The Fifth Elephant

shapes in the endless curtain of snow.
    “…if we’re lucky,” he mumbled. He licked Carrot’s face, a move that usually resulted in the lickee chasing Gaspode down the street with a broom. There was merely another snore.
    Gaspode’s mind raced.
    Of course, he was a dog, and dogs and wolves…well, they were the same, right? Everyone knew that. So-oo, said a treacherous inner voice…maybe it wasn’t exactly Gaspode and Carrot in trouble. Maybe it was only Carrot. Yeah, right on, brothers! Let us join together in wild runs in the moonlight! But first, let us eat this monkey!
    On the other paw…
    He’d got hard pad, soft pad, the swinge, licky end, scroff, mange and something rather strange on the back of his neck that he couldn’t quite reach. Gaspode somehow couldn’t imagine the wolves saying Hey, he’s one of us!
    Besides…while he’d begged, fought, tricked and stolen, he’d never actually been a Bad Dog.
    You needed to be a moderate good theological disputant to accept this, especially since a fair number of sausages and prime cuts had disappeared from butchers’ slabs in a blur of gray and a lingering odor of lavatory carpet, but nevertheless Gaspode was clear in his own mind that he’d never crossed the boundary from merely being a Naughty Boy. He’d never bitten a hand that fed him. * He’d never done It on the carpet. He’d never shirked a Duty. It was a bugger, but there you were. It was a dog thing.
    He whined when the ring of dark shapes closed in.
    Eyes gleamed.
    He whined again, and then growled as unseen fanged death surrounded him.
    This was clearly impressing no one, not even Gaspode.
    He wagged his tail nervously.
    “Just passin’ through!” he said, in a strangulatedly cheerful voice. “No trouble to anyone!”
    There was a definite feeling that the shadows beyond the snowflakes were getting more crowded.
    “So…have you had your holidays yet?” he squeaked.
    This also did not appear to be well received.
    Well, this was it, then. Famous Last Stand. Plucky Dog Defends His Master. What a Good Dog. Shame there’d be no one left to tell anyone…
    He barked “Mine! Mine!” and leapt snarling toward the nearest shape.
    A huge paw swatted him out of the air and then pinned him down, spread-eagled, in the snow.
    He looked up past white fangs and a long muzzle into eyes that seemed familiar…
    “Hmine,” growled the wolf. It was Angua.

    The coaches slowed to a walk on a road that was rough with potholes under the unbroken snow, every one a wheel-breaking trap in the dark.
    Vimes nodded to himself when he saw lights flickering beside the road a few miles into the pass. On either side, old landslides had formed banks of scree, down which the forests had spilled.
    He dropped quietly off the back of the coach and vanished into the shadows.
    The leading coach stopped at a log which had been dropped across the road. There was some movement, and then the driver swung himself down into the mud and set off at a dead run back down the pass.
    Figures moved out of the trees. One of them stopped at the door of the first coach and tried the handle.
    There was a moment when the world held its breath. The figure must have sensed it, because he was already leaping aside when there was a click and the whole door and its surrounding frame blew outward in a cloud of splinters.
    The thing about fires, Vimes had once observed, was that only an idiot got between them and a troll holding a two-thousand-pound crossbow. All hell hadn’t been let loose. It was merely Detritus. But from a few feet away you couldn’t tell the difference.
    Another figure reached for the door of the second coach just before Vimes fired out of the darkness and hit his shoulder with a butcher’s sound. Then Inigo dived through the window, rolled with unclerklike grace as he hit the ground, rose in front of one of the bandits and brought his hand around, edge first, on the man’s neck.
    Vimes had seen this trick done before. Usually, it just made people angry. Occasionally, it managed an incapacitating blow.
    He’d never seen it remove a head.
    “Everybody stop!”
    Sybil was pushed out of the coach. Behind her, a man stepped out. He was holding a crossbow.
    “Your Grace Vimes!” he shouted. The word bounced back and forth between the cliffs.
    “I know you’re here, Your Grace Vimes! And here is your lady! And there are many of us! Come out , Your Grace Vimes!”
    Flakes of snow hissed over the fires.
    Then there