The one they called Teal'c had disappeared, probably turned into something small and primeval.
Jack O'Neill and Mustrum Ridcully had tried to kill each other.
The young blonde woman from O'Neill's team had disappeared.
There had been magic and noise, smoke and panic.
It was just another day in the Ankh Morpork City Watch.
The humorous tableau being conducted so adroitly beneath the table had reached an impasse. The frog wasn't coming out and Stibbons had stopped banging his head on the underside of the tables. He had started to use his head for other things, like thinking. He decided to try the patient approach. He waited for the frog to make its next move.
The frog watched him with amphibian disdain.
The sort of attention to inaction that sat behind both of those decisions hardly made good spectator sport.
"Carrot," Vimes said finally. He would really enjoy watching this sort of spectacle all day, but there was work to be done.
Carrot dragged his attention away from the day's entertainment somewhat reluctantly. Until the frog comedy had begun, the whole shooting match had happened way too quickly for any sort of appropriate police action on his part. Carrot was extremely annoyed by the manner of their conduct. Mustrum Ridcully should have known better.
"Yes, sir," Carrot replied. He watched Vimes expectantly.
"Can you slip out into the garden and round those two idiots up before someone gets hurt?"
Carrot reluctantly pushed himself off the wall and started heading for the window. "Certainly." He strode across the room and leapt athletically through the open window. He missed the roses and landed lightly. In the distance he heard a series a cracks and knew which was he needed to head.
Vimes scratched his match against Detritus. It burst into flame. "Sorry sergeant," he apologised. The smell of cigar smoke filled the air with its distinctive brand of aromatic assault. Vimes drew a lung full through his mouth and heaved a huge smoky sigh.
"S'OK sir," said Detritus. "I know how it is."
"Do you Sergeant? I would hope not. It's just; I have one of these, or I have a drink, and you know how it is with drinking."
The troll nodded enthusiastically. "Yessir," he agreed. Vimes watched the heavy air-cooled and heat-sinked helmet suspiciously. It didn't look like it was going to fall off the Troll on his head, but you could never be too sure. "Two's not enough," supplied Detritus, "and one's way too many."
Vimes frowned back at the Troll. "Sometimes you surprise me Sergeant."
"It'd pretty cold in here."
"There is that," Vimes conceded and then turned to Angua. "Got a job for you too Sergeant."
*
Samantha Carter picked up the first weapon that she found lying on the floor and played her thumb across the edge. It was very thin and very strong. Some one could get hurt if they were on the wrong side of that thing.
"Just follow me," a female voice came from the shadows behind her. Samantha Carter spun around (carefully; you never knew what unexploded traps might still be lurking in the not-so-innocent looking walls of that hallway). The knife attacked to the slender timber gantry that she had been examining clinked quietly against the wall. "I've worked out how to avoid the traps," Angua continued. "We'll be able to get out of here a lot more safely that way."
A tallish blonde woman, who might almost have been a mirror image of Carter - if not for the extravagantly long hair, the chain mail and the gleaming armoured breastplate - could just be made out lurking in the shadows beneath the doorway through which Carter had just alighted. "I've been asked to keep an eye on you. I'll just tag along. You don't mind?"
Carter was taken aback. "Should I?"
Angua shrugged. "Just being polite," she dismissed. "It's something new that Carrot suggested that I try." Angua leant against the wall and kicked one of the spring-loaded swords away from her foot. It moved away quickly and then slunk most of the way back to where it had been.
"Carrot?" Carter struggled to catch up. The conversation seemed to be racing away from her at a furious rate.
"The big guy back there with the red hair," The blonde woman answered. "He was in the room back there with Commander Vimes and Detritus."
Carter detected something in the tone, something wistful. "Carrot and you…?"
Angua nodded. "Yeah, although being a werewolf doesn't help."
"Werewolf?" Samantha tasted the word, it was better than trying to swallow the implications.
"Commander Vimes has asked that I be completely open with you."
