Nothing to it, really! 15 part one

Moving the story on to the conclusion with mayhem, fighting, and (no spoilers). People will get hurt. Including the good guys. No getting around this. Ground rules: condense to

Drink Rooibuis tea.

And here we are, trying to wrap up this tale. To get to the end where the bad guys get theirs (did you think they wouldn't?) and nicer things happen. This is going to be a long one. Lots will happen and one new OC is introduced.

Aaargh! After getting the necessary prompt which fired me into seeing how it all fits together (thank you to reader KsandraMallan) I really got stuck into finishing this. Then I did a word count. 14,000 words and climbing. Five thousand is about right for a chapter. Seven thousand long, but not excessively so. Ten thousand the upper limit of acceptable – reader endurance, and all that. So I decided to chop it into sections. This is the final battle, part one. Part two will follow quickly. Enjoy!

From the Ankh-Morpork Times:

CITY IN FEAR AS TERRORISTS STILL NOT CAUGHT AFTER LATEST OUTRAGE

Assassins raise bounty on their heads

We understand from insiders at the Guild of Assassins that Lord Downey has significantly raised the tax-free bounty payable to Guild members who successfully detain or otherwise deal with four nasmed suspects, thought responsible for the outrage at the Tegg's Nose sports ground, in w2hich a Guild schoolgirl was foully slain.

His Lordship is understood to have remarked that "this is on one level a cosmetic gesture, as these men will be no easier to detain for fifteen thousand dollars a head than they were at ten. However, it sends out a clear signal that we are enormously displeased at the attack on our students, on our premises, and the level of our displeasure has been magnified by 50%."

Lord Downey has also made it clear that any Guild member taking this contract should be prepared, in the spirit of noblesse oblige, to pay generously for valid information leading to the successful detention or if necessary inhumation of the suspected terrorists. Members of the public with information should discreetly leave a message, with contact details, at the Guild gates on Filigree Street. They will be contacted.

Other News:

The Guild of Assassins has still not yet confirmed that one of its students was slain in the Tegg's Nose outrage. Its press release flatly stated that the ;parents of a student affected in the assault needed, for decency's sake, to be informed first. As they dwell in a remote part of Howondaland this would necessarily take up to five days even using the fastest generally available transport. Once assured the parents have been given the sad news, the Guild will be happy to comment further.

Our eye at the transport terminal for the Klatchian Carpetways Service has confirmed that Miss Heidi van Kruger, a graduate Assassin and teacher at the Guild School, was seen to board the scheduled long-haul flight to Caarp Town, Rimwards Howondaland (calling at Al-Khali, Al-Gebra, Sprained Ankle(1), New Scrote(2), Pratoria and Caarp Town). It is therefore entirely probable that Miss van Kruger has the sorry task of breaking the news concerning the murdered pupil, believed to be Miss Mariella Smith-Rhodes (130) of Piemberg, Rimwards Howondaland. A source at the air terminal disclosed that Miss van Kruger's ticket is valid for Pratoria, Rimwards Howondaland, a journey which indeed takes the hardy traveller slightly less than three days.

City Watch Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh, has asked us to make it clear that whatever the bloody Assassins are prepared to pay in information fees, he will at least match, provided the information is sound and there are "no bloody time-wasters".

From the letters page:

Only print this one if it's a slow day for letters. WdW.

Dear Sir,

It's an utter disgrace that these Howondalandians are being allowed to roam around our City setting off bombs, and murdering people willy-nilly, and Gods-know-what. What are the Watch doing, paid for out of our taxes and everything, that's what I'd like to know! Why, there was even one of them in the butcher's shop on Cheap Street where I was buying my liver for tea, and some scraps for the cat. Walks in, br zenly queues up with everybody as if he was a normal citizen, politely asks for two pounds of cooking steak, then says thank you, well it sounded like "thenk you", you know the way these people talk, they're sneaky, you can't even tell they're Howondalandian because they're white and they look like normal people, until they open their mouths! Then pays up with real money, can you believe the brass nerve, takes his change, and walks out of the shop again! You can imagine a man like that setting off bombs and shooting at little girls (showing their actual knees to all and sundry on the running track, brazen hussies). Should be stopped, but the Watch have STILL done nothing about the Dwarfs what peep in on me undressing for bed every night, what can you expect!

Yours sincerely,

Marietta Cosmopolite (Mrs),

3 Quirm Street,

Morpork.

"So what's it like to be a knee-revealing brazen hussy?" Rupert Mericet asked. He was one of a circle of Guild School pupils sitting in the back lawn at 18 Spa Lane. Mariella had been transferred here in conditions of great security late at night. She was relieved to be at her sister's. She knew she was as safe here as anywhere, and that there was a permanent detachment of graduate Assassins two doors down the street at Doctor Bellamy's, poised to intervene if any attack was made.

