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#i don’t think this is what pterry meant by ‘a man’s not dead while his name is still spoken’
thestuffedalligator · 11 months
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It’s not a Discworld joke unless you read it, don’t parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like “It’s a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlova” and you scream Terry’s name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is he’ll hear it.
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i-ate-nt-dead · 5 years
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Sand Music - A Discworld Fic
Submitted by Ean Morgan.
Just a short story I wrote based off the events in Sir Terry Pratchett’s “Soul Music”. The Klatchian Foreign Legion, etc. belong to PTerry, “A Horse With No Name” belongs to Dewey Bunnell/the band America, the other characters are mine. The instrument is a washtub bass. Suitable for everyone. Footnotes at the end. 
Somewhere in the Klatchian Desert…
Private Medium always struggled with this part. He liked music, at least, he thought he did, but he could never remember far enough into anything to really get a tune going. Most nights he still worked at the harmonica because it seemed appropriate, for some reason, to have a harmonica playing at night in the lonely desert, even if it was just the same few notes over and over.
Tonight, though, he felt different.
He wanted music, real music. And a harmonica just…wasn’t right. Not for what he was feeling. Sure, it was great for the old standby ‘Going Into The Klatchian Foreign Legion To Forget Everything, Don’t Mourn Me’ (which never had the same tune twice) but it lacked….something.
Now he was staring at his creation, trying to get the nerve to try it. He wasn’t really sure how he made it or why but this didn’t bother him because he was used to forgetting things.
It had started with him sitting on the metal washtub1 drumming his heels. It had made a small 'bonk, bonk’ sound and when he’d gotten up, the metal had flexed outward, free of his weight, with a 'fwumb’ noise. And somehow, all of that had led to him standing here, holding a notched spearbutt on the metal edge, tied to one of Private Hang Dry’s bootlaces which was nailed to the washtub.
It looked pointless. Something, though, something made him ease back on the spear haft like it was the lever of some complicated siege weapon and tentatively pluck the string.
It made a very satisfying 'bwomp’ noise. He pulled back harder and tried again. “Bwamp,” went the string. He could feel his brain struggling to remember this, to put it together. And for some reason, he could. The tighter the string, the higher the note, he reasoned.
“Bwomm, bwom, bwompp, bwomp, bwamp, bwam!” sang the string as he dragged it up something like a scale. He looked around. Hang Dry, who had forgotten Medium had borrowed his bootlace, was sitting on the floor, boot in hand, staring at him. Sand trickled out of the forgotten boot. Detatchable Collar and Made Under The Eye of Om were handing the Sergeant2 the daily paperwork3, but they were staring at him as well. No one seemed inclined to stop him, though.
He stared at the dirty walls, then closed his eyes and thought, for some reason, of a stranger he couldn’t quite remember and an endless desert of black sand…. His hands moved.
After a series of soft twangs, accompanied by the cymbal-like hiss of sand falling out of Hang Dry’s bootlace onto the metal, Medium began to sing in a not terribly pure voice.
“He came through the desert on a horse with no name…”
“It had a name.”
“What?” Medium’s eyes popped open. Corporal Wash With Care was up on the wall, staring out at the desert. The moonlight reflected in his eyes as he turned to look at Medium.
“The horse, it had a name.”
Medium was irritated. “How do you know what horse I’m singing about?”
“All horses have a name,” said Om, but he sounded doubtful of this. “Stands to reason.”
“What, like us?” groused Collar, popping his.
“Alright, gents,” said the Sergeant but without any real feeling. Wash went back to staring over the wall. He was looking at the fresh graves just over the next dune.
“What was its name, then?” Medium asked once the Sergeant had gone back to shuffling his one piece of paper around the desk in an important sort of way. He was expecting to hear, 'I don’t know.’
“It…started with a B. The…” He hesitated before calling him a man because the word didn’t seem right. “The person who was here. For awhile.” His brow furrowed. “Maybe he told me. A white horse. Started with a B.” His voice trailed away.
Anywhere else this would not have been a remotely sufficient answer. But for the Klatchian Foreign Legion, this was practically an oral history. There wasn’t much room for complaint about names from men who took theirs from clothing labels.4
Medium began plucking at his makeshift instrument again.