"Oh," Carter managed. No, Carter decided, she had to think about it. She slowly drew a conclusion, working her way through a state of muddle-headed disbelief, that yes, she could see that being a werewolf would not help anybody in anything related to human interaction. Except possibly in the act of feeding?
"Angua," the woman said and then thrust out her hand.
Just for a moment Carter wondered which of them - Angua or Carrot - was the werewolf and then decided that it would be too impolite to ask. "Samantha," she answered. She took the hand and shook it briefly. "Where are we going?"
"Where ever you want, within reason. Commander Vimes has asked me to give your gonnes back to the other members of your team and then get you the hell out of this place. That's his end goal."
*
Daniel Jackson Stepped from behind the overturned bookcase that had provided him with cover and scratched his head. This whole mission had gone pear shaped in a space ship and he wasn't sure what he should do now. Jack's call of Goa'uld hadn't made any sense to Jackson, but he was at a loss to understand how else to explain what happened to Teal'c. He had just disappeared.
A thump from beneath the table at the centre of the room caught his attention. He bent to have a look at what was going on under there.
*
With the other team members neatly accounted for, Vimes and Detritus leant against the wall and watched the latest in Ponder Stibbon's efforts to catch the frog that had once been the Jaffa, Teal'c.
Patience hadn't worked. Like a wizard had a hope of 'out waiting' something as brain dead and lazy as a frog. Who was he kidding?
Teal'c croaked mockingly.
Ponder tried leaping after it and his head found the table again.
*
O'Neill leapt over the fence and found himself once again in the streets of down town Morpork. Only minutes earlier he had avoided the subtly camouflaged trap that was the ho-ho (like a ha-ha only much deeper. B.S. Johnson again) by skidding violently and grabbing hold of a bush. It had turned out to be a rose bush. His left had had stopped bleeding but it still hurt like hell. He didn't have time to think about that right now.
Somewhere on the street ahead of him, the rotund form of the Arch-chancellor of the Unseen University, Mistrum Ridcully, was racing along the street at the sort of speed that belied his girth. Nothing like being chased by a denizen of the dungeon dimension to lend urgency to your step, and his steps were quite urgent now.
The street all around them was awash with people. O'Neill was not prepared to take the shot with so many bystanders in the firing line.
A crowd had gathered around a speaker who was in turn hectoring the crowd from the moral high ground of being the one who thought to bring a soapbox and then climbed on board. The crowd listened to his editorial on their failings. A few critics hefted pieces of old fruit, ready to pass instant judgement. It was just the sort of street theatre for which Ankh Morpork was famous.
Ridcully burst into the crowd, scattering people and fruit into the air.
Narrative convention demands a few panicked chickens, squawking away from the melee. So there they are, one was red and the other was white. They flapped a few times and managed to get themselves onto the top of the awnings over the entry door leading into a bakery. A cow and a pig lurched out of the same melee, making their characteristic noises and lurching into the street.
Amid the melee, the speaker landed on his backside after a large woman pushed him from his soapbox. She in turned cannoned off the ricocheting form of Mustrum Ridcully and toppled with the kind of unstoppable momentum of an avalanche.
In a superb piece of comic timing the speaker and the well-processed remains of one of the upset chicken's breakfast coordinated their plummet to the ground.
The bab- boonk splat might have been played by Keith Moon or John Bonham from heaven.
Wearing an appropriate frown, the speaker wiped his suddenly dirty face and watched the rotund form of the wizard in his frenzied retreat. Ridcully was now a long way down the street and the distance was increasing very rapidly.
A few of the more alert souls among the scattering crowd worked out what was going on and panicked with more enthusiasm than they had displayed in doing anything else to date. Nothing gets the population of Ankh Morpork more excited than the sight of a wizard running. Inevitably there was something fundamentally nasty and frequently fatal following along behind him and no one was hanging around to find out what manner of tentacled beast it might be.
The street became a busy place. Undecided on a particular direction, people were running every which way.
