‘I’m staying with my Uncle Armstrangler,’ said Cheery. ‘It’s not very nice there. People talk about mining most of the time.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘There’s not a lot you can say about mining. “I mine in my mine and what’s mine is mine,” ‘ said Cheery in a singsong voice. ‘And then they go on about gold which, frankly, is a lot duller than people think.’
‘I thought dwarfs loved gold,’ said Angua.
They just say that to get it into bed.’
‘Are you sure you’re a dwarf? Sorry. That was a joke.’
‘There must be more interesting things. Hair. Clothes. People.’
‘Good grief. You mean girl talk?
‘I don’t know, I’ve never talked girl talk before,’ said Cheery. ‘Dwarfs just talk.’
‘It’s like that in the Watch, too,’ said Angua. ‘You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There’s no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You’ll soon learn the language. Basically it’s how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were sick. Just think egotesticle. You’ll soon get the hang of it. And you’ll have to be prepared for sexually explicit jokes in the Watch House.’
Cheery blushed.
‘Mind you, that seems to have ended now,’ said Angua.
‘Why? Did you complain?’
‘No, after I joined in it all seemed to stop/ said Angua, ‘And, you know, they didn’t laugh? Not even when I did the hand gestures too? I thought that was unfair. Mind you, some of them were quite small gestures.’
‘There’s no help for it, I’ll have to move out,’ sighed Cheery. ‘I feel all… wrong.’
Angua looked down at the little figure trudging along beside her. She recognized the symptoms. Everyone needed their own space, just like Angua did, and sometimes that space was inside their heads. And she liked Cheery, oddly enough. Possibly it was because of her earnestness. Or the fact that she was the only person apart from Carrot who didn’t look slightly frightened when they talked to her. And that was because she didn’t know. Angua wanted to preserve that ignorance as a small precious thing, but she could tell when someone needed a little change in their lives.
‘We’re going quite close to Elm Street,’ she said, carefully. ‘Just, er, drop in for a while. I’ve got some stuff you could borrow . . .’
I won’t be needing it, she told herself. When I go, I won’t be able to carry much.
Constable Downspout watched the fog. Watching was, after staying in one place, the thing he did best. But he was also good at keeping quite still. Not making any noise whatsoever was another of his best features. When it came to doing absolutely nothing at all he was among the finest. But it was keeping completely motionless in one place that was his forte. If there were a roll-call for the world’s champion non-movers, he wouldn’t even turn up.
Now, chin on his hands, he watched the fog.
The clouds had settled somewhat so that up here, six storeys above the streets, it was possible to believe you were on a beach at the edge of a cold, moonlit sea. The occasional tall tower or steeple rose out of the clouds, but all sounds were muffled and pulled in on themselves. Midnight came and went.
Constable Downspout watched, and thought about pigeons.
Constable Downspout had very few desires in life, and almost all of them involved pigeons.
A group of figures lurched, staggered or in one case rolled through the fog like the Four Horsemen of a small Apocalypse. One had a duck on his head, and because he was almost entirely sane except for this one strange particular he was known as the Duck Man. One coughed and expectorated repeatedly, and hence was called Coffin Henry. One, a legless man on a small wheeled trolley, was for no apparent reason called Arnold Sideways. And the fourth, for some very good reasons indeed, was Foul Ole Ron.
Ron had a small greyish-brown, torn-eared terrier on the end of a string, although in truth it would be hard for an observer to know exactly who was leading whom and who, when push came to shove, would be the one to fold at the knees if the other one shouted ‘Sit!’ Because, although trained canines as aids for those bereft of sight, and even of hearing, have frequently been used throughout the universe, Foul Ole Ron was the first person ever to own a Thinking-Brain Dog.
The beggars, led by the dog, were heading for the dark arch of Misbegot Bridge, which they called Home. At least, one of them called it ‘Home’; the others respectively called it ‘Haaawrk haaawrk HRRaawrk ptui!’, ‘Heheheh! Whoops!’ and ‘Buggrit, millennium hand and shrimp!’
As they stumbled along the riverside they passed a can from hand to hand, drinking appreciatively and occasionally belching.
