“Plenty of time,” Bunty agreed.
“Fred and Nobby did take the horses up to the valley, didn’t they?” said Sybil.
“Yes, Sybil. You watched them go,” said Bunty. She looked over Sybil’s head to the gaunt figure of her husband, who was standing in the hall doorway. He shrugged hopelessly.
“Only the other day, he was running up the stairs as the clocks were striking six,” Sybil said, calmly soaping Young Sam with a sponge shaped like a teddy bear. “The very last second. You wait and see.”
He wanted to sleep. He’d never felt this tired before. Vimes slumped to his knees, and then fell sideways onto the sand.
When he forced his eyes open, he saw pale stars above him, and had, once again, the sensation that there was someone else present.
He turned his head, wincing at the stab of pain, and saw a small but brightly lit folding chair on the sand. A robed figure was reclining in it, reading a book. A scythe was stuck in the sand beside it.
A white, skeletal hand turned a page.
“You’ll be Death, then?” said Vimes, after a while.
AH, MISTER VIMES, ASTUTE AS EVER. GOT IT IN ONE, said Death, shutting the book on his finger to keep the place.
“I’ve seen you before.”
I HAVE WALKED WITH YOU MANY TIMES, MISTER VIMES.
“And this is it, is it?”
HAS IT NEVER STRUCK YOU THAT THE CONCEPT OF A WRIT-TEN NARRATIVE IS SOMEWHAT STRANGE? said Death.
Vimes could tell when people were trying to avoid something they really didn’t want to say, and it was happening here.
“Is it?” he insisted. “Is this it? This time I die?”
COULD BE.
“Could be? What sort of answer is that?” said Vimes.
A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR-VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON’T MINDME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK.
Vimes rolled over onto his stomach, gritted his teeth, and pushed himself onto his hands and knees again. He managed a few yards before slumping back down.
He heard the sound of a chair being moved.
“Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?” he said.
I AM, said Death, sitting down again.
“But you’re here!”
AS WELL. Death turned a page and, for a person without breath, managed a pretty good sigh. IT APPEARS THAT THE BUTLER DID IT.
“Did what?”
ITISAMADE-UP STORY. VERY STRANGE. ALL ONE NEED DO IS TURN TO THE LAST PAGE AND THE ANSWER IS THERE. WHAT, THEREFORE, IS THE POINT OF DELIBERATELY NOT KNOWING?
It sounded like gibberish to Vimes, so he ignored it. Some of the aches were gone, although his head still hammered. There was an empty feeling everywhere. He just wanted to sleep.
“Is that clock right?”
“I’m afraid it is, Sybil.”
“I’ll just go outside and wait for him, then. I’ll have the book ready,” said Lady Sybil. “He won’t let anything stop him, you know.” “I’m sure he won’t,” said Bunty.
“Although things can be very treacherous in the lower valley at this time of—” her husband began, and was fried into silence by his wife’s stare.
It was six minutes to six.
“Ob oggle oog soggle!”
It was a very little, watery sound, and it came from somewhere in Vimes’s trousers. After a few moments, enough time to recollect that he had both hand and trousers, he reached down and, after a struggle, freed the Gooseberry from his pocket. The case was battered, and the imp, when Vimes had got the flap open, was quite pale.
“Ob ogle soggle!”
Vimes stared at it. It was a talking box. It meant something.
“Woggle soggle lob!”
Slowly, Vimes tipped the box up. Water poured out of it.
“You weren’t listening! I was shouting and you weren’t listening!” the imp whined. “It’s five minutes to six! Read to Young Sam!”
Vimes dropped the protesting box on his chest and stared up at the pale stars.
“Mus’ read to Young Sam,” he murmured, and shut his eyes.
They snapped open again.
“Got t’read to Young Sam!”
The stars were moving. It wasn’t the sky! How could it be the sky? This was a bloody cave, wasn’t it?
