Snuff

  “Ye gods! That’s Baker’s Knob! Here, let me at the wheel! How close is it now?”

  “Maybe fifty yards?”

  “And you can see it in all this? Damn me, mister, you must have been born in a cave! That means we ain’t that far from Quirm now, a touch under nineteen miles. You think you could stand lookout? Is my family okay? That little snot threatened to harm them if I didn’t keep the Fanny on schedule!” Something big and heavy bounced off the roof and spun away into the night, and the pilot went on, “Gastric Sillitoe, delighted to make your acquaintance, sir.” He stared ahead. “I’ve heard of you. Koom Valley, right? Happy to have you aboard.”

  “Er, Gastric? Whole tree spinning in current near left-hand shore, ten yards ahead! Nothing much to see on right.”

  The wheel spun frantically again. “Obliged to you, sir, and I surely hope you won’t take it amiss if I say that we generally talk about port and starboard?”

  “Wouldn’t know about that, Gastric, never drank starboard. Mass of what looks like smashed logs ahead, forty yards, looks like small stuff, and I see a faint light high up on our right, can’t tell how far away.” Vimes ducked and a jagged log bounced off the back of the wheelhouse. Beside him the pilot sounded as if he had got a grip on things now.

  “Okay, commander, that would be Jackson’s Light, very welcome sight! Now I’ve found my bearings and an hourglass that ain’t busted, I’d be further in your debt if you’d go below and tell Ten Gallons to cut loose the barges? There’s a chicken farmer on one of them! Best to get him on board before the dam breaks.”

  “And hundreds of goblins, Gastric.”

  “Pay them no mind, sir. Goblins is just goblins.”

  For a moment Vimes stared into the darkness, and the darkness within the darkness, and it said to him, “You’re having fun, aren’t you, commander! This is Sam Vimes being Sam Vimes in the dark and the rain and the danger and because you’re a copper you’re not going to believe that Stratford is dead until you see the corpse. You know it. Some people take a devil of a lot of killing. You know you saw him go out of the cabin, but there’s all kinds of ropes and handholds on the boat, and the bugger was wiry and limber, and you know, just as day follows night, that he’ll be back. Double jeopardy, Commander Vimes, all the pieces on the board, goblins to save, a murderer to catch—and all the time, when you remember, there is a wife and a little boy waiting for you to come back.”

  “I always remember!”

  “Of course you do, Commander Vimes,” the voice continued, “of course you do. But I know you, and sometimes a shadow passes every sun. Nevertheless, the darkness will always be yours, my tenacious friend.”

  And then reality either came back or went away and Vimes was saying, “We bring the goblins aboard, Gastric, because they…Yes, they are evidence in an important police investigation!”

  There was a further surge, and this time Vimes landed up on the deck, which was a little bit softer now because of the ragged carpet of leaves and branches. As he got up Mr. Sillitoe said, “Police investigation, you say? Well, the Fanny has always been a friend of the law but, well, sir, they stink like the pits of hell, and that’s the truth of it! They’ll frighten the oxen something terrible!”

  “Do you think they aren’t frightened already?” said Vimes. “Er, small logjam ahead on the right. All clear on the left.” Vimes sniffed. “Trust me, sir, by the smell of it they’re pretty nervous as it is. Can’t you just stop and tie us up to the bank?”

  Sillitoe’s laugh was brittle. “Sir, there are no banks now, none that I’d try to get to. I know this river and it’s angry and there’s a damn slam coming. Can’t stop it any more than I could stop the storm. You signed up for the long haul, commander: either we race the river or we fold our hands, pray to the gods and die right now.” He saluted. “Nevertheless, I can see you’re a man, sir, who does what he sees needs doing, and, by hokey, I can’t argue with that! You’ve done a man’s job as it is, Commander Vimes, and may the gods go with you. May they go with all of us.”

  Vimes ran down the steps and grabbed Feeney in passing as he danced over the heaving floor to the cowshed. “Come on, lad, it’s time to ditch the barges. There’s too much of a drag. Mr. Ten Gallons? Let’s get those doors open, shall we? Mr. Sillitoe has put me in charge down here. If you want to argue, feel free!”

  The huge man didn’t even attempt an argument, and punched the doors open.

