“How can I forget?”
“Climb the ladder and grab a ring,” said the dragonrider, “then bring your feet up until the hooks catch.” He helped the protesting wizard climb until he was hanging upside down, robe tucked into his britches, Kring dangling from one hand. At this angle the dragonfolk looked reasonably bearable but the dragons themselves, hanging from their perches, loomed over the scene like immense gargoyles. Their eyes glowed with interest.
“Attention, please,” said Lio!rt. A dragonrider handed him a long shape, wrapped in red silk.
“We fight to the death,” he said. “Yours.”
“And I suppose I earn my freedom if I win?” said Rincewind, without much hope.
Lio!rt indicated the assembled dragonriders with a tilt of his head.
“Don’t be naive,” he said.
Rincewind took a deep breath. “I suppose I should warn you,” he said, his voice hardly quavering at all, “that this is a magic sword.”
Lio!rt let the red silk wrapping drop away into the gloom and flourished a jet-black blade. Runes glowed on its surface.
“What a coincidence,” he said, and lunged.
Rincewind went rigid with fright, but his arm swung out as Kring shot forward. The swords met in an explosion of octarine light.
Lio!rt swung himself backward, his eyes narrowing. Kring leapt past his guard and, although the dragonlord’s sword jerked up to deflect most of the force, the result was a thin red line across its master’s torso.
With a growl he launched himself at the wizard, boots clattering as he slid from ring to ring. The swords met again in another violent discharge of magic and, at the same time, Lio!rt brought his other hand down against Rincewind’s head, jarring him so hard that one foot jerked out of its ring and flailed desperately.
Rincewind knew himself to be almost certainly the worst wizard on the Discworld since he knew but one spell; yet for all that he was still a wizard, and thus by the inexorable laws of magic this meant that upon his demise it would be Death himself who appeared to claim him (instead of sending one of his numerous servants, as is usually the case).
Thus it was that, as a grinning Lio!rt swung back and brought his sword around in a lazy arc, time ran into treacle.
To Rincewind’s eyes the world was suddenly lit by a flickering octarine light, tinged with violet as photons impacted on the sudden magical aura. Inside it the dragonlord was a ghastly-hued statue, his sword moving at a snail’s pace in the glow.
Beside Lio!rt was another figure, visible only to those who can see into the extra four dimensions of magic. It was tall and dark and thin and, against a sudden night of frosty stars, it swung two-handed a scythe of proverbial sharpness…
Rincewind ducked. The blade hissed coldly through the air beside his head and entered the rock of the cavern roof without slowing. Death screamed a curse in his cold crypt voice. The scene vanished. What passed for reality on the Discworld reasserted itself with a rush of sound. Lio!rt gasped at the sudden turn of speed with which the wizard had dodged his killing stroke and, with that desperation only available to the really terrified, Rincewind uncoiled like a snake and launched himself across the space between them. He locked both hands around the dragonlord’s sword arm, and wrenched.
It was at that moment that Rincewind’s one remaining ring, already overburdened, slid out of the rock with a nasty little metal sound.
He plunged down, swung wildly, and ended up dangling over a bone-splintering death with his hands gripping the dragonlord’s arm so tightly that the man screamed.
Lio!rt looked up at his feet. Small flakes of rock were dropping out of the roof around the ring pitons.
“Let go, damn you!” he screamed. “Or we’ll both die!”
Rincewind said nothing. He was concentrating on maintaining his grip and keeping his mind closed to the pressing images of his fate on the rocks below.
“Shoot him!” bellowed Lio!rt.
Out of the corner of his eye Rincewind saw several crossbows leveled at him. Lio!rt chose that moment to flail down with his free hand, and a fistful of rings stabbed into the wizard’s fingers.
He let go.
Twoflower grabbed the bars and pulled himself up.
“See anything?” said Hrun, from the region of his feet.
“Just clouds.”
Hrun lifted him down again, and sat on the edge of one of the wooden beds that were the only furnishings in the cell. “Bloody hell,” he said.
“Don’t despair,” said Twoflower.
“I’m not despairing.”
“I expect it’s all some sort of misunderstanding. I expect they’ll release us soon. They seem very civilized.”
Hrun stared at him from under bushy eyebrows. He started to say something, then appeared to think better of it. He sighed instead.