He rolled over and got to his feet in one movement. There were more stars now, drifting along the walls. The vurms were moving with a purpose. Overhead, they had become a glowing river.
Although they were flickering a little, the lights were also coming back on in Vimes’s head. He peered into what was now no longer blackness but merely gloom, and gloom was like daylight after the darkness that had gone before.
“…got to read to Young Sam…” he whispered, to a cavern of giant stalactites and stalagmites, all gleaming with water, “…to read to Young Sam…”
Stumbling and sliding through shallow pools, running across the occasional patch of white sand, Vimes followed the lights.
Sybil tried not to look at the worried faces of her host and hostess as she crossed their hall. She glared at the grandfather clock. The minute hand was nearly on the 12, and trembling.
She threw open the front door. There was no Sam there, and no one galloping down the road.
The clock struck the hour. She heard someone step quietly beside her.
“Would you like me to read to the young man, madam?” said Willikins. “Perhaps a man’s voice would—”
“No, I’ll go up,” said Sybil quietly. “You wait here for my husband. He won’t be long,” she added firmly.
“Yes, madam.”
“He’ll probably be quite rushed.”
“I shall usher him up without delay, madam.”
“He will be here, you know!”
“Yes, madam.”
“He will walk through walls!”
Sybil climbed the stairs as the chimes ended. The clock was a wrong clock. Of course it was!
Young Sam had been installed in the old nursery of the house, a rather somber place full of grays and browns. There was a truly frightening rocking horse, all teeth and mad glass eyes.
The boy was standing up in his cot. He was smiling, but the smile faded into puzzlement as Sybil pulled up a chair and sat down next to him.
“Daddy has asked Mummy to read to you tonight, Sam,” she announced brightly. “Won’t that be fun!”
Her heart did not sink. It could not. It was already as low as any heart could go. But it curled up and whimpered as she watched the little boy stare at her, at the door, at her again, and then throw back his head and scream.
Vimes, half limping and half running, tripped and fell into a shallow pool.
He found he’d stumbled over a dwarf. A dead one. Very dead. So dead, in fact, that the dripping water had built a small stalagmite on him, and with a film of milky stone had cemented him to the rock against which he sat.
“…got to read to Young Sam,” Vimes told the shadowy helmet, earnestly.
A little way away, on the sand, was a dwarf’s battle-axe. What was going on in Vimes’s mind was not exactly coherent thought, but he could hear faint noises up ahead and an instinct older than thought decided there was no such thing as too much cutting power.
He picked it up. It was covered with no more than a thin coat of rust. There were other humps and mounds on the cavern floor, which, now that he came to look at them, might all be—
No time! Read book!
At the end of the cavern, the ground sloped up, and had been made treacherous by the dripping water. It fought back, but the axe helped. One problem at a time. Climb hill! Read book!
And then the screaming started. His son, screaming.
It filled his mind.
They will burn…
A staircase floated in his vision, reaching endlessly upwards into darkness. The screaming came from up there.
Feet slithered. The axe bit into the milky stone
. Weeping and cursing, sliding at every step, Vimes struggled to the top of the slope.
A new, huge cave spread out below. It was busy with dwarfs. It looked like a mine.
There were four of them, only a few feet away from Vimes, whose vision was full of rocking lambs. They stared at this sudden, bloody, swaying apparition, which was dreamily waving a sword in one hand and an axe in the other.
They had axes, too. But the thing glared at them and asked:
“Where’s…My…Cow?”
They backed away.
“Is that my cow?” the creature demanded, stepping forward unsteadily. It shook its head sadly.
“It goes Baaaa!” it wept. “It is…a sheep…”
Then it fell to its knees, clenched its teeth, turned its face upwards, like a man tortured beyond his wits, beseeching the gods of fortune and the tempest, and screamed:
“No! That! Is!! Not!!! My!!! Cow!!!!!”
