The Fifth Elephant

by Terry Pratchett

  Right…

  He wasn’t sure how long it took him to get a feel for the cell, but a feel it was. He moved by inches, waving his arms ahead of him like a man practicing a very slow martial art against the darkness.

  Even then, the senses became unreliable in the total black. He followed the wall carefully, followed another wall, followed a wall which yielded, under his fingertips, the outline of a small door with a handle, and found the wall which had the stone slab against it on which he’d awoken.

  What made this all the harder was having to do this with his head sunk against his chest. Vimes wasn’t a very tall man. If he had been, he’d probably have cracked his skull when he woke up.

  Without any other aids to rely on, he walked the length of the walls using his copper’s pace. He knew exactly how long it took him, swinging his legs easily, to walk across the Brass Bridge back home. A little bit of muzzy mental arithmetic was needed, but eventually he decided that the room was ten feet square.

  One thing that Vimes did not do was shout “Help! Help!” He was in a cell. Someone had put him in a cell. It was reasonable to assume, therefore, that whoever had done this wasn’t interested in his opinions.

  He groped his way to the stone slab again and lay down. As he did so, something rattled.

  His patted his pockets and brought out what felt and sounded very much like a box of matches. There were only three left.

  So…resources = the clothes he stood up in, and a few matches.

  Now to work out what the hell was going on.

  He remembered seeing the chandelier. He thought he remembered seeing Detritus actually catch the thing. And there had been a lot of screaming and shouting and running around, while in his arms the king swore at Vimes as only a dwarf could swear. Then someone had hit him.

  There was also an ache across his back where an ax had been turned aside by his armor. He felt a twitch of national pride at that thought. Ankh-Morpork armor had stood up to the blow! Admittedly, it was probably made in Ankh-Morpork by dwarfs from Uberwald, using steel smelted from Uberwald iron, but it damn well was Ankh-Morpork armor, just the same.

  There was a pillow on the slab, made in Uberwald.

  As Vimes turned his head, the pillow went, very faintly, clink. This was a sound he didn’t associate with feathers.

  In the darkness, he picked up the sack and, after resorting to his teeth, managed to rip a hole in the heavy material.

  If what he drew up had ever been part of a bird, it wasn’t one Vimes would ever like to meet. It felt very much like Inigo’s One-Shot. A finger inserted very gingerly into the end told Vimes that it was loaded, too.

  Just one shot, he remembered. But it was one people didn’t know you had…

  On the other hand, the Tooth Fairy probably wasn’t responsible for putting it in the pillow, unless she’d been having to face some particularly difficult children lately.

  He slipped it back into the bag when he became aware of a light. It was the faintest glow, showing that the door contained a barred window and that there were shadowy figures on the other side of it.

  “Are you awake, Your Grace? This is very unfortunate.”

  “Dee?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve come to tell me this has all been some terrible mistake?”

  “Alas, no. I am convinced of your innocence, of course.”

  “Really? Me too,” growled Vimes. “In fact I’m so convinced of my innocence I don’t even know what it is I’m innocent of! Let me out or—”

  “—or you will stay in, I am afraid,” said Dee. “It is a very strong door. You are not in Ankh-Morpork, Your Grace. I will of course communicate your predicament to your Lord Vetinari as soon as possible, but I understand that the message tower has been badly damaged—”

  “My predicament is that you’ve locked me up! Why? I saved your king, didn’t I?”

  “There is…conflict…”

  “Someone let that chandelier down!”

  “Yes, indeed. A member of your staff, it appears.”

  “You know that can’t be true! Detritus and Littlebottom were with me when—”

  “Mister Skimmer was on your staff?”

  “He…Yes, but…I…he wouldn’t—”

  “I believe you have such a thing in Ankh-Morpork called the Guild of Assassins?” said Dee, calmly. “Correct me if I am wrong.”

  “He was up at the tower!”

  “The damaged tower?”

