'It's a tradithion!' he said. 'Every Igor leaveth hith body to the family! Why wathte good organth? Look at my Uncle Igor, he died of buffaloeth, tho there wath a perfectly good heart and thome kidneyth going begging, pluth he'd thtill got Grandad'th handth and they were damn good handth, let me tell you.' He sniffed. 'I with I'd had them, he wath a great thurgeon.'

'We-ll . . . I know every family says things like 'He's got his father's eyes"-' Nanny began.

'No, my thecond couthin Igor got them.'

'But- but ... who does the cutting and sewing?' said Magrat.

'I do. An Igor leamth houthehold thurgery on hith father'th knee,' said Igor. 'And then practitheth on hith grandfather'th kidneyth.'

' 'scuse me,' said Nanny. 'What did you say your uncle died of?'

'Buffaloeth,' said Igor, unlocking another door.

'He broke out in them?'

'A herd fell on him. A freak acthident. We don't talk about it.'

'Sorry, are you telling us you do surgery on yourself?' said Magrat.

'It'th not hard when you know what you're doing. Thometimeth you need a mirror, of courth, and it helpth if thomeone can put a finger on the knotth.'

'Isn't it painful?'

'Oh, no, I alwayth tell them to take it away jutht before I pull the thtring tight.'

The door creaked open. It was a long, tortured, groaning noise: In fact there was more creak than door, and it went on just a few seconds after the door had stopped.

'That sounds dreadful,' said Nanny.

'Thank you. It took dayth to get right. Creakth like that don't jutht happen by themthelveth.'

There was a woof from the darkness and something leapt at Igor, knocking him off his feet.

'Get off, you big thoppy!'

It was a dog. Or several dogs rolled, as it were, into one. There were four legs, and they were nearly all the same length although not, Magrat noted, all the same colour. There was one head, although the left ear was black and pointed while the right ear was brown and white and flopped. It was a very enthusiastic animal in the department of slobber.

'Thith ith Thcrapth,' said Igor, fighting to get to his feet in a hail of excited paws. 'He'th a thilly old thing.'

'Scraps . . . yes,' said Nanny. 'Good name. Good name.'

'He'th theventy-eight yearth old,' said Igor , leading the way down a winding staircase. 'Thome of him.'

'Very neat stitching,' said Magrat. 'He looks well on it, too. Happy as a dog with two- Oh, I see he does have two. . .'

'I had one thpare,' said Igor, leading the way with Scraps bounding along beside him. 'I thought, he'th tho happy with one, jutht think of the fun he could have with two. . .'

Nanny Ogg's mouth didn't even get half open

'Don't you even think of saying anything, Gytha Ogg!' snapped Magrat.

'Me?' said Nanny innocently.

'Yes! And you were. I could see you! You know he was talking about tails, not . . . anything else.'

'Oh, I thought about that long ago,' said Igor. 'It'th obviouth. Thaveth wear and tear, pluth you can uthe one while you're replathing the other. I ecthperimented on mythelf.'

Their footsteps echoed on the stairs.

'Now, what are we talking about here, exactly?' said Nanny, in a quiet, I'm-only-asking-out-of-interest tone of voice.

'Heartth,' said Igor.

'Oh, two hearts. You've got two hearts?'

'Yeth. The other one belonged to poor Mr Thwinetth down at the thawmill, but hith wife thed it wath no uthe to him after the acthident, what with him not having a head to go with it.'

'You're a bit of a self-made man on the quiet, aren't you?' said Magrat.

'Who did your brain?' said Nanny.

'Can't do brainth yourthelf,' said Igor.

'Only . . . you've got all those stitches . . .'

'Oh, I put a metal plate in my head,' said Igor. 'And a wire down my neck all the way to my bootth. I got fed up with all thothe lightning thtriketh. Here we are.' He unlocked another groaning door. 'My little plathe.'

It was a dank vaulted room, clearly lived in by someone who didn't spend a lot of social time there. There was a fireplace with a dog basket in front of it, and a bed with a mattress and one

blanket. Crude cupboards lined one wall.

'There'th a well under that cover there,' he said, 'and there'th a privy through there . . .'

'What's through that door?' said Nanny, pointing to one with heavy bolts across it.

'Nothing,' said Igor.

Nanny shot him a glance. But the bolts were very firmly on this side.

'This looks like a crypt,' she said. 'With a fireplace.'

'When the old Count wath alive he liked to get warm of an evening before going out,' said Igor. 'Golden dayth, them wath. I wouldn't give you tuppenth for thith lot. D'you know, they wanted me to get rid of Thcrapth?',

Scraps leapt up and tried to lick Nanny's face.

'I thaw Lacrimotha kick him onthe,' said Igor darkly. He rubbed his hands together. 'Can I get you ladieth anything to eat?'

'No,' said Nanny and Magrat together.

Scraps tried to lick Igor. He was a dog with a lot of lick to share.

'Thcrapth, play dead,' said Igor. The dog dropped and rolled over with his legs in the air.

'Thee?' said Igor. 'He rememberth!'

'Won't we be cornered down here if the Magpyrs come?' said Magrat.

'They don't come down here. It'th not modern enough for them,' said Igor. 'And there'th wayth out if they do.'

Magrat glanced at the bolted door. It didn't look the kind of way out anyone would want to take.

'What about weapons?' she said. 'I shouldn't

think there'd be any anti-vampire stuff in a vampire's castle, would there?'

'Why, thertainly,' said Igor.

'There is?'

'Ath much ath you want. The old marthter wath very keen on that. When we had vithitorth ecthpected, he alwayth thed, "Igor, make thertain the windowth are clean and there'th lotth of lemonth and birth of ornament that can be turned into religiouth thymbolth around the plathe." He enjoyed it when people played by the ruleth. Very fair, the old marthter.'

'Yeah, but that'd mean he'd die, wouldn't it?' said Nanny. She opened a cupboard and a stack of wrinkled lemons fell out.

Igor shrugged. 'You win thome, you lothe thome,' he said. 'The old marthter uthed to that'; "Igor, the day vampireth win all the time, that'th the day we'll be knocked back beyond return." Mind you, he got annoyed when people pinched hith thockth. He'd thay, "Thod, that wash thilk, ten dollarth a pair in Ankh-Morpork."'

'And he probably spent a lot of money on blotting paper, too,' said Nanny. Another cupboard revealed a rack of stakes, along with a mallet and a simple anatomical diagram with an X over the heart area.

'The chart wath my idea, Mithith Ogg,' said Igor proudly. 'The old marthter got fed up with people just hammering the thtaketh in any old where. He thed he didn't mind the dying, that wath quite rethtful, but he did object to looking like a colander.'

'You're a bright chap, aren't you, Igor?' said Nanny.

Igor beamed. 'I've got a good brain in my head.'

'Chose it yourself, did you? No, only joking. You can't do brains.'

'I've got a dithtant couthin at Untheen Univerthity, you know.'

'Really? What's he do there?'

'Floatth around in hith jar,' said Igor proudly. 'Thall I thow you the holy water thellar? The old marthter built up a very good collection.'

'Sorry? A vampire collected holy water?' said Magrat.

'I think I'm beginning to understand,' said Nanny. 'He was a sportsman, right?'

'Egthactly!'

'And a good sportsman always gives the valiant prey a decent chance,' said Nanny. 'Even if it means having a cellar of Chateau Nerf de Pope. Sounds an intelligent bird, your old boy. Not like this new one. He's just clever.'

'I don't follow you,' said Magrat.

'Being killed's nothing to a vampire,' said Nanny. 'They always find a way of coming back. Everyone knows that, who knows anything about vampires. If they're not too hard to kill and it's all a bit of an adventure for people, well, like as not they'll just stake him or chuck him in the river and go home. Then he has a nice restful decade or so, bein' dead, and comes back from the grave and away he goes again. That way he never gets totally wiped out and the lads of the village get some healthy exercise.'

'The Magpyrs will come after us,' said Magrat, clutching the baby to her. 'They'll see we're not in Lancre and they'll know we couldn't have gone down to the plains. They'll find the smashed coach, too. They'll find us, Nanny.'

Nanny looked at the array of jars and bottles, and the stakes neatly organized in order of size.

'It'll take them a little while,' she said. 'We've got time to get . . . prepared.'

She turned around with a bottle of blessed water in one hand, a crossbow loaded with a wooden bolt, and a bag of musty lemons in her mouth.

'Eg oo it I ay,' she said.

'Pardon?' said Magrat.

Nanny spat out the lemons.

'Now we'll try things my way,' she said. 'I'm not good at thinkin' like Granny but I'm bloody good at actin' like me. Headology's for them as can handle it. Let's kick some bat.'

The wind soughed across the moors on the edge of Lancre, and hissed through the heather.

Around some old mounds, half buried in brambles, it shook the wet branches of a single thorn tree, and shredded the curling smoke that drifted up through the roots.

There was a single scream.

Down below, the Nac mac Feegle were doing their best, but strength is not the same as weight and mass and even with pixies hanging on to every limb and Big Aggie herself sitting on

Verence's chest he was still hard to control.

'I think mebbe the drink was a wee bitty too trackle?' said Big Aggie's man, looking down at Verence's bloodshot eyes and foaming mouth. 'I'm sayin', mebbe it was wrong jus' giving him fifty times more than we tak'. He's not used to it ...'

Big Aggie shrugged.

In the far corner of the barrow half a dozen pixies backed out of the hole they'd hacked into the next chamber, dragging a sword. For bronze, it was quite well preserved – the old chieftains of Lancre reckoned to be buried with their weapons in order to fight their enemies in the next world, and since you didn't become a chieftain of ancient Lancre without sending a great many enemies to the next world, they liked to take weapons that could be relied upon to last.

Under the direction of the old pixie, they manoeuvred it within reach of Verence's flailing hand.

'Are ye scrat?' said Big Aggie's man. 'Yin! Tan! Tetra!'

The Feegle leapt away in every direction. Verence rose almost vertically, bounced off the roof, grabbed the sword, hacked madly until he'd cut a hole through to the outside world, and escaped into the night.

The pixies clustered around the walls of the barrow turned their eyes to their Kelda.

Big Aggie nodded.

'Big Aggie says ye'd best see him come to nae harm,' said the old pixie.

A thousand small but very sharp weapons waved in the smoky air.

'Hoons!'

'Kill 'em a'!'

'Nac mac Feegle!'

A few seconds later the chamber was empty.

Nanny hurried across the castle's main hall, burdened with stakes, and stopped dead.

'What the hell's that thing?' she said. 'Takes up a whole wall!'

'Oh, that wath the old Count'th pride and joy,' said Igor. 'He wathn't very modern, he alwayth thaid, but the Thentury of the Fruitbat had it'th compenthathionth. Thometimeth he'd play with it for hourth on end. . .'

It was an organ, or possibly what an organ hoped to be when it grew up, because it dominated the huge room. A music lover to the core, Nanny couldn't help trotting over to inspect it. It was black, its pipes framed and enclosed in intricate ebony fretwork, with the stops and keyboard made of dead elephant.

'How does it work?' she said.

'Water power,' said Igor proudly. 'There'th an underground river. The marthter had thith made thpethially to hith own dethign . . .'

Nanny ran her fingers over a brass plate screwed above the keyboard.

It read: 'HLISTEN TO ZER CHILTREN OFF DER NIGHT . . . VOT VONDERFUL MHUSICK DEY MAKE. Mnftrd. by Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, Ankh-Morpork.'

'It's a Johnson,' she breathed. 'I haven't got my hands on a Johnson for ages . . .' She looked closer. 'What's this? "Scream 1"? "Thunderclap 14"? "Wolf Howl 5"? There's a whole set of stops just marked "Creaky Floors"! Can't you play music on this thing?'

'Oh, yeth. But the old marthter wath more interethted in . . . effectth.'

There was still a dust-covered sheet of music on the stand, which someone had been filling in carefully, with many crossings-out.

' "Return Of The Bride Of The Revenge Of The Son Of Count Magpyr",' Nanny said aloud, noting that 'From 20,000 Fathoms(?)' had been written in subsequently and then crossed out. ' "Sonata for Thunderstorm, Trapdoors and Young Women in Skimpy Clothing". Bit of an artist too, then, your old master?'

'in a . . . thpethial way,' said Igor wistfully.

Nanny stepped back.

'Magrat's going to be safe, isn't she?' she said, picking up the stakes again.

'It'th a mob-proof door,' said Igor. 'And Thcrapth ith ninethirtyeighth Rottweiler.'

'Which parts, as a matter of interest?'

'Two legth, one ear, lotth of tubeth and lower jaw,' said Igor promptly as they hurried off again.

'Yes, but he's got a spaniel brain,' said Nanny.

'It'th in the bone,' said Igor. 'He holdth people in hith jawth and beatth them thentheleth with hith tailth.'

'He wags people to death?'

'Thometimeth he drownth them in dribble,' said Igor.

The rooftops of Escrow loomed out of the darkness as the vampires drifted lower. A few windows were glowing with candlelight when Agnes's feet touched the ground.

Vlad dropped down beside her.

'Of course, you can't see it at its best in this weather,' he said. 'Some quite good architecture in the town square, and a very fine town hall. Father paid for the clock.'

'Really.'

'And the belltower, naturally. Local labour, of course.'

