Interesting Times

want to get blood all over you.”
    “But you haven’t got a weapon and there’s one of you and they’ve got big swords and there’s five of them!”
    “I know,” said the old man, wrapping the chain around one of his fists in a businesslike manner. “It’s unfair, but I can’t wait around all day.”
    He grinned.
    Gems glittered in the morning light. Every tooth in the man’s head was a diamond. And Rincewind knew of only one man who had the nerve to wear troll teeth.
    “Here? Cohen the Barbarian?”
    “Ssh! Ingconitar! Now get out of the way, I said.” The teeth flashed at the guards, who were now vertical. “Come on, boys. There’s five of you, after all. An’ I’m an old man. Mumble, mumble, oo me leg, ekcetra…”
    To their credit, the guards hesitated. It was probably not, to judge from their faces, because there’s something reprehensible about five large, heavily beweaponed men attacking a frail old man. It might have been because there’s something odd about a frail old man who keeps on grinning in the face of obvious oblivion.
    “Oh, come on ,” said Cohen. The men edged closer, each waiting for one of the others to make the first move.
    Cohen took a few steps forward, waving his arms wearily. “Oh, no ,” he said. “It makes me ashamed, honestly it does. This is not how you attack someone, all milling around like a lot of millers; when you attack someone the important thing to remember is the element of… surprise —”
    Ten seconds later he turned to Rincewind.
    “All right, Mister Wizard. You can open your eyes now.”
    One guard was upside-down in a tree, one was a pair of feet sticking out of a snowdrift, two were slumped against rocks, and one was…generally around the place. Here and there. Certainly hanging out.
    Cohen sucked his wrist thoughtfully.
    “I reckon that last one came within an inch of getting me,” he said. “I must be getting old.”
    “Why are you h—” Rincewind paused. One packet of curiosity overtook the first one. “How old are you, exactly?”
    “Is this still the Century of the Fruitbat?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh, I dunno. Ninety? Could be ninety. Maybe ninety-five?” Cohen fished the keys out of the snow and ambled over to the group of men, who were cowering even more. He unlocked the first set of manacles and handed the shocked prisoner the keys.
    “Bugger off, the lot of you,” he said, not unkindly. “And don’t get caught again.”
    He strolled back to Rincewind.
    “What brings you into this dump, then?”
    “Well—”
    “Interestin’,” said Cohen, and that was that. “But can’t stay chatting all day, got work to do. You coming, or what?”
    “What?”
    “Please yourself.” Cohen tied the chain around his waist as a makeshift belt and wedged a couple of swords in it.
    “Incidentally,” he said, “what did you do with the Barking Dog?”
    “What dog?”
    “I expect it doesn’t matter.”
    Rincewind scuttled after the retreating figure. It wasn’t that he felt safe when Cohen the Barbarian was around. No one was safe when Cohen the Barbarian was around. Something seemed to have gone wrong with the ageing process there. Cohen had always been a barbarian hero because barbaric heroing was all he knew how to do. And while he got old he seemed to get harder, like oak.
    But he was a known figure, and therefore comforting. He just wasn’t in the right place.
    “No future in it, back around the Ramtops,” said Cohen, as they trudged through the snow. “Fences and farms, fences and farms everywhere . You kill a dragon these days, people complain . You know what? You know what happened?”
    “No. What happened?”
    “Man came up to me, said my teeth were offensive to trolls. What about that, eh?”
    “Well, they are made of—”
    “I said they never complained to me .”
    “Er, did you ever give them a cha—”
    “I said, I see a troll up in the mountains with a necklace o’ human skulls, I say good luck to him. Silicon Anti-Defamation League, my bottom. It’s the same all over. So I thought I’d try my luck the other side of the icecap.”
    “Isn’t it dangerous, going around the Hub?” said Rincewind.
    “Used to be,” said Cohen, grinning horribly.
    “Until you left, you mean?”
    “’S right. You still got that box on legs?”
    “On and off. It hangs around. You know.” Cohen chuckled.
    “I’ll get the bloody lid off that thing one day, mark my words. Ah. Horses.”
    There were five, looking