The Fifth Elephant

with all my life?”
    She held out a hand.
    “Just one bite’ll end all my troubles, eh?” Vimes snarled.
    “One bite would be one too many, Sam Vimes.”
    The wood cracked. She grabbed his wrist.
    If he’d thought about it at all, Vimes would have expected to be dangling from a vampire now. Instead, he was simply floating.
    “Don’t think of letting go,” said Margolotta, as they rose gently up the shaft.
    “One bite would be too many?” said Vimes. He recognized the mangled mantra. “You’re a…a teetotaler ?”
    “Almost four years now.”
    “No blood at all?”
    “Oh yes. Animal. It’s rather kinder to them than slaughter, don’t you think? Of course, it makes them docile, but frankly a cow is unlikely ever to vin the Thinker of the Year award. I’m on a vagon, Mister Vimes.”
    “ The wagon. We call it the wagon,” said Vimes weakly. “And…that replaces human blood?”
    “Like lemonade replaces vhisky. Believe me. However, the intelligent mind can find a…substitute.” The sides of the shaft dropped away and they were in clear, freezing air, which knifed through Vimes’s shirt. They drifted sideways a little, and then Vimes was dropped into knee-deep snow.
    “One of the better things about our dwarfs is that they don’t often try something new and they never let go of anything old,” said the vampire, hovering over the snow. “You weren’t hard to find.”
    “Where am I?” Vimes looked around at rocks and trees mounded in snow.
    “In the mountains, quite a long way viddershins of the town, Mister Vimes. Goodbye.”
    “You’re going to leave me here ?”
    “I’m sorry? You vere the one who escaped. I am certainly not here. Me, a vampire, interfering in the affairs of the dwarfs? Unthinkable! But let us just say…I like people to have an even chance.”
    “It’s freezing! I haven’t even got a coat! What is it you want ?”
    “You have freedom, Mister Vimes. Isn’t that vhat everyone vants? Isn’t it supposed to give you a lovely varm glow?”
    Lady Margolotta disappeared into the snow.
    Vimes shivered. He hadn’t realized how warm it had been underground. Or what time it was. There was a dim, a very dim light. Was this just after sunset? Was it almost dawn?
    The flakes were piling up on his damp clothes, driven by the wind.
    Freedom could get you killed.
    Shelter…that was essential . The time of day and a precise location were no use to the dead. They always knew what time it was and where they were.
    He moved away from the open shaft and staggered into the trees, where the snow wasn’t so deep. It gave off a light, fainter than a sick beetle, as if snow somehow absorbed it from the air as it fell.
    Vimes wasn’t good at forests. They were things you saw on the horizon. If he’d thought about them at all, he’d imagined a lot of trees, standing like poles, brown at the bottom, bushy and green at the top.
    Here there were humps, and bumps, and dark branches weighted and creaking under the snow. It fell around him with a hiss. Occasionally lumps of the stuff would slide from somewhere above, and there would be another shower of frigid crystals as a branch sprang back.
    There was a track of sorts, or at least a wider, smoother expanse of snow. Vimes followed it, on the basis that there was no more sensible choice. The warm glow of freedom only lasted so long.
    Vimes had city eyes. He’d watched coppers develop them. A trainee copper who glanced once at a street was just learning, and if he didn’t learn quicker he’d become highly experienced at dying. One who’d been on the streets for a while paid attention, took in details, noted shadows, saw background and foreground and the people who were trying not to be in either. Angua looked at streets like that. She worked at it.
    The long-term coppers, like even Nobby when he was on a good day, glanced once at a street and that was enough, because they’d seen everything.
    Maybe there were…country eyes. Forest eyes. Vimes saw trees, mounds, snow and not much else.
    The wind was getting up, and began to howl among the trees. Now the snow stung.
    Trees. Branches. Snow.
    Vimes kicked a mound beside the track. Snow slid off dark pine needles.
    He dropped to his hands and knees and pushed forward…
    Ah…
    It was still cold, and there was some snow on the dead needles, but the weighted branches had spread around the trunk like a tent. He pulled himself in, congratulating himself. It was windless here and, contrary