“He came through the desert on a horse that started with B…” He paused a moment for contemplation. “The black desert’s like a not very wet sea…” He looked around self-consciously. Hang Dry nodded encouragingly.
“In the Klatchian Foreign Legion you can’t remember your name but there’s lots of angry D'regs here to give you some pain.” He launched into some vaguely musical 'la la la’s and several others joined in on the basis that no one can complain if they don’t know how it goes either. The string bounced and vibrated.
Medium concentrated, his hands moving of their own accord. There was a black desert and a white horse and a man in black…
“On the first part of the journey, I think I’d just lost my life…” There was a voice like something carved in stone and all around him was…
“There was sand and….sand and rocks and things,” this didn’t sound very musical even to him, but he plowed on, “there was sand and hills and…things.” His eyes popped open. He didn’t want to think about or remember the things he had just seen hurrying over the sand, things with too many bits attached to them. He fumbled for several seconds, just letting the music happen without words.
Even Wash seemed to be listening. Medium thought he heard a toe tapping.
“The heat was hot,” he gabbled, “and the ground was dry and the air was full of arrows.” Some part of him knew this shouldn’t be considered music, deep down, but it stuck to you somehow and it was all true, after all, and men were listening and nodding their heads. Medium didn’t know the word 'catchy’ and would have forgotten it even if he had but that’s precisely what it was.  He launched into the part he’d already sang, since repeating things was what he was good at.
“He came through the desert on a horse that started with B, the black desert’s like a not very wet sea, in the Klatchian Foreign Legion you can’t remember your name but there’s lots of angry D'regs here to give you some pain.”
“La, la, la…” sang Wash, like a man half asleep.
“La, laa, la, la, la,” echoed Hang Dry, standing up, boot in hand.
For a few minutes there was only the sound of the men in the barracks 'la'ing along at various intervals and keys. If Medium could have described it, he would have said it felt like a Moment, with a capital M. Even the Sergeant was singing quietly, staring a hole through his desk.
As the music twanged under his fingertips, Medium felt that there was more there, waiting. More of the song, maybe more songs beyond that. The black desert in his mind was endless and there was music there, somewhere. A white horse, a black rider. A deep loneliness, a dead space, a void of love. In that Moment, his fingers hovered on the string and he felt a vast ocean of empty notes open before him, blowing like the dancing patterns of sand on the barracks floor. He could tumble into it, slide down the cascading sand into the surf of sound.
Twing!
Medium stopped playing. His eyes opened and he stared at the still quivering string as if he hadn’t seen it before. His gaze roamed up over the many pairs of eyes watching him.
“Sarge?” he quavered.
“What is it, Private?”
“What am I doing, Sarge?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” replied the Sergeant, who was used to this question, but often didn’t know the answer.
“There was music,” mumbled Medium, his fingers curling around the string. “And, er….then the Universe went 'twing’.”
“Hmm,” said the Sergeant. For all he knew, the Universe regularly went 'twing’. “Well, er, best you not worry about it too much,” he decided, in the firm tones of a man who fully expects to forget this conversation in its entirety. “Look at Private, er…”
“Ha…lf Dry?” said Hang Dry uncertainly when he realized the Sergeant was gesturing at him.
“Half Dry, yes, good man, look at Half Dry here, he’s emptying his boots of sand, good gesture, that man, why don’t you do that, you’ve got watch soon, I expect, when you can fill them up with more sand.”
“Yes, Sarge.”
Medium sat down next to Hang Dry and began unlacing his boots. The laces felt strange under his fingers and he felt a momentary desire to strum them. Next to him, Hang Dry was staring mournfully at his unlaced boot, trying to remember what was missing.
An hour later, when Air Dry came in and said, “Oy, what’s this thing under my hammock?” no one had any idea.
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1There was never enough water to wash with, so mostly it was used to store things people had forgotten what they were until someone remembered.
2Sergeants never have names anyway, so he’d never bothered to try to learn his from his clothing. For ease of reference, the other two were usually called Collar and Om, since no one could remember who Om was and only a handful of them remembered how to button on a collar.
3This was a single piece of paper with blurry orders on it that the sergeant would look at, go, “Hmm,” profoundly a few times and then tuck away carefully for the next night.