'Vampires have a lot of cash, do they?' said Agnes. The town looked quite large, and pretty much like the country towns down on the plains save for a certain amount of gingerbread carving on the eaves.

'Well, the family has always owned land,' said Vlad, ignoring the sarcasm. 'The money mounts up, you know. Over the centuries. And obviously we've not enjoyed a particularly active social fife.'

'Or spent much on food,' said Agnes.

'Yes, yes, very good-'

A bell started to toll, somewhere above them.

'Now you'll see,' said Vlad. 'And you'll understand.'

Granny Weatherwax opened her eyes. There were flames roaring right in front of her.

'Oh,' she said. 'So be at, then . . .'

'Ah. Feeling better, are we?' said Oats.

Her head spun round. Then she looked down at the steam rising from her dress.

Oats ducked between the branches of two firs and threw another armful of dead wood on the flames. It hissed and spluttered.

'How long was I . . . resting?' said Granny.

'About half an hour, I'd say.' Red light and black shadows danced among the trees. The rain had turned to sleet, but it was flashing into steam overhead.

'You did well to get a fire going in this murk,' said Granny.

'I thank Om for it,' said Oats.

'Very kind of him, I'm sure. But we've got to . . . get on.' Granny tried to stand up. 'Not far now. All downhill.. .'

'The mule ran away,' said Oats.

'We've got feet, haven't we? I feel better for the . . . rest. The fire's put a . . . bit of life into me.'

'It's too dark and far too wet. Wait until morning.'

Granny pulled herself up. 'No. Find a stick or something I can lean on. Go on.'

'Well . . . there's a hazel grove just along the slope, but . . .'

'Just the thing, a good bit of hazel. Well, don't just stand there. I'm feeling better every minute. Off you go.'

He disappeared into the dripping shadows.

Granny flapped her skirts in front of the blaze to circulate some warm air, and something small and white flew up from the ashes, dancing in the fire and sleet.

She picked it up from the moss where it had landed.

It was a piece of thin paper, the charred corner of a page. She could just make out, in the red light, the words '. . . of Om . . . aid unto . . . Ossory smote . . .' The paper was attached to a burnt strip of leather binding.

She regarded it for a while, and then dropped it carefully into the flames as the sound of crackling twigs indicated Oats's return.

'Can you even find the way in all this?' he said, handing her a long hazel pole.

'Yes. You go on one side of me, and I've got this staff. Then it's just a walk in the woods, eh?'

'You don't look better.'

'Young man, if we're going to wait for me to look interestin' we'll be here for years.'

She raised a hand and the wowhawk flew down

out of the shadows.

'Good thing you were able to get a fire going, all the same,' she said, without turning round.

'I have always found that if I put my trust in Om a way will be found,' said Oats, hurrying after her.

'I reckon Om helps those who helps themselves,' said Granny.

Through the town of Escrow the windows glowed as lamps were lit and there was the sound of doors being unbolted. Over all, the bell went on ringing out through the fog.

'Normally we congregate in the town square,' said Vlad.

'It's the middle of the night!' said Agnes.

'Yes, but it doesn't happen very often, and our covenant says never more than twice in a month,' said Vlad. 'Do you see how prosperous the place is? People are safe in Escrow. They've seen reason. No shutters on the windows, do you see? They don't have to bar their windows or hide in the cellar, which I have to admit is what people do in the . . . less well regulated areas of our country. They exchanged fear for security. They-' He stumbled, and steadied himself against a wall. Then he rubbed his forehead. 'Sorry. I felt a little . . . strange. What was I saying?'

'How should I know?' snapped Agnes. 'You were talking about how happy everyone is because the vampires visit, or something.'

'Oh, yes. Yes. Because of co-operation, not enmity. Because. . .' he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face '. . . because . . . well, you'll see . . . is it rather cold here?'

'Just clammy,' said Agnes.

'Let's get to the square,' Vlad muttered. 'I'm sure I shall feel better.'

It was just ahead. Torches had been lit. People had congregated there, most of them with blankets across their shoulders or a coat over their night clothes, standing around in aimless groups like people who'd heard the fire alarm but hadn't seen the smoke.

One or two of them caught sight of Vlad and there was a certain amount of coughing and shuffling.

Other vampires were descending through the mist. The Count landed gently and nodded to Agnes.

'Ah, Miss Nitt,' he said vaguely. 'Are we all here, Vlad?'

The bell stopped. A moment later Lacrimosa descended.

'You've still got her?' she said to Vlad, raising her eyebrows. 'Oh, well . . .'

'I will just have a brief chat to the mayor,' said the Count. 'He appreciates being kept informed.'

Agnes watched him walk towards a small, dumpy man who, despite getting out of bed in the middle of a wet night, seemed to have had the foresight to put on a gold chain of office.

She noticed the vampires taking up positions in a line in front of the belltower, about four or five feet apart. They joked and called out to one another, except for Lacrimosa, who was glaring directly at her.

The Count was deep in conversation with the mayor, who was staring down at his feet.

Now, across the square, the people were beginning to form lines. A couple of small children pulled away from their parents' hands and chased one another up and down the lines of people, laughing.

And the suspicion bloomed slowly in Agnes like a great black, red-edged rose.

Vlad must have felt her body stiffen, because

his grip tightened on her arm.

'I know what you're thinking-' he began.

'You don't know what I'm thinking but I'll tell you what I'm thinking,' she said, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. 'You're-'

'Listen, it could be so much worse, it used to be so much worse-'

The Count bustled. 'Good news,' he said, 'Three children have just turned twelve.' He smiled at Agnes. 'We have a little . . . ceremony, before the main lottery. A rite of passage, as it were. I think they look forward to it, to tell you the truth.'

He's watching you to see how you react, said Perdita. Vlad is just stupid and Lacrimosa would weave your hair into a face flannel if she had the chance but this one will go for the throat if you so much as blink at the wrong time . . . so don't blink at the wrong time, thank you, because even figments of the imagination want to live...

But Agnes felt the terror rising around her. And it was wrong, the wrong kind of terror, a numbing, cold, sick feeling that froze her where she stood. She had to do something, do anything, break its horrible grip

it was Vlad who spoke.

'It's nothing dramatic,' he said quickly. 'A little drop of blood . . . Father went to the school and explained all about citizenship. . .'

'How nice,' she croaked. 'Do they get a badge?' It must have been Perdita behind that; she couldn't imagine Agnes being so tasteless, even in the cause of sarcasm.

'Hah, no. But what a good idea,' said the Count, giving her another quick smile. 'Yes . . . perhaps a badge, or a small plaque. Something to be treasured in later life. I shall make a mental note of this. And so . . . let us begin. Ah, the mayor has assembled the dear children . . .'

There was a shout somewhere at the back of the crowd and, for a moment, Agnes caught sight of a man trying to press forward. The mayor nodded at a couple of the nearby men. They hurried back into the crowd. There was a scuffle in the shadows. She thought she heard a woman's scream, suddenly muffled. A door slammed.

As the mayor turned back, he met Agnes's stare. She looked away, not wanting to see that expression. People were good at imagining hells, and some they occupied while they were alive.

'Shall we get on?' said the Count.

'Will you let go of my arm, Vlad?' said Agnes sweetly.

They're just waiting for you to react, whispered Perdita. Oh, said Agnes inside her head, so I should just stand here and watch? Like everybody else? I just thought I'd point it out. What's been done to them? They're like pigs queueing for Hogswatch! I think they saw reason, said Agnes. Oh well . . . just wipe that smile off Lacrimosa's face, that's all I ask . . .

They could move very fast. Even a scream wouldn't work. She might be able to get in one good wallop, and that would be it. And perhaps she'd wake up as a vampire, and not know the difference between good and evil. But that wasn't the point. The point was here and now, because here and now she did.

She could see every drop of moisture hanging in the air, smell the woodsmoke from damped-down fires, hear the rats in the thatch of the houses. Her senses were working overtime, to make the most of the last few seconds

'I don't see why!' Lacrimosa's voice cut through the mist like a saw.

Agnes blinked. The girl had reached her father and was glaring at him.

'Why do you always start?' she demanded.

'Lacrimosa! What has got into you? I am the head of the clan!'

'Oh, really? For ever?'

The Count looked astonished. 'Well, yes. Of course!'

'So we'll always be pushed around by you, for ever? We'll just be your children for ever?'

'My dear, what do you think you-'

'And don't try that voice on me! That only works on the meat! So I'll be sent to my room for being disobedient for ever?'

'We did let you have your own rack-'

'Oh, yes! And for that I have to nod and smile and be nice with meat?'

'Don't you dare talk to your father like that!' screamed the Countess.

'And don't talk about Agnes like that!' snarled Vlad.

'Did I use the word Agnes? Did I refer to her in any way?' said Lacrimosa, coldly. 'I don't believe I did. I wouldn't dream of mentioning her at all.'

'I can't be having with this arguing!' shouted the Count.

'That's it, isn't it?' said Lacrimosa. 'We don't argue! We just do what you say, for ever.'

'We agreed-'

'No, you agreed, and no one disagreed with you. Vlad was right!'

'Indeed?' said the Count, turning to his son. 'Right about what, prey?'

Vlad's mouth opened and shut once or twice as he hastily assembled a coherent sentence. 'I may have mentioned that the whole Lancre business might be considered unwise-'

'Oh,' said the Countess. 'You know so much about wisdom all of a sudden and you're barely two hundred?'

'Unwise?' said the Count.

'I'd say stupid!' said Lacrimosa. 'Little badges? Gifts? We don't give anything! We're vampiresl We take what we want, like this-'

She reached out, grabbed a man standing near her, and turned, mouth open and hair flying.

And stopped, as if she'd been frozen.

Then she buckled, one hand reaching for her throat, and glared at her father.

'What . . . did you do?' she gasped. 'My throat . . . feels . . . You did something!'

The Count rubbed his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'Lacci-'

'And don't call me thatl You know how I hate that!'

There was a brief scream from one of the lesser vampires behind them. Agnes couldn't remember his name, it was probably Fenrir or Maledicta or something, but she did recall that he preferred to be known as Gerald. He sagged to his knees, clawing at his throat. None of the other vampires looked very happy, either. A couple of them were kneeling and groaning, to the bewilderment of the citizens.

'I don't . . . feel very well,' said the Countess, swaying slightly. 'I did say I didn't think wine was a good idea. . .'

The Count turned and stared at Agnes. She took a step back.

'It's you, isn't it?' he said.

'Of course it is!' moaned Lacrimosa. 'You know that old woman put her self somewhere, and she must've known Vlad was soppy on that lump!'

She's not in here, is she? said Perdita. Don't you know? Agnes thought, backing away again. Well, I don't think she is, but is it me doing the thinking? Look, she's hidden her self in that priest, we know it. No, we don't, you just thought that'd be a smart thing for her to do because everyone would think she's hiding in the baby.

'Why don't you just crawl back into your coffin and rot, you slimy little maggot,' Agnes said. It wasn't that good, but impromptu insults are seldom well crafted.

Lacrimosa leapt at her, but something else was wrong. Instead of gliding through the air like velvet death she lurched like a bird with a broken wing. But fury let her rear up in front of Agnes, one claw out to scratch-

Agnes hit her as hard as she could and felt Perdita get behind the blow as well. It shouldn't have been possible for it to connect, the girl was quick enough to run around Agnes three times before it could, but it did.

The people of Escrow watched a vampire stagger back, bleeding.

The mayor raised his head.

Agnes went into a crouch, fists raised.

'I don't know where Granny Weatherwax went,' she said. 'Maybe she is in here with me, eh?' A flash of mad inspiration struck her and she added, in Granny's sharp tones, 'And if you strike me down again I'll bite my way up through your boots!'

'A nice try, Miss Nitt,' said the Count, striding towards her. 'But I don't think so-'

He stopped, clutching at the gold chain that was suddenly around his neck.

Behind him the mayor hauled on it with all his weight, forcing the vampire to the ground.

The citizens looked at one another, and all moved at once.

Vampires rose into the air, trying to gain height, kicking at clutching hands. Torches were snatched from walls. The night was suddenly full of screams.

Agnes looked up at Vlad, who was staring in horror. Lacrimosa was surrounded by a closing ring of people.

'You'd better run,' she said, 'or they'll-'

He turned and lunged, and the last thing she saw was teeth.

The track downhill was worse than the climb. Springs had erupted in every hollow, and every path was a rivulet.

As Granny and oats lurched from mud slough to bog, Oats reflected on the story in the Book of Om – the story, really – about the prophet Brutha and his journey with Om across the burning desert, which had ended up changing Omnianism for ever. It had replaced swords with sermons, which at least caused fewer deaths except in the case of the really very long ones, and had broken the Church into a thousand pieces which had then started arguing with one another and finally turned out Oats, who argued with himself.

Oats wondered how far across the desert Brutha would have got if he'd been trying to support Granny Weatherwax. There was something unbending about her, something hard as rock. By about halfway the blessed prophet might, he felt guiltily, have yielded to the temptation to . . . well, at least say something unpleasant, or give a meaningful sigh. The old woman had got very crotchety since being warmed up. She seemed to have something on her mind.

The rain had stopped but the wind was sharp, and there were still occasional stinging bursts of hail.

'Won't be long now,' he panted.

'You don't know that,' said Granny, splashing through black, peaty mud.

'No, you're absolutely right,' said Oats. 'I was just saying that to be cheerful.'

