Bigger-than-Small-Dave Dave along Peach Pie Street and I fell off that ledge?"
T HAT IS CORRECT.
"But I landed on that cart. I didn"t die!"
B UT YOU MIGHT HAVE DONE.
"But I thought we all had some kind of hourglass thing that said when we"re going to die?"
Now the roar was almost physical. Vimes redoubled his grip on the boat.
O H, YES. YOU DO , said Death.
"But we might not?"
N O. Y OU WILL. T HERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT.
"But you said - "
Y ES, IT IS A BIT HARD TO UNDERSTAND, ISN"T IT? A PPARENTLY THERE"S THIS THING CALLED THE TROUSERS OF TIME, WHICH IS QUITE ODD, BECAUSE TIME CERTAINLY DOESN"T -
The boat went over the waterfall.
Vimes had a thunderous sensation of pounding, thudding water, followed by the echoing ringing in his ears as he hit the pool below. He fought his way to what passed for the surface and felt the current take him, slam him into a rock and then roll him away in the white water.
He flailed blindly and caught another rock, his body swinging around into a pool of comparative calm. As he fought for breath he saw a grey shape leaping from stone to stone and then another dose of hell was unleashed as it landed, snarling, beside him.
He grabbed it desperately and hung on as it struggled to bite him. A paw flailed to gain purchase on the slippery stone and then, in sudden difficulties, responding automatically... it changed...
It was as if the wolf shape became small and a man shape became bigger, in the same space, at the same time, with a moment of horrible distortion as the two forms passed through one another.
And then there was that moment he"d noticed before, a second of confusion -
It was just long enough to ram the man"s head against the rock with every ounce of strength he could scrape together. Vimes thought he heard a crack.
Then he pushed himself back out into the current and let it carry him on, while he simply struggled to stay near the surface. There was blood in the water. He"d never killed someone with his bare hands before. Truth to tell, he"d never deliberately killed at all. There had been deaths, because when people are rolling down a roof and trying to strangle one another it"s sheer luck who is on top when they hit the ground. But that was different. He went to bed every night believing that.
His teeth were chattering and the bright sun made his eyes ache, but he felt... good.
He wanted to beat his chest and scream, in fact.
They"d been trying to kill him!
Make them stay wolves, said a little inner voice. The more time they spent on four legs the less bright they"d become.
A deeper voice, red and raw, from much, much further inside, said, Kill "em all!
The rage was boiling up now, fighting against the chill.
His feet touched bottom.
The river was broadening here, into something wide enough to be called a lake. A wide ledge of ice had crept out from the bank, covered here and there with blown snow. Fog drifted across it, fog with a sulphurous smell.
There were still cliffs on the far side of the river. A solitary werewolf, companion to the one now drifting on the current, was watching him from the nearest bank. Clouds were sliding across the sun and snow was falling again, in large, raggedy flakes.
Vimes waded to the rim of ice and tried to pull himself up out of the water, but it creaked ominously under his weight and cracks zigzagged across its surface.
The wolf came closer, moving with caution. Vimes made another desperate attempt, a slab of ice came free and tipped up, and he disappeared under the water. The creature waited a few moments and then inched further out over the ice, growling as fine cracks spread out like stars under its paws.