She smiled.

"Emused, I think." she said. She had heard about Mrs Cosmopolite. It was hard to take offence. "But in limbo, es I em still officially dead."

"Until next week." Tim Bellamy said, sympathetically. "Being dead gets you off lessons, I bet."

"I wish." Mariella said. Johanna's conditional sympathy for her younger sister had expired at this point. A stack of school books had been left on the table next to her together with lesson plans, assignments, and a note saying there was no reason for her not to keep up with her studies, as she could still read and write. And M. LeBalouard had called by for a social drink. He'd sympathised with the invalid but had still sat down with her for an intensive three-quarters-of-an-hour of the Simple Past Tense in Quirmian, to compensate for her having missed his class that day. Her head was still reeling from the preterite case of the verb être, which her teacher stressed was hardly ever used in speech but was important for comprehending the written language. Or something. Mariella wished Quirmian could organise itself on sensible lines, like a real language such as Vondalaans, Überwaldean, or, stretching a point, Morporkian.

"Why do they think I'm a hundred end thirty years old?" she asked, having read that day's Times. "Thet's a bit old to be et school?"

Rupert laughed, but not in a supercilious or condescending way.

"Bitched type, they call it. A compositor in a hurry reaches for the wrong letters. And the zero is right next to the right-brackets sign in the boxes. He didn't mean to insert the zero after the thirteen, but that's what you get." he explained. (3) "The paper's always peppered with little glitches like that. I can count at least five on this one page alone." Rupert wanted to write professionally after graduating. He had no real desire to inhume anybody, but given the sort of things he wrote about people, he reasoned that Assassin training would be useful for necessary self-defence against literary criticism. The Times had offered him a placement, sensing a useful, if potentially inflammatory, talent. Controversy, as Rupert and William de Worde both knew, sells papers. (4)

Mariella giggled. She drained the glass of sweetened soda. Almost straight away, Eve the maid stepped forward to refill it. She appreciated this. Her sister's household staff had fussed and fawned over her and nothing was too much trouble. And after the torture of the school san, she was being offered proper food again. Dorothea the cook was making sure of that.

"Don't get too full to run." Rupert advised her, kindly. "Although if the people who fix the odds see you doing nothing and stuffing your face, it means the odds on you winning get higher. You do know how much money people make off you and Sissi when you race?"

He helpfully named a few names, of amounts staked and won. Rupert had lots of contacts. He got to know things.

"Ag! Thet much?" she said, genuinely surprised.

"I'm afraid so." Rupert said, nodding soberly. "Shame you and Sissi are in a strictly amateur sport. If they paid you both for drawing a crowd out, you'd be on thousands."

She filed this away for consideration later.

"Shame we sixth formers are strictly prohibited from betting." he added, drily. "Gambling breaks school rules. Ah well, that's life."

She tried not to let her eyes narrow suspiciously. Rupert knew lots of people. Often the sorts of people the Guild wished its students didn't know. She wondered about asking him to do her a favour, privately, later. Although she also had Cousin Julian in mind. She felt his sense of humour would make him sympathetic to a request for help.

But for now it was a pleasant enough evening, not greatly warm, but not so cold they'd have to return indoors. A good time to sit out with friends, Rupert, Tim, Peggy from up the street, and Rivka. And two big happy dogs that were pleased to be among people they liked.

Mariella wondered, uneasily, about what was going to happen next, when the attacking gang struck again. It was like a cloud in the sky.

Johanna Smith-Rhodes looked out from the kitchen window, choosing not to intervene and to let her sister and her friends have privacy. She felt slightly piqued that Kaffee and Crème had barely acknowledged her, in their doggy delight that Mariella was here. The two dogs had surged out onto the lawn to be with the student group.

Behind her, Dorothea carried on assembling what would be the evening dinner, pleased that her cooking talents were going to be appreciated that night by a wider group of people.

Something special, for Young Madam, the cook had said. And for the other young ones. Johanna shook her head. She was Madam here, wasn't she? The Baas-Lady? So why did she feel that she had to ask her cook's permission to enter her own kitchen? Uneasily, she sensed this was something an employer of domestic staff had to get to grips with. She wondered if Sybil Ramkin also felt diffident if she ever had to enter the kitchen at Ramkin Manor, some tacit acknowledgement that down-stairs was the servants' world, even in her own house. Mr Vimes had once described his mounting embarrassment at walking into the servants' quarters and asking to be dealt into a game of cards, after all. His own sense of being an intruder in somebody else's space.

