Thud!

by Terry Pratchett

  A tiny square block on the road ahead was getting bigger quite fast. Willikins twitched on the reins, Vimes had a momentary vision of rearing horses, and the mail coach was a dwindling dot, soon hidden by the smoke of flaming brassicas.

  “Dem milestones is goin’ past real fast now,” Detritus observed in a conversational tone of voice. Behind him, Brick lay flat on the roof of the coach with his eyes shut tight, having never before been in a world where the sky went all the way to the ground; there were brass rails around the top of the coach, and he was leaving fingerprints in them.

  “Could we try braking?” said Vimes. “Look out! Haycart!”

  “That only stops the wheels spinning, sir!” yelled Willikins as the cart went by with a whoom and fell back into the distance.

  “Try pulling on the reins a little!”

  “At this speed, sir?”

  Vimes slid back the hatch behind him. Sybil had Young Sam on her knee, and was pulling a wooly jumper over his head.

  “Is everything all right, dear?” he ventured.

  She looked up and smiled. “Lovely, smooth ride, Sam. Aren’t we going rather fast, though?”

  “Er…could you please sit with your back to the horses?” said Sam. “And hold on tight to Young Sam? It might be a bit…bumpy.”

  He watched her shift seats. Then he shut the hatch, and yelled to Willikins.

  “Now!”

  Nothing seemed to happen. In Vimes’s mind, the milestones were already going zip…zip as they flashed past.

  Then the flying world slowed, while in the fields on either side hundreds of burning cabbages leapt toward the sky, trailing oily smoke. The horse of light and air disappeared, and the real horses dropped gently to the road, going from floating statues to beasts in full gallop without a stumble.

  He heard a brief scream as the rear coach tore past and swerved into a field full of cauliflowers, where, eventually, it squelched to a flatulent halt. And then there was stillness, except for the occasional thud of a falling cabbage. Detritus was comforting Brick, who’d not picked a good day to go cold turkey; it was turning out to be frozen roc.

  A skylark, safely above cabbage range, sang in the blue sky. Below, except for the whimpering of Brick, all was silent.

  Absentmindedly, Vimes pulled a half-cooked leaf off his helmet and flicked it away.

  “Well, that was fun,” he said, his voice a little distant.

  He got down carefully and opened the coach door.

  “Everyone all right in here?” he said.

  “Yes. Why have we stopped?” said Sybil.

  “We ran out of…er, well, we just ran out,” said Vimes. “I’d better go and check that everyone else is all right…”

  The milestone nearby proclaimed that it was but two miles to Quirm. Vimes fished out the Gooseberry as a red-hot cabbage smacked into the road behind him.

  “Good morning!” he said brightly to the surprised imp. “What is the time, please?”

  “Er…nine minutes to eight, Insert Name Here,” said the imp.

  “So that would mean a speed slightly above one mile a minute,” mused Vimes. “Very good.”

  Moving like a sleepwalker, he walked into the field on the other side of the road and followed the trail of stricken, steaming greens until he reached the other coach. People were climbing out of it.

  “Everyone okay?” he said. “Breakfast today will be boiled cabbage, baked cabbage, fried cabbage—” he stepped smartly aside as a steaming cauliflower hit the ground and exploded “—and Cauliflower Surprise. Where’s Fred?”

  “Looking for somewhere to throw up,” said Angua.

  “Good man. We’ll take a minute or two to rest here, I think.”

  With that, Sam Vimes walked back to the milestone, sat down next to it, put his arms around it, and held on tight until he felt better.

  You could catch up with the dwarfs long before they’re near Koom Valley. Good grief, at the speed we did earlier you’d have to watch out in case you smash into the back of them!

  Vimes’s thoughts nagged at him as Willikins drove the coach, at a very sedate speed, out of Quirue and then, on a clear stretch of road, unleashed the hidden horsepower until they were bowling along at forty miles every hour. That seemed quite fast enough.

  No one was hurt, after all. You could get to Koom Valley by nightfall!

  Yes, but that was not the plan.

