Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld Read Free

GO DOWNHILL VERY QUICKLY AT MIDNIGHT .
    ‘Why?’
    T HAT’S WHEN THEY THINK I’ LL BE TAKING MY MASK OFF .
    He vanished, leaving only a cocktail stick and a short paper streamer behind.
    *
    When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalized in generations of atlases such geographicaloddities as Just A Mountain, I Don’t Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
    *
    Cohen the Barbarian enters the Discworld canon:
    The barbarian chieftain said: ‘What then are the greatest things that a man may find in life?’
    The man on his right spoke thus: ‘The crisp horizon of the steppe, the wind in your hair, a fresh horse under you.’
    The man on his left said: ‘The cry of the white eagle in the heights, the fall of snow in the forest, a true arrow in your bow.’
    The chieftain nodded, and said: ‘Surely it is the sight of your enemy slain, the humiliation of his tribe and the lamentation of his women.’
    Then the chieftain turned respectfully to his guest, and said: ‘But our guest, whose name is legend, must tell us truly: what is it that a man may call the greatest things in life?’
    The warriors leaned closer. This should be worth hearing.
    The guest thought long and hard and then said, with deliberation: ‘Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.’
    *
    [He was] a very old man, the skinny variety that generally gets called ‘spry’, with a totally bald head, a beard almost down to his knees, and a pair of matchstick legs on which varicose veins had traced the street map of quite a large city …
    *
    ‘When I was a young man, carving my name in the world, well, then I liked my women red-haired and fiery’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘And then I grew a little older and for preference I looked for a woman with blonde hair and the glint of the world in her eye.’
    ‘Oh? Yes?’
    ‘But then I grew a little older again and I came to see the point of dark women of a sultry nature.’
    He paused. Rincewind waited.
    ‘And?’ he said. ‘Then what? What is it that you look for in a woman now?’
    Cohen turned one rheumy blue eye on him.
    ‘Patience,’ he said.
    *
    Cohen [had] .. . spent his life living rough under the sky [and] knew the value of a good thick book, which ought to outlast at least a season of cooking fires if you were careful how you tore the pages out. Many a life had been saved on a snowy night by a handful of sodden kindling and a really dry book. If you felt like a smoke and couldn’t find a pipe, a book was your man every time.
    Cohen realized people wrote things in books. It had always seemed to him to be a frivolous waste of paper.
    *
    ‘If you kill me a thousand will take my place,’ said the man, who was now backed against the wall.
    ‘Yes,’ said Cohen, in a reasonable tone of voice, ‘but that isn’t the point, is it? The point is, you’ll be dead.’
    *
    Greyhald Spold, currently the oldest wizard on the Disc and determined to keep it that way, has been very busy. The servants have been dismissed. The doorways have been sealed with a paste made from powdered mayflies, and protective octograms have been drawn on the windows. Rare and rather smelly oils have been poured in complex patterns on the floor; in the very centre of the room is the eightfold octogram of Withholding, surrounded by red and green candles. And in the centre of that is a box, lined with red silk and yet more protective amulets. Because Greyhald Spold knows that Death is looking for him, and has spent many years designing an impregnable hiding place.
    He has just set the complicated clockwork of the lock and shut the lid, lying back in the knowledge that here at last is the perfect defence against the most ultimate of all his