“—but I’ve seen ’em thick as milk in some rivers,” said Ridcully. “Fightin’ to get ahead. The whole river just a mass of silver.”
“Fine, fine,” said the Senior Wrangler. “What’d they do that for?”
“Well…it’s all to do with breeding.”
“Disgusting. And to think we have to drink water,” said the Senior Wrangler.
“Right, we’re in the open now, this is where we outflank ’em,” said Ridcully. “We’ll just aim for a clear space and—”
“I don’t think so,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
Every direction was filled with an advancing, grinding, fighting wall of trolleys.
“They’re coming to get us! They’re coming to get us!” wailed the Bursar. The Dean snatched his staff.
“Hey, that’s mine!”
The Dean pushed him away and blew off the wheels of a leading trolley.
“That’s my staff!”
The wizards stood back to back in a narrowing ring of metal.
“They’re not right for this city,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
“I know what you mean,” said Ridcully. “Alien.”
“I suppose no one’s got a flying spell on them today?” the Senior Wrangler inquired.
The Dean took aim again and melted a basket.
“That’s my staff you’re using, you know.”
“Shut up, Bursar,” said the Archchancellor. “And, Dean, you’re getting nowhere picking them off one by one like that. Okay, lads? We want to do them all as much damage as possible. Remember—wild, uncontrolled bursts…”
The trolleys advanced.
OW. OW.
Miss Flitworth staggered through the wet, rattling gloom. Hailstones crunched underfoot. Thunder cannonaded around the sky.
“They sting, don’t they,” she said.
THEY ECHO.
Bill Door fielded a stook as it was blown past, and stacked it with the others. Miss Flitworth scuttled past him, bent double under a load of corn.* The two of them worked steadily, criss-crossing the field in the teeth of the storm to snatch up the harvest before the wind and hail stole it away. Lightning flickered around the sky. It wasn’t a normal storm. It was war.
“It’s going to pour with rain in a minute,” screamed Miss Flitworth, above the noise. “We’ll never get it down to the barn! Go and fetch a tarpaulin or something! That’ll do for tonight!”
Bill Door nodded, and ran through the squelching darkness toward the farm buildings. Lightning was striking so many times around the fields that the air itself was sizzling, and corona danced along the top of the hedge.
And there was Death.
He saw it looming ahead of him, a crouched skeletal shape poised to spring, its robe flapping and rattling behind it in the wind.
Tightness gripped him, trying to force him to run while at the same time rooting him to the spot. It invaded his mind and froze there, blocking all thought save for the innermost, tiny voice which said, quite calmly: SO THIS IS TERROR.
Then Death vanished as the lightning glow faded, reappeared as a fresh arc was struck on the next hill.