'Hasn't worked,' said Granny.

'Mistress Weatherwax, would you like me to leave you here?' said Oats.

Granny sniffed. 'Wouldn't worry me,' she said.

'Would you like me to?' said Oats.

'It's not my mountain,' said Granny. 'I wouldn't be one to tell people where they should be.'

'I'll go if you want me to,' said Oats.

'I never asked you to come,' said Granny simply.

'You'd be dead if I hadn't!'

'That's no business of yours.'

'My god, Mistress Weatherwax, you try me sorely.'

'Your god, Mister Oats, tries everyone. That's what gods generally does, and that's why I don't truck with 'em. And they lays down rules all the time.'

'There have to be rules, Mistress Weatherwax.'

'And what's the first one that your Om requires, then?'

'That believers should worship no other god but Om,' said Oats promptly.

'Oh yes? That's gods for you. Very self-centred, as a rule.'

'I think it was to get people's attention,' said Oats. 'There are many commandments about dealing well with other people, if that's what you're getting at.'

'Really? And s'pose someone doesn't want to believe in Om and tries to live properly?'

'According to the prophet Brutha, to live properly is to believe in Om.'

'Oho, that's clever! He gets you coming and going,' said Granny. 'It took a good thinker to come up with that. Well done. What other clever things did he say?'

'He doesn't say things to be clever,' said Oats

hotly. 'But, since you ask, he said in his Letter to the Simonites that it is through other people that we truly become people.'

'Good. He got that one right.'

'And he said that we should take light into dark places.'

Granny didn't say anything.

'I thought I'd mention that,' said Oats, 'because when you were . . . you know, kneeling, back in the forge . . . you said something very similar . . .'

Granny stopped so suddenly that Oats nearly fell over.

'I did what?'

'You were mumbling and-'

'I was talkin' in my . . . sleep?'

'Yes, and you said something about darkness being where the light needs to be, which I remember because in the Book of Om-'

'You listened?'

'No, I wasn't listening, but I couldn't help hearing, could I? And you sounded as if you were having an argument with someone...'

'Can you remember everything I said?'

'I think so.'

Granny staggered on a little, and stopped in a puddle of black water that began to rise over her boots.

'Can you forget?' she said.

'Pardon?'

'You wouldn't be so unkind as to pass on to anyone else the ramblings of a poor of woman who was probably off her head, would you?' said Granny slowly.

Oats thought for a moment. 'What ramblings were these, Mistress Weatherwax?'

Granny seemed to sag with relief.

'Ah. Good thing you asked, really, bein' as there weren't any.'

Black bubbles arose from the bog around Granny Weatherwax as the two of them watched each other. Some sort of truce had been declared.

'I wonder, young man, if you would be so good as to pull me out?'

This took some time and involved a branch from a nearby tree and, despite Oats's best efforts, Granny's first foot came out of its boot. And once one boot has said goodbye in a peat bog, the other one is bound, to follow out of fraternal solidarity.

Granny ended up on what was comparatively dry and comparatively land wearing a pair of the heaviest-looking socks Oats had ever seen. They looked as if they could shrug off a hammer blow.

'They was good boots,' said Granny, looking at the bubbles. 'Oh, well, let's get on.'

She staggered a little as she set off again, but to Oats's admiration managed to stay upright. He was beginning to form yet another opinion of the old woman, who caused a new opinion to arise about once every half-hour, and it was this: she needed someone to beat. If she didn't have someone to beat, she'd probably beat herself.

'Shame about your little book of holy words. . .' she said, when she was further down the track.

There was a long pause before Oats replied.

'I can easily get another,' he said levelly.

'Must be hard, not having your book of words.'

'It's only paper.'

'I shall ask the King to see about getting you another book of words.'

'I wouldn't trouble him.'

'Terrible thing to have to burn all them words, though.'

'The worthwhile ones don't burn.'

'You're not too stupid, for all that you wear a funny hat,' said Granny.

'I know when I'm being pushed, Mistress Weatherwax.'

'Well done.'

They walked on in silence. A shower of hail bounced off Granny's pointy hat and Oats's wide brim.

Then Granny said, 'It's no good you trying to make me believe in Om, though.'

'Om forbid that I should try, Mistress Weatherwax. I haven't even given you a pamphlet, have I?'

'No, but you're trying to make me think, "Oo, what a nice young man, his god must be something special if nice young men like him helps old ladies like me," aren't you?'

No.

'Really? Well, it's not working. People you can believe in, sometimes, but not gods. And I'll tell you this, Mister Oats . . .'

He sighed. 'Yes?'

She turned to face him, suddenly alive. 'It'd be as well for you if I didn't believe,' she said,

prodding him with a sharp finger. 'This Om . . . anyone seen him?'

'It is said three thousand people witnessed his manifestation at the Great Temple when he made the Covenant with the prophet Brutha and saved him from death by torture on the iron turtle-'

'But I bet that now they're arguing about what they actually saw, eh?'

'Well, indeed, yes, there are many opinions-'

'Right. Right. That's people for you. Now if I'd seen him, really there, really alive, it'd be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched 'em like a father and cared for 'em like a mother . . . well, you wouldn't catch me sayin' things like "There are two sides to every question," and "We must respect other people's beliefs." You wouldn't find me just being gen'rally nice in the hope that it'd all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin' sword. And I did say burnin', Mister Oats, 'cos that's what it'd be. You say that you people don't burn folk and sacrifice people any more, but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. Thars religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein' nice. And a way of keepin' in touch with the neighbours.'

She relaxed slightly, and went on in a quieter voice: 'Anyway, that's what I'd be, if I really believed. And I don't think that's fashionable right now, 'cos it seems that if you sees evil now you

have to wring your hands and say, "Oh deary me, we must debate this." That's my two penn'orth, Mister Oats. You be happy to let things lie. Don't chase faith, 'cos you'll never catch it.' She added, almost as an aside, 'But, perhaps, you can live faithfully.'

Her teeth chattered as a gust of icy wind flapped her wet dress around her legs.

'You got another book of holy words on you?' she added.

'No,' said Oats, still shocked. He thought: my god, if she ever finds a religion, what would come out of these mountains and sweep across the plains? My god. . . I just said, 'My god'. . .

'A book of hymns, maybe?' said Granny.

No.'

'A slim volume o' prayers, suitable for every occasion?'

'No, Granny Weatherwax.'

'Damn.' Granny slowly collapsed backwards, folding up like an empty dress.

He rushed forward and caught her before she landed in the mud. One thin white hand gripped his wrist so hard that he yelped. Then she relaxed, and sagged in his grasp.

Something made Oats look up.

A hooded figure sat on a white horse a little way away, outlined in the faintest blue fire.

'Go away!' he screamed. 'You be gone right now or . . . or. . .'

He lowered the body on to some tufts of grass, grabbed a handful of mud and flung it into the gloom. He ran after it, punching wildly at a shape that was suddenly no more than shadows and curling mist.

He dashed back, picked up Granny Weatherwax, slung her over his shoulder and ran on, downhill.

The mist behind him formed a shape on a white horse.

Death shook his head.

IT WASN'T EVEN AS IF I SAID ANYTHING, he said.

Waves of black heat broke over Agnes, and then there was a pit, and a fall into hot, suffocating darkness.

She felt the desire. It was tugging her forward like a current.

Well, she thought dreamily, at least I'll lose some weight. . .

Yes, said Perdita, but all the eyeliner you'll have to wear must add a few pounds . . .

The hunger filled her now, accelerating her.

And there was light, behind her, shining past her. She felt the fall gradually slow as if she'd hit invisible feathers, and then the world spun and she was rising again, moving up faster than an eagle stoops, towards an expanding circle of cold white-

It couldn't possibly be words that she heard. There was no sound but a faint rushing noise. But it was the shadow of words, the effect they leave in the mind after they have been said, and she felt her own voice rushing in to fill the shape that had appeared there. I. . . can't . . . be . . . having . . . with ...this...

Light exploded.

And someone was about to hammer a stake through her heart.

'Stdt?' she said, knocking the hand away. She spluttered for a moment and then spat the lemon out of her mouth. 'Hey, stop that!' she tried again, this time with all the authority she could muster. 'What the heck are you doing? Do I look like a vampire?'

The man with the stake and mallet hesitated, and then tapped a finger to the side of his neck.

Agnes reached to hers, and found two raised weals.

'He must have missed!' she said, pushing the stake away and sitting up. 'Who took my stocking off? Who took off my left stocking? Is that boiling vinegar I can smell? What're all these poppyseeds doing poured down my bra? If it wasn't a woman who took my stocking off there's going to be some serious trouble, I can tell you!'

The crowd around the table looked at one another, suddenly uncertain in the face of her rage. Agnes glanced up as something brushed her ear. Hanging over her were stars and crosses and circles and more complex designs she recognized as religious symbols. She'd never felt inclined to believe in religion, but she knew what it looked like.

'And this is just a very tasteless display,' she said.

'She doesn't act like a vampire,' said a man. 'She doesn't look like one. And she did fight the others.'

' We saw that one bite her!' said a woman.

'Bad aim in poor light,' said Agnes, knowing that it wasn't. There was a hunger welling up. It was not like the black urge she'd felt in the dark, but sharp and urgent all the same. She had to give in to it.

'I'd kill for a cup of tea,' she added.

That seemed to clinch it. Tea wasn't the liquid usually associated with vampires.

'And for goodness' sake let me shake some of these poppyseeds out,' she went on, adjusting her bosom. 'I feel like a wholemeal loaf.'

They moved aside as she swung her legs off the table, which now meant that she could see the vampire lying on the floor. She nearly thought of it as the other vampire.

It was a man wearing a long frock coat and a fancy waistcoat, both covered in mud and blood; there was a stake through his heart. Further identification, though, would have to await finding where they'd put his head.

'I see you got one, then,' she said, trying not to, be sick.

'Got two,' said the man with the hammer. 'Set fire to the other one. They killed the mayor and Mr Vlack.'

'You mean the rest got away?' said Agnes.

'Yes. They're still strong but they can't fly much.'

Agnes indicated the headless vampire. 'Er . . . is that one Vlad?' she said.

'Which one was he?'

'The one that . . . bit me. Tried to bite me,' she corrected herself.

'We can check. Piotr, show her the head.'

A young man obediently went to the fireplace, pulled on a glove, lifted the lid of a big saucepan and held up a head by its hair.

'That's not Vlad,' said Agnes, swallowing. No, said Perdita, Vlad was taller.

'They'll be heading back to their castle,' said Piotr. 'On foot! You should see them trying to fly! It's like watching chickens panicking.'

'The castle. . .'said Agnes.

'They'll have to make it before cock-crow,' said Piotr, with some satisfaction. 'And they can't cut through the woods, 'cos of the werewolves.'

'What? I thought werewolves and vampires would get along fine,' said Agnes.

'Oh, maybe it looks like that,' said Piotr. 'But they're watching one another all the time to see who's going to be the first to blink.' He looked around the room. 'We don't mind the werewolves,' he went on, to general agreement. 'They leave us alone most of the time because we don't run fast enough to be interesting.'

He looked Agnes up and down.

'What was it you did to the vampires?' he said.

'Me? I didn't do- I don't know,' said Agnes.

'They couldn't even bite us properly.'

'And they were squabbling like kids when they left,' said the man with the mallet.

'You've got a pointy hat,' said Piotr. 'Did you put a spell on them?'

'I- I don't know. I really don't.' And then natural honesty met witchcraft. One aspect of witchcraft is the craftiness, and it's seldom unwise

to take the credit for unexplained but fortuitous events. 'I may have done,' she added.

'Well, we're going after them,' said Piotr.

'Won't they have got well away?'

'We can cut through the woods.'

Blood tinted the rain that ran off the wound on Jason Ogg's shoulder. He dabbed at it with a cloth.

'Reckon I'll be hammerin' left-handed for a week or two,' he said, wincing.

'They got very good fields of fire,' said Shawn, who had taken refuge behind the beer barrel used so recently to wet the baby's head. 'I mean, it's a castle. A frontal attack simply won't work.'

He sighed, and shielded his guttering candle to keep the wind from blowing it out. They'd tried a frontal attack nevertheless, and the only reason no one had been killed was that the drink seemed to be flowing freely within the keep. As it was, one or two people would be limping for a while. Then they'd tried what Jason persisted in referring to as a backal attack, but there were arrow slots even over the kitchens. One man creeping up to the walls very slowly – a sidle attack, as Shawn had thought of it -had worked, but since all the doors were very solidly barred this had just meant that he'd stood there feeling like a fool.

He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he'd lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually

found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read 'Endeavour to be the one inside' he'd rather lost heart.

The rest of the Lancre militia cowered behind buttresses and upturned carts, waiting for him to lead them.

There was a respectful clang as Big Jim Beef, who was acting as cover for two other part-time soldiers, saluted his commander.

'I reckon,' he ventured, 'dat if we got big fires goin' in frun' of the doors we could smoke dem out.'

'Good idea,' said Jason.

'That's the King's door,' Shawn protested. 'He's already been a bit sharp with me for not cleaning the privy pit this week-'

'He can send Mum the bill.'

'That's seditious talk, Jason! I could have you arr- I could arr- Mum would have something to say about you talking like that!'