The words echoed around the cavern and broke through mere rock, so great was the force behind them, melted mere mountains, screamed across the miles…
And in the somber nursery, Young Sam stopped crying and looked around, suddenly happy but puzzled, and said, to his despairing mother’s surprise: “Co!”
The dwarfs backed way down the slope. Overhead, the vurms were still pouring in, outlining the invader against their green-white glow.
“Where’s my cow? Is that my cow?” it demanded, following them.
In every part of the cavern, dwarfs had stopped work. There was hesitancy in the air. This was only one man, after all, and the thought in many minds was: What is someone else going to do about this? It had not yet progressed to: What am I going to do about this? Besides, where was the cow? There were cows down here?
“It goes Naaaaay. It is a horse! That is not my cow!”
Dwarfs looked at one another. Where was the horse, then? Did you hear a horse? Who else is down here?
The four guards had retreated to the cavern for advice and reorientation. There was a number of deep-downers there, clustered in frantic conversation and watching the approaching man.
In Vimes’s strobing vision, there were fluffy bunnies, too, and quacky ducks…
He had dropped to his knees again, and was staring at the ground and crying.
Half a dozen shrouded dark guards stepped out from the group. One of them carried ahead of him a flame weapon, and advanced on the figure cautiously. The flame of its little pilot light was the brightest thing in the cave.
The figure looked up, the light reflected red in its eyes, and growled: “Is that my cow?”
Then it threw the axe overarm, full at the guard. It struck the flame weapon, which exploded.
“It goes HRUUUGH!”
“Hg!” said Young Sam, as his mother hugged him and stared blankly at the wall.
Burning oil fountained across the dark. Some of it splashed on Vimes’s arm. He slapped at it. There was pain, intense pain, but he knew this only in the same way that he knew the moon existed. It was there, but it was a long way off and didn’t affect him very much.
“That’s not my cow!” he said, standing up.
He strode on now, over the burning oil, through red-edged smoke, past the dwarfs rolling desperately on the ground to put out the flames. He seemed to be looking for something.
Two more guards ran at him. Without appearing to notice them, Vimes crouched and whirled the sword around in a circle. A little lamb rocked in front of his eyes.
A dwarf with greater presence of mind than the others had found a crossbow and was taking aim when he had to stop to brush away the bats streaming past him. He raised the bow again, looked around at a noise like two slabs of meat being slapped together, and was picked up and thrown across the cave by a naked young woman. An astonished miner swung his axe at the smiling girl, who vanished in a cloud of bats.
There was a lot of yelling going on. Vimes paid it no attention. Dwarfs were running through the smoke. He merely slapped them aside. He had found what he was seeking.
“Is that my cow? It goes Mooooo!”
Picking up another fallen axe, Vimes started to run.
“Yes! That’s my cow!”
The grags were behind a ring of guards, in a frantic huddle, but Vimes’s eyes were on fire, and there were flames streaming from his helmet. A dwarf holding a flamethrower threw it down and fled.
“Hooray, hooray, it’s a wonderful day, for I have found my cow!”
…and perhaps that, it was said later, was what did it. Against the berserker, there is no defense. They had sworn to fight to the death, but not to this death. The slowest four guards went down to the axe and the sword, the others scattered and ran.
And now Vimes paused in front of the cowering old dwarfs, raising the weapons over his head—
And halted, rocking like a statue.
Night, forever. But within it, a city, shadowy and only real in certain ways.
The entity cowered in its alley, where the mist was rising. This could not have happened!
Yet it had. The streets had filled with…things. Animals! Birds! Changing shape! Screaming and yelling! And, above it all, higher than the rooftops, a lamb rocking back and forth in great slow motions, thundering over the cobbles…
And then bars had come down, slamming down, and the entity had been thrown back.
But it had been so close! It had saved the creature, it was getting through, it was beginning to have control…and now this…
In the darkness of the inner city, above the rustle of the never-ending rain, it heard the sound of boots approaching.
A shape appeared in the mist.
