Thud (30 page)

“But
you
went to the Shamlegger School of Butlering!” Vimes giggled. His knees were trembling. Part of him knew what this was all about. After the terror came that drunken feeling, when you were still alive and suddenly everything was funny. “I
mean
, other butlers just know how to cut people dead with a look, but
you,
Willikins, you know how to cut them dead with—”

“Listen, sir! He’s got outside, sir!” said Willikins urgently. “So is Lady Sybil!”

Vimes’s grin froze.

“Shall I take the young man, sir?” Willikins said, reaching.

Vimes backed away. A troll with a crowbar and a tub of grease would not have wrested his son from him.

“No! But give me that knife! And go and make sure Purity is all right!”

Clutching Young Sam to him, he ran back downstairs, across the hall, and out into the garden. It was stupid, stupid, stupid. He told himself that later. But right now Sam Vimes was thinking only in primary colors. It had been hard, hard, to go into the nursery in the face of the images that thronged his imagination. He was not going to go through that ever again. And the rage flowed back, easily, under control now. Smooth like a river of fire. He’d find them all, all of them, and they would
burn…

The main dragon shed could only be reached now by dodging around three big cast-iron flame-deflector shields, put in place two months ago; dragon breeding was not a hobby for sissies or people who minded having to repaint the whole side of the house occasionally. There were big iron doors at either end; Vimes headed toward one at random, ran into the dragon shed, and bolted the door behind him.

It was always warm in there, because the dragons burped all the time; it was that or explode, which occasionally did happen. And there was Sybil, in full dragon-keeping gear, walking calmly between the pens with a bucket in each hand, and behind her the doors at the other end were opening, and there was a short, dark figure, and there was a rod with a little pilot flame on the end, and—

“Look out! Behind you!” Vimes yelled.

His wife stared at him, turned around, dropped the buckets, and started to shout something.

And then the flame blossomed. It hit Sybil in the chest, splashed across the pens, and went out abruptly. The dwarf looked down and began to thump the pipe desperately.

The pillar of flame that was Lady Sybil said, in an authoritative voice that brooked no disobeying:

“Lie down, Sam. Right now.” And Sybil dropped to the sandy floor as, all down the lines of pens, dragon heads rose on long dragon necks.

Their nostrils were flaring. They were breathing in.

They’d been challenged. They’d been offended. And they’d just had their supper.

“
Good
boys,” said Sybil, from the floor.

Twenty-six streams of answering dragon fire rose to the occasion. Vimes, lying on the floor so that his body shielded Young Sam, felt the hairs crisp on the back of his neck.

This wasn’t the smoky red of the dwarf fire; this was something only a dragon’s stomach could cook up. The flames were practically invisible. At least one of them must have hit the dwarf’s weapon, because there was an explosion and something went through the roof. The dragon pens were built like a fireworks factory: the walls were very thick, and the roof was as thin as possible, to provide a faster exit to heaven.

When the noise had died to an excited hiccuping, Vimes risked looking up. Sybil was also getting to her feet, a little clumsily, because of all the special clothing every dragon breeder wore.
*

The iron of the far doors glowed around the black outline of a dwarf. A little way in front of them, two iron boots were cooling from white heat in a puddle of molten sand.

Metal went
plink
.

Lady Sybil reached up with heavy-gloved hands, patted out some patches of burning oil on her leather apron, and lifted off her helmet. It landed on the sand with a thud.

“Oh, Sam…” she said softly.

“Are you all right? Young Sam is fine. We’ve got to get out of here!”

“Oh, Sam…”

“Sybil, I need you to take him!” Vimes said, speaking slowly and clearly to get through the shock. “There could be others out there!”

Lady Sybil’s eyes focused.

“Give him to me,” she ordered. “And
you
take Raja!”

Vimes looked where she was indicating. A young dragon with floppy ears and an expression of mildly concussed good humor blinked at him. He was a Golden Wouter, a breed with a flame so strong that one of them had once been used by thieves to melt their way into a bank vault.

