‘I’ve wanted to do something like this ever since I saw my first locomotive, commander,’ he said to Commander Vimes.

‘Yes,’ said Vimes, ‘that’s what I’m afraid of. So I must tell you that we work as a team or we become separate corpses.’ He pointed at the trees towering overhead in the deep cutting they were travelling through. ‘There is very little space in this damn cutting. Trees? Nothing but stiff weeds – remember that!’

‘I’m sure we could do it,’ said Moist. ‘Why not bring Detritus up top as well?’

‘No, he’s good on the ground, but he isn’t limber. Anyway, with Detritus on top of it I’m afraid the roof would pretty soon become the floor.’

The commander looked around and said, ‘The rest of you know your stations. Remember, we’re on this train to get the King back again. Guard him! Don’t bother about us on top.’

When he could speak to Vimes with nobody else listening, Moist said, ‘I know the rhythm of the train, but I’m no fighter, commander. Why choose me?’

‘Because, Mister Lipwig, you’d pay a king’s ransom in order to say that you fought on the roof of a train and I’ve seen you, you’re a bastard in close combat, worse than Nobby and he tends to bite their knees. I saw the corpses of the grags from that incident at the Quirm railhead. You can fight, if only in terror, but it’s true that the coward can often be the best fighter of all.’

As the sky grew pallid in the pre-dawn, the atmosphere on the train changed. The whole crew knew that they were now heading at top speed right into unfriendly territory. On every crag in the mountains of Uberwald you could see the lights of the Igors twinkling and wobbling in the darkness of the canyons, and green lightning flashed from gargoyle to gargoyle like spectres.

Moist had generally always kept away from the place. You got the occasional werewolf or zombie in Ankh-Morpork, of course, but in Uberwald they were commonplace. This was their place, with their rules – and that included the black ribboners, the slightly weird types who had sworn to shun the temptation to drink people’s blood and similar … But they were still weird, possibly even more so, drinking only cocoa and marching with banners and drums on every possible occasion. Arguably that was better than being taken to the crossroads and staked … again. The hand of Lady Margolotta was visible everywhere, and Moist knew that where you found her hand you would also find the hand of Vetinari.

But now there was menace in the air. Although Moist was, in fact, okay with menace, it was the thought of dying that was uppermost in his mind, and his little internal demon was shouting, ‘Hahaha! Remember that a life without danger is a life not worth living!’ And valiantly he stood by that assertion … though quite frankly he would rather have been standing on a beach in Quirm, if possible eating one of those really nice ice creams they made with a wafer-thin cone that crunched so beautifully as you bit into it. With strawberry sauce. And sprinkles.