It drew nearer.
Water cascaded off a metal helmet and an oiled leather cloak as the figure stopped and, entirely unconcerned, cupped its hand in front of its face and lit a cigar.
Then the match was dropped on the cobbles, where it hissed out, and the figure said: “What are you?”
The entity stirred, like an old fish in a deep pool. It was too tired to flee.
“I am the Summoning Dark.” It was not, in fact, a sound, but had it been, it would have been a hiss. “Who are you?”
“I am the Watchman.”
“They would have killed his family!” The darkness lunged, and met resistance. “Think of the deaths they have caused! Who are you to stop me?”
“He created me. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? Me. I watch him. Always. You will not force him to murder for you.”
“What kind of human creates his own policeman?”
“One who fears the dark”
“And so he should,” said the entity, with satisfaction.
“Indeed. But I think you misunderstand. I am not here to keep darkness out. I’m here to keep it in.” There was a clink of metal as the shadowy watchman lifted a dark lantern and opened its little door. Orange light cut through the blackness. “Call me…the Guarding Dark. Imagine how strong I must be.”
The Summoning Dark backed desperately into the alley, but the light followed it, burning it.
“And now,” said the watchman, “get out of town.”
—and went down as a werewolf landed on his back.
Angua drooled. The hair along her spine stood out like a saw blade. Her lips curled back like a wave. Her growl was from the back of a haunted cave. All together, these told the brain of anything monkey-shaped that movement meant death. And that stillness, while it also meant death, didn’t mean immediate, this actual second, death, and was therefore the smart-monkey option.
Vimes didn’t move. The growl knotted his muscles. Terror was in control.
I salute you, said a thought that was not his, and he felt the sudden absence of something whose presence he had not noticed before. In the blackness behind his eyes, some dark fin swished and vanished.
He heard a whimper, and the weight on him disappeared. He rolled over and saw, fading in the middle of the air, a crude drawing of an eye with a tail. It dwindled into nothing
, and the all-enveloping darkness slowly gave way to flames and the light of the vurms. Blood had been spilled; they were pouring down the walls. He felt…
A certain amount of time passed. Vimes jerked awake.
“I read it for him!” he said, mostly to reassure himself.
“You did, sir,” said the voice of Angua, behind him. “Very clearly, too. We were more than two hundred yards away. Well done, sir. We thought you ought to have a rest.”
“What have I done well?” said Vimes, trying to sit up. The movement filled his world with pain, but he managed a brief glimpse before slumping back.
There was a lot of smoke in the cave, but there were actual torches flickering here and there. And a great many dwarfs, some distance away, some sitting down, some standing around in groups.
“Why are there so many dwarfs here, Sergeant?” he asked, looking up at the cavern roof. “That is, why are there so many dwarfs here that aren’t actually trying to kill us?”
“They’re from the Low King, sir. We’re their prisoners…sort of…er…but not exactly…”
“Of Rhys? Bugger that!” said Vimes, trying to get to his feet again. “I saved his bloody life once!” He managed to get upright, but then the world pivoted around him, and he would have fallen if Angua hadn’t caught him and lowered him onto a rock. Well, at least he was sitting up now…
“Not exactly prisoners,” Angua said. “We can’t go anywhere. But since we wouldn’t know where to go even it we could go anywhere, it’s all a bit moot. Sorry I’m only in a shift, sir, you know how it is. The dwarfs have promised to fetch my gear. Er…it’s all gone political, sir. The dwarf in command seems a decent sort but he’s way out of his depth, so he’s sticking with what he knows, sir. And, er, he doesn’t know a lot. Do you remember anything about what happened? You’ve been out for a good twenty minutes.”
“Yes. There were…wooly lambs…” Vimes’s voice trailed into silence for a while. Somehow, what he’d just said took the ring of veracity and dropped it in a deep, deep hole. “There weren’t wooly lambs, right?” he asked hopelessly.