Discworld 39 - Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  Vimes saw Mr. False close his eyes and groan, but turned back to Feeney and said, “Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? The water? Going down?”

  “No, it isn’t, sir!” yelled Feeney. “It’s still raining hard and the water level is going down, and that means that upstream of us enough broken trees and bushes and mud and other junk are piling up to make a dam which is getting bigger and bigger and growing out sideways as the water builds up behind it, sir. Can you see what I mean?”

  Vimes did. “Damn slam?”

  Feeney nodded. “Damn right! We have two choices: would you rather die on the river or under it? What are your orders, please, sir?”

  Another collision shook the barge, and Vimes stared at darkness. In this terrible twilight somebody was managing to stop this boat from foundering. A woman had screamed and Vimes had a crowbar. Almost absent-mindedly he reached down into the open toolbox and picked up a sledgehammer, handing it to Feeney. “There you go, lad. I know you’ve got your official firewood, but things might get up close and personal. Chalk it up to the dreadful algebra of necessity, but try not to hit me with it.”

  He heard the voice of Feeney saying, more frantically this time, “What are we going to do, commander?!”

  And Vimes blinked and said, “Everything!”

  The wind caught the tarpaulin as Vimes pulled it open, and it flapped off across the river, leaving the complicated chicken farmer living in hope and broken eggs. They pulled themselves out into the darkness, their shadows dancing to the rhythm of the lightning. How the hell was the pilot navigating in all this? Lamps up front? Surely they could do nothing on a night like this except show up the darkness. But although there was a suspicion, at every bang and bounce, that the Fanny was in real trouble, Vimes could hear now the splashing of the paddle wheels like one solid dependable theme in the cacophony, a regular, reassuring sound. It was making way. There was some order in the world, but how could the pilot manage the chaos? How could you steer when you couldn’t see?

  Feeney had explained in a hurry and Vimes had expressed utter disbelief even faster. “It’s true, sir! He knows every bend in the river, he knows the wind, he knows how fast we’re going and has a stopwatch and an hourglass in reserve. He takes a turn when it’s time to take it. Okay, he’s shaving the banks a bit with the old Fanny, but she’s pretty tough.”

  They jumped together on to the last barge and found a hatch that was locked. However, a crowbar is a universal pass key. And there, under the hatch, were goblins, tied hand and foot, every one, and they had been stacked like cabbages. There were hundreds of them. Overwhelmed, Vimes looked around for Stinky, who turned out to be behind him.

  “Okay, my friend, over to you. We’ll cut them loose, certainly, but I wouldn’t mind a bit of reassurance that I won’t suddenly have a load of angry goblins twisting my head backward and forward to see which way would take it off, understand?”

  Stinky, already as skinny as a skeleton, looked even thinner when he shrugged. He pointed at the groaning heaps. “Too sore, too stiff, too hungry, too … ” Stinky looked closely at a goblin at the bottom of a pile and touched a flaccid hand, “too dead to chase anyone, Mr. Po-leess-maan. Hah! But later, give food, give water and they chase. Oh, they chase like the buggery, you bet! Once I talk to them, oh you bet! But I will say to them, po-leess-maan, him big arsehole, okay, but kind arsehole. I will say to them, you whack him, I whack you on account that I po-leess-maan now. Special Po-leess-maan Stinky!”

  Vimes considered that was the best valedictory he could expect in the circumstances. Just then Feeney managed to lever the lid off a large drum, one of several rolling around on the deck. Immediately the terrible stench in the barge doubled in intensity, and he backed away with his hands over his mouth. Stinky, on the other hand, sniffed approvingly. “Hot damn! Turkey gizzards! Food of the gods! Bastard murder voyage, but okay catering.”

  Vimes stared at him. Well, okay, he thought, he hangs around near humans so he picks up a vocabulary, maybe that is suspiciously clever. Perhaps Miss Beedle gave him language lessons? Or maybe he’s just some occult adventurer from hell knows where having fun at the expense of a hardworking copper. Not for the first time.

