Later, she asked for a doggy bottle.
Mr. Brooks the beekeeper ladled some greenish, foul smelling liquid out of the saucepan that was always simmering in his secret hut, and filled his squirter.
There was a wasps' nest in the garden wall. It'd be a mortuary by morning.
That was the thing about bees. They always guarded the entrance to the hive, with their lives if necessary. But wasps were adept at finding the odd chink in the woodwork around the back somewhere and the sleek little devils'd be in and robbing the hive before you knew it. Funny. The bees in the hive'd let them do it, too. They guarded the entrance, but if a wasp found another way in, they didn't know what to do.
He gave the plunger a push. A stream of liquid bubbled out and left a smoking streak on the floor.
Wasps looked pretty enough. But if you were for bees, you had to be against wasps.
There seemed to be some sort of party going on in the hall. He vaguely remembered getting an invitation but, on the whole, that sort of thing never really caught his imagination. And especially now. Things were wrong. None of the hives showed any signs of swarming. Not one.
As he passed the hives in the dusk he heard the humming. You got that, on a warm night. Battalions of bees stood at the hive entrance, fanning the air with their wings to keep the brood cool. But there was also the roar of bees circling the hive.
They were angry, and on guard.
There was a series of small weirs just on the borders of Lancre. Granny Weatherwax hauled herself up on to the damp woodwork, and squelched to the bank where she emptied her boots.
After a while a pointy wizard's hat drifted downriver, and rose to reveal a pointy wizard underneath it. Granny lent a hand to help Ridcully out of the water.
“There,” she said, “bracing, wasn't it? Seemed to me you could do with a cold bath.”
Ridcully tried to clean some mud out of his ear. He glared at Granny.
“Why aren't you wet?”
“I am.”
“No you're not. You're just damp. I'm wet through. How can you float down a river and just be damp?”
“I dries out quick.”
Granny Weatherwax glared up the rocks. A short distance away the steep road ran on to Lancre, but there were other, more private ways known to her among the trees,
“So,” she said, more or less to herself. “She wants to stop me going there, does she? Well, we'll see about that.”
“Going where?” said Ridcully.
“Ain't sure,” said Granny. “All I know is, if she don't want me to go there, that's where I'm going. But I hadn't bargained on you tumin' up and having a rush of blood to the heart. Come on.”
Ridcully wrung out his robe. A lot of the sequins had come off. He removed his hat and unscrewed the point.
Headgear picks up morphic vibrations. Quite a lot of trouble had once been caused in Unseen University by a former Archchancellor's hat, which had picked up too many magical vibrations after spending so much time on wizardly heads and had developed a personality of its very own. Ridcully had put a stop to this by having his own hat made to particular specifications by an Ankh-Morpork firm of completely insane hatters.
It was not a normal wizard hat. Few wizards have ever made much use of the pointy bit, except maybe to keep the odd pair of socks in it. But Ridcully's hat had small cupboards. It had surprises. It had four telescopic legs and a roll of oiled silk in the brim that extended downward to make a small but serviceable tent, and a patent spirit stove just above it. It had inner pockets with three days' supply of iron rations. And the tip unscrewed to dispense an adequate supply of spirituous liquors for use in emergencies, such as when Ridcully was thirsty.
Ridcully waved the small pointed cup at Granny.
“Brandy?” he said.
“What have you got on your head?”
Ridcully felt his pate gingerly.
“Urn . . .”
“Smells like honey and horse apples to me. And what's that thing?”