Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett [3]
‘Aho! The Megapode!’ It wasn’t clear where the cry came from. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. ‘There she bumps! Ho, the Megapode!’
The cry was taken up on every side, and from the dark shadows of every corridor, bar the one down which the beast had fled, galloped curious shapes, which turned out to be, by the flickering light of the Emperor, the senior faculty of the university. Each wizard was being carried piggy-back by a stout bowler-hatted university porter, whom he was urging onward by means of a bottle of beer on a string held, as tradition demanded, ahead of the porter’s grasp on a long stick.
The doleful quack rang out again, some distance away, and a wizard waved his staff in the air and yelled: ‘Bird is Flown! Ho, the Megapode!’
The colliding wizardry, who’d already crushed Smeems’s rickety ladder under the hobnailed boots of their steeds, set off at once, butting and barging for position.
For a little while ‘Aho! The Megapode!’ echoed in the distance. When he was certain they had gone, Nutt crept out from his refuge behind the Emperor, picked up what remained of the ladder, and looked around.
‘Master?’ he ventured.
There was a grunt from above. He looked up. ‘Are you all right, master?’
‘I have been better, Nutts. Can you see my feet?’
Nutt raised his lantern. ‘Yes, master. I’m sorry to say the ladder is broken.’
‘Well, do something about it. I’m having to concentrate on my handholds here.’
‘I thought I wasn’t paid to think, master.’
‘Don’t you try to be smart!’
‘Can I try to be smart enough to get you down safely, master?’
No answer was the stern reply. Nutt sighed, and opened up the big canvas tool bag.
Smeems clung to the vertiginous candle as he heard, down below, mysterious scrapings and clinking noises. Then, with a silence and suddenness that made him gasp, a spiky shape rose up beside him, swaying slightly.
‘I’ve screwed together three of the big snuffer poles, master,’ said Nutt from below. ‘And you’ll see there’s a chandelier hook stuck in the top, yes? And there’s a rope. Can you see it? I think that if you can make a loop around the Emperor it won’t slip much and you ought to be able to let yourself down slowly. Oh, and there’s a box of matches, too.’
‘What for?’ said Smeems, reaching out for the hook.
‘Can’t help noticing that the Emperor has gone out, sir,’ said the voice from below, cheerfully.
‘No it hasn’t!’
‘I think you’ll find it has, sir, because I can’t see the—’
‘There is no room in this university’s most important department for people with bad eyesight, Nutts!’
‘I beg your pardon, master. I don’t know what came over me. Suddenly I can see the flame!’
From above came the sound of a match being struck, and a circle of yellow light expanded on the ceiling as the candle that never went out was lit. Shortly afterwards Smeems very gingerly lowered himself to the floor.
‘Well done, sir,’ said Nutt.
The Candle Knave flicked a length of congealed candle dribble off his equally greasy shirt.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But you’ll have to come back in the morning to recover the—’ But Nutt was already going up the rope like a spider. There was a clanging on the other side of the great candle as the lengths of snuffer pole were dropped, and then the boy abseiled back down to his master with the hook under his arm. And now he stood there all eagerness and scrubbed (if somewhat badly dressed) efficiency. There was something almost offensive about it. And the Candle Knave wasn’t used to this. He felt obliged to take the lad down a peg, for his own good.
‘All candles in this university must be lit by long taper from a candle that still burns, boy,’ he said sternly. ‘Where did you get those matches?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say, sir.’
‘I dare say you wouldn’t, indeed! Now tell me, boy!’
‘I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, master.’
‘Your reluctance