Thud! (Discworld 34)

. "he scratched his head". .. minge drinking."

"She"s only gone out with Angua and Sally and Cheery, sarge," said Nobby, taking another biscuit.

"Oooh, you wanna watch that, Nobby. Women gangin" up on men-" Fred paused. "A vampire and a werewolf out on the razzle? Take my tip, lad, stay indoors tonight. And if they start behaving in-"

He stopped as the sound of Sam Vimes"s voice came down the spiral stone steps, followed closely by its owner.

"So I"ve got to stop them forming a block, right?"

"If you"re playing the troll side, yes," said a new voice. "A tight group of dwarfs is bad news for trolls."

"Trolls shove, dwarfs throw."

"Right:

"And the central rock, no one can jump that, right?" said Vimes.

"Yes."

"I still think the dwarfs have it all their own way."

"We shall see. The important thing-"

Vimes stopped when he saw Nobby and Colon. "Okay, lads, I"ll talk to the prisoner now," he said. "How is he?"

Fred indicated the hunched figure on the narrow bunk in the corner cell. sat rigidly staring at the scrawls on the page. In the distance, Detritus was barking a command at someone.

He felt like a man crossing a river on stepping stones. He was nearly halfway across, but the next stone was just a bit too far and could only be reached with serious groinal stress. Nevertheless, his foot was waving in the air and it was that or a ducking ...

He wrote: "Rascal. Then he circled the word several times, the pencil biting into the cheap paper.

Rascal must have been to Koom Valley. Let"s say he found a cube there, who knows how. Just lying there? Anyway, he brings it home. He paints his picture and goes mad, but somewhere along the line the cube starts talking to him.

Vimes wrote "SPECIAL WORD?" He drew a circle round it so hard that his pencil broke.

Maybe he can"t find the word for "stop talking"? Anyway, he chucks it down a well ...

He tried to write "Did Rascal ever live in Empirical Crescent?; and then gave up and tried to remember it.

Anyway ... then he dies and, afterwards, this damn book is written. It doesn"t sell many copies, but recently it"s republished and ... ah, but now there"re lots of dwarfs in the city. Some of them read it and something tells them that the secret is in this cube. They want to find out where it is. How? Damn. Doesn"t the book say the secret of Koom Valley is in the painting? Okay. Maybe he ... somehow painted some kind of code into the painting to say where the cube

was? But so what? What was so bad to hear that you killed the poor devils who heard it?

I think I"m looking at this wrong. It"s not my cow. It"s a sheep with a pitchfork. Unfortunately, it goes quack.

He was getting lost now, going all over the place, but he"d got a toe on the opposite stone and he felt he"d made some progress. But to what, exactly?

I mean, what would really happen if there was proof that, say, the dwarfs ambushed the trolls? Nothing that isn"t happening already, that"s what. You can always find an excuse that your side will accept, and who cares what the enemy thinks? In the real world, it wouldn"t make any difference.

There was a faint knock at the door, the sort that you use if you secretly hope it won"t be answered. Vimes sprang from his chair and pulled the door open.

A. E. Pessimal stood there.

"Ah, A. E.," said Vimes, going back to his desk and laying down his pencil. "Come on in. What can I do for you? How"s the arm?"

"Er ... could you spare a moment of your time, your grace?" Your grace, thought Vimes. Well, he hadn"t the heart to object this time.

He sat down again. A. E. Pessimal was still wearing the chain mail shirt with the Specials badge on it. He didn"t look very shiny. Brick"s swipe had bowled him across the plaza like a ball.