Thud!

by Terry Pratchett

  Vimes flinched as Raja burped.

  “That was a dwarf, wasn’t it?” said Sybil, cradling Young Sam. “One of those deep-down ones you see about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did it try to kill me?”

  When people are trying to kill you, it means you’re doing something right. It was a rule Sam had lived by. But this…even a real stone killer like Chrysophrase wouldn’t have tried something like this. It was insane. They will burn. They will burn…

  “I think they’re frightened of what I’m going to find out,” said Vimes. “I think it’s all gone wrong for them, and they want to stop me.”

  Could they have been that stupid? he wondered. A dead wife? A dead child? Could they think that would mean for one moment that I’d stop? As it is, when I catch up with whoever ordered this, and I will, I hope there’s someone there to hold me back.

  They will burn for what they did.

  “Oh, Sam…” murmured Sybil, the iron mast falling for a moment.

  “I’m sorry. I never expected this,” said Vimes. He put the dragon down and held her carefully, almost fearfully. The rage had been so strong; he felt he might grow spikes, or snap into shards. And the headache was coming back, like a lump of lead nailed just over his eyes.

  “Whatever happened to all that, you know, hi-ho, hi-ho, and being kind to poor lost orphans in the forest, Sam?” Sybil whispered.

  “Willikins is in the house,” he said. “Purity is as well.”

  “Let’s go and find them, then,” said Sybil. She grinned, a little damply. “I wish you wouldn’t bring your work home with you, Sam.”

  “This time it followed me,” said Vimes grimly. “But I intend to tidy it up, believe me.”

  They shall bur—no! They shall be hunted down to any hole they hide in and brought back to face justice. Unless (oh please!) they resist arrest…

  Purity was standing in the hall, alongside Willikins. She was holding a trophy Klatchian sword, without much conviction. The butler had augmented his weaponry with a couple of meat cleavers, which he hefted with a certain worrying expertise.

  “My gods, man, you’re covered in blood!” Sybil burst out.

  “Yes, Your Ladyship,” said Willikins smoothly. “May I say in mitigation that it is not, in fact, mine.”

  “There was a dwarf in the dragon house,” said Vimes. “Any sign of any others?”

  “No, sir. The ones in the cellar had an apparatus for projecting fire, sir.”

  “The dwarf we saw had one too,” said Vimes, adding: “It didn’t do him any good.”

  “Indeed, sir? I apprised myself of its use, sir, and tested my understanding by firing it down the tunnel they had arrived by until it ran out of igniferous juice, sir. Just in case there were more. It is for this reason, I suspect, that the shrubbery at Number Five is on fire.”

  Vimes hadn’t met Willikins when they were both young. The Cockbill Street Roaring Lads had a treaty with Shamlegger Street, thus allowing them to ignore that flank while they concentrated on stopping the territorial aggression of the Pigsty Hill Dead Marmoset Gang. He was glad he hadn’t fetched up against young Willikins.

  “They must have come up for air there,” he said. “The Jeffersons are on holiday.”

  “Well, if they’re not ready for that sort of thing, they shouldn’t be growing rhododendrons,” said Sybil matter-of-factly. “What now, Sam?”

  “We’re staying the night at Pseudopolis Yard,” said Vimes. “Don’t argue.”

  “Ramkins have never run away from anything,” Sybil declared.

  “Vimeses have run like hell all the time,” said Vimes, too diplomatic to mention the aforesaid ancestors who came home in pieces. “That means you fight where you want to fight. We’re all going to go and get the coach, and we’re all going down to the Yard. When we’re there, I’ll send people back to pick up our stuff. Just for one night, all right?”

  “What would you like me to do with the visitors, sir?” said Willikins, with a sidelong glance at Lady Sybil. “One is indeed dead, I am afraid. If you recall, I must have stabbed him with the ice knife I happened to be innocently holding, having been cutting ice for the kitchen,” he added, poker-faced.

  “Put him on the roof of the coach,” said Vimes.

  “The other one also appears to be dead, sir. I’d swear he was fine when I tied him up, sir, because he was cursing me in their lingo.”

