Thud (36 page)

He gets as far as some humans, but when he’s leading them back to the place where it’s hidden, he finally dies.

Forward two thousand years. Would a cube last that long? Hell, they bob up in molten lava!

So it’s lying there. Methodia Rascal comes along, looking for…a nice view, or something, and he looks down and there it is? Well, I’ll have to accept that he did, because he found it and got it talking, who knows how. But he couldn’t
stop
it. He drops it down the well. The dwarfs find it. They listen to the box, but hate what they hear. They hate it so much that Hamcrusher has four miners killed just because they heard it, too. So why the painting? It shows what the box is talking about? Where the box is? If you’ve got the box in your hand, isn’t that
it
?

Anyway, who says it was the voice of Bloodaxe doing the speaking? It could be anybody. Why would you believe what it said?

He was aware of Sir Reynold talking to Carrot…

“…said to your sergeant Colon here, the painting is set several miles from hwhere the actual battle hwas fought. It’s in entireleah the hwrong part of Koom Valley! That’s just about the one thing both sides are agreed on!”

“So why did he set it there?” said Vimes, staring at the table as if hoping to draw a clue from it by willpower alone.

“Who knows? It’s all Koom Valley. There are about two hundred and fifty square miles of the place. I imagine he just chose somewhere that looked dramatic.”

“Would you chaps like a cup of tea?” said Lady Sybil, from the door. “I felt a bit at a loose end, so I made a pot. And you should be getting your head down, Sam.”

Sam Vimes looked panicky, a figure of authority caught once again in a domestic situation.

“Oh, Lady Sybil, they took the Rascal!” said Sir Reynold. “I know it belonged to your family!”

“My grandfather said it was just a damn nuisance,” said Sybil. “He used to let me unroll it on the floor of the ballroom. I used to name all the dwarfs. We looked for the secret, because he said there was hidden treasure, and the painting showed you where it was. Of course, we never found it, but it kept me quiet on rainy afternoons.”

“Oh, it hwasn’t great art,” said Sir Reynold. “And the man hwas
quite
mad, of course. But somehow it spoke to people.”

“I wish it’d say something to me,” said Vimes. “You really don’t need to make tea for people, dear. One of the officers—”

“Nonsense! We must be hospitable,” said Sybil.

“Of course, people
tried
to copeah it,” said the curator, accepting a cup. “Oh dear, they hwere terrible! A painting fifteah feet long and ten feet deep is really
quite
impossible to copy hwith any kind of accuraceah—”

“Not if you lay it out on the ballroom floor and get a man to make you a pantograph,” said Sybil, pouring tea. “This teapot is really a disgrace, Sam. Worse than the urn. Doesn’t
anyone
ever clean it out?”

She looked up at their faces.

“Did I say something wrong?” she said.

“You made a copy of the Rascal?” said Sir Reynold.

“Oh, yes. The whole thing, on a scale of one to five,” said Sybil. “When I was fourteen. It was a school project. We were doing dwarf history, you see, and, well, since we owned that painting, it was too good to miss. You know what a pantograph is, don’t you? It’s a very simple way of making larger or smaller copies of a painting, using geometry, some wooden levers, and a sharp pencil. Actually, I did it as five panels ten feet square, that’s full-size, to make sure I got all the detail, and then I did the one-fifth scale version to display it as poor Mr. Rascal wanted it displayed. I got full marks from Miss Turpitude. She was our math teacher, you know, she wore her hair in a bun with a pair of compasses and a ruler stuck in it? She used to say that a girl who knew how to use a set square and protractor would go a long way in life.”

“What a shame you no longer have it!” said Sir Reynold.

“Why should you say that, Sir Reynold?” said Sybil. “I’m sure I’ve still got it somewhere. I had it hanging up from the ceiling of my room for some time. Let me think…did we take it with us when we moved? I’m sure—” She looked up brightly. “Ah, yes. Have you even been up to the attics here, Sam?”

“No!” said Vimes.

“Now’s the time, then.”

