After a few seconds the main doors burst open and the soldiers ran out. The first one was smacked between the eyes by a ballistic king.
Shawn had just started to run back to the fight when someone landed on his shoulders, bearing him to the ground.
“Well, well, one of the toy soldiers,” sneered Corporal Svitz, leaping up and drawing his sword.
As he raised it Shawn rolled and struck upward with the Lancrastian Peace-time Army Knife. He might have had time to select the Device for DFissecting Paradoxes, or the Appli-ance for Detecting Small Grains of Hope, or the Spiral Thing for Ascertaining the Reality of Being, but as it happened it was the Instrument for Ending Arguments Very Quickly that won the day.
Presently, there came a short sharp shower of soft rain.
Well…certainly a shower.
Definitely soft, anyway.
Agnes hadn’t seen a mob like this before. Mobs, in her limited experience, were noisy. This one was silent. Most of the town was in it, and to Agnes’s surprise they’d brought along many of the children.
It didn’t surprise Perdita. They’re going to kill the vampires, she said, and the children will watch.
Good, thought Agnes, that’s exactly right.
Perdita was horrified. It’ll give them nightmares!
No, thought Agnes. It’ll take the nightmares away. Sometimes, everyone has to know the monster is dead, and remember, so that they can tell their grandchildren.
“They tried to turn people into things,” she said aloud.
“Sorry, miss?” said Piotr.
“Oh…just thinking aloud.”
And where had she got that other idea, Perdita wondered, the one where she’d told the villagers to send runners out to other towns to report on the night’s work. That was unusually nasty of her.
But she remembered the look of horror on the mayor’s face, and, later, the blank engrossed expression when he was trying to throttle the Count with his chain of office. The vampire had killed him with a blow that had almost broken him in half.
She fingered the wounds on her neck. She was pretty certain vampires didn’t miss, but Vlad must have done, because she clearly wasn’t a vampire. She didn’t even like the idea of rare steak. She’d tried to see if she could fly, when she thought people weren’t looking, but she was as attractive to gravity as ever. The blood-sucking…no, never that, even if it was the ultimate diet program, but she’d have liked the flying.
It’s changed you, said Perdita.
“How?”
“Sorry, miss?”
You’re sharper…edgier…nastier.
“Maybe it’s about time I was, then.”
“Sorry, miss?”
“Oh, nothing. Do you have a spare sickle?”
The vampires traveled fast but erratically, appearing not so much to fly as to be promising entries in the world long-jump championships.
“We’ll burn that ungrateful place to the ground,” moaned the Countess, landing heavily.
“Afterward we’ll burn that place to the ground,” said Lacrimosa. “This is what kindness leads to, Father, I do hope you’re paying attention?”
“After you paid for that bell tower, too,” said the Countess.
The Count rubbed his throat, where the links of the gold chain still showed as a red weal. He wouldn’t have believed that a human could be so strong.
“Yes, that might be a good course of action,” he said. “We would have to make sure the news got around, of course.”
“You think this news won’t get around?” said Lacrimosa, landing beside him.
“It will be dawn soon, Lacci,” said the Count, with heavy patience. “Because of my training, you will regard it as rather a nuisance, not a reason to crumble into a little pile of dust. Reflect on this.”
“That Weatherwax woman did this, didn’t she,” said Lacri-mosa, ignoring this call to count her blessings. “She put her self somewhere and she’s attacking us. She can’t be in the baby. I suppose she wasn’t in your fat girl, Vlad? Plenty of room in there. Are you listening, Brother?”
“What?” said Vlad, distantly, as they turned a corner in the road and saw the castle ahead of them.
“I saw you give in and bite her. So romantic. They still dragged her off, though. They’ll have to use quite a long stake to hit any useful organ.”
“She’d have put her self somewhere close,” said the Count. “It stands to reason. It must’ve been someone in the hall…”
“One of the other witches, surely,” said the Countess.
“I wonder…”
“That stupid priest,” said Lacrimosa.
“That would probably appeal to her,” said the Count. “But I suspect not.”
“Not…Igor?” said his daughter.
“I wouldn’t give that a moment’s thought,” said the Count.
“I still think it was Fat Agnes.”
“She wasn’t that fat,” said Vlad sulkily.
“You’d have got tired of her in the end and we’d have ended up with her always getting in the way, just the others,” said Lacrimosa. “Traditionally a keepsake is meant to be a lock of their hair, not their entire skull—”
“She’s different.”
“Just because you can’t read her mind? How interesting would that be?”
“At least I did bite someone,” said Vlad. “What was wrong with you?”
“Yes, you were acting very strangely, Lacci,” said the Count, as they reached the drawbridge.
“If she was hiding in me I’d know!” snarled Lacrimosa.
“I wonder if you would,” said the Count. “She just has to find a weak spot…”
“She’s just a witch, Father. Honestly, we’re acting as though she’s got some sort of terrible power—”
“Perhaps it was Vlad’s Agnes after all,” said the Count. He gave his son a slightly longer stare than was strictly necessary.
“We’re nearly at the castle,” said the Countess, trying to rally them. “We’ll all feel better for an early day.”