  Feeney was already cutting ropes, and Vimes tried to resurrect as many goblins as he could in a hurry. It was no errand for anyone with a concern for hygiene or even a notion of what the word meant—though after an hour in a storm on Old Treachery, it had no meaning anyway. They staggered up, and fell down again, found their way to the upended barrel of dead turkey bits and stumbled over slippery decks to a sloshing and now half-empty water trough that Feeney had found and was filling by the simple expedient of sticking a bucket over the side. They were coming back to life; mostly they were coming back to life.

  The barge bounced off a bank again, and amid tumbling goblins Vimes grabbed for a handhold. Half the entire barge was full of barrels which, if you sniffed anywhere near them, were certainly not full of sweet roses. He braved the rocking deck again and said, “I don’t think all this is for a little voyage to the seaside, do you? There’s more barrels of stinking turkey entrails than this lot of poor devils could possibly get through in a week! Someone was expecting a long journey! Good grief!”

  The barge had smacked into something and, by the sound of breaking glass, that something had been smashed. Feeney stood up, holding on to a rope, and, wiping turkey gizzard off his coat, said, “Voyage, sir. Not journey, sir. You wouldn’t need all this stuff if you’re traveling on land. I reckon they’re bound for somewhere a long way away.”

  “Do you think it’ll be a holiday of sun, sea, surf and fun?” said Vimes.

  “No, sir,” said Feeney, “and they wouldn’t like it if it was, would they? Goblins like the dark.”

  Vimes slapped him on the shoulder. “Okay, Chief Constable Upshot, don’t hit somebody who surrenders and, if a man drops his weapon, be a little bit wary of him until you’re certain he hasn’t got another one tucked away somewhere, right? If in doubt, knock ’em out. And you know how to do that: use the old Bang Suck Cling Buck on them, eh?!”

  “Yes, sir, that’s a recipe for shoe polish, sir, but I’ll bear it in mind.”

  Vimes turned to Stinky, who already looked slightly fatter than usual. “Stinky, I don’t have the faintest idea what is going to happen next. I can see your chums are starting to look alive, and so you’ve got the chance that we all get, sink or swim, and I can’t say better than that. Come on, let’s go, Feeney.”

  This close, the Wonderful Fanny was now a rolling, creaking mess, half-covered by flying weeds and sticks. Apart from the storm and the clanging and creaking of the mechanisms, it was silent.

  “Okay,” said Feeney quietly, “we’d better go in by the cattle door at the stern, sir, or as you would say, ‘the back.’ It won’t be a difficult jump, there’s lots of handholds because the loadmaster has to come out here to see to the barges. Can you see that double door and the little wicket gate? We go in that way. There’ll likely be more cargo along the cattle ramp, because a loadmaster never wastes floor space, and then we go midships … ”

  “That is to say ‘the middle of the ship’?” said Vimes.

  Feeney smiled. “Yes, sir, and watch out because it’s a mass of machinery. You’ll see what I mean, because you’re smart. Take the wrong step and you could fall into a gear or on top of an ox, never a happy occasion. It’s noisy, smelly and dangerous, so if there are many bandits on this boat I wouldn’t expect to find them there.”

  I would, Vimes thought; our Mr. Stratford is the kind of maniac who would want to keep going in suicidal circumstances. Why? So that the cargo is a long way away before anyone knows about it? And Stratford works for Lord Rust and the Rusts believe the world belongs to them. We’re taking goblins somewhere, but they want to keep them alive—why?

  The shock of another collision brought him back to
the dreadful here and now, and he said, “I’d expect to find any crew here being watched like hawks in case they put a spanner in the works.”

  “Oh, very smart, sir, very smart indeed. There has to be some light in there for safety’s sake, but not much and all behind glass ’cos of … ”

  Feeney hesitated, so Vimes suggested, “Fire, perhaps? I’ve never known an engineer who doesn’t shove grease wherever he can.”

  “Oh, it’s not exactly the grease, sir, it’s the beasts. The gas does build up, so it does! And if the glass breaks, well, it’s regrettably spectacular. Two years ago the Glorious Peggy was blown out of the water for just such a reason!”

  “Do they eat the Hang Suck Butt Dog with turnips around here?”

