Hrun met her gaze. He thought about his life, to date. It suddenly seemed to him to have been full of long damp nights sleeping under the stars, desperate fights with trolls, city guards, countless bandits and evil priests and, on at least three occasions, actual demigods and for what? Well, for quite a lot of treasure, he had to admit - but where had it all gone? Rescuing beleagured maidens had a certain passing reward, but most of the time he’d finished up by setting them up in some city somewhere with a handsome dowry, because after a while even the most agreeable exmaiden became possessive and had scant sympathy for his efforts to rescue her sister sufferers. In short, life had really left him with little more than a reputation and a network of scars. Being a lord might be fun. Hrun grinned. With a base like this, all these dragons and a good bunch of fighting men, a man could really be a contender.
Besides, the wench was not uncomely.
“The third test?” she said.
“Am I to be weaponless again?” said Hrun.
Liessa reached up and removed her helmet letting the coils of red hair tumble out. Then she unfastened the brooch of her robe. Underneath, she was naked.
As Hrun’s gaze swept over her his mind began to operate two notional counting machines. One assessed the gold in her bangles, the tiger-rubies that ornamented her toe-rings, the diamond spangle that adorned her navel, and two highly individual whirligigs of silver filigree. The other was plugged straight into his libido. Both produced tallies that pleased him mightily.
As she raised a hand and proffered a glass of wine she smiled, and said, “I think not.”
“He didn’t attempt to rescue you,” Rincewind pointed out as a last resort.
He clung desperately to Twoflower’s waist as the dragon circled slowly, tilting the world at a dangerous angle. The new knowledge that the scaley back he was astride only existed as a sort of threedimensional daydream did not, he had soon realised, do anything at all for his ankle-wrenching sensations of vertigo. His mind kept straying towards the possible results of Twoflower losing his concentration.
“Not even Hrun could have prevailed against those crossbows,” said Twoflower stoutly.
As the dragon rose higher above the patch of woodland, where the three of them had slept a damp and uneasy sleep, the sun rose over the edge of the disc. Instantly the gloomy blues and greys of predawn were transformed into a bright bronze river that flowed across the world, flaring into gold where it struck ice or water or a light-dam. (Owing to the density of the magical field surrounding the disc, light itself moved at sub-sonic speeds; this interesting property was well utilized by the Sorca people of the Great Nef, for example, who over the centuries had constructed intricate and delicate dams, and valleys walled with polished silica, to catch the slow sunlight and sort of store it. The Scintillating reservoirs of the Nef, overflowing after several weeks of uninterrupted sunlight, were a truly magnificent sight from the air and it is therefore unfortunate that Twoflower and Rincewind did not happen to glance in that direction.)
In front of them the billion-ton impossibility that was the magic-wrought Wyrmberg hung against the sky and that was not too bad, until Rincewind turned his head and saw the mountain’s shadow slowly unroll itself across the cloudscape of the world…
“What can you see?” said Twoflower to the dragon.
I see fighting on the top of the mountain came the gentle reply.
“See?” said Twoflower. “Hrun’s probably fighting for his life at this very moment.”
Rincewind was silent. After a moment Twoflower looked around. The wizard was staring intently at nothing at all, his lips moving soundlessly.
“Rincewind?”
The wizard made a small croaking noise.
“I’m sorry,” said Twoflower. “What did you say?”
“…all the way… the great fall…” muttered Rincewind, His eyes focused, looked puzzled for a moment, then widened in terror. He made the mistake of looking down.
“Aargh,” he opined, and began to slide.
Twoflower grabbed him.
“What’s the matter?”
Rincewind tried shutting his eyes, but there were no eyelids to his imagination and it was staring widely.
“Don’t you get scared of heights?” he managed to say.
Twoflower looked down at the tiny landscape, mottled with cloud shadows. The thought of fear hadn’t actually occurred to him.
“No,” he said. “Why should I? You’re just as dead if you fall from forty feet as you are from four thousand fathoms, that’s what I say.”
Rincewind tried to consider this dispassionately, but couldn’t see the logic of it. It wasn’t the actual falling, it was the hitting he…
Twoflower grabbed him quickly.
“Steady on,” he said cheerfully. “We’re nearly there.”