Thud!

by Terry Pratchett

  And he was not certain, not certain at all, what he’d do if the prisoner gave him any lip or tried to be smart. Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say “we’re the good guys” and do bad-guy things. Sometimes the watching watchman inside every good copper’s head could use an extra pair of eyes.

  Justice had to be seen to be done, so he’d see it done up good and proper.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, keeping his eye on the grag but talking to the room at large, “I know all of you, you all know me. You’re all respected dwarfs with a stake in this city. I want you to vouch for Mr. Bashfullsson, because I’ve never met him before in my life. Come on, Gimlet, I’ve known you for years, what do you say?”

  “They killed my son,” said Ironcrust.

  A knife dropped into Vimes’s head. It slipped down his wind-pipe, sliced his heart, cut through his stomach, and disappeared. Where the rage had been, there was a chill.

  “I’m sorry, Commander,” said Bashfullsson quietly. “It’s true. I don’t think Gunder Ironcrust was interested in the politics, you understand. He just took a job at the mine because he wanted to feel like a real dwarf and work with a shovel for a few days.”

  “They left him to the mud,” said Ironcrust, in a voice that was eerily without emotion. “Any help you need, we will give. Any help. But when you find them, kill them all.”

  Vimes could think of nothing more to say than “I will catch them.” He didn’t say: Kill them? No. Not if they surrender, not if they don’t come at me armed. I know where that leads.

  “Then we will leave and let you get about your business,” said Stronginthearm. “Grag Bashfullsson is known to us, indeed. A little modern, perhaps. A little young. Not the kind of grag we grew up with, but…yes, we’d vouch for him. Good night, Commander.”

  Vimes stared at his desk as they filed out. When he looked up, the grag was still there, with a patient little smile.

  “You don’t look like a grag. You look like just another dwarf,” said Vimes. “Why haven’t I heard of you?”

  “Because you are a policeman, perhaps?” said Bashfullsson meekly.

  “Okay, I take the point. But you’re not a deep-downer?”

  Bashfullsson shrugged. “I can think deep thoughts. I was born here, Commander, just like Helmclever. I don’t believe I need a mountain over my head in order to be a dwarf.”

  Vimes nodded. A local lad, not some mountain graybeard. Got a quick brain, too. No wonder the leaders like him. “All right, Mr. Bashfullsson, you can tag along,” he said. “But it’s on two conditions, okay? Condition one: you’ve got five minutes to lay your hands on a Thud set. I think you can do that?”

  “I think I can, too,” said the dwarf, smiling faintly. “And the other condition?”

  “How long will it take you to teach me to play?” said Vimes.

  “You? You’ve never played it at all?”

  “No. A certain troll showed me the game a little while ago, but I’ve never played games since I grew up. I used to be good at tiddley-rats* when I was a nipper, though.”

  “Well, a few hours should be—” Bashfullsson began.

  “We don’t have time,” said Vimes. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

  The drinking had started in The Bucket, in Gleam Street. This was the coppers’ pub. Mr. Cheese, the owner, understood about coppers. They liked to drink somewhere where they wouldn’t see anything that reminded them they were a copper. Fun was not encouraged.

  It was Tawneee who suggested that they moved to Thank Gods It’s Open.

  Angua wasn’t really in the mood, but she hadn’t the heart to say no. The plain fact was that while Tawneee had a body that every other woman should hate her for, she compounded the insult by actually being very likable. This was because she had the self-esteem of a caterpillar and, as you found out after any kind of conversation with her, about the same amount of brain. Perhaps it all balanced out, perhaps some kindly god had said to her: “Sorry, kid, you are going to be thicker than a yard of lard, but the good news is, that’s not going to matter.”

  And she had a stomach made of iron, too. Angua found herself wondering how many hopeful men had died trying to drink her under the table. Alcohol didn’t seem to go to her brain at all. Maybe it couldn’t find it. But she was pleasant, easygoing company, if you avoided allusion, irony, sarcasm, repartee, satire, and words longer than “chicken.”

  Angua was tetchy because she was dying for a beer, but the young man behind the bar thought that “a pint of Winkles” was the name of a cocktail. Given the drinks on offer, perhaps this was not surprising.