She excused herself and moved, restlessly, into the dining room. The door to the main living room was ajar. She heard movement. Moving as soundlessly as she could, she went to the door. And saw Claude the butler dummying moves with the Zulu assegai that normally lived over the fireplace. Good moves. Experienced moves.

"Claude." she said, softly. "I think you and I need a little chet, don't we?"

Austerity Codscallop was an apothecary. "Was" being the operative word, as he'd been struck off the professional register for various misdemeanours. Cast out of the Guild of Apothecaries and Pharmacists for his more inventive forms of prescribing - he prided himself on his ability to match the correct pharmaceutical to the person distinctly in need of it, in return for cash – he now made a tenuous non-Guild living ministering to the needs of those who frequented pubs like the Troll's Head, medicating their various needs, no questions asked, in return for cash.

So when the mysterious Howondalandian showed up, claiming he'd been referred to Codscallop as one who could provide certain discreet favours, the backstreet apothecary had sized him up, briefly wondering if this was one of the four who the Watch and the Assassins were chasing. But a large quantity of dollars had bought both the drugs the man sought, and Codscallop's silence afterwards.

However, Codscallop, a man who needed cash to ward off rainy days, had also heard both the Watch and the Guild paid for information. For a day or so, he weighed up the consequences of having been seen to grass against the idea of at least a few hundred dollars more. By Saturday morning, he would have made his mind up. He wondered which agency to discreetly approach first. With luck, he could extract payment from both. And the consequences of being discovered to have aided and abetted this particular gang, given what they'd done, up to and including an attempt to kill Vetinari… he shuddered.

Johanna took a deep breath.

"So Uncle Pieter chose to send you to me…"

Claude nodded.

"Indeed, madam. He felt that given the life you live, you required a special sort of domestic servant. One who would be prepared, and trained, to provide loyal service in every way you could require. When Lady Friejda insisted on sending you a staff of servants, he saw the opportunity to insert me among their number. Mr van der Graaf knew of my service history with the Army and of my rank as Sergeant. He also knew I am from Smith-Rhodesia, and I took a vow of loyalty to the Smith-Rhodes family. As my father and grandfather did before me."

Claude regarded her without fear or servility.

"You would be within your rights to dismiss me, or to send me back to the Embassy, madam. Mr van der Graaf asked me not to disclose this to you, as he feared what he termed "a streak of bloody-minded independence" would assert itself, and you would display resentment at what you would consider to be interference and meddling."

Johanna shook her head, and slowly smiled.

"Please cerry on with your duties, Claude." she said. "All your duties. End thenk you."

Shallow Valley is a quiet suburban cul-de-sac leading off the street of Shallow End in upmarket Ankh. The houses here are above the average, as any estate agent will point out, and are desirable detached properties in substantial gardens suitable for professional people with families who earn well over the average wage. In a quiet cul-de-sac with no through traffic and with a lot of space separating the dwellers from their neighbours, they are, in fact, havens of peace and security in a busy city where a family might live in undisturbed peace.

On this Saturday morning, the Jennerson family living at Number Five Shallow Valley have discovered there is a downside to living in private seclusion, on a street where the neighbours respect your right to privacy and tend only to call round by appointment.

Specifically, when four large, brutal-looking and frankly bad-smelling men barge in through the door, round up the family and lock you up in the cellar with hands and feet tied, you know nobody will have seen a thing, and therefore it wouldn't even dawn on them to call the Watch. You are very much on your own.

It occurred to a terrified and somewhat battered George Jennerson that these must be the four men from Howondaland. The desperate, wanted, men who'd been responsible for a string of atrocities across the City. The Great Train Robbery. The murder of a Thief. The terror attack at an Embassy. The murder of that Wizard. The bombs. The attack on Vetinari. The slaughter of that poor schoolgirl…

"You people better behave!" the leader said in a grating voice. "Then we might let you heve water. Perheps food. End leave you elive, when we go."

One of his associates passed an eye over Mrs Jennerson and their older daughter.

"Hey, bro. Shame we hed to kill thet girl et the School. The runner." he said. "If we'd hed time you could hev hed a little fun with her first. I know you like them younger. She hed thet pale redhead look you like."

He watched as Mr and Mrs Jennerson went pale. Their daughter had auburn-red hair.

"Ja." Said de Koenig. He was the one who'd visited the apothecary with a specific request. "Shame we hev a job to do. But there might be time for a bit of rest end recreation, later."

"Only if I say so!" the leader grated. The others pretended to look disappointed. The leader looked down and said to the Jennersons:

"Up to you people. This cen be easy, or it cen be hard. Do es you ere told end your daughter is safe. But if not…"

Then, satisfied his threat had been received and the hostages had been terrified into docility, their captors went upstairs. Upstairs, they laughed at how the threat to the daughter had terrified the parents into submission. Typical soft city people. De Koenig then went to perform his part in preparing for the attack.

