The Truth (Discworld 25)

William rubbed his head. 'What's happening?' he said.

The nearest dwarf looked up at him and nudged a colleague urgently. The nudge passed itself along the rows, and the room was suddenly filled wall to wall with a cautious silence. A dozen solemn dwarf faces looked hard at William.

No one can look harder than a dwarf. Perhaps it's because there is only quite a small amount of face between the statutory round iron helmet and the beard. Dwarf expressions are more concentrated.

'Urn,' he said. 'Hello?'

One of the dwarfs in front of the big machine was the first to unfreeze.

'Back to work, lads,' he said, and came and looked William sternly in the groin.

'You all right, your lordship?' he said.

William winced. 'Um... what happened?' he said. 'I, uh, remember seeing a cart, and then something hit...'

'It ran away from us,' said the dwarf. 'Load slipped, too. Sorry about that.'

'What happened to Mr Dibbler?'

The dwarf put his head on one side. 'The skinny man with the sausages?' he said.

'That's right. Was he hurt?'

'I don't think so,' said the dwarf carefully. 'He sold young Thunderaxe a sausage in a bun, I do know that.'

William thought about this. Ankh-Morpork had many traps for the unwary newcomer.

'Well, then, is Mr Thunderaxe all right?' he said.

'Probably. He shouted under the door just now that he was feeling a lot better but would stay where he was for the time being,' said the dwarf. He reached under a bench and solemnly handed William a rectangle wrapped in grubby paper.

'Yours, I think,'

William unwrapped his wooden block. It was split right across where a wheel of the cart had run over it, and the writing had been smudged. He sighed.

' 'scuse me,' said the dwarf, 'but what was it meant to be?'

'It's a block prepared for a woodcut,' said William. He wondered how he could possibly explain the idea to a dwarf from outside the city. 'You know? Engraving? A... a sort of very nearly magical way of getting lots of copies of writing? I'm afraid I shall have to go and make another one now,'

The dwarf gave him an odd look, and then took the block from him and turned it over and over in his hands.

'You see,' said William, 'the engraver cuts away bits of--'

'Have you still got the original?' said the dwarf.

'Pardon?'

'The original,' said the dwarf patiently.

'Oh, yes,' William reached inside his jacket and produced it.

'Can I borrow it for a moment?'

'Well, all right, but I shall need it again to--'

The dwarf scanned the letter a while, and then turned and hit the nearest dwarf a resounding boing on the helmet.

'Ten point across three,' he said, handing him the paper. The struck dwarf nodded, and then its right hand moved quickly across the rack of little boxes, selecting things.