Carpe Jugulum

so impolite, I could kill you right now. A simple arrow would suffice. Corporal Svitz?”
    The mercenary gave the wave that was as good as he’d ever get to a salute, and raised his crossbow.
    “Are you sure ?” said Granny. “Is your ape sure he’d have time for a second shot? That I’d still be here?”
    “You’re not a shape-changer, Mistress Weatherwax. And by the look of it you’re in no position to run.”
    “She’s talking about moving her self into someone else’s head,” said Vlad.
    The witches looked at one another.
    “Sorry, Esme,” said Nanny Ogg, at last. “I couldn’t stop meself thinking. I don’t think I drunk quite enough.”
    “Oh yes,” said the Count. “The famous Borrowing trick.”
    “But you don’t know where, you don’t know how far,” said Granny wearily. “You don’t even know what kind of head. You don’t know if it has to be a head. All you know about me is what you can get out of other people’s minds, and they don’t know all about me. Not by a long way.”
    “And so your self is put elsewhere,” said the Count. “Primitive. I’ve met them, you know, on my travels. Strange old men in beads and feathers who could put their inner self into a fish, an insect…even a tree. And as if it mattered. Wood burns. I’m sorry, Mistress Weatherwax. As King Verence is so fond of saying, there’s a new world order. We are it. You are history—”
    He flinched. The three witches dropped to the ground.
    “Well done ,” he said. “A shot across my bows. I felt that. I actually felt it. No one in Uberwald has ever managed to get through.”
    “I can do better’n that,” said Granny.
    “I don’t think you can,” said the Count. “Because if you could you would have done so. No mercy for the vampire, eh? The cry of the mob throughout the ages!”
    He strolled toward her. “Do you really think we’re like some inbred elves or gormless humans and can be cowed by a firm manner and a bit of trickery? We’re out of the casket now, Mistress Weatherwax. I have tried to be understanding toward you, because really we do have a lot in common, but now—”
    Granny’s body jerked back like a paper doll caught by a gust of wind.
    The Count was halfway toward her, hands in the pockets of his jacket. He broke his step momentarily.
    “Oh dear, I hardly felt that one,” he said. “ Was that your best?”
    Granny staggered, but raised a hand. A heavy chair by the wall was picked up and tumbled across the room.
    “For a human that was quite good,” said the Count. “But I don’t think you can keep on sending it away.”
    Granny flinched, and raised her other hand. A huge chandelier began to swing.
    “Oh dear,” said the Count. “Still not good enough. Not nearly good enough.”
    Granny backed away.
    “But I will promise you this,” said the Count. “I won’t kill you. On the contrary—”
    Invisible hands picked her up and slammed her against the wall.
    Agnes went to step forward, but Magrat squeezed her arm.
    “Don’t think of it as losing, Granny Weatherwax,” said the Count. “You will live forever. I would call that a bargain, wouldn’t you?”
    Granny managed a sniff of disapproval.
    “ I ’d call that unambitious,” she said. Her face screwed up in pain.
    “Goodbye,” said the Count.
    The witches felt the mental blow. The hall wavered.
    But there was something else, on a realm outside normal space. Something bright and silvery, slipping like a fish…
    “She’s gone,” whispered Nanny. “She sent her self some-where…”
    “Where? Where?” hissed Magrat.
    “Don’t think about it!” said Nanny.
    Magrat’s expression froze.
    “Oh no …” she began.
    “Don’t think it! Don’t think it!” said Nanny urgently. “Pink elephants! Pink elephants!”
    “She wouldn’t—”
    “Lalalala! Ee-ie-ee-ie-oh!” shouted Nanny, dragging her toward the kitchen door. “Come on, let’s go! Agnes, it’s up to you two!”
    The door slammed behind them. Agnes heard the bolts slide home. It was a thick door and they were big bolts; the builders of Lancre Castle hadn’t understood the concept of planks less than three inches thick or locks that couldn’t withstand a battering ram.
    The situation would, to an outsider, have seemed very selfish. But logically, three witches in danger had been reduced to one witch in danger. Three witches would have spent too much time worrying about one another and what they were going to do. One witch was her