The Light Fantastic

enough to know that it wouldn’t let Twoflower be killed.
    After about ten minutes they saw it in the middle of the road. Its lid lay open invitingly. It was full of gold.
    “Go around it,” said Herrena.
    “But—”
    “It’s a trap.”
    “That’s right,” said Weems, white-faced. “You take it from me.”
    Reluctantly they reined their horses around the glittering temptation and trotted on along the track. Weems glanced back fearfully, dreading to see the chest coming after him.
    What he saw was almost worse. It had gone.
    Far off to one side of the path the long grass moved mysteriously and was still.
    Rincewind wasn’t much of a wizard and even less of a fighter, but he was an expert at cowardice and he knew fear when he smelled it. He said, quietly, “It’ll follow you, you know.”
    “What?” said Weems, distractedly. He was still peering at the grass.
    “It’s very patient and it never gives up. That’s sapient pearwood you’re dealing with. It’ll let you think it’s forgotten you, then one day you’ll be walking along a dark street and you’ll hear these little footsteps behind you—shlup, shlup, they’ll go, then you’ll start running and they’ll speed up, shlupshlupSHLUP—”
    “Shut up!” shouted Weems.
    “It’s probably already recognized you, so—”
    “I said shut up!”
    Herrena turned around in her saddle and glared at them. Weems scowled and pulled Rincewind’s ear until it was right in front of his mouth, and said hoarsely, “I’m afraid of nothing, understand? This wizard stuff, I spit on it.”
    “They all say that until they hear the footsteps,” said Rincewind. He stopped. A knifepoint was pricking his ribs.

    Nothing happened for the rest of the day but, to Rincewind’s satisfaction and Weems’s mounting paranoia, the Luggage showed itself several times. Here it would be perched incongruously on a crag, there it would be half-hidden in a ditch with moss growing over it.
    By late afternoon they came to the crest of a hill and looked down on the broad valley of the upper Smarl, the longest river on the Disc. It was already half a mile across, and heavy with the silt that made the lower valley the most fertile area on the continent. A few wisps of early mist wreathed its banks.
    “Shlup,” said Rincewind. He felt Weems jerk upright in the saddle.
    “Eh?”
    “Just clearing my throat,” said Rincewind, and grinned. He had put a lot of thought into that grin. It was the sort of grin people use when they stare at your left ear and tell you in an urgent tone of voice that they are being spied on by secret agents from the next galaxy. It was not a grin to inspire confidence. More horrible grins had probably been seen, but only on the sort of grinner that is orange with black stripes, has a long tail and hangs around in jungles looking for victims to grin at.
    “Wipe that off,” said Herrena, trotting up.
    Where the track led down to the river bank there was a crude jetty and a big bronze gong.
    “It’ll summon the ferryman,” said Herrena. “If we cross here we can cut off a big bend in the river. Might even make it to a town tonight.”
    Weems looked doubtful. The sun was getting fat and red, and the mists were beginning to thicken.
    “Or maybe you want to spend the night this side of the water?”
    Weems picked up the hammer and hit the gong so hard that it spun right around on its hanger and fell off.
    They waited in silence. Then with a wet clinking sound a chain sprang out of the water and pulled taut against an iron peg set into the bank. Eventually the slow flat shape of the ferry emerged from the mist, its hooded ferryman heaving on a big wheel set in its center as he winched his way toward the shore.
    The ferry’s flat bottom grated on the gravel, and the hooded figure leaned against the wheel panting.
    “Two at a time,” it muttered. “That’sh all. Jusht two, with horshesh.”
    Rincewind swallowed, and tried not to look at Twoflower. The man would probably be grinning and mugging like an idiot. He risked a sideways glance.
    Twoflower was sitting with his mouth open.
    “You’re not the usual ferryman,” said Herrena. “I’ve been here before, the usual man is a big fellow, sort of—”
    “It’sh hish day off.”
    “Well, okay,” she said doubtfully. “In that case— What’s he laughing at? ”
    Twoflower’s shoulders were shaking, his face had gone red, and he was emitting muffled snorts. Herrena glared at him, then