'Where is the King, anyway?' said Darren Ogg. 'Sittin' back and lettin' Mum sort everything out while we get shot at?'

'You know he's got a weak chest,' said Shawn. 'He does very well considering he-'

He stopped as a sound rolled out across the countryside. It had a hoarse, primal quality, the sound of an animal who is in pain but also intends to pass it on as soon as possible. The men looked around nervously.

Verence came thundering through the gates.

Shawn recognized him only by the embroidery on his nightshirt and his fluffy slippers. He held a long sword over his head in both hands and was running straight for the door of the keep, trailing a scream behind him.

The sword struck the wood. Shawn heard the whole door shudder.

'He's gone mad!' shouted Darren. 'Let's grab the poor creature before he gets shot!'

A couple of them scurried across to the struggling King, who was standing horizontally on the door in an effort to get the sword out.

'Now, see here, your maj- Aargh!'

'Ach, tak a faceful o'heid!'

Darren staggered back, clutching at his face.

Little shapes swarmed across the courtyard after the King, like some kind of plague.

'Gibbins!'

'Fackle!'

'Nac mac Feegle!'

There was another scream as Jason, trying to restrain his monarch's enthusiasm, found that while the touch of a monarch may indeed cure certain scalp conditions, the scalp of a king itself is capable of spreading someone's nose into an interesting flat shape.

Arrows thudded into the ground around them.

Shawn grabbed Big Jim. 'They're all going to get shot, drink or not!' he shouted above the din. 'You come with me!'

'What we gonna do?'

'Clean the privies!'

The troll scuttled after him as he edged his way

around the keep, to where the Gong Tower loomed against the night in all its odoriferous splendour. It was the bane of Shawn's life. All the keep's garderobes discharged into it. One of his jobs was to clean it out and take the contents to the pits in the gardens where Verence's efforts at composting were gradually turning them into, well, Lancre.[13] But now that the castle was a lot busier than it used to be his weekly efforts with shovel and wheelbarrow weren't the peaceful and solitary interludes they had been. Of course he'd let the job sort of . . . pile up these last few weeks, but did they expect him to do everything?

He waved Big Jim towards the door at the bottom of the tower. Fortunately, trolls have not much interest in organic odours, although they can easily distinguish types of limestone by smell.

'I want you to open it when I say,' he said, tearing a strip off his shirt and wrapping it round an arrow. He searched his pockets for a match. 'And when you've opened the door,' he went on, as the cloth caught, 'I want you to run away very, very fast, right? Okay . . . open the door!'

Big Jim pulled at the handle. There was a very faint whoosh as the door swung back.

'Run!' Shawn shouted. He drew back the bowstring and fired through the doorway.

The flaming arrow vanished into the noisome darkness. There was a pause of a few heartbeats. Then the tower exploded.

It happened quite slowly. The green-blue light mushroomed up from storey to storey in an almost leisurely way, blowing out stones at every level to give the tower a nice sparkling effect. The roofing leads opened up like a daisy. A faint flame speared the clouds. Then time, sound and motion came back with a thump.

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 over and struck upwards with the Lancrastian Peace-time Army Knife. He might have had time to select the Device for Dissecting Paradoxes, or the Appliance 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 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 dearly 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 programme, 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 travelled 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.

'Afterwards 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 belltower, 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 Lacrimosa, 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 like 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 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.[14]

Clouds were suddenly spiralling, 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 month 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 afterwards, 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 defences. 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. . . grow 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 became 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 centre, 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 centre 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 any more. 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 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 dear bright light-'

Splash, suck, splash.

'–and I in mine . . . Om be praised.'

Squelch, splash.

Oats had worked his way though most of the hymns he knew, even the old ones you shouldn't really sing any more but you nevertheless remembered because the words were so good. He 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 she'd apparently gained in the last mile or so, especially whenever he fell over and she landed on top of him.

He'd 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 had 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. Rivulets 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.

And then there was the castle, seen through a gap in the trees, lit by a flash of lightning. Oats staggered through a clump of thorn bushes, managed to keep upright down a slope of loose boulders, and collapsed on the road with Granny Weatherwax on top of him.

She stirred.

'. . . holiday from reason . . . kill them all . . . can't be havin' with this. . .' she murmured.

The wind blew a branchful of raindrops on her face, and she opened her eyes. For a moment they seemed to Oats to have red pupils, and then the icy blue gaze focused on him.

'Are we here, then?'

'Yes.'

'What happened to your holy hat?'

'It got lost,' said Oats abruptly. Granny peered closer.

'Your magic amulet's gone too,' she said. 'The one with the turtle and the little man on it.'

'It's not a magic amulet, Mistress Weatherwax! Please! A magic amulet is a symbol of primitive

and mechanistic superstition, whereas the Turtle of Om is . . . is . . . is . . . Well, it's not, do you understand?'

'Oh, right. Thank you for explaining,' said Granny. 'Help me up, will you?'

Oats was having some difficulty with his temper. He'd carried the old bit- biddy for miles, he was frozen to the bone, and now they were here she acted as if she'd somehow done him a favour.

'What's the magic word?' he snarled.

'Oh, I don't think a holy man like you should be having with magic words,' said Granny. 'But the holy words are: do what I tell you or get smitten. They should do the trick.'

He helped her to her feet, alive with badly digested rage, and supported her as she swayed.

There was a scream from the castle, suddenly cut off.

'Not female,' said Granny. 'I reckon the girls have started. Let's give 'em a hand, shall we?'

Her arm shook as she raised it. The wowhawk fluttered down and settled on her wrist.

'Now help get me to the gate.'

'Don't mention it, glad to be of service,' Oats mumbled. He looked at the bird, whose hood swivelled to face him.

'That's the . . . other phoenix, isn't it?' he said.

'Yes,' said Granny, watching the door. 'A phoenix. You can't .have just one of anything.'

'But it looks like a little hawk.'

'It was born among hawks, so it looks like a hawk. If it was hatched in a hen roost it'd be

a chicken. Stands to reason. And a hawk it'll remain, until it needs to be a phoenix. They're shy birds. You could say a phoenix is what it may become. . .'

'Too much eggshell. . .'

'Yes, Mister Oats. And when does the phoenix sometimes lay two eggs? When it needs to. Hodgesaargh was right. A phoenix is of the nature of birds. Bird first, myth second.'

The doors were hanging loose, their iron reinforcements twisted out of shape and their timbers smouldering, but some effort had been made to pull them shut. Over what remained of the arch, a bat carved in stone told visitors everything they needed to know about this place.

On Granny's wrist the hood of the hawk was crackling and smoking. As Oats watched, little flames erupted from the leather again.

'He knows what they did,' said Granny. 'He was hatched knowing. Phoenixes share their minds. And they don't tolerate evil.'

The head turned to look at Oats with its whitehot stare and, instinctively, he backed away and tried to cover his eyes.

'Use the doorknocker,' said Granny, nodding to the big iron ring hanging loosely from one splintered door.

'What? You want me to knock on the door? Of a vampire's castle?'

'We're not going to sneak in, are we? Anyway, you Omnians are good at knocking on doors.'

'Well, yes,' said Oats, 'but normally just for a shared prayer and to interest people in our

pamphlets' – he let the knocker fall a few times, the boom echoing around the valley – 'not to have my throat ripped out!'

'Think of this as a particularly difficult street,' said Granny. 'Try again . . . mebbe they're hidin' behind the sofa, eh?'

'Hah!'

'You're a good man, Mister Oats?' said Granny, conversationally, as the echoes died away. 'Even without your holy book and holy amulet and holy hat?'

'Er . . . I try to be . . .' he ventured.

'Well ... this is where you find out,' said Granny. 'To the fire we come at last, Mister Oats. This is where we both find out.'

Nanny raced up some stairs, a couple of vampires at her heels. The vampires were hampered because they hadn't got to grips with not being able to fly, but there was something else wrong with them as well.

'Tea!' one screamed. 'I must have . . . tea!'

Nanny pushed open the door to the battlements. They followed her, and tripped over Igor's leg as he stepped out of the shadows.

He raised two sharpened table legs.

'How d'you want your thtaketh, boyth?' he shouted excitedly, as he struck. 'You thould have thed you liked my thpiderth!’

Nanny leaned against the wall to get her breath back.

'Granny's somewhere here,' she panted. 'Don't ask me how. But those two were craving a cup of tea, and I reckon only Esme could mess up someone's head like that-'

The sounds of the doorknocker boomed around the courtyard below. At the same time the door at the other end of the battlements opened. Half a dozen vampires advanced.

'They're acting very dumb, aren't they?' said Nanny. 'Give me a couple more stakes.'

'Run out of thtaketh, Nanny.'

'Okay, then, pass me a bottle of holy water . . . Hurry up. . .'

'None left, Nanny.'

'We've got nothing?'

'Got'n orange, Nanny.'

'What for?'

'Run out of lemonth.'

'What good will an orange do if I hit a vampire in the mouth with it?' said Nanny, eyeing the approaching creatures.

Igor scratched his head. 'Well, I thuppothe they won't catch coldth tho eathily . . .'

The knocking reverberated around the castle again. Several vampires were creeping across the courtyard.

Nanny caught a flicker of light around the edge of the door. Instinct took over. As the vampires began to run, she grabbed Igor and pulled him down.

The arch exploded, every stone and plank drifting away on an expanding bubble of eyeball-searing flame. It lifted the vampires off their feet and they screamed as the fire carried them up.

When the brightness had faded a little Nanny peered carefully into the courtyard.

A bird, house-sized, wings of flame wider than the castle, reared in the broken doorway.

Mightily Oats pushed himself up on to his hands and knees. Hot flames roared around him, thundering like fiercely burning gas. His skin should have been blackening already, but against all reason the fire felt no more deadly than a hot desert wind. The air smelled of camphor and spices.

He looked up. The flames wrapped Granny Weatherwax, but they looked oddly transparent, not entirely real. Here and there little gold and green sparks glittered on her dress, and all the time the fire whipped and tore around her.

She looked down at him. 'You're in the wings of the phoenix now, Mister Oats,' she shouted, above the noise, 'and you ain't burned!'

The bird flapping its wings on her wrist was incandescent.

'How can-'

'You're the scholarl But male birds are always ones for the big display, aren't they?'

'Males? This is a male phoenix?'

'Yes!'

It leapt. What flew . . . what flew, as far as Oats could see, was a great bird-shape of pale flame, with the little form of the real bird inside like the head of a comet. He added to himself: if that is indeed the real bird . . .

It swooped up into the tower. A yell, cut off quickly, indicated that a vampire hadn't been fast enough.

'It doesn't burn itself?' Oats said weakly.

'Shouldn't think so,' said Granny, stepping over the wreckage. 'Wouldn't be much point.'

'Then it must be magical fire. . .'

'They say that whether it burns you or not is up to you,' said Granny. 'I used to watch them as a kid. My granny told me about 'em. Some cold nights you see them dancin' in the sky over the Hub, burnin' green and gold. . .'

'Oh, you mean the aurora coriolis,' said Oats, trying to make his voice sound matter of fact. 'But actually that's caused by magic particles hitting the-'

'Dunno what it's caused by,' said Granny sharply, 'but what it is is the phoenix dancin'.' She reached out. 'I ought to hold your arm.'

'In case I fall over?' said Oats, still watching the burning bird.

'That's right.'

As he took her weight the phoenix above them flung back its head and screamed at the sky.

'And to think I thought it was an allegorical creature,' said the priest.

'Well? Even allegories have to live,' said Granny Weatherwax.

Vampires are not naturally co-operative creatures. It's not in their nature. Every other vampire is a rival for the next meal. In fact, the ideal situation

for a vampire is a world in which every other vampire has been killed off and no one seriously believes in vampires any more. They are by nature as co-operative as sharks.

Vampyres are just the same, the only real difference being that they can't spell properly.

The remnant of the clan scurried through the keep and headed for a door that for some reason had been left ajar.

The bucket containing a cocktail of waters blessed by a Knight of Offler, a High Priest of Io and a man so generically holy that he hadn't cut his hair or washed for seventy years, landed on the first two to run through.

They did not include the Count and his family, who had moved as one into a side tower. There's no point in having underlings if you don't let them be the first to go through suspicious doors.

'How could you have been so-' Lacrimosa began, and to her shock got a slap across the face from her father.

'All we need to do is remain calm,' said the Count. 'There's no need to panic.'

'You struck me!'

'And most satisfying it was, too,' said the Count. 'Careful thought is what will save us. That is why we will survive.'

'It's not working!' said Lacrimosa. 'I'm a vampire! I'm supposed to crave blood! And all I can think about is a cup of tea with three sugars in it, whatever the hell that is! That old woman's doing something to us, can't you see?'

'Not possible,' said the Count. 'Oh, she's sharp for a human, but I don't reckon there's any way she could get into your head or mine-'

'You're even talkin' like her!' shouted Lacrimosa.

'Be resolute, my dear,' said the Count. 'Remember – that which does not kill us can only make us stronger.'

'And that which does kill us leaves us dead!' snarled Lacrimosa. 'You saw what happened to the others! You got your fingers burned!'

'A moment's lapse of concentration,' said the Count. 'That old witch is not a threat. She's a vampire. Subservient to us. She'll be seeing the world differently-'

'Are you mad? Something killed Cryptopher.'

'He let himself be frightened.'

The rest of the family looked at the Count. Vlad and Lacrimosa exchanged a glance.