Five Shallow Valley backed directly onto Eighteen Spa Lane. Only a dividing hedge, backed by some of Davinia Bellamy's special border plants, separated them from their desired target. DuPlessis had hit on this method of attack as being the best approach route to Johanna Smith-Rhodes. Sheltered, stealthy and from an unexpected angle the damned Assassins did not appear to be covering.

In the Undercity, a mixed group of Dark Clerks, Assassins and City Watchmen covered all approaches to the sub-cellar Vetinari's spy rats had identified as a possible location. The special rats were recruited from the Clan that had developed sentience as a result of eating magical waste on the Unreal Estate.(5) They had co-ordinated keekee as advance agents who had identified several locations housing suspect people. Even so, the special rats were relatively few and could not be everywhere at once. Relying on the sense of smell and general intuition of the keekee, rats who could sense a negatively inclined human but nothing more specific, several raids had gone in, finding only groups of beggars who'd really fallen down on their luck, or else unlicenced thieves, desperate to evade attention. All of whom had still needed to be hauled off and formally processed. This had necessarily taken time, and rotating relief squads had taken over the continual process of raiding, checking, arresting and eliminating. Word also seemed to have gone out among Undercity denizens that Vetinari was really pissed off by something and had authorised a clear-out. People were running and they were finding only empty spaces, with clear signs of recent rough sleeping.

Approaching their eighth big raid in a thirty-six hour search, Watch hopes were fading for getting the men they wanted. But they still had to remember that every raid meant they might be in a desperate fight with armed and desperate men with nothing to live for…

The lead Assassin conferred with the Watch sergeant. All approach routes were covered. There was no escape route. A co-ordinated party in the street above was watching the houses above the sub-cellar, and the drains and manhole covers that offered a more desperate escape to the surface world.

Then they went in, the Dwarf officers attacking the old crumbling wall with mattocks, the Assassins poised to fire crossbows through the hole.

But again they were too late. Sleeping rolls and rough mattresses showed that four men had slept here. Old copies of the Times, open to accounts of the Howondalandian gang's raids and outrages. An imperfectly concealed locked box. A copy of an Assassins' Guild professional register of licenced practitioners, with several names ringed.

Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom read names such as Jocasta Wiggs, Heidi van Kruger, Emmanuelle les Deux-Epées, Alice Band and Johanna Smith-Rhodes. All names the owner of the directory had thought worthwhile to circle in red.

"They were here." she said. "And we missed them."

Then she thought. They've left this stuff behind. Including the locked box full of gold and jewellery from the Great Train Robbery. They must be planning to return. Which means….

"Get a message to Mr Vimes, quickly!" she said. "They're out there somewhere. They're going to hit somebody!"

Heidi van Kruger relaxed under the familiar and welcome heat of a Howondalandian sun. She was stuck here, at least until Buggy Swires sobered up. He was still in no fit state to crawstep them back to Ankh-Morpork. Johanna's father had produced a bottle of potent spirits and had nodded to Buggy, saying he was in no mood to drink alone. An hour or two later, Irena had done the irritated face-palm thing, realising she was pretty much grounded.

The two had made the best of things, accepting Agnetha Smith-Rhodes' offer of a room for the night. By the look of things, Johanna's mother would have words to say to Johanna's father when he sobered up. Heidi had taken it all in, reflecting that she could now see more clearly what had gone into her old teacher's genetic make-up. Meeting her parents explained a lot about Johanna. It also implied a lot about the sort of woman Mariella would grow up to become. As one of her teachers, Heidi reflected that it was good to know these things about a pupil's family background. And the other girl, the one she'd asked Irena to take on a Pegasus ride, who Heidi had discovered was also called Johanna Smith-Rhodes. But this one, only ten years old. Apparently, a niece. Heidi had a feeling. If she'd thought herself as being psychic, she might have called it a premonition. That she'd soon be seeing more of this girl.

She shrugged, and set about helping with the routine of feeding and watering livestock. Irena had gone to check on the welfare of her Pegasus, indulgently fending off excited children who were clamouring to see the amazing flying horse. She said she might take as many as she could manage up for a ride, if your parents permit. To occupy the time until my co-pilot and navigator is…. well… again.

She pitched in on feeding the oxen, alongside several black-skinned farmhands and a pleasant red-haired guy in his middle twenties, who moved in a suspiciously familiar manner and was easy to get along with.

"Shame about baby sister." he said, laconically. "If I know big sister, she's going to be furious. Somebody's guava is going to get kicked."

Heidi nodded, soberly.

"She'll live, though. In a way, it's good for somebody in this trade to pick up a scar or two early on. To remind them how dangerous it can be."