  Okay, he thought, but what was the plan, exactly? Well, it helped that Sybil knew more or less everybody, or at least everybody who was female, of a certain age, and who had been to the Quirm College for Young Ladies at the same time as Sybil. There appeared to be hundreds of them. They all seemed to have names like Bunny or Bubbles, they kept in touch meticulously, they’d all married influential or powerful men, they all hugged one another when they met, and went on about the good old days in Form 3b or whatever, and if they acted together, they could probably run the world or, it occurred to Vimes, might already be doing so.

  They were Ladies Who Organize.

  Vimes did his best, but he could never keep track of them. A web of correspondence held them all together, and he marveled at Sybil’s ability to be concerned over the problems of a child, whom she’d never met, of a woman she hadn’t seen in twenty-five years. It was a female thing.

  So they would be staying in the town near the foot of the valley, with a lady currently known only as Bunty, whose husband was the local magistrate. According to Sybil, he had his own police force. Vimes translated this, in the privacy of his head, as “he’s got his own gang of thuggish, toothless, evil-smelling thief-takers” since that was what you generally got in these little towns. Still, they might be useful.

  Beyond that…there was no plan. He intended to find the dwarfs and capture and drag as many as possible back to Ankh-Morpork. But that was an intention, not a plan. It was a firm intention, though. Five people had been murdered. You couldn’t just turn your back on that. He’d drag ’em back and lock them up and throw everything at ’em and see what stuck. He doubted it they had many friends now. Of course, it’d get political, it always did, but at least people would know that he’d done all he could, and it was the best he could do. With any luck, it would stop anyone else getting funny ideas.

  And then there was the damn Secret, but it occurred to him that if he did find it, and it simply was proof that the dwarfs ambushed the trolls or the trolls ambushed the dwarfs or they both ambushed each other at the same time, well, he might as well drop it down a hole. It really wouldn’t change anything. And it was unlikely to be a pot of gold; people didn’t take a lot of money onto battlefields, because there wasn’t very much to spend it on.

  Anyway, it had been a good start. They’d clawed some time, hadn’t they? They could keep up a cracking pace and change horses at every staging inn, couldn’t they? Why was he trying to persuade himself? It made sense to slow down. It was dangerous to go fast.

  “If we keep up this pace, we might get there the day after tomorrow, right?” he said to Willikins as they rattled on between stands of young maize.

  “If you say so, sir,” said Willikins. Vimes noted the hint of diplomacy.

  “You don’t think so?” he said. “Come on, you can speak your mind!”

  “Well, sir, those dwarfs want to get there fast, d’you think?” said Willikins.

  “I expect so. I don’t think they want to hang around. So?”

  “So I’m just puzzled that you think they’ll be using the road, sir. They could use broomsticks, couldn’t they?”

  “I suppose so,” Vimes conceded. “But the archchancellor would have told me if they’d done that, surely.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but what business would it be of his? They wouldn’t have to bother the gentlemen at the university. Everyone knows the best broomsticks are made by the dwarfs, up at Copperhead.”

  The coach rolled on.

  After a while, Vimes inquired, in the voice of one who has been thinking deeply: “They’
d have to travel at night, though. They’d be spotted otherwise.”

  “Very true, sir,” said Willikins, staring ahead.

  There was more thoughtful silence.

  “Do you think this thing could jump fences?” said Vimes.

  “I’m game to give it a try, sir,” said Willikins. “I think the wizards put some thought into all this.”

  “And how fast do you think it could go, for the sake of argument?” said Vimes.

  “Dunno, sir. But I’ve got a feeling it might be pretty fast. A hundred miles in an hour, maybe?”

  “You really think so? That means we could be halfway there in a couple of hours!”

  “Well, you did say you wanted to get there fast, sir,” said Willikins.

  This time, the silence went on longer, before Vimes said: “All right, stop somewhere. I want to make sure that everyone knows what we’re going to do.”

  “Happy to do that, sir,” said Willikins. “It’ll give me a chance to tie my hat on.”

  What Vimes remembered most of all about that journey— and there was so much of it he wanted to forget—was the silence. And the softness.