'I am supremely confident,' said the Count. His smile looked like a death mask, waxen and disturbingly tranquil. 'My mind is like a rock. My nerve is firm. A vampire with his wits about him, or her, of course, can never be defeated. Didn't I teach you this? What's this one?'

His hand flew from his pocket, holding a square of white cardboard.

'Oh, Father, this is really no time for-' Lacrimosa froze, then jerked her arm in front of her face. 'Put it away! Put it awayl it's the Agatean Chlong of Destiny!'

'Exactly, which is merely three straight lines and two curved lines pleasantly arranged which-'

'-I'd never have known about if you hadn't told me, you old fool!' screamed the girl, backing away.

The Count turned to his son.

'And do you-' he began. Vlad sprang back, putting his hand over his eyes.

'It hurts!’  he shouted.

'Dear me, the two of you haven't been practising-' the Count began, and turned the card around so that he could look at it.

He screwed up his eyes and turned his face away.

'What have you done to us?!' Lacrimosa screamed. 'You've taught us how to see hundreds of the damned holy thingsl They're everywherel Every religion has a different one! You taught us that, you stupid bastard! Lines and crosses and circles . . . Oh, my. . .' She caught sight of the stone wall behind her astonished brother and shuddered. 'Everywhere I look I see something holy! You've taught us to see patterns!' she snarled at her father, teeth exposed.

'It'll be dawn soon,' said the Countess nervously. 'Will it hurt?'

'It won't! Of course it won't!’  shouted Count Magpyr, as the others glanced up at the pale light coming through a high window. 'It's a learned psychochromatic reaction! A superstition! It's all in the mind!'

'What else is in our minds, Father?' said Vlad coldly.

The Count was circling, trying to keep an eye on Lacrimosa. The girl was flexing her fingers and snarling.

'I said-'

'Nothing's in our minds that we didn't put there!' the Count roared. 'I saw that old witch's mind! It's weak. She relies on trickery! She couldn't possibly find a way in! I wonder if there are other agendas here?'

He bared his teeth at Lacrimosa.

The Countess fanned herself desperately. 'Well, I think we're all getting a little bit overexcited,' she said. 'I think we should all settle down and have a nice cup of . . . a nice . . . of tea . . . a cup of . . .'

'We're vampires!' Lacrimosa shouted.

'Then let's act like them!' screamed the Count.

Agnes opened her eyes, kicked up, and the man with the hammer and stake lost all interest in vampires and in consciousness as well.

'Whsz-' Agnes removed from her mouth what was, this time, a fig. 'Can you get it into your stupid heads that I'm not a vampire? And this isn't a lemon. It's a fig. And I'd watch that bloke with the stake. He's altogether too keen on it. I reckon there's some psychology there-'

'I wouldn't have let him use it,' said Piotr, close by her ear. 'But you did act very odd and then you just collapsed. So we thought we'd better see what woke up.'

He stood up. The citizens of Escrow stood watching among the trees, their faces gaunt in the flickering torchlight.

'It's all right, she's still not one,' he said. There was some general relaxation.

You really have changed, said Perdita.

'You're not affected?' said Agnes. She felt as if she was on the end of a string with someone jerking the other end.

No. I'm the bit of you that watches, remember?

'What?' said Piotr.

'I really, really hope this wears off,' said Agnes. 'I keep tripping over my own feet! I'm walking wrong! My whole body feels wrong!'

'Er ... can we go on to the castle?' said Piotr.

'She's already there,' said Agnes. 'I don't know how, but-'

She stopped and looked at the worried faces, and for a moment she found herself thinking in the way Granny Weatherwax thought.

'Yes,' she said, more slowly. 'I reckon . . . I mean, I think we ought to get there right away. People have to kill their own vampires.'

Nanny hurried down the steps again.

'I told you!’  she said. 'That's Esme Weatherwax down there, that is. I told you! I knew she was just biding her timel Hah, I'd like to see the bloodsucker who could put one over on her!’

'I wouldn't,' said Igor, fervently.

Nanny stepped over a vampire who hadn't noticed, in the shadows, a cunning combination of a tripwire, a heavy weight and a stake, and opened a door into the courtyard.

'Coo-ee, Esme!'

Granny Weatherwax pushed Oats away and stepped forward.

'Is the baby all right?' she said.

'Magrat and Es . . . young Esme are locked up in the crypt. It's a very strong door,' said Nanny.

'And Thcrapth ith guarding them,' said Igor. 'He'th a wonderful guard dog.'

Granny raised her eyebrows and looked Igor up and down.

'I don't think I know this . . . these gentlemen,' she said.

'Oh, this is Igor,' said Nanny. 'A man of many parts.'

'So it seems,' said Granny.

Nanny glared at Mightily Oats. 'What did you bring him for?' she said.

'Couldn't seem to shake him off,' said Granny.

'I always try hiding behind the sofa, myself,' said Nanny. Oats looked away.

There was a scream from somewhere on the battlements. The phoenix had spotted another vampire.

'All over now bar sweeping up the dust, then,' said Nanny. 'They didn't seem very smart-'

'The Count's still here,' said Granny flatly.

'Oh, I vote we just set fire to the place and go home,' said Nanny. 'It's not as though he'll be coming back to Lancre in a hurry-'

'There'th a crowd coming,' said Igor.

'I can't hear anything,' said Nanny.

'I've got very good ear'th,' said Igor.

'Ah, well, of course some of us don't get to choose,' said Nanny.

There was a clattering of footsteps across the bridge and people were suddenly swarming over the rubble.

'Isn't that Agnes?' said Nanny. Normally there'd be no mistaking the figure advancing across the courtyard, but there was something about the walk, the way every foot thudded down as though the boots were not on speaking terms with the earth. And the arms, too, swung in a way-

'I can't be having with this!' Agnes shouted, marching up to Granny. 'I can't think straight. It's you, isn't it?'

Granny reached out and touched the wounds on her neck.

'Ah, I see,' she said. 'One of them bit you, yes?'

'Yes! And somehow you spoke to me!'

'Not me. That was something in your blood talkin', I reckon,' said Granny. 'Who're all these people? Why's that man trying to set fire to the wall? Don't he know stone don't burn?'

'Oh, that's Claude, he's a bit single minded. Just let me know if he picks up a stake, will you? Look, they're from Escrow, it's a town not far away . . . The Magpyrs treated them like . . . well . . . pets. Farm animals! Just like they were trying to do back home!'

'We ain't leaving until we've dealt with the Count,' said Granny. 'Otherwise he'll be sneaking back-'

'Er, excuse me,' said Oats, who seemed to have been thinking about something. 'Excuse me, but did someone mention that the Queen was locked up in the crypt?'

'Safe as houses,' said Nanny. 'Huge thick door and you can bar it from the inside.'

'How safe are houses from vampires?' said Oats.

Granny's head turned sharply. 'What do you mean?'

Oats took a step backwards.

'Ah, I know what he means,' said Nanny. 'It's all right, we're not daft, she won't open up until she knows it's us-'

'I meant, how does the door stop vampires?'

'Stop them? It's a door.'

'So . . . they can't turn themselves into some sort of mist, then?' said Oats, frying in the joint radiation of their stares. 'Only I thought that vampires could, you see. I thought everyone knew that who knows anything about vampires. . .'

Granny turned on Igor. 'D'you know anything about this?'

Igor's mouth opened and shut a few times.

'The old Count never did anything like that,' he said.

'Yes,' said Nanny, 'But he played fair.'

There was a rising howl from the depths of the castle, cut off suddenly.

'That was Thcrapth!' said Igor, breaking into a run.

'Thcraapthhh?' said Agnes, wrinkling her brow. Nanny grabbed her arm and dragged her after Igor.

Granny swayed a little. Her eyes had an unfocused look.

Oats glanced at her, made up his mind,

staggered rather theatrically and sprawled in the dust.

Granny blinked, shook her head and glared down at him.

'Hah! All too much for you, eh?' she said hoarsely.

Trembling fingers reached down for Oats. He took them, taking care not to pull, and stood up.

'If you could just give me a hand,' he said, as her grateful weight hit his shoulder.

'Right,' said Granny. 'Now let's find the kitchens.'

'Huh? What do we want with the kitchens?'

'After a night like this we could all do with a cup of tea,' said Granny.

Magrat leaned against the door as a second thump rattled the bolts. Beside her, Scraps started to growl. Perhaps it was something to do with his extensive surgery, but Scraps growled in half a dozen different pitches all at once.

Then there was silence, which was even more terrifying than the thumping.

A faint noise made her look down. A green smoke was pouring through the keyhole.

It was thick, and had an oily quality . . .

She darted across the room and snatched up a jar that had contained lemons so sportingly provided by the mysterious old Count that Igor thought so highly of. She wrenched off the lid and held it under the keyhole. When the smoke had filled it up she dropped a few cloves

of garlic in and slammed the lid back on.

The jar rocked urgently on the floor.

Then Magrat glanced at the lid of the well. When she lifted it up she heard rushing water a long way below. Well, that was likely, wasn't it? There must be lots of underground rivers in the mountains.

She held the jar over the centre of the hole and let it go. Then she slammed the lid back down.

Young Esme gurgled in the corner. Magrat hurried over to her and shook a rattle.

'Look at the pretty bunny rabbit,' she said, and darted back again.

There was whispering on the other side of the door. Then Nanny Ogg's voice said, 'It's all right, dear, we've got them. You can open the door now. Lawks.'

Magrat rolled her eyes.

'Is that really you, Nanny?'

'That's right, dear.'

'Thank goodness. Just tell me the joke about the old woman, the priest and the rhinoceros then and I'll let you in.'

There was a pause, and some more whispering.

'I don't think We've got time for that, dear,' said the voice.

'Ha ha, nice try,' said Magrat. 'I've dropped one of you in the river! Who was it?'

After some silence the voice of the Count said, 'We thought the Countess could persuade you to listen to reason.'

'Not in a jar she can't,' said Magrat. 'And I've got more jars if you want to try it again!'

'We had hoped that you would be sensible about this,' said the Count. 'However. . .'

The door slammed back, pulling the bolts out of the wall.

Magrat grabbed the baby and stepped backwards, her other hand raised.

'You come near me and I'll stab you with this!' she shouted.

'It's a teddybear,' said the Count. 'I'm afraid it wouldn't work, even if you sharpened it.'

The door was so hard that the wood was like stone with a grain. Someone had once thought hard about the maximum amount of force a really determined mob would be able to apply, and had then overdesigned.

It hung open.

'But we heard her put the bars across!' wailed Nanny.

A variously coloured lump was sprawled in front of the door. Igor knelt down and picked up a limp paw.

'They've killed Thcrapth! The bathtardth!’

'They've got Magrat and the babby!' snapped Nanny.

'He wath my only friend!'

Nanny's arm shot out and, despite his bulk, Igor was lifted up by his collar.

'You're going to have one very serious enemy really soon, my lad, unless you help us out right now! Oh, for heaven's sake. . .' With her spare hand she reached into her knickerleg and produced a large crumpled handkerchief. 'Have a good blow, will you?'

There was a noise like a foghorn being trodden on.

'Now, where would they take them? The place is swarming with righteous peasants!' said Nanny, when he'd finished.

'He wath alwayth ready with hith waggy tailth and hith cold nothe-' Igor sobbed.

'Where, Igor?'

Igor pointed with his finger, or at least one that he currently owned, to the far door.

'That goeth to the vaultth,' he said. 'An' they can get out through the iron gate down in the valley. You'll never catch them!'

'But it's still bolted,' said Agnes.

'Then they're thtill in the cathle, which ith thtupid-'

He was interrupted by several huge organ chords, which made the floor rumble.

'Any of the Escrow folk big musicians?' said Nanny, lowering Igor.

'How do I know?' said Agnes, as another couple of descending chords brought dust down from the ceiling. 'They wanted to hammer a stake in me and boil my head! That is not the time to ask them to give a little whistle!'

The organ piped its summons once more.

'Why'd they stay?' said Nanny. 'They could be dug in deep somewhere by now- Oh . . .'

'Granny wouldn't run,' said Agnes.

'No, Granny Weatherwax likes a showdown,' said Nanny, grinning artfully. 'And they're

thinkin' like her. Somehow she's making them think like her. . .'

'She thinks like her, too,' said Agnes.

'Let's hope she's had more practice, then,' said Nanny. 'Come on!'

Lacrimosa pulled an organ stop marked 'Ghastly Face at Window' and was rewarded with a chord, a crash of thunder and a slightly mechanical scream.

'Thank goodness we don't take after your side of the family, Father, that's all I can say,' she said. 'Although I suppose it could be fun if we could arrange some sort of mechanical linkage to the torture chamber. That certainly wasn't a very realistic scream.'

'This is ridiculous,' said Vlad. 'We've got the child. We've got the woman. Why don't we just leave? There're plenty of other castles.'

'That would be running away,' said the Count.

'And surviving,' said Vlad, rubbing his head.

'We don't run,' said the Count. 'And- No, step back, please . . .'

This was to the mob, which was hovering uncertainly just inside the doors. Mobs become uncertain very quickly, in view of the absence of a central brain, and in this case the hesitation was caused by the sight of Magrat and the baby.

Vlad had a bruise on his forehead. A push-and-go wooden duck on wheels can cause quite a lot of damage if wielded with enough force.