O'Neill raced around the corner, barely restraining his momentum on the slippery cobblestones and then he slid to a halt. Damn, it was chaotic down there. He lost sight of the Goa'uld amid the bustle of the street and he scanned the chaos carefully in the hope of catching sight of it again. He heaved a few heavy breaths and took stock. Amid the frantic clearing of the street, he thought he saw a flash of purple robe which must have been the Goa'uld once again. O'Neill stepped after him.
He didn't get far.
The cow that had been through this same patch of roadway during it's panicked flight and it had left behind some excess baggage; all the better for it to take flight, reduce it's inertia and such. There it lay upon the cobbled street, steamed still, not yet finished with cooling from body temperature to air temperature.
O'Neill placed one foot in it and found that the corfficient of friction between boot sole and cow manure was somewhat less than that between boot sole and cobbles. He kicked that foot toward the sky like a can-can dancer, although he nothing like the skill, dexterity or natural grace. He landed with a thump to his backside. He managed at the last minute to avoid landing in the cow manure by twisting during his fall and landing painfully on his bony hip rather than the fleshy part of his buttocks. He had to land that way; it hurts more.
When O'Neill hit the ground his trigger-finger flinched and a barrage of lead pellets burst from his gun and raked the wall of the building across the road. In passing it mowed down the tread bare strapping that anchored the sign above the butcher's shop. It swung ponderously from the one remaining strap.
The large woman who had earlier bounced off the speaker was in the process of regaining her feet. No one seemed to be taking any notice of her plight or helping her to her feet so she had to do it herself. It was a laborious job and might have been better performed by a medium sized crane. Instead she had just her flabby arms and her wobbly legs with which to do the job. They weren't the best tools in the shed.
Her efforts weren't helped by the sudden approach of a large timber placard advertising Gordon's prime ribs and beef cuts. The word "beef" caught her eye, (breaking her nose at the same time). She pitched backwards, and as a consequence the speaker once again found himself flattened against the cobblestones.
O'Neill clambered awkwardly to his feet. He left leg was partially numb from the impact between his left buttock and the cobblestones.
After a few hobbled paces along the street he concluded that there was no sign of the vivid purple robe. The Goa'uld was gone.
"Damn," O'Neill spat.
"Hot sausage in a bun?" inquired a man from beside him.
O'Neill turned to see who might have approached him and what it was that he wanted.
The man was standing by a cart filled with some sort of meat like substance that had long since been boiled to death. A stack of cheap buttered rolls waited on one end of the trolley, patently prepared in the hope of being wrapped around one of the sausages. In the vendor's hand he held one of his wares, supported by a soggy white thing that might have once been a member of the bread pile. The vendor waved his wares about hopefully.
If O'Neill had had the opportunity to eat lunch earlier in the day - instead of lying unconscious on a slab in the watch house - the thing being offered to him would have appeared utterly disgusting. As it was the sight of that sausage in that bun bordered on revolting and he was not tempted in the slightest. That was not salivation he was experiencing. It was the horrible moistening of the mouth in preparation for diluting the concentration of stomach acid when it accompanies breakfast on the way back out through the orifice it had used when being fed into the body.
"People actually buy these things?" O'Neill asked. He looked closely at the floating sausages. "And eat them?" You didn't boil sausages, you immolated them. What was this guy thinking.
"Genuine C.M.O.T. Dibbler's sausages," the vendor said as though that was a recommendation. "These are the best that money can buy."
O'Neill had another look. "Which part of C.M.O.T. Dibbler was cut up to make these sausages?"
"No, no," the man said emphatically. "I must have got the patter wrong. I've only had this franchise for a few days and the patter is still a bit rusty."
"Franchise?" asked O'Neill. He was appalled.
"Yeah it's the latest thing in town. Mr Dibbler is offering us all the opportunity to sell these sausages under his banner, so we can operate our own small business, and he looks after all the advertising for us. It works a treat."
O'Neill almost asked how much the franchise cost, but decided not to embarrass the poor man any further, although someone who sold Dibbler's sausages for a living probably couldn't have any shame anyway. Instead O'Neill asked, "Have you seen a great big man in a purple robe and a pointed hat run past here? He has this long beard and…"
"Mr Ridcully, the University Archchancellor? Yeah I saw him a couple of minutes ago. He was hiding under my cart for a bit and then said something about the smell of real food and then ran that way. You only just missed him, and…Oh… There he is now! If you hurry you might catch him before he gets around that, oh too late."
