Thud (42 page)

“Matches,” he mumbled. “Got matches!”

He found the wax bundle and, working his clammy fingers slowly, drew out one match. Scraping the wax off the head with his thumb, he struck it against the stone.

The glare hurt his eyes. Look, quick! Flowing water, smooth sand, hand-and footprints coming out of the water, one set only? Yes. Walls looked dry, small cave, darkness over there, way out…

Vimes limped toward the oval entrance as quick as he could while the match spat and fizzed in his hand.

There was a bigger cave here, so big that the blackness in it seemed to suck all the light from the match, which scorched his fingers and died.

The heavy darkness closed in again, like curtains, and now he knew what the dwarfs meant. This wasn’t the darkness of a hood, or a cellar, or even of their shallow little mine. He was a long way below the ground here, and the weight of all that darkness bore down on him.

Now and again, a drop of water went
plink
into some unseen pool.

Vimes staggered onwards. He knew he was bleeding. He
didn’t
know why he was walking, but he did know that he had to.

Maybe he’d find daylight. Maybe he’d find a log that had been washed in here, and float his way out. He wasn’t going to die, not down here in the dark, a long way from home.

A lot of water was dripping in this cavern. A lot of it was going down his neck right now, but there were
plinks
on every side. Hah, water trickling down your neck and odd noises in the shadows…well, that’s when we find out if we’ve got a real copper, right? But there were no shadows here. It wasn’t light enough.

Perhaps that poor sod of a dwarf had wandered through here. But
he
found a way out. Maybe he knew the way, maybe he had a rope, maybe he was young and limber…and so he’d got out, dying on his feet, and tucked away the treasure, out of the way, and then went down the valley, walking through his grave. That’s how it could take people. He remembered Mrs. Oldsburton, who went mad after her baby died, cleaning everything in the house, every cup, wall, ceiling, and spoon, not seeing anybody or hearing anything, just working all day and all night. Something in the head went click, and you found something to do, anything, to stop yourself thinking.

Best to stop thinking that the way out the dwarf had found had been the one Vimes had dropped in by, and he had no idea where that was now.

Maybe he could simply jump back in the water, knowing what he was doing this time, and maybe he’d make it all the way down to the river before the turbulent currents battered him to death. Maybe he—

Why the hell had he let go of that rope? It had been like that little voice that whispers “Jump” when you’re at a cliff edge, or “Touch the fire.” You didn’t listen, of course. At least most people didn’t, most of the time. Well, a voice had said “Let go,” and he had…

He shuffled on, aching and bleeding, while the dark curled its tail around him.

“H
e’ll be back soon,
you know,” said Sybil. “Even if it’s
at the very last minute.”

Out in the hall, a big grandfather clock had just stopped chiming half past five.

“I’m sure he will,” said Bunty. They were bathing Young Sam.

“He’s
never
late,” Sybil went on. “He says if you’re late for a good reason you’ll be late for a bad one. And it’s only half past five, anyway.”

“Plenty of time,” Bunty agreed.

“Fred and Nobby did take the horses up to the valley, didn’t they?” said Sybil.

“
Yes
, Sybil. You watched them go,” said Bunty. She looked over Sybil’s head to the gaunt figure of her husband, who was standing in the hall doorway. He shrugged hopelessly.

“Only the other day, he was running up the stairs as the clocks were striking six,” Sybil said, calmly soaping Young Sam with a sponge shaped like a teddy bear. “The very last second. You wait and see.”

H
e wanted to sleep.
He’d never felt this tired before. Vimes
slumped to his knees, and then fell sideways onto the sand.

When he forced his eyes open, he saw pale stars above him, and had, once again, the sensation that there was someone else present.

He turned his head, wincing at the stab of pain, and saw a small but brightly lit folding chair on the sand. A robed figure was reclining in it, reading a book. A scythe was stuck in the sand beside it.

A white, skeletal hand turned a page.

“You’ll be Death, then?” said Vimes, after a while.

A
H
,
MISTER
V
IMES
,
ASTUTE AS EVER
. G
OT IT IN ONE
, said Death, shutting the book on his finger to keep the place.

“I’ve seen you before.”

I
HAVE WALKED WITH YOU MANY TIMES
, M
ISTER
V
IMES
.

“And this is
it
, is it?”

H
AS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRIT
-
TEN NARRATIVE IS SOMEWHAT STRANGE
? said Death.

Vimes could tell when people were trying to avoid something they really didn’t want to say, and it was happening here.

“Is it?” he insisted. “Is this it? This time I die?”

C
OULD BE
.

“Could be? What sort of answer is that?” said Vimes.

A
VERY ACCURATE ONE
. Y
OU SEE
,
YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR
-
DEATH EXPERIENCE
,
WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT
I
MUST UNDERGO A NEAR
-
V
IMES
EXPERIENCE
. D
ON
’
T MINDME
. C
ARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING
. I
HAVE A BOOK
.

Vimes rolled over onto his stomach, gritted his teeth, and pushed himself onto his hands and knees again. He managed a few yards before slumping back down.

He heard the sound of a chair being moved.

“Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?” he said.

I
AM
, said Death, sitting down again.

“But you’re here!”

A
S WELL
. Death turned a page and, for a person without breath, managed a pretty good sigh. I
T APPEARS THAT THE BUT
LER DID IT
.

“Did what?”

I
TISAMADE
-
UP STORY
. V
ERY STRANGE
. A
LL ONE NEED DO IS TURN TO THE LAST PAGE AND THE ANSWER IS THERE
. W
HAT
,
THEREFORE
,
IS THE POINT OF DELIBERATELY NOT KNOWING
?

