The Fifth Elephant

battered to death.
    Mwahahaa.
    The snow was heavy now, making the fat pools spit.
    He sagged to his knees. He ached all over. It wasn’t just that his brain was writing checks that his body couldn’t cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn’t got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions.
    And still nothing was coming up behind him. Surely they must’ve crossed the river by now?
    Then he saw one. He could have sworn it hadn’t been there a moment ago. Another one trotted out from behind a nearby snowdrift.
    They sat watching him.
    “Come on, then!” Vimes yelled. “What are you waiting for?”
    The pools of fat hissed and bubbled around Vimes. It was warm here, though. If they weren’t going to move, then neither was he.
    He focused on a tree on the edge of the fat geysers. It looked barely alive, with greasy splashes on the end of the longer branches, but it also looked climbable. He concentrated on it, tried to estimate the distance and whatever speed he might be capable of.
    The werewolves turned to look at it, too.
    Another one had entered the clearing at a different point. There were three watching him now.
    They weren’t going to run until he ran, he realized. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fun.
    He shrugged, turned away from the tree…and then turned back and ran. By the time he was halfway there he was afraid his heart was going to climb up his throat, but he ran on, jumped awkwardly, caught a low branch, slipped, struggled gasping to his feet, grabbed the branch again and managed to pull himself up, expecting at every second the first tiny puncture as teeth broke his skin…
    He rocked on the greasy wood. The werewolves hadn’t moved, but they were watching him with interest.
    “You bastards ,” Vimes growled.
    They got up and picked their way carefully toward the tree, without hurrying. Vimes climbed a little farther up the tree.
    “Ankh-Morpork! Mister Civilized! Where are your weapons now, Ankh-Morpork?”
    It was Wolfgang’s voice. Vimes peered around the snowdrifts, which were already filling up with violet shadows as the afternoon died.
    “I got two of you!” he shouted.
    “Yes, they will have big headaches later on! We are werewolves , Ankh-Morpork! Quite hard to stop!”
    “You said that you—”
    “Your Mister Sleeps could run much faster than you, Ankh-Morpork!”
    “Fast enough?”
    “No! And the man with the little black hat could fight better than you, too!”
    “Well enough?”
    “No!” shouted Wolfgang cheerfully.
    Vimes growled. Even Assassins didn’t deserve that kind of death.
    “It’ll be sunset soon!” he shouted.
    “Yes! I lied about the sunset!”
    “Well, wake me up at dawn, then. I could do with the sleep!”
    “You will freeze to death, Civilized Man!”
    “Good!” Vimes looked around at the other trees. Even if he could jump to one, they were all conifers, painful to land in and easy to fall out of.
    “Ah, this must be the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humor, yes?”
    “No, that was just irony,” Vimes shouted, still looking for an arboreal escape route. “You’ll know when we’ve got onto the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humor when I start talking about breasts and farting!”
    So what were his options? Well, he could stay in the tree, and die, or run for it, and die. Of the two, dying in one piece seemed better.
    Y OU’RE DOING VERY WELL FOR A MAN OF YOUR AGE .
    Death was sitting on a higher branch of the tree.
    “Are you following me, or what?”
    A RE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE PHRASE ‘D EATH WAS HIS CONSTANT COMPANION ’?
    “But I don’t usually see you!”
    P OSSIBLY YOU ARE IN A STATE OF HEIGHTENED AWARENESS CAUSED BY LACK OF FOOD, SLEEP AND BLOOD ?
    “Are you going to help me?”
    W ELL…YES .
    “When?”
    E R…WHEN THE PAIN IS TOO MUCH TO BEAR . Death hesitated, and then went on, E VEN AS I SAY IT I REALIZE THAT THIS ISN’T THE ANSWER YOU WERE LOOKING FOR, HOWEVER .
    The sun was near the horizon now, getting big and red.
    Racing the sun…that was another Uberwald sport, wasn’t it? Be home safe before the sun sets.
    Half a mile or more, through deep snow in rising ground…
    Someone was climbing up the tree. He felt it shake. He looked down. In the cold blue gloom, a naked man was quietly pulling himself from branch to branch.
    Vimes was enraged. They weren’t supposed to do this!
    There was a grunt from below as the climber slipped and recovered on