“I
’ve never been
on a girls’ night out before,” said Cheery
as they walked, a little uncertainly, through the nighttime city. “Was that last bit supposed to happen?”

“What bit was that?” said Sally.

“The bit where the bar was set on fire.”

“Not
usually
,” said Angua.

“I’ve never seen men
fight
over a woman before,” Cheery went on.

“Yeah, that was something, wasn’t it?” said Sally. They’d dropped Tawneee off at her home. She’d been in quite a thoughtful frame of mind.

“And all she did was smile at a man,” said Cheery.

“Yes,” said Angua. She was trying to concentrate on walking.

“It’d be a bit of a shame for Nobby if she lets that go to her head, though,” said Cheery.

Save me from talkative druks…drinks…
drunks
, Angua thought. She said: “Yes, but what about Miss Pushpram? She’s thrown some quite expensive fish at Nobby over the years.”

“We’ve struck a blow for womanhood,” Sally declared loudly. “Shoes, men, coffins…never accept the first one you see.”

“Oh,
shoes
,” said Cheery. “I can talk about
shoes
. Has anyone seen the new Yan Rockhammer solid-copper slingbacks?”

“Er…we don’t go to a metalworker for our footwear, dear,” said Sally. “Oh…I think I’m going to be sick…”

“Serves you right for drinking…vine,” said Angua maliciously.

“Oh ha ha,” said the vampire, from the shadows. “I’m perfectly fine with
sarcastic pause
‘vine,’ thank you! What I
shouldn’t
have drunk was sticky drinks with names made up by people with less sense of humor than, uh, excuse me…oh, noooo…”

“Are you all right?” said Cheery.

“I’ve just thrown up a small, hilarious, paper umbrella…”

“Oh dear.”

“And a sparkler…”

“Is that you, Sergeant Angua?” said a voice in the gloom. A lantern was opened, and lit the approaching face of Constable Visit. As he approached, she could just make out the thick wad of pamphlets under his other arm.

“Hello, Washpot,” she said. “What’s up?”

“…looks like a twist of lemon…” said a damp voice from the shadows.

“Mister Vimes sent me to search the dens of iniquity and low places of sin for you,” said Visit.

“And the literature?” said Angua. “By the way, the words ‘nothing personal’ could have so easily been added to that last sentence.”

“Since I was having to tour the temples of vice, Sergeant, I thought I could do Om’s holy work at the same time,” said Visit, whose indefatigable evangelical zeal triumphed over all adversity.
*
Sometimes whole bars full of people would lie down on the floor with the lights out when they heard he was coming down the street.

There were sounds of retching from the darkness.

“ ‘Woe unto those who abuseth the vine,’ ” said Constable Visit. He caught the expression on Angua’s face and added “no offense meant.”

“We’ve been through all that,” moaned Sally.

“What does he want, Washpot?” said Angua.

“It’s about Koom Valley again. He wants you back at the Yard.”

“But we were stood down!” Sally complained.

“Sorry,” said Visit cheerfully, “I reckon you’ve been stood up again.”

“The story of my life,” said Cheery.

“Oh, well, I suppose we’d better go,” said Angua, trying to disguise her relief.

“When I say ‘the story of my life,’ obviously I don’t mean the
whole
story,” mumbled Cheery, apparently to herself, as she trailed behind them into a world blessedly without fun.

T
he Ramkins
never threw anything away. There was something
worrying about their attics, and it wasn’t just that they had a faint aroma of long-dead pigeons.

The Ramkins
labeled
things. Vimes have been into the big attics in Scoone Avenue to fetch down the rocking horse and the cot and a whole box of elderly but much-loved soft toys smelling of mothballs. Nothing that might ever be useful again was thrown away. It was carefully labeled and put in the attic.