'Well done,' said the Count, cradling baby Esme on one arm. Magrat writhed to escape the grip of his other hand, but it clamped her wrist like steel. 'You see? Absolute obedience. It's just as in chess. If you take the Queen, you've as good as won. It doesn't matter if a few pawns are lost.'

'That's a very nasty way to talk about Mother,' said Vlad.

'I am very attached to your mother,' said the Count. 'And she'll find a way to return, in the fullness of time. A voyage will be good for her health. Some fisherman will find the jar and next thing you know she'll be back with us, fat and healthy- Ah, the inestimable Mrs Ogg . . .'

'Don't you go smarming me!' snapped Nanny, pushing her way. through the bewildered crowd. 'I'm fed up with you smarming at me smarmily as if you were Mister Smarm! Now you just free the both of them or-'

'Ah, so quickly we get to or,' sighed the Count. 'But I will say: you will all leave the castle, and then we shall see. Perhaps we shall let the Queen go. But the little princess . . . Isn't she charming? She can remain as our guest. She'll brighten the place up-'

'She's coming back to Lancre with us, you bastard!' screamed Magrat. She twisted in the Count's grip and tried to slap him, but Agnes saw her face whiten as his hand tightened on her wrist.

'That's very bad language for a queen,' said the Count. 'And I am still very strong, even for a vampire. But you're right. We shall all go back to Lancre. One big happy family, living in the castle. I must say, this place is losing its attractions. Oh, don't blame yourself, Mrs Ogg. I'm sure others will do that for you-'

He stopped. A sound that had been on the edge of hearing was getting louder. It had a rhythmic, almost tinny sound.

The crowd parted. Granny Weatherwax walked forward, slowly stirring.

'No milk in this place,' she said. 'Not to be wondered at, really. I sliced a bit of lemon, but it's not the same, I always think.'

She laid the spoon in the saucer with a clink that echoed around the hall, and gave the Count a smile.

'Am I too late?' she said.

The bolts rattled back, one by one.

'. . . 'th gone too far,' Igor muttered. 'The old marthter wouldn't. . .'

The door creaked back on lovingly rusted hinges. Cool dry air puffed out of the darkness.

Igor fumbled with some matches and lit a torch.

'. . . it'th all very well wanting a nithe long retht, but thith ith a dithgrathe . . .'

He ran along the dark corridors, half rough masonry, half sheer naked rock, and reached another chamber that was completely empty apart from a large stone sarcophagus in the centre, on the side of which was carved MAGPYR.

He stuffed the torch into a bracket, removed his coat and after considerable pushing heaved the stone lid aside.

'Thorry about thith, marthter,' he grunted as it thudded to the ground.

Inside the coffin grey dust twinkled in the torchlight.

'... coming up here, mething everything up. . .' Igor picked up his coat and took a thick wad of material out of his pocket. He unrolled it on the edge of the stone,. Now the light glinted off an array of scalpels, scissors and needles .

. . . threatening little babieth now . . . you never done that . . . only adventurouth femaleth over the age of theventeen and looking good in a nightie, you alwayth thed . . .'

He selected a scalpel and, with some care, nicked the little finger of his left hand.

A drop of blood appeared, swelled and dropped on to the dust, where it smoked.

'That one'th for Thcrapth,' said Igor with grim satisfaction.

By the time he'd reached the door white mist was already pouring over the edge of the coffin.

'I'm an old lady' said Granny Weatherwax, looking around sternly. 'I'd like to sit down, thank you so very much.'

A bench was rushed forward. Granny sat, and eyed the Count.

'What were you saying?' she said.

'Ah, Esmerelda,' said the Count. 'At last you come to join us. The call of the blood is too strong to be disobeyed, yes?'

'I hope so,' said Granny.

'We're all going to walk out of here, Miss Weatherwax.'

'You're not leaving here,' said Granny. She stirred the tea again. The eyes of all three vampires swivelled to follow the spoon.

'You have no choice but to obey me. You know that,' said the Count.

'Oh, there's always a choice,' said Granny.

Vlad and Lacrimosa leaned down on either side of their father. There was some hurried whispering. The Count looked up.

'No, you couldn't have resisted it,' he said. 'Not even you!'

'I won't say it didn't cost me,' said Granny. She stirred the tea again.

There was more whispering.

'We do have the Queen and the baby' said the Count. 'I believe you think highly of them.'

Granny raised the cup halfway to her lips. 'Kill 'em,' she said. 'It won't benefit you.'

'Esme!' snapped Nanny Ogg and Magrat together.

Granny put the cup back in the saucer. Agnes thought she saw Vlad sigh. She could feel the pull herself . . .

I know what she did, whispered Perdita. So do I, thought Agnes.

'He's bluffing,' Granny said.

'Oh? You'd like a vampire queen one day, would you?' said Lacrimosa.

'Had one once, in Lancre,' said Granny conversationally. 'Poor woman got bitten by one of you people. Got by on blue steak and such. Never laid a tooth on anyone, the way I heard it. Griminir the Impaler, she was.'

'The Impaler?'

'Oh, I just said she wasn't a bloodsucker. I didn't say she was a nice person,' said Granny. 'She didn't mind shedding blood, but she drew the line at drinking it. You don't have to, neither.'

'You know nothing about true vampires!'

'I know more'n you think, and I know about Gytha Ogg,' said Granny. Nanny Ogg blinked.

Granny Weatherwax raised the teacup again, and then lowered it. 'She likes a drink. She'll tell you it has to be best brandy. . .' Nanny nodded affirmation '. . . and that's certainly what she desires, but really she'll settle for beer just like everyone else.' Nanny Ogg shrugged as Granny went on: 'But you wouldn't settle for black puddings, would you, because what you really drink is power over people. I know you like I know myself. And one of the things I know is that you ain't going to hurt a hair of that child's head. Leastways,' and here Granny absentmindedly stirred the tea again, 'if she had any yet, you wouldn't. You can't, see.'

She picked up the cup and carefully scraped it on the edge of the saucer. Agnes saw Lacrimosa's lips part, hungrily.

'So all I'm really here for, d'you see, is to see whether you get justice or mercy,' said Granny. 'It's just a matter of choosing.'

'You really think we wouldn't harm meat?' said Lacrimosa, striding forward. 'Watch!'

She brought her hand down hard towards the baby, and then jerked back as if she'd been stung.

'Can't do it,' said Granny.

'I nearly broke my arm!'

'Shame,' said Granny calmly.

'You've put some . . . something magical in the child, have you?' said the Count.

'Can't imagine who'd think I'd do such a thing,' said Granny, while behind her Nanny Ogg looked down at her boots. 'So here's my offer, you see. You hand back Magrat and the baby and we'll chop your heads off.'

'And that's what you call justice, is it?' said the Count.

'No, that's what I call mercy,' said Granny. She put the cup back in the saucer.

'For goodness' sake, woman, are you going to drink that damn tea or not?' roared the Count.

Granny sipped it and made a face.

'Why, what have I been thinkin' of? I've been so busy talking it's got cold,' she said, and daintily tipped the contents of the cup on to the floor.

Lacrimosa groaned.

'It'll probably wear off soon,' Granny went on, in the same easy voice. 'But until it does, you see, you'll not harm a child, you'll not harm Magrat, you hate the thought of drinking blood, and you won't run because you'll never run from a challenge. . .'

'What will wear off?' said Vlad.

'Oh, they're strong, your walls of thought,' said Granny dreamily. 'I couldn't get through them.'

The Count smiled.

Granny smiled, too. 'So I didn't,' she added.

The mist rolled through the crypt, flowing along the floor, walls and ceiling. It poured up the steps and along a tunnel, the billows boiling ahead on one another as though engaged in a war.

An unwary rat, creeping across the flagstones, was too late. The mist flowed over it. There was a squeak, cut off, and when the mist had gone a few small white bones were all that remained.

Some equally small bones, but fully assembled and wearing a black hooded robe and carrying a tiny scythe, appeared out of nowhere and walked over to them. Skeletal claws tippy-tapped on the stone.

'Squeak?' said the ghost of the rat pathetically.

SQUEAK, said the Death of Rats. This was really all it needed to know.

'You wanted to know where I'd put my self,' said Granny. 'I didn't go anywhere. I just put it in something alive, and you took it. You invited me in. I'm in every muscle in your body and I'm in your head, oh yes. I was in the blood, Count. In the blood. I ain't been vampired. You've been Weatherwaxed. All of you. And you've always listened to your blood, haven't you?'

The Count stared at her, open mouthed.

The spoon dropped out of her saucer and tinkled on to the floor, raising a wave in a thin white mist. It was rolling in from the walls, leaving a shrinking circle of black and white tiles in the middle of which were the vampires.

Igor pushed his way through the crowd until he was alongside Nanny.

'It'th all right,' he said, 'I couldn't let it go on, it wath dithgratheful. . .'

The mist rose in a boiling tower, there was a moment of discontinuity, a feeling of sliced time, and then a figure stood behind Vlad and Lacrimosa. He was rather taller than most men, and wearing evening dress that might have been in style once upon a time. His hair was streaked with grey and brushed back over his ears in a way that gave the impression his head had been designed for its aerodynamic efficiency.

Beautifully manicured hands gripped the shoulders of the younger vampires. Lacrimosa turned to scratch him, and cowered when he snarled like a tiger.

Then the face returned to something closer to human, arid the newcomer smiled. He seemed genuinely pleased to see everyone.

'Good morning,' he said.

'Another bloody vampire?' said Nanny.

'Not any old vampire,' said Igor, hopping from one foot to the other. 'It'th the old marthter! Old Red Eyeth ith back!'

Granny stood up, ignoring the tall figure firmly holding the two suddenly docile vampires. She advanced on the Count.

'I know all about what you can and can't do,' she said, 'because you let me in. An' that means you can't do what I can't do. An' you think just like me, the difference bein' I've done it longer and I'm better'n you at it.'

'You're meat,' snarled the Count. 'Clever meat!'

'And you invited me in,' said Granny. 'I'm not the sort to go where I'm not welcome, I'm sure.'

In the Count's arms the baby started to cry. He stood up.

'How sure are you that I won't harm this child?' he said.

'I wouldn't. So you can't.'

The Count's face contorted as he wrestled with his feelings and also with Magrat, who was kicking him on the shins.

'It could have worked. . .' he said, and for the first time the certainty had been drained from his voice.

'You mean it could have worked for you!' shouted Agnes.

'We are vampires. We cannot help what we are.'

'Only animals can't help what they are,' said Granny. 'Will you give me the child now?'

'If I . . .'the Count began, and then straightened up. 'No! I don't have to bargain! I can fight you, just as you fought me! And if I walk out of here now, I don't think there's anyone who'll dare stop me. Look at you . . . all of you . . . and look at me. And now look at . . . him.' He nodded at the figure holding Vlad and Lacrimosa as still as statues. 'Is that what you want?'

'Sorry . . . who is this we're supposed to be looking at?' said Granny. 'Oh ... Igor's "old master"? The old Count Magpyr, I believe.'

The old Count nodded gracefully. 'Your servant, madam,' he said.

'I doubt it,' said Granny.

'Oh, no one minded him,' said Piotr, from among the Escrow citizens. 'He only ever came round every few years and anyway if you remembered about the garlic he wasn't a problem. He didn't expect us to like him.'

The old Count smiled at him.

'You look familiar. One of the Ravi family, aren't you?'

'Piotr, sir. Son of Hans.'

'Ah, yes. Very similar bone structure. Do remember me to your grandmother.'

'She passed away ten years ago, sir.'

'Oh, really? I am so sorry. Time goes so quickly when you're dead.' The old master sighed. 'A very fine figure in a nightdress, as I recall.'

'Oh, he was all right,' said someone else in the crowd. 'We got a nip every now and again but we got over it.'

'That's a familiar voice,' said the vampire. 'Are you a Veyzen?'

'Yessir.'

'Related to Arno Veyzen?'

'Great-granddaddy, sir.'

'Good man. Killed me stone dead seventy-five years ago. Stake right through the heart from twenty paces. You should be proud.'

The man in the crowd beamed with ancestral pride.

'We've still got the stake hung up over the fireplace, yer honour,' he said.

'Well done. Good man. I like to see the old ways kept up'

Count Magpyr screamed.

'You can't possibly prefer that?! He's a monster!'

'But he never made an appointment!' shouted Agnes, even louder. 'I bet he never thought it was all just an arrangement!'

Count Magpyr was edging towards the door with his hostages.

'No,' he said, 'this is not how it's going to happen. If anyone really believes that I won't harm my charming hostages, perhaps you will try to stop me? Does anyone really believe that old woman?'

Nanny Ogg opened her mouth, caught Granny's eye, and shut it again. The crowd parted behind the Count as he dragged Magrat towards the door.

He walked into the figure of Mightily Oats.

'Have you ever thought of letting Om into your life?' said the priest. His voice trembled. His face glistened with sweat.

'Oh . . . you again?' said the Count. 'If I can resist her, little boy, you are not a problem!'

Oats held his axe before him as if it was made of some rare and delicate metal.

'Begone, foul fiend-' he began.

'Oh, dear me,' said the Count, thrusting the axe aside. 'And don't you learn anything, you stupid man? Little stupid man who has a little stupid faith in a little stupid god?'

'But it . . . lets me see things as they are,' Oats managed.

