The milestone near by proclaimed that it was but two miles to Quirm. Vimes fished out the Gooseberry as a red-hot cabbage smacked into the road behind him.
"Good morning!" he said brightly to the surprised imp. "What is the time, please?"
"Er ... nine minutes to eight, Insert Name Here," said the imp. "So that would mean a speed slightly above one mile a minute," mused Vimes. "Very good."
Moving like a sleepwalker, he went into the field on the other side of the road and followed the trail of stricken, steaming greens until he reached the other coach. People were climbing out of it.
"Everyone okay?" he said. "Breakfast today will be boiled cabbage, baked cabbage, fried cabbage"- he stepped smartly aside as a steaming cauliflower hit the ground and exploded - "and Cauliflower Surprise. Where"s Fred?"
"Looking for somewhere to throw up," said Angua.
"Good man. We"ll take a minute or two to rest here, I think." With that, Sam Vimes walked back to the milestone, sat down
next to it, put his arms round it, and held on tight until he felt better.
You could catch up with the dwarfs long before they"re near Koom Valley. Good grief, at the speed we did earlier you"d have to watch out in case you smashed into the back of them!
Vimes"s thought nagged at him as Willikins drove the coach, at a very sedate speed, out of Quirm and then, on a clear stretch of road, unleashed the hidden horsepower until they were bowling along at forty miles every hour. That seemed quite fast enough.
No one was hurt, after all. You could get to Koom Valley by nightfall!
Yes, but that was not the plan.
Okay, he thought, but what is the plan, exactly? Well, it helped that Sybil knew more or less everybody, or at least everybody who was female, of a certain age, and who had been to the Quirm College for Young Ladies at the same time as Sybil. There appeared to be hundreds of them. They all seemed to have names like Bunny or Bubbles, they kept in touch meticulously, they"d all married influential or powerful men, they all hugged one another when they met and went on about the good old days in Form 3b or whatever, and if they acted together, they could probably run the world or, it occurred to Vimes, might already be doing so.
They were Ladies Who Organize.
Vimes did his best, but he could never keep track of them. A web of correspondence held them all together, and he marvelled at Sybil"s ability to be concerned over the problems of a child - which she"d never met - of a woman she hadn"t seen for twenty-five years. It was a female thing.
So they would be staying in the town near the foot of the valley with a lady currently known to him only as Bunty, whose husband was the local magistrate. According to Sybil, he had his own police force. Vimes translated this, in the privacy of his head, as "he"s got his own gang of thuggish, toothless, evil-smelling thief-takers, since that was what you generally got in these little towns. Still, they might be useful.
Beyond that ... there was no plan. He intended to find the dwarfs and capture and drag as many as possible back to AnkhMorpork. But that was an intention, not a plan. It was a firm intention, though. Five people had been murdered. You couldn"t just turn your back on that. He"d drag "em back and lock them up and throw everything at "em and see what stuck. He doubted if they had many friends now. Of course, it"d get political, it always did, but at least people would know that he"d done all he could, and it was the best he could do. And with any luck it would stop anyone else getting funny ideas. And then there was the damn Secret, but it occurred to him that if he did find it, and it simply was proof that the dwarfs ambushed the trolls or the trolls ambushed the dwarfs or they both ambushed each other at the same time, well, he might as well drop it down a hole. It really wouldn"t change anything. And it was unlikely to be a pot of gold; people didn"t take a lot of money on to battlefields, because there wasn"t very much to spend it on.
Anyway, it had been a good start. They"d clawed back some time, hadn"t they? They could keep up a cracking pace and change horses at every staging inn, couldn"t they? Why was he trying to persuade himself? It made sense to slow down. It was dangerous to go fast.
"If we keep up this pace we might get there the day after tomorrow, right?" he said to Willikins, as they rattled on between stands of young maize.
"If you say so, sir," said Willikins. Vimes noted the hint of diplomacy. "You don"t think so?" he said. "Come on, you can speak your mind!" "Well, sir, those dwarfs want to get there fast, d"you think?" said
Willikins.
"I expect so. I don"t think they want to hang around. So?"
"So I"m just puzzled that you think they"ll be using the road, sir. They could use broomsticks, couldn"t they?"
"I suppose so," Vimes conceded. "But the Archchancellor would have told me if they"d done that, surely."
"Begging your pardon, sir, but what business would it be of his?
They wouldn"t have to bother the gentlemen at the university. Everyone knows the best broomsticks are made by the dwarfs, up at Copperhead."
The coach rolled on.
After a while Vimes observed, in the voice of one who has been thinking deeply, "They"d have to travel at night, though. They"d be spotted otherwise."
"Very true, sir," said Willikins, staring ahead.
There was more thoughtful silence.