Interesting Times

said Rincewind encouragingly.
    “Much Ownership of Means of Production!”
    “‘How’s Your Granny Off For Soap?’”
    Three Yoked Oxen beamed.
    Butterfly opened the door. That left Rincewind outside with the other two.
    “Very useful slogans,” he said, moving sideways just a little. “But I would draw your attention to the famous saying of the Great Wizard Rincewind.”
    “Indeed, I am all ear,” said Lotus Blossom politely.
    “Rincewind, he say…Goodbyeeeeeeeee—”
    His sandals skidded on the cobbles but he was already traveling fast when he hit the doors, which turned out to be made of bamboo and smashed apart easily.
    There was a street market on the other side. That was something Rincewind remembered later about Hunghung; as soon as there was a space, any kind of space, even the space created by the passage of a cart or a mule, people flowed into it, usually arguing with one another at the tops of their voices over the price of a duck which was being held upside down and quacking.
    His foot went through a wicker cage containing several chickens, but he pressed on, scattering people and produce. In an Ankh-Morpork street market something like this would have caused some comment, but since everyone around him already seemed to be screaming into other people’s faces Rincewind was merely a momentary and unremarked nuisance as he half ran, half limped with one squawking foot past the stalls.
    Behind him, the people flowed back. There may have been some cries of pursuit, but they were lost in the hubbub.
    He didn’t stop until he found an overlooked alcove between a stall selling songbirds and another purveying something that bubbled in bowls. His foot crowed.
    He smashed it against cobbles until the cage broke; the cockerel, maddened by the heady air of freedom, pecked him on the knee and fluttered away.
    There were no sounds of pursuit. However, a battalion of trolls in tin boots would have had trouble making themselves heard above a normal Hunghung street market.
    He let himself get his breath back.
    Well, he was his own man again. So much for the Red Army. Admittedly he was in the capital city, where he didn’t want to be, and it was only a matter of time before something else unpleasant happened to him, but it wasn’t actually happening at the moment. Let him find his bearings and five minutes’ start and they could watch his dust. Or mud. There was a lot of both, here.
    So…this was Hunghung…
    There didn’t seem to be streets in the sense Rincewind understood the term. Alleys opened on to alleys, all of them narrow and made narrower by the stalls that lined them. There was a large animal population in the marketplace. Most of the stalls had their share of caged chickens, ducks in sacks, and strange wriggling things in bowls. From one stall a tortoise on top of a struggling heap of other tortoises under a sign saying: 3r. each, good for Ying gave Rincewind a slow, “You think you’ve got troubles?” look.
    But it was hard to tell where the stalls ended and the buildings began in any case. Dried-up things hanging on a string might be merchandise or someone’s washing or quite possibly next week’s dinner.
    The Hunghungese were an outdoor kind of people; from the look of it, they conducted most of their lives on the street and at the top of their voice.
    Progress was made by viciously elbowing and shoving people until they got out of the way. Standing still and saying, “Er, excuse me” was a recipe for immobility.
    The crowds did part, though, at the banging of a gong and a succession of loud “pops.” A group of people in white robes danced past, throwing fireworks around and banging on gongs, saucepans and odd bits of metal. The din contrived to be louder than the street noise, but only by very great effort.
    Rincewind had been getting the occasional puzzled glance from people who stopped screaming long enough to notice him. Perhaps it was time to act like a native.
    He turned to the nearest person and screamed, “Pretty good, eh?”
    The person, a little old lady in a straw hat, stared at him in distaste.
    “It’s Mr. Whu’s funeral,” she snapped, and walked off.
    There were a couple of soldiers nearby. If this had been Ankh-Morpork, then they’d have been sharing a cigarette and trying not to see anything that might upset them. But these had an alert look.
    Rincewind backed into another alley. An untutored visitor could clearly find himself in big trouble here.
    This