'Really? And you think you can stand in my way? An axe isn't even a holy symbol!'

'Oh.' Oats looked crestfallen. Agnes saw his

shoulders sag as he lowered the blade.

Then he looked up, smiled brightly and said, 'Let's make it so.'

Agnes saw the blade leave a gold trail in the air as it swept around. There was a soft, almost silken sound.

The axe dropped on to the flagstones. In the sudden silence it clanged like a bell. Then Oats reached out and snatched the child from the vampire's unresisting hands. He held her out to Magrat, who took her in shocked silence.

The first sound after that was the rustle of Granny's dress as she stood up and walked over to the axe. She nudged it with her foot.

'If I've got a fault,' she said, contriving to suggest that this was only a theoretical possibility, 'it's not knowing when to turn and run. And I tends to bluff on a weak hand.'

Her voice echoed in the hall. No one else had even breathed out yet.

She nodded at the Count, who'd slowly raised his hands to the red wound that ran all around his neck.

'It was a sharp axe,' she said. 'Who says there's no mercy in the world? Just don't nod, that's all. And someone'll take you down to a nice cold coffin and I daresay fifty years'll just fly past and maybe you'll wake with enough sense to be stupid.'

There was a murmur from the mob as they came back to life. Granny shook her head.

'They want you deader than that, I see,' she said, as the Count gazed ahead of him with frozen,

desperate eyes and the blood welled and seeped between his fingers. 'An' there's ways. Oh, yes. We could burn you to ashes and scatter them in the sea-'

This met with a general sigh of approval.

'-or throw 'em up in the air in the middle of a gale-'

This got a smattering of applause.

'-or just pay some sailor to drop you over the edge.' This even got a few whistles. 'Of course, you'd come back alive again, I suppose, one day. But just floating in space for millions of years, oh, that sounds very boring to me.' She raised a hand to silence the crowd.

'No. Fifty years to think about things, that's about right. People need vampires,' she said. 'They helps 'em remember what stakes and garlic are for.'

She snapped her fingers at the crowd. 'Come on, two of you take him down to the vaults. Show some respect for the dead-'

'That's not enough!' said Piotr, stepping forward. 'Not after all he-'

'Then when he comes back you deal with him yourself,' snapped Granny loudly. 'Teach your children! Don't trust the cannibal just 'cos he's usin' a knife and fork! And remember that vampires don't go where they're not invited!'

They backed away. Granny relaxed a little.

'This time round, it's up to me. My . . . choice.' She leaned closer to the Count's horrible grimace. 'You tried to take my mind away from me,' she said in a lower voice. 'And that's

everything to me. Reflect on that. Try to learn.' She stood back. 'Take him away.'

She turned away, to the tall figure. 'So ... you're the old master, are you?' she said.

'Alison Weatherwax?' said the old master. 'I have a good memory for necks.'

Granny froze for a second.

'What? No! Er ... how do you know the name?'

'Why, she passed through here, what, fifty years ago. We met briefly, and then she cut off my head and stuck a stake in my heart.' The Count sighed happily. 'A very spirited woman. You're a relative, I presume? I lose track of generations, I'm afraid.'

'Granddaughter,' said Granny weakly.

'There's a phoenix outside the castle, Igor tells me...'

'It'll leave, I expect.'

The Count nodded. 'I've always rather liked them,' he said wistfully. 'There were so many of them when I was young. They made the nights .. . pretty. So pretty. Everything was so much simpler then . . .' His voice trailed off, and then came back louder. 'But now, apparently, we're in modern times.'

'That's what they say,' murmured Granny.

'Well, madam, I've never taken too much notice of them. Fifty years later they never seem so modern as all that.' He shook the younger vampires like dolls. 'I do apologize for my nephew's behaviour. Quite out of keeping for a vampire. Would you people from Escrow like to kill these two? It's the least I could do.'

'Ain't they your relatives?' said Nanny Ogg, as the crowd surged forward.

'Oh, yes. But we've never been much of a species for playing happy families.'

Vlad looked imploringly at Agnes, and reached out to her.

'You wouldn't let them kill me, would you? You wouldn't let them do this to me? We could have . . . we might... you wouldn't, would you?'

The crowd hesitated. This sounded like an important plea. A hundred pairs of eyes stared at Agnes.

She took his hand. I suppose we could work on him, .said Perdita. But Agnes thought about Escrow, and the queues, and the children playing while they waited, and how evil might come animal sharp in the night, or greyly by day on a list...

'Vlad,' she said gently, looking deep into his eyes, 'I'd even hold their coats.'

'A fine sentiment but that ain't happenin',' said Granny, behind her. 'You take 'em away, Count. Teach 'em the old ways. Teach 'em stupidity.'

The Count nodded and grinned toothily.

'Certainly. I shall teach them that to live you have to rise again-'

'Hah! You don't live, Count. The phoenix lives. You just don't know you're dead. Now get along with you!'

There was another moment sliced out of time and then a flock of magpies rose up from where the three vampires had been, screaming and chattering, and disappeared in the darkness of the roof.

'There's hundreds of them!' said Agnes to Nanny.

'Well, vampires can turn into things,' said Nanny. 'Everyone knows that, who knows anything about vampires.'

'And what do three hundred magpies mean?'

'They mean it's time to put covers on all the furniture,' said Nanny. 'And that it's time for me to have a very big drink.'

The crowd began to break up, aware that the big show was over.

'Why didn't she just let us wipe them out?' hissed Piotr by Agnes's ear. 'Death's too good for them!'

'Yes,' said Agnes. 'I suppose that's why she didn't let them have it.'

Oats hadn't moved. He was still staring straight ahead of him, but his hands were shaking. Agnes led him gently to a bench and eased him down.

'I killed him, didn't I?' he whispered.

'Sort of,' said Agnes. 'It's a bit hard to tell with vampires.'

'There was just nothing else to do! Everything just went . . . the air just went gold, and there was just this one moment to do something-'

'I don't think anyone's complaining,' said Agnes. You've got to admit he's quite attractive, whispered Perdita. If only he'd do something about that boil. . .

Magrat sat down on the other side of Oats, clutching the baby. She breathed deeply a few times.

'That was very brave of you,' she said.

'No, it wasn't,' said Oats hoarsely. 'I thought Mistress Weatherwax was going to do something. . .'

'She did,' said Magrat, shivering. 'Oh, she did.'

Granny Weatherwax sat down on the other end of the bench and pinched the bridge of her nose.

'I just want to go home now,' she said. 'I just want to go home and sleep for a week.' She yawned. 'I'm dyin' for a cuppa.'

'I thought you'd made one!' said Agnes. 'You had us slavering for it!'

'Where'd I get tea here? It was just some mud in water. But I know Nanny keeps a bag of it somewhere on her person.' She yawned again. 'Make the tea, Magrat.'

Agnes opened her mouth, but Magrat waved her into silence and then handed her the baby.

'Certainly, Granny,' she said, gently pushing Agnes back into her seat. 'I'll just find out where Igor keeps the kettle, shall I?'

Mightily Oats stepped out on to the battlements. The sun was well up and a breeze was blowing in over the forests of Uberwald. A few magpies chattered in the trees nearest the castle.

Granny was leaning with her elbows on the wall, staring out over the thinning mists.

'It looks like it's going to be a fine day,' said Oats happily. And he did feel happy, to his amazement. There was sharpness to the air, and the sense of the future brimming with possibilities. He remembered the moment when he'd swung the axe, when both of him had swung it together. Perhaps there was a way . . .

'There's a storm coming down from the Hub later,' said Granny.

'Well . . . at least that'll be good for the crops, then,' said Oats.

Something flickered overhead. In the new daylight the wings of the phoenix were hard to see, mere yellow shimmers in the air, with the tiny shape of the little hawk in the centre as it circled high over the castle.

'Why would anyone want to kill something like that?' said Oats.

'Oh, some people'll kill anything for the fun of it.'

'Is it a true bird or is it something that exists within a-'

'It's a thing that is,' said Granny sharply. 'Don't go spilling allegory all down your shirt.'

'Well, I feel . . . blessed to have seen it.'

'Really? I genially feel the same about the sunrise,' said Granny. 'You would too, at my time of life.' She sighed, and then seemed to be speaking mainly to herself. 'She never went to the bad, then, whatever people said. And you'd have to be on your toes with that of vampire. She never went to the bad. You heard him say that, right? He said it. He didn't have to.'

'Er . . . yes.'

'She'd have been older'n me, too. Bloody good witch was Nana Alison. Sharp as a knife. Had her funny little ways, o' course, but who hasn't?'

'No one I know, certainly.'

'Right. You're right.' Granny straightened up. 'Good,' she said.

'Er. ..'

'Yes?'

Oats was looking down at the drawbridge and the road to the castle.

'There's a man in a nightshirt covered in mud and waving a sword down there,' he said, 'followed by a lot of Lancre people and some . . . little blue men. . .'

He looked down again. 'At least it looks like mud,' he added.

'That'll be the King,' said Granny. 'Big Aggie's given him some of her brose, by the sound of it. He'll save the day.'

'Er . . . hasn't the day been saved?'

'Oh, he's the King. It looks like it might be a nice day, so let him save it. You've got to give kings something to do. Anyway, after a drink from Big Aggie he won't know what day it is. We'd better get down there.'

'I feel I should thank you,' said Oats, when they reached the spiral staircase.

'For helping you across the mountains, you mean?'

'The world is . . . different.' Oats's gaze went out across the haze, and the forests, and the purple mountains. 'Everywhere I look I see something holy.'

For the first time since he'd met her he saw Granny Weatherwax smile properly. Normally her mouth went up at the corners just before something unpleasant was going to happen to someone who deserved it, but this time she appeared to be pleased with what she'd heard.

'That's a start, then,' she said.

The Magpyrs' coach had been righted and dragged up to the castle. Now it returned, with Jason Ogg at the reins. He was concentrating on avoiding the bumps. They made his bruises tender. Besides, the royal family was on board and he was feeling extremely loyal at the moment.

Jason Ogg was very big and very strong and, therefore, not a violent man, because he did not need to be. Sometimes he was summoned down to the pub to sort out the more serious fights, which he usually did by picking up both contestants and holding them apart until they stopped struggling. If that didn't work, he'd bang them together a few times, in as friendly a way as possible.

Aggressiveness did not normally impress him, but since in yesterday's battle at Lancre Castle he'd had to physically lift Verence off the ground in order to stop him slaughtering enemies, friends, furniture, walls and his own feet, he was certainly seeing his king in a new light. It had turned out to be an extremely short battle. The mercenaries had been only too keen to surrender, especially after Shawn's assault. The real fight had been to keep Verence away from them long enough to allow them to say so.

Jason was impressed.

King Verence, inside the coach, laid his head in

his wife's lap and groaned as she wiped his brow with a cloth . . . '

At a respectable distance the coach was followed by a cart containing the witches, although what it contained mostly was snore.

Granny Weatherwax had a primal snore. It had never been tamed. No one had ever had to sleep next to it, to curb its wilder excesses by means of a kick, a prod in the small of the back or a pillow used as a bludgeon. It had had years in a lonely bedroom to perfect the knark, the graaah and the gnoc, gnoc, gnoc unimpeded by the nudges, jabs and occasional attempts at murder that usually moderate the snore impulse over time.

She sprawled in the straw at the bottom of the cart, mouth open, and snored.

'You half expect to find the shafts sawed through, don't you?' said Nanny, who was leading the horse. 'Still, you can hear it doin' her good.'

'I'm a bit worried about Mister Oats, though,' said Agnes. 'He's just sitting there and grinning.'

Oats was sitting with his legs over the tail of the cart, staring happily at the sky.

'Did he hit his head?' said Nanny.

'I don't think so.'

'Let him be, then. At least he ain't settin' fire to anything . . . Oh, here's an old friend. . .'

Igor, tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth in the ferocity of his concentration, was putting the finishing touches to a new sign. It read 'Why not vysyt our Gifte Shoppe?' He stood up and nodded as the cart drew near.

'The old marthter came up with thome new

ideath while he wath dead,' he said, feeling that some explanation was called for. 'Thith afternoon I've got to thtart building a funfair, whatever that ith.'

'That's basic'ly swings,' said Nanny.

Igor brightened up. 'Oh, I've plenty of rope and I've alwayth been a dab hand at nootheth,' he said.

'No, that's not-' Agnes began, but Nanny Ogg cut in quickly.

'I s'pose it all depends on who's going to have the fun,' she said. 'Well, be seeing you, Igor. Don't do anything I wouldn't do, if you ever find anything I wouldn't do.'

'We're very sorry about Scraps,' said Agnes. 'Perhaps we can find you a puppy or-'

'Thankth all the thame, but no. There'th only one Thcrapth.'

He waved to them until they were round the next bend.

As Agnes turned round again she saw the three magpies. They were perched on a branch over the road.

"Three for a funeral-"' she began.

A stone whirred up. There was an indignant squawk and a shower of feathers.

'Two for mirth,' said Nanny, in a self-satisfied voice.

'Nanny, that was cheating.'

'Witches always cheat,' said Nanny Ogg. She glanced back at the sleeping figure behind them. 'Everyone knows that – who knows anything about witches.'

They went home to Lancre.

It had been raining again. Water had seeped into Oats's tent and also into the harmonium, which now emitted an occasional squashed-frog burp when it was played. The songbooks also smelled rather distressingly of cat.