  Oh, he could feel the wind in his face, but it was only a breeze, even when the ground was a flat green blur. The air was shaping itself around them. When Vimes experimentally held up a piece of paper a foot above his head, it blew away in an instant.

  The corn exploded, too. As the coach approached, the green shoots grew out of the ground as if dragged, and then burst like fireworks.

  The corn belt was giving way to cattle country, when Willikins said: “You know, sir, this thing steers itself. Watch.”

  He lowered the reins as a patch of woodland approached. The scream had hardly formed in Vimes’s throat before the coach curved around the woodland and then swung delicately back onto its original course.

  “Don’t do that again, please!” said Vimes.

  “All right, sir, but it’s steering itself. I don’t think I could make it run into anything.”

  “Don’t try!” Vimes said quickly. “And I swear I saw a cow explode back there! Keep us away from towns and people, will you?”

  Behind the coach, turnips and rocks leapt into the air and bounced away in the opposite direction. Vimes hoped they wouldn’t get into trouble about that.*

  The other thing that Vimes noticed was the landscape ahead was strangely bluish, while behind them it had a relatively red tint. He didn’t like to point this out, though, in case it sounded strange.

  They had to stop twice to get directions, and were twenty miles from Koom Valley at half past five. There was a coaching inn. They sat out in its yard. No one spoke much. Apart from the speed-hungry Willikins, the only people not shaken by the journey were Sybil and Young Sam, who seemed quite happy, and Detritus, who had watched the world skim past with every sign of enjoyment. Brick was still facedown on the coach roof, holding tight.

  “Ten hours,” said Fred Colon. “And that included lunch and stoppin’ to be sick. I can’t believe it…”

  “I don’t fink people are s’posed to go this fast,” Nobby moaned. “I fink my brain’s still back home.”

  “Well, if we’re going to have to wait for it to catch up, Nobby, I’ll buy a house here, shall I?” said Fred.

  Nerves were frayed, brains were jogging behind…this is why I don’t like magic, thought Vimes. But we’re here, and it’s amazing how the inn’s beer helped recovery.

  “We might even be able to have a quick look at Koom Valley before it gets dark,” he ventured, to general groaning.

  “No, Sam! Everyone needs a meal and a rest!” said Sybil. “Let’s go into town like proper people, nice and slowly, and everyone will be fresh for tomorrow.”

  “Lady Sybil is right, Commander,” said Bashfullsson. “I wouldn’t advise going up to the valley at night, even at this time of the year. It’s so easy to get lost.”

  “In a valley?” said Vimes.

  “Oh yes, sir,” Cheery chimed in. “You’ll see why, sir. And mostly, if you get lost, you die.”

  On the sedate journey into town, and because it was six o’clock, Vimes read Where’s My Cow? to Young Sam. In fact, it became a communal effort. Cheery obliged by handling the chicken noises, an area in which Vimes felt he was somewhat lacking, and Detritus delivered a HRUUUGH! that rattled the windows. Grag Bashfullsson, against all expectation, managed a very passable pig. To Young Sam, watching with eyes like saucers, it was indeed the Show Of The Year.

  Bunty was surprised to see them so soon, but Ladies Who Organize are seldom thrown by guests arriving unexpectedly early.

  It turned out Bunty was Berenice Waynesbury, née Mouse-father, which must have come as a relief, with a daughter who was married and lived just outside Quirm and a son who’d had to go to Fourecks in a hurry over a complete misunderstanding but was now into sheep in a big way and she hoped Sybil and of course his grace would be able to stay until Saturday because she’d invited simply everybody and wasn’t Young Sam simply adorable…and so on, right up to “—and we’ve cleaned out one of the stables for your trolls” said with a happy smile.

  Before Sybil or Vimes could say a word, Detritus had removed his helmet and bowed.

  “T’ank you very much, missus,” he said gravely, “you know, sometimes people forget to clean dem out first. It’s dem little touches dat mean a lot.”

