Lords and Ladies

chain-mail hung on a rack, next to the pikes.
    Shawn probably came in here every day.
    It was the armory.
    Greebo hopped down from Magrat’s shoulders and wandered off down the cobwebbed avenues, in his endless search for anything small and squeaky.
    Magrat followed him, in a daze.
    The kings of Lancre had never thrown anything away. At least, they’d never thrown anything away if it was possible to kill someone with it.
    There was armor for men. There was armor for horses. There was armor for fighting dogs. There was even armor for ravens, although King Gurnt the Stupid’s plan for an aerial attack force had never really got off the ground. There were more pikes, and swords, cutlasses, rapiers, epees, broadswords, flails, morningstars, maces, clubs, and huge knobs with spikes. They were all piled together and, in those places where the roof had leaked, were rusted into a lump. There were longbows, short bows, pistol bows, stirrup bows, and crossbows, piled like firewood and stacked with the same lack of care. Odd bits of armor were piled in more heaps, and were red with rust. In fact rust was everywhere. The whole huge room was full of the death of iron.
    Magrat went on, like some clockwork toy that won’t change direction until it bumps into something.
    The candlelight was reflected dully in helmets and breastplates. The sets of horse armor in particular were terrible, on their rotting wooden frames—they stood like exterior skeletons, and, like skeletons, nudged the mind into thoughts of mortality. Empty eye sockets stared sightlessly down at the little candlelit figure.
    “Lady?”
    The voice came from outside the door, far behind Magrat. But it echoed around her, bouncing off the centuries of moldering armaments.
    They can’t come in here, Magrat thought. Too much iron. In here, I’m safe.
    “If lady wants to play, we will fetch her friends.”
    As Magrat turned, the light caught the edge of something, and gleamed.
    Magrat pulled aside a huge shield.
    “Lady?”
    Magrat reached out.
    “Lady?”
    Magrat’s hands held a rusty iron helmet, with wings.
    “Come dance at the wedding, lady.”
    Magrat’s hands closed on a well-endowed breastplate, with spikes.
    Greebo, who had been tracking mice through a prone suit of armor, stuck his head out of a leg.
    A change had come over Magrat. It showed in her breathing. She’d been panting, with fear and exhaustion. Then, for a few seconds, there was no sound of her breathing at all. And finally it returned. Slowly. Deeply. Deliberately.
    Greebo saw Magrat, who he’d always put down as basically a kind of mouse in human shape, lift the hat with the wings on it and put it on her head.
    Magrat knew all about the power of hats.
    In her mind’s ear she could hear the rattle of the chariots.
    “Lady? We will bring your friends to sing to you.”
    She turned.
    The candlelight sparkled off her eyes.
    Greebo drew back into the safety of his armor. He recalled a particular time when he’d leapt out on a vixen. Normally Greebo could take on a fox without raising a sweat but, as it turned out, this one had cubs. He hadn’t found out until he chased her into her den. He’d lost a bit of one ear and quite a lot of fur before he’d got away.
    The vixen had a very similar expression to the one Magrat had now.
    “Greebo? Come here!”
    The cat turned and tried to find a place of safety in the suit’s breastplate. He was beginning to doubt he’d make it through the knight.

    Elves prowled the castle gardens. They’d killed the fish in the ornamental pond, eventually.
    Mr. Brooks was perched on a kitchen chair, working at a crevice in the stable wall.
    He’d been aware of some sort of excitement, but it was involving humans and therefore of secondary importance. But he did notice the change in the sound from the hives, and the splintering of wood.
    A hive had already been tipped over. Angry bees clouded around three figures as feet ripped through comb and honey and brood.
    The laughter stopped as a white-coated, veiled figure appeared over the hedge. It raised a long metal tube.
    No one ever knew what Mr. Brooks put in his squirter. There was old tobacco in it, and boiled-up roots, and bark scrapings, and herbs that even Magrat had never heard of. It shot a glistening stream over the hedge which hit the middle elf between the eyes, and sprayed over the other two.
    Mr. Brooks watched dispassionately until their struggles stopped.
    “Wasps,” he said.
    Then he went