Vimes was watching the King"s face. Some of this you knew, right. Not all of it, but you didn"t look surprised that it was Bloodaxe speaking. Rumours? Old stories? Something in the records? You"ll never tell me.
"Had"ra," said Bashfullsson, and the cube fell silent. "That means stop, commander," the grag added.
"And so we are under Koom Valley," sneered Ardent. "And what do we find?"
"We find you," said Bashfullsson. "We always find you."
"Dead trolls. Dead dwarfs. And nothing more than a voice," said Ardent.
"Ankh-Morpork here is here. They are devious. These words could have been spoken yesterday!"
The King was watching Ardent and Bashfullsson. So was every other dwarf. You don"t have to stand and argue! Vimes wanted to shout. Just chain the bastards up and we can sort it out later!
But being a dwarf was all about words and laws ...
"These are venerable grags," said Ardent, indicating the robed figures behind him. "They have studied the Histories! They have studied the Devices! Thousands of years of knowledge stand before you. And you? What do you know?"
"You came to destroy the truth," said Bashfullsson. "You dared not trust it. A voice is just a voice, but these bodies are proof. You came here to destroy them:
Ardent snatched the axe from a miner and was flourishing it before any of the bodyguards could react. When realization caught up with them, there was a massed move forward.
"No!" said Bashfullsson, holding up his hands. "Sire, please! This is an argument between grags!"
"Why do you carry no axe?" Ardent snarled.
"I need no axe to be a dwarf," said Bashfullsson. "Nor do I need to hate trolls. What kind of creature defines itself by hatred?"
"You strike at the very root of us!" said Ardent. "At the root!"
"Then strike back," said Bashfullsson, holding out his empty hands. "And put your sword away, Commander Vimes," he added, without turning his head. "This is dwarf business. Ardent? I"m still standing. What do you believe in? Ha"ak! Ga strak ja"ada!"
Ardent jerked forward, axe raised. Bashfullsson moved quickly, there was the thud of something hitting flesh, and then a tableau as motionless as the brooding figures around the cavern. There was Ardent, axe raised overhead. There was Bashfullsson, down on one knee with his head resting almost companionably against the dwarf"s chest and the edge of one hand pressed hard against Ardent"s throat.
Ardent"s mouth opened, but all that came out was a croak and a trickle of blood. He took a few steps back, and fell over backwards.
The axe struck the white, wet, stony waterfall, and smashed through the drip of millennia. Time fell in shards around it.
Bashfullsson rose, looking shocked and massaging his hand. "It is like using an axe," he said, to no one in particular, "but without the axe..."
The uproar began again, but a dwarf, dripping with water, pushed through the mob. "Sire, there"s a band of trolls coming up the valley! They asked for you! They say they want to parley!"
Rhys stepped over the body of Ardent, looking intently at the hole in the waterfall of stone. Another piece fell down as he touched it.
"Is there something unusual about their leader?" he said in a preoccupied voice, still staring into the new darkness. "Yes, sire! He"s all ... sparkly!"
"Ah. Good," said the King. "He has his parley. Bring him down here." "Could that be a troll who knows some very powerful dwarfs?" said Vimes.
The Low King met his eyes for a moment. "Yes, I imagine it is," he said. Then he raised his voice. "Someone fetch me a torch! Commander Vimes, could you just ... look at this, please?"
In the depths of the revealed cave, something shone.
On this day in 1802, the painter Methodia Rascal dropped the glittering thing in the deepest well he knew. No one would ever hear it down there. The Chicken chased him home.
It would be a lot simpler, Vimes thought, if this was a story. A sword is pulled out of a stone or a magic ring is flung into the depths of the sea, and with general rejoicing the world turns.
But this was real life. The world didn"t turn, it just went into a spin. It was Koom Valley Day and there wasn"t a battle going on in Koom Valley. But what was going on here wasn"t peace, either. What was going on ... well, what was going on was committees. It was negotiation. Actually, as far as he could tell, it hadn"t even got as far as negotiation yet. It hadn"t got past talks about meetings about delegations. On the other hand, no one had died, except maybe of boredom.
There was a lot of history to be unpicked, and, for those who weren"t actually engaged in that delicate activity, there was Koom Valley to tame. Two cultural heroes were down there in the cavern, and all it needed was one good storm and a few misplaced blockages for a white flood laden with grinding boulders to wipe the whole place away. It hadn"t happened yet, but sooner or later the dynamic geography would get round to it. Koom Valley couldn"t be left to its own devices, not any more.