Thud (46 page)

Ardent snatched the axe from a miner and was flourishing it before any of the bodyguards could react. When realization caught up with them, there was a massed move forward.

“No!” said Bashfullsson, holding up his hands. “Sire, please! This is an argument between grags!”

“Why do you carry no axe?” Ardent snarled.

“I need no axe to be a dwarf,” said Bashfullsson. “Nor do I need to hate trolls. What kind of creature defines itself by hatred?”

“You strike at the very root of us!” said Ardent. “At the root!”

“Then strike back,” said Bashfullsson, holding out his empty hands. “And put your sword away, Commander Vimes,” he added, without turning his head. “This is dwarf business. Ardent? I’m still standing. What do you believe in?
Ha’ak! Ga strak ja’ada!”

Ardent jerked forward, axe raised. Bashfullsson moved quickly, there was the thud of something hitting flesh, and then a tableau as motionless as the brooding figures around the cavern. There was Ardent, axe raised overhead. There was Bashfullsson, down on one knee, with his head resting almost companionably against the dwarf’s chest and the edge of one hand pressed hard against Ardent’s throat.

Ardent’s mouth opened, but all that came out was a croak and a trickle of blood.

He took a few steps back, and fell over backwards. The axe struck the white, wet, stony waterfall, and smashed through the drip of millennia. Time fell in shards around.

Bashfullsson rose, looking shocked and massaging his hand.

“It is like using an axe,” he said, to no one in particular, “but without the axe…”

The uproar began again, but a dwarf, dripping with water, pushed through the mob.

“Sire, there’s a band of trolls coming up the valley! They asked for you! They say they want to parley!”

Rhys stepped over the gurgling body of Ardent, looking intently at the hole in the waterfall of stone. Another piece fell down as he touched it.

“Is there something unusual about their leader?” he said in a preoccupied voice, still staring into the new darkness.

“Yes, sire! He’s all…sparkly!”

“Ah. Good,” said the king. “He has his parley. Bring him down here.”

“Could that be a troll who knows some very powerful dwarfs?” said Vimes.

The Low King met his eyes for a moment. “Yes, I imagine it is,” he said. Then he raised his voice. “Someone fetch me a torch! Commander Vimes, could you just…look at this, please?”

In the depths of the revealed cave, something shone.

I
t would be a lot simpler,
Vimes thought, if this was a story. A
sword is pulled out of a stone, or a magic ring is flung into the depths of the sea, and with general rejoicing, the world turns.

But this was real life. The world didn’t turn, it just went into a spin. It was Koom Valley Day, and there wasn’t a battle going on in Koom Valley. But what was going on here wasn’t peace, either. What was going on…well, what was going on was
committees
. It was negotiation. Actually, as far as he could tell, it hadn’t even got as far as negotiation yet.

It hadn’t got past talks about meetings about delegations. On the other hand, no one had died, except maybe of boredom.

There was a lot of history to be unpicked, and, for those who weren’t actually engaged in that delicate activity, there was Koom Valley to tame. Two cultural heroes were down there in the cavern, and all it needed was one good storm and a few misplaced blockages for a white flood laden with grinding boulders to wipe the whole place away. It hadn’t happened yet, but sooner or later the dynamic geography would get around to it. Koom Valley couldn’t be left to its own devices, not anymore.

Everywhere you looked, there were teams of trolls and dwarfs surveying, diverting, damming, and drilling. They’d been engaged in this for two days. It would take them forever, because every winter changed the game. Koom Valley was
forcing
cooperation on them. Dam Koom Valley…

Vimes thought that was a bit too pat, but nature can be like that. Sometimes you got sunsets so pink that they had no style at all.

One thing that had happened fast was the tunnel. Dwarfs had cut down quickly through the soft limestone. You could stroll down into the cavern now, although, In fact, you’d have to queue, because of the long line of trolls and dwarfs.

Those in the line going down eyed one another with uncertainty at best. Those in the line coming up sometimes looked angry, or were close to tears, or just walked along looking at the ground. Once they got past the exit, they tended to form into quiet groups.

