Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett Page A

arresting a witch. He was pretty certain, though, that the witch wouldn’t like the idea. He didn’t like the idea of a witch not liking the idea.
    The men were Ramtoppers as well. They werefollowing him very closely, ready to duck behind him at the first sign of anything more unexpected than a tree.
    Granny’s cottage was a fungoid shape in the mist. Her unruly herb garden seemed to move, even in the still air. It contained plants seen nowhere else in the mountains, their roots and seeds traded across five thousand miles of the Discworld, and the sergeant could swear that one or two blooms turned towards him. He shuddered.
    â€˜What now, Sarge?’
    â€˜We – we spread out,’ he said. ‘Yes. We spread out. That’s what we do.’
    They moved carefully through the bracken. The sergeant crouched behind a handy log, and said, ‘Right. Very good. You’ve got the general idea. Now let’s spread out again, and this time we spread out separately.’
    The men grumbled a bit, but disappeared into the mist. The sergeant gave them a few minutes to take up positions, then said, ‘Right. Now we—’
    He paused.
    He wondered whether he dared shout, and decided against it.
    He stood up. He removed his helmet, to show respect, and sidled through the damp grass to the back door. He knocked, very gently.
    After a wait of several seconds he clamped his helmet back on his head, said, ‘No-one in. Blast’, and started to stride away.
    The door opened. It opened very slowly, and with the maximum amount of creak. Simple neglect wouldn’t have caused that depth of groan; you’d need careful work with hot water over a period of weeks.The sergeant stopped, and then turned round very slowly while contriving to move as few muscles as possible.
    He had mixed feelings about the fact that there was nothing in the doorway. In his experience, doors didn’t just open themselves.
    He cleared his throat nervously.
    Granny Weatherwax, right by his ear, said, ‘That’s a nasty cough you’ve got there. You did right in coming to me.’
    The sergeant looked up at her with an expression of mad gratitude. He said, ‘Argle.’
    â€˜She did
what
?’ said the duke.
    The sergeant stared fixedly at an area a few inches to the right of the duke’s chair.
    â€˜She give me a cup of tea, sir,’ he said.
    â€˜And what about your men?’
    â€˜She give them one too, sir.’
    The duke rose from his chair and put his arms around the sergeant’s rusting chain mail shoulders. He was in a bad mood. He had spent half the night washing his hands. He kept thinking that something was whispering in his ear. His breakfast oatmeal had been served up too salty and roasted with an apple in it, and the crook had hysterics in the kitchen. You could tell the duke was extremely annoyed. He was polite. The duke was the kind of man who becomes more and more agreeable as his temper drains away, until the point is reached where the words ‘Thank you so much’ have the cutting edge of a guillotine.
    â€˜Sergeant,’ he said, walking the man slowly across the floor.
    â€˜Sir?’
    â€˜I’m not sure I made your orders clear, sergeant,’ said the duke, in snake tones.
    â€˜Sir?’
    â€˜I mean, it is possible I may have confused you. I meant to say “Bring me a witch, in chains if necessary”, but perhaps what I
really
said was “Go and have a cup of tea”. Was this in fact the case?’
    The sergeant wrinkled his forehead. Sarcasm had not hitherto entered his life. His experience of people being annoyed with him generally involved shouting and occasional bits of wood.
    â€˜No, sir,’ he said.
    â€˜I wonder why, then, you did not in fact do this thing that I asked?’
    â€˜Sir?’
    â€˜I expect she said some magic words, did she? I’ve heard about witches,’ said the duke, who had spent the night