Thud! Read online

  “One question, right? And no funny answers, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Tell me why you helped Brick. Why should you care about a slushed-out gutter troll?”

  “Why should you care about some dead dwarfs?” said Mr. Shine.

  “Because someone has to!”

  “Exactly! Good-bye, Mr. Vimes.”

  Vimes hurried up the stairs and followed Miss Pointer/Miss Pickles out into the shop. Detritus was standing among the mineral specimens, looking uncomfortable, like a man in a morgue.

  “What’s happening?” said Vimes.

  Detritus shifted uneasily.

  “Sorry, Mister Vimes, but I was der only one dat knew where—” he began.

  “Yes, okay. Is this about the taka-taka?”

  “How did you know about dat, sir?”

  “I don’t. What is the taka-taka?”

  “It der famous war club of der trolls,” said Detritus. Vimes, with the image of the peace club of the trolls downstairs still in his mind, couldn’t stop himself.

  “You mean you subscribe and get a different war every month?” he said. But that sort of thing was wasted on Detritus. He treated humor as some human aberration that had to be overcome by talking slowly and patiently.

  “No, sir. When der taka-taka is sent a-round the clans, it a summon-ing to war,” he said.

  “Oh damn. Koom Valley?”

  “Yes, sir. An’ I’m hearing dat der Low King and der Uberwald dwarfs is already on der way to Koom Valley, too. Der street is full of it.”

  “Er…bingle bingle bingle…?” said a small and very nervous voice.

  Vimes pulled out the Gooseberry and stared at it. At a time like this…

  “Well?” he said.

  “It’s twenty-nine minutes past five, Insert Name Here,” said the imp nervously.

  “So?”

  “On foot, at this time of day, you will need to leave now to be home at six o’clock,” said the imp.

  “Der Patrician want to see you and dere’s clackses arrivin’ and everythin’,” said Detritus insistently.

  Vimes continued to stare at the imp, which looked embarrassed.

  “I’m going home,” he said, and started walking. Dark clouds were rolling in overhead, heralding another summer storm.

  “Dey’ve foun’ der three dwarfs near der well, sir,” said Detritus, lumbering after him. “Looks like it was other dwarfs what killed ’em, sure enough. The ol’ grags have gone. Captain Carrot’s put guards on every exit he can find…”

  But they dig, Vimes thought. Who knows where all the tunnels go?

  “…and he wants permission to break open der big iron doors in Treacle Street,” Detritus went on. “Dey can get at the last dwarf dat way.”

  “What are the dwarfs saying about it?” said Vimes, over his shoulder. “The living ones, I mean?”

  “A lot of dem saw the dead dwarfs brought up,” said Detritus. “I fink most of dem would hand him der crowbar.”

  Let’s hear it for the mob, Vimes thought. Grab it by its sentimental heart. Besides, the storm is beginning. Why worry about an extra raindrop?

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell him this. I know Otto will be there with his damn picture box, so when that door is wrenched open, it’s going to be dwarfs doing it, okay? A picture full of dwarfs?”

  “Right, sir!”

  “How is young Brick? Will he swear a statement? Does he understand about that?”

  “I reckon he could, sir.”

  “In front of dwarfs?”

  “He will if I ask him, sir,” said Detritus. “Dat I can promise.”

  “Good. And get someone to put out a message on the clacks, to every city watch and village constable between here and the mountains. Tell them to look out for a party of dark dwarfs. They’ve got what they came for and they’re doing a runner, I know it.”

  “You want they should try to stop ’em?” the sergeant asked.

  “No! No one should try it! Say they’ve got weapons that shoot fire! Just let me know where they’re headed!”

  “I’ll tell dem dat, sir.”

  And I’m going home, Vimes repeated to himself. Everyone wants something from Vimes, even though I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Hell, I’m probably a spoon. Well, I’m going to be Vimes, and Vimes reads Where’s My Cow? to Young Sam at six o’clock. With the noises done right.

