your case, we will give you, oh, an hour’s lead. For the sport of it!” He pointed. “Bonk is five miles in that direction. The lore says that you must not enter a dwelling until you get there.”
“And if I don’t run?”
“Then it will be a really short event! We do not like Ankh-Morpork. We do not want you here!”
“That’s odd,” said Vimes.
Wolf’s broad brow wrinkled.
“Your meaning?”
“Oh, it’s just that everywhere I go in Ankh-Morpork I seem to bump into people who came from Uberwald, you see. Dwarfs, trolls, humans. All beavering away quite happily and writing letters home saying, come on, it’s great here—they don’t eat you alive for a dollar.”
Wolf’s lip curled, revealed a glint of incisor. Vimes had seen that look on Angua’s face. It meant she was having a bad hair day. And a werewolf can have a bad hair day all over.
He pushed his luck. It was clearly too weak to move by itself.
“Angua’s getting on well—”
“Vimes! Mister Civilized! Ankh-Morpork! You will run!”
Hoping that his legs would support him, Vimes climbed out on the snow of the bank, as slowly as he dared. There was laughter from the werewolves.
“You go into the water wearing clothes?”
Vimes looked down at his streaming legs.
“You’ve never seen drawers before?” he said.
Wolf’s lip curled again. He glanced triumphantly at the others.
“Behold…civilization!” he said.
Vimes puffed life into his cigar, and looked around the frozen woodland with as much hauteur as he could muster.
“Four hundred crowns, did you say?” he said.
“Yes!”
Vimes sneered at the forest again.
“What is that in Ankh-Morpork dollars, do you know? About a dollar fifty?”
“The question will not arise!” Wolf bellowed.
“Well, I don’t want to have to spend it all here—”
“Run!”
“Under the circumstances, then, I won’t ask if you have the money on you.”
Vimes walked away from the werewolves, glad that they couldn’t see his face and very much aware that the skin on his back wanted to crawl around to his front.
He kept moving calmly, his wet drawers beginning to crackle in the frosty air, until he was certain he was out of sight of the pack.
So, let’s see…they’ve got better strength than you, they know the country, and if they’re as good as Angua they could track a fart through a skunk’s breakfast, and your legs hurt already.
So what are the plusses here? Well…you’ve made Wolf really angry.
Vimes broke into a run.
Not much of a plus there then, all things considered.
Vimes broke into a faster run.
Off in the distance, wolves began to howl.
There is a saying: It won’t get better if you picket.
Corporal Nobbs or, rather, Guild President C. W. St. J. Nobbs, reflected on this. A little early snow was fizzling in the air over the metal drum in which, in approved strike fashion, was glowing red-hot in front of the Watch House.
A main problem, as he saw it, was that there was something philosophically wrong with picketing a building that no one except a watchman wanted to enter in any case. It is impossible to keep people out of something that they don’t want to go into. It can’t be done.
The chant hadn’t worked. An old lady had given him a penny.
“Colon, Colon, Colon! Out! Out! Out!” shouted Reg Shoe happily, waving his placard.
“That doesn’t sound right, Reg,” said Nobby. “Sounds like surgery.”
He looked at the other placards. Dorfl was holding a large, closely worded text, detailing their grievances in full, with references to Watch procedures and citing a number of philosophical texts. Constable Visit’s sandwich board, on the other hand, proclaimed: WHAT PROFITETH IT A KINGDOM IF THE OXEN BE DEFLATED? RIDDLES II, V3
Somehow, these cogent arguments did not seem to be bringing the city to its knees.
He turned at the sound of a coach pulling up and looked up at a door which had a crest consisting mainly of a black shield. And