  “What?” said Angua, reading the menu, “is a Screaming Orgasm?”

  “Ah,” said Sally, “Looks like we got to you just in time, girl!”

  “No,” sighed Angua as the others laughed; that was such a vampire response. “I mean what’s it made of?’’

  “Almonté, Wahlulu, Bearhuggers Whiskey Cream, and vodka,” said Tawneee, who knew the recipe for every cocktail ever made.

  “And how does it work?” said Cheery, craning to see over the top of the bar.

  Sally ordered four, and turned back to Tawneee.

  “So…you and Nobby Nobbs, eh?” she said. “How about that?” Three sets of ears flared.

  The other thing you got used to in the presence of Tawneee was silence. Everywhere she went, went quiet. Oh, and the stares. The silent stares. And sometimes, in the shadows, a sigh. There were goddesses who’d kill to look like Tawneee.

  “He’s nice,” said Tawneee. “He makes me laugh and he keeps his hands to himself.”

  Three faces locked in expressions of concentrated thought. In Angua’s case, one was: This is Nobby we’re talking about. There are so many questions that we are not going to ask.

  “Has he shown you the tricks he can do with his spots?” she said.

  “Yes. I thought I’d widdle myself! He’s so funny!”

  Angua stared into her drink. Cheery coughed. Sally studied the menu.

  “And he’s very dependable,” said Tawneee. And, as if dimly aware that this was still not sufficient, she added sadly: “If you must know, he’s the first boy who’s ever asked me out.”

  Sally and Angua breathed out together. Light dawned. Ah, that was the problem. And this one’s a baaaad case.

  “I mean, my hair’s all over the place, my legs are too long, and I know my bosom is far too—” Tawneee went on, but Sally had raised a quietening hand.

  “First point, Tawneee—”

  “My real name’s Betty,” said Tawneee, blowing a nose so exquisite that the greatest sculptor in the world would have wept to carve it. It went blort.

  “First point, then…Betty,” Sally managed, struggling to use the name, “is that no women under forty-five—”

  “Fifty,” Angua corrected.

  “Right, fifty…no woman under fifty uses the word ‘bosom’ to name anything connected to her. You just don’t do it.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Tawneee sniffed.

  “It’s a fact,” said Angua. And, oh dear, how to begin to explain the jerk syndrome? To someone like Tawneee, on whom the name Betty stuck like rocks to a ceiling? This wasn’t just a case of the jerk syndrome, this was it, the quintessential, classic, pure platonic example that should be stuffed and mounted and preserved as a teaching aid for students in the centuries to come. And she was happy with Nobby!

  “What I’ve got to tell you now is…” she began, and faded in the face of the task, “is…look, shall we have another drink? What’s the next cocktail on the menu?”

  Cheery peered at it.

  “Pink, Big and Wobbly,” she announced.

  “Classy! We’ll have four!”

  Fred Colon peered through the bars. He was, on the whole, a pretty good jailer; he always had a pot of tea on the go, he was, as a general rule, amiably disposed to most people, he was too slow to be easily fool
ed, and he kept the cell keys in a tin box in the bottom drawer on his desk, a long way out of reach of any stick, hand, dog, cunningly thrown belt, or trained Klatchian monkey spider.*

  He was a bit worried about this dwarf. You got all sorts in jail, and they often yelled a bit, but with this one he didn’t know what was worse, the sobbing or the silence. He’d put on candlestick on a stool by the bars, too, because the dwarf carried on alarmingly if there wasn’t enough light.

  He stirred the tea reflectively and handed the mug to Nobby.

  “We’ve got a rum ’un here, I reckon,” he said. “A dwarf that’s scared of the dark? Not right in the head, then. Wouldn’t touch his tea and biscuit. What do you think?”

  “I think I’ll have his biscuit,” said Nobby, reaching over to the plate.

  “Why’re you down here, anyway?” said Fred. “I’m surprised you ain’t out there a-ogling of young women.”

  “Tawneee’s going out boozing with the girls tonight,” said Nobby.

  “Ah, you want to warn her about that sort of thing,” said Fred Colon. “You know what it’s like in the center when the pubs and clubs empty. There’s throwin’ up and yellin’ and unladylike behavior and takin’ their vests off and I don’t know what. ’S called…” he scratched his head “…minge drinking.”

