The Shepherd's Crown (Discworld #41)(30)

Tiffany knew Nanny Ogg rarely did any washing – what were daughters-in-law for? – but she realized suddenly that she had never seen Granny Weatherwax doing any laundry for the old gentlemen either, and that thought stopped her for a moment. I need time to work this out, she thought, looking at the Big Man of the Nac Mac Feegles standing in front of her, ready for anything. This would be a tough task for them, she knew.

‘I’ve a wee geas tae lay on ye,’ she said.

‘Och aye?’

‘Rob, have you heard of washing clothes?’

‘Och aye, we ken it happens,’ said Rob Anybody. He scratched at his spog and a mixture of dead insects, half-gnawed chicken’s foot bones and the like showered out.

‘Well then,’ said Tiffany, ‘I would deem it a favour if you could spend some time in my scullery whilst I am about my business. You would be helping an old man, indeed you would. He likes to be clean, and to have clean clothes.’ She glared down at him. ‘A circumstance, Rob, which would be well considered by yourself.’

She approached the scullery door in trepidation when she got back from her visits. Everything was shining clean, and draped among the trees outside were old Mr Price’s unmentionables, as white as white could be. Only then did Tiffany draw breath.

‘Excellent,’ she said to Rob Anybody.

He smiled and said, ‘Aye, we kenned this would be a tricky job.’

‘Good job I wuz with ye this time,’ came a voice. It was Wee Mad Arthur, a Feegle who didn’t mind washing, due to his having been raised by a bunch of cobblers, and then being a polisman in the big city. Wee Mad Arthur, Tiffany often thought, had a battle raging inside him between his Feegle half and the city half, but since every Feegle liked a good punch-up, well, a fight inside yourself was just an extra treat.

Big Yan pushed Wee Mad Arthur aside and said, ‘We dinnae mind helping old bigjobs and getting them squeaky clean, but we are the Feegles and we treasure our dirt. Washing makes a Feegle wither awa’. We cannae abide the soap, ye ken.’

‘Nae me, Rob. Nae me,’ came a happy voice and Daft Wullie fell off the wall of the goat paddock. Bubbles floated away on the air as he rolled across the grass.

‘I’ve told ye about that, Wullie,’ Rob snapped. ‘It just makes bubbles come out of your ears.’

Tiffany laughed. ‘Well, you could make your own soap, Wullie. Make some for Jeannie. Take a wee present home to your kelda. It’s easy to make – you just need some fat and some lye.’

‘Och aye, we’re good liars, we are,’ Rob put in proudly. ‘Famed for it, ye ken.’

Well, I tried, thought Tiffany. And anyway, their spirits are pure, if not particularly clean.

Down on the Chalk, at the edge of a dark forest on the top of a hill overlooking Twoshirts, a small town with growing aspirations of being a bit more than one store, a coaching inn and a blacksmith’s shop, the Queen of the Elves smiled in satisfaction.

It was a warm night and the air smelled as it always did, and the sky looked as it always did. There appeared to be a new road or stream into the town which glimmered in the moonlight, but otherwise things seemed just as they had been on her last visit.

She turned to look at her goblin prisoner, who was perched with his hands bound on the saddle behind one of her guards. She smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile. She would hand him over to Lord Lankin, she thought. The elf would enjoy tearing the wretched goblin limb from limb – after he had had his pleasure playing with his prey, of course.

But first, this goblin filth had led them here – to this hillside. The Queen and her raiding party looked down at the sleeping valley ahead. Her warriors wore scraps of fur and leather, feathers tucked into headbands and dangling around their necks – and they carried bows with the arrows already nocked.

The gate between the worlds had given them very little trouble in the end. It had not taken much effort for the stronger elves to push through – the barrier was, indeed, very weak just now. Before, the old witch would surely have kept it strong, kept them out. For she had been always on the watch for the fairy folk.

Animals noticed them too. At the very moment the Queen stepped onto the Chalk, the hares on the downs had turned and frozen, whilst the owls out hunting had soared higher, sensing the unwelcome presence of another predator.

Humans, however, were usually the last to notice anything. Which made them so much more fun . . .

Apart from a glow above a mound on the hillside and a distant noise of roistering that the Queen recognized as being the usual sounds of the Nac Mac Feegle, there had been nothing so far to trouble the first elf incursion into the Discworld for many years, and the elves had begun to enjoy themselves. They had caroused through a couple of villages, letting out cows, upturning carts, turning the milk in the churns sour, spoiling a cask of ale and generally amusing themselves with such trifles. But the growing little town below promised all sorts of entertainment for elves who had been denied the pleasures of a raid for far too long.

Apart from the delicate tinkling of myriad bells attached to the harnesses of the raiding party’s black horses, there was silence as the elves waited for their Queen to give the signal.

She raised her arm.

But before she could do anything, suddenly, screaming through the air, there came a noise as though someone was killing a gigantic pig.

It was a sound which enveloped the whole of the Chalk. A screaming whistle which screeched around the hills, setting everyone’s teeth on edge. Down in the valley, the air now seemed to be full of fire as a huge iron monster tore along the silvery trail towards the town, clouds of steam marking its path.