Thud! (Discworld 34)

THUD!

The first thing Tak did, he wrote himself.

The second thing Tak did, he wrote the Laws.

The third thing Tak did, he wrote the World.

The fourth thing Tak did, he wrote a cave.

The fifth thing Tak did, he wrote a geode, an egg of stone.

And in the twilight of the mouth of the cave, the geode hatched and the Brothers were born.

The first Brother walked towards the light, and stood under the open sky.

Thus he became too tall. He was the first Man. He found no Laws, and he was enlightened.

The second Brother walked towards the darkness, and stood under a roof of stone. Thus he achieved the correct height. He was the first Dwarf. He found the Laws Tak had written, and he was endarkened.

But some of the living spirit of Tak was trapped in the broken stone egg, and it became the first troll, wandering the world unbidden and unwanted, without soul or purpose, learning or understanding. Fearful of light and darkness it shambles for ever in twilight, knowing nothing, learning nothing, creating nothing, being nothing ...

-From "Gd Tak "Gar" (The Things Tak Wrote) trans. Prof. W. W. W Wildblood, Unseen University Press, AM$8. In the original, the last paragraph of the quoted text appears to have been added by a much later hand.

Him who mountain crush him no

Him who sun him stop him no

Him who hammer him break him no

Him who fire him fear him no

Him who raise him head above him heart Him diamond

- Translation of Troll pictograms found carved on a basalt slab in the deepest level of the Ankh-Morpork treacle mines, in pig-treacle measures estimated at 500,000 years old.

Thud...

That was the sound the heavy club made as it connected with the head. The body jerked, and slumped back.

And it was done, unheard, unseen: the perfect end, a perfect solution, a perfect story.

But, as the dwarfs say, where there is trouble you will always find a troll.

The troll saw.

It started out as a perfect day. It would soon enough be an imperfect one, he knew, but just for these few minutes it was possible to pretend that it wouldn"t.

Sam Vimes shaved himself. It was his daily act of defiance, a confirmation that he was ... well, plain Sam Vimes.

Admittedly he shaved himself in a mansion, and while he did so his butler read out bits from the Times, but they were just ... circumstances. It was still Sam Vimes looking back at him from the mirror. The day he saw the Duke of Ankh in there would be a bad day. "Duke" was just a job description, that"s all.

"Most of the news is about the current ... dwarfish situation, sir,"

said Willikins as Vimes negotiated the tricky area under the nose. He still used his grandad"s cut-throat razor. It was another anchor to reality. Besides, the steel was a lot better than the steel you got today. Sybil, who had a strange enthusiasm for modern gadgetry, kept on suggesting he get one of those new shavers, with a little magic imp inside that had its own scissors and did all the cutting very quickly, but Vimes had held out. If anyone was going to be using a blade near his face, it was going to be him.

"Koom Valley, Koom Valley ," he muttered to his reflection. "Anything new?"

"Not as such, sir," said Willikins, turning back to the front page. "There is a report of that speech by Grag Hamcrusher. There was a disturbance afterwards, it says. Several dwarfs and trolls were wounded. Community leaders have appealed for calm."