Men at Arms (Discworld 15)

'I had the devil of a time getting them to swallow the fortunes.'

Cuddy stopped. A change in the air suggested a vaster tunnel up ahead.

And, indeed, the tunnel opened into the side of a much larger one. There was deep mud on the floor, in the middle of which ran a trickle of water. Cuddy fancied he heard rats, or what he hoped were rats, scuttle away into the dark emptiness. He even thought he could hear the sounds of the city – indistinct, intermingled – filtering through the earth.

'It's like a temple,' he said, and his voice boomed away into the distance.

'Writing here on wall,' said Detritus.

Cuddy peered at the letters hacked deeply into the stone.

' “VIA CLOACA”,' he said. 'Hmm. Well, now . . . via is an old word for street or way. Cloaca means . . .'

He peered into the gloom.

'This is a sewer,' he said.

'What that?'

'It's like . . . well, where do trolls dump their . . . rubbish?' said Cuddy.

'In street,' said Detritus. 'Hygienic.' 'This is . . . an underground street just for . . . well, for crap,' said Cuddy. 'I never knew Ankh-Morpork had them.'

'Maybe Ankh-Morpork didn't know Ankh-Morpork had them,' said Detritus.

'Right. You're right. This place is old. We're in the bowels of the earth.'

'In Ankh-Morpork even the shit have a street to itself,' said Detritus, awe and wonder in his voice. 'Truly, this a land of opportunity.'

'Here's some more writing,' said Cuddy. He scraped away some slime.

' “Cirone IV me fabricat”,' he read aloud. 'He was one of the early kings, wasn't he? Hey . . . do you know what that means?'

'No-one's been down here since yesterday,' said Detritus.

'No! This place . . . this place is more than two thousand years old. We're quite probably the first people to come down here since—'

'Yesterday,' said the troll.

'Yesterday? Yesterday? What's yesterday got to do with it?'

'Footprints still fresh,' said Detritus.

He pointed.

There were footprints in the mud.

'How long have you lived here?' said Cuddy, suddenly feeling very conspicuous in the middle of the tunnel.

'Nine-er years. That is the number of years I have lived here. Nine-er,' said Detritus, proudly. 'It only one of a large . . . number of numbers I can count to.'

'Have you ever heard of tunnels under the city?'

'No.'

'Someone knows about them, though.'

'Yes.'