  He went home at a brisk walk, using all the little shortcuts, his mind sloshing backwards and forwards like thin soup, his ribs nudging him occasionally to say yes, they were still here and twinging. He arrived at the door just as Willikins was opening it.

  “I shall tell her ladyship you are back, sir,” he called out as Vimes hurried up the stairs. “She is mucking out the dragon pens.”

  Young Sam was standing up in his cot, watching the door. Vimes’s day went soft and pink.

  The chair was littered with the favored toys of the hour—a rag ball, a little hoop, a wooly snake with one button eye. Vimes pushed them onto the rug, sat down, and took off his helmet. Then he took off his damp boots. You didn’t need to heat a room after Sam Vimes had taken his boots off. On the wall, the nursery clock ticked, and with every tick and tock a little sheep jumped back and forth over a fence.

  Sam unfolded the rather chewed, rather soggy book.

  “Where’s my cow?” he announced, and Young Sam chuckled. Rain rattled on the window.

  Where’s my cow?

  Is that my cow?

  …A “thing” that talks, he thought as his mouth and eyes took over the task at hand. I’m going to have to find out about that. Why’d it make dwarfs want to kill one another?

  It goes baa!

  It is a sheep!

  …Why did we go into that mine? Because we heard there’d been a murder, that’s why!

  No, that’s not my cow!

  …Everyone knows that dwarfs gossip. It was stupid to tell them to keep it from us!

  That’s the deep-downers for you, they think they just have to say a thing and it’s true!

  Where’s my cow?

  …Water dripping on a stone.

  Is that my cow?

  Where did I see one of those Thud boards recently?

  It goes naaaay!

  Oh, yes, Helmclever. He was very worried, wasn’t he?

  It is a horse!

  He had a board. He said he was a keen player.

  No, that’s not my cow!

  That was a dwarf under pressure if ever I saw one; he looked as if he was dying to tell me something…

  Where’s my cow?

  That look in his eyes…

  Is that my cow?

  I was so angry. Don’t tell the Watch? What did they expect? You’d have thought he would have known…

  It goes HRUUUGH!

  He knew I’d go postal!

  It is a hippopotamus!

  He wanted me to be angry!

  No, that’s not my cow!

  He damn well wanted me to be angry!

  Vimes snorted and crowed his way through the rest of the zoo, missing out not one bark or squeak, and tucked up his son with a kiss.

  There was the sound of tinkling glass from downstairs. Oh, someone’s dropped a glass, said his front brain. But his back brain, which had steered him safely through these mean streets for more than fifty years, whispered: Like hell they did!

  Purity would be up in her room. Cook had the evening off. Sybil was out feeding the dragons. That left Willikins. Butlers didn’t drop things.

  From below, there was a quiet “ugh,” and then the thud of something hitting meat.

  And Vimes’s sword was on the hook at the other end of the hall, because Sybil didn’t like him wearing it in the house.

  As quietly as possible, he sought around for something, anything, that could be turned into a weapon. Regrettably, they had, when choosing toys for Young Sam, completely neglected the whole area of hard things with sharp edges. Bunnies, chickies, and piggies there were in plenty, but—ah! Vimes spotted
something that would do, and wrenched it free.

  Moving soundlessly on thick, over-darned socks, he crept down the stairs.

  The door to the wine cellar was open. Vimes didn’t drink these days, but guests did, and Willikins, in accordance with some butlerian duty to generations only just or as yet unborn, cared for it and bought the occasional promising vintage. Was there the crackle of glass being trodden on? Okay, did the stairs creak? He’d find out.

  He reached the vaulted, damp cellar, and stepped carefully out of the light filtering down from the hall.

  Now he could smell it…the faint reek of black oil.

  The little bastards! And they could see in the dark, too, right?

