Reaper Man

The wizards backed further away down the length of the hall.

‘I hope it doesn’t eat too much wood,’ said the dazed Modo, radiating genuine concern. ‘They’re a devil, excuse my Klatchian, if you get too much carbon in them. It’s far too heating.’

‘You know, this is exactly the right time for a lecture on the dynamics of compost making, Modo,’ said the Dean.

Dwarfs do not know the meaning of the word ‘irony’.

‘Well, all right. Ahem. The correct balance of materials, correctly layered according to—’

‘There goes the door,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, lumbering towards the rest of them.

The mound of furniture started to move forward.

The Archchancellor stared desperately around the hall, at a loss. Then his eyes were drawn to a familiar, heavy bottle on one of the sideboards.

‘Carbon,’ he said. ‘That’s like charcoal, isn’t it?’

‘How should I know? I’m not an alchemist,’ sniffed the Dean.

The compost heap emerged from the debris. Steam poured off it.

The Archchancellor looked longingly at the bottle of Wow-Wow Sauce. He uncorked it. He took a deep sniff.

‘The cooks here just can’t make it properly, you know,’ he said. ‘It’ll be weeks before I can get any more from home.’

He tossed the bottle towards the advancing heap.

It vanished into the seething mass.

‘Stinging nettles are always useful,’ said Modo, behind him. ‘They add iron. And comfrey, well, you can never get enough comfrey. For the minerals, you know. Myself, I’ve always reckoned that a small quantity of wild yarrow—’

The wizards peered over the top of an overturned table.

The heap had stopped moving.

‘Is it just me, or is it getting bigger?’ said the Senior Wrangler.

‘And looking happier,’ said the Dean.

‘It smells awful,’ said the Bursar.

‘Oh, well. And that was nearly a full bottle of sauce, too,’ said the Archchancellor sadly. ‘I’d hardly opened it.’

‘Nature’s a wonderful thing, when you come to think about it,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘You don’t all have to glare at me like that, you know. I was only passing a remark.’

‘There are times when—’ Ridcully began, and then the compost heap exploded.

It wasn’t a bang or a boom. It was the dampest, most corpulent eruption in the history of terminal flatulence. Dark red flame, fringed with black, roared up to the ceiling. Pieces of heap rocketed across the hall and slapped wetly into the walls.

The wizards peered out from their barricade, which was now thick with tea-leaves.

A cabbage stalk dropped softly on to the Dean’s head.

He looked at a small, bubbling patch on the flagstones.

His face split slowly into a grin.

‘Wow,’ he said.

The other wizards unfolded themselves. Adrenalin backwash worked its seductive spell. They grinned, too, and started playfully punching one another on the shoulder.

‘Eat hot sauce!’ roared the Archchancellor.

‘Up against the hedge, fermented rubbish!’

‘Can we kick ass, or can we kick ass?’ burbled the Dean happily.

‘You mean can’t the second time, not can. And I’m not sure that a compost heap can be said to have an—’ the Senior Wrangler began, but the tide of excitement was flowing against him.

‘That’s one heap that won’t mess with wizards again,’ said the Dean, who was getting carried away. ‘We’re keen and mean and—’

‘There’s three more of them out there, Modo says,’ said the Bursar.

They fell silent.

‘We could go and pick up our staffs, couldn’t we?’ said the Dean.

The Archchancellor prodded a piece of exploded heap with the toe of his boot.

‘Dead things coming alive,’ he murmured. ‘I don’t like that. What’s next? Walking statues?’

The wizards looked up at the statues of dead Archchancellors that lined the Great Hall and, indeed, most of the corridors of the University. The University had been in existence for thousands of years and the average Archchancellor remained in office for about eleven months, so there were plenty of statues.

‘You know, I really wish you hadn’t said that,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

‘It was just a thought,’ said Ridcully. ‘Come on, let’s have a look at the rest of those heaps.’

‘Yeah!’ said the Dean, now in the grip of a wild, unwizardly machismo. ‘We’re mean! Yeah! Are we mean?’

The Archchancellor raised his eyebrows, and then turned to the rest of the wizards.

‘Are we mean?’ he said.

‘Er. I’m feeling reasonably mean,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

‘I’m definitely very mean, I think,’ said the Bursar. ‘It’s having no boots that does it,’ he added.

‘I’ll be mean if everyone else is,’ said the Senior Wrangler.

The Archchancellor turned back to the Dean.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it appears that we are all mean.’

‘Yo!’ said the Dean.

‘Yo what?’ said Ridcully.

‘It’s not a yo what, it’s just a yo,’ said the Senior Wrangler, behind him. ‘It’s a general street greeting and affirmative with convivial military ingroup and masculine bonding-ritual overtones.’

‘What? What? Like “jolly good”?’ said Ridcully.

‘I suppose so,’ said the Senior Wrangler, reluctantly.