  “Why, thank you,” said Bunty. “How charming. I’ve, er, never seen a troll wearing clothing before…”

  “I can take dem off if you like,” said Detritus. At which point, Sybil took Bunty gently by the arm and said: “Let me introduce you to everybody else…”

  Mr. Waynesbury, the magistrate, wasn’t the venal pocket-liner Vimes had expected. He was thin, tall, and didn’t say a great deal, and spent his time at home in a study filled with law books, pipes, and fishing tackle; he dispensed justice in the mornings, fished during the afternoon, and charitably forgave Vimes for his total lack of interest in dry flies.

  The local town of Ham-on-Koom made a good living off the river. When the Koom hit the plains, it widened and slowed and was more full of fish than a tin of sardines. Marshes spread out on either side, too, with deep and hidden lakes that were the home and feeding ground of innumerable birds.

  Oh…and there were the skulls, too.

  “I am the coroner as well,” he told Vimes as he unlocked a cupboard in his desk. “We get a few bones washed down here every spring. Mostly tourists, of course. They really will not take advice, alas. But sometimes we get things that are of more…historical interest.” He put a dwarf skull on the leather desktop.

  “About a hundred years old,” he said. “From the last big battle, a hundred years ago. We get the occasional piece of armor, too. We put it all in the charnel house, and occasionally the dwarfs or the trolls come with a cart to sort through it and carry it away. They take it very seriously.”

  “Any treasure?” said Vimes.

  “Hah. Not that I get told about. But I’d hear about it if there was anything big.” The magistrate sighed. “Every year people come to search for it. Sometimes they are lucky.”

  “They find gold?”

  “No, but they get back alive. The others? They wash up out of the caves, in the fullness of time.” He selected a pipe from a rack on his desk and began to fill it. “I’m amazed that anyone feels it necessary to take weapons up the valley. It’ll kill you on a whim. Will you take one of my lads, Commander?”

  “I have my own guide,” said Vimes, and then added, “But thank you.”

  Mr. Waynsbury puffed his pipe.

  “As you wish, of course,” he said. “I shall watch the river, in any case.”

  Angua and Sally had been put in the same bedroom. Angua tried to feel good about that. The woman wasn’t to know. Anyway, it was nice to get between clean sheets, even if the room had a slightly musty smell. More must, less vampire, she thought; look on the bright side.

  In the darkness, she opened one eye.


  Someone had moved silently across the room. They’d made no noise but, nevertheless, their passage had stirred the air and changed the texture of the subtle night sounds.

  They were at the window now. It was bolted shut, and a faint noise was probably the bolt being slipped back.

  It was easy to tell when the window itself was opened; new scents flooded in.

  There was a creak that possibly only a werewolf would have heard, followed by a sudden rustling of many leathery wings. Little leathery wings.

  Angua shut her eye again. The little minx! Maybe Sally just didn’t care anymore? No point in trying to follow her, though. She debated the wisdom of shutting the window and bolting the door, just to see what excuses Sally came up with, but dismissed it. No good telling Mister Vimes yet, either, what could she prove? It’d all be put down to the werewolf/vampire thing…

  And now Koom Valley stretched away ahead of Vimes, and he could see why he hadn’t made plans. You couldn’t make plans for Koom Valley. It’d laugh at them. It would push them away, like it pushed away roads.

  “Of course, you’re seeing it at its best at this time of year,” said Cheery.

  “By ‘best’ you mean—?” Vimes prompted.

  “Well, it’s not actually trying to murder us, sir. And there’s the birds. And when the sun’s right, you get some wonderful rainbows.”

  There were lots of birds. Insects bred like mad in the wide, shallow pools and dams that littered the floor of the valley in late spring. Most of them would be dry by the late summer, but for now Koom Valley was a smorgasbord of things that went bzz! And the birds had come up from the plains to feast on all of it. Vimes wasn’t good at birds, but they mostly looked like swallows, millions of them. There were nests on the nearest cliff, a good half mile away, and Vimes could hear the chattering from here. And where trees and rocks had piled up in dams, saplings and green plants had sprouted.

  Below the narrow track the party had taken, water gushed from half a dozen caves and joined together for one wild waterfall into the plain.