The Fifth Elephant (Discworld 24)

"Wrong dwarf won?" he said.

"Some dwarfs would say so. But it"s more that the whole process has been called into question," said Carrot. "By the dwarfs in the biggest dwarf city outside Uberwald."

"Don"t tell me, that must be that place Hubwards of - "

"It"s Ankh-Morpork, sir."

"What? We"re not a dwarf city!"

"Fifty thousand dwarfs now, sir."

"Really?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir."

Of course he is, Vimes thought. He probably knows them all by name.

"You have to understand, sir, that there"s a sort of big debate going on," said Carrot. "On how you define a dwarf."

"Well, some people might say that they"re called dwarfs because - "

"No, sir. Not size. Nobby Nobbs is shorter than many dwarfs, and we don"t call him a dwarf."

"We don"t call him a human, either," said Vimes.

"And, of course, I am also a dwarf."

"You know, Carrot, I keep meaning to talk to you about that - "

"Adopted by dwarfs, brought up by dwarfs. To dwarfs I"m a dwarf, sir. I can do the rite of k"zakra, I know the secrets of h"ragna, I can ha"lk my g"rakha correctly... I am a dwarf."

"What do those things mean?"

"I"m not allowed to tell non-dwarfs." Carrot tactfully tried to stand out of the way of the cigar smoke. "Unfortunately, some of the mountain dwarfs think that dwarfs who"ve moved away aren"t proper dwarfs either. But this time the kingship has been swung by the views of the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs, and a lot of dwarfs back home don"t like it. There"s been a lot of bad feeling all round. Families falling out, that sort of thing. Much pulling of beards."

"Really?" Vimes tried not to smile.

"It"s not funny if you"re a dwarf."

"Sorry."

"And I"m afraid this new Low King is only going to make matters worse, although of course I wish him well."

"Tough, is he?"

"Er, I think you can assume, sir, that any dwarf who rises sufficiently in dwarf society to even be considered as a candidate for the kingship did not get there by singing the hi-ho song and bandaging wounded animals in the forest. But by dwarf standards, King Rhys Rhysson is a modern thinker, although I hear he doesn"t like Ankh-Morpork very much."

"Sounds like a very clear thinker, too."

"Anyway, this has upset a lot of the more, er, traditional mountain dwarfs who thought the next king would be Albrecht Albrechtson."

"Who is not a modern thinker?"

"He thinks even coming up above ground is dangerously non-dwarfish."