Sam, with Young Sam in his arms, didn’t have to queue. News had got around. He went straight in, past the trolls and dwarfs who were painstakingly reassembling the broken stalagmites (it was news to Vimes that you could do that, but apparently if you came back in five hundred years they’d be as good as new) and into what had come to be called the Kings’ Cave.

And there they were. You couldn’t argue with it. There was the dwarf king, slumped forward across the board, glazed by the eternal drip, his beard now rock and at one with the stone, but the diamond troll king had remained upright in death, his skin gone cloudy, and you could still see the game in front of him. It was his move; a healthy little stalagmite hung from his outstretched hand.

They’d broken off small stalagmites to make the pieces, which time had now glued into immobility. The scratched lines on the stone were more or less invisible, but Thud players from both races had already pored over it and a sketch of the Dead Kings’ Game had already appeared in the
Times
. The troll king was playing the dwarf side. Apparently, it could go either way.

People were saying that when this was all over, they’d seal the cave. Too many people in a living cave killed it in some way, the dwarfs said. And then the kings would be left in the dark to finish their game in, with luck, peace.

Water dripping on a stone, changing the shape of the world one drop at a time, washing away a valley…

Yes, well, Vimes had added to himself. But it’d never be that simple. And for every new generation, you’d have to open it again, so that people could see that it was true.

Today, though, it was open for Sam and Young Sam, who was wearing a fetching wooly hat with a bobble on it.

Brick and Sally were on duty, along with a couple of dwarfs and two more trolls, all watching the stream of visitors and one another. Vurms covered the ceiling. The game gleamed. What would Young Sam remember? Probably just the glitter. But it had to be done.

The players were genuine—on that, at least, both sides agreed. The carvings on Diamond were accurate, the armor and jewelry on Bloodaxe were just as history recorded. Even the long loaf of dwarf bread that he carried into battle, and which could shatter a troll skull, was by his side. Dwarf scholars had, with delicacy and care and the blunting of fifteen saw blades, removed a tiny slice of it. Miraculously, it had turned out still to be as inedible now as the day it was baked.

A minute was about enough for this historic moment, Vimes decided. Young Sam was at the grabbing age, and he’d never hear the end of it if his son ate a historic monument.

“Can I have a word, Lance Constable?” he said to Sally as he turned to go. “The guard changes in a minute.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Sally. Vimes strolled off to a corner of the cavern and waited until Nobby and Fred Colon marched in at the head of the relief.

“Glad you joined, Lance Constable?” he said, as she hurried up.

“Very much, sir!”

“Good. Shall we go up to the daylight?”

She followed him up the slope and into the damp warmth of Koom Valley, where he sat down on a boulder. He looked at her while Young Sam played at his feet.

He said: “Is there anything you’d like to say to me, Lance Constable?”

“Should there be, sir?”

“I can’t prove anything, of course,” said Vimes. “But you are an agent of the Low King, aren’t you? You’ve been spying on me?”

He waited while she considered her options. Swallows swooped overhead in squadrons.

“I, er, wouldn’t put it quite like that, sir,” she said eventually. “I was keeping an eye on Hamcrusher, and I’d heard about the mining, and then, when it all started to heat up—”

“—becoming a watchman seemed a good idea, right? Did the league know?”

“No! Look, sir, I wasn’t spying on
you
—”

“You told him I was headed for Koom Valley. And the night we arrived, you went for a little fly-around. Just stretching your wings?”

“Look, this isn’t my life!” said Sally. “I’d joined the new force in Bonk. We’re trying to make a difference up there! I did want to come to Ankh-Morpork anyway, because, well, we all want to. To learn, you know? How you manage to do it? Everyone speaks highly of you! And then the Low King summoned me and I thought, where’s the harm? Hamcrusher has caused trouble up there, too. Er…I never actually told you a lie, sir.”

“Rhys already knew about the Secret, right?” said Vimes.

“No, sir, not as such. But I think he had some reason to suspect there was something down there.”

“Then why didn’t he just go and look?”

“Dwarfs digging around in Koom Valley? The trolls would, er, go postal, sir.”

