Thud (14 page)

Three words, smacking into the silence like lead. It was the way the troll said them. A suicidal kind of way.

The silence was broken by the steely sound of bolts being shot home, followed by a click. The trolls turned. Sergeant Detritus was taking the key out of the lock of the Watch house’s big, thick, double doors. Then he turned around and his heavy hands landed on the trolls’ shoulders.

He sighed. “Boys,” he said, “if dere was a Ph.D. in bein’ fick, youse wouldn’t be able to find a pencil.”

The troll who’d uttered the not-very-veiled threat then made another mistake. It must have been terror that moved his arms, or dumb machismo. Surely no one with a functioning brain cell would have selected that moment to move their arms into what, for trolls, was the attack position.

Detritus’s fist moved in a blur, and the crack, as it connected with the troll’s skull, made the furniture rattle.

Vimes opened his mouth…and shut it again. Trollish was a very
physical
language. And you had to respect cultural traditions, didn’t you? It wasn’t only dwarfs who were allowed to have them, was it? Besides, you couldn’t crack a troll’s skull even with a hammer and chisel.
And he threatened your family,
his hind brain added.
He had it coming—

There was a twinge of pain from the wound on his hand, echoed by the stab of a headache. Oh hells. And Igor said the stuff would work!

The stricken troll rocked for a second or two, and then went over forwards in one rigid movement.

Detritus walked across to Vimes, kicking the recumbent figure en passant.

“Sorry about dat, sir,” he said, and his hand clanged on his helmet as he saluted. “Dey got no manners.”

“All right, that’s enough,” said Vimes, and addressed the remaining, suddenly-very-alone messenger. “
Why
does Chrysophrase want to see me?”

“He wouldn’t tell der Brothers Fick that, would he…” said Detritus, grinning horribly at the troll. There was no swagger left now.

“All I know is, it’s about der killin’ o’ the
horug
,” mumbled the troll, taking refuge in surliness. At the sound of the word the eyes of every watching dwarf narrowed further. It was a very bad word.

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh…” Detritus hesitated.

“Boy,” said Vimes out of the corner of his mouth.

“—boy!” said Detritus triumphantly. “You are makin’ friends like nobody’s business today!”

“Where’s the meeting?” said Vimes.

“Der Pork Futures Warehouse,” said the troll. “You is to come alone…” he paused, awareness of his position dawning on him, and added, “if you don’t mind.”

“Go and tell your boss I might choose to wander that way, will you?” said Vimes. “Now get out of here. Let him out, Sergeant.”

“An’ take your rubbish home wid you,” Detritus roared.

He slammed the doors behind the troll, bent under the weight of his fallen comrade.

“Okay,” said Vimes, as tensions relaxed. “You heard the troll. A good citizen wants to help the Watch. I’ll go and see what he’s got to—”

His eye caught the front page of the
Times
, spread out on the desk. Oh hell, he thought wearily. There we are, at a time like this, with a troll officer holding a dwarf with his feet off the ground.

“It’s a good picture of Detritus, sir,” said Sergeant Littlebottom nervously.

“ ‘The Long Arm of The Law,’ ” Vimes read aloud. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Probably it is to people who write headlines,” said Cheery.

“Hamcrusher Murdered,” Vimes read. “Watch Investigating.”

“Where do they get this?” he said aloud. “Who tells them? Pretty soon I’ll have to read the
Times
to find out what I’m doing today!” He flung the paper back on the desk. “Anything important I need to know about right now?”

“Sergeant Colon says there’s been a robbery at the Royal—” Cheery began, but Vimes waved that away.

“More important than robberies, I mean,” he said.

“Er…Another two officers have quit since I sent you that note, sir,” said Cheery. “Corporal Ringfounder and Constable Schist at Chittling Street. Both say it’s for, er, personal reasons, sir.”

“Schist was a good officer,” Detritus rumbled, shaking his head.

“Sounds like he decided to be a good troll instead,” said Vimes. He was aware of a stirring behind him. He still had an audience. Oh well, time for
the
speech.

