The horse pounded surefooted along the tunnels, leaping sudden slides of rubble and adroitly sidestepping huge stones as they thundered down from the straining roof. Rincewind, clinging on grimly, looked behind them.
No wonder the horse was moving so swiftly. Close behind, speeding through the flickering violet light, were a large ominous-looking chest and a picture box that skittered along dangerously on its three legs. So great was the ability of sapient pearwood to follow its master anywhere, the gravegoods of dead emperors had traditionally been made of it…
They reached the outer air a moment before the octagonal arch finally broke and smashed into the flags.
The sun was rising. Behind them a column of dust rose as the temple collapsed in on itself, but they did not look back. That was a shame, because Twoflower might have been able to obtain pictures unusual even by Discworld standards.
There was a movement in the smoking ruins. They seemed to be growing a green carpet. Then an oak tree spiraled up, branching out like an exploding green rocket, and was in the middle of a venerable copse even before the tips of its aged branches had stopped quivering. A beech burst out like a fungus, matured, rotted, and fell in a cloud of tinder dust amid its struggling offspring. Already the temple was a half-buried heap of mossy stones.
But Time, having initially gone for the throat, was now setting out to complete the job. The boiling interface between decaying magic and ascendant entropy roared down the hill and overtook the galloping horse, whose riders, being themselves creatures of Time, completely failed to notice it. But it lashed into the enchanted forest with the whip of centuries.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” observed a voice by Rincewind’s knee as the horse cantered through the haze of decaying timber and falling leaves.
The voice had an eerie metallic ring to it. Rincewind looked down at Kring the sword. It had a couple of rubies set in the pommel. He got the impression they were watching him.
From the moorland rimward of the wood they watched the battle between the trees and Time, which could only have one ending. It was a sort of cabaret to the main business of the halt, which was the consumption of quite a lot of a bear which had incautiously come within bowshot of Hrun.
Rincewind watched Hrun over the top of his slab of greasy meat. Hrun going about the business of being a hero, he realized, was quite different to the wine-bibbing, carousing Hrun who occasionally came to Ankh-Morpork. He was cat-cautious, lithe as a panther, and thoroughly at home.
And I’ve survived Bel-Shamharoth, Rincewind reminded himself. Fantastic.
Twoflower was helping the hero sort through the treasure stolen from the temple. It was mostly silver set with unpleasant purple stones. Representations of spiders, octopi and the tree-dwelling octarsier of the Hubland wastes figured largely in the heap.
Rincewind tried to shut his ears to the grating voice beside him. It was no use.
“—and then I belonged to the Pasha of Re’durat and played a prominent part in the battle of the Great Nef, which is where I received the slight nick you may have noticed some two-thirds of the way up my blade,” Kring was saying from its temporary home in a tussock. “Some infidel was wearing an octiron collar, most unsporting, and of course I was a lot sharper in those days and my master used to use me to cut silk handkerchiefs in midair and—am I boring you?”
“Huh? Oh, no, no, not at all. It’s all very interesting,” said Rincewind, with his eyes still on Hrun. How trustworthy would he be? Here they were, out in the wilds, there were trolls about…
“I could see you were a cultured person,” Kring went on. “So seldom do I get to meet really interesting people, for any length of time, anyway. What I’d really like is a nice mantelpiece to hang over, somewhere nice and quiet. I spent a couple of hundred years on the bottom of a lake once.”
“That must have been fun,” said Rincewind absently.
“Not really,” said Kring.
“No, I suppose not.”
“What I’d really like is to be a plowshare. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like an existence with some point to it.”
Twoflower hurried over to the wizard.
“I had a great idea,” he burbled.
“Yah,” said Rincewind, wearily. “Why don’t we get Hrun to accompany us to Quirm?”
Twoflower looked amazed. “How did you know?” he said.
“I just thought you’d think it,” said Rincewind.
Hrun ceased stuffing silverware into his saddlebags and grinned encouragingly at them. Then his eyes strayed back to the Luggage.
“If we had him with us, who’d attack us?” said Twoflower.
Rincewind scratched his chin. “Hrun?” he suggested.
“But we saved his life in the Temple!”
“Well, if by attack you mean kill,” said Rincewind, “I don’t think he’d do that. He’s not that sort. He’d just rob us and tie us up and leave us for the wolves, I expect.”