4This necessarily meant that 'Dry’ was something of a surname. Line Dry had been killed in the recent fighting, while Air Dry was currently standing watch.
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Sand Music - A Short Discworld Fic
Just a short story I wrote based off the events in Sir Terry Pratchett’s “Soul Music”. The Klatchian Foreign Legion, etc. belong to PTerry, “A Horse With No Name” belongs to Dewey Bunnell/the band America, the other characters are mine. The instrument is a washtub bass. Suitable for everyone. Footnotes at the end.
Somewhere in the Klatchian Desert...
Private Medium always struggled with this part. He liked music, at least, he thought he did, but he could never remember far enough into anything to really get a tune going. Most nights he still worked at the harmonica because it seemed appropriate, for some reason, to have a harmonica playing at night in the lonely desert, even if it was just the same few notes over and over.
Tonight, though, he felt different. 
He wanted music, real music. And a harmonica just...wasn't right. Not for what he was feeling. Sure, it was great for the old standby 'Going Into The Klatchian Foreign Legion To Forget Everything, Don't Mourn Me' (which never had the same tune twice) but it lacked....something.
Now he was staring at his creation, trying to get the nerve to try it. He wasn't really sure how he made it or why but this didn't bother him because he was used to forgetting things.
It had started with him sitting on the metal washtub1 drumming his heels. It had made a small 'bonk, bonk' sound and when he'd gotten up, the metal had flexed outward, free of his weight, with a 'fwumb' noise. And somehow, all of that had led to him standing here, holding a notched spearbutt on the metal edge, tied to one of Private Hang Dry's bootlaces which was nailed to the washtub.
It looked pointless. Something, though, something made him ease back on the spear haft like it was the lever of some complicated siege weapon and tentatively pluck the string.
It made a very satisfying 'bwomp' noise. He pulled back harder and tried again. “Bwamp,” went the string. He could feel his brain struggling to remember this, to put it together. And for some reason, he could. The tighter the string, the higher the note, he reasoned.
“Bwomm, bwom, bwompp, bwomp, bwamp, bwam!” sang the string as he dragged it up something like a scale. He looked around. Hang Dry, who had forgotten Medium had borrowed his bootlace, was sitting on the floor, boot in hand, staring at him. Sand trickled out of the forgotten boot. Detatchable Collar and Made Under The Eye of Om were handing the Sergeant2 the daily paperwork3, but they were staring at him as well. No one seemed inclined to stop him, though.
He stared at the dirty walls, then closed his eyes and thought, for some reason, of a stranger he couldn't quite remember and an endless desert of black sand.... His hands moved.
After a series of soft twangs, accompanied by the cymbal-like hiss of sand falling out of Hang Dry's bootlace onto the metal, Medium began to sing in a not terribly pure voice.
“He came through the desert on a horse with no name...”
“It had a name.”
“What?” Medium's eyes popped open. Corporal Wash With Care was up on the wall, staring out at the desert. The moonlight reflected in his eyes as he turned to look at Medium.
“The horse, it had a name.”
Medium was irritated. “How do you know what horse I'm singing about?”
“All horses have a name,” said Om, but he sounded doubtful of this. “Stands to reason.”
“What, like us?” groused Collar, popping his.
“Alright, gents,” said the Sergeant but without any real feeling. Wash went back to staring over the wall. He was looking at the fresh graves just over the next dune.
“What was its name, then?” Medium asked once the Sergeant had gone back to shuffling his one piece of paper around the desk in an important sort of way. He was expecting to hear, 'I don't know.'
“It...started with a B. The...” He hesitated before calling him a man because the word didn't seem right. “The person who was here. For awhile.” His brow furrowed. “Maybe he told me. A white horse. Started with a B.” His voice trailed away.
Anywhere else this would not have been a remotely sufficient answer. But for the Klatchian Foreign Legion, this was practically an oral history. There wasn't much room for complaint about names from men who took theirs from clothing labels.4
Medium began plucking at his makeshift instrument again.
“He came through the desert on a horse that started with B...” He paused a moment for contemplation. “The black desert's like a not very wet sea...” He looked around self-consciously. Hang Dry nodded encouragingly.