  Vimes swore. Mr. Sillitoe had been right. There was roaring not far behind them and a river of lightning and blue fire was sweeping down the valley like a tide. For a moment he was hypnotized, and then got a grip. “Okay, Feeney, you start getting the goblins on board and I’ll fetch our chicken farmer! The bloody iron ore can sink for all I care.”

  In the glaring light of the damn slam Vimes jumped twice to land on the barge from which was already coming the squawking of terrified birds. Water poured off him as he dragged open the hatch and shouted, “Mr. False! No, don’t start grabbing the chickens! Better off farmer with no chickens than a load of chickens with no farmer! Anyway, they’ll probably float, or fly, or something!”

  He coaxed the frightened man on to the next barge to find that it was still full of bewildered goblins. Feeney was looking out from the open door at the rear of the Fanny, and above the roar and hissing Vimes heard him shout, “It’s Mr. Ten Gallons, sir! He says no goblins!”

  Vimes glanced behind them, and then turned back to Feeney. “Very well, Mr. Feeney, keep an eye on the goblins’ barge while I discuss matters with Mr. Ten Gallons, understand?”

  He flung Mr. False on to the deck of the Fanny and looked around for Ten Gallons. He shook his head. What a copper that man would make if properly led by human beings. He sighed. “Mr. Ten Gallons? I told you, Mr. Sillitoe has given me carte blanche. Can we discuss the matter of the goblins?”

  The giant growled, “I ain’t got no cart and I don’t know no Blanche, and I ain’t having no goblins on my deck, okay?”

  Vimes nodded, poker-faced, and looked exhaustedly at the deck. “Is that your last word, Mr. Ten Gallons?”

  “It damn well is!”

  “Okay, this is mine.”

  Ten Gallons went over backward like a tree and began to sleep like a log.

  The street never leaves you…

  And what the University of the Street told you was that fighting was a science, the science of getting the opponent out of your face and facedown on the ground with the maximum amount of speed and the minimum of effort. After that, of course, you had a range of delightful possibilities and the leisure in which to consider them. But if you wanted to fight fair, or at least more fair than most of the other street options, then you had to know how to punch, and what to punch and from precisely which angle to punch it. Of course, his treasured brass knuckles were an optional but helpful extra but, Vimes thought as he tried to wring some blood back into his fingers, probably any court, after sight of Ten Gallons, would have forgiven Vimes, even if he used a sledgehammer.

  He looked at the brass knuckles. They hadn’t even bent: good old Ankh-Morpork know-how. The country may have the muscle but the city has got the technology, he thought, as he slipped them back in his pocket.

  “Okay, Mr. Feeney, let’s get them in, shall we? Find Stinky, he’s the brains of the outfit.”

  Possibly Stinky was the brains of the outfit. Even at the end Vimes was never certain just what Stinky was. But the goblins, spurred by his crunchy chattering, ran and leapt like ugly gazelles past Vimes and into the boat. He took one look at the growling death behind them, made the last jump into the boat and helped Feeney shut and bolt the doors. And that meant that now, with the ventilation gone, the bulls in the basement were getting nostrils full of goblin. It wasn’t, Vimes thought, all that bad when you got used to it—more alchemical than midden—but down below there was a lot of shouting and a jerk as the beasts tried to stampede inside their treadmill.

  Vimes ignored it, despite the shuddering of the bo
at, and shouted, “Let go of the barges, chief constable! I hope you really do know how!”

  Feeney nodded and opened the hatch in the floor. Spray blew in and stopped when he knelt down and stuck his hand into the hole.

  “Takes quite a few turns before they drop, commander. If I was you I’d be holding on to something when the iron ore goes!”

  Vimes elbowed his way through the terrified goblins, pulled himself with care up into the wheelhouse again, and tapped Gastric on the shoulder. “We’re dropping the barges any minute!” The pilot, still clinging to the wheel and squinting into the dark, gave a brief nod; nothing less than a scream would be heard in the wheelhouse now. The wind and debris had smashed every window.

  Vimes looked out of the rear window and saw the great, floating, flying desolation of lightning-laced wood, mud and tumbling rock closing in. For a moment he thought he saw a naked marble lady tumbling with the debris and clutching her marble shift as if defending the remains of her modesty from the deluge. He blinked and she was gone…Perhaps he’d imagined it…He shouted, “I hope you can swim, sir?” just as the damn slam caught up and the apparition called Stratford dived through the window and was fielded neatly by Vimes, to Stratford’s great surprise.

