The Fifth Elephant (Discworld 24)

"He said, "Who has?", sir."

"It sounded like it. All that arguing... it"s not a case of sitting on the throne and saying, "Do this, do that," then."

"Dwarfs are very argumentative, sir. Of course, many wouldn"t agree. But none of the big dwarf clans are happy about this. You know how it is the Copperheads didn"t want Albrecht, and the Schmaltzbergers wouldn"t support anyone called Glodson, the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs were split both ways, and Rhys comes from a little coalmining clan near Llamedos that isn"t important enough to be on anyone"s side..."

"You mean he didn"t get to be king because

everyone liked him but because no one disliked him enough?"

"That"s right, sir."

Vimes glanced at the crumpled letters that the King had thrust into his hand. By daylight he could see the faint scribble on one corner. There were just two words.

MIDNIGHT, SEE?

Humming to himself, he tore the piece of paper off and rolled it into a ball.

"And now for the damn vampire," he said.

"Don"t worry, sir," said Cheery. "What"s the worst she can do? Bite your head off?"

"Thank you for that, corporal. Tell me... those robes some of the dwarfs were wearing. I know they wear them on the surface so they"re not polluted by the nasty sunlight, but why wear . them down there?"

"It"s traditional, sir. Er, they were worn by the... well, it"s what you"d call the knockermen, sir."

"What did they do?"

"Well, you know about firedamp? It"s a gas you get in mines sometimes. It explodes."

Vimes saw the images in his mind as Cheery explained...

The miners would clear the area, if they were lucky. And the knockerman would go in wearing layer after layer of chain-mail and leather, carrying his sack of wicker globes stuffed with rags and oil. And his long pole. And his slingshot.

Down in the mines, all alone, he"d hear the knockers. Agi Hammerthief and all the other things that made noises, deep under the earth.

There could be no light, because light would mean sudden, roaring death. The knockerman would feel his way through the utter dark, far below the surface.

There was a type of cricket that lived in the mines. It chirruped loudly in the presence of firedamp. The knockerman would have one in a box, tied to his hat.

When it sang, a knockerman who was either very confident or extremely suicidal would step back, light the torch on the end of his pole and thrust it ahead of him. The more careful knockerman would step back rather more, and slingshot a ball of burning rags into the unseen death. Either way, he"d trust in his thick leather clothes to protect him from the worst of the blast.

Initially the dangerous trade did not run in families, because who"d marry a knockerman? They were dead dwarfs walking. But sometimes a young dwarf would ask to become one; his family would be proud, wave him goodbye, and then speak of him as if he was dead, because that made it easier.

Sometimes, though, knockermen came back. And the ones that survived went on to survive again, because surviving is a matter of practice. And sometimes they would talk a little of what they heard, all alone in the deep mines... the tap-tapping of dead dwarfs trying to get back into the world, the distant laughter of Agi Hammerthief, the heartbeat of the turtle that carried the world.

Knockermen became kings.

Vimes, listening with his mouth open,

wondered why the hell it was that dwarfs believed that they had no religion and no priests. Being a dwarf was a religion. People went into the dark for the good of the clan, and heard things, and were changed, and came back to tell...

And then, fifty years ago, a dwarf tinkering in Ankh-Morpork had found that if you put a simple fine mesh over your lantern flame it"d burn blue in the presence of the gas but wouldn"t explode. It was a discovery of immense value to the good of dwarfkind and, as so often happens with such discoveries, almost immediately led to a war.

"And afterwards there were two kinds of dwarf," said Cheery sadly. "There"s the Copperheads, who all use the lamp and the patent gas exploder, and the Schmaltzbergers, who stick to the old ways. Of course we"re all dwarfs," she said, "but relations are rather... strained."

"I bet they are."

"Oh, no, all dwarfs recognize the need for the Low King, it"s just that..."