Feet of Clay (13 page)

‘I’ve brought you the latest
Unadorned Facts
magazine, sir, and also this month’s
Battle Call
, which contains many articles that I’m sure will be of interest to you, including Pastor Nasal Pedlers’ exhortation to the congregation to rise up and speak to people sincerely through their letterboxes, sir.’

‘Er, thank you.’

‘I can’t help noticing that the pamphlets and magazines I gave you last week are still on your desk where I left them, sir.’

‘Oh, yes, well, sorry, you know how it is, the amount of work these days, makes it so hard to find the time to—’

‘It’s never too soon to contemplate eternal damnation, sir.’

‘I think about it all the time, Constable. Thank you.’

Unfair
, thought Vimes, when Visit had gone. A note is left at the scene of a crime in my town and does it have the decency to be a death-threat? No.
The
last dying scrawl of a man determined to name his murderer? No. It’s a bit of religious doggerel. What’s the good of Clues that are more mysterious than the mystery?

He scribbled a note on Visit’s translation and chucked it into his In Tray.

Too late, Angua remembered why she avoided the slaughterhouse district at this time of the month.

She could change at will at any time. That’s what people forgot about werewolves. But they remembered the important thing. Full moonlight was the
irresistible
trigger: the lunar rays reached down into the centre of her morphic memory and flipped all the switches, whether she wanted them switched or not. Full moon was only a couple of days away. And the delicious smell of the penned animals and the blood from the slaughterhouses was chiming against her strict vegetarianism. The clash was bringing on her PLT.

She glared at the shadowy building in front of her. ‘I think we’ll go round the back,’ she said. ‘And you can knock.’

‘Me? They won’t take any notice of me!’ said Cheery.

‘You show them your badge and tell them you’re the Watch.’

‘They’ll ignore me! They’ll laugh at me!’

‘You’re going to have to do it sooner or later. Go on.’

The door was opened by a stout man in a bloody
apron
. He was shocked to have his belt grabbed by one dwarf hand, while another dwarf hand was thrust in front of his face, holding a badge, and a dwarf voice in the region of his navel said, ‘We’re the Watch, right? Oh, yes! And if you don’t let us in we’ll have your guts for starters!’

‘Good try,’ murmured Angua. She lifted Cheery out of the way and smiled brightly at the butcher.

‘Mr Sock? We’d like to speak to an employee of yours. Mr Dorfl.’

The man hadn’t quite got over Cheery, but he managed to rally. ‘
Mr
Dorfl? What’s he done now?’

‘We’d just like to talk to him. May we come in?’

Mr Sock looked at Cheery, who was trembling with nerves and excitement. ‘I have a choice?’ he said.

‘Let’s say – you have a
kind
of choice,’ said Angua.

She tried to close her nostrils against the beguiling miasma of blood. There was even a sausage factory on the premises. It used all the bits of animals no one would ever otherwise eat, or even recognize. The odours of the abattoir turned her human stomach but, deep inside, part of her sat up and drooled and begged at the mingling smells of pork and beef and lamb and mutton and …

‘Rat?’ she said, sniffing. ‘I didn’t know you supplied the dwarf market, Mr Sock.’

Mr Sock was suddenly a man who wished to be seen to be cooperative.

‘Dorfl! Come here right now!’

There was the sound of footsteps and a figure emerged from behind a rack of beef carcases.

Some people had a thing about the undead. Angua knew Commander Vimes was uneasy in their presence, although he was getting better these days. People always needed someone to feel superior to. The living hated the undead, and the undead loathed – she felt her fists clench – the unalive.

The golem called Dorfl lurched a little because one leg was slightly shorter than the other. It didn’t wear any clothes because there was nothing whatsoever to conceal, and so she could see the mottling on it where fresh clay had been added over the years. There was so much patching that she wondered how old it could be. Originally, some attempt had been made to depict human musculature, but the repairs had nearly obscured these. The thing looked like the kind of pots Igneous despised, the ones made by people who thought that because it was hand-made it was supposed to
look
as if it was hand-made, and that thumbprints baked in the clay were a sign of integrity.

That was it. The thing
looked
hand-made. Of course, over the years it had mostly made itself, one repair at a time. Its triangular eyes glowed faintly. There were no pupils, just the dark red glow of a banked fire.

It was holding a long, heavy cleaver. Cheery’s stare gravitated to this and remained fixed on it in terrified fascination. The other hand grasped a piece of string, on the end of which was a large, hairy and very smelly goat.

‘What are you doing, Dorfl?’

