Thud! (Discworld 34)

Stumbling and sliding through shallow pools, running across the occasional patch of white sand, Vimes followed the lights.

Sybil tried not to look at the worried faces of her host and hostess as she crossed their hall. The minute hand on the grandfather clock was nearly on the 12, and trembling.

She threw open the front door. There was no Sam there, and no one galloping down the road.

The clock struck the hour. She heard someone step quietly beside her.

"Would you like me to read to the young man, madam?" said Willikins. "Perhaps a man"s voice would-"

"No, I"ll go up," said Sybil quietly. "You wait here for my husband. He won"t be long."

"Yes, madam."

"He"ll probably be quite rushed."

"I shall usher him up without delay, madam." "He will be here, you know!"

"Yes, madam."

"He will walk through walls!"

Sybil climbed the stairs as the chimes ended. The clock was a wrong clock. Of course it was!

Young Sam had been installed in the old nursery of the house, a rather sombre place full of greys and browns. There was a truly frightening rocking-horse, all teeth and mad glass eyes.

The boy was standing up in his cot. He was smiling, but it faded into puzzlement as Sybil pulled up a chair and sat down next to him.

"Daddy has asked Mummy to read to you tonight, Sam," she announced brightly. "Won"t that be fun!"

Her heart did not sink. It could not. It was already as low as any heart could go. But it curled up and whimpered as she watched the little boy stare at her, at the door, at her again, and then throw back his head and scream.

Vimes, half limping and half running, tripped and fell into a shallow pool. He found he"d stumbled over a dwarf. A dead one. Very dead. So dead, in fact, that the dripping water had built a small stalagmite on him, and with a film of milky stone had cemented him to the rock against which he sat.

"Got to read to Young Sam," Vimes told the shadowy helmet earnestly.

A little way away, on the sand, was a dwarf"s battle-axe. What was going on in Vimes"s mind was not exactly coherent thought, but he could hear faint noises up ahead and an instinct as old as thought decided there was no such thing as too much cutting power.

He picked it up. It was covered with no more than a thin coat of rust. There were other humps and mounds on the cavern floor which, now that he came to look at them, might all be- No time! Read book!

At the end of the cavern the ground sloped up, and had been made treacherous by the dripping water. It fought back, but the axe helped. One problem at a time. Climb hill! Read book! And then the screaming started. His son, screaming. It filled his mind.

They will burn ...

A staircase floated in his vision, reaching endlessly upwards into darkness. The screaming came from up there.

Feet slithered. The axe bit into the milky stone. Weeping and cursing, sliding at every step, Vimes struggled to the top of the slope.

A new, huge cave spread out below. It was busy with dwarfs. It looked like a mine.

There were four of them only a few feet away from Vimes, whose vision was full of rocking lambs. They stared at this sudden, bloody, swaying apparition, which was dreamily waving a sword in one hand and an axe in the other.

They had axes, too. But the thing glared at them and asked: "Where"s ... my ... cow?"

They backed away.

"Is that my cow?" the creature demanded, stepping forward unsteadily. It shook its head sadly.

"It goes, "Baaaa!" it wept. "It is ... a sheep...