Feet of Clay

  The king picked up its own leg, balanced for a moment, and joined itself together.

  Then its red gaze swept the factory and flared when it caught sight of Carrot.

  “There must be a back way out of here,” muttered Angua. “Carry got out!”

  The king started to run after them, but hit an immediate problem. It had put its leg on back to front. It began to limp in a circle but, somehow, the circle got nearer to Carrot.

  “We can’t just leave Dorfl lying there,” said Carrot.

  He pulled a long metal rod out of a stirring tank and eased himself back down to the grease-crusted floor.

  The king rocked towards him. Carrot hopped backwards, steadied himself on a rail, and swung.

  The golem lifted its hand, caught the rod out of the air and tossed it aside. It raised both fists and tried to step forward.

  It couldn’t move. It looked down.

  “Thsss,” said what remained of Dorfl, gripping its ankle.

  The king bent, swung one hand with the palm edgewise, and calmly sheared the top off Dorfl’s head. It removed the chem and crumpled it up.

  The glow died in Dorfl’s eyes.

  Angua cannoned into Carrot so hard he almost fell over. She wrapped both arms around him and pulled him after her.

  “It just killed Dorfl, just like that!” said Carrot.

  “It’s a shame, yes,” said Angua. “Or it would be if Dorfl had been alive. Carrot, they’re like…machinery. Look, we can make it to the door—”

  Carrot shook himself free. “It’s murder,” he said. “We’re Watchmen. We can’t just…watch! It killed him!”

  “It’s an it and so’s he—”

  “Commander Vimes said someone has to speak for the people with no voices!”

  He really believes it, Angua thought. Vimes put words in his head.

  “Keep it occupied!” he shouted, and darted away.

  “How? Organize a sing-song?”

  “I’ve got a plan.”

  “Oh, good!”

  Vimes looked up at the entrance of the candle-factory. He could dimly see two cressets burning on either side of a shield. “Look at that, will you?” he said. “Paint not dry and he flaunts the thing for all the world to see!”

  “What’s dat, sir?” said Detritus.

  “His damn’ coat of arms!”

  Detritus looked up. “Why’s it got a lighted fish on it?” he said.

  “In heraldry that’s a poisson,” said Vimes bitterly. “And it’s suppose to be a lamp.”

  “A lamp made out of a poisson,” said Detritus. “Well, dere’s a fing.”

  “At least it’s got the motto in proper language,” said Sergeant Colon. “Instead of all the old-fashioned stuff no one understands. ‘Art Brought Forth the Candle.’ That, Sergeant Detritus, is a pun, or play on words. ’Cos his name is Arthur, see.”

  Vimes stood between the two sergeants and felt a hole open up in his head.

  “Damn!” he said. “Damn, damn, damn! He showed it to me! ‘Dumb plodder Vimes! He won’t notice!’ Oh, yes! And he was right!”

  “’S not that good,” said Colon. “I mean, you’ve got to know that Mr. Carry’s first name is Arthur—”

  “Shut up, Fred!” snapped Vimes.

  “Shutting up right now, sir.”

  “The arrogance of the…who’s that?”

  A figure darted out of the building, glanced around hurriedly, and scurried along the street.

  “That’s Carry!” said Vimes. He didn’t even shout “After him!” but went from a standing start to a full run. The fleeing figure dodged between the occasional straying sheep or pig and didn’t have a bad turn of speed, but Vimes was powered by sheer anger and was only yards away when Carry ducked into an alleyway.

  Vimes skidded to a halt and grabbed at the wall. He’d seen the shape of a crossbow and one of the things you learned in the Watch—that is, one of the things which hopefully you’d have a chance to learn—was that it was a very stupid thing indeed to follow someone with a crossbow into a dark alley where you’d be outlined against any light there was.

  “I know it’s you, Carry,” he shouted.

  “I’ve got a crossbow!”

  “You can only fire it once!”

  “I want to turn Patrician’s Evidence!”

  “Guess again!”

  Carry lowered his voice. “They just said I could get the damn’ golem to do it. I didn’t think anyone was going to get hurt.”