  “She’s only gone out with Angua and Sally and Cheery, Sarge,” said Nobby, taking another biscuit.

  “Ooo, you wanna watch that, Nobby. Women gangin’ up on man—” Fred paused. “A vampire and a werewolf out on the razzle? Take my tip, lad, stay indoors tonight. And if they start behaving in—”

  He stopped as the sound of Sam Vimes’s voice came down the spiral stone steps, followed closely by its owner.

  “So, I’ve got to stop them forming a block, right?”

  “If you’re playing the troll side, yes,” said a new voice. “A tight group of dwarfs is bad news for trolls.”

  “Troll shove, dwarfs throw?”

  “Right.”

  “And the central rock, no one can jump that, right?” said Vimes.

  “Yes.”

  “I still think the dwarfs have it all their own way.”

  “We shall see. The important thing—”

  Vimes stopped when he saw Nobby and Colon.

  “Okay, lads, I’ll talk to the prisoner now,” he said. “How is he?”

  Fred indicated the hunched figure on the narrow bunk in the corner cell.

  “Captain Carrot tried talking to him for nearly half an hour, and you know he’s got a way with people,” he said. “Didn’t get as much as a sentence out of him. I read him his rights but don’t ask me if he understood ’em. He didn’t want his tea and biscuit, at any rate. That’s rights 5 and 5b,” he added, looking Bashfullsson up and down. “He gets right 5c only if we’ve got Teatime Assortment.”

  “Can he walk?” said Vimes.

  “He sort of shuffles, sir.”

  “Fetch him out, then,” said Vimes, and, seeing Fred’s inquiring look at Bashfullsson, he went on: “This gentleman is here to make sure we don’t use the rubber truncheon, Sergeant.”

  “Didn’t know we had one, Mister Vimes,” said Fred.

  “We haven’t,” said Vimes. “No point in hitting ’em with something that bounces, eh?” he added, looking at Bashfullsson, who smiled, once again, his strange little smile.

  One candle burned on the table. For some reason, Fred had seen fit to put another one on a stool near the one occupied cell.

  “Isn’t it a bit dark in here, Fred?” said Vimes as he pushed aside the debris of mugs and old newspapers that covered most of the table.

  “Yessir. The dwarfs came and nicked some of our candles to put ’round their heathe—that nasty sign,” said Fred, with a nervous look at Bashfullsson. “Sorry, sir.”

  “I don’t know why we can’t just burn it,” grumble Vimes, setting out the Thud board.

  “That would be dangerous, now that the Summoning Dark is in the world,” said Bashfullsson.

  “You believe in that stuff?” said Vimes.

  “Believe? No,” said the grag. “I just know it exists. The troll pieces go all ’round the central stone, sir,” he added helpfully.

  Populating the board with its little warriors took some time, but so did the arrival of Helmclever. With Fred Colon steering him gently by a shoulder, he walked like someone in a dream, his eyes turned up so that they mostly showed the whites. His iron boots scraped on the flagstones.

  Fred pushed him gently into a chair and put the second candle beside him. Like magic, the dwarf’s eyes focused on the little stone armies to the exclusion of everything else in the jail.

  “We’re playing a game, Mr. Helmclever,” said Vimes quietly. “And you can choose your side.”

  Helmclever reached out with a trembling hand and touched a piece. A troll. A dwarf had chosen to play as the trolls. Vimes gave the hovering Bashfullsson a questioning glance, and got another smile in return.

  Okay, you got as many of the little sods as possible in a defensive huddle, right? Vimes’s hand hesitated, and shifted a dwarf across the board. The click as he placed it was echoed by the one made by the movement of Helmclever’s next troll. The dwarf looked sleepy, but his hand had moved with snake speed.

  “Who killed the four mining dwarfs, Helmclever?” said Vimes softly. “Who killed the boys from the city?”

  Dull eyes looked at him, and then, meaningfully, at the board. Vimes moved a dwarf at random.

  “The dark soldiers,” Helmclever whispered as a little troll clicked smartly into place.