Vimes picked him up carefully, and still winced. Ye gods, the ache in his hand had gone all the way to the elbow…

“Coal him up,” Sybil commanded.

Good old Sybil, he told himself as he fed anthracite into Raja’s eager gullet. Her female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel back or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around little gold-wrapped chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons that made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.

Vimes flinched as Raja burped.

“That was a dwarf, wasn’t it?” said Sybil, cradling Young Sam. “One of those deep-down ones you see about?”

“Yes.”

“Why did it try to kill me?”

When people are trying to kill you, it means you’re doing something right. It was a rule Sam had lived by. But this…even a real stone killer like Chrysophrase wouldn’t have tried something like this. It was insane.
They will burn. They will burn…

“I think they’re frightened of what I’m going to find out,” said Vimes. “I think it’s all gone wrong for them, and they want to stop me.”

Could they have been that stupid? he wondered. A dead wife? A dead child? Could they think that would mean
for one moment
that I’d stop? As it is, when I catch up with whoever ordered this,
and I will,
I hope there’s someone there to hold me back.

They will burn for what they did.

“Oh, Sam…” murmured Sybil, the iron mast falling for a moment.

“I’m sorry. I never expected this,” said Vimes. He put the dragon down and held her carefully, almost fearfully. The rage had been so strong; he felt he might grow spikes, or snap into shards. And the headache was coming back, like a lump of lead nailed just over his eyes.

“Whatever happened to all that, you know, hi-ho, hi-ho, and being kind to poor lost orphans in the forest, Sam?” Sybil whispered.

“Willikins is in the house,” he said. “Purity is as well.”

“Let’s go and find them, then,” said Sybil. She grinned, a little damply. “I wish you wouldn’t bring your work home with you, Sam.”

“This time it followed me,” said Vimes grimly. “But I intend to tidy it up, believe me.”

They shall bur
—no! They shall be hunted down to any hole they hide in and brought back to face justice. Unless (oh please!) they resist arrest…

Purity was standing in the hall, alongside Willikins. She was holding a trophy Klatchian sword, without much conviction. The butler had augmented his weaponry with a couple of meat cleavers, which he hefted with a certain worrying expertise.

“My gods, man, you’re covered in blood!” Sybil burst out.

“Yes, Your Ladyship,” said Willikins smoothly. “May I say in mitigation that it is not, in fact, mine.”

“There was a dwarf in the dragon house,” said Vimes. “Any sign of any others?”

“No, sir. The ones in the cellar had an apparatus for projecting fire, sir.”

“The dwarf we saw had one too,” said Vimes, adding: “It didn’t do him any good.”

“Indeed, sir? I apprised myself of its use, sir, and tested my understanding by firing it down the tunnel they had arrived by until it ran out of igniferous juice, sir. Just in case there were more. It is for this reason, I suspect, that the shrubbery at Number Five is on fire.”

Vimes hadn’t met Willikins when they were both young. The Cockbill Street Roaring Lads had a treaty with Shamlegger Street, thus allowing them to ignore that flank while they concentrated on stopping the territorial aggression of the Pigsty Hill Dead Marmoset Gang. He was
glad
he hadn’t fetched up against young Willikins.

“They must have come up for air there,” he said. “The Jeffersons are on holiday.”

“Well, if they’re not ready for that sort of thing, they shouldn’t be growing rhododendrons,” said Sybil matter-of-factly. “What now, Sam?”

“We’re staying the night at Pseudopolis Yard,” said Vimes. “Don’t argue.”

“Ramkins have never run away from
anything
,” Sybil declared.

“Vimeses have run like hell all the time,” said Vimes, too diplomatic to mention the aforesaid ancestors who came home in pieces. “That means you fight where
you
want to fight. We’re all going to go and get the coach, and we’re all going down to the Yard. When we’re there, I’ll send people back to pick up our stuff. Just for one night, all right?”