  “Do you think I’m a baby, Mr. Stratford? Do you think that I don’t think?”

  Stratford squirmed out of Vimes’s grip, spun neatly and threw a punch which Vimes very nearly dodged. It was harder than he had expected, and, to give a devil his due, Stratford knew how to defend and, perish the thought, was younger than Vimes, much younger. Yes, you could tell the eyes of a murderer, at least after they had done more than three or so and got away with it. Their eyes held the expression some gods probably had. But a killer in the process of trying to kill was always absorbed, constantly calculating, drawing upon some hideous strength. If you cut their leg off they wouldn’t notice until they fell over. Tricks didn’t work, and the floor was slippery with the debris of half a forest. As they kicked and punched their way back and forth across the wheelhouse deck, Stratford was winning. When had Vimes last eaten, or had a decent drink of water, or slept properly?

  And then from below was the cry “Barges away!” And the Wonderful Fanny bucked like a thoroughbred, throwing both of the fighters to the floor, where Vimes barely had room to kick and fend off blows. Water poured over them, filling the cabin to waist level, reducing Vimes’s stamina to almost nothing. Stratford had his hands around his throat, and Vimes’s world turned dark blue and full of chuckling water, banging against his ears. He tried to think of Young Sam and Sybil, but the water kept washing them away…except that the pressure was suddenly gone, and his body, deciding that his brain had at last gone on holiday, flailed upward.

  And there was Stratford, kneeling in water that was falling away very fast, a matter probably of no concern to him now since he was holding his head and screaming, owing to the fact that suddenly there was Stinky, spreadeagled on Stratford’s head, reaching down and kicking and scratching anything that could be kicked off, scratched or, to one lengthy scream, pulled.

  His Grace the Duke of Ankh, assisted by Sir Samuel Vimes, with the help of Commander Vimes, got to his feet, with the last-minute assistance of Blackboard Monitor Vimes, and all of them coalesced into one man as he leapt across the shaking deck just too late to stop Stratford pulling Stinky—and a certain amount of hair—off his head, and throwing him to the streaming deck and stamping on him heavily. There was no mistaking it. He’d heard the crack of bones even while airborne, and so what hit Stratford was the full force of the law, and its rage.

  The street is old and cunning; but the street is always willing to learn and that is why Vimes, in mid air, felt his legs unfold and the full majesty of the law hit Stratford with the traditionally unstoppable One Man He Up Down Very Sorry. Even Vimes was surprised and wondered if he would be able to do it again.

  “We’re on the wave!” Gastric shouted. “We’re on it, not under it! We’re surfing all the way to Quirm, commander! There’s light ahead! Glory be!”

  Vimes grunted as he wrapped the last of the rope from his pocket around the stunned Stratford, tying him tightly to a stanchion. “Sink or swim, you’re going to pay, Mr. Stratford, from heaven, hell or high water, I don’t care which.”

  And then there was a creaking and a bellowing as the frantic oxen redoubled their attempts to escape the stench of the goblins immediately behind them, a surge skyward and while it would be most poetic to say that the waters were on the face of the earth, in truth they were mostly on the face of Samuel Vimes.

  Vimes woke in damp and utter darkness with sand under his cheek. Some parts of his body reported for duty, others protested that they had a note from their mother. After a while little insistent clues evolved: there was the sound of surf, the chatter of people and, for some reason, what sounded like the trumpeting of an elephant.

  At this point something stuck a finger in one of his nostrils and pulled hard. “Upsee-daisy, Mr. Po-leess-maan, otherwise you biggest pancake I ever seen! Upsee-daisy! Save Goblins! Big hero! Hurrah! Everybody get clap!”

  It was a familiar voice, but it couldn’t have been Stinky, because Vimes had seen the little goblin completely crushed. But Vimes tried to pull himself up anyway and this was almost impossible because of the stinking fishy-smelling debris that covered him like a shroud. He couldn’t bring his arm around to swat whatever blasted thing it was that was still tugging at his nostril, but he did manage to at least raise himself enough to realize that there was a lot of debris on top of him.