“I know it’s hard for dwarf and troll officers right now,” he said to the room at large. “I know that giving one of your own kind a tap with your truncheon because he’s trying to kick you in the fork might feel like you’re siding with the enemy. It’s no fun for humans, either, but it’s worse for you. The badge seems a bit heavy now, right? You see your people looking at you and wondering whose side you’re on, yes? Well, you’re on the side of the people, which is where the law ought to be.
All
the people, I mean, who’re out there beyond the mob, who’re fearful and puzzled and scared to go out at night. Now, funnily enough, the idiots who’re out there right in front of you getting their self-defense in first are also the people, but since they don’t seem to remember that, well, you’re doing them a favor by cooling them off a bit. Hold on to that, and hold together. You think that you should stay home to make sure your ol’ mum is okay? What good would you be against a mob? Together, we can stop things going that far. This’ll go its course. I know we’re all being run ragged, but right now I need everyone I can get, and in return there will be jam tomorrow and free beer, too. Maybe I’ll even be a little blind when I’m signing the overtime dockets, who knows. Got it? But I want you all, whatever,
whoever
you are, to know this: I’ve got no patience with idiots who’ll drag a grudge across five hundred miles and a thousand years. This is Ankh-Morpork. It’s not Koom Valley. You
know
it’s going to be a bad night tonight. Well, I’ll be on duty. If you are, too, then I’ll want to know that I can depend on you to watch my back as I’ll watch yours. If I can’t depend on you, I don’t want to see you near me. Any questions?”

There was an embarrassed silence, as there always is on such occasions. Then a hand went up. It belonged to a dwarf.

“Is it true a troll killed the grag?” he asked. There was a murmuring from the watchmen, and he went on, a little less timorously, “Well, he
did
ask.”

“Captain Carrot is investigating,” said Vimes. “At the moment, we are still in the dark. But if indeed there has been a murder, then I
will
see that the murderer is brought to justice, no matter what size they are, what shape they are, who they are, or where they may be. You have my guarantee on that. My
personal
guarantee. Is that acceptable?”

The general change in the atmosphere indicated that it was so.

“Good,” he said. “Now go out there and be coppers. Go on!”

The room emptied of all except those still laboring over the knotty problem of where they should put the comma.

“Er…permission t’speak freely, sir?” said Detritus, knuckling closer.

Vimes stared at him. When I first met you, you were chained to a wall like a watchdog and didn’t speak much beyond a grunt, he thought. Truly, the leopard can change his shorts.

“Yes, of course,” he said.

“You ain’t serious, are you? You’re not going runnin’ after a coprolite like Chrysophrase, sir?”

“What’s the worst he can do to me?”

“Rip off your head, grind you to mince, and make soup from your bones, sir,” said Detritus promptly. “An’ if you was a troll, he’d have all your teeth knocked out an’ make cuff links out of ’em.”

“Why’d he choose to do that now? Do you think he’s looking for a war with us? That’s not his way. He’s hardly going to kill me by appointment, is he?
He
wants to talk to
me
. It’s got to be to do with the case. He might know something. I don’t dare
not go
. But I want you along. Scrounge up a squad, will you?”

A squad would be sensible, he admitted to himself. The streets were just too…nervous at the moment. He compromised with Detritus and a scratch band of whoever was doing nothing at the moment. That was one thing you could say about the Watch, it
was
representative. If you based your politics on what other people looked like, then you couldn’t claim the Watch was on the side of any
shape.
That was worth hanging on to.

It seemed quieter outside, not so many people on the streets as usual. That wasn’t a good sign. Ankh-Morpork could feel trouble ahead like spiders could feel tomorrow’s rain.

W
hat was this?

The creature swam through a mind. It had seen thousands of minds since the universe began, but there was something strange about this one.