  He reached into his pocket and fumbled for his matches, while his heart thudded in his ears. His fingers closed over a match, he took a deep breath—

  One hand grasped his wrist, and, as he swung madly at the darkness with the hind leg of a rocking horse, this, too, was wrested from him. Instinctively, he kicked out, and there was a grunt. His arms were released, and from somewhere near the floor, the voice of Willikins, rather strained, said: “Excuse me, sir, I appear to have walked into your foot.”

  “Willikins? What the hell’s been happening?”

  “Some dwarfish gentlemen called while you were upstairs, sir,” said the butler, unfolding slowly. “Through the cellar wall, in fact. I regret to say that I found it necessary to deal somewhat strictly with them. I fear one might be dead.”

  Vimes peered around. “Might be dead? Is he still breathing?”

  “I do not know, sir.” Willikins applied a match, with great care, to a stub of candle. “I heard him gurgling, but he appears to have stopped. I’m sorry to say that they came upon me when I was leaving the ice store, and I was forced to defend myself with the first thing that came to hand.”

  “Which was…?”

  “The ice knife, sir,” said Willikins levelly. He held up eighteen inches of sharp, serrated steel, designed to slice ice into convenient blocks. “The other gentleman I have lodged on a meat hook, sir.”

  “You didn’t—” Vimes began, horrified.

  “Only through his clothing, sir. I am sorry to have laid hands on you, but I feared the wretched oil might have been inflammable. I hope I got all of them. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for the mess—”

  But Vimes was gone and already halfway up the cellar steps. In the hall, his heart stopped.

  A short dark figure was at the top of the stairs and disappearing into the nursery.

  The broad, stately staircase soared in front of him, a stairway to the top of the sky. He ran up it, hearing himself screaming—

  “I’ll kill I’ll killyoukillyoukillyoukillkillkill I’ll kill you kill I’llkill you—” The terrible fury choked him, the rage and dreadful fear set his lungs on fire, and still the stairs unrolled. There was no end to them. They climbed forever, while he was falling backwards, into hell. But hell buoyed him up, gave wings to his rage, lifted him, sent him back…

  And then, his breath now nothing more than one long, profane scream, he reached the top step—

  The dwarf came out of the nursery doorway, backwards and fast. He hit the railings and crashed through them onto the floor below. Vimes ran on, sliding on the polished wood, skidding as he swung into the nursery, dreading the sight of—

  —Young Sam, sleeping peacefully. On the wall, the little lamb rocked the night away.

  Sam Vimes picked up his son, wrapped in his blue blanket, and sagged to his knees. He hadn’t drawn breath all the way up the stairs, and now his body cashed its checks, sucking in air and redemption in huge, racking sobs. Tears boiled out of him, shaking him wretchedly…

  Through the running, wet blur, he saw something on the floor. There, on the rug, was the rag ball, the hoop, and the wooly snake, lying where they’d fallen.

  The ball had rolled, more or less, into the middle of the hoop. The snake lay half-uncoiled, its head resting on the edge of the circle.

  Together, in this weak nursery light, they looked at first glance like a big eye with a tail.

  “Sir? Is everything all right?”

  Vimes looked up and focused on the red face of Willikins, out of breath.

  “Er…yeah…what?…yeah…fine…thanks,” he managed, summoning his scattered senses. “Fine, Willikins. Thank you.”

  “One must’ve got past me in the dark—”

  “Huh? Yeah, very remiss of you, then,” said Vimes, getting to his feet but still clutching his son to him. “I’d just bet most butlers ’round here would have taken out all three with one swipe of their polishing cloth, right?”

  “Are you all right, sir? Because—”

  “But you went to the Shamlegger School of Butlering!” Vimes giggled. His knees were trembling. Part of him knew what this was all about. After the terror came that drunken feeling, when you were still alive and suddenly everything was funny. “I mean, other butlers just know how to cut people dead with a look, but you, Willikins, you know how to cut them dead with—”

  “Listen, sir! He’s got outside, sir!” said Willikins urgently. “So is Lady Sybil!”

