He lobbed the fragile bottle so that it would land twenty feet ahead of the werewolf. Then he dropped from the stairs on to the top of a wall and jumped down on to a privy roof just as the glass broke with a ‘pof!’ inside the sock.
There was a yelp, and the sound of scrabbling claws.
William jumped from the roof on to another wall, inched along the top of it and climbed down into another alley. Then he ran.
It took five minutes, dodging into convenient cover and cutting through buildings, to arrive at the livery stables. In the general bustle no one took any notice of him. He was just another man coming to fetch his horse.
The stall that might or might not have contained Deep Bone was occupied by a horse now. It looked down its nose at him.
‘Don’t turn round, Mister Paper Man,’ said a voice behind him.
William tried to remember what had been behind him. Oh, yes . . . the hay lift. And huge bags of straw. Plenty of room for someone to hide.
‘All right,’ he said.
‘Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,’ said Deep Bone. ‘You must be ment’l.’
‘But I’m on the right track,’ said William. ‘I think I’ve–‘
“ere, you sure you weren’t followed?’
‘Corporal Nobbs was on my trail,’ said William. ‘But I shook him off.’
‘Hah! Walkin’ round the corner’d shake off Nobby Nobbs!’
‘Oh, no, he kept right up. I knew Vimes would have me tracked,’ said William proudly.
‘By Nobbs?’
‘Yes. Obviously . . . in his werewolf shape . . .’ There. He’d said it. But today was a day for shadows and secrets.
‘A werewolf shape,’ said Deep Bone flatly.
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‘Yes. I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone else.’
‘Corporal Nobbs,’ said Deep Bone, still in the same dull monotone.
‘Yes. Look, Vimes told me not to–‘
‘Vimes told you Nobby Nobbs was a werewolf?’
‘Well. . . no, not exactly. I worked that out for myself, and Vimes told me not to tell anyone else
‘About Corporal Nobbs bein’ a werewolf. . .’
‘Yes.’
‘Corporal Nobbs is not a werewolf, mister. In any way, shape or form. Whether he’s human is another matter, but he ain’t a lycr– a lynco– a lycantro– a bloody werewolf, that’s for sure!’
Then whose nose did I just drop a scent bomb in front of?’ said William triumphantly.
There was silence. And then there was the sound of a thin trickle of water.
‘Mr Bone?’ said William.
‘What kind of a scent bomb?’ said the voice. It sounded rather strained.
‘I think oil of scallatine was probably the most active ingredient.’
‘Right in front of a werewolf’s nose?’
‘More or less, yes.’
‘Mister Vimes is going to go round the twist,’ said the’ voice of Deep Bone. ‘He’s going to go totally Librarian-poo. He’s going to invent new ways of being angry just so’s he can try them out on you–‘
Then I’d better get hold of Lord Vetinari’s ,dog as soon as possible,’ said William. He produced his chequebook. ‘I can give you a cheque for fifty dollars, and that’s all I can afford.’
‘What’s one of them, then?’
‘It’s like a legal IOU.’
‘Oh, great,’ said Deep Bone. ‘Not much good to me when you’re locked up, though.’
‘Right now, Mr Bone, there’s a couple of very nasty men hunting down every terrier in the city, by the sound of it–‘
Terriers?’ said Deep Bone. ‘All terriers?’
‘Yes, and while I don’t expect you to–‘
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‘Like . . . pedigree terriers, or just people who might happen to look a bit terrier-like?’
They didn’t look like they were inspecting any paperwork. Anyway, what do you mean, “people who look like terriers”?’
Deep Bone went silent again.
William said, ‘Fifty dollars, Mr Bone.’
At length the sacks of straw said, ‘All right. Tonight. On the Misbegot Bridge. Just you. Er . . . I won’t be there but there will be . . . a messenger.’
‘Who shall I make the cheque to?’ said William.
There was no answer. He waited a while and then eased himself into a position where he could peer around the sacks. There was a rustling from them. Probably rats, he thought, because certainly none of them could hold a man.
Deep Bone was a very tricky customer.
Some time after William had gone, looking surreptitiously into the shadows, one of the grooms turned up with a trolley and began to load up the sacks.