Jack O'Neill was already running long before the sausage salesman finished his speech.
From his vantage-point behind the cornerstone of the Ankh Morpork opera house. Ridcully caught sight of the running figure in military fatigues and leapt back to the flight. He had his breath back and could make pretty good time.
He hustled around a corner and avoided an on-rushing cart by the expedient of turning the horse into a frog. If you're on a good thing stick to it.
The owner of the cart was a man with the unfortunately coincident name of Oliver Cartwright. After several unremarkable years of his life spent growing cabbages on the Sto Plains, the unfortunate Oliver Cartwright chose this particular day to enliven his existence with a trip to the Ankh Morpork markets. He was busy looking for a place to park his cart and set up his stall when his horse just disappeared.
The cart rolled to a clattering halt after the loss of the horse and then teetered nose first toward the road. It's momentum caused the nose of the cart to dig into the cobbles and it toppled onto its side.
Cartwright fell out of the seat and landed with a thud on his head. This was just the first of his trials. He rolled on the ground and then climbed to his feet drunkenly. He waited for his head to clear before he could work out what had gone wrong.
O'Neill rounded the corner and saw Ridcully lining up the shot with his staff. O'Neill let out a panicked yelp, ground to a sudden comical halt, ran on the spot and cart-wheeled his arms for a moment just like the best of cartoon characters before he scrambled behind the cover of the wall. He made it just in time to avoid the bolt that Ridcully let fly.
The bolt was enough to subdue a medium sized dungeon dimension denizen. There was none of those available anywhere in the place to stop it. The bolt hit the upturned cart amidships. Octarine fire obliterated everyone's vision for a few moments. The cart exploded in a shower of hay, flames, timber splinters and nails. For some reason there was no sign of cabbages in the wreckage.
O'Neill hid in the doorway of a business that advertised 'Stronginthearm swords clearance sale - fifty percent off' and waited for the shower of shredded cart to finish raining onto the roadway.
Comic narrative requires that a flaming wheel bounces on the pavement and then rolls past our baffled hero with flame licking from its periphery. And there it goes now. O'Neill watched it pass wearing a befuddled expression on his face. The cart's wheel rolled drunkenly along the road, past O'Neill's hiding place and then toppled over; orbiting on its side for several seconds while it's angular momentum slowly dissipated in a crescendo of noise.
"Hey that was my cart," Oliver Cartwright cried out. He was so angry he did something completely out of character. He strode confidence forth to confront Ridcully.
"Here my man," Ridcully said. The man had the cheek to step between him and O'Neill, just when Ridcully was lining up for another bolt. He forestalled the spell with a visible effort.
Cartwright's horse chose that moment to become a horse again, having done with being a frog. Unfortunately it was in mid leap. It landed on Cartwright with a thud.
*
"AH, THERE HE IS, RIGHT ON TIME," Death said with a satisfied air. He stepped past Ridcully and stood over the body of Oliver Cartwright. He cleared his throat - maybe, oh well… he made a noise like he was clearing his throat, if he had one. "OLIVER CARTWRIGHT THIS IS YOUR LIFE." Death waved the now silent copy of the man's life story before him.
The shade of Oliver Cartwright was looking down at the crumpled hoof impressed body on the ground.
"That's me isn't it," he said in a small distracted voice. He turned to face death. "I'm dead?"
"OLIVER CARTWRIGHT THIS IS YOUR LIFE." Death waved the book at him again.
"How can this be my life?" Cartwright asked in a deeply befuddled manner. "I would have thought this was my death."
"OLIVER CARTWRIGHT THIS USED TO BE YOUR LIFE." Death waved the book at him again.
Cartwright looked at the book and the befuddled expression became a bemused expression on his simple face. "Is this for me?" he said.
"YES!" Death pounced. This wasn't gong well.