  “It was damaged before he—” Vimes stopped. “Why would he smash up one of the towers?”

  “I did not say he would,” said Dee. The flat calm was still there. “And then, Your Grace, it has been suggested that you gave a signal just before the thing came down…”

  “What?”

  “A hand to the cheek, or something. It has been suggested that you anticipated the event.”

  “The thing was swaying! Look, let me talk to Skimmer!”

  “Do you have supernatural powers, Your Grace?”

  Vimes hesitated.

  “He’s dead?”

  “We believe he became entangled in the winch mechanism in the process of releasing the chandelier. Three dwarfs were dead around him.”

  “He wouldn’t—”

  Vimes stopped again. Of course he wouldn’t. It’s just that he’s a member of this Guild we have, and you certainly know that, don’t you—

  Dee must have seen his expression.

  “Quite so, quite so. Everything will be investigated thoroughly. The innocent have nothing to fear.”

  The news that they have nothing to fear is guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of innocents everywhere.

  “What have you done with Sybil?”

  “Done, Your Grace? Why…nothing. We are not barbarians. We have heard nothing but good reports of your wife. She is upset, of course.”

  Vimes groaned. “And Detritus and Littlebottom?”

  “Well, of course they were under your command, Your Grace. And one is a troll and the other is…dangerously different. And that is why, and precisely for that reason, that they are under house arrest in your own embassy. We do respect the traditions of diplomacy, and we will not have it said that we have acted out of malice.” Dee sighed. “And then, of course, there is the other matter—”

  “Are you going to accuse me of stealing the Scone, too?”

  “You laid hands on the king.”

  Vimes stared. “Huh? A ton of candlestick was about to fall on him!”

  “This has been pointed out—”

  “And I’m imprisoned for saving him from an assassination attempt I planned?”

  “Are you?”

  “No! Look, the thing was coming down, what else should I have done? Tugged at the carpet and try to drag him away?”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. But precedent in this area is very clear. In 1345, when the king at the time fell into a lake, not one member of his staff dared touch him because of the ruling, and the subsequent finding was that they had acted correctly. It is forbidden to touch the king. I have of course explained to the conclave that this is not the Ankh-Morpork way, but…this is not Ankh-Morpork.”

  “I don’t need everyone reminding me about that!”

  “You will remain…our guest while investigations continue. Food and drink will be brought to you.”

  “And light?”

  “Of course. Excuse our lack of consideration. Stand back from the door, please. The guards with me are armed and they are…uncomplicated people.”

  The grille on the door was swung back. A glowing wire cage was put on the ledge.

  “What’s this? A sick glow-worm?”

  “It is a kind of beetle, yes. You will find that it will very soon seem quite bright. We are very accustomed to darkness.”

  “Look,” said Vimes, as the grille was shut again, “You know this is ridiculous! I…don’t know what the position is with Mister Skimmer, but I damn well intend to find out! And there’s the Scone th
eft, I’m pretty certain I’m close to working that out, too. If you let me return to the embassy, where else could I go?”

  “We would not wish to find out. You may just feel that life would be more pleasant in Ankh-Morpork.”

  “Really? And how would we get there?”

  “You may have friends in unexpected places.”

  Vimes thought of the evil little weapon in the pillow.

  “You will not be badly treated. This is our way,” said Dee. “I will return when I have news.”

  “Hey—”

  But Dee was a retreating shape in the crepid, almost-light.

  In Vimes’s cell, the glow beetle was doing its best. All it managed to achieve, though, was to turn the darkness into a variety of green shadows. You could find your way with it without walking into walls, but that was about the extent of it.

  One shot, that they didn’t know you had.

  That’d probably get him out of the door. Into a corridor. Underground. Full of dwarfs.

  On the other hand…it was amazing how the evidence could stack up against you when people wanted it to.

  Anyway, Vimes was an ambassador! What happened to diplomatic immunity? But that was hard to argue when you were faced by uncomplicated people with weaponry; there was a risk that they’d experiment to see if it was true.

