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cobbles. His arm dipped into the press of bodies and hauled up a struggling figure.
He spun round, thudded back through the gap that hadn't had time to close yet, and
was beside Vimes before Ringfounder's helmet had stopped rolling.
'Well done, sergeant,' said Vimes out of the corner of his mouth. 'Did you have a plan
for the next bit?'
'I'm more der tactical kind, sir,' said Detritus.
Oh, well. At times like this you didn't argue, and you didn't step back. Vimes pulled
out his badge and held it up.
'This dwarf is under arrest for assaulting a Watch officer!' he shouted. 'Let us through,
in the name of the law!'
And to his amazement, the crowd went quiet, like a lot of children when they sense
that this time teacher is really, really angry. Perhaps it was the words on the badge,
he thought. You couldn't rub them out.
In the silence, another half-brick dropped out of the free hand of the dwarf in
Detritus's very solid custody. Years later, Vimes would shut his eyes and still be able
to recall the crunch it made when it hit the ground.
Angua stood up, with the unconscious Ringfounder in her arms. 'He's concussed,'
she said. 'And I suggest, sir, that you turn round, just for a moment?'
Vimes risked a glance. Ardent - or, at least, a leather-shrouded dwarf that could have
been him - was standing in the shadows of the doorway. He had the attention of the
crowd.
'We're being allowed to go?' he said to Angua, nodding to the figure.
'I think the going is the thing, sir, don't you?'
'You've got that right, sergeant. Detritus, keep a grip on that little bugger. Back to the
nick, all of us.'
The crowd parted to let them through, with barely a murmur. The silence followed
them all the way back to the Watch House
... where Otto Chriek of the Times was waiting in the street, iconograph at the ready.
'Oh no you don't, Otto,' said Vimes, as his squad approached. 'I'm standing on the
public highway, Mister Vimes,' said Otto meekly. 'Smile, please ..
And took a picture of a troll officer holding a dwarf up in the air.
Oh well, said Vimes to himself, that's Page One sorted out. And probably the bloody
cartoon, too.
One dwarf in the cells, one in the tender loving care of Igor, Vimes thought as he
trudged up the stairs to his office. And it's only going to get worse. Those dwarfs
were obeying Ardent, weren't they? What would they have done if the dwarf had
shaken his head?
He landed in his chair so hard that it rolled back a foot.
He'd met deep-down dwarfs before. They'd been weird, but he'd been able to deal
with them. The Low King was a deep-downer, and Vimes had got on with him well
enough, once you accepted that the fairytale dwarf in the Hogfather beard was an
astute politician. He was a dwarf with vision. He dealt with the world. Ha, 'he'd seen
the light. But those in the new mine
He hadn't seen them, even though they were sitting in a room made brilliant with the
light of hundreds of candles. That seemed odd, since the grags themselves were
completely shrouded in their pointy black leather. But maybe it was some mystic
ceremony, and who'd look for sense there? Maybe you got a more holy dark in the
midst of light? The brighter the light the blacker the shadow?
Ardent had spoken in a language that sounded like dwarfish, and out of the dark
hoods had come answers and questions, all barked out in the same harsh brief
syllables.
At one point Vimes was asked to repeat the meat of his statement made up above,
which had seemed too far away now. He'd done so, and there'd been a long drawn
out discussion in what he'd come to think of as Deep Dwarf. And all the time he felt
that eyes he could not see were watching him very hard indeed. It didn't help that his
head had been aching like mad and there were shooting pains going up and down
his arm.
And that was it. Had they understood him? He didn't know. Ardent had said that they
agreed with considerable reluctance. Had they? He hadn't a clue, not a clue, to what
had really been said. Would Carrot be given access to a crime scene that had not
been interfered with in any way? Vimes grunted. Huh. What do you think, boys and
girls?
He pinched his nose, and then stared at his right hand. Igor had gone on at length
about 'tiny invithible biting creatureth' and used some vicious ointment that probably
killed anything of any size or visibility. It had stung like seven hells for five minutes,
but then had gone and seemed to have taken the pain with it. Anyway, what mattered
was that the Watch was officially on this case.
His eye was caught by the top sheet of paperwork in his in-tray [1 Vimes maintained
three trays: In, Out and Shake It All About; the last one was where he put everything
he was too busy, angry, tired or bewildered to do anything about.] He groaned as he
picked it up.
To: His Grace Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Watch
From: Mr A E Pessimal, Inspector of the Watch Your Grace,
I hope you will not mind giving me as soon as possible the answers to the
following questions:
1 What is Corporal 'Nobby' Nobbs for? why do you employ a known petty
thief.'
2 I timed two officers in Broadway - earlier, and in the space of one hour
they made no arrests. Why was this an economic use of their time
3 The level of violence used by troll officers against troll prisoners appears
excessive. Could you please comment upon this?
... and so on. Vimes read on with his mouth open. All right, the man wasn't a copper -
definitely not - but surely he had a fully functional brain. Oh, good grief, he'd even
spotted the monthly discrepancy in the petty cash box! Would A. E. Pessimal
understand if Vimes explained that Nobby's services over the years more than made
up for the casual petty theft, which you accepted as a kind of mild nuisance? Would
that be an economic use of my time? I think not.
As he put the paper back in the tray he spotted a sheet underneath, in Cheery's
handwriting. He picked it up and read it.
Two dwarfs and one troll had handed in their badges that morning, citing 'family
reasons'. Damn. That was seven officers lost this week. Bloody Koom Valley, it got
everywhere. Oh, it couldn't be fun, heavens knew, being a troll holding the line
against a bunch of your fellow trolls and defending a dwarf like the late Hamcrusher.
It probably wasn't any funnier being a dwarf hearing that some troll street gang beat
up your brother because of what that idiot had said. Some people would be asking:
whose side are you on? If you're not for us, you're against us. Huh. If you're not an
apple, you're a banana...
Carrot came in quietly and placed a plate on the desk. 'Angua told me all about it,' he
said. 'Well done, sir.'
'What do you mean, well done?' said Vimes, looking at his healthy sandwich lunch. 'I
nearly started a war!'
'Ah, but they didn't know you were bluffing.'
'I probably wasn't.' Vimes carefully lifted the top of the bacon, lettuce and tomato
sandwich and smiled inwardly. Good old Cheery. She knew what a Vimes BIT was all
about. It was about having to lift up quite a lot of crispy bacon before you found the
miserable skulking vegetables. You might never notice them at all.
'I want you to take Angua down there with you again,' he said. 'And yes, Lance-
Constable Humpeding. Our little Sally. Just the job for a vampire who fortuitously has
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