Thud (23 page)

“I thought vampires could rematerialize their clothes,” said Angua accusingly. “Otto Chriek can!”

“Females can’t. We don’t know why. It’s probably part of the whole underwired-nightdress business. That’s where you score again, of course. When you’re in one hundred and fifty bat bodies, it’s quite hard to remember to keep two of them carrying a pair of pants.” Sally looked up at the ceiling, and sighed. “Look, I can see where this is going. It’s going to be about Captain Carrot, isn’t it…”

“I saw the way you were smiling at him!”

“I’m sorry! We can be very personable! It’s a vampire thing!”

“You were so keen to impress him, eh!”

“And you aren’t? He’s the kind of man anyone would want to impress!”

They watched each other warily.

“He
is
mine, you know,” said Angua, feeling the nascent claws strain under her fingernails.

“You’re his, you mean!” said Sally. “You know it works like that. You trail after him!”

“I’m sorry! It’s a werewolf thing!” Angua yelled.

“Hold it!” Sally thrust both hands in front of her in a gesture of peace. “There’s something we’d better sort before this goes any further!”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. We’re both wearing nothing, we’re standing in what, you may have noticed, is increasingly turning into mud, and we’re squaring up to fight. Okay. But there’s something missing, yes?”

“And that is…?”

“A paying audience? We could make a
fortune
.” Sally winked. “Or we could do the job we came here to do.”

Angua forced her body to relax.
She
should have been saying that. She was the sergeant, wasn’t she?

“All right, all right,” she said. “We’re both here, okay? Let’s leave it at that. Were you saying that these dwarfs were killed by some…
thing
from the well?”

“Possibly. But if they were, it used an axe,” said Sally. “Take a look. Scrape some of the mud away. It’s been oozing over them since I arrived. That’s probably why you missed it,” she added generously.

Angua hauled one dwarf out of the shining slime.

“I see,” she said, letting the body fall back. “This one hasn’t been dead two days. Not much effort made to hide them, I see.”

“Why bother? They’ve stopped pumping out these tunnels, the props look pretty temporary, the mud’s coming back. Besides, who’d be stupid enough to come down here?”

A piece of wall slithered down, with a sticky, organic, cow-pat sort of noise. Little plops and trickles filled the tunnel. Ankh-Morpork’s underworld was stealthily reclaiming its own.

Angua closed her eyes and concentrated. The slime reek, the vampire’s smell, and the water that was now ankle-deep all jostled for attention, but this was competition time. She couldn’t let a vampire take the lead. That would be so…
traditional.

“There were other dwarfs,” she murmured. “Two—no, three…er, four more. I’m getting…the black oil. Distant blood. Down the tunnel.” She stood up so sharply that she nearly hit her head on the tunnel roof. “C’mon!”

“It’s getting a bit unsafe—”

“We could solve this! Come
on
!
You
can’t be afraid of dying!”

Angua plunged away.

“And you think spending a few thousand years buried in sludge is likely to be fun?” shouted Sally, but she was talking only to dripping mud and fetid air. She hesitated a moment, groaned, and followed Angua.

Further along the main tunnel there were more passages branching off. On either side, rivers of mud, like cool lava, were already flowing out of them. Sally splashed past something that looked like a huge copper trumpet, turning gently on the current.

The tunnel was better built here than the ones nearer the well. And there, at the end of it, was a pale light, and Angua, crouched by one of the big, round dwarf doors. Sally paid her no attention. She barely glanced at the dwarf slumped with his back against the bottom of the door.

Instead, she stared at the symbol scrawled large on the metal. It was big and crude, and might be a round, staring eye with a tail, and it gleamed with the greeny-white glow of vurms.

“He wrote it in his blood,” said Angua, without looking up. “They left him for dead, but he was only dying, you see. He managed to make it to here, but the killers had shut the door. He scratched at it, smell here, and he’s worn away his fingernails. Then he made that sign in his own warm blood and sat here, holding the wound shut, watching the vurms turn up. I’d say he’s been dead for eighteen hours or so. Hmm?”

