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Weems might have had a room-temperature IQ, but he knew idiocy when he saw it. Gancia's eyes gleamed more than gold, and he appeared to be staring at Weems' left ear.
Weems looked desperately at the Luggage. It was still open invitingly, which was odd – you'd have thought all this shaking would have slammed the lid shut.
'We'd never carry it,' he suggested. 'It's too heavy,' he added.
'We'll damn well carry some of it!' shouted Gancia, and leapt towards the chest as the floor shook again.
The lid snapped shut. Gancia vanished.
And just in case Weems thought it was accidental the Luggage's lid snapped open again, just for a second, and a large tongue as red as mahogany licked across broad teeth as white as sycamore. Then it slammed shut again.
To Weem's further horror hundreds of little legs extruded from the underside of the box. It rose very deliberately and, carefully arranging its feet, shuffled around to face him. There was a particularly malevolent look about its keyhole, the sort of look that says 'Go on – make my day . . .'
He backed away and looked imploringly at Twoflower.
'I think it might be a good idea if you untied us,' suggested Twoflower. 'It's really quite friendly once it gets to know you.'
Licking his lips nervously, Weems drew his knife. The Luggage gave a warning creak.
He slashed through their bonds and stood back quickly.
'Thank you,' said Twoflower.
'I think my back'sh gone again,' complained Cohen, as Bethan helped him to his feet.
'What do we do with this man?' said Bethan.
'We take hish knife and tell him to bugger off,' said Cohen. 'Right?'
'Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!' said Weems, and bolted towards the cavemouth. For a moment he was outlined against the grey pre-dawn sky, and then he vanished. There was a distant cry of 'aaargh'.
The sunlight roared silently across the land like surf. Here and there, where the magic field was slightly weaker, tongues of morning raced ahead of the day, leaving isolated islands of night that contracted and vanished as the bright ocean flowed onwards.
The uplands around the Vortex Plains stood out ahead of the advancing tide like a great grey ship.
It is possible to stab a troll, but the technique takes practice and no-one ever gets a chance to practise more than once. Herrena's men saw the trolls loom out of the darkness like very solid ghosts. Blades shattered as they hit silica skins, there were one or two brief, flat screams, and then nothing more but shouts far away in the forest as they put as much distance as they could between themselves and the avenging earth.
Rincewind crept out from behind a tree and looked around. He was alone, but the bushes behind him rustled as the trolls lumbered after the gang.
He looked up.
High above him two great crystalline eyes focussed in atred of everything soft and squelchy and, above all, warm. Rincewind cowered in horror as a hand the size of a house rose, curled into a fist, and dropped towards him.
Day came with a silent explosion of light. For a moment the huge terrifying bulk of Old Grandad was a breakwater of shadow as the daylight streamed past. There was a brief grinding noise.
There was silence.
Several minutes passed. Nothing happened.
A few birds started singing. A bumblebee buzzed over the boulder that was Old Grandad's fist and alighted on a patch of thyme that had grown under a stone fingernail.
There was a scuffling down below. Rincewind slid awkwardly out of the narrow gap between the fist and the ground like a snake leaving a burrow.
He lay on his back, staring up at the sky past the frozen shape of the troll. It hadn't changed in any way, apart from the stillness, but already the eye started to play tricks. Last night Rincewind had looked at cracks in stone and seen them become mouths and eyes; now he looked at the great cliff face and saw the features become, like magic, mere blemishes in the rock.
'Wow!' he said.
That didn't seem to help. He stood up, dusted himself off, and looked around. Apart from the bumble bee, he was completely alone.
