Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett [44]
…and heard the running feet. Someone was coming through them at high speed, without caring who heard him, and over the top of the sound of breaking twigs was a curious dull jingling. Magrat sidled behind a dripping holly bush and peered cautiously through the leaves.
It was Shawn, the youngest of Nanny Ogg’s sons, and the metal noise was caused by his suit of chain mail, which was several sizes too big for him. Lancre is a poor kingdom, and over the centuries the chain mail of the palace guards has had to be handed down from one generation to another, often on the end of a long stick. This one made him look like a bullet-proof bloodhound.
She stepped out in front of him.
“Is that you, Miss Magrat?” said Shawn, raising the flap of mail that covered his eyes. “It’s mam!”
“What’s happened to her?”
“He’s locked her up! Said she was coming to poison him! And I can’t get down to the dungeons to see because there’s all new guards! They say she’s been put in chains—” Shawn frowned—“and that means something horrible’s going to happen. You know what she’s like when she loses her temper. We’ll never hear the last of it, miz.”
“Where were you going?” demanded Magrat.
“To fetch our Jason and our Wane and our Darron and our—”
“Wait a moment.”
“Oh, Miss Magrat, suppose they try to torture her? You know what a tongue she’s got on her when she gets angry—”
“I’m thinking,” said Magrat.
“He’s put his own bodyguards on the gates and everything—”
“Look, just shut up a minute, will you, Shawn?”
“When our Jason finds out, he’s going to give the duke a real seeing-to, miz. He says it’s about time someone did.”
Nanny Ogg’s Jason was a young man with the build and, Magrat had always thought, the brains of a herd of oxen. Thick-skinned though he was, she doubted whether he could survive a hail of arrows.
“Don’t tell him yet,” she said thoughtfully. “There could be another way…”
“I’ll go and find Granny Weatherwax, shall I, miz?” said Shawn, hopping from one leg to another. “She’ll know what to do, she’s a witch.”
Magrat stood absolutely still. She had thought she was angry before, but now she was furious. She was wet and cold and hungry and this person—once upon a time, she heard herself thinking she would have burst into tears at this point.
“Oops,” said Shawn. “Um. I didn’t mean. Whoops. Um…” He backed away.
“If you happen to see Granny Weatherwax,” said Magrat slowly, in tones that should have etched her words into glass, “you can tell her that I will sort it all out. Now go away before I turn you into a frog. You look like one anyway.”
She turned, hitched up her skirts, and ran like hell toward her cottage.
Lord Felmet was one of nature’s gloaters. He was good at it.
“Quite comfortable, are we?” he said.
Nanny Ogg considered this. “Apart from these stocks, you mean?” she said.
“I am impervious to your foul blandishments,” said the duke. “I scorn your devious wiles. You are to be tortured, I’ll have you know.”
This didn’t appear to have the required effect. Nanny was staring around the dungeon with the vaguely interested gaze of a sightseer.
“And then you will be burned,” said the duchess.
“OK,” said Nanny.
“OK?”
“Well, it’s bloody freezing down here. What’s that big wardrobe thing with the spikes?”
The duke was trembling. “Aha,” he said. “Now you realize, eh? That, my dear lady, is an Iron Maiden. It’s the latest thing. Well may you—”
“Can I have a go in it?”
“Your pleas fall on deaf…” The duke’s voice trailed off. His twitch started up.
The duchess leaned forward until her big red face was inches away from Nanny’s nose.
“This insouciance gives you pleasure,” she hissed, “but soon you will laugh on the other side of your face!”
“It’s only got this side,” said Nanny.
The duchess fingered a tray of implements lovingly. “We shall see,” she said, picking up a pair of pliers.
“And you need not think any others of your people will come to your aid,” said the duke, who was sweating despite the chill. “We alone hold the keys to this dungeon. Ha ha. You will be an example to all those who have been spreading malicious