“Our best coffins got taken to Lancre,” said Lacrimosa sullenly. “Someone was so sure of themselves.”
“Don’t you adopt that tone with me, young woman!” said the Count.
“I’m two hundred years old,” said Lacrimosa. “Pardon me, but I think I can choose any tone I like.”
“That’s no way to speak to your father!”
“Really, Mother, you might at least act as if you had two brain cells of your own!”
“It is not your father’s fault that everything’s gone wrong!”
“It has not all gone wrong, my dear! This is just a temporary setback!”
“It won’t be when the Escrow meat tell their friends! Come on, Vlad, stop moping and back me up here…”
“If they tell them, what can they do? Oh, there will be a little bit of protesting, but then the survivors will see reason,” said the Count. “In the meantime, we have those witches waiting for us. With the baby.”
“And we’ve got to be polite to them, I suppose?”
“Oh, I don’t think we need to go that far,” said the Count. “Let them live, perhaps—”
Something bounced on the bridge beside him. He reached down to pick it up, and dropped it with a yelp.
“But…garlic shouldn’t burn…” he began.
“Thith ith water from the Holy Turtle Pond of Thquintth,” said a voice above them. “Blethed by the Bithop himthelf in the Year of the Trout.” There was a glugging noise and the sound of someone swallowing. “That wath a good year for beatitude,” Igor went on. “But you don’t have to take my word for it. Duck, you thuckerth!”
The vampires dived for cover as the bottle, turning over and over, arced down from the battlements.
It shattered on the bridge, and most of the contents hit a vampire, who burst into flame as if hit by burning oil.
“Now really, Cryptopher, there’s no call for that sort of thing,” said the Count, as the blazing figure
screamed and spun around in a circle. “It’s all in your mind, you know. Positive thinking, that’s the ticket…”
“He’s turning black,” said the Countess. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
“Oh, very well. Vlad, just kick him off the drawbridge, will you?”
The luckless Cryptopher was pushed, squirming, into the chasm.
“You know, that should not have happened,” said the Count, looking at his blistered fingers. “He obviously was not…truly one of us.” Far below, there was a splash.
The rest of the vampires scrambled for the cover of the gate arch as another bottle exploded near the Count. A drop splashed his leg, and he glanced down at the little wisp of smoke.
“Some error appears to have crept in,” he said.
“I’ve never been one to put myself forward,” said the Countess, “but I strongly suggest you find a new plan, dear. One which works, perhaps?”
“I have one already formed,” he said, tapping his knuckles against the huge oak gates. “If everyone would perhaps stand aside…”
Up on the battlement Igor nudged Nanny Ogg, who lowered a decanter of water from the Holy Fountain of Seven-Handed Sek and followed his pointing thumb.*
Clouds were suddenly spiraling, with blue light flashing inside them.
“There’th going to be a thtorm!” he said. “The top of my head’th tingling! Run!”
They reached the tower just as a single bolt of lightning blew the doors apart and shattered the stones where they had been standing.
“Well, that was easy,” said Nanny, lying full length on the floor.
“They can control the weather,” said Igor.
“Blast!” said Nanny. “That’s right. Everyone knows that, who knows anything about vampires.”
“Thorry. But they won’t be able to try that on the inthide doorth. Come on!”
“What’s that smell?” said Nanny, sniffing. “Igor, your boots are on fire!”
“Damn! And thethe feet were nearly new thicth montth ago,” said Igor, as Nanny’s holy water sizzled over the smoking leather. “It’th my wire, it pickth up thtray currentth.”
“What happened, someone was hit by a falling buffalo?” said Nanny, as they hurried down the stairs.
“It wath a tree,” said Igor reproachfully. “Mikhail Thwenitth up at the logging camp, the poor man. Practically nothing left, but hith parentth thaid I could have hith feet to remember him by.”
“That was strangely kind of them.”
“Well, I gave him a thpare arm after the acthe acthident a few yearth ago and when old Mr. Thwenitth’th liver gave out I let him have the one Mr. Kochak left to me for giving Mithith Kochak a new eye.”
“People round here don’t so much die as pass on,” said Nanny.
“What goeth around cometh around,” said Igor.
“And your new plan is…?” said Lacrimosa, stepping across the rubble.
“We’ll kill everyone. Not an original plan, I admit, but tried and tested,” said the Count. This met with general approval, but his daughter looked unsatisfied.
“What, everyone? All at once?”
“Oh, you can save some for later if you must.”
The Countess clutched his arm.
“Oh, this does so remind me of our honeymoon,” she said. “Don’t you remember those wonderful nights in Grjsknvij?”
“Oh, fresh morning of the world indeed,” said the Count, solemnly.
“Such romance…and we met such lovely people, too. Do you remember Mr. and Mrs. Harker?”
