Something tingled at the back of his neck.

He circled the late Hopkinson's name and drew a line down the page to another circle, in which he wrote: 'He'd got a big oven.'

Hmm. Cheery had said you couldn't bake clay properly in a bread oven. But maybe you could bake it improperly.

He looked up at the candlelight again.

They couldn't do that, could they? Oh, gods... No, surely not ...

But, after all, all you needed was clay. And a holy man who knew how to write the words. And someone to actually sculpt the figure, Vimes supposed, but golems had had hundreds and hundreds of years to learn to be good with their hands...

Those great big hands. The ones that looked so very fist-like.

And then the first thing they'd want to do would be to destroy the evidence, wouldn't they? They probably didn't think of it as killing, but more like a sort of switching-off...

He drew another rather misshapen circle on his notes.

Grog. Old baked clay, ground up small.

They'd added some of their own clay. Dorfl had a new foot, didn't he - it? It hadn't made it quite right. They'd put part of their own selves into a new golem.

That all sounded - well, Nobby would call it mucky. Vimes didn't know what to call it. It sounded like some sort of secret-society thing. 'Clay of my clay.' My own flesh and blood...

Damn hulking things. Aping their betters!

Vimes yawned. Sleep. He'd be better for some sleep. Or something.

He stared at the page. Automatically his hand trailed down to the bottom drawer of his desk, as it always did when he was worried and trying to think. It wasn't as though there was ever a bottle there these days - but old habits died ha ...

There was a soft glassy ching and a faint, seductive slosh.

Vimes's hand came up with a fat bottle. The label said: Bearhugger's Distilleries: The MacAbre, Finest Malt.

The liquid inside almost crawled up the sides of the glass in anticipation.

He stared at it. He'd reached down into the drawer for the whisky bottle and there it was.

But it shouldn't have been. He knew Carrot and Fred Colon kept an eye on him, but he'd never bought a bottle since he'd got married, because he'd promised Sybil, hadn't he... ?

But this wasn't any old rotgut. This was The MacAbre...

He'd tried it once. He couldn't quite remember why now, since in those days the only spirits he generally drank had the subtlety of a mallet to the inner ear. He must have found the money somehow. Just a sniff of it had been like Hogswatchnight. Just a sniff...

'And she said, That's funny - it didn't do that last night !' said Corporal Nobbs.

He beamed at the company.

There was silence. Then someone in the crowd started to laugh, one of those little uncertain laughs a man laughs who is unsure that he's not going to be silenced by those around him. Another man laughed. Two more picked it up. Then laughter exploded in the group as a whole.

Nobby basked.

'Then there's the one about the Klatchian who walked into a pub with a tiny piano - ' he began.

'I think,' said Lady Selachii firmly, 'that the buffet is ready.'

'Got any pig knuckles?' said Nobby cheerfully. 'Goes down a treat with Winkles, a plate of pig knuckles.'

'I don't normally eat extremities,' said Lady Selachii.

Tags: Terry Pratchett Discworld Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net