The witch stood up, leaving her body behind.
'Well done,' she said. 'I thought you'd missed it, for a minute, there.'
Mort leaned against a tree, panting heavily, and watched Goodie walk around the log to look at herself.
'Hmm,' she said critically. Time has got a lot to answer for.' She raised her hand and laughed to see the stars through it.
Then she changed. Mort had seen this happen before, when the soul realised it was no longer bound by the body's morphic field, but never under such control. Her hair unwound itself from its tight bun, changing colour and lengthening. Her body straightened up. Wrinkles dwindled and vanished. Her grey woollen dress moved like the surface of the sea and ended up tracing entirely different and disturbing contours.
re staying here, sir?' Death looked up and down the street. His eye-sockets flared.
I THOUGHT I MIGHT STROLL AROUND A BIT, he said mysteriously. I DON'T SEEM TO FEEL QUITE RIGHT. I COULD DO WITH THE FRESH AIR. He seemed to remember something, reached into the mysterious shadows of his cloak, and pulled out three hourglasses. ALL STRAIGHTFORWARD, he said. ENJOY YOURSELF.
He turned and strode off down the street, humming.
'Um. Thank you,' said Mort. He held the hourglasses up to the light, noting the one that was on its very last few grains of sand.
'Does this mean I'm in charge?' he called, but Death had turned the corner.
Binky greeted him with a faint whinny of recognition. Mort mounted up, his heart pounding with apprehension and responsibility. His fingers worked automatically, taking the scythe out of its sheath and adjusting and locking the blade (which flashed steely blue in the night, slicing the starlight like salami). He mounted carefully, wincing at the stab from his saddlesores, but Binky was like riding a pillow. As an afterthought, drunk with delegated authority, he pulled Death's riding cloak out of its saddlebag and fastened it by its silver brooch.
He took another look at the first hourglass, and nudged Binky with his knees. The horse sniffed the chilly air, and began to trot.
Behind them Cutwell burst out of his doorway, accelerating down the frosty street with his robes flying out behind him.
Now the horse was cantering, widening the distance between its hooves and the cobbles. With a swish of its tail it cleared the housetops and floated up into the chilly sky.
Cutwell ignored it. He had more pressing things on his mind. He took a flying leap and landed full length in the freezing waters of the horsetrough, lying back gratefully among the bobbing ice splinters. After a while the water began to steam. Mort kept low for the sheer exhilaration of the speed. The sleeping countryside roared soundlessly underneath. Binky moved at an easy gallop, his great muscles sliding under his skin as easily as alligators off a sandbank, his mane whipping in Mort's face. The night swirled away from the speeding edge of the scythe, cut into two curling halves.
They sped under the moonlight as silent as a shadow, visible only to cats and people who dabbled in things men were not meant to wot of.
Mort couldn't remember afterwards, but very probably he laughed.
Soon the frosty plains gave way to the broken lands around the mountains, and then the marching ranks of the Ramtops themselves raced across the world towards them. Binky put his head down and opened his stride, aiming for a pass between two mountains as sharp as goblins' teeth in the silver light. Somewhere a wolf howled.
Mort took another look at the hourglass. Its frame was carved with oak leaves and mandrake roots, and the sand inside, even by moonlight, was pale gold. By turning the glass this way and that, he could just make out the name 'Ammeline Hamstring' etched in the faintest of lines.
Binky slowed to a canter. Mort looked down at the roof of a forest, dusted with snow that was either early or very, very late; it could have been either, because the Ramtops hoarded their weather and doled it out with no real reference to the time of year.
A gap opened up beneath them. Binky slowed again, wheeled around and descended towards a clearing that was white with drifted snow. It was circular, with a tiny cottage in the exact middle. If the ground around it hadn't been covered in snow, Mort would have noticed that there were no tree stumps to be seen; the trees hadn't been cut down in the circle, they'd simply been discouraged from growing there. Or had moved away.
Candlelight spilled from one downstairs window, making a pale orange pool on the snow.
Binky touched down smoothly and trotted across the freezing crust without sinking. He left no hoofprints, of course.
Mort dismounted and walked towards the door, muttering to himself and making experimental sweeps with the scythe.
The cottage roof had been built with wide eaves, to shed snow and cover the logpile. No dweller in the high Ramtops would dream of starting a winter without a logpile on three sides of the house. But there wasn't a logpile here, even though spring was still a long way off.
There was, however, a bundle of hay in a net by the door. It had a note attached, written in big, slightly shaky capitals: FOR THEE HORS.
It would have worried Mort if he'd let it. Someone was expecting him. He'd learned in recent days, though, that rather than drown in uncertainty it was best to surf right over the top of it. Anyway, Binky wasn't worried by moral scruples and bit straight in.
It did leave the problem of whether to knock. Somehow, it didn't seem appropriate. Supposing no-one answered, or told him to go away?
So he lifted the thumb latch and pushed at the door. It swung inwards quite easily, without a creak.
There was a low-ceilinged kitchen, its beams at trepanning height for Mort. The light from the solitary candle glinted off crockery on a long dresser and flagstones that had been scrubbed and polished into iridescence. The fire in the cave-like inglenook didn't add much light, because it was no more than a heap of white ash under the remains of a log. Mort knew, without being told, that it was the last log.