“Very fondly. I recall they lasted nearly all week. Now, listen all of you. Holy symbols will not hurt us. Holy water is just water—yes, I know, but Cryptopher just wasn’t concentrating. Garlic is just another member of the allium family. Do onions hurt us? Are we frightened of shallots? No. We’ve just got a bit tired, that’s all. Malicia, call up the rest of the clan. We will have a little holiday from reason. And afterward, in the morning, there will be room for a new world order I can’t be having with this at all…”
He rubbed his forehead. The Count prided himself on his mind, and tended it carefully. But right now it felt exposed, as though someone was looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t certain he was thinking right. She couldn’t have got into his head, could she? He’d had hundreds of years of experience. There was no way some village witch could get past his defenses. It stood to reason…
His throat felt parched. At least he could obey the call of his nature. But this time it was an oddly disquieting one.
“Do we have any…tea?” he said.
“What is tea?” said the Countess.
“It…grows on a bush, I think,” said the Count.
“How do you bite it, then?”
“You…er…lower it into boiling water, don’t you?” The Count shook his head, trying to free himself of this demonic urge.
“While it’s still alive?” said Lacrimosa, brightening up.
“…sweet biscuits…” mumbled the Count.
“I think you should try to get a grip, dear,” said the Countess.
“This…tea,” said Lacrimosa. “Is it…brown?”
“…yes…” whispered the Count.
“Because when we were in Escrow I was going to put the bite on one of them and I had this horrible mental picture of a cup full of the wretched stuff,” said his daughter.
The Count shook himself again.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he said. “So let’s stick to what we do know, shall we? Obey our blood…”
The second casualty in the battle for the castle was Vargo, a lank young man who actually become a vampire because he thought he’d meet interesting girls, or any girls at all, and had been told he looked good in black. And then he’d found that a vampire’s interests always center, sooner or later, on the next meal, and hitherto he’d never really thought of the neck as the most interesting organ a girl could have.
Right now all he wanted to do was sleep, so as the vampires surged into the castle proper he sauntered gently away in the direction of his cellar and nice comfortable coffin. Of course he was hungry, since all he’d got in Escrow was a foot in the chest, but he had just enough sense of self-preservation to let the others get on with the hunting so that he could turn up later for the feast.
His coffin was in the center of the dim cellar, its lid lying carelessly on the floor beside it. He’d always been messy with the bedclothes, even as a human.
Vargo climbed in, twisted and turned a few times to get comfortable on the pillow, then pulled the lid down and latched it.
As the eye of narrative drew back from the coffin on its stand, two things happened. One happened comparatively slowly, and this was Vargo’s realization that he never recalled the coffin having a pillow before.
The other was Greebo deciding that he was as mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore. He’d been shaken around in the wheely thing and then sat on by Nanny, and he was angry about that because he knew, in a dim animal way, that scratching Nanny might be the single most stupid thing he could do in the whole world, since no one else was prepared to feed him. This hadn’t helped his temper.
Then he’d encountered a dog, which had tried to lick him. He’d scratched and bitten it a few times, but this had no effect apart from encouraging it to try to be more friendly.
He’d finally found a comfy resting place and had curled up into a ball, and now someone was using him as a cushion—
There wasn’t a great deal of noise. The coffin rocked a few times, and then pivoted around.
Greebo sheathed his claws, and went back to sleep.
“—burn, with a clear bright light—”
Splash, suck, splash.
“—and I in mine…Om be praised.”
Squelch, splash.
Oats had worked his way through most of the hymns he knew, even the old ones which you shouldn’t really sing anymore but you nevertheless remembered because the words were so good. H
e sang them loudly and defiantly, to hold back the night and the doubts. They helped take his mind off the weight of Granny Weatherwax. It was amazing how much she’d apparently gained in the last mile or so, especially whenever he fell over and she landed on top of him.
He lost one of his own boots in a mire. His hat was floating in a pool somewhere. Thorns had ripped his coat to tatters—
He slipped and fell once again as the mud shifted under his feet. Granny rolled off, and landed in a clump of sedge.
If Brother Melchio could only see him now…
The wowhawk swooped past and landed on the branch of a dead tree, a few yards away. Oats hated the thing. It appeared demonic. It flew even though it surely couldn’t see through the hood. Worse, whenever he thought about it, as now, the hooded head turned to fix him with an invisible stare. He took off his other useless shoe, its shiny leather all stained and cracked, and flung it inexpertly.
“Go away, you wicked creature!”
The bird didn’t stir. The shoe flew past it.
Then, as he tried to get to his feet, he smelled burning leather.
Two wisps of smoke were curling up from either side of the hood.
Oats reached to his neck for the security of the turtle, and it wasn’t there. It has cost him five obols in the Citadel, and it was too late now to reflect that perhaps he shouldn’t have hung it from a chain worth a tenth of an obol. It was probably lying in some pool, or buried in some muddy, squelching marsh…
Now the leather burned away, and the yellow glow from the holes was so bright he could barely see the outline of the bird. It turned the dank landscape into lines and shadows, put a golden edge on every tuft of grass and stricken tree—and winked out so quickly that it left Oats’s eyes full of purple explosions.
When he’d recovered his breath and his balance, the bird was swooping away down the moor.
He picked up Granny Weatherwax’s unconscious body and ran after it.
The track did lead downhill, at least. Mud and bracken slipped under his feet. Streams were running from every hole and gully. Half the time it seemed to him that he wasn’t walking, merely controlling a slide, bouncing off rocks, slithering through puddles of mud and leaves.