Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

After some thought, the king wrote to the ruler of Ankh-Morpork, respectfully asking if Carrot could be considered for a place amongst the city's finest.

Letters rarely got written in that mine. Work stopped and the whole clan had sat around in respectful silence as his pen scrittered across the parchment. His aunt had been sent up to Varneshi's to beg his pardon but could he see his way clear to sparing a smidgen of wax His sister had been sent down to the village to ask Mistress Garlick the witch how you stopped spelling recommendation.

Months had gone by.

And then there'd been the reply. It was fairly grubby, since mail in the Ramtops was generally handed to whoever was going in more or less the right direction, and it was also fairly short. It said, baldly, that his application was accepted, and would he present himself for duty immediately.

“Just like that?” he said. “I thought there'd be tests and things. To see if I was suitable. ”

“You're my son, ” said the king. “I told them that, see. Stands to reason you'll be suitable. Probably officer material. ”

old Vimes, Vimes thought.

Poor old Vimes, here in gutter. But that's where he started. Poor old Vimes, with the water swirling in under breastplate. Poor old Vimes, watching rest of gutter's contents ooze by. Prob'ly even poor old Gas-kin has got better view now, he thought.

Lessee . . . he'd gone off after the funeral and got drunk. No, not drunk, another word, ended with 'er'. Drunker, that was it. Because world all twisted up and wrong, like distorted glass, only came back into focus if you looked at it through bottom of bottle.

Something else now, what was it.

Oh, yes. Night-time. Time for duty. Not for Gaskin, though. Have to get new fellow. New fellow coming anyway, wasn't that it? Some stick from the hicks. Written letter. Some tick from the snicks . . .

Vimes gave up, and slumped back. The gutter continued to swirl.

Overhead, the lighted letters fizzed and flickered in the rain.

...

It wasn't only the fresh mountain air that had given Carrot his huge physique. Being brought up in a gold mine run by dwarfs and working a twelve-hour day hauling wagons to the surface must have helped.

He walked with a stoop. What will do that is being brought up in a gold mine run by dwarfs who thought that five feet was a good height for a ceiling.

He'd always known he was different. More bruised for one thing. And then one day his father had come up to him or, rather, come up to his waist, and told him that he was not, in fact, as he had always believed, a dwarf.

It's a terrible thing to be nearly sixteen and the wrong species.

“We didn't like to say so before, son,” said his father. “We thought you'd grow out of it, see.”

“Grow out of what?” said Carrot.

“Growing. But now your mother thinks, that is, we both think, it's time you went out among your own kind. I mean, it's not fair, keeping you cooped up here without company of your own height.” His father twiddled a loose rivet on his helmet, a sure sign that he was worried. “Er,” he added.

“But you're my kind!” said Carrot desperately.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” said his father.

"In another manner of speaking, which is a rather more precise and accurate manner of speaking, no. It's all this genetics business, you see. So it might be a very good idea if you were to go out and see something of the world.''

“What, for good?”

“Oh, no! No. Of course not. Come back and visit whenever you like. But, well, a lad your age, stuck down here . . . It's not right. You know. I mean. Not a child any more. Having to shuffle around on your knees most of the time, and everything. It's not right.”

' 'What is my own kind, then?'' said Carrot, bewildered.

The old dwarf took a deep breath. “You're human,” he said.

' 'What, like Mr Varneshi?'' Mr Varneshi drove an ox-cart up the mountain trails once a week, to trade things for gold. “One of the Big People?”

“You're six foot six, lad. He's only five foot.” The dwarf twiddled the loose rivet again. “You see how it is.”