It looked like a city. Ghostly, wavering buildings appeared through a drizzle of midnight rain. Of course, no two minds were alike…

The creature was old, although it would be more accurate to say that it had existed for a long time. When, at the start of all things, the primordial clouds of mind had collapsed into gods and demons and souls of all levels, it had been among those who had never drifted close to a major accretion. So it had entered the universe aimlessly, without task or affiliation, a scrap of being blowing free, fitting in wherever it could, a sort of complicated thought looking for the right kind of mind. Currently—that is to say, for the past ten thousand years, it had found work as a superstition.

And now it was in this strange, dark city. There was movement around it. The place was alive. And it rained.

For a moment, just then, it had sensed an open door, a spasm of rage it could use. But just as it leapt to take advantage, something invisible and strong had grabbed it and flung it away.

Strange.

With a flick of its tail, it disappeared into an alley.

T
he Pork Futures Warehouse
was…one of those things, the
sort that you get in a city that has lived with magic for too long. The occult reasoning, if such it could be called, was this: pork was an important commodity in the city. Future pork, possibly even pork as yet unborn, was routinely traded by the merchants. Therefore, it had to exist
somewhere.
And the Pork Futures Warehouse came into existence, icy cold within as the pork drifted backwards in time. It was a popular place for cold storage—and for trolls who wanted to think quickly.

Even here, away from the more troubled areas of the city, the people on the streets were…watchful.

And now they watched Vimes and his motley squad pull up outside of the warehouse doors.

“I reckon at least one of us should go in wid you,” Detritus rumbled, as protective as a mother hen. “Chrysophrase won’t be alone, you can bet on dat.” He unslung the Piecemaker, the crossbow he had personally built from a converted siege weapon, the multiple bolts of which tended to shatter in the air from the sheer stress of acceleration. They could remove a door not simply from its frame but also from the world of objects bigger than a match-stick. Its incredible inaccuracy was part of its charm. The rest of the squad very quickly got behind him.

“Only you, then, Sergeant,” said Vimes. “The rest of you, come in only if you hear screaming. Me screaming, that is.” He hesitated, and then pulled out the Gooseberry, which was still humming to itself. “And no interruptions, understand?”

“Yes, Insert Name Here! Hmm hum hmm…”

Vimes pulled open the door. Dead, freezing air poured out around him. Thick frost crackled under his feet. Instantly, his breath twinkled in clouds.

He hated the Pork Futures Warehouse. The semitransparent slabs of yet-to-be-meat hanging in the air, accumulating reality every day, made him shiver for reasons that had nothing to to with temperature. Sam Vimes considered crispy bacon to be a food group in its own right, and the sight of it traveling backwards in time turned his stomach the wrong way.

He took a few steps inside and looked around in the dank, chilly grayness.

“Commander Vimes,” he announced, feeling a bit of a fool.

Here, away from the doors, freezing mist lay knee-high on the floor. Two trolls waded through it toward him. More lichen, he saw. More clan graffiti. More sheep skulls.

“Leave weapons here,” one rumbled.

“Baaa!” said Vimes, striding between them.

There was a click behind him, and the faint song of steel wires—under tension yet yearning to be free. Detritus had shouldered his bow.

“You can try takin’ dis one off’f me if you like,” he volunteered.

Vimes saw, further into the mist, a group of trolls. One or two of them looked like hired grunt. The others though…he sighed. All Detritus needed to do was fire that thing in this direction and quite a lot of the organized crime in the city would suddenly be very disorganized, as would be Vimes if he didn’t hit the floor in time. But he couldn’t allow that. There were rules here that went deeper than the law. Besides, a forty-foot hole in the warehouse wall would take some explaining.

Chrysophrase was sitting on a frost-crusted crate. You could always tell him in a crowd. He wore suits, when few trolls aspired to more that a few scraps of leather.

He even wore a tie, with a diamond pin. And today he had a fur coat around his shoulders. That had to be for show. Trolls
liked
low temperatures. They could think faster when their brains were cool. That’s why the meeting had been called here. Right, Vimes thought, trying to stop his teeth from chattering, when it’s
my
turn it’s going to be in a sauna.