"Ah-huh. I hear big sister nearly had an arm ripped off by a leopard. She showed me her scars. But she killed the leopard."

He didn't sound surprised. They worked on together. Heidi spoke about leaving home early and being sent to the faraway Assassins' School. Where Big Sister had been one of her teachers and was now a colleague.

"Bet nobody misbehaves in her classes." Danie Smith-Rhodes reflected, a younger brother with experience of his sister.

"Never more than once." Heidi agreed. Then she asked, out of curiosity, "Danie, have you never wanted to see the big world outside Howondaland? You know, to travel a bit?"

Johanna's brother blinked in honest bafflement.

"Why should I? National Service was enough. Everything I need is here. No need to travel further than Piemburg."

Heidi shook her head and got back to work, having decided that a good-looking Boor boy, as Danie definitely was, if you were to ask her, wasn't really enough. Nice guy, though. She might perhaps permit herself a flirtation. You know, practice.

Vimes put the report from Cheery alongside the account he'd received from Julian Smith-Rhodes. He regarded that as information from a very reliable source.

He summoned Carrot and asked him to back up the party in the Undercity with more Dwarf officers.

"It's their home turf, and they can hunt a few rats." he said. "If it comes to a fight down there, I want dwarfs."

"Already done, sir." Carrot replied, smoothly. "I sent six Dwarf officers down there to relieve the human officers. Who've been in there for twelve hours. Cheery's posting her Dwarfs on every known access route to that cellar. To ambush them when they try to make it back."

Vimes nodded.

"So long as they're careful about bagging any actual rats." he said. "Vetinari was explicit about that. We don't want them eating his pets."

"Operatives, sir." Carrot corrected him. Vimes grunted.

"And get a presence as close to Spa Lane as we can manage, without potentially scaring anything off." Vimes directed. "If they're going for Johanna, I want her to have support nearby."

"I can have CSP watching the street side, sir. There's a disused shop in Hope Square, premises currently vacant, that we can use as a temporary Watch House. If CSP raise the alarm, we can be round the corner on Spa Lane inside two or three minutes."

"These people are dangerous, Carrot. They've already killed one Watchman and injured another. Take a couple of trolls and at least one golem."

"Will do, sir. Any news on Officer Politek?"

"Still detained in Howondaland, apparently. We're despatching a follow-up mission to check she got to her destination. She was apparently last seen receiving her passenger over the Circle Sea. They did leave her return flight to her own discretion, though. Sensitive mission, apparently."

DeKoenig quickly threw the tainted meat over the dividing hedge, to land on Johanna's back lawn. In the grass, it would be invisible to humans until they were right on top of it. But very visible to dogs.

Taking out those two Ridgeback dogs the woman kept was a part of the strategy. Nobody wanted an angry Ridgeback going for his throat in defence of its mistress. De Koenig had therefore been sent out, to go first to that bent apothecary and get a fast-acting poison, something that worked on dogs, and then to a butcher's shop to buy a couple of pounds of good meat to inject it into. He had come back, shaking his head and remarking about the crazy little woman in the shop who had just stood there and glowered at him. The shopkeeper had said, in a low whisper, "Pay no attention, sir. That's the way of things with Marietta Cosmopilite. She's harmless."

He had heard about her in the Troll's Head. They had gathered that she was a mad old woman, but one who people looked after as if she were some sort of fetish – what was the word here? Talisman. But some of the bros in the Troll's Head had apparently paid some Dwarfs a few shillings to go and look through her bedroom window and leer. You know, their idea of a joke.

And De Koenig had gone against duPlessis in this matter. If he had a redeeming feature, he was fond of dogs. He'd kept ridgebacks, in fact. He appreciated watching the way they had with the blecks. They'd bought a pair to the camp at first, to help keep the goblins in line. Man, the fun the ridgies had had with their goblin chew-toys!

Then they'd caught some jungle sickness and died. Jungles were not a place for veldt-dogs. De Koenig had been broken up. He'd have cried, if that had not been a moffie sort of thing to do.

No. He couldn't kill a pair of ridgies. Not even moffie ridgies, that had incredibly been taught to treat blecks as if they were people.

He'd asked for a dose of a strong sedative that would send a large powerful dog to sleep for forty-eight hours. The apothecary had complied. And now, injected into the meat, it had been flung where the dogs would find it irresistible.

Task completed, he returned to the house. More men were arriving, the hired muscle, the meat-shields, in groups of ones and twos. By nightfall they'd have enough men for the attack. They passed the time eating their unwilling hosts' food, and cleaning and checking weapons.