Brushing aside cobwebs with one hand and holding up a lantern with the other, Sybil led the way past boxes of
MEN
’
S BOOTS
,
VARIOUS
;
RISIBLE PUPPETS
,
STRING
&
GLOVE
;
MODEL THE
-
ATER AND SCENERY
. Maybe that was the reason for their wealth: they had bought things that were built to last, and now they seldom had to buy anything at all. Except food, of course, and even then Vimes would not have been surprised to see boxes labeled
APPLE CORES
,
VARIOUS
, or
LEFTOVERS
,
NEED EATING UP
.
*

“Ah, here we are,” said Sybil, lifting aside a bundle of fencing foils and lacrosse sticks. She pulled a long, thick tube out into the light.

“I didn’t color it in, of course,” she said as it was manhandled back to the stairs. “That would have taken forever.”

Getting the heavy bundle down to the canteen took some effort and a certain amount of shoving, but eventually it was lifted onto the table and the crackling scroll removed.

While Sir Reynold unrolled the big ten-foot squares and enthused, Vimes pulled out the small-scale copy that Sybil had created. It was just small enough to fit on the table; he weighed down one end with a crusted mug and put a saltcellar on the other.

Methodia’s notes made sad reading. Difficult reading, too, because a lot of them were half-burned, and in any case Rascal’s handwriting was what might have been achieved by a spider on a trampoline during an earthquake.

The man was clearly as mad as a spoon, writing notes that he wanted to keep secret from the Chicken; sometimes he’d stop writing in mid-note if he thought the Chicken was watching. Apparently, he was a very sad sight to see until he picked up a brush, whereupon he would work quite quietly and with a strange glow to his features. And that was his life: one huge oblong of canvas. Methodia Rascal: born, painted famous picture, thought he was a chicken, died.

Given that the man couldn’t touch bottom with a long stick, how could you make sense out of anything he wrote? The only note that seemed concise, if horrible, was the one generally accepted as his last, since it was found under his slumped body. It read:

Awk! Awk! It comes! IT COMES!

He’d choked on a throatful of feathers. And on the canvas, the last of the paint was still drying.

Vimes’s eye was caught by the message numbered, arbitrarily, #39:

I thought it was a guiding omen, but it screams in the night.

An omen of what? And what about #143?

The dark, in the dark, like a star in chains.

Vimes had made a note of that one. He’d made a note of many others, too. But the worst thing about them—or the best, if you were keen on mysteries—was that they could mean
anything
. You could pick your own theory. The man was half-starved and in mortal dread of a chicken that lived in his head. You might as well try to make sense of raindrops.

Vimes pushed them aside and stared at the careful pencil drawing. Even at this size, it was confusing. Up front, faces were so large that you could see the pores on a dwarf’s nose. In the distance, Sybil had meticulously copied figures that were a quarter of an inch high.

Axes and clubs were being waved, spears were being pointed, there were charges and countercharges and single combats. Across the whole length of the picture, dwarfs and trolls were locked in ferocious battle, hacking and smashing—

He thought: Who’s missing?

“Sir Reynold, could you help me?” he said quietly, lest the nascent thought turn tail and run.

“Yes, Commander?” said the curator, hurrying over. “Doesn’t Ladeah Sybil do the most
exquisite
—”

“She’s very good, yes,” said Vimes. “Tell me…how did Rascal
know
all this stuff?”

“There were many dwarf songs about it, and some troll stories. Oh, and some humans hwitnessed it.”

“So Rascal could have read about it?”

“Oh, yes. Apart from the fact that he put it in the wrong part of the valley, he’d got it down quite accurately.”

Vimes didn’t take his gaze off the paper battle.

“Does anyone know why he put it in the wrong place, then?” he said.

“There are several theories. One is that he hwas deceived by the fact that the dead dwarfs hwere cremated at that end of the valley, but after the storm that hwas hwhere many of the bodies ended up. There was also a great deal of dead hwood for bonfires. But
I
believe he chose that end because the view is so much better. The mountains are so dramatic.”

Vimes sat down, staring at the sketch, willing it to yield its secret.

Everyone will know the secret in a few weeks, Mr. Shine had said. Why?

“Sir Reynold, was anything going to happen to the painting in the next couple of weeks?” he said.