  “Right, right,” said Vimes. “You made poisoned candles because they gave a better light, I expect.”

  “You know what I mean! They told me it would all be all right and—”

  “Which they would ‘they’ be?”

  “They said no one would ever find out!”

  “Really?”

  “Look, look, they said they could…” The voice paused, and took on that wheedling tone the bluntwitted use when they’re trying to sound sharp.

  “If I tell you everything, you’ll let me go, right?”

  The two sergeants had caught up. Vimes pulled Detritus towards him, although in fact he ended up pulling himself towards Detritus.

  “Go round the corner and see he doesn’t come out of the alley the other way,” he whispered. The troll nodded.

  “What’s it you want to tell me, Mr. Carry?” said Vimes to the darkness in the alley.

  “Have we got a bargain?”

  “What?”

  “A bargain.”

  “No, we damn’ well haven’t got a bargain, Mr. Carry! I’m not a tradesman! But I’ll tell you something, Mr. Carry. They betrayed you!”

  There was silence from the darkness, and then a sound like a sigh.

  Behind Vimes, Sergeant Colon stamped his feet on the cobbles to keep warm.

  “You can’t stay in there all night, Mr. Carry,” said Vimes.

  There was another sound, a leathery sound. Vimes glanced up into the coils of fog. “Something’s not right,” he said. “Come on!”

  He ran into the alley. Sergeant Colon followed, on the basis that it was fine to run into an alley containing an armed man provided you were behind someone else.

  A shape loomed at them.

  “Detritus?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Where did he go? There are no doors in the alley!”

  Then his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom. He saw a huddled outline at the foot of a wall, and his foot nudged a crossbow. “Mr. Carry?”

  He knelt down and lit a match.

  “Oh, nasty,” said Sergeant Colon. “Something’s broken his neck…”

  “Dead, is he?” said Detritus. “You want I should draw a chalk outline round him?”

  “I don’t think we need bother, Sergeant.”

  “It no bother, I’ve got der chalk right here.”

  Vimes looked up. Fog filled the alley, but there were no ladders, no handy low roofs.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Angua faced the king.

  She resisted a terrible urge to change. Even a werewolf’s jaws probably wouldn’t have any effect on the thing. It didn’t have a jugular.

  She daren’t look away. The king moved uncertainly, with little jerks and twitches that in a human would suggest madness. Its arms moved fast but erratically, as if signals that were being sent were not arriving properly. And Dorfl’s attack had left it damaged. Every time it moved, red light shone from dozens of new cracks.

  “You’re cracking up!” she shouted. “The oven wasn’t right for pottery!”

  The king lunged at her. She dodged and heard its hand slice through a rack of candles.

  “You’re cranky! You’re baked like a loaf! You’re half-baked!”

  She drew her sword. She didn’t usually have much use for it. She found a smile would invariably do the trick.

  A hand sliced the top off the blade.

  She stared at the sheared metal in horror and then somersaulted back as another blow hummed past
her face.

  Her foot slipped on a candle and she fell heavily, but with enough presence of mind to roll before a foot stamped down.

  “Where’ve you gone?” she yelled.

  “Can you get it to move a little closer to the doors, please?” said a voice from the darkness on high.

  Carrot was crawled out along the rickety structure that supported the production line.

  “Carrot!”

  “Almost there…”

  The king grabbed at her leg. She lashed out with her foot and caught it on the knee.

  To her amazement she made it crack. But the fire below was still there. The pieces of pottery seemed to float on it. No matter what anyone did the golem could keep going, even if it were just a cloud of dust held together.

  “Ah. Right,” said Carrot, and dropped off the gantry.

  He landed on the king’s back, flung one arm around its neck, and began to pound on its head with the hilt of his sword. It staggered and tried to reach up to pull him off.

  “Got to get the words out!” Carrot shouted, as the arms flailed at him. “It’s the only…way!”

  The king staggered forward and hit a stack of boxes, which burst and rained candles over the floor. Carrot grabbed its ears and tried to twist.

