Thud! (Discworld 34)

Vimes slapped him on the back.

"Probably not this one," he said. And added, but only to himself: because you, captain, are not a bastard.

Bewildered and aimless, the troll wanders through the world ...

Brick"s head really gonged. He really didn"t want to be doing dis, but he"d fallen into bad company. He often fell into bad company, he reflected, although sometimes he had to look all day to find it, "cos Brick was a loser"s loser. A troll without a clan or a gang, and who is considered thick even by other trolls, has to take any bad company he can find. In this case he"d met Totally Slag an" Hardcore an" Big Marble, an" it had been easier to fall in wi" dem than decide not to, an" dey"d met up wi" more trolls an" now ...

Look at it like dis, he thought as he trudged along, singing gang songs a bit behind the beat because he didn"t know the words ... All right, being in der middle of dis mob o" trolls ain"t "lyin" low, dat is a fact. But Totally Slag had said the word wuz that the Watch wuz also after the troll who"d been down dat mine, right? An", if you fink about it, the best place to hide a troll, right, is in a big bunch of trolls. "Cos the Watch"d be pokin" around in der cellars where der real mean trollz hung out, they wouldn"t be lookin" here. An" if they did, an" were puttin" the finger on him, then all dese brother trolls would help him out.

He wasn"t too certain about that last bit, in his heart of hearts. His possibly negative IQ, complete absence of street cred and, above all, his permanent inclination to snort, suck, swallow or bite anything that promised to make his brain sparkle, meant that he had been turned down even by the Tenth Egg Street Can"t- fink- of- aname Gang, rumoured to be so dense that one of their members was a lump of concrete on a piece of string. No, it would be hard to imagine any troll caring much what happened to Brick. But right now dey were brothers, and der only game in town. was a pillared room on the other side of the door. It smelled damp and unfinished. There were vurms on the ceiling, but the floor was muddy and squelched underfoot.

Angua could make out another dwarf door across the room, and one on either side as well.

"We take spoil to a heap on the waste ground outside," said Ardent. "We, er, believe the troll got in that way. It was an unpardonable oversight." He still sounded uneasy.

"And the troll was not seen?" said Carrot, kicking at the mud.

"No. These chambers are finished. The diggers are elsewhere, but they came as soon as they could. We believe the grag had come up here for solitude. To die at the random hand of an abomination!"

"Lucky for the troll, wasn"t it, sir?" said Angua sharply. "He just happened to wander in and stumble across Hamcrusher?"

Carrot"s boot struck something metallic. He kicked some more mud away. "You"ve laid rails?" he said. "You must be shifting a lot of spoil, sir.,

"Better to push than to carry," said Ardent. "Now, I have arranged for-"

"Hold on, what"s this?" said Carrot. He squatted down and pulled at something pale. "It"s a piece of bone, by the look of it. On a string."

"There are plenty of old bones," said Ardent. "Now, I-"

It came free with a gloop, and grinned at them in the sickly light.

"It doesn"t look very old, sir," said Carrot.

Just one breath was enough for Angua.

"It"s a sheep skull," she said. "About three months dead." Oh, another clue, she added to herself. Nice and convenient for us to find, too.

"Could have been dropped by the troll," said Carrot.

"A troll?" said Ardent, backing away.

It wasn"t the reaction Angua had expected. Ardent had been

nervous already, but now, under all those wrappings, he was on the verge of panic.

"You did say a troll had attacked the grag, sir?" said Carrot.

"But we never- I never saw that before! Why didn"t we find it? Did it come back?"

"All the doors are sealed, sir," said Carrot patiently. "Aren"t they?" "But have we sealed it in here with us?" It was practically a shriek. "You"d know, sir, wouldn"t you?" said Carrot. "Trolls sort of, well,

stand out."

"I must fetch guards!" said Ardent, backing away towards the single open door. "It could be anywhere!"

"Then you could be heading right towards it, sir," said Angua.

Ardent stopped dead for a moment, and then uttered a little whimper and ran into the dark, Helmclever on his heels.