  “You didn’t tie him up too hard, did—” Vimes began, and gave up on it. If Willikins wanted someone dead, he wouldn’t have taken a prisoner. It must have been a surprise, breaking into a cellar and meeting something like Willikins. Anyway, to hell with them.

  “Just…died?” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Do dwarfs naturally salivate green?”

  “What?”

  “There is green around his mouth, sir. Could be a clue, in my opinion.”

  “All right, put him on the roof of the coach, too. Let’s go, shall we?”

  Vimes had to insist that Sybil traveled on the inside. Usually, she got her own way and he was happy to give it to her, but the unspoken agreement was that when he really insisted, she listened. It’s a married couple thing.

  Vimes rode beside Willikins, and got him to stop halfway down the hill where a man was selling the evening edition of the Times, still damp from the press.

  The picture on the front page was of a mob of dwarfs. They were pulling open one of the mine’s big, round metal doors; it was hanging off its hinges. In the middle of the group, hands gripping the edge of the frame and muscles bulging, was Captain Carrot. Gleaming, with his shirt off.

  Vimes grunted happily, folded up the paper, and lit a cheroot. The shaking in his legs was barely noticeable now, the fires of that terrible rage banked but still glowing.

  “A Free Press, Willikins. You just can’t beat it,” he said.

  “I’ve often heard you remark as much, sir,” said Willikins.

  The entity slithered through the rainy streets. Confounded again!

  It was getting through, it knew it! It was being heard! And yet every time it tried to follow the words, it was thrown back. Bars had blocked its way, doors that had been open locked themselves as it approached. And what was this? Some kind of low-class soldier! By now it would have had berserkers biting their shields in half!

  That was not the main problem, though. It was being watched. And that had never happened before.

  There was a crowd of dwarfs milling around outside the Yard. They did not look belligerent—that is to say, any more than a species the members of which, by custom and practice, wear a big heavy helmet, mail, iron boots, and carry an axe all the time can fail to look belligerent—but they did look lost and bewildered and unsure why they were there.

  Vimes got Willikins to drive in through the coach arch and take the bodies of the attackers down to Igor, who knew about things like people dying with green mouths.

  Sybil, Purity, and Young Sam were hustled away to a clean office. Interesting thing, Vimes thought as he watched Cheery and a group of dwarf officers fuss over the child: even now—in fact, especially now, given the way the tension had made everyone revert to old certainties—he wasn’t sure how many female dwarf officers he had. It was a brave female dwarf who advertised the fact, in a society where the wearing of even a decent, floor-length leather-and-chain-mail dress instead of leggings positioned you on the moral map at the far side of Tawneee and her hardworking coworkers at the PussyCat Club. But introduce a gurgling kid into the room, and you could spot them instantly, for all their fearsome clang and beards you could lose a rat in.

  Carrot pushed his way through the crowd and saluted.

  “A lot’s been happening, sir!”

  “My word, has it?” said Vimes, with manic brightness.

  “Yessir. Everyone was pretty…angry when we brought the dead dwarfs up, and what with one thing and another, opening the big door in Treacle Street was pretty popular. All the deep-downers have gone, except one�
�”

  “That’d be Helmclever,” said Vimes, heading for his office.

  Carrot looked surprised. “That’s right, sir. He’s in a cell. I’d like you to have a look at him, if you don’t mind. He was crying and moaning and trembling in a corner, with lit candles all ’round him.”

  “More candles? Afraid of the dark?” Vimes suggested.

  “Could be, sir. Igor says the trouble’s in his head.”

  “Don’t let Igor try to give him a new one!” said Vimes quickly. “I’ll go down there as soon as I can.”

  “I’ve tried talking to him, but he just looks blank, sir. How did you know he was the one we found?”

  “I’ve got some edges and some bits that are an interesting shape,” said Vimes, sitting down at his desk. When Carrot looked blank, he went on: “Of the jigsaw puzzle, Captain. But there are lots of bits of sky. However, I think I might be nearly there, because I think I’ve been handed a corner. What talks underground?”