It sounded like gibberish to Vimes, so he ignored it. Some of the aches were gone, although his head still hammered. There was an empty feeling everywhere. He just wanted to sleep.

“I
s that clock right?”

“I’m afraid it is, Sybil.”

“I’ll just go outside and wait for him, then. I’ll have the book ready,” said Lady Sybil. “He won’t let anything stop him, you know.” “I’m sure he won’t,” said Bunty.

“Although things can be very treacherous in the lower valley at this time of—” her husband began, and was fried into silence by his wife’s stare.

It was six minutes to six.

“O
b oggle oog soggle!”

It was a very little, watery sound, and it came from somewhere in Vimes’s trousers. After a few moments, enough time to recollect that he had both hand and trousers, he reached down and, after a struggle, freed the Gooseberry from his pocket. The case was battered, and the imp, when Vimes had got the flap open, was quite pale.

“Ob ogle soggle!”

Vimes stared at it. It was a talking box. It meant something.

“Woggle soggle lob!”

Slowly, Vimes tipped the box up. Water poured out of it.

“You weren’t listening! I was shouting and you weren’t listening!” the imp whined. “It’s five minutes to six! Read to Young Sam!”

Vimes dropped the protesting box on his chest and stared up at the pale stars.

“Mus’ read to Young Sam,” he murmured, and shut his eyes.

They snapped open again.

“Got t’read to Young Sam!”

The stars were moving. It wasn’t the sky! How could it be the sky? This was a bloody cave, wasn’t it?

He rolled over and got to his feet in one movement. There were more stars now, drifting along the walls. The vurms were moving with a purpose. Overhead, they had become a glowing river.

Although they were flickering a little, the lights were also coming back on in Vimes’s head. He peered into what was now no longer blackness but merely gloom, and gloom was like daylight after the darkness that had gone before.

“…got to read to Young Sam…” he whispered, to a cavern of giant stalactites and stalagmites, all gleaming with water, “…to read to Young Sam…”

Stumbling and sliding through shallow pools, running across the occasional patch of white sand, Vimes followed the lights.

S
ybil tried not to look
at the worried faces of her host and
hostess as she crossed their hall. She glared at the grandfather clock. The minute hand was nearly on the 12, and trembling.

She threw open the front door. There was no Sam there, and no one galloping down the road.

The clock struck the hour. She heard someone step quietly beside her.

“Would you like me to read to the young man, madam?” said Willikins. “Perhaps a man’s voice would—”

“No, I’ll go up,” said Sybil quietly. “You wait here for my husband. He won’t be long,” she added firmly.

“Yes, madam.”

“He’ll probably be quite rushed.”

“I shall usher him up without delay, madam.”

“He
will
be here, you know!”

“Yes, madam.”

“He will walk through walls!”

Sybil climbed the stairs as the chimes ended. The clock was a
wrong
clock. Of course it was!

Young Sam had been installed in the old nursery of the house, a rather somber place full of grays and browns. There was a truly frightening rocking horse, all teeth and mad glass eyes.

The boy was standing up in his cot. He was smiling, but the smile faded into puzzlement as Sybil pulled up a chair and sat down next to him.

“Daddy has asked Mummy to read to you tonight, Sam,” she announced brightly. “Won’t that be fun!”

Her heart did not sink. It could not. It was already as low as any heart could go. But it curled up and whimpered as she watched the little boy stare at her, at the door, at her again, and then throw back his head and scream.

V
imes,
half limping and half running, tripped and fell into a
shallow pool.

He found he’d stumbled over a dwarf. A dead one. Very dead. So dead, in fact, that the dripping water had built a small stalagmite on him, and with a film of milky stone had cemented him to the rock against which he sat.

“…got to read to Young Sam,” Vimes told the shadowy helmet, earnestly.

A little way away, on the sand, was a dwarf’s battle-axe. What was going on in Vimes’s mind was not exactly coherent thought, but he could hear faint noises up ahead and an instinct older than thought decided there was no such thing as too much cutting power.

He picked it up. It was covered with no more than a thin coat of rust. There were other humps and mounds on the cavern floor, which, now that he came to look at them, might all be—

No time! Read book!

At the end of the cavern, the ground sloped up, and had been made treacherous by the dripping water. It fought back, but the axe helped. One problem at a time. Climb hill! Read book!

And then the screaming started. His son, screaming.

It filled his mind.

They will burn…

A staircase floated in his vision, reaching endlessly upwards into darkness. The screaming came from up there.

Feet slithered. The axe bit into the milky stone. Weeping and cursing, sliding at every step, Vimes struggled to the top of the slope.

A new, huge cave spread out below. It was busy with dwarfs. It looked like a mine.

There were four of them, only a few feet away from Vimes, whose vision was full of rocking lambs. They stared at this sudden, bloody, swaying apparition, which was dreamily waving a sword in one hand and an axe in the other.

They had axes, too. But the thing glared at them and asked:

“Where’s…My…Cow?”

They backed away.

“Is that my cow?” the creature demanded, stepping forward unsteadily. It shook its head sadly.

“It goes Baaaa!” it wept. “It is…a sheep…”

Then it fell to its knees, clenched its teeth, turned its face upwards, like a man tortured beyond his wits, beseeching the gods of fortune and the tempest, and screamed:

“No! That! Is!! Not!!! My!!! Cow!!!!!”

The words echoed around the cavern
and broke through mere rock, so great was the force behind them, melted mere mountains, screamed across the miles…