Read Online Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online Page A

pushed his hands past his head, and heaved.
    The soggy loam of Ankh-Morpork moved slightly.
    Windle paused out of habit to take a breath, and realized that there was no point. He pushed again. The end of the coffin splintered.
    Windle pulled it toward him and tore the solid pine like paper. He was left with a piece of plank which would have been a totally useless spade for anyone with un-zombie-like strength.
    Turning onto his stomach, tucking the earth around him with his impromptu spade and ramming it back with his feet, Windle Poons dug his way toward a fresh start.

    Picture a landscape, a plain with rolling curves.
    It’s late summer in the octarine grass country below the towering peaks of the high Ramtops, and the predominant colors are umber and gold. Heat sears the landscape. Grasshoppers sizzle, as in a frying pan. Even the air is too hot to move. It’s the hottest summer in living memory and, in these parts, that’s a long, long time.
    Picture a figure on horseback, moving slowly along a road that’s an inch deep in dust between fields of corn that already promise an unusually rich harvest.
    Picture a fence of baked, dead wood. There’s a notice pinned to it. The sun has faded the letters, but they are still readable.
    Picture a shadow, falling across the notice. You can almost hear it reading both the words.
    There’s a track leading off the road, toward a small group of bleached buildings.
    Picture dragging footsteps.
    Picture a door, open.
    Picture a cool, dark room, glimpsed through the open doorway. This isn’t a room that people live in a lot. It’s a room for people who live out-doors but have to come inside sometimes, when it gets dark. It’s a room for harnesses and dogs, a room where oil-skins are hung up to dry. There’s a beer barrel by the door. There are flagstones on the floor and, along the ceiling beams, hooks for bacon. There’s a scrubbed table that thirty hungry men could sit down at.
    There are no men. There are no dogs. There is no beer. There is no bacon.

    There was silence after the knocking, and then the flap-flap of slippers on flagstones. Eventually a skinny old woman with a face the color and texture of a walnut peered around the door.
    “Yes?” she said.
    T HE NOTICE SAID “M AN W ANTED .”
    “Did it? Did it? That’s been up there since before last winter!”
    I AM SORRY ? Y OU NEED NO HELP ?
    The wrinkled face looked at him thoughtfully.
    “I can’t pay more’n sixpence a week, mind,” it said.
    The tall figure looming against the sunlight appeared to consider this.
    Y ES , it said, eventually.
    “I wouldn’t even know where to start you workin,” either. We haven’t had any proper help here for three years. I just hire the lazy good-fornothin’s from the village when I want ’em.
    Y ES ?
    “You don’t mind, then?”
    I HAVE A HORSE .
    The old woman peered around the stranger. In the yard was the most impressive horse she’d ever seen. Her eyes narrowed.
    “And that’s your horse, is it?”
    Y ES .
    “With all that silver on the harness and everything?”
    Y ES .
    “And you want to work for sixpence a week?”
    Y ES .
    The old woman pursed her lips. She looked from the stranger to the horse to the dilapidation around the farm. She appeared to reach a decision, possibly on the lines that someone who owned no horses probably didn’t have much to fear from a horse thief.
    “You’re to sleep in the barn, understand?” she said.
    S LEEP ? Y ES . O F COURSE . Y ES , I WILL HAVE TO SLEEP .
    “Couldn’t have you in the house anyway. It wouldn’t be right.”
    T HE BARN WILL BE QUITE ADEQUATE , I ASSURE YOU .
    “But you can come into the house for your meals.”
    T HANK YOU .
    “My name’s Miss Flitworth.”
    Y ES .
    She waited.
    “I expect you have a name, too,” she prompted.
    Y ES . T HAT’S RIGHT .
    She waited again.
    “Well?”
    I’ M SORRY ?
    “What is your name?”
    The stranger stared at her for a moment, and then looked around