The golem nodded towards the goat.

‘Feeding the yudasgoat?’

Dorfl nodded again.

‘Have you got something to do, Mr Sock?’ said Angua.

‘No, I’ve …’

‘You
have
got something to do, Mr Sock,’ said Angua emphatically.

‘Ah. Er? Yes. Er? Yes. Okay. I’ll just go and see to the offal boilers …’

As the butcher walked away he stopped to wave a finger under the place where Dorfl’s nose would be if the golem had had a nose.

‘If you’ve been causing trouble …’ he began.

‘I expect those boilers could really do with attention,’ said Angua sharply.

He hurried off.

There was silence in the yard, although the sounds of the city drifted in over the walls. From the other side of the slaughterhouse there was the occasional bleat of a worried sheep. Dorfl stood stock-still, holding his cleaver and looking down at the ground.

‘Is it a troll made to look like a human?’ whispered Cheery. ‘Look at those
eyes
!’

‘It’s not a troll,’ said Angua. ‘It’s a golem. A man of clay. It’s a machine.’

‘It
looks
like a human!’

‘That’s because it’s a machine made for looking like a human.’

She walked around behind the thing. ‘I’m going to read your chem, Dorfl,’ she said.

The golem let go of the goat and raised the cleaver and brought it down sharply on to a chopping block beside Cheery, making the dwarf leap sideways. Then it pulled around a slate that was slung over its shoulder on a piece of string, unhooked the pencil, and wrote:

YES.

When Angua put her hand up, Cheery realized that there was a thin line across the golem’s forehead. To her horror, the entire top of the head flipped up. Angua, quite unperturbed, reached inside. Her hand came out holding a yellowing scroll.

The golem froze. The eyes faded.

Angua unrolled the paper. ‘Some kind of holy writing,’ she said. ‘It always is. Some old dead religion.’

‘You’ve killed it?’

‘No. You can’t take away what isn’t there.’ She put the scroll back and closed the head with a click.

The golem came alive again, the glow returning to its eyes.

Cheery had been holding her breath. It came out in a rush. ‘What did you
do
?’ she managed.

‘Tell her, Dorfl,’ said Angua.

The golem’s thick fingers were a blur as the pencil scratched across the slate.

I AM A GOLEM. I WAS MADE OF CLAY. MY LIFE IS THE WORDS. BY MEANS OF WORDS OF PURPOSE IN MY HEAD I ACQUIRE LIFE. MY LIFE IS TO WORK. I OBEY ALL COMMANDS. I TAKE NO REST.

‘What words of purpose?’

RELEVENT TEXTS THAT ARE THE FOCUS OF BELIEF. GOLEM MUST WORK. GOLEM MUST HAVE A MASTER.

The goat lay down beside the golem and started to chew cud.

‘There have been two murders,’ said Angua. ‘I’m pretty certain a golem did one and probably both. Can you tell us anything, Dorfl?’

‘Sorry, look,’ said Cheery. ‘Are you telling me this … thing is powered by words? I mean … is
it
telling me it’s powered by words?’

‘Why not? Words
do
have power. Everyone knows that,’ said Angua. ‘There are more golems around than you might think. They’re out of fashion now, but they last. They can work underwater, or in total darkness, or knee-deep in poison. For years. They don’t need rest or feeding. They …’

‘But that’s slavery!’ said Cheery.

‘Of course it isn’t. You might as well enslave a doorknob. Have you got anything to tell me, Dorfl?’

Cheery kept looking at the cleaver in the block. Words like
length
and
heavy
and
sharp
were filling her head more snugly than any words could have filled the clay skull of the golem.

Dorfl said nothing.

‘How long have you been working here, Dorfl?’

NOW THREE HUNDRED DAYS ALREADY.

‘And you have time off?’

TO MAKE A HOLLOW LAUGHING. WHAT WOULD I DO WITH TIME OFF?

‘I mean, you’re not always in the slaughterhouse?’

SOMETIMES I MAKE DELIVERIES.

‘And meet other golems? Now
listen
, Dorfl, I
know
you things keep in touch somehow. And, if a golem is killing
real
people, I wouldn’t give a busted teacup for your chances. Folk will be along here straight away with flaming torches. And sledgehammers. You get my drift?’

The golem shrugged.

THEY CANNOT TAKE AWAY WHAT DOES NOT EXIST,
it wrote.

Angua threw up her hands. ‘I’m trying to be civilized,’ she said. ‘I could confiscate you right now. The charge would be Being Obstructive When It’s Been a Long Day and I’ve Had Enough. Do you know Father Tubelcek?’