“In the Klatchian Foreign Legion you can't remember your name but there's lots of angry D'regs here to give you some pain.” He launched into some vaguely musical 'la la la's and several others joined in on the basis that no one can complain if they don't know how it goes either. The string bounced and vibrated.
Medium concentrated, his hands moving of their own accord. There was a black desert and a white horse and a man in black...
“On the first part of the journey, I think I'd just lost my life...” There was a voice like something carved in stone and all around him was...
“There was sand and....sand and rocks and things,” this didn't sound very musical even to him, but he plowed on, “there was sand and hills and...things.” His eyes popped open. He didn't want to think about or remember the things he had just seen hurrying over the sand, things with too many bits attached to them. He fumbled for several seconds, just letting the music happen without words.
Even Wash seemed to be listening. Medium thought he heard a toe tapping.
“The heat was hot,” he gabbled, “and the ground was dry and the air was full of arrows.” Some part of him knew this shouldn't be considered music, deep down, but it stuck to you somehow and it was all true, after all, and men were listening and nodding their heads. Medium didn't know the word 'catchy' and would have forgotten it even if he had but that's precisely what it was.  He launched into the part he'd already sang, since repeating things was what he was good at.
“He came through the desert on a horse that started with B, the black desert's like a not very wet sea, in the Klatchian Foreign Legion you can't remember your name but there's lots of angry D'regs here to give you some pain.”
“La, la, la...” sang Wash, like a man half asleep.
“La, laa, la, la, la,” echoed Hang Dry, standing up, boot in hand.
For a few minutes there was only the sound of the men in the barracks 'la'ing along at various intervals and keys. If Medium could have described it, he would have said it felt like a Moment, with a capital M. Even the Sergeant was singing quietly, staring a hole through his desk.
As the music twanged under his fingertips, Medium felt that there was more there, waiting. More of the song, maybe more songs beyond that. The black desert in his mind was endless and there was music there, somewhere. A white horse, a black rider. A deep loneliness, a dead space, a void of love. In that Moment, his fingers hovered on the string and he felt a vast ocean of empty notes open before him, blowing like the dancing patterns of sand on the barracks floor. He could tumble into it, slide down the cascading sand into the surf of sound.
Twing!
Medium stopped playing. His eyes opened and he stared at the still quivering string as if he hadn't seen it before. His gaze roamed up over the many pairs of eyes watching him.
“Sarge?” he quavered.
“What is it, Private?”
“What am I doing, Sarge?”
“What do you think you're doing?” replied the Sergeant, who was used to this question, but often didn't know the answer.
“There was music,” mumbled Medium, his fingers curling around the string. “And, er....then the Universe went 'twing'.”
“Hmm,” said the Sergeant. For all he knew, the Universe regularly went 'twing'. “Well, er, best you not worry about it too much,” he decided, in the firm tones of a man who fully expects to forget this conversation in its entirety. “Look at Private, er...”
“Ha...lf Dry?” said Hang Dry uncertainly when he realized the Sergeant was gesturing at him.
“Half Dry, yes, good man, look at Half Dry here, he's emptying his boots of sand, good gesture, that man, why don't you do that, you've got watch soon, I expect, when you can fill them up with more sand.”
“Yes, Sarge.”
Medium sat down next to Hang Dry and began unlacing his boots. The laces felt strange under his fingers and he felt a momentary desire to strum them. Next to him, Hang Dry was staring mournfully at his unlaced boot, trying to remember what was missing.
An hour later, when Air Dry came in and said, “Oy, what's this thing under my hammock?” no one had any idea.
1There was never enough water to wash with, so mostly it was used to store things people had forgotten what they were until someone remembered.
2Sergeants never have names anyway, so he'd never bothered to try to learn his from his clothing. For ease of reference, the other two were usually called Collar and Om, since no one could remember who Om was and only a handful of them remembered how to button on a collar.
3This was a single piece of paper with blurry orders on it that the sergeant would look at, go, “Hmm,” profoundly a few times and then tuck away carefully for the next night.
4This necessarily meant that 'Dry' was something of a surname. Line Dry had been killed in the recent fighting, while Air Dry was currently standing watch.
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