Nobody from the attacking gang was watching the street side of Spa Lane. That would prove to be their downfall. They'd assumed a heavily pregnant woman on a Saturday afternoon would be confined to her house with no reason to go anywhere and the child not officially due, they'd discovered, for another few weeks. Thus, they missed seeing a cab leave the house, followed shortly after by the arrival of Julian Smith-Rhodes and then, three quarters of an hour later, Miss Ruth N'Kweze, arriving discreetly. They'd been invited to Saturday night dinner with the promise of an overnight stay. The Assassin detail at 18 Spa Lane noted that one other very capable Assassin had arrived at the house, and put it in their log. They paid scant attention to Rivka bin-Divorah arriving a little later. A School student visiting her teacher's home address wasn't unusual, and anyway, Doctor Smith-Rhodes employed trusted students to walk her dogs.

From a position up on the Tump, Detective-Constable (Special) Grace Speaker, ostensibly a private citizen walking a dog, noted the same things for her report. Walking dogs was part of her life. It was not unusual for a pet-shop owner to leave the shop in the care of assistants and take dogs for a walk. A Special Constable in the Watch, she didn't mind combining two jobs. It made life more efficient. In her pocket was a signal rocket she'd been instructed to set off to alert the detail in Hope Square if any emergency arose. A gargoyle on the roof of the temporary Watch House was alert for this.

Irena was startled to witness Johanna's mother and sister marching purposely across the farm complex, each carrying a large crossbow. Heidi shrugged. It was nothing new to her.

"Would you care to join us?" Mrs Smith-Rhodes asked, in Vondalaans. Heidi cheerfully said she'd be delighted, then translated for Irena.

There was a crossbow range, of sorts, on the edges of the farm. Roughly human-size targets were ranged at about seventy yards. Irena noted they had been painted in the likeness of charging native warriors with spears and oval shields. A couple of the farm labourers, allocated a light duty, stood by with crossbows and a crate of bolts. Bows were offered to Heidi and Irena.

A small child tugged at the skirts of Johanna's sister. She ruffled the boy's hair lovingly and said "Not now, dear. Mummy and Granny are busy. Go and play."

Irena then stood back, open-mouthed, as Johanna's non-Assassin sister placed several crossbow bolts into a very tight grouping in the target's chest. Her mother did equally well, continually passing the used weapons back to a servant who passed her a loaded crossbow and reloaded the spent weapon. It was a well-practiced drill.

Johanna's sister Agnetha smiled happily. She was blonder than the rest, the red of her hair more muted. She looked like a mumsier version of Johanna, more rounded and well-padded. Heidi wondered if this was how Johanna would end up looking after more children.

"We come here to prectice." she explained, in between shots. "Mother says it's good to let off steam when you are engry. Efter hearing ebout Mariella, we are engry."

"End if they etteck from over the river." the older Agnetha added. "Everybody fights."

Heidi nodded, understanding. Irena shrugged, and decided practicing a Watch skill would do no harm. She appreciated the luxury of having somebody to reload for her. You could put up a really fast and deadly arrow storm this way. Like we did at the Tobacco Farm. Those native soldiers attack in a closely packed body. No need to aim. You pointed and fired and reloaded as fast as you could.

And then the new Pegasus appeared.

"For us, I think." Heidi remarked. All work stopped as the flying horse descended. It was one of the new pilots with the Service, on one of the Lancre-born mounts. Irena recognised the pilot as Nottie, a trainee witch from Lancre who piloted for the Service when she could, usually during school holidays. She'd petitioned her parents for ponies. Her father had been taken aback when a Pegasus had been born, and bonded to her as the first human it saw who brought it food and water. Her mother had smiled indulgently and persuaded him to let her fly. After all, her mother had said, all we had were broomsticks.

"Hi, Irena. When you were late getting back, they asked me to come out and check. Big Tam up in the mane reckoned he could follow the trail of another Feegle who'd done the crawstep. He led me here."

A small blue shape in the mane nodded acknowledgement of the others. He was a Lancre Feegle who'd been given leave by his Kelda to work for the Pegasus witches and see a bit of the world.

Irena crisply explained why their flight back had been delayed. Nottie nodded understanding.

"Big Tam?"

There was a blue blur as the Feegle raced to her side.

"Aye, mistress?"

"What can we do about this, do you think?"

"Aye, weel. This is a farm, I ken?"

Agnetha nodded a "yes". She seemed amused. Her mother scowled.

"I epologise. Your colleague decided to get incapably drunk with my husband. He's in the house. Sleeping it off. I've said to Andreas thet I'm not emused."

"Ye have a horse-trough, mistress? Guid. By your leave." The blue blur raced off. Nottie grinned.

"How's the family?" Irena asked, to make conversation. Princess Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre, heiress to the throne, Nottie to her friends, grinned.