  Angua heard him saying: “You…have…the right…to…a lawyer…”

  “Carrot! Don’t bother with its damn’ rights!”

  “You…have…the right to—”

  “Just give it the last ones!”

  There was a commotion in the gaping doorway and Vimes ran in, sword drawn. “Oh, gods…Sergeant Detritus!”

  Detritus appeared behind him. “Sah!”

  “Crossbow bolt through the head, if you please!”

  “If you say so, sir…”

  “Its head, Sergeant! Mine is fine! Carrot, get down off the thing!”

  “Can’t get its head off, sir!”

  “We’ll try six feet of cold steel in the ear just as soon as you let the damn’ thing go!”

  Carrot steadied himself on the king’s shoulders, tried to judge his moment as the thing staggered around, and leapt.

  He landed awkwardly on a sliding heap of candles. His leg buckled under him and he tumbled over until he was stopped by the inert shell that had been Dorfl.

  “Hey, look dis way, mister,” said Detritus.

  The king turned.

  Vimes didn’t catch everything that happened next, because it all happened so quickly. He was merely aware of the rush of air and the gloink of the rebounding bolt mingling with the wooden juddering noise as it buried itself in the doorframe behind him.

  And the golem was crouching down by Carrot, who was trying to squirm out of the way.

  It raised a fist, and brought it down…

  Vimes didn’t even see Dorfl’s arm move but there it was, there, suddenly gripping the king’s wrist.

  Tiny stars of light went nova in Dorfl’s eyes.

  “Tssssss!”

  As the king jerked back in surprise, Dorfl held on and levered himself up on what remained of his legs. As he came up so did his fist.

  Time slowed. Nothing moved in the whole universe but Dorfl’s fist.

  It swung like a planet, without any apparent speed but with a drifting unstoppability.

  And then the king’s expression changed. Just before the fist landed, it smiled.

  The golem’s head exploded. Vimes recalled it in slow motion, one long second of floating pottery. And words. Scraps of paper flew out, dozens, scores of them, tumbling gently to the floor.

  Slowly, peacefully, the king hit the floor. The red light died, the cracks opened, and then there were just…pieces.

  Dorfl collapsed on top of them.

  Angua and Vimes reached Carrot together.

  “He came alive!” said Carrot, struggling up. “That thing was going to kill me and Dorfl came alive! But that thing had smashed the words out of his head! A golem has to have the words!”

  “They gave their own golem too many, I can see that,” said Vimes.

  He picked up some of the coils of paper.

  …CREATE PEACE AND JUSTICE FOR ALL…

  …RULE US WISELY…

  …TEACH US FREEDOM…

  …LEAD US TO…

  Poor devil, he thought.

  “Let’s get you home. That hand needs treating—” said Angua.

  “Listen, will you?” said Carrot. “He’s alive!”

  Vimes knelt down by Dorfl. The broken clay skull looked as empty as yesterday’s breakfast egg. But there was still a pinpoint of light in each eye socket.

  “Usssss,” hissed Dorfl, so faintly that Vimes wasn’t sure he’d heard it.

  A finger scratched on the floor.

  “Is it trying to write something?” said Angua.

  Vimes pulled out his notebook, eased it under Dorfl’s hand, and gently pushed a pencil into the golem’s fingers. They watched the hand as it wrote—a little jerkily but still with the mechanical precision of a golem—eight words.

  Then it stopped. The pencil rolled away. The lights in Dorfl’s eyes dwindled and went out.

  “Good grief,” breathed Angua. “They don’t need words in their heads…”

  “We can rebuild him,” said Carrot hoarsely. “We have the pottery.”

  Vimes stared at the words, and then at what remained of Dorfl.

  “Mister Vimes?” said Carrot.

  “Do it,” said Vimes.

  Carrot blinked.

  “Right now,” Vimes said. He looked back at the scrawl in his book.

  WORDS IN THE HEART CAN NOT BE TAKEN.

  “And when you rebuild him,” he said, “when you rebuild him…give him a voice. Understand? And get someone to look at your hand.”

  “A voice, sir?”