One of them said: Tut me down, mister.’
The man dropped the sack and then opened it cautiously.
A small terrier-like dog struggled out, shaking itself free of clinging wisps.
Mr Hobson did not encourage independence of thought and an enquiring mind, and at 50 pence a day plus all the oats you could steal he didn’t get them. The groom looked owlishly at the dog.
‘Did you just say that?’ he said.
“course not,’ said the dog. ‘Dogs can’t talk. Are you stupid or somethin’? Someone’s playin’ a trick on you. Gottle o’ geer, gottle o’ geer, vig viano.’
‘You mean, like, throwing their voice? I saw a man do that down at the music hall.’
That’s the ticket. Hold on to that thought.’
The groom looked around. ‘Is that you playin’ a trick, Tom?’ he said.
That’s right, it’s me, Tom,’ said the dog. ‘I got the trick out of a
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book. Throwin’ my voice into this harmless little dog what cannot talk at all.’
‘What? You never told me you were learnin’ to read!’
‘There were pictures,’ said the dog hurriedly. Tongues an’ teeth an’ that. Dead easy to understand. Oh, now the little doggie’s wanderin’ off. . .’
The dog edged its way to the door.
‘Sheesh,’ it appeared to say. ‘A couple of thumbs and they’re lords of bloody creation
Then it ran for it.
‘How will this work?’ said Sacharissa, trying to look intelligent. It was much better to concentrate on something like this than think about strange men getting ready to invade again.
‘Slowly,’ mumbled Goodmountain, fiddling with the press. ‘You realize that this means it’ll take us much longer to print each paper?’
‘You vanted colour, I gif you colour,’ said Otto sulkily. ‘You never said qvick.’
Sacharissa looked at the experimental iconograph. Most pictures were painted in colour these days. Only really cheap imps painted in black and white, even though Otto insisted that monochrome ‘vas an art form in itself. But printing colour . . . ‘
Four imps were sitting on the edge of it, passing a very small cigarette from hand to hand and watching with interest the work on the press. Three of them wore goggles of coloured glass – red, blue and yellow.
‘But not green . . .’ she said. ‘So . . . if something’s green – have I got this right? – Guthrie there sees the . . . blue in the green and paints that on the plate in blue’ – one of the imps gave her a wave – ‘and Anton sees the yellow and paints that, and when you run it through the press–‘
‘. . . very, very slowly,’ muttered Goodmountain. ‘It’d be quicker to go round to everyone’s house and tell ’em the news.’
Sacharissa looked at the test sheets that had been done of the recent fire. It was definitely a fire, with red, yellow and orange flames, and there was some, yes, blue sky, and the golems
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were a pretty good reddish-brown, but the flesh tones . . . well, ‘flesh-coloured’ was a bit of a tricky one in Ankh-Morpork, where if you picked your subject it could be any colour except maybe light blue, but the faces of many of the bystanders did suggest that a particularly virulent plague had passed through the city. Possibly the Multi-coloured Death, she decided.
‘Zis is only the beginning,’ said Otto. ‘Ve vill get better.’
‘Better maybe, but we’re as fast as we can go,’ said Good-mountain. ‘We can do maybe two hundred an hour. Maybe two hundred and fifty, but someone’s going to be looking for their fingers before this day’s out. Sorry, but we’re doing the best we can. If we had a day to redesign and rebuild properly–‘
‘Print a few hundred and do the rest in black and white, then,’ said Sacharissa, and sighed. ‘At least it’ll catch people’s attention.’
‘Vunce zey see it, the Inqvirer vill vork out how it vas done,’ said Otto.
‘Then at least we’ll go down with our colours flying,’ said Sacharissa. She shook her head as a little dust floated down from the ceiling.
‘Hark at that,’ said Boddony. ‘Can you feel the floor shake? That’s their big presses again.’
They’re undermining us everywhere,’ said Sacharissa. ‘And we’ve all worked so hard. It’s so unfair.’
I’m surprised the floor takes it,’ said Goodmountain. ‘It’s not as though anything’s on solid ground round here.’