"As always. My snotty little brother constantly complains that as eldest son, he should inherit. Doesn't like the way Mum and Dad decreed the succession should go to the oldest child, which is me. He complains in other Kingdoms, older sisters don't count and the Kingship goes to the oldest son, so why should it be him who suffers? But you just can't tell my parents. Personally I want to stand down, and focus on just being a witch. He can have the bloody kingdom if that's what he wants. I'll just stand behind him and shout down his ear if he gets it wrong, the way Mistress Weatherwax and Mrs Ogg do to Dad. But they say it's striking a blow for women everywhere, if the old outmoded practice of only the oldest Prince becomes King is overturned. You know what they're like. Impractical. Good intentions, but utter disasters in practice. And Mum's into this feminism thing. I tell you, it doesn't work in Lancre!"

They heard muffled Feegle swearing and a dragging noise in the earth.

Big Tam, the Lancre Feegle, was dragging a recumbent Buggy Swires by the ankles. Buggy was protesting and weakly struggling.

"Horse-trough's over there."Agnetha Smith-Rhodes said, jerking a thumb.

"I thank ye, mistress." Big Tam said. After a while there was a loud splash and lots more Feegle swearing. The younger Agnetha Smith-Rhodes-Maaijande put her hands over her small son's ears. But something told Irena, possibly a witch-sense, that a lot of children around this farming community would suddenly become tri-lingual in terms of Feegle cursing. Some things were inevitable. She'd already heard the word "Crivvens!" in the middle of a stream of childish Vondalaans.

Big Tam returned to his witch.

"He'll be sober after his dip." he said. "Nothing again' a wee dram, but yon fella's had an awfy big dram. Not guid for the crawstepping, aye."

"A pity you can't do thet for Andreas." his wife said. Her attitude said that it would do him good.

Big Tam grinned.

"It would take more than one Feegle for yon Barbarossa, aye." he said. "Him sitting there and groaning and swearing to lay off the stuff, now he's started seeing wee blue men."

He looked around him, speculatively.

"This earth has guid bones. Ah kin feel them in mah feet. Ah sense it in mah spog."

He stamped on the ground. The Smith-Rhodes women smiled at the compliment.

"We call it the Gods' Own Country, Mr Big Tem." said the older Agnetha.

"Aye, weel. Mah people have a Kelda. She has a daughter, looking to leave and start a clan of her own. I'm thinking. If there are no other Feegle here, this would be a guid land. You know. Emm-ee-grate."

Irena and Nottie shared a grin. Heidi tried not to look appalled at the implications. Feegle. In Rimwards Howondaland. She considered warning Mr van der Graaf at the Embassy. Do not issue any entry visas. Then she reflected the Feegle would never ask for them, or just ignore officialdom anyway. And lots of people had emigrated here. It worked out, more or less. She thought again. What would happen if a Zulu impi ever tried picking a fight with them? And then her appalled expression turned into a wide happy grin.

Agnetha Smith-Rhodes said, briskly, "You've travelled a long way. Stay and hev the evening meal with us."

Johanna realised there was something wrong when her dogs came in from a run in the garden. They had been patiently trained to do any necessary doggy business in the vicinity of a secluded compost heap, so that Cyprian or Simeon could come along later and discreetly incorporate it into what, in the fullness of time, would become new earth. But she frowned as what had begun as uncharacteristic vagueness and loss of focus became staggering circles, followed by slumping into un-natural sleep. She checked their temperatures and rolled back eyelids to examine the sclera. No eyeball was visible. She called for Op De Veldt and instructed the goblin to clacks for a cab. Ponder offered to look after things and receive the expected guests while she was away.

"I need edvice on this." she said, concerned for her dogs. Mariella nodded, wishing she could go too. She loved those two dogs.

Shortly afterwards, a cab drew up to the house. Claude and Cyprian helped load the dogs aboard.

"Guild of Essassins." Johanna instructed the driver. "Fest."

In Howondaland, a hungover and chastened Barbarossa Smith-Rhodes presided over dinner for his extended family and guests. It was a cheerful informal occasion, marred only by the threat to family members in distant Ankh-Morpork. Barbarossa was amused that he had a Princess dining at his humble table, and remarked that she wasn't much older than his daughter Mariella. How do you get to own one of those amazing creatures, anyway?

Nottie explained that she was nominally at least a pupil at the Quirm Academy for Young Ladies – her parents had vetoed the Assassins' School – and when the magic had seriously started in her, her school had placed her in the care of Miss Tick, its visiting consultant teacher in witchcraft, for pastoral guidance. Miss Tick had sent her back to Lancre for a year of study leave, where her practical education in witchcraft had been at the hands of people like Mistress Weatherwax and Mrs Ogg. She, Nottie, had just, er, happened to be in the vicinity of Hobley's stud when one of his mares was gravid from a Pegasus stallion. As the nearest witch of any sort, she'd assisted at the birth, and when she'd seen the foal had a pair of folded-back wings close to its body… well, they bond to the first human to give them food and water. Nottie, perfectly coincidentally, had been that first human to tend to the new Pegasus. Spike(6), her Pegasus, had been hers from that moment on. So Irena and Olga had invited her to join a small elite of flying horsewomen, despite her only being fourteen.