THE OLD PRIEST WHO LIVES ON THE BRIDGE.

‘How come you know him?’

I HAVE MADE DELIVERIES THERE.

‘He’s been murdered. Where were you when he was killed?’

IN THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE.

‘
How do you know?
’

Dorfl hesitated a moment. Then the next words were written very slowly, as if they had come from a long way away after a great deal of thought.

BECAUSE IT IS SOMETHING THAT MUST HAVE HAPPENED NOT LONG AGO, BECAUSE YOU ARE EXCITED. FOR THE LAST THREE DAYS I HAVE BEEN WORKING HERE.

‘All the time?’

YES.

‘Twenty-four hours a day?’

YES. MEN AND TROLLS HERE ON EVERY SHIFT, THEY WILL TELL YOU. DURING THE DAY I MUST SLAUGHTER, DRESS, QUARTER, JOINT AND BONE, AND AT NIGHT WITHOUT REST I MUST MAKE SAUSAGES AND BOIL UP THE LIVERS, HEARTS, TRIPES, KIDNEYS AND CHITTERLINGS.

‘That’s
awful
,’ said Cheery.

The pencil blurred briefly.

CLOSE.

Dorfl turned his head slowly to look at Angua and wrote:

DO YOU NEED ME FURTHER?

‘If we do, we know where to find you.’

I AM SORRY ABOUT THE OLD MAN.

‘Good. Come on, Cheery.’

They felt the golem’s eyes on them as they left the yard.

‘It was lying,’ said Cheery.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘It
looked
as if it was lying.’

‘You’re probably right,’ said Angua. ‘But you can see the size of the place. I bet we wouldn’t be able to prove it’d stepped out for half an hour. I think I’ll suggest that we put it under what Commander Vimes calls special surveillance.’

‘What, like … plain clothes?’

‘Something like that,’ said Angua carefully.

‘Funny to see a pet goat in a slaughterhouse, I thought,’ said Cheery, as they walked on through the fog.

‘What? Oh, you mean the yudasgoat,’ said Angua. ‘Most slaughterhouses have one. It’s not a pet. I suppose you could call it an employee.’

‘Employee? What kind of job could it possibly do?’

‘Hah. Walk into the slaughterhouse every day.
That’s
its job. Look, you’ve got a pen full of frightened animals, right? And they’re milling
around
and leaderless … and there’s this ramp into this building, looks very scary … and, hey, there’s this goat,
it’s
not scared, and so the flock follows it and’ – Angua made a throat-slitting noise – ‘only the goat walks out.’

‘That’s horrible!’

‘I suppose it makes sense from the goat’s point of view. At least it
does
walk out,’ said Angua.

‘How did you know about this?’

‘Oh, you pick up all sorts of odds and ends of stuff in the Watch.’

‘I’ve got a lot to learn, I can see,’ said Cheery. ‘I never thought you had to carry bits of blanket, for a start!’

‘It’s special equipment if you’re dealing with the undead.’

‘Well, I knew about garlic and vampires. Anything holy works on vampires. What else works on werewolves?’

‘Sorry?’ said Angua, who was still thinking about the golem.

‘I’ve got a silver mail vest which I promised my family I’d wear, but is anything else good for werewolves?’

‘A gin and tonic’s always welcome,’ said Angua distantly.

‘Angua?’

‘Hmm? Yes? What?’

‘Someone told me there was a werewolf in the
Watch
! I can’t believe that!’

Angua stopped and stared down at her.

‘I mean, sooner or later the wolf comes through,’
said
Cheery. ‘I’m surprised Commander Vimes allows it.’

‘There is a werewolf in the Watch, yes,’ said Angua.

‘
I knew
there was something odd about Constable Visit.’

Angua’s jaw dropped.

‘He always looks hungry,’ said Cheery. ‘And he’s got that odd smile all the time. I know a werewolf when I see one.’

‘He
does
look a bit hungry, that’s true,’ said Angua. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘Well, I’m going to be keeping my distance!’

‘Fine,’ said Angua.

‘Angua …’

‘Yes?’

‘Why do you wear your badge on a collar round your neck?’

‘What? Oh. Well … so it’s always handy. You know. In any circumstances.’

‘Do I need to do that?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

Mr Sock jumped. ‘Dorfl, you damn stupid lump!
Never
sneak up behind a man on the bacon slicer! I’ve told you that before! Try to make some noise when you move, damn you!’