Carpe Jugulum

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 Weather-wax 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 onto 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, and 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 ax, 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 center 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 gen’rally 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 ol’ 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.