The Queen halted the procession a few yards away.
“Ah, the brave girl,” she said. “Come to save her fiance, all alone? How sweet. Someone kill her.”
An elf spurred its horse forward, and raised its sword. Magrat gripped the battleaxe.
Somewhere behind her a bowstring slammed against wood. The elf jerked. So did one behind it. The arrow kept going, curving a little as it passed over one of the fallen Dancers.
Then Shawn Ogg's ragbag army charged out from under the trees, except for Ridcully, who was feverishly trying to rewind his crossbow.
The Queen did not look surprised.
“And there's only about a hundred of them,” she said. “What do you think, Esme Weatherwax? A valiant last stand? It's so beautiful, isn't it? I love the way humans think. They think like songs.”
“You get down off that horse!” Magrat shouted.
The Queen smiled at her.
Shawn felt it. Ridcully felt it. Ponder felt it. The glamour swept over them.
Elves feared iron, but they didn't need to go near it.
You couldn't fight elves, because you were so much more worthless than them. It was right that you should be so worthless. And they were so beautiful. And you weren't. You were always the one metaphorically picked last for any team, even after the fat kid with one permanently blocked runny nostril; you were always the one who wasn't told the rules until you'd lost, and then wasn't told the new rules; you were the one who always knew that everything interesting was happening to other people. All those hot self-consuming feelings were rolled together. You couldn't fight an elf. Someone as useless as you, as stolid as you, as human as you, could never win; the universe wasn't built like that-
Hunters say that, just sometimes, an animal will step out of the bushes and stand there waiting for the spear . . .
Magrat managed to half-raise the axe, and then her hand slumped to her side. She looked down. The correct attitude of a human before an elf was one of shame. She had shouted so coarsely at something as beautiful as an elf. . .
The Queen dismounted and walked over to her.
“Don't touch her,” said Granny.
The Queen nodded.
“You can resist,” she said. “But you see, it doesn't matter. We can take Lancre without a fight. There is nothing you can do about it. Look at the brave little army, standing like sheep. Humans are so enthusiastic.”
Granny looked at her boots.
“You can't rule while I'm alive,” she said.
“There's no trickery here,” said the Queen. “No silly women with bags of sweets.”
“You noticed that, did you?” said Granny. “Gytha meant well, I expect. Daft old biddy. Mind if I sit down?”
“Of course you may,” said the Queen. “You are an old woman now, after all.”
She nodded to the elves. Granny subsided gratefully on to a rock, her hands still tied behind her.
“That's the thing about witchcraft,” she said. “It doesn't exactly keep you young, but you do stay old for longer. Whereas you, of course, do not age,” she added.
“Indeed, we do not.”
“But I suspect you may be capable of being reduced.”
The Queen's smile didn't vanish, but it did freeze, as smiles do when their owner is not certain about what has just been said and isn't sure what to say next.
“You meddled in a play,” said Granny. “I believe you don't realize what you've done. Plays and books . . . you've got to keep an eye on the buggers. They'll turn on you. I mean to see that they do.” She nodded amicably at an elf covered in woad and badly tanned skins. “Ain't that so, Fairy Peaseblossom?”
The Queen's brows knotted.