“I think we should get out of here right now,” said Sally, backing away. “Do you know what that sign means?”

“I know it’s mine sign, that’s all. Do
you
know what it means?”

“No, but I know it’s one of the
really
bad ones. It’s not good seeing it here. What are you doing with that body?” Sally backed away further.

“Trying to find out who he was,” said Angua, searching the dwarf’s clothing. “It’s the sort of thing we do in the Watch. We don’t stand around getting worried about drawings on the wall. What’s the problem?”

“Right now?” said the vampire. “He’s…oozing a bit…”

“If I can stand it, so can you. You see a lot of blood in this job. Don’t attempt to drink it, that’s my advice,” said Angua, still rummaging. “Ah…he’s got a rune necklace. And…” she pulled a hand out of the dead dwarf’s jerkin, “can’t make this out very well, but I can smell ink, so it may be a letter. Okay. Let’s get out of here.” She stood up. “Did you hear me?”

“The sign was written by someone dying,” said Sally, still keeping her distance.

“Well?”

“It’s probably a curse.”

“So? We didn’t kill him,” said Angua, getting to her feet with some difficulty.

They looked down at the liquid mud now rising to their knees.

“Do you think it cares?” said Sally matter-of-factly.

“No, but I think there may be another way out in that last tunnel we passed,” said Angua, looking back along the tunnel.

She pointed. Scuttling along with blind determination, a line of vurms marched along the dripping roof almost as fast as the mud flowed down below. They were heading into the side tunnel in a glowing stream.

Sally shrugged. “It’s worth a try, yes?”

They left, and the sound of their splashing soon died away.

Slowly the mud rose, rustling in the gloom. The trail of vurms gradually disappeared overhead. The vurms that made the sign remained though, because such a feast as this was worth dying for.

Their glow winked out, one insect at a time.

The darkness beneath the world caressed the sign, which flamed red and died.

Darkness remained.

I
t was five a.m.
Rain rustled out the sky, not hard, but with a
gentle persistence.

In Sator Square, and in the Plaza of Broken Moons, it hissed on the white ash of the bonfires, occasionally exposing the orange glow, which would briefly sizzle and spit.

A family of gnolls were sniffing around, each one dragging his or her little cart. A few officers were keeping an eye on them. Gnolls weren’t choosy about what they collected, provided it didn’t actually struggle, and even then there were rumors.

But they were tolerated. Nothing cleaned up the place like a gnoll.

From here, they looked like little trolls, each with a huge compost heap on its back. That represented everything it owned, and mostly what it owned was rotten.

Sam Vimes winced at the pain in his side. Just his luck. Two coppers injured in the entire damn affair, and he had to be one of them? Igor had done his best, but broken ribs were broken ribs, and it’d be a week or two before the suspicious green ointment made much difference. His hand twinged in sympathy with them, too.

Still, he enjoyed a bit of a warm glow about the whole thing. They
had
used good, old-fashioned policing, and since good, old-fashioned policemen are invariably outnumbered, he’d employed the good, old-fashioned police methods of cunning, deceit, and any damn weapon you could lay your hands on.

It had hardly been a fight at all. The dwarfs had mostly been sitting and singing gloomy songs, because they fell over when they tried to stand up, or had tried to stand up and were now lying down and snoring. The trolls were, on the other hand, mostly upright, but went over when you pushed them. One or two, a little clearer in the head than the others, had put up a ponderous and laughable fight but had fallen to that most old-fashioned of police methods: the well-placed boot. Well, most of them had. Vimes shifted to ease the aching in his side; he should have seen that one coming.

But all’s well that ends well, eh? No deaths at all, and just to put a little cherry on the morning cake, he had in his hand an early-morning edition of the
Times
, in which a leading article deplored the gangs stalking the city and wondered if the Watch was “up to the job” of cleaning up the streets.