  “Sir?”

  “You know, the dwarfs were listening for something underground? You wondered if someone was trapped, right? But is there…I don’t know…something dwarf-made that talks?”

  Carrot’s brow wrinkled.

  “You’re not talking about a cube, are you, sir?”

  “I don’t know. Am I? You tell me!”

  “The deep-downers have some in their mine, sir, but I’m sure there’s none buried here. They’re generally found in hard rocks. Anyway, you wouldn’t listen for one. I’ve never heard of them talking when they are found. Some dwarfs have spent years learning how to use just one of them!”

  “Good! Now: What Is A Cube?” said Vimes, glancing at his in-tray. Oh, good. There weren’t any memos from A. E. Pessimal.

  “It’s, um…it’s like a book, sir. Which talks. A bit like your Gooseberry, I suppose. Most of them contain interpretations of dwarf lore by ancient lawmasters. It’s very old…magic, I suppose.”

  “Suppose?” said Vimes.

  “Well, technomantic Devices look like things that are built, you know, out of—”

  “Captain, you’ve lost me again. What are Devices and why do you pronounce the capital D?”

  “Cubes are a type of Device, sir. No one knows who made them or for what original purpose. They might be older than the world. They’ve been found in volcanoes and the deepest rocks. The deep-downers have most of them. They come in all sorts of—”

  “Hold on, you mean that when they’re dug up, there’s dwarf voices from millions of years ago? Surely dwarfs haven’t been—”

  “No, sir. Dwarfs put them on later. I’m not too well up on this. I think when they’re first found, they mostly have natural noises, like moving water or birdsong or rocks moving, that sort of thing. The grags found out how to get rid of those to make room for words, I think. I did hear about one that was the sounds of a forest. Ten million years of sounds, in a cube less than two inches across.”

  “And they’re valuable, these things?”

  “Unbelievably valuable, especially the cubes. Worth mining through a mountain of granite, as we say…er, that’s a dwarf ‘we,’ not a copper ‘we,’ sir.”

  “So, digging through a few thousand of tons of Ankh-Morpork muck would be worth it, then?”

  “For a cube? Yes! Is that what all this is about? But how would it get here? The average dwarf might never see one in his whole life. Only grags and great chieftains use them! And why would it be talking? All dwarf ones can only be brought to life by a key word!”

  “Search me. What do they look like? Apart from being cubical, I assume?”

  “I’ve only ever seen a few, sir. They’re, oh, up to six inches on a side, look like old bronze, and they glitter.”

  “Green and blue?” Said Vimes sharply.

  “Yes, sir! They had a few in the mine in Treacle Street.”

  “I think I saw them,” said Vimes. “And I think they’ve got one more. Voices from the past, eh? How come I’ve never heard of them before?”

  Carrot hesitated. “You’re a very busy man, sir. You can’t know everything.”

  Vimes detected just a soupçon of a smidgen of a reproach there.

  “Are you saying I’m a man of narrow horizons, Captain?”

  “Oh no, sir. You’re interested in every aspect of police work and criminology.”

  Sometimes it was impossible to read Captain Carrot’s face. Vimes didn’t bother to try.

  “I’m missing something,” he said. “But this is about Koom Valley, I know it. Look, what is the secret of Koom Valley?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I don’t think there is one. I suppose the big secret would be which side attacked first. You know, sir, both sides say they were ambushed by the other side.”

  “Does that sound very interesting to you?” said Vimes. “Would it matter much now?”

  “Who started it all? I should say so, sir!” said Carrot.

  “But I thought they’d been scrapping since time began?”

  “Yes. But Koom Valley was the first official one, sir.”

  “Who won?” said Vimes.

  “Sir?”

  “It’s not a difficult question, is it? Who won the first Battle of Koom Valley?”

  “I suppose you could say it was rained off, sir,” said Carrot.

  “They stopped a grudge march like that because of a bit of rain?”

