Reaper Man

an hour later.
    Miss Flitworth sorted through her rag-bag.
    “What next?” she said.
    W HAT HAVE WE HAD SO FAR ?
    “Let’s see…hessian, calico, linen…how about satin? Here’s a piece.”
    Bill Door took the rag and wiped it gently along the blade.
    Miss Flitworth reached the bottom of the bag, and pulled out a swatch of white cloth.
    Y ES ?
    “Silk,” she said softly. “Finest white silk. The real stuff. Never worn.”
    She sat back and stared at it.
    After a while he took it tactfully from her fingers.
    T HANK YOU .
    “Well now,” she said, waking up. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
    When he turned the blade, it made a noise like whommmm . The fires of the forge were barely alive now, but the blade glowed with razor light.
    “Sharpened on silk,” said Miss Flitworth. “Who’d believe it?”
    A ND STILL BLUNT .
    Bill Door looked around the dark forge, and then darted into a corner.
    “What have you found?”
    C OBWEB .
    There was a long thin whine, like the torturing of ants.
    “Any good?”
    S TILL TOO BLUNT .
    She watched Bill Door stride out of the forge, and scuttled after him. He went and stood in the middle of the yard, holding the scythe blade edge-on to the faint, dawn breeze.
    It hummed.
    “How sharp can a blade get, for goodness’ sake?”
    I T CAN GET SHARPER THAN THIS .
    Down in his henhouse, Cyril the cockerel awoke and stared blearily at the treacherous letters chalked on the board. He took a deep breath.
    “Floo-a-cockle-dod!”
    Bill Door glanced at the rimward horizon and then, speculatively, at the little hill behind the house.
    He jerked forward, legs clicking over the ground.

    The new daylight sloshed onto the world. Discworld light is old, slow and heavy; it roared across the landscape like a cavalry charge. The occasional valley slowed it for a moment and, here and there, a mountain range banked it up until it poured over the top and down the far slope.
    It moved across a sea, surged up the beach and accelerated over the plains, driven by the lash of the sun.
    On the fabled hidden continent of Xxxx, somewhere near the rim, there is a lost colony of wizards who wear corks around their pointy hats and live on nothing but prawns. There, the light is still wild and fresh as it rolls in from space, and they surf on the boiling interface between night and day.
    If one of them had been carried thousands of miles inland on the dawn, he might have seen, as the light thundered over the high plains, a stick figure toiling up a low hill in the path of the morning.
    It reached the top a moment before the light arrived, took a breath, and then spun around in a crouch, grinning.
    It held a long blade upright between extended arms.
    Light struck…split…slid…
    Not that the wizard would have paid much attention, because he’d be too busy worrying about the five-thousand-mile walk back home.

    Miss Flitworth panted up as the new day streamed past. Bill Door was absolutely still, only the blade moving between his fingers as he angled it against the light.
    Finally he seemed satisfied.
    He turned around and swished it experimentally through the air.
    Miss Flitworth stuck her hands on her hips. “Oh, come on ,” she said.

    She paused.
    He waved the blade again.

    Down in the yard, Cyril stretched his bald neck for another go. Bill Door grinned, and swung the blade toward the sound.

    Then he lowered the blade.
    T HAT’S SHARP .
    His grin faded, or at least faded as much as it was able to.
    Miss Flitworth turned, following the line of his gaze until it intersected a faint haze over the cornfields.
    It looked like a pale gray robe, empty but still somehow maintaining the shape of its wearer, as if a garment on a washing line was catching the breeze.
    It wavered for a moment, and then vanished.
    “I saw it,” said Miss Flintworth.
    T HAT WASN’T IT . T HAT WAS THEM .
    “Them who?”
    T HEY’RE LIKE —Bill Door waved a hand vaguely—S ERVANTS . W ATCHERS . A UDITORS . I NSPECTORS .
    Miss Flitworth’s eyes narrowed.
    “Inspectors? You mean like the Revenoo?” she said.
    I SUPPOSE SO —
    Miss Flitworth’s face lit up.
    “Why didn’t you say? ”
    I’ M SORRY ?
    “My father always made me promise never to help the Revenoo. Even just thinking about the Revenoo, he said, made him want to go and have a lie down. He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn’t happen to you every year. We had to go out of the room when he really got