“What would you like me to do with the visitors, sir?” said Willikins, with a sidelong glance at Lady Sybil. “One is indeed dead, I am afraid. If you recall, I must have stabbed him with the ice knife I happened to be innocently holding, having been cutting ice for the kitchen,” he added, poker-faced.

“Put him on the roof of the coach,” said Vimes.

“The other one also appears to be dead, sir. I’d swear he was fine when I tied him up, sir, because he was cursing me in their lingo.”

“You didn’t tie him up too hard, did—” Vimes began, and gave up on it. If Willikins wanted someone dead, he wouldn’t have taken a prisoner. It must have been a surprise, breaking into a cellar and meeting something like Willikins. Anyway, to hell with them.

“Just…died?” he said.

“Yes, sir. Do dwarfs naturally salivate green?”

“What?”

“There is green around his mouth, sir. Could be a clue, in my opinion.”

“All right, put him on the roof of the coach, too. Let’s go, shall we?”

Vimes had to insist that Sybil traveled on the inside. Usually, she got her own way and he was happy to give it to her, but the unspoken agreement was that when he
really
insisted, she listened. It’s a married couple thing.

Vimes rode beside Willikins, and got him to stop halfway down the hill where a man was selling the evening edition of the
Times
, still damp from the press.

The picture on the front page was of a mob of dwarfs. They were pulling open one of the mine’s big, round metal doors; it was hanging off its hinges. In the middle of the group, hands gripping the edge of the frame and muscles bulging, was Captain Carrot. Gleaming, with his shirt off.

Vimes grunted happily, folded up the paper, and lit a cheroot. The shaking in his legs was barely noticeable now, the fires of that terrible rage banked but still glowing.

“A Free Press, Willikins. You just can’t beat it,” he said.

“I’ve often heard you remark as much, sir,” said Willikins.

T
he entity slithered
through the rainy streets. Confounded again!

It was getting through, it knew it! It was being heard! And yet every time it tried to follow the words, it was thrown back. Bars had blocked its way, doors that had been open locked themselves as it approached. And what was this? Some kind of low-class soldier! By now it would have had berserkers biting their shields in half!

That was not the main problem, though. It was being watched. And that had
never
happened before.

T
here was a crowd
of dwarfs milling around outside the Yard.
They did not look belligerent—that is to say, any more than a species the members of which, by custom and practice, wear a big heavy helmet, mail, iron boots, and carry an axe all the time can fail to look belligerent—but they did look lost and bewildered and unsure why they were there.

Vimes got Willikins to drive in through the coach arch and take the bodies of the attackers down to Igor, who knew about things like people dying with green mouths.

Sybil, Purity, and Young Sam were hustled away to a clean office. Interesting thing, Vimes thought as he watched Cheery and a group of dwarf officers fuss over the child: even now—in fact, especially now, given the way the tension had made everyone revert to old certainties—he wasn’t sure how many female dwarf officers he had. It was a brave female dwarf who advertised the fact, in a society where the wearing of even a decent, floor-length leather-and-chain-mail dress instead of leggings positioned you on the moral map at the far side of Tawneee and her hardworking coworkers at the PussyCat Club. But introduce a gurgling kid into the room, and you could spot them instantly, for all their fearsome clang and beards you could lose a rat in.

Carrot pushed his way through the crowd and saluted.

“A lot’s been happening, sir!”

“My word, has it?” said Vimes, with manic brightness.

“Yessir. Everyone was pretty…angry when we brought the dead dwarfs up, and what with one thing and another, opening the big door in Treacle Street was pretty popular. All the deep-downers have gone, except one—”

“That’d be Helmclever,” said Vimes, heading for his office.

Carrot looked surprised. “That’s right, sir. He’s in a cell. I’d like you to have a look at him, if you don’t mind. He was crying and moaning and trembling in a corner, with lit candles all ’round him.”