Raising Steam (Discworld 40)

From the gloom of the guard’s van behind him someone coughed, pointedly. Vimes emerged with a little smile and said, ‘Plausible deniability, eh, Mister Lipwig? But well done, anyway. Just between ourselves: those golems that’ll never be used … What do you suppose they’re doing right now?’

Moist opened his mouth to deny all knowledge of the golems, then thought better of it. Something in Vimes’s eyes dared him to try. ‘Digging their way back home, I trust,’ he said. ‘Rather more easily since they tunnelled their way up here in the first place.’

And in the distance behind the train, the rickety bridge was falling bit by bit into the valley in a curious kind of mechanical ballet. It would be some time before it could be used again, thought Moist – but now we’ve got Rhys this far we can throw everything into getting this damn bridge built properly.

And a few hours later, as the golems tunnelled under his tavern, the Grosszügig Stein, Herr Muckenfuss noticed the floor dancing and every glass and stein in the buil

ding shook rapidly. Plump though he was, he scooped up every falling stein and glass with great determination until there was a sudden settling in the air and the tavern was eerily silent. He looked at Herr Bummel, his solitary customer, who stared at the dregs in his stein of the new cask of Old Blonk they had been sampling before whispering in impressed tones, ‘I think I’ll have the same again.’

As Bonk came ever closer and the horizon was now eaten by the mountains – looming outlines visible against the night sky, steep slopes occasionally catching the moonlight – Commander Vimes called a council of war in the guard’s van, the centre of operations. With the experience of the attacks at the Paps and the destruction of the Flyer to draw upon, careful plans were laid for the defence of the train and the King.

‘Well now, look around, all of you. What you see is canyons and trees. If I was a grag I’d probably see this next stretch as my last available opportunity to derail Iron Girder.’

Vimes’s face was grim as he outlined his proposals and Rhys nodded his approval, interrupting now and then to add a refinement.

‘We must also take care of attacks from above,’ the commander continued. ‘As we’ve seen, Iron Girder is well protected. She has her corsets on now, thanks to Dick’s new alloy, but we might have to fight on top of the carriages. I see you grin, Mister Lipwig. So, smart boy, if that happens I invite you to join me and the others on the roof when the time comes. Are you game, sir? It’s likely to be very dangerous up there.’

The inner Moist patted himself on the back as he thought of his illicit adventure on top of the Flyer. He could dance on the train, jump and spin and twirl, because he had the measure of the moods of every part of the train.

‘I’ve wanted to do something like this ever since I saw my first locomotive, commander,’ he said to Commander Vimes.

‘Yes,’ said Vimes, ‘that’s what I’m afraid of. So I must tell you that we work as a team or we become separate corpses.’ He pointed at the trees towering overhead in the deep cutting they were travelling through. ‘There is very little space in this damn cutting. Trees? Nothing but stiff weeds – remember that!’

‘I’m sure we could do it,’ said Moist. ‘Why not bring Detritus up top as well?’

‘No, he’s good on the ground, but he isn’t limber. Anyway, with Detritus on top of it I’m afraid the roof would pretty soon become the floor.’

The commander looked around and said, ‘The rest of you know your stations. Remember, we’re on this train to get the King back again. Guard him! Don’t bother about us on top.’

When he could speak to Vimes with nobody else listening, Moist said, ‘I know the rhythm of the train, but I’m no fighter, commander. Why choose me?’

‘Because, Mister Lipwig, you’d pay a king’s ransom in order to say that you fought on the roof of a train and I’ve seen you, you’re a bastard in close combat, worse than Nobby and he tends to bite their knees. I saw the corpses of the grags from that incident at the Quirm railhead. You can fight, if only in terror, but it’s true that the coward can often be the best fighter of all.’

As the sky grew pallid in the pre-dawn, the atmosphere on the train changed. The whole crew knew that they were now heading at top speed right into unfriendly territory. On every crag in the mountains of Uberwald you could see the lights of the Igors twinkling and wobbling in the darkness of the canyons, and green lightning flashed from gargoyle to gargoyle like spectres.