  “Who ordered it?” Again the look, again a dwarf placed at random followed by a troll that was moved so fast that the two pieces seemed to hit the board together.

  “Grag Hamcrusher ordered it.”

  “Why?” Click/click.

  “They had heard it speaking.”

  “What was it that spoke? Was it a cube?” Click/click.

  “Yes. It was dug up. It said it spoke with the voice of B’hrian Bloodaxe.”

  Vimes heard a gasp from Bashfullsson, and caught Fred Colon’s eye. He jerked his head toward the cell-block door, and mouthed a couple of words.

  “Wasn’t he a famous dwarf king?” said Vimes. Click/click.

  “Yes. He commanded the dwarfs at Koom Valley,” said Helmclever.

  “And what did this voice say?” said Vimes. Click/click. And a third click from behind Vimes as Fred Colon locked the door and stood in front of it, looking impassive.

  “I do not know. Ardent said was about the battle. He said it was lies.”

  “Who killed Grag Hamcrusher?” Click/click.

  “I do not know. Ardent called me to the meeting and said there was terrible fighting among the grags. Ardent said one of them killed him in the dark, with a mining hammer, but none knew who. They were all struggling together.”

  All dressed alike, Vimes thought. Just shapes, if you can’t see their wrists…

  “Why did they want to kill him?” Click/click.

  “They had to stop him destroying the words! He was screaming and hitting the cube with the hammer!”

  “There are…sensitive areas on a cube, and it is possible that if they are touched in the wrong order, all the sound will vanish,” whispered Bashfullsson.

  “I should think the hammer would do the trick whatever it hit!” said Vimes, turning his head.

  “No, Commander. Devices are immensely tough.”

  “They must be!”

  Vimes turned back to Helmclever.

  “It’s wrong to destroy lies, but it’s okay to kill the miners?” he said. Click.

  He heard the hiss of Bashfullsson’s intake of breath. Well, yes, perhaps that could have been better put. There was no answering move. Helmclever hung his head.

  “It was wrong to kill the miners,” he whispered. “And why not destroy lies? But it is wrong to think these thoughts, so I…I said nothing. The old grags were angry and upset and confused, so Ardent took charge. He
said one dwarf killing another underground, everyone knew that was no business of humans. He said he could make it all right. He said everyone must listen to him. He told the dark guards to take the body to the new outer chamber. And…he told me to fetch my club…”

  Vimes glanced at Bashfullsson and mouthed the word “Club?” He got an emphatic nod in return.

  Helmclever sat hunched in silence, and then raised one hand slowly and moved a troll. Click.

  Click/click. Click/click. Click/click. Vimes tried to spare a few brain cells for the game while his mind raced and tried to piece the random information spilling out of Helmclever.

  So…It all starts when they come here looking for this magic cube, which can speak…

  “Why did they come to the city? How did they know the cube was here?” Click/click.

  “When I went to begin my training, I took a copy of the Codex. Arden confiscated it, but then they called me to a meeting and said it was very important and they would honor me by letting me go with them to the city. Ardent told me it was a great opportunity. Grag Hamcrusher had a mission, he said.”

  “They hadn’t even known about the painting?”

  “They lived under a mountain. They believe that humans are not real. But Ardent is smart. He said there were always rumors that something had come out of Koom Valley.”

  I bet he is smart, Vimes thought. So they come here, do a little light pastoral work and rabble-rousing, and search for the cube in a very dwarfish way. They find it. But the poor bastards who were doing the digging hear what it’s got to say. Well, everyone knows dwarfs gossip, so the dark guards make sure these four don’t have a chance to.

  Click/click. Click/click.

  Then friend Hamcrusher doesn’t like what he hears, either. He wants to destroy this thing. In the struggle in the dark, one of the other grags does the world a favor and fetches him a crack on the noggin. But, whoops, big mistake, because the mob is going to miss him and his jolly urging to wholesale troll slaughter. You know how dwarfs gossip, and you can’t kill ’em all. So while it’s still just us together in the dark, we need a plan! Forward, Mr. Ardent, who says “I know! We’ll take the corpse out to a tunnel that a troll just might have got into, and bash its head in with a club. A troll did it. What right-thinking dwarf could possibly believe anything else?”