Well, yes, I think we are, you pompous twerp.
Vimes struck a match on a plinth and lit a cigar in recognition of a petty but darkly satisfying triumph. Gods knew they needed one. The Watch had taken a pounding over the whole damn Koom Valley thing, and it was good to hand the lads something to be proud of for a change. All in all, it was definitely a Result—

He stared at the plinth. He didn’t remember what statue had once been there. It celebrated generations of graffiti artists now.

A piece of troll graffiti adorned it now, obliterating everything done by the artists who used mere paint. He read:

MR
.
SHINE
!

HIM DIAMOND
!

Mine sign, city scrawl, he thought. Thing go bad, and people are moved to write on the walls…“Commander!”

He turned. Captain Carrot, armor gleaming, was hurrying toward him, his face, as usual, radiating an expression of a hundred percent pure Keen.

“I thought I told everyone not on prisoner duty to get some sleep, Captain?” said Vimes.

“Just clearing up a few things, sir,” said Carrot. “Lord Vetinari sent a message down to the Yard. He wants a report. I thought I’d better tell you, sir.”

“I was just thinking, Captain,” said Vimes expansively. “Should we put up a little plaque? Something simple? It could say something like
BATTLE OF KOOM VALLEY NOT FOUGHT HERE
,
GRUNE THE
5
TH
,
YEAR OF THE PRAWN
. Could we get them to do a bloody stamp? What do you think?”

“I think you need to get some sleep yourself, Commander,” said Carrot. “And technically, it isn’t Koom Valley until Saturday.”

“Of course, monuments to battles that didn’t take place might be stretching things a bit, but a stamp—”

“Lady Sybil really worries about you, sir.” Carrot broadcast concern.

The fizz in Vimes’s head subsided. As if awakened by the reference to Sybil, the debtors of his body queued up to wave their overdue IOUs: feet—dead tired and in need of a bath; stomach—gurgling; ribs—on fire; back—aching; brain—drunk on its own poisons. Bath, sleep, eat…good ideas. But still must do things…

“How’s our Mr. Pessimal?” he said.

“Igor’s fixed him up, sir. He’s a bit amazed at all the fuss. Now, I know I can’t order you to go and see his lordship—”

“No, you can’t, because I am a
commander
, Captain,” said Vimes, still fuzzily intoxicated on exhaustion.

“—but
he
can and he
has
, sir. And your coach will be waiting for you outside the palace when you come out. That’s
Lady Sybil’s
orders, sir,” said Carrot, appealing to higher authority.

Vimes looked up at the ugly bulk of the palace. Suddenly, clean sheets seemed such a sweet idea.

“Can’t face him like this,” he murmured.

“I had a word with Secretary Drumknott, sir. Hot water, a razor, and a big cup of coffee will be waiting in the palace.”

“You thought of everything, Carrot…”

“I hope so, sir. Now off you—”

“But I thought of
something
, eh?” said Vimes, swaying cheerfully. “Better dead drunk than just dead, eh?”

“It was a classic ruse, sir,” said Carrot reassuringly. “One for the history books. Now, off you go, sir. I’m going to have a look for Angua. She hasn’t slept in her bed.”

“But at this time of the month—”

“I know, sir. She hasn’t slept in her basket, either.”

I
n a dank cellar
that once was an attic and was now half-full of
mud, the vurms poured out of a small hole where wooden planks had long since worn away.

A fist punched up. Soggy timber split and crumbled.

Angua pulled herself up into this new darkness, then reached down to help Sally, who said: “Well, here’s another fine mess.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Angua. “I think we need to go up at least one more level. There’s an archway here. Come on.”

There had been too many dead ends, forgotten stinking rooms and false hopes, and altogether too much slime.

After a while, the smell became almost tangible, and then it managed to become just another part of the darkness. The women wandered and scrambled from one dripping, fetid room to another, testing the muddy walls for hidden doors, searching for even a pinprick of light in the ceilings hanging with interesting but horrible growths.