  Vimes’s grin froze.

  “Shall I take the young man, sir?” Willikins said, reaching.

  Vimes backed away. A troll with a crowbar and a tub of grease would not have wrested his son from him.

  “No! But give me that knife! And go and make sure Purity is all right!”

  Clutching Young Sam to him, he ran back downstairs, across the hall, and out into the garden. It was stupid, stupid, stupid. He told himself that later. But right now Sam Vimes was thinking only in primary colors. It had been hard, hard, to go into the nursery in the face of the images that thronged his imagination. He was not going to go through that ever again. And the rage flowed back, easily, under control now. Smooth like a river of fire. He’d find them all, all of them, and they would burn…

  The main dragon shed could only be reached now by dodging around three big cast-iron flame-deflector shields, put in place two months ago; dragon breeding was not a hobby for sissies or people who minded having to repaint the whole side of the house occasionally. There were big iron doors at either end; Vimes headed toward one at random, ran into the dragon shed, and bolted the door behind him.

  It was always warm in there, because the dragons burped all the time; it was that or explode, which occasionally did happen. And there was Sybil, in full dragon-keeping gear, walking calmly between the pens with a bucket in each hand, and behind her the doors at the other end were opening, and there was a short, dark figure, and there was a rod with a little pilot flame on the end, and—

  “Look out! Behind you!” Vimes yelled.

  His wife stared at him, turned around, dropped the buckets, and started to shout something.

  And then the flame blossomed. It hit Sybil in the chest, splashed across the pens, and went out abruptly. The dwarf looked down and began to thump the pipe desperately.

  The pillar of flame that was Lady Sybil said, in an authoritative voice that brooked no disobeying:

  “Lie down, Sam. Right now.” And Sybil dropped to the sandy floor as, all down the lines of pens, dragon heads rose on long dragon necks.

  Their nostrils were flaring. They were breathing in.

  They’d been challenged. They’d been offended. And they’d just had their supper.

  “Good boys,” said Sybil, from the floor.

  Twenty-six streams of answering dragon fire rose to the occasion. Vimes, lying on the floor so that his body shielded Young Sam, felt the hairs crisp on the back of his neck.

  This wasn’t the smoky red of the dwarf fire; this was something only a dragon’s stomach could cook up. The flames were practically invisible. At least one of them must have hit the dwarf’s weapon, because there was an explosion and something went through the roof. The dragon pens were built like a fireworks factory: the walls were very thick, and the roof was as thin as possible, to provide a fast
er exit to heaven.

  When the noise had died to an excited hiccuping, Vimes risked looking up. Sybil was also getting to her feet, a little clumsily, because of all the special clothing every dragon breeder wore.*

  The iron of the far doors glowed around the black outline of a dwarf. A little way in front of them, two iron boots were cooling from white heat in a puddle of molten sand.

  Metal went plink.

  Lady Sybil reached up with heavy-gloved hands, patted out some patches of burning oil on her leather apron, and lifted off her helmet. It landed on the sand with a thud.

  “Oh, Sam…” she said softly.

  “Are you all right? Young Sam is fine. We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “Oh, Sam…”

  “Sybil, I need you to take him!” Vimes said, speaking slowly and clearly to get through the shock. “There could be others out there!”

  Lady Sybil’s eyes focused.

  “Give him to me,” she ordered. “And you take Raja!”

  Vimes looked where she was indicating. A young dragon with floppy ears and an expression of mildly concussed good humor blinked at him. He was a Golden Wouter, a breed with a flame so strong that one of them had once been used by thieves to melt their way into a bank vault.

  Vimes picked him up carefully, and still winced. Ye gods, the ache in his hand had gone all the way to the elbow…

  “Coal him up,” Sybil commanded.

  Good old Sybil, he told himself as he fed anthracite into Raja’s eager gullet. Her female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel back or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around little gold-wrapped chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons that made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.