“But not if the dwarfs were merely investigating why a copper from Ankh-Morpork was chasing some fleeing criminals into the caves, right? Not if the copper was good ol’ Sam Vimes, who, everyone knows, is as straight as an arrow even if he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. You can’t bribe Sam Vimes, but why bother when you can pull the wool over his eyes?”

“Look, sir, I know how you must feel, but…well, there’s your litle boy there, playing in Koom Valley, with trolls and dwarfs all ’round, and they’re not fighting. Right? I didn’t lie, I just…liaised a little. Wasn’t it worth it, sir? Hah, you really worried them when you went to the wizards! Shine hadn’t left the city! Rhys had to fly him in by night! All they really did was follow your lead. The only person who fooled you was me, and it turns out I wasn’t very good at it. They needed you, sir. Look around and say it wasn’t worth it…”

A hundred yards away, a house-sized rock rumbled across the stone, pushed and steered by a dozen trolls, dropped into a sinkhole and blocked it like an egg in a cup. There was a cheer.

“Can I mention something else, sir?” said Sally. “I do
know
Angua is standing behind me.”

“It’s Sergeant Angua to you,” said Angua, by her ear. “You didn’t fool me, either. I told you we didn’t like snitches in the Watch. But for what it’s worth, sir, she smells like she’s telling the truth.”

“Do you still have a route to the Low King?” said Vimes.

“Yes, and I’m sure he’ll—” Sally began quickly.

“These are my demands. The grags and what’s left of their guards are coming back to Ankh-Morpork with me. That includes Ardent, though I’m told it’ll be weeks before he can talk again. They’re going before Vetinari. I’ve got promises to keep, and no one is going to stop me. It’ll be tough to make any big charges stick, but I’m bloody well going to try. And since I’ll bet my dinner that Vetinari is in on all this, I expect he’ll pack ’em off back to Rhys in any case. I imagine
he’s
got a cell that’s deep enough for comfort. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. And the other demands?”

“The same as that one, repeated in a louder voice,” said Vimes. “Understood?”

“Absolutely, sir. Then I’ll resign, of course,” said Sally.

Vimes’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll resign when I tell you to, Lance Constable! You took the King’s Shilling, remember? And made an oath. Go and liaise!”

“You’re going to keep her?” said Angua, watching the vampire disappear into the distance.

“You said yourself she’s a good copper. We’ll see. Oh, don’t make that face, Sergeant. It’s all the rage in politics these days, spying on your friends. That’s what I’m told. Like she said: look around.”

“This is a bit unlike you, sir,” said Angua, giving him a look of concern.

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” said Vimes. “I had a nice sleep last night. It’s a nice day. No one is actively trying to kill me, which is nice. Thank you, Sergeant. Have a nice evening.”

Vimes carried Young Sam back in late-afternoon light. Just as well the girl
had
been working for Rhys. Things might have been a bit tricky otherwise. That was the plain fact of it. Keep her on? Maybe. She’d been very useful, even Angua admitted. Besides, he’d been practically forced to take on a spy, in times of more-orless war! If he played that right, no one would
ever again
dictate to him who he took on in the Watch. Doreen Winkings could rattle her false canines as much as she liked!

Hmm…was this how Vetinari thought
all the time
?

He heard his name being called. A coach was coming across the rock, and Sybil was waving from the window. That was another step forward; even wagons could get up here now.

“You haven’t forgotten the dinner tonight, have you?” she said, a hint of suspicion in her voice.

“No, dear.” Vimes hadn’t, but he’d hoped that it might evaporate if he didn’t think about it. It was going to be Official, with both kings and lots of important lesser kings and clan leaders. And the Special Envoy from Ankh-Morpork, unfortunately. That would be Sam Vimes, scrubbed up.

At least there weren’t going to be tights and plumes. Even Sybil hadn’t been that farsighted. Regrettably, though, the town had a decent tailor who’d been very keen to use all that gold braid he’d bought by accident a couple of years ago.

“Willikins will have a bath run by the time we get back,” said Sybil as the coach moved away.