He gave up on them and turned to the task of disassembling his camp bed, which had skinned two knuckles and crushed one finger when he put it up and still looked as though it was designed for a man shaped like a banana.

Oats was aware that he was trying to avoid thinking. On the whole, he was happy with this. There was something pleasing about simply getting on with simple tasks, and listening to his own breath. Perhaps there was a way . . .

From outside there was the faint sound of something wooden hitting something hollow and whispering on the evening air.

He peered through the tent flap.

People were filing stealthily into the field. The first few were carrying planks. Several were pushing barrels. He stood with his mouth open as the very rough benches were constructed and began to fill up.

A number of the men had bandages across their noses, he noticed.

Then he heard the rattle of wheels and saw the royal coach lurch through the gateway. This woke him up and he scurried back into the tent, pulling damp clothes out of his bag in a frantic search for a clean shirt. His hat had never been found and

his coat was caked with mud, the leather of his shoes was cracked and the buckles had instantly tarnished in the acid marshes, but surely a clean shirt-

Someone tried to knock on the damp canvas and then, after an interval of half a second, stepped into the tent.

'Are you decent?' said Nanny Ogg, looking him up and down. 'We're all out here waitin', you know. Lost sheep waitin' to be shorn, you might say,' she added, her manner suggesting very clearly that she was doing something that she personally disapproved of, but doing it just the same.

Oats turned around.

'Mrs Ogg, I know you don't like me very much-'

'Don't see why I should like you at all,' said Nanny. 'What with you tagging after Esme and her havin' to help you all that way across the mountains like that.'

The response was screaming up Oats's throat before he noticed the faint knowing look in Nanny's eyes, and he managed to turn it into a cough.

'Er . . . yes,' he said. 'Yes. Silly of me, wasn't it? Er . . . how many are out there, Mrs Ogg?'

'Oh, a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty.'

Levers, thought Oats, and had a fleeting vision of the pictures in Nanny's parlour. She controls the levers of lots of people. But someone pulled her lever first, I'll bet.

'And what do they expect of me?'

'Says Evensong on the poster,' said Nanny

simply. 'Even beer would be better.'

So he went out and saw the watching faces of a large part of Lancre's population lined up in the late-afternoon light. The King and Queen were in the front row. Verence nodded regally at oats to signal that whatever it was that he intended ought to start around now.

It was clear from the body language of Nanny Ogg that any specifically Omnian prayers would not be tolerated, and Oats made do with a generic prayer of thanks to any god that might be listening and even to the ones that weren't.

Then he pulled out the stricken harmonium and tried a few chords until Nanny elbowed him aside, rolled up her sleeves and coaxed notes out of the damp bellows that oats never even knew were in there.

The singing wasn't very enthusiastic, though, until Oats tossed aside the noisome songbook and taught them some of the songs he remembered from his grandmother, full of fire and thunder and death and justice and tunes you could actually whistle, with titles like 'Om Shall Trample The Ungodly' and 'Lift Me To The Skies' and 'Light The Good Light'. They went down well. Lancre people weren't too concerned about religion, but they knew what it ought to sound like.

While he led the singing, with the aid of a long stick and the words of the hymns scrawled on the side of his tent, he scanned his . .. well, he decided to call it his congregation. It was his first real one. There were plenty of women, and a lot

of very well scrubbed men, but one face was patently not there. Its absence dominated the scene.

But, as he raised his eyes upwards in mid-song, he did notice an eagle far overhead, a mere speck gyrating across the darkening sky, possibly hunting for lost lambs.

And then it was over and people left, quietly, with the look of those who'd done a job which had not been unpleasant but which was nevertheless over. The collection plate produced two pennies, some carrots, a large onion, a small loaf, a pound of mutton, a jug of milk and a pickled pig's trotter.

'We're not really a cash economy,' said King Verence, stepping forward. He had a bandage across his forehead.

'Oh, it'll make a good supper, sire,' said Oats, in the madly cheerful voice that people use when addressing royalty.

'Surely you'll dine with us?' said Magrat.

'I . . . er . . . was planning to leave at first light, sire. So I really ought to spend the evening packing and setting fire to the camp bed.'

'Leaving? But I thought you were staying here. I've taken . . . community soundings,' said the King, 'and I think I can say that popular opinion is with me on this.'

Oats looked at Magrat's face, which said plainly, Granny doesn't object.

'Well, I, er . .. I expect I shall pass through again, sire,' he said. 'But . . . to tell you the truth, I was thinking of heading on to Uberwald.'

'That's a hellish place, Mr Oats.'

'I've thought about it all day, sire, and I'm set on it.'

'Oh.' Verence looked nonplussed, but kings learn to swing back upright. 'I'm sure you know your own mind best.' He swayed slightly as Magrat's elbow grazed his ribs. 'Oh . . . yes . . . we heard you lost your, er, holy amulet and so this afternoon we, that is to say the Queen and Miss Nitt . . . got Shawn Ogg to make this in the mint. . .'

Oats unwrapped the black velvet scroll. Inside, on a golden chain, was a small golden doubleheaded axe.

He stared at it.

'Shawn isn't very good at turtles,' said Magrat, to fill the gap.

'I shall treasure it,' said Oats, at last.

'Of course, we appreciate it's not very holy,' said the King.

Oats waved a hand dismissively. 'Who knows, sire? Holiness is where you find it,' he said.

Behind the King, Jason and Darren Ogg were standing respectfully to attention. Both still had plasters stuck across their noses. They moved aside hurriedly to make way for the King, who didn't seem to notice.

Nanny Ogg struck a chord on the harmonium when the royal couple had departed with their retinue.

'If you, drop in to our Jason's forge first thing when you're leavin' I'll see to it he fixes the bellows on this contraption,' she said diffidently, and Oats realized that in the context of Nanny

Ogg this was as close as he was going to get to three rousing cheers and the grateful thanks of the population.

'I was so impressed that everyone turned up of their own free will,' he said. 'Spontaneously, as it were.'

'Don't push your luck, sonny boy,' said Nanny, getting up.

'Nice to have met you, Mrs Ogg.'

Nanny walked away a few steps, but Oggs never left anything unsaid.

'I can't say as I approve of you,' she said, stiffly. 'But should you ever come knockin' on an Ogg door in these parts you'll . . . get a hot meal. You're too skinny. I've seen more meat on a butcher's pencil.'

'Thank you.'

'Not necessarily puddin' as well, mark you.'

'Of course not.'

'Well, then. . .' Nanny Ogg shrugged. 'Best of luck in Uberwald, then.'

'Om will go with me, I'm sure,' said Oats. He was interested in how annoyed you could make Nanny by speaking calmly to her, and wondered if Granny Weatherwax had tried it.

'I hope he does,' said Nanny. 'I person'ly don't want him hanging around here.'

When she'd gone Oats lit a fire of the horrible bed and stuck the songbooks around it to dry out.

'Hello. . .'

The thing about a witch in darkness is that all you see is her face, bobbing towards you, surrounded by black. Then a little contrast reasserted

itself, and an area of shadow detached from the rest and became Agnes.

'Oh, good evening,' said Oats. 'Thank you for coming. I've never heard anyone singing in harmony with themselves before.'

Agnes coughed nervously.

'Are you really going on into Uberwald?'

'There's no reason to stay here, is there?'

Agnes's left arm twitched a few times. She steadied it with her right hand.

'S'pose not,' she said, in a small voice. 'No! Shut up! This is not the time!'

'I beg your pardon?'

'I was, um, just talking to myself,' said Agnes wretchedly. 'Look, everyone knows you helped Granny. They just pretend they don't.'

'Yes. I know.'

'You don't mind?'

Oats shrugged. Agnes coughed.

'I thought perhaps you were going to stay on here for a while.'

'There'd be no point. I'm not needed here.'

'I shouldn't think vampires and so on would be very keen on singing hymns,' said Agnes quietly.

'Perhaps they can learn something else,' said Oats. 'I shall see what may be done.'

Agnes stood hesitantly for a few moments.

'I've got to give you this,' she said, suddenly handing over a small bag. Oats reached inside and took out a small jar.

Inside, a phoenix feather burned, lighting up the field with a clear, cool light.

'It's from-' Agnes began.

'I know who it's from,' said Oats. 'Is Mistress Weatherwax all right? I didn't see her here.'

'Er . . . she's been having a rest today.'

'Well, thank her from me, will you?'

'She said it's to take into dark places.'

Oats laughed.

'Er . . . yes. Er . . . I might come and see you off in the morning. . .'said Agnes, uncertainly.

'That would be nice of you.'

'So . . . until . . . you know...'

'Yes.'

Agnes seemed to be struggling with some inner resistance. Then she said, 'And, er .. . there's something I've been meaning to . . . I mean, perhaps you could. . .'

'Yes?'

Agnes's right hand dived urgently into her pocket and she pulled out a small package wrapped in greased paper.

'It's a poultice,' she blurted out. 'It's a very good recipe and the book says it always works and if you heat it up and leave it on it'll do wonders for your boil.'

Oats took it gently. 'It's just possible that's the nicest thing anyone's ever given me,' he said.

'Er . . . good. It's from . . . er . . . both of us. Goodbye.'

Oats watched her leave the circle of light, and then something drew his eye upwards again.

The circling eagle had risen above the shadow of the mountains and into the light of the setting sun. For a moment it flashed gold, and then dropped into the dark again.

From up here the eagle could see for miles across the mountains.

Over Uberwald, the threatened storm had broken. Lightning scribbled across the sky.

Some of it crackled around the highest tower of Don'tgonearthe Castle, and on the rainhat that Igor wore to stop his head rusting. It raised little balls of glowing light on the big telescopic iron spike as, taking care to stand on his portable rubber mat, he patiently wound it upwards.

At the foot of the apparatus, which was already humming with high tension, was a bundle wrapped in a blanket.

The spike locked itself in position. Igor sighed, and waited.

DOWN, BOY! DOWN, I SAYI! WILL YOU STOP- LET GO! LET GO THIS MINUTE! ALL RIGHT, LOOK ... FETCH? FETCH? THERE WE GO . . .

Death watched Scraps bound away.

He wasn't used to this. It wasn't that people weren't sometimes glad to see him, because the penultimate moments of life were often crowded and complex and a cool figure in black came as something of a relief. But he'd never encountered quite this amount of enthusiasm or, if it came to it, this amount of flying mucus. It was disconcerting. It made him feel he wasn't doing his job properly.

THERE'S A SATISFACTORY DOG. NOW . . . DROP. LET GO, PLEASE. DID YOU HEAR ME SAY LET GO? LET GO THIS MINUTE!

Scraps bounced away. This was far too much fun to end.

There was a soft chiming from within his robe. Death rubbed his hand on the cloth in an effort to get it dry and brought out a lifetimer, its sand all pooled in the bottom bulb. But the glass itself was misshapen, twisted, covered in welts of raised glass and, as Death watched, it filled up with crackling blue light.

Normally, Death was against this sort of thing but, he reasoned as he snapped his fingers, at the moment it looked as though it was the only way he'd get his scythe back.

The lightning hit.

There was a smell of singed wool.

Igor waited a while and then trudged round to the bundle, trailing molten rubber behind him. Kneeling down, he carefully unwrapped the blanket.

Scraps yawned. A large tongue licked Igor's hand.

As he smiled with relief there came, from far down below in the castle, the sound of the mighty organ playing 'Toccata for Young Women in Underwired Nightdresses'.

The eagle swooped on into the bowl of Lancre.

The long light glowed on the lake, and on the

big V-shaped ripple, made up of many small V-shaped ripples, that arrowed through the water towards the unsuspecting island.

The voices echoed around the mountains.

'See you, otter!'

'Taggit, jins ma greely!'

'Wee free men!'

'Nac mac Feegle!'

The eagle passed overhead, dropping fast and steep now. It drifted silently over the shadowy woods, curved over the trees, and landed suddenly on a branch beside a cottage in a clearing.

Granny Weatherwax awoke.

Her body did not move, but her gaze darted this way and that, sharply, and in the gloom her nose looked more hooked than normal. Then she settled back, and her shoulders lost the hunched, perching look.

After a while she stood up, stretched, and went to the doorway.'

The night felt warmer. She could feel greenness in the ground, uncoiling. The year was past the edge, heading away from the dark . . . Of course, dark would come again, but that was in the nature of the world. Many things were beginning.

When at last she'd shut the door she lit the fire, took the box of candles out of the dresser and lit every single one and put them around the room, in saucers.

On the table the pool of water that had accumulated in the last two days rippled and rose gently in the middle. Then a drip soared upwards

and plopped into the damp patch in the ceiling.

Granny wound up the clock, and started the pendulum. She left the room for a moment and came back with a square of cardboard attached to a loop of elderly string. She sat down in the rocking chair and reached down into the hearth for a stick of half-burned wood.

The clock ticked as she wrote. Another drop left the table and plunged towards the ceiling.

Then Granny Weatherwax hung the sign around her neck and lay back with a smile. The chair rocked for a while, a counterpoint to the dripping of the table and the ticking of the clock, and then slowed.

The sign read:

 stilL

I   ATE'NT DEAD

  ^

The light faded from can to can't.

After a few minutes an owl woke up in a nearby tree and sailed out over the forests.

THE END