The dog stopped. The beggars shunted to a halt behind it.
A figure came towards them along the riverside.
‘Ye gods!’
‘Ptui!’
‘Whoops!’
‘Buggrit?’
The beggars flung themselves against the wall as the pale figure lurched past. It was clutching at its head as if trying to lift itself off the ground by its ears, and then occasionally banging its head against nearby buildings.
While they watched, it pulled a metal mooring post out of the cobbles and started to hit itself over the head. Eventually the cast iron shattered.
The figure dropped the stub, flung back its head, opened a mouth from which red light spilled, and roared like a bull in distress. Then it staggered on into the darkness.
‘There’s that golem again,’ said the Duck Man. ‘The white one.’
‘Heheh, I gets heads like that myself, some mornings,’ said Arnold Sideways.
‘I knows about golems,’ said Coffin Henry, spitting expertly and hitting a beetle climbing the wall twenty feet away. ‘They ain’t s’posed to have a voice.’
‘Buggrit/ said Foul Ole Ron. ‘Dang the twigger f r’a bang at the fusel, and shrimp, ‘cos the worm’s on the other boot! See if he don’t.’
‘He meant it’s the same one we saw the other day,’ said the dog. ‘After that ole priest got topped.’
‘Do you think we should tell someone?’ said the Duck Man.
The dog shook its head. ‘Nah,’ it said. ‘We got a cushy number down here, no sense in spoiling it.’
The five of them staggered on into the damp shadows.
‘I hate bloody golems, takin’ our jobs . . .’
‘We ain’t got jobs.’
‘See what I mean?’
‘What’s for supper?’
‘Mud and ole boots. HRRaawrk ptui!’
‘Millennium hand and shrimp, I sez.’
‘m glad I’ve got a voice. I can speak up for meself.’
‘It’s time you fed your duck.’
‘What duck?’
The fog glowed and sizzled around Five and Seven Yard. Flames roared up and all but set the thick clouds alight. Spitting liquid iron cooled in its moulds. Hammers rang out around the workshops. The ironmasters didn’t work by the clock, but by the more demanding physics of molten metal. Even though it was nearly midnight, Stronginthearm’s Iron Founders, Beaters and General Forging was still bustling.
There were many Stronginthearms in Ankh-Morpork. It was a very common dwarf name. That had been a major consideration for Thomas Smith when he’d adopted it by official deed poll. The scowling dwarf holding a hammer which adorned his sign was a mere figment of the signpainter’s imagination. People thought ‘dwarfmade’ was better, and Thomas Smith had decided not to argue.
The Committee for Equal Heights had objected but things had mired somewhat because, firstly, most of the actual Committee was human, since dwarfs were generally too busy to worry about that sort of thing,[13] and in any case their position hinged on pointing out that Mr Stronginthearm né Smith was too tall, which was clearly a sizeist discrimination and technically illegal under the Committee’s own rules.
In the meantime Thomas had let his beard grow, wore an iron helmet if he thought anyone official was around, and put up his prices by twenty pence on the dollar.
The drop hammers thumped, all in a row, powered by the big ox treadmill. There were swords to beat out and panels to be shaped. Sparks erupted.
Stronginthearm took off his helmet (the Committee had been around again) ancl wiped the inside.
‘Dibbuk? Where the hell are you?’
A sensation of filled space made him turn. The foundry’s golem was standing a few inches behind him, the forge light glowing on his dark red clay.
‘I told you not to do that, didn’t I?’ Stronginthearm shouted above the din.
The golem held up its slate.
YES.
‘You’ve gone and done all your holy day stuff? You were away too long!’
SORROW.
‘Well, now you’re back with us, go and take over on Number Three hammer and send Mr Vincent up to my office, right?’
YES.
Stronginthearm climbed the stairs to his office. He turned at the top to look back across the red-lit foundry floor. He saw Dibbuk walk over to the hammer and hold up a slate for the foreman. He saw Vincent the foreman walk away. He saw Dibbuk take the sword-blank that was being shaped and hold it in place for a few blows, then hurl it aside.