  “For a lot of rain, sir. A thunderstorm just sat there in the mountains above it. There were flash floods, full of boulders. The fighters were knocked off their feet and washed away, some were struck by lightning—”

  “It quite ruined the whole day,” said Vimes. “All right, Captain, do we have any idea where the bastards have gone?”

  “They had an escape tunnel—”

  “I bet they did!”

  “—and collapsed it after them. I’ve got men digging—”

  “Stand them down. They could be in a safe house, they could have got out in a cart, hell, they could all be wearing helmets and chain mail and passing for city dwarfs. Enough of that. We’ve been running people ragged. Let them go for now. I think we’ll be able to find them again.”

  “Yes, sir. The grags left so fast, sir, that they left some other Devices. I have secured them for the city. They must have been very frightened. They just took the cubes and ran. Are you all right, sir? You look a bit flustered.”

  “Actually, Captain, I feel inexplicably cheerful. Would you like to hear how my day went?”

  The showers in the Watch house were the talk of the city. Vimes had paid for them himself, after Vetinari made an acidic comment about the cost. They were a bit primitive and were really no more than watering-can heads connected to a couple of water tanks on the next floor, but after a night in Ankh-Morpork’s underworld, the thought of being really clean was very attractive. Even so, Angua hesitated.

  “This is wonderful,” said Sally, turning gently under a spray. “What’s wrong?”

  “Look, I’m just dealing with it, all right?” snapped Angua, standing just beyond the spray. “It’s full moon, okay? The wolf is a bit strong.”

  Sally stopped scrubbing.

  “Oh, I see,” she said. “Is it the whole B.A.T.H. thing?”

  “You just had to say that, didn’t you,” said Angua, and forced herself to step onto the tiles.

  “Well, what do you do normally?” said Sally, handing her the soap.

  “Cold water, and pretend it’s rain. Don’t you dare laugh! Change of subject, right now!”

  “All right. What did you think of Nobby’s girlfriend?” said Sally.

  “Tawneee? Friendly. Good-looking…”

  “Try perfect physical beauty? Astonishing proportions? A walking classic?”

  “Well…yes. Pretty much,” Angua conceded.

  “And all that is Nobby Nobbs’s girlfriend?”

  “She seems to think so.”

  “You’re not telling me she deserves Nobby?” said Sally.

  “Look, Verity Pushp
ram doesn’t deserve Nobby, and she’s got a weird squint, arms like a stevedore, and cooks shellfish for a living,” said Angua. “That’s how things are.”

  “Is she his old girlfriend?”

  “He used to say so. As far as I know, the physical side of the relationship consisted of her hitting him with a wet fish whenever he went near her.”

  Angua squeezed the last of the slime out of her hair. It was tough stuff to loose. As it was, some of it was fighting not to go down the plug hole.

  That was enough. She didn’t like to spend too much time in the S.H.O.W.E.R. Another six or so sessions, and the smell would have quite gone away. The important thing now was to remember to use a towel and not to shake herself dry.

  “You think I went down there to impress Captain Carrot, don’t you,” said Sally, behind her.

  Angua stopped, her head wrapped in toweling. Oh well, it was going to happen sooner or later…

  “No,” she said.

  “Your heartbeat says otherwise,” Sally said meekly. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have a chance. His heart beats faster every time he looks at you, and yours skips a beat every time you see him.”

  Okay, then, this is it, said the wolf who was never far away, this is where we sort it out, claw against fang…No! Don’t listen to the wolf! But it would help, wouldn’t it, if this stupid bitch stopped listening to the bat…

  “Stay out of people’s hearts,” she growled.

  “I can’t. You can’t switch off your nose, can you? Can you?”

  The moment of the wolf had passed. Angua relaxed a little. His heart beat faster, did it?

  “No,” she said. “I can’t.”

  “Has he ever seen you without your uniform?”

  Ye gods, thought Angua, and headed for her clothes.

  “Well…of course…” she mumbled.

  “I meant wearing something else. Like—a dress?” Sally went on. “Come on. Every copper spends some time out of uniform. That’s how you know you’re off duty.”