“Lady?”
Magrat reached out.
“Lady?”
Magrat's hands held a rusty iron helmet, with wings.
“Come dance at the wedding, lady.”
Magrat's hands closed on a well-endowed breastplate, with spikes.
Greebo, who had been tracking mice through a prone suit of armour, stuck his head out of a leg.
A change had come over Magrat. It showed in her breathing. She'd been panting, with fear and exhaustion. Then, for a few seconds, there was no sound of her breathing at all. And finally it returned. Slowly. Deeply. Deliberately.
Greebo saw Magrat, who he'd always put down as basically a kind of mouse in human shape, lift the hat with the wings on it and put it on her head.
Magrat knew all about the power of hats.
In her mind's ear she could hear the rattle of the chariots.
“Lady? We will bring your friends to sing to you.”
She turned.
The candlelight sparkled off her eyes.
Greebo drew back into the safety of his armour. He recalled a particular time when he'd leapt out on a vixen. Normally Greebo could take on a fox without raising a sweat but, as it turned out, this one had cubs. He hadn't found out until he chased her into her den. He'd lost a bit of one ear and quite a lot of fur before he'd got away.
The vixen had a very similar expression to the one Magrat had now.
“Greebo? Come here!”
The cat turned and tried to find a place of safety in the suit's breastplate. He was beginning to doubt he'd make it through the knight.
Elves prowled the castle gardens. They'd killed the fish in the ornamental pond, eventually.
Mr. Brooks was perched on a kitchen chair, working at a crevice in the stable wall.
He'd been aware of some sort of excitement, but it was involving humans and therefore of secondary importance. But he did notice the change in the sound from the hives, and the splintering of wood.
A hive had already been tipped over. Angry bees clouded around three figures as feet ripped through comb and honey and brood.
The laughter stopped as a white-coated, veiled figure appeared over the hedge. It raised a long metal tube.
No one ever knew what Mr. Brooks put in his squirter. There was old tobacco in it, and boiled-up roots, and bark scrapings, and herbs that even Magrat had never heard of. It shot a glistening stream over the hedge which hit the middle elf between the eyes, and sprayed over the other two.
Mr. Brooks watched dispassionately until their struggles stopped.
“Wasps,” he said.
Then he went and found a box, lit a lantern and, with great care and delicacy, oblivious to the stings, began to repair the damaged combs.
* * *
Shawn couldn't feel much in his arm anymore, except in the hot dull way that indicated at least one broken bone, and he knew that two of his fingers shouldn't be looking like that. He was sweating, despite being only in his vest and drawers. He should never have taken his chain-mail off, but it's hard to say no when an elf is pointing a bow at you. Shawn knew what, fortunately, many people didn't - chain-mail isn't much defence against an arrow. It certainly isn't when the arrow is being aimed between your eyes.
He'd been dragged along the corridors to the armoury. There were at least four elves, but it was hard to see their faces. Shawn remembered when the travelling Magic Lanthorn show had come to Lancre. He'd watched entranced as different pictures had been projected on to one of Nanny Ogg's bedsheets. The elf faces put him in mind of that. There were eyes and a mouth in there somewhere, but everything else seemed to be temporary, the elves' features passing across their faces like the pictures on the screen.