  One shot they didn’t expect…

  Sometime later there was a rattling of keys and the door was pulled open. Vimes could make out the shape of two dwarfs. One was holding an ax, the other was bearing a tray.

  The dwarf with the ax motioned Vimes to step back.

  An ax wasn’t a good idea, Vimes considered. It was always the weapon of choice amongst dwarfs, but it wasn’t sensible in a confined space.

  He raised his hands and, as the other dwarf walked cautiously over to the stone slab, let them move toward the back of his neck.

  These dwarfs were nervous of him. Perhaps they didn’t see humans very often.

  They’d remember this one.

  “Want to see a trick?” said Vimes.

  “Grz’dak?”

  “Watch this,” said Vimes, and brought his hands around and shut his eyes just before the match flared.

  He heard the ax drop as its owner tried to cover his face. That was an unexpected bonus, but there wasn’t time to thank the god of desperate men. Vimes plunged forward, kicked as hard as he could, and heard an “oof” of expelled breath. Then he leapt into the patch of darkness that contained the other dwarf, found a head, spun around and rammed it into an unseen wall.

  The other dwarf was trying to get to his feet. Vimes fumbled for him in the gloom, pulled him up by his jerkin, and rasped: “Someone left me a weapon. They wanted me to kill you. Remember that. I could have killed you.”

  He punched the dwarf in the stomach. This was no time to play by the Marquis of Fantailler rules.*

  Then he turned, snatched the little cage containing the light beetle, and headed for the door.

  There was a feeling of passageway, stretching off in both directions. Vimes paused for just long enough to sense the draft on his face, and headed that way.

  Another glow beetle was hanging in a cage a little distance off. It illuminated, if such a bright word could be used for a light that merely made the darkness less black, a huge circular opening in which a fan turned lazily.

  The blades were so slow that Vimes was able to step between them, into the velvet cavern beyond.

  Someone really wants me dead, he thought, as he inched his way along the nearest invisible wall with his face to the draft. One shot they weren’t expecting…but someone was expecting it, weren’t they?

  If you want to get a prisoner out of the clink, then you gave him a key, or a file. You didn’t give him a weapon. A key might get him out; a weapon would get him killed.

  He stopped, one foot over emptiness. The glow beetle revealed a hole in the floor. It had the huge suckingness of depth.

  Then he gripped the beetle’s basket between his teeth, took a few steps back and completely misjudged the distance. He hit the other side of the hole with every rib, both arms flat on the floor beyond.

  A bit of Ankh-Morpork sense of humor hissed between his teeth.

  He scrabbled his way onto the cave floor and got his breath back. Then he took the one-shot out of his pocket, fired it into the floor, tossed it into the hole—it clattered and echoed for some time—and moved on, keeping his face toward the cold air.

  This wasn’t a tunnel anymore. It was the bottom of a shaft. But the green glow lit up something heaped in the middle.

  Vimes picked up a handful of snow and, when he looked up, a flake melted on his face.

  He grinned in the dark. The beetle light just caught the edge of the spiral stairs fixed to the rock.

  “Stairs” turned out to be a generous description. When the shaft had been cut, the dwarfs had made holes in the stone and hammered thick balks of timber into them. He tried one or two. They seemed sturdy enough. With care, he’d be able to scramble…

  He was a long way up before one snapped. He flung out his hands and caught the next one, his grip slipping on the wet wood. The glow beetle disappeared downward and Vimes, swinging back and forth from his precarious handhold, watched the circle of dim green light dwindle to a dot, and vanish.

  Then the realization crept over him that there was no way he would be able to pull himself up. His fingers were numb, but the rest of his entire life consisted of the amount of time they could maintain a grip on the clammy step above him.

  Call it a minute, perhaps.

  There were a lot of things that could profitably be done in a minute, but most of them couldn’t be done with no hands while hanging in darkness over a long drop.

