wonât he,â crooned Nanny Ogg, picking up Greebo. He hung limply, like a bag of water gripped around the middle.
To Nanny Ogg Greebo was still the cute little kitten that chased balls of wool around the floor.
To the rest of the world he was an enormous tomcat, a parcel of incredibly indestructible life forces in a skin that looked less like a fur than a piece of bread that had been left in a damp place for a fortnight. Strangers often took pity on him because his ears were non-existent and his face looked as though a bear had camped on it. They could not know that this was because Greebo, as a matter of feline pride, would attempt to fight or rape absolutely anything, up to and including a four-horse logging wagon. Ferocious dogs would whine and hide under the stairs when Greebo sauntered down the street. Foxes kept away from the village. Wolves made a detour.
âHeâs an old softy really,â said Nanny.
Greebo turned upon Granny Weatherwax a yellow-eyed stare of self-satisfied malevolence, such as cats always reserve for people who donât like them, and purred. Greebo was possibly the only cat who could snigger in purr.
âAnyway,â said Nanny, âwitches are supposed to like cats.â
âNot cats like him, theyâre not.â
âYouâre just not a cat person, Esme,â said Nanny, cuddling Greebo tightly.
Jason Ogg pulled Magrat aside.
âOur Sean read to me in the almanac where thereâs all these fearsome wild beasts in foreign parts,â he whispered. âHuge hairy things that leap out on travellers, it said. Iâd hate to think whatâd happen if they leapt out on mum and Granny.â
Magrat looked up into his big red face.
âYou will see no harm comes to them, wonât you,â said Jason.
âDonât you worry,â she said, hoping that he neednât. âIâll do my best.â
Jason nodded. âOnly it said in the almanac that some of them were nearly extinct anyway,â he said.
The sun was well up when the three witches spiralled into the sky. They had been delayed for a while because of the intractability of Granny Weatherwaxâs broomstick, the starting of which always required a great deal of galloping up and down. It never seemed to get the message until it was being shoved through the air at a frantic running speed. Dwarf engineers everywhere had confessed themselves totally mystified by it. They had replaced the stick and the bristles dozens of times.
When it rose, eventually, it was to a chorus of cheers.
The tiny kingdom of Lancre occupied little more than a wide ledge cut into the side of the Ramtop mountains. Behind it, knife-edge peaks and dark winding valleys climbed into the massive backbone of the central ranges.
In front, the land dropped abruptly to the Sto plains, a blue haze of woodlands, a broader expanse of ocean and, somewhere in the middle of it all, a brown smudge known as Ankh-Morpork.
A skylark sang, or at least started to sing. The rising point of Granny Weatherwaxâs hat right underneath it completely put it off the rhythm.
âI ainât going any higher,â she said.
âIf we go high enough we might be able to see where weâre going,â said Magrat.
âYou said you looked at Desiderataâs maps,â said Granny.
âIt looks different from up here, though,â said Magrat. âMore . . . sticking up. But I think we go . . . that way.â
âYou sure?â
Which was the wrong question to ask a witch. Especially if the person doing the asking was Granny Weatherwax.
âPositive,â said Magrat.
Nanny Ogg looked up at the high peaks.
âThereâs a lot of big mountains that way,â she said.
They rose tier on tier, speckled with snow, trailing endless pennants of ice crystals high overhead. No-one skiâd in the high Ramtops, at least for more than a few feet and a disappearing scream.
Hundreds of Years to Reform a Rake