Part 29 (1/2)

Boamund looked at him. 'Such as?'

'Well,' Galahaut said, 'apparently, this b.u.t.ton here There was a whoos.h.i.+ng noise directly under them, and two vapour trails appeared behind the sleigh. A moment later there was a loud explosion in the sky to their rear.

'Heat-seeking rockets,' Galahaut said, 'disguised as giftwrapped golf umbrellas. And this . . .'

He got no further with his sentence; the air was filled with thick, rolling black clouds which billowed away into their slipstream. Toenail finished the sentence for him.

'Smoke screen,' he said. 'Now, which of these is the machine-guns, and which is the rear wash-wipe?' He shrugged and pressed both.

When the smoke cleared, there were only seven sleighs following them. Boamund grabbed the instruction manual and started flicking through it.

'Jet boost,' he said. 'Hey, tally, what does that .

Before Galahaut could answer, the sleigh was hurled across the sky like a fast leg-break. Boamund only managed to stay in it by clinging on to the strap of a sleigh-bell.

'Nice one,' Galahaut said, as he hauled him back into the c.o.c.kpit. 'Won't be long before they've closed in, though. They're pretty nippy, those sleighs.' He looked at the dwarf thoughtfully. 'We're carrying too much weight,' he said. 'We could do with lightening this thing up a bit, really.'

Toenail didn't speak; he put his arms round one of the bags of socks and set his face into a grim expression. Galahaut shrugged, said that it was just a suggestion, and looked over Boamund's shoulder at the manual.

'Anti-aircraft mines,' he read. 'Don't see that myself, do you?'

'Does no harm to try.'

'All right.'

They pressed the b.u.t.ton together, and at once the rear cargo-door of the sleigh flew open, scattering hundreds of little brightly-wrapped parcels which hung in the air on tiny individual parachutes. A few minutes later, as the lead pursuit sleigh pa.s.sed through the floating cloud, they found out how that one worked.

'That's about it,' Galahaut said wistfully. 'And there's still five of them following us.'

'There's still this b.u.t.ton here.'

'I'd leave that alone if I were you.'

'Ejector seat,' Boamund read aloud. 'I wonder what that does?'

Toenail hit the surface of the ice, and bounced.

The sackful of socks burst under him, scattering its contents, and he slid for a while on his stomach until he came to rest in a snowdrift. He picked himself up slowly andTom Holt examined the punctured sack. There was just one pair of nicks left in it.

Then he lifted his head and looked up at the sky. Without the dwarf s weight, the knights' sleigh was moving faster, drawing rapidly away from its pursuers. He stood and watched a,, the chase screamed away over the skyline.

Oddly enough, in the middle of the ice floe there was a signpost.

Hammerfest 1200 On, it said, and pointed.

The dwarf put his hand down into the pillow case and drew out the remaining pair of socks. Slowly he unravelled them, found the label and read it. The lettering was faint, worn away by incessant laundry, but after a while he was able to make out the words.

MADE IN SYRIA. 100% COTTON. HAND-WASH ONLY.

He grinned, stuffed the socks into his satchel, and began to walk.

Von Weinacht reined in his sleigh, leant forward and shook his fist at the tiny speck on the horizon.

'Next time, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!' he yelled. 'Next time!'

242.

Exit Ken Barlow, pursued by a bear.

The ghost looked at the page in front of him, wrinkled his broad, insubstantial forehead, and crossed out what he'd just written. No good; start again.

The Rovers Return. Alf Roberts and Percy Sugden are leaning against the bar.

Alfa ? he way 1 see it, Percy, there's a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, you understand, well - you could 6e on to a good thing there.

Percy: Im with you all the way there, Councillor. 1 was saying to Mrs Bishop just the other day, if you don't grab hold of your opportunities in this life, you're bound in shallows and in miseries, like.

No. Something lacking there. Not punchy enough.

The ghost drew a line through it and noticed that the sheet of paper was completely full. He scowled irritably; a perfectly good sheet of A4 down the plughole, and nothing to show for it.

In the hall, the old clock whirred, hesitated for a moment and struck thirteen times.

Funny, the ghost reflected, how it did that. It always had, ever since he could remember, and it had always aggravated him beyond measure. Ironic, really, that the only piece of original furniture in the whole place should be that knackered old clock. Why they couldn't get one of those smart new digital affairs was beyond him.

He wrenched his mind back to work, bit the end of his pen, spat out a fragment of quill, and wrote: The Rovers Return. Vera, Ivy and Gail sharing a table.

Vera: Well, here we all are again, like. Raining cats and dogs outside, an' all.

Another thing which had always annoyed him was the way his concentration tended to waver when he came to a sticky bit. Instead of pulling himself together and getting down to it, he had this tendency to let his mind wander away from the job in hand to quite irrelevant and unimportant things, like why that b.l.o.o.d.y clock had never worked, not since the day . . .

He strolled into the hall, trying to hear Vera's voice in his head. What would the confounded woman be likely to say? She's come home after a hard day, gone down the pub, run into her best friend and her best friend's daughter-in-law . . .

Maybe it was the pendulum. It wasn't the escapement; he'd had that out and in pieces all over the kitchen table that time he'd had a block with t.i.tus Andronicus. But the pendulum was something he hadn't considered. If the pony thing was out of true - the weight not balanced right, or whatever - that might well account for it.

Maybe he shouldn't start the scene with Vera at all. Maybe two courtiers . . .

First Courtier: They say Jack Duckworth's been off his feed lately.

Second Courtier: Perhaps he hasn't heard that their Terry's in trouble with the police over that vanload of stolen eiderdowns that was found round the back of Rosamund Street . . .

Nah.

He opened the door of the clock and looked inside.

There were his initials, where he'd scratched them on the case when he was twelve. There was the stain where he'd hidden the rabbits he'd had off the Squire's back orchard, the night Sir John Falstaff s men had got a warrant to raid the place. Happy days.

He reached in and located the pendulum. Seemed all right, not loose or anything. Maybe it's the . . .