  “Do it!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right.” Vimes pulled himself together. “Constable Angua and I will have a look around here. Off you go.”

  He watched the two of them carry the remains out. “OK,” he said. “We’re looking for arsenic. Maybe there’ll be some workshop somewhere. I shouldn’t think they’d want to mix the poisoned candles up with the others. Cheri’ll know what—Where is Corporal Littlebottom?”

  “…Er…I don’t think I can hold on much longer…”

  They looked up.

  Cheri was hanging on the line of candles.

  “How did you get up there?” said Vimes.

  “I sort of found myself going past, sir.”

  “Can’t you just let go? You’re not that high—Oh…”

  A big trough of molten tallow was a few feet under her. Occasionally the surface went gloop.

  “Er…how hot would that be?” Vimes hissed to Angua.

  “Ever bitten hot jam?” she said.

  Vimes raised his voice. “Can’t you swing yourself along, Corporal?”

  “All the wood’s greasy, sir!”

  “Corporal Littlebottom, I order you not to fall off!”

  “Very good sir!”

  Vimes pulled off his jacket. “Hang on to this. I’ll see if I can climb up…” he muttered.

  “It won’t work!” said Angua. “The thing’s shaky enough as it is!”

  “I can feel my hands slipping, sir.”

  “Good grief, why didn’t you call out earlier?”

  “Everyone seemed to be busy, sir.”

  “Turn around, sir,” said Angua, undoing the buckles of her breastplate. “Right now, please! And shut your eyes!”

  “Why, what…?”

  “Rrright nowwww, sirrrrr!”

  “Oh…yes…”

  Vimes heard Angua back away from the candle machine, her footsteps punctuated by the clang of falling armor. Then she started running and the footsteps changed while she was running and then…

  He opened his eyes.

  The wolf sailed upwards in slow motion, caught the dwarf’s shoulder in its jaws as Cheri’s grip gave way, and then arced its body so that wolf and dwa
rf hit the floor on the far side of the vat.

  Angua rolled, whimpering.

  Cheri scrambled to her feet. “It’s a werewolf!”

  Angua rolled back and forth, pawing at her mouth.

  “What’s happened to it?” said Cheri, her panic receding a little. “It looks…hurt. Where’s Angua? Oh…”

  Vimes glanced at the dwarf’s torn leather shirt. “You wear chain mail under your clothes?” he said.

  “Oh…it’s my silver vest…but she knew about it. I told her…”

  Vimes grabbed Angua’s collar. She moved to bite him, and then caught his eye and turned her head away.

  “She only bit the silver,” said Cheri, distractedly.

  Angua pulled herself on to her feet, glared at them, and slunk off behind some crates. They heard her whimpering which, by degrees, became a voice.

  “…blasted blasted dwarfs and their blasted vests…”

  “You all right, Constable?” said Vimes.

  “…damn’ silver underwear…Can you throw me my clothes, please?”

  Vimes bundled up Angua’s uniform and, eyes closed for decency’s sake, handed it around the crates.

  “No one told me she was a were—” Cheri moaned.

  “Look at it like this, Corporal,” said Vimes, as patiently as he could. “If she hadn’t been a werewolf you would by now be the world’s largest novelty candle, all right?”

  Angua walked from behind the crates, rubbing her mouth. The skin around it looked too pink…

  “It burned you?” said Cheri.

  “It’ll heal,” said Angua.

  “You never said you were a werewolf!”

  “How would you’ve liked me to have put it?”

  “Right,” said Vimes, “If that’s all sorted out, ladies, I want this place searched. Understand?”

  “I’ve got some ointment,” said Cheri meekly.

  “Thank you.”

  They found a bag in a cellar. There were several boxes of candles. And a lot of dead rats.

  Igneous the troll opened the door of his pottery a fraction. He’d intended the fraction to be no more than about one-sixteenth, but someone immediately pushed hard and turned it into rather more than one and three-quarters.

  “Here, what’s dis?” he said, as Detritus and Carrot came in with the shell of Dorfl between them. “You can’t jus’ break in here—”

  “We ain’t just breakin’ in,” said Detritus.