Lords And Ladies

"Ready?" she said. ' "No."

"Then let's go. And keep a look out. With your eyes open."

"I'm looking for elves?" said Casanunda, as the stick rose into the moonlight.

"Could be. It wasn't Esme, and the only other one ever flying around here is Mr. Ixolite the banshee, and he's very good about slipping us a note under the door when he's going to be about. For air traffic control, see?"

Most of the town was dark. The moonlight made a black and silver checkerboard across the country. After a while, Casanunda began to feel better about things. The motion of the broomstick was actually quite soothing.

"Carried lots of passengers, have you?" he said.

"On and off, yes," said Nanny.

Casanunda appeared to be thinking about things. And then he said, in a voice dripping with scientific inquiry, "Tell me, has anyone ever tried to mak-"

"No," said Nanny Ogg firmly. "You'd fall off."

"You don't know what I was going to ask."

"Bet you half a dollar?"

They flew in silence for a couple of minutes, and then Casanunda tapped Nanny Ogg on the shoulder.

"Elves at three o'clock!"

"That's all right, then. That's hours away."

"I mean they're over there!"

Nanny squinted at the stars. Something ragged moved across the night.

"Oh, blast."

"Can't you outfly them?"

"Nope. They can put a girdle round the world in forty minutes."

"Why? It's not that fat," said Casanunda, who was feeling in the mood for a handful of dried frog pills.

"I mean they're fast. We can't outrun 'em, even if we lost some weight."

"I think I'm losing a tiny bit," said Casanunda, as the broomstick dived toward the trees.

Leaves scraped on Nanny Ogg's boots. Moonlight glinted briefly off ash-blond hair, away to her left. "Bugger, bugger, bugger."

Three elves were keeping station with the broomstick. That was the thing about elves. They chased you till you dropped, until your blood was curdling with dread; if a dwarf wanted you dead, on the other hand, they'd simply cut you in half with an axe first chance they got. But that was because dwarfs were a lot nicer than elves.

"They're gaming on us!" said Casanunda.

"Got the crowbar?"

"Yes!"

"Right. . ."

The broomstick zigzagged over the silent forest. One of the elves drew its sword and swung down. Knock them down into the trees, leave them alive as long as possible . . .

The broomstick went into reverse. Nanny Ogg's head and legs went forward, so that partly she was sitting on her hands but mainly she was sitting on nothing. The elf swooped toward her, laughing–

Casanunda stuck out the crowbar.

There was a sound very like doioinng.

The broomstick jerked ahead again, dumping Nanny Ogg in Casanunda's lap.

"Sorry."

"Don't mention it. In fact, do it again if you like."

"Get him, did you?"

"Took his breath away."

"Good. Where're the others?"

"Can't see them." Casanunda grinned madly. "We showed them, eh?"

Something went zip and stuck into Nanny Ogg's hat. "They know we've got iron," she said. "They won't come close again. They don't need to," she added bitterly.

The broomstick swerved around a tree and ploughed through some bracken. Then it swung out on to an overgrown path.

"They aren't following us anymore," said Casanunda, after a while. "We've frightened them off, yes?"

"Not us. They're nervy of going close to the Long Man. It's not their turf. Huh, look at the state of this path. There's trees growing in it now. When I was a girl, you wouldn't find a blade of grass growing on the path." She smiled at a distant memory. "Very popular place on a summer night, the Long Man was."

There was a change in the texture of the forest now. It was old even by the standards of Lancre forestry. Beards of moss hung from gnarled low branches. Ancient leaves crackled underfoot as the witch and the dwarf flew between the trees. Something heard them and crashed away through the thick undergrowth. By the sound of it, it was something with horns.

Nanny let the broomstick glide to a halt.

"There," she said, pushing aside a bracken frond, 'the Long Man.'"

Casanunda peered under her elbow.

"Is that all? It's just an old burial mound."

"Three old burial mounds," said Nanny

Casanunda took in the overgrown landscape.

"Yes, I see them," he said. "Two round ones and a long one. Well?"

"The first time I saw 'em from the air," said Nanny, "I nearly fell off the bloody broomstick for laughin'."

There was one of those pauses known as the delayed drop while the dwarf worked out the topography of the situation.

Then:

"Blimey," said Casanunda. "I thought the people who built burial mounds and earthworks and things were serious druids and people like that, not. . . not people who drew on privy walls with 200,000 tons of earth, in a manner of speaking."

"Doesn't sound like you to be shocked by that sort of thing."

She could have sworn the dwarf was blushing under his wig.

"Well, there's such a thing as style," said Casanunda. "There's such a thing as subtlety. You don't just shout: I've got a great big tonker."