  He could make out what seemed like the thump of an elephant’s footfall, and in his state of comfortable hallucination wondered idly what an elephant was doing at the seaside, and how much care said elephant would take to avoid just another load of flotsam. This thought crystallized just as the tugging at his nose stopped and the cracked voice shouted, “Rise and shine, Mr. Vimes, ’cos here come Jumbo!”

  Vimes managed the champion press-up of all time and sprang clear, dripping driftwood and barnacles, just as a foot the size of a dustbin thumped down where his head had been.

  “Hooray, no flattery for Mr. Vimes!”

  Vimes looked down and saw, about half an inch from the family-sized toenail of the elephant, who incidentally now wore an expression of some embarrassment, the figure of Stinky bouncing up and down excitedly on the tip of its trunk. Other people had spotted Vimes too, and were hurrying toward him, and it was with a terrifying relief that he spotted the distinctive helmets of the Quirm City Watch, which he had always thought were far too fussy and militaristic for proper coppers, but now viewed as shining beacons of sanity.

  An officer with a captain’s helmet said, “Commander? Are you all right? Everyone thought you’d been washed away!”

  Vimes tried to brush mud and sand off his torn shirt and managed to say, “Well, the lads back in Ankh-Morpork gave me a bucket and spade for my holiday, so I thought I ought to try it out. Never mind about me, what about the Fanny? What about the people?”

  “All fine, sir, as far as we can tell. A few bangs and bruises, of course. It was amazing, sir, the men who look after the elephants at Quirm Zoo saw it happen! They take the creatures down to the surf in the morning to have a wash and a bit of a play before the crowds come along, and one said he saw the Fanny go right over the top of the dock on the crest of the wave, sir, and it sort of settled down on the beach. I had a look inside, and I’d say she’ll need a month or so in the boat yard, and the paddle wheels are smashed to blazes, but it’ll be the talk of the river for years!”

  By now an apologetic zookeeper was steering his charge away from Vimes, allowing him to see a beach covered in damp rubbish and, he was surprisingly pleased to note, quite a large number of chickens, scratching busily for worms. One of them, totally oblivious to Vimes, scratched at some seaweed for a moment, hunkered down with a cross-eyed expression, gurgled once or twice and then stood up, looking rather relieved. He saw that it had left an egg on the sand
. At least he supposed it to be an egg. It was square. He picked it up and looked down at the chickens, and in his half-hallucinating state said, “Well, that definitely looks complicated to me.”

  Out on the surf the two oxen were standing nearly neck deep in the water, and perhaps it was only his imagination that led Vimes to believe that the water around them was steaming.

  And now more people were running and chickens were running away, and there was even Ten Gallons, and Mrs. Sillitoe with her daughter, looking damp, and with blankets around them, but most importantly not looking dead. Vimes, who had been holding his breath for too long, breathed out. He breathed out even further when Ten Gallons slapped him on the back, and Mrs. Sillitoe gave him a kiss. “What about Gastric?” he said, “And where’s Feeney?”

  Mrs. Sillitoe smiled. “They’re fine, Commander Vimes, as far we can tell. They’re a bit battered, but sleeping it off. No long-term problems according to the medic. I’m sure they’ll be fine, thanks to you!”

  She stood back as a Quirmian officer handed Vimes a mug of coffee. It had sand in it, but never had sandy coffee tasted better. “All sorted out very well, you might say, sir. We even made sure those damn goblins caught their boat!”

  Never in the field of coffee-making had so much of the stuff been sprayed so far and over so many. Vimes stared beyond the surf where, in the distance, a ship had left the port and was making good sail. He said, “Fetch me Acting Captain Haddock right now!”

  Acting Captain Haddock arrived at a run six minutes later and Vimes couldn’t help noticing that he had a bit of breakfast around the edge of his mouth. “Our relationship with Commandant Fournier is cordial at the moment, is it not?” said Vimes.

  Haddock grinned widely. “Commander, when he gets down here you may have to try hard to stop him kissing you on both cheeks. Mrs. Sillitoe is his daughter.”

  “Was happy to be of assistance,” said Vimes, looking around absently, “and so would you tell these gentlemen that I want a fast boat, one fast enough to catch that ship, and a decent squad of men to crew it, and I want them now, and while I’m waiting I’d like someone to get me a clean shirt and a bacon sandwich…without avec.”