  “No, sir, not as far as I know, but Bhangbhangduc fusion cookery is very popular on the boats, it’s true. Anyway, further on you’ll find the pilot’s cabin, the sleeping quarters and then the wheelhouse, which has very wide windows, which is another good reason to attack from behind.”

  Refreshingly, it was a short leap with a good handhold at the end of it. Vimes had no worries about being heard. The deck creaked under his feet as he crept inside the Wonderful Fanny and sidled toward the middle of the ship, or whatever the hell the real term for it was, but then she creaked everywhere, and all the time, and groaned, too. The boat was so noisy that a sudden patch of silence might have drawn attention to itself. And I’m looking for somebody who looks like everybody else, he thought, right up until he looks like the vicious killer he is. Well, that seems straightforward.

  Vimes was vaguely aware of huge wheels spinning frantically off to either side and chains traveling overhead and now, here, at the top of the flight of stairs, was somebody who clearly wasn’t where they should have been …

  It was a woman, with a small girl clinging to her dress. They had been loosely tied to a creaking beam, and a small oil lamp overhead held them in the center of its circle of light. And this was probably because there was a man sitting a little way away from them on a stool, with a crossbow lying on his lap.

  And here was a puzzle because a length of string had been tied to each of his legs. One length of string ran across the floor and disappeared downward into what was, to judge by the heat, the farmyard stink and the occasional bellow of troubled ungulate, the cowshed that Vimes had just passed. The other string disappeared forward toward the wheelhouse.

  The woman spotted him and immediately clasped the child to her chest and very slowly put a finger to her lips. He had to hope that the man hadn’t noticed, and did not have to hope that the woman realized that he was there to rescue her, not to add to her troubles. That wasn’t necessary, but he did feel better that she was a lady fast on the uptake. He held up a hand in front of Feeney, but the lad was definitely future captain material; he hadn’t moved at all. Like Vimes, he had become an observer. And Vimes observed, and let the dark rise up to assess the situation in its own inimitable way. This wasn’t the Summoning Dark, or at least he fervently hoped not. It was just his own human darkness and internal enemy, which knew his every thought, which knew that every time Commander Vimes dragged some vicious and inventive murderer to such mercy or justice as the law in its erratic wisdom determined, there was another Vimes, a ghost Vimes, whose urge to chop that creature into pieces on the spot had to be chained. This, regrettably, was harder every time, and he wondered if one day that darkness would break out and claim its heritage, and he wouldn’t know … the brakes and chains and doors and locks in his head would have vanished and he wouldn’t know.

  Right now, as he looked at the frightened child, he feared that moment was coming closer. Possibly only the presence of Feeney was holding the darkness at bay, the dreadful urge to do the hangman out of his entitlement of a dollar for the drop, thruppence for the rope and sixpence for his beer. How easy it is to kill, yes, but not when a smart young copper who thinks you are a good guy is looking to you. At home, the Watch and his family surrounded Vimes like a wall. Here the good guy was the good guy because he didn’t want anyone to see him being bad. He did not want to be ashamed. He did not want to be the darkness.

  The bow was pointed at the two hostages and its holder had surely been told to fire if a leg pull sounded the alarm. Would he do it? You needed to age a bit for the dark to start trickling in, although there were always one or two who were born as darkness on legs, who would kill for a pastime. Was he one? Even if he wasn’t, would he panic? How light was the trigger? Could a sudden jerk set it off?

  Outside, the storm raged. Whether the water was going down or not didn’t seem all that important, given there was so much of the damn stuff around already. The woman was watching him out of the corner of her eye. Oh well, every moment counted …

  Timing his steps carefully, as if a footstep would be heard in all the thunder and creaking, Vimes crept up to the unsuspecting guard, clamped both hands around his neck and jerked upward. The arrow thudded into the ceiling.

  “I don’t want anybody to get hurt.” Vimes tried to say it in a friendly way, but went on, “If you think you can pull strings, kid, then let me tell you that you’ll run out of gasp before I run out of squeeze. Chief Constable Upshot, grab that weapon and tie up this gentleman’s legs. You may keep his weapon. I know you like them.”