Barbarossa nodded, encouragingly. Next to him, Agnetha turned and looked suspiciously at his face. She'd been married to him for long enough to know that was the sort of face he showed when he was having ideas….

"And the Feegle have this magic called the craw-step. Only they know how it works, but we discovered that it can get a Pegasus plus load anywhere you like on the Disc practically instantaneously. It only took about half an hour to get here, for instance, and that's the little bit of flying in real space at each end."

"IzzatSO…" Barbarossa breathed. Heidi had heard Johanna using that expression. Usually when she'd realised there was an angle to a situation that she could exploit. Now she saw where it came from.

Barbarossa turned to his farm manager Kurt Maaijande and asked him a question. Then Heidi and the rest realised where his brain was going. Agnetha sat up, startled. But this time she didn't argue with her husband. Nor did she express disapproval.

Johanna instructed the cabbie to drive right in. She called from the window to identify herself to Mr Maroon the porter and added the word "Emergency."

Leaping out as best she could, she grabbed four pupils and ordered them to go to the Infirmary, alert Matron Igorina, and come back with stretchers. And to hurry. She paid off the cab driver, and detailed the students to very carefully carry her dogs out of the cab and load them onto stretchers. A small crowd was gathering. Some girls from her old Raven House, the ones who walked her dogs, realised, seeing the still bodies. There was weeping. Johanna hugged a tearful girl she recognised.

"They're still alive. Barely. I want to esk Igorina whet this, is end to see if there is a remedy."

"You'd better bring them in." Igorina said from behind her. She made no sarcastic cracks along the lines of "Oh, so I'm a vet now, am I?" Johanna had been bracing herself for this. Instead, Igorina behaved with professional concern and care.

"It's a slow day. No human casualties." she explained, walking with the dogs.

Johanna, knotted up with anxiety for her pets, followed. She stopped dead, wincing as a sudden constricting pain gripped her lower stomach.

Oh, ye gods! Not NOW! she told herself. She took a few deep breaths. Davinia had told her that in the last month, there'd be false alarms. It was just her body getting ready and testing out the muscles it would need. She waited. The constriction did not recur. She put it down to anxiety about her beloved dogs.

DuPlessis drilled his crew in the attack. Who would go in where. He told them they'd attack just after midnight, as the house was settling down for the night. A henchman raised the issue of payment. DuPlessis growled slightly and reminded them they'd all get fifty dollars each at the end, as agreed. But you killed everybody. Men, women, children, goblins. Especially the bloody goblins. Save for the red-haired woman. Who was his. He'd kill anyone who got in between him and his vengeance.

(1) Sprained Ankle is a trading settlement, and the nearest thing the Central Howondaland Plains Indians have to a permanent town and indeed a capital city. The peace treaty of the previous century is still honoured by the powerful neighbours surrounding the Plains, and Sprained Ankle is a bum diplomatic posting for everybody. It's hard to stack the pyramid of gold-foil-wrapped chocolates just so when living in a log cabin. Or a tepee.

(2) New Scrote is the capital of the province of Smith-Rhodesia. Sir Cecil Smith-Rhodes wanted his capital city to be named after a bucolic country town in the Central Continent near Ankh-Morpork, where he was born and of which he had good memories. A similar logical process saw a capital city, in our Africa, initially receive the name Salisbury after the charming country town in Wiltshire. After Rhodesia went under new management and became Zimbabwe, it was renamed Harare. What Johanna and Julian think of the lowly origins of their family in the village of Scrote is not known.

(3) Look down at your keyboard. The (130) was my error. Hit the 0/) key without hitting shift. Decided to leave it in as an amusing Times misprint.

(4) William de Worde had also resolved to run Rupert's copy past the company lawyer prior to print, just to make sure there would be no libel actions. Sacharissa Cripslock had speculated as to whether there would be a market for a news magazine dealing with humorous satire. She thought Rupert would be perfect to produce it. It could be called, oh I don't know, Secretive Glance, or something suggestive of hidden things brought out in the open.

(5) Shameless plug: members of the Clan appear in my story Clowning is a Serious Business. They return to Ankh-Morpork to look for others who have developed sentience, only to discover Vetinari got there first and recruited them.

(6) After the legendary horse of Queen Ynci of Lancre.