Interesting Times

The dreadful scourge of the rebellion would allow him to wield the kind of powers that even the maddest Emperor had not dreamed of. And then it would be unthinkable not to build a vengeful fleet to wreak terror on the foreign devils. Thank you, Lord Fang. Your point is duly noted.
    As if it mattered who was Emperor! The Empire was possibly a bonus, to be acquired later, perhaps, in passing. Let him just have Ankh-Morpork, with its busy dwarfs and its grasp, above all, of machinery. Look at the Barking Dogs. Half the time they blew up. They were inaccurate. The principle was sound but the execution was terrible, especially when they blew up.
    It had come as a revelation to Lord Hong when he looked at the problem the Ankh-Morpork way and realized that it might just possibly be better to give the job of Auspicious Dog-maker to some peasant with a fair idea about metal and explosive earths than to some clerk who’d got the highest marks in an examination to find the best poem about iron. In Ankh-Morpork people did things.
    Let him just walk down Broadway as owner, and eat the pies of the famous Mr. Dibbler. Let him play one game of chess against Lord Vetinari. Of course, it would mean leaving the man one arm.
    He was shaking with excitement. Not later…now. His fingers reached for the secret key on its chain around his neck.

    It was barely a track. Rabbits would have walked right past it. And you’d have sworn there was a sheer, passless rock wall until you found the gap.
    Once you did find it, it was hardly worth the bother. It led to a long gully with a few natural caves in it, and a bit of grass, and a spring.
    And, as it turned out, Cohen’s gang. Except that he called it a horde. They were sitting in the sun, complaining about how it wasn’t as warm as it used to be.
    “I’m back then, lads,” said Cohen.
    “Been away, have you?”
    “Whut? Whut’s he say?”
    “He said HE’S BACK.”
    “Black what?”
    Cohen beamed at Rincewind. “I brought ’em with me,” he said. “Like I said, no future in going it alone these days.”
    “Er,” said Rincewind, after surveying the little scene, “are any of these men under eighty years old?”
    “Stand up, Boy Willie,” said Cohen.
    A dehydrated man only marginally less wrinkled than the others got to his feet. It was his feet that were particularly noticeable. He wore boots with extremely thick soles.
    “So’s me feet touch the ground,” he said.
    “Don’t they…er…touch the ground in ordinary boots?”
    “Nope. Orthopedic problem, see. Like…you know how a lot of people’ve got one leg shorter than the other? Funny thing, with me it’s—”
    “Don’t tell me,” said Rincewind. “Sometimes I get these amazing flashes… Both legs are shorter than the other, right?”
    “Amazing. O’ course, I can see you’re a wizard,” said Boy Willie. “You’d know about this sort of thing.”
    Rincewind gave the next member of the Horde a bright mad smile. It was almost certainly a human being, because wizened little monkeys didn’t usually go around in a wheelchair while wearing a helmet with horns on it. It grimaced at Rincewind.
    “This is—”
    “Whut? Whut?”
    “Mad Hamish,” said Cohen.
    “Whut? Whozee?”
    “I bet that wheelchair terrifies them,” said Rincewind. “Especially the blades.”
    “We had the devil of a job getting it over the wall,” Cohen conceded. “But you’d be amazed at his turn of speed.”
    “Whut?”
    “And this is Truckle the Uncivil.”
    “Sod off, wizard.”
    Rincewind beamed at Exhibit B. “Those walking sticks…Fascinating! Very impressive the way you’ve got LOVE and HATE written on them.”
    Cohen smiled proprietorially.
    “Truckle used to be reckoned one of the biggest badasses in the world,” he said.
    “Really? Him?”
    “But it’s amazing what you can do with a herbal suppository.”
    “Up yours, mister,” said Truckle.
    Rincewind blinked. “Er. Can I have a word, Cohen?”
    He drew the ancient barbarian aside.
    “I don’t want to seem to be making trouble here,” he said, “but it doesn’t strike you, does it, that these men are a bit, well, past their sell-by date? A little, not to put too fine a point on it, old?”
    “Whut? Whutzeesayin’?”
    “He says IT’S COLD.”
    “Whut?”
    “What’re you saying? There’s nearly five hundred years of concentrated barbarian hero experience in ’em,” said Cohen.
    “Five hundred years’ experience in a fighting unit is