Mort

'What'd he do it all for?' he said.

Albertgrunted. 'Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?'

Mort thought for a moment.

'No,' he said eventually, 'what?'

There was silence.

Then Albert straightened up and said, 'Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right.'

'He said I could go out with him tonight,' said Mort.

'You're a lucky boy then, aren't you,' said Albert vaguely, heading back for the cottage.

'Did he really make all this?' said Mort, tagging along after him.

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'I suppose he wanted somewhere where he could feel at home.'

'Are you dead, Albert?'

'Me? Do I look dead?' The old man snorted when Mort started to give him a slow, critical look, 'and you can stop that. I'm as alive as you are. Probably more.'

'Sorry.'

'Right.' Albert pushed open the back door, and turned to regard Mort as kindly as he could manage.

'It's best not to ask all these questions,' he said, 'it upsets people. Now, how about a nice fry-up?'

The bell rang while they were playing dominoes. Mort sat to attention.

'He'll want the horse made ready,' said Albert. 'Come on.'

They went out to the stable in the gathering dusk, and Mort watched the old man saddle up Death's horse.

'His name's Binky,' said Albert, fastening the girth. 'It just goes to show, you never can tell.'

Binky tried to eat his scarf in an affectionate way.

Mort remembered the woodcut in his grandmother's almanack, between the page on planting times and the phases of the moon section, showing Dethe the Great Levyller Comes To Alle Me

'I would have thought something like Fang or Sabre or Ebony,' Albert continued, 'but the master will have his little fancies, you know. Looking forward to it, are you?'

'I think so,' said Mort uncertainly. 'I've never seen Death actually at work.'

'Not many have,' said Albert. 'Not twice, at any rate.'

Mort took a deep breath.

'About this daughter of his —' he began.

AH, GOOD EVENING, ALBERT, BOY.

'Mort,' said Mort automatically.

Death strode into the stable, stooping a little to clear the ceiling. Albert nodded, not in any subservient way, Mort noticed, but simply out of form. Mort had met one or two servants, on the rare occasions he'd been taken into town, and Albert wasn't like any of them. He seemed to act as though the house really belonged to him and its owner was just a passing guest, something to be tolerated like peeling paintwork or spiders in the lavatory. Death put up with it too, as though he and Albert had said everything that needed to be said a long time ago and were simply content, now, to get on with their jobs with the minimum of inconvenience all around. To Mort it was rather like going for a walk after a really bad thunderstormy thing was quite fresh, nothing was particularly unpleasant, but there was the sense of vast energies just expended.

Finding out about Albert tagged itself on to the end of his list of things to do.

HOLD THIS, said Death, and pushed a scythe into his hand while he swung himself up on to Binky. The scythe looked normal enough, except for the blade: it was so thin that Mort could see through it, a pale blue shimmer in the air that could slice flame and chop sound. He held it very carefully.

RIGHT, BOY, said Death. COME ON UP. ALBERT. DON'T WAIT UP.

The horse trotted out of the courtyard and into the sky.

There should have been a flash or rush of stars. The air should have spiralled and turned into speeding sparks such as normally happens in the common, everyday trans-dimensional hyper-jumps. But this was Death, who has mastered the art of going everywhere without ostentation and could slide between dimensions as easily as he could slip through a locked door, and they moved at an easy gallop through cloud canyons, past great billowing mountains of cumulus, until the wisps parted in front of them and the Disc lay below, basking in sunlight.

THAT'S BECAUSE TIME IS ADJUSTABLE, said Death, when Mort pointed this out. IT'S NOT REALLY IMPORTANT.

'I always thought it was.'

PEOPLE THINK IT'S IMPORTANT ONLY BECAUSE THEY INVENTED IT, said Death somberly. Mort considered this rather trite, but decided not to argue.

'What are we going to do now?' he said.

THERE'S A PROMISING WAR IN KLATCHISTAN, said Death. SEVERAL PLAGUE OUTBREAKS. ONE RATHER IMPORTANT ASSASSINATION, IF YOU'D PREFER.

'What, a murder?'

AYE, A KING.

'Oh, kings,' said Mort dismissively. He knew about kings. Once a year a band of strolling players, or at any rate ambling ones, came to Sheepridge and the plays they performed were invariably about kings. Kings were always killing one another, or being killed. The plots were quite complicated, involving mistaken identity, poisons, battles, long-lost sons, ghosts, witches and, usually, lots of daggers. Since it was clear that being a king was no picnic it was amazing that half the cast were apparently trying to become one. Mort's idea of palace life was a little hazy, but he imagined that no one got much sleep.

'I'd quite like to see a real king,' he said. 'They wear crowns all the time, my gra

Death considered this carefully.

THERE'S NO TECHNICAL REASON WHY NOT, he conceded. IN MY EXPERIENCE, HOWEVER, IT IS GENERALLY NOT THE CASE.

The horse wheeled, and the vast flat checkerboard of the Sto plain sped underneath them at lightning speed. This was rich country, full of silt and rolling cabbage fields and neat little kingdoms whose boundaries wriggled like snakes as small, formal wars, marriage pacts, complex alliances and the occasional bit of sloppy cartography changed the political shape of the land.

'This king,' said Mort, as a forest zipped beneath them, 'is he good or bad?'

I NEVER CONCERN MYSELF WITH SUCH THINGS, said Death. HE'S NO WORSE THAN ANY OTHER KING, I IMAGINE.

'Does he have people put to death?' said Mort, and remembering who he was talking to added, 'Saving y' honour's presence, of course.'

SOMETIMES. THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU HAVE TO DO, WHEN YOU'RE A KING.

A city slid below them, clustered around a castle built on a rock outcrop that poked up out of the plain like a geological pimple. It was one huge rock from the distant Ramtops, Death said, left there by the retreating ice in the legendary days when the Ice Giants waged war on the gods and rode their glaciers across the land in an attempt to freeze the whole world. They'd given up in the end, however, and driven their great glittering flocks back to their hidden lands among the razor-backed mountains near the Hub. No one on the plains knew why they had done this; it was generally considered by the younger generation in the city of Sto Lat, the city around the rock, that it was because the place was dead boring.