Wyrd Sisters

was a lad. He said he’d think nothing of quaffing ale all night and coming home at 5 a.m., smashing windows. He said he was a bit of a roister-doister, not like these white-livered people today who can’t hold their drink.” Tomjon adjusted his doublet in front of the mirror, and added, “You know, Hwel, I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.”
    Hwel sighed. Tomjon’s memory for ill-judged remarks was legendary.
    “All right,” he said. “Just the one, though. Somewhere decent.”
    “I promise.” Tomjon adjusted his hat. It had a feather in it.
    “By the way,” he said, “exactly how does one quaff?”
    “I think it means you spill most of it,” said Hwel.

    If the water of the river Ankh was rather thicker and more full of personality than ordinary river water, so the air in the Mended Drum was more crowded than normal air. It was like dry fog.
    Tomjon and Hwel watched it spilling out into the street. The door burst open and a man came through backward, not actually touching the ground until he hit the wall on the opposite side of the street.
    An enormous troll, employed by the owners to keep a measure of order in the place, came out dragging two more limp bodies which he deposited on the cobbles, kicking them once or twice in soft places.
    “I reckon they’re roistering in there, don’t you?” said Tomjon.
    “It looks like it,” said Hwel. He shivered. He hated taverns. People always put their drinks down on his head.
    They scurried in quickly while the troll was holding one unconscious drinker up by one leg and banging his head on the cobbles in a search for concealed valuables.
    Drinking in the Drum has been likened to diving in a swamp, except that in a swamp the alligators don’t pick your pockets first. Two hundred eyes watched the pair as they pushed their way through the crowd to the bar, a hundred mouths paused in the act of drinking, cursing or pleading, and ninety-nine brows crinkled with the effort of working out whether the newcomers fell into category A, people to be frightened of or B, people to frighten.
    Tomjon walked through the crowd as though it was his property and, with the impetuosity of youth, rapped on the bar. Impetuosity was not a survival trait in the Mended Drum.
    “Two pints of your finest ale, landlord,” he said, in tones so carefully judged that the barman was astonished to find himself obediently filling the first mug before the echoes had died away.
    Hwel looked up. There was an extremely big man on his right, wearing the outside of several large bulls and more chains than necessary to moor a warship. A face that looked like a building site with hair on it glared down at him.
    “Bloody hell,” it said. “It’s a bloody lawn ornament.”
    Hwel went cold. Cosmopolitan as they were, the people of Morpork had a breezy, no-nonsense approach to the nonhuman races, i.e. hit them over the head with a brick and throw them in the river. This did not apply to trolls, naturally, because it is very difficult to be racially prejudiced against creatures seven feet tall who can bite through walls, at least for very long. But people three feet high were absolutely designed to be discriminated against.
    The giant prodded Hwel on the top of his head.
    “Where’s your fishing rod, lawn ornament?” he said.
    The barman pushed the mugs across the puddled counter.
    “Here you are,” he said, leering. “One pint. And one half pint.”
    Tomjon opened his mouth to speak, but Hwel nudged him sharply in the knee. Put up with it, put up with it, slip out as soon as possible, it was the only way…
    “Where’s your little pointy hat, then?” said the bearded man.
    The room had gone quiet. This looked like being cabaret time.
    “I said , where’s your pointy hat, dopey?”
    The barman got a grip of the blackthorn stick with nails in which lived under the counter, just in case, and said, “Er—”
    “I was talking to the lawn ornament here.”
    The man took the dregs of his own drink and poured them carefully over the silent dwarf’s head.
    “I ain’t drinking here again,” he muttered, when even this failed to have any effect. “It’s bad enough they let monkeys drink here, but pygmies—”
    Now the silence in the bar took on a whole new intensity in which the sound of a stool being slowly pushed back was like the creak of doom. All eyes swiveled to the other end of the room, where sat the one drinker in the