"Wow," Cartwright opened a page and looked at the first entry. He was still reading from the book when he faded from view. If any witnesses to his passing were uncharitable, they might say he expression was fading from wonderstruck to gobsmacked just before he disappeared from sight. That might have been for the realisation that his father was not the man he called dad.
"STILL NOT QUITE RIGHT," Death told his skeletal rodent companion. "THERE'S STILL SOMETHING MISSING."
"SQUEEK," said the death of rats.
"THAT'S EASY FOR YOU TO SAY." Death said and leapt onto Binky the almost magic horse. He rode slowly along the road, which is not to say that he rode along the pavement, it was just that he rode along the idea of the gap between buildings where its essential road-ness resided. Binky's hooves missed the roadway by a good ten centimetres.
Death stopped not far from where O'Neill was waiting in the doorway for the smoke and debris to clear. Death turned his cowl encased skull toward O'Neill's hiding place. The sapphire gleam of his eyes peered into the gloom while he carefully examined the leader of SG-1 for a long time. If he could have blinked Death would have done so. He looked deeply into the shadow again and then shook his head once more. Death rode on. It was not often that Death dealt with repeat business and those rare occasions tend to stick in your mind even when you're an anthropomorphic personification.
For a moment there O'Neill had the feeling that someone had walked over his grave, but it was gone almost before he became aware of it. He shook himself to clear his head of a sudden and short-lived dread. Back to his right state of mind, O'Neill leapt from the shelter of the doorway and levelled his gun in the direction of the last place where he had seen Ridcully. There was no sign of the Goa'uld amid the wreckage that filled most of the roadway.
"Damn," O'Neill spat into the street. He had a clear line of sight, with no bystanders - other than the guy crumpled on the roadway - and there were no targets.
O'Neill pulled another clip from his belt and loaded it into the magazine of his gun. He was just about to set off in pursuit when he found him self prevented from running along the roadway again by a massive hand gripping his upper arm.
"Mr Vimes would like you to come back and join the fun," Carrot said. "Those were his very words."
"Yeah. OK," said O'Neill. "I've lost him any way."
"He won't have gone far sir. The wizards always seem to finish up back at the University. It's the only place they can get well enough fed. I'm sure that if you wanted to speak with Mr Ridcully at a later date I could arrange it for you."
O'Neill blinked at Carrot for a moment. University, he thought, of course, where else would the Goa'uld congregate.
*
Teal'c was still wearing the guise of a frog.
The horse, that other victim of Ridcully's spell, had only remained transformed into a frog for a very short time. It had much more body weight to hide in that magical realm than did Teal'c, so thaumalogically speaking the spell couldn't last anywhere near as long.
Teal'c was going to take several hours to revert back to sort of human form again. In the mean time there was the life of a fancy-free amphibian to experience. Now all he needed was a gullible princess. Where was Samantha Carter when you needed her?
Ponder Stibbons had given up on being patient and he had given up being crafty. He decided to revert to frantic grabbing. He made one last lurch after the frog. He hit his head on the leg of another of the tables. Again. Nothing had changed, he realised. He had just experienced a case of wishful thinking.
Teal'c landed on top of a pile of rock and croaked judgementally at the supine form of Stibbons.
"I got him," said the pile of rocks.
"Thank god for that," muttered Stibbons. He crawled from beneath the table, needing three hands to rub the damage to his head and both shoulders.
"I tink we need to take you to see Igor," said Detritus to Teal'c. "See if he can put you back right."
"It'll wear off," Ponder said despondently.
"I might be a troll, but I'm not fick enuff to take da word of someone who crawls under da table to hunt a frog. Dat's not da way ta get cre-dib-ili-ty in dis town."
This time Daniel Jackson was sure the voice came from the pile of rocks in the corner. It was just that he didn't care any more.
He wondered where the rest f SG-1 had gone and what they were up to. He probably should find out.
Vimes was scratching his head, obviously none to wiser as to the Patrician's whereabouts. He looked once at Jackson, but there was no answers coming from that quarter.