  He must have inadvertently decreased the pressure, for his captive said hoarsely, “I don’t want to kill anybody, sir, please! They gave me the bow and told me I was to fire if the boat stopped or I got a pull on the ropes! Do you think I’d do that, sir? Do you really think I’d do that? I was only sitting here in case one of them came in! Please, sir, I never came along for anything like this! It’s Stratford, sir, he’s a total nutjob, sir, a bloody killer, he is!”

  There was a crash and the whole boat shook. Maybe the pilot’s stopwatch had let him down. “What’s your name, mister?”

  “Eddie, sir, Eddie Brassbound. I’m just a water rat, sir!” The man was trembling. Vimes could see his hand shaking. He turned to the woman with the child, who was being supported now by Feeney, touched his forelock and flashed his carefully secreted badge. “Madam, I’m Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Has this man mishandled you or the little girl in any way?”

  The woman had barely moved. She reminded him of the younger Sybil, calm and collected and much more likely to fight than scream, but she wouldn’t fight until she was ready. “It was done pretty slick, commander, just when I was putting Grace to bed. The bastards came on as owners of some cargo and acted like decent boys until my husband said he reckoned the weather was going to get really bad. I was in the galley, I heard a lot of yelling and then we were put down here. Personally, sir, I would deem it a favor if you killed every man jack of them, but life can’t be all fun. As far as this one is concerned, well, he could have been less gentlemanly, so although I’d like you to throw him into the river I wouldn’t object if you refused to tie a heavy weight to his leg.”

  Feeney laughed. “Wouldn’t need weights, ma’am! The river is having a party and we’re all guests! I’m a pretty good swimmer, and I wouldn’t dare jump into what’s out there.”

  Vimes grabbed Brassbound and stared into his eyes. After a moment he said, “No, I know a killer’s eyes when I see them. That doesn’t mean you ain’t a pirate, though, so we’re going to keep an eye on you, okay, so don’t try anything. I’m trusting you. Heavens help you if I’m wrong.”

  Brassbound opened his mouth to speak, but Vimes added quickly, “You could make your life a little easier and possibly longer, Mr. Brassbound, if you were to tell me how many of your jolly parcel of rogues there are on the Fanny.”

  “Don’t know, sir. Don’t know who’s still alive, see?”

  Vimes looked at the woman as the boat gave a lurch. It was a strange sensation—for a moment Vimes felt almost weightless—and there was a commotion behind them in the cowshed among the great spinning wheels.
When he got his balance he managed to say, “I take it that you are Mrs. Sillitoe, madam?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I am, commander,” she said as the little girl clung more tightly to her. “I know my husband is still alive, because so are we … at the moment.” She stopped as another surge lifted the entire boat, then the Fanny came down with a splash and a spine-numbing thump, followed by the long-drawn-out bellow of a bullock who had had enough, and the start of a scream.

  Vimes, Feeney and Brassbound picked themselves up off the floor. Mrs. Sillitoe and her daughter were, amazingly, still vertical and Mrs. Sillitoe wore a grim smile. “That sound you heard was one of the pirates dying, I’m extremely pleased to say! That means everyone else in the cowshed is alive. Shall I tell you why? He almost certainly didn’t hop! Those lifts and drops are little slams to me: somewhere behind us a damn slam is getting so big that bits of it are calving off and coming down all the way to us at speed, you see, raising the water level and dropping it again like a stone as they go past—and that’s when you have to know enough to dance to the rhythm! Because if you don’t dance to the rhythm of the slam you’ll dance with the Devil soon enough! A man went down there with a crossbow when the fighting started. By the sound of it he wasn’t familiar with the dance. I expect it was Ten Gallon Charlie who got him when he was on the ground, poor lamb. Charlie is the Bullock Wrangler. If he hits a man once, no one will ever have to hit him again.” Mrs. Sillitoe said that in a matter-of-fact, satisfied voice. “If you want to try to steal from our riverboat you have to be prepared for some considerable inconvenience.”

  And I thought the city was on the tough side, Vimes thought. He noticed that a prudent Feeney had rearmed the confiscated crossbow and said, “I’m going below to make certain. Mrs. Sillitoe, how many other pirates do you think there are?”