A Blink of the Screen

practically everything else.
    Such of his papers as survive give a tantalizing hint that in failing to discover the Americas, he may inadvertently have discovered practically everywhere else. What can we make of the mention of a land of giant jumping rats, found in the southern oceans, but, owing to Sir Joshua’s record-keeping, lost the following day?
    Nevertheless, quite late in the reign of Elizabeth the First, he succeeded in not only finding the Americas, but also in finding England again. He then, with much ceremony, presented to Good Queen Bess a marvellous and intriguing animal from that far-off country, whose black and white fur he deemed very attractive and fit for a queen.
    It was at this point the court really understood that, in addition to a sense of direction that meant that he frequently arrived in court with his shoes on the wrong feet, Sir Joshua also had no sense of smell what soever. This led to the queen, despite her growing infirmities, going on progress again at quite a high speed. When frantic courtiers asked about the destination she said, ‘Anywhere away from that bloodyee man.’
    However, even as relays of servants were scrubbing the palace floors and the female skunk was giving birth in the cellars, the Queen gave Sir Joshua the office of Captain of the Gongfermours or, in other words, put him in charge of the latrines, a post for which he was clearly well suited.
    Oblivious to the sniggers of the other courtiers, he took this position extremely seriously and even adopted on his coat of arms the motto ‘Quod Init Exire Oportet’ (What Goes in Must Come Out).
    Dr John Dee said of him: ‘He is a man born under the wrong stars , and has never learned which ones they are.’
    Dogged to the end, and oblivious to the noxious gases that only he could not smell, he spent the last years of his life in the following century trying to find a way to harness their igniferous nature, achieving an overwhelming success which led to his hat being found in Kingswinford and his head being found in a bear pit in Dudley.

Discworld Shorter Writings

TROLL BRIDGE

    A FTER THE K ING
, ED . M ARTIN H. G REENBERG , TOR B OOKS , N EW Y ORK, 1992
    After the King,
for which this was written, was an anthology in honour of J. R. R. Tolkien rather than being any attempt to trespass in Middle Earth, but it seemed to me that there was a mood I could aim for. Things change, things pass. You fight a war to change the world, and it changes into a world with no place in it for you, the fighter. Those who fight for the bright future are not always, by nature, well fitted to live in it. Sawmills oust the spiders from the dark wood, the endless plains are fenced …
    The wind blew off the mountains, filling the air with fine ice crystals.
    It was too cold to snow. In weather like this wolves came down into villages, trees in the heart of the forest exploded when they froze.
    In weather like this right-thinking people were indoors, in front of the fire, telling stories about heroes.
    It was an old horse. It was an old rider. The horse looked like a shrink-wrapped toast rack; the man looked as though the only reason he wasn’t falling off was because he couldn’t muster the energy. Despite the bitterly cold wind, he was wearing nothing but a tiny leather kilt and a dirty bandage on one knee.
    He took the soggy remnant of a cigarette out of his mouth and stubbed it out on his hand.
    ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s do it.’
    ‘That’s all very well for you to say,’ said the horse. ‘But what if you have one of your dizzy spells? And your back is playing up. How shall I feel, being eaten because your back’s played you up at the wrong moment?’
    ‘It’ll never happen,’ said the man. He lowered himself on to the chilly stones, and blew on his fingers. Then, from the horse’s pack, he took a sword with an edge like a badly maintained saw’s and gave a few half-hearted thrusts at the air.
    ‘Still got the old knackaroony,’ he said. He winced, and leaned against a tree. ‘I’ll swear this bloody sword gets heavier every day.’
    ‘You ought to pack it in, you know,’ said the horse. ‘Call it a day. This sort of thing at your time of life. It’s not right.’
    The man rolled his eyes.
    ‘Blast that damn distress auction. This is what comes of buying something that belonged to a wizard,’ he said, to the cold world in general. ‘I looked at your teeth, I looked at your hooves, it never occurred to me to