Mort

“I won’t lose,” said Mort. “That’s the trouble.”

“Father wants him to win,” said Ysabell bitterly.

“You mean he’ll let Mort win?” said Cutwell.

“Oh, no, he won’t let him win. He just wants him to win.”

Mort nodded. As they followed Death’s dark shape he reflected on an endless future, serving whatever mysterious purpose the Creator had in mind, living outside Time. He couldn’t blame Death for wanting to quit the job. Death had said the bones were not compulsory, but perhaps that wouldn’t matter. Would eternity feel like a long time, or were all lives—from a personal viewpoint—entirely the same length?

Hi, said a voice in his head. Remember me? I’m you. I got you into this.

“Thanks,” he said bitterly. The others glanced at him.

You could come through this, the voice said. You’ve got a big advantage. You’ve been him, and he’s never been you.

Death swept through the hall and into the Long Room, the candles obediently flicking into flame as he entered.

ALBERT.

“Master?”

FETCH THE GLASSES.

“Master.”

Cutwell grabbed the old man’s arm.

“You’re a wizard,” he hissed. “You don’t have to do what he says!”

“How old are you, lad?” said Albert, kindly.

“Twenty.”

“When you’re my age you’ll see your choices differently.” He turned to Mort. “Sorry.”

Mort drew his sword, its blade almost invisible in the light from the candles. Death turned and stood facing him, a thin silhouette against a towering rack of hourglasses.

He held out his arms. The scythe appeared in them with a tiny thunderclap.

Albert came back down one of the glass-lined alleys with two hourglasses, and set them down wordlessly on a ledge on one of the pillars.

One was several times the size of the ordinary glasses—black, thin and decorated with a complicated skull-and-bones motif.

That wasn’t the most unpleasant thing about it.

Mort groaned inwardly. He couldn’t see any sand in there.

The smaller glass beside it was quite plain and unadorned. Mort reached for it.

“May I?” he said.

BE MY GUEST.

The name Mort was engraved on the top bulb. He held it up to the light, noting without any real surprise that there was hardly any sand left. When he held it to his ear he thought he could hear, even above the ever-present roar of the millions of lifetimers around him, the sound of his own life pouring away.

He put it down very carefully.

Death turned to Cutwell.

MR WIZARD, SIR, YOU WILL BE GOOD ENOUGH TO GIVE US A COUNT OF THREE.

Cutwell nodded glumly.

“Are you sure this couldn’t all be sorted out by getting around a table—” he began.

NO.

“No.”

Mort and Death circled one another warily, their reflections flickering across the banks of hourglasses.

“One,” said Cutwell.

Death spun his scythe menacingly.

“Two.”

The blades met in mid-air with a noise like a cat sliding down a pane of glass.

“They both cheated!” said Keli.

Ysabell nodded. “Of course,” she said.

Mort jumped back, bringing the sword round in a too-slow arc that Death easily deflected, turning the parry into a wicked low sweep that Mort avoided only by a clumsy standing jump.

Although the scythe isn’t pre-eminent among weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants’ revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome. Once its owner gets it weaving and spinning no-one—including the wielder—is quite certain where the blade is now and where it will be next.

Death advanced, grinning. Mort ducked a cut at head height and dived sideways, hearing a tinkle behind him as the tip of the scythe caught a glass on the nearest shelf…

… in a dark alley in Morpork a night soil entrepreneur clutched at his chest and pitched forward over his cart…

Mort rolled and came up swinging the sword double-handed over his head, feeling a twang of dark exhilaration as Death darted backwards across the checkered tiles. The wild swing cut through a shelf; one after another its burden of glasses started to slide towards the floor. Mort was dimly aware of Ysabell scurrying past him to catch them one by one…

… across the Disc four people miraculously escaped death by falling…

… and then he ran forward, pressing home his advantage. Death’s hands moved in a blur as he blocked every chop and thrust, and then changed grip on the scythe and brought the blade swinging up in an arc that Mort sidestepped awkwardly, nicking the frame of an hourglass with the hilt of his sword and sending it flying across the room…

… in the Ramtop mountains a tharga-herder, searching by lamplight in the high meadows for a lost cow, missed his footing and plunged over a thousand foot drop…

… Cutwell dived forward and caught the tumbling glass in one desperately outstretched hand, hit the floor and slid along on his stomach…

… a gnarled sycamore mysteriously loomed under the screaming herder and broke his fall, removing his major problems—death, the judgement of the gods, the uncertainty of Paradise and so on—and replacing them with the comparatively simple one of climbing back up about one hundred feet of sheer, icy cliff in pitch darkness.