Thud! (Discworld 34)

His wife stared at him, turned round, dropped the buckets and started to shout something.

And then the flame blossomed. It hit Sybil in the chest, splashed across the pens, and went out abruptly. The dwarf looked down and began to thump the pipe desperately.

The pillar of flame that was Lady Sybil said, in an authoritative voice that brooked no disobeying: "Lie down, Sam. Right now." And Sybil dropped to the sandy floor as, all down the lines of pens, dragon heads rose on long dragon necks.

Their nostrils were flaring. They were breathing in.

They"d been challenged. They"d been offended. And they"d just had their supper.

"Good boys," said Sybil, from the floor.

Twenty-six streams of answering dragon fire rose to the occasion. Vimes, lying on the floor so that his body shielded Young Sam, felt the hairs crisp on the back of his neck.

This wasn"t the smoky red of the dwarf fire; this was something only a dragon"s stomach could cook up. The flames were practically invisible. At least one of them must have hit the dwarf"s weapon, because there was an explosion and something went through the roof. The dragon pens were built like a firework factory: the walls were very thick, and the roof was as thin as possible to provide a faster exit to heaven.

When the noise had died to an excited hiccuping, Vimes risked looking up. Sybil was getting to her feet, a little clumsily because of all the special clothing every dragon breeder wore.[1]

The iron of the far doors glowed around the black outline of a

[1] That is to say, every dragon breeder not currently occupying a small artistic urn.

dwarf. A little way in front of them, two iron boots were cooling from white heat in a puddle of molten sand.

Metal went plink.

Lady Sybil reached up with heavy gloved hands, patted out some patches of burning oil on her leather apron, and lifted off her helmet. It landed on the sand with a thud.

"Oh, Sam ..: she said softly.

"Are you all right? Young Sam is fine. We"ve got to get out of here!"

"Oh, Sam. .."

"Sybil, I need you to take him!" Vimes said, speaking slowly and clearly to get through the shock. "There could be others out there!"

Lady Sybil"s eyes focused. "Give him to me," she ordered. "And you take Raja!"

Vimes looked where she was indicating. A young dragon with floppy ears and an expression of mildly concussed good humour blinked at him. He was a Golden Wouter, a breed with a flame so strong that one of them had once been used by thieves to melt their way into a bank vault.

Vimes picked him up carefully.

"Coal him up," Sybil commanded.

It"s in the bloodline, Vimes told himself as he fed anthracite into Raja"s eager gullet. Sybil"s female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.

Vimes flinched as Raja burped.

"That was a dwarf, wasn"t it?" said Sybil, cradling Young Sam. "One of those deep-down ones?"

"Yes:

"Why did it try to kill me?"

When people are trying to kill you, it means you"re doing something right. It was a rule Sam had lived by. But this ... even a real stone killer like Chrysoprase wouldn"t have tried something like this. It was insane. They will burn. They will burn.

"I think they"re frightened of what I"m going to find out," said Vimes. "I think it"s all gone wrong for them, and they want to stop me."

Could they have been that stupid? he wondered. A dead wife? A dead child? Could they think that would mean for one moment that I"d stop? As it is, when I catch up with whoever ordered this, and I will, I hope there"s someone there to hold me back. They will burn for what they did.