  He lost his grip. A moment later he smacked into the spiral of logs one turn below, which parted company with the wall.

  Man and timber fell one more turn. Vimes landed with a rib-bending thump across one step, while those around it gave way. Rocking gently on the one tough log, he listened to the thuds and booms as the fallen timber continued to the bottom of the shaft.

  “———!” Vimes had intended to swear, but the fall had knocked the breath out of him.

  He hung like a folded pair of old trousers.

  It had been a long time since he’d slept. Whatever he’d been doing on the slab, it hadn’t been sleep. Normal sleep didn’t leave your mouth feeling as though glue had been poured into it.

  And only this morning the new ambassador for Ankh-Morpork had strolled out to present his credentials. Only this evening Ankh-Morpork’s commander of police had set out to solve a simple little theft. And now he was dangling halfway up a freezing shaft, with a few inches of old and unreliable wood between him and a brief trip to the next world.

  All he could hope for was that his whole life wasn’t going to pass before his eyes. There were some bits of it he didn’t want to remember.

  “Ah…Sir Samuel. Bad luck. You were doing so well.”

  He opened his eyes.

  A faint purple light just above him illuminated the form of the Lady Margolotta. She was sitting on empty space.

  “Can I give you a lift?” she said.

  Vimes shook his head, muzzily.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I really don’t like doing this,” said the vampire. “It’s so…expected of one. Oh dear. That rotten old log doesn’t look very—”

  The log snapped. Vimes landed spread-eagled on the turn below, but only for a moment. Several stairs broke and dropped him a further flight. This time, he caught hold of one and was, once again, dangling.

  Lady Margolotta descended regally.

  Far below, the broken wood boomed.

  “Now, in theory this might be an almost survivable way of getting back down,” said the vampire. “Unfortunately, I fear that the descending logs have smashed many of the ones below.”

  Vimes shifted. His handhold seemed secure. It might just be possible to pull himself up…


  “I knew you were behind this,” he muttered, trying to will some life into his shoulder muscles.

  “No, you didn’t. You knew that the Scone wasn’t stolen, though.”

  Vimes stared at the serenely floating shape.

  “The dwarfs wouldn’t think that—” he began. The log under him gave the little nasty movement that announces to any luckless passengers that it is about to land.

  Lady Margolotta drifted closer.

  “I know you hate vampires,” she said. “It’s quite usual, for your personality type. It’s the…penetrative aspect. But if I vas you, right now, I’d ask myself…do I hate them with all my life?”

  She held out a hand.

  “Just one bite’ll end all my troubles, eh?” Vimes snarled.

  “One bite would be one too many, Sam Vimes.”

  The wood cracked. She grabbed his wrist.

  If he’d thought about it at all, Vimes would have expected to be dangling from a vampire now. Instead, he was simply floating.

  “Don’t think of letting go,” said Margolotta, as they rose gently up the shaft.

  “One bite would be too many?” said Vimes. He recognized the mangled mantra. “You’re a…a teetotaler?”

  “Almost four years now.”

  “No blood at all?”

  “Oh yes. Animal. It’s rather kinder to them than slaughter, don’t you think? Of course, it makes them docile, but frankly a cow is unlikely ever to vin the Thinker of the Year award. I’m on a vagon, Mister Vimes.”

  “The wagon. We call it the wagon,” said Vimes weakly. “And…that replaces human blood?”

  “Like lemonade replaces vhisky. Believe me. However, the intelligent mind can find a…substitute.” The sides of the shaft dropped away and they were in clear, freezing air, which knifed through Vimes’s shirt. They drifted sideways a little, and then Vimes was dropped into knee-deep snow.

  “One of the better things about our dwarfs is that they don’t often try something new and they never let go of anything old,” said the vampire, hovering over the snow. “You weren’t hard to find.”

  “Where am I?” Vimes looked around at rocks and trees mounded in snow.