The Fifth Elephant

leading to it, not human. When he reached the door he swung wildly at the darkness just inside, and his reward was a cut-off yelp.
    The skiff that was housed in the tumbledown shed was a quarter full of dark water, but he didn’t dare think about bailing yet. He grabbed the dusty oars and rowed with considered effort and not much speed out onto the river.
    He groaned. Wolf was trotting across the snow, with the rest of the pack behind him. They all seemed to be there.
    Wolf cupped his hands.
    “Very civilized, Your Grace! But, you see, when you set fire to a barn full of wolves, they panic, Your Grace! But when they’re werewolves, one of them just opens the door! You cannot kill werewolves, Mister Vimes!”
    “Tell that to the one in the boathouse!” Vimes shouted, as the current took the boat.
    Wolf looked into the shadows for a moment, and then cupped his hands again.
    “He will recover, Mister Vimes!”
    Vimes swore under his breath, because despite all his hopes a couple of werewolves had plunged into the water upstream and were swimming strongly toward the opposite bank. But that was another doggy thing, wasn’t it? Leap joyfully into any water outdoors, but fight like hell against a tub.
    Wolfgang had started to trot along the bank. The ones in the water emerged on the far bank. Now they were keeping pace with the boat on both sides.
    The current was carrying him faster now. Vimes started to bail with both hands.
    “You can’t outrun the river, Wolf!” he shouted.
    “We don’t have to, Mister Vimes! That is not the question! The question is, can you outswim the waterfall? See you later, Civilized!”
    Vimes looked around. In the distance, the river ahead had a foreshortened look. When he concentrated, the inner ear of terror could hear a distant roaring.
    He snatched the oars again and tried to row upstream and, yes, it was possible to make headway against the current. But he couldn’t keep rowing faster than wolves could run, and taking on two at once on the shore, when they were ready and waiting for him, was not an option.
    If he went over the falls now, he might get to the bottom before they did.
    That wasn’t a good sentence, however he tried it.
    He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the ax onto my back—
    He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body—
    G OOD MORNING .
    Vimes blinked. A tall dark-robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
    “Are you Death?”
    I T’S THE SCYTHE, ISN’T IT . P EOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE .
    “I’m going to die?”
    P OSSIBLY .
    “ Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?”
    O H YES . I T’S QUITE THE NEW THING . I T’S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE .
    “What’s that?”
    I’ M NOT SURE .
    “That’s very helpful.”
    I THINK IT MEANS PEOPLE MAY OR MAY NOT DIE . I HAVE TO SAY IT’S PLAYING HOB WITH MY SCHEDULE, BUT I TRY TO KEEP UP WITH MODERN THOUGHT .
    The roar was a lot louder now. Vimes lay back in the boat and gripped the sides.
    I’m talking to Death, he thought, to take my mind off things.
    “Didn’t I see you last month? I was chasing Bigger-than-Small-Dave Dave along Peach Pie Street and I fell off that ledge?”
    T HAT IS CORRECT .
    “But I landed on that cart. I didn’t die!”
    B UT YOU MIGHT HAVE .
    “But I thought we all had some kind of hourglass thing that said when we going to die?”
    Now the roar was almost physical. Vimes redoubled his grip on the boat.
    O H YES . Y OU DO , said Death.
    “But we might not?”
    N O . Y OU WILL . T HERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT .
    “But you said—”
    Y ES, IT IS A BIT HARD TO UNDERSTAND, ISN’T IT ? A PPARENTLY THERE’ S THIS THING CALLED THE T ROUSERS OF T IME, WHICH IS QUITE ODD, BECAUSE T IME CERTAINLY DOESN’T —
    The boat went over the waterfall.
    Vimes had a thunderous sensation of pounding, thudding water, followed by the echoing ringing in his ears as he hit the pool below. He fought his way to what passed for the surface and felt the current take him, slam him into a rock and then roll him away in the white water.
    He flailed blindly and caught another rock, his body swinging around into a pool of comparative calm. As he fought for breath he saw a gray shape leaping from stone to stone and then another dose of hell was unleashed as it landed, snarling, beside