Moist had generally always kept away from the place. You got the occasional werewolf or zombie in Ankh-Morpork, of course, but in Uberwald they were commonplace. This was their place, with their rules – and that included the black ribboners, the slightly weird types who had sworn to shun the temptation to drink people’s blood and similar … But they were still weird, possibly even more so, drinking only cocoa and marching with banners and drums on every possible occasion. Arguably that was better than being taken to the crossroads and staked … again. The hand of Lady Margolotta was visible everywhere, and Moist knew that where you found her hand you would also find the hand of Vetinari.

But now there was menace in the air. Although Moist was, in fact, okay with menace, it was the thought of dying that was uppermost in his mind, and his little internal demon was shouting, ‘Hahaha! Remember that a life without danger is a life not worth living!’ And valiantly he stood by that assertion … though quite frankly he would rather have been standing on a beach in Quirm, if possible eating one of those really nice ice creams they made with a wafer-thin cone that crunched so beautifully as you bit into it. With strawberry sauce. And sprinkles.

Moist stood in the middle of the guard’s van letting his body understand the motions of the train. He rocked when it rolled and concentrated on staying upright. After all, he reasoned, if there was going to be a fight then your legs had to know what was waiting for them. Vimes was puzzled about what he was doing, but when Moist tried to explain, the commander snorted in derision.

‘In general, Mister Lipwig, I try to disable those who’re trying to do the same to me as quickly as I can. It’s a simple little approach. Not very complicated, but it helps me stay alive … that and the understanding that almost everything has a groin and every foot has a boot.’

The sound of metal and stone bouncing off the carriages came as a relief. Like an expected shoe dropping.

The train was travelling through a cutting that had once been used by wagons, and Iron Girder almost touched the rocky sides as she passed through at less than half speed. The guard’s van was in a state of siege and only later did Moist learn that grags had swung down from the sides of the cutting.

An unfortunate few dwarfs had landed on Bluejohn’s flatbed and while the biggest officer of the City Watch was at heart a pussycat, two grags trying to hack lumps out of him was clearly causing him to become somewhat acerbic and so the pussycat was now fighting like a lion. He hurled curses in trollish which actually shone red in the air as they were cast.

Quelling his nerves, Moist grabbed a jim crow and opened the trap door on to the roof of the guard’s van, to the initial amazement of the grag who had been trying to force his way in. But any sense of achievement the dwarf might have felt was knocked away by the vicious metal bar hitting his jaw with a satisfactory clang.

Moist wasn’t surprised to hear Commander Vimes scrambling up after him. And now, surrounded by grags in a state of disarray, Vimes tore off his shirt and as other dwarfs approached him Moist saw them suddenly realize that their futures were in the hands of the legendary Blackboard Monitor. Once freed, the brilliant scar on the commander’s wrist was almost throbbing in the half-light. The grags stared at it and that was the first of their many mistakes, because the commander went, as they say in Ankh-Morpork, totally librarian on them.

As Vimes charged towards the far end of the van he smacked away one distraught grag so that he landed on top of another, making it look almost balletic as they twisted and fell on to the rails below. And now the goblins joined in to make the grags’ day just a little bit more interesting: goblins in your armour was definitely not an aid to fighting.

The trap door and an adjoining panel had been torn away from the top of the guard’s van and, while battling a particularly ferocious dwarf,fn78 Moist saw Detritus levelling his enormous crossbow through the hole and heard the troll shout, ‘Piece Maker!’, a signal to anyone of sense to take extreme cover immediately. The darts that the piecemaker fired were hardwood and therefore horribly dangerous. And if Detritus was really feeling fit, the weapon spat the wood so fast that the darts ignited as they flew. Not metal, only wood, but wood going so incredibly fast that it splintered into a thousand more darts all travelling at terrible speed.

When the thunder had died away, Detritus yelled up to him, ‘Hey, Mister Lipwig! Dis van is goin’ backwards! Der gritsuckers knew jus’ where to take der engine off!’