The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

chicken casserole. True, he played the accordion for amusement, and disliked cats intensely, and had a habit of dabbing his upper lip with his napkin after his tea ceremony in a way that had made Mrs Beneficent Winds commit murder in her mind on a regular basis over the years. And he kept his money in a small leather shovel purse, and counted it out very thoroughly whenever he made a purchase, especially if there was a queue behind him.
    *
    Rincewind and Twoflower lay in their separate cells and talked about the good old days. At least, Twoflower talked about the good old days. Rincewind worked at a crack in the stone with a piece of straw, it being all he had to hand. It would take several thousand years to make any kind of impression, but that was no reason to give up …
    A little piece of mortar fell away.Not bad for ten minutes’ work, thought Rincewind. Come the next Ice Age, we’re out of here …
    *
    ‘But there are causes worth dying for,’ said Butterfly.
    ‘No, there aren’t! Because you’ve only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!’
    ‘Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?’
    Rincewind took a deep breath.
    ‘Continuously!’

    ‘Luck is my middle name,’ said Rincewind, indistinctly. ‘Mind you, my first name is Bad.’

    It was something about Cohen. Maybe it was what they called charisma. It overpowered even his normal smell of a goat that had just eaten curried asparagus.
    *
    There was muttering from the Horde.
    ‘Bruce the Hoon never went in the back way’
    ‘Shut up.’
    ‘Never one for back gates, Bruce the Hoon.’
    ‘Shut up.’
    ‘When Bruce the Hoon attacked Al Khali, he did it right at the main guard tower, with a thousand screaming men on very small horses.’
    ‘Yeah, but… last I saw of Bruce the Hoon, his head was on a spike.’
    ‘All right, I’ll grant you that. But at least it was over the main gate. I mean, at least he got in.’
    ‘His head did.’
    *
    ‘Who’re you?’ said Cohen. He drew his sword. ‘I need to know so’s it can be put on your gravestone—’
    *
    ‘They want to parley’ said Six Beneficent Winds.
    ‘Why don’t we just invite them to dinner and massacre them all when they’re drunk?’
    ‘You heard the man. There’s seven hundred thousand of them.’
    ‘Ah? So it’d have to be something simple with pasta, then.’
    *
    The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. But even less significantevents have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet and Contra-flow.
    *
    Lord Hong looked at himself in the mirror.
    He’d gone to great lengths to achieve this. He had used several agents, none of whom knew the whole plan. But the Ankh-Morpork tailor had been good at his work and the measurements had been followed exactly. From pointy boots to hose to doublet, cloak and hat with a feather in it, Lord Hong knew he was a perfect Ankh-Morpork gentleman. The cloak was lined with silk.
    He’d walk through the city on that first great day and the people would be silent when they saw their natural leader.
    It never crossed his mind that anyone would say, ‘ ‘Ere, wot a toff! ‘Eave ‘arf a brick at ‘im!’
    *
    ‘You sound a very educated man for a barbarian,’ said Rincewind.
    ‘I didn’t start out a barbarian. I used to be a school teacher. But I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.’
    ‘After being a teacher all your life?’
    ‘It did mean a change of perspective, yes.’
    ‘But … well … surely … the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death …’
    Mr Saveloy brightened up. ‘Oh, you’ve been a teacher, have you?’
    *
    ‘There’s a lot of waiting in warfare,’ said Boy Willie.
    ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Saveloy. ‘I’ve heard people say that. They say there’s long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement.’
    ‘Not really’ said Cohen. ‘It’s more like short periods of waiting followed by long periods of being dead.’
    *
    There were a large number of ranks in the armies of the Empire, and many of them were untranslatable. Three Pink Pig and Five White Fang were, loosely speaking, privates, and not just because they were pale, vulnerable and inclined to curl up and hide when