From its highest points, people said, you could see all the way to the rim of the world. 'Nac mac Feegle!' 'Ach, stickit yer trakkans!' 'Gie you sich a kickin'!' 'Bigjobs!' 'Dere c'n onlie be whin t'ousand!' 'Nac mac Feegle wha hae!' 'Wha hae yersel, ya boggin!' The little cup of valleys, glowing in the last shreds of evening sunlight, was the kingdom of Lancre. It would have been more impressive if they'd agreed on one before, but as it was it sounded as though every single small warrior had a battle cry of his very own and would fight anyone who tried to take it away from him. They lined up and looked down into the new place and then, weapons waving, raised a battle cry. None of them was more than six inches high. It was made up of very small blue men, some wearing pointy blue caps but most of them with their red hair uncovered. The shadow reached a flat rock that offered a magnificent view of the fields and wood below, and there the army came out from among the roots. It was hard to see exactly what it was furze rippled, heather rustled, as if a very large army made of very small creatures was moving with one purpose. Far below, unheeded and unheeding, something else was entering this little handful of valleys. There were tiny fields, like a patchwork quilt thrown across the rocks. Against all reason there was a valley here, or a network of valleys, clinging to the edge of the mountains before the long fall to the plains. It shot out of the canyon at the top of a cliff, where meltwater from a glacier plunged down into a distant pool. Something still glided down the moonlit ribbon between the rocks. The fire was reflected off walls of blue ice as the light dropped into the beginnings of a canyon and thundered now through its twists and turns. Under it, the land itself started to fall away. Snow glowed briefly on the mountain slopes when it crackled overhead. Through the shredded black clouds a fire moved like a dying star, falling back to earth -the earth, that is, of the Discworld-but unlike any star had ever done before, it sometimes managed to steer its fall, sometimes rising, sometimes twisting, but inevitably heading down.
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