‘Undermining us, eh?’ said Boddony.
One or two of the dwarfs looked up when he said this. Boddony said something in dwarfish. Goodmountain snapped something in reply. A couple of other dwarfs joined in.
‘Excuse me,’ said Sacharissa tartly.
The lads were . . . wondering about going in and having a look,’ said Goodmountain.
‘I tried going in the other day,’ said Sacharissa. ‘But the troll on the door was most impolite.’
‘Dwarfs . . . approach matters differently,’ said Goodmountain.
Sacharissa saw a movement. Boddony had pulled his axe out
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from under the bench. It was a traditional dwarf axe. One side was a pickaxe, for the extraction of interesting minerals, and the other side was a war axe, because the people who own the land with the valuable minerals in it can be so unreasonable sometimes.
‘You’re not going to attack anyone, are you?’ she said, shocked.
‘Well, someone did say that if you want a good story you have to dig and dig,’ said Boddony. ‘We’re just going to go for a walk.’
‘In the cellar?’ said Sacharissa, as they headed for the steps.
‘Yeah, a walk in the dark,’ said Boddony.
Goodmountain sighed. The rest of us will get on with the paper, shall we?’ he said.
After a minute or two there was the sound of a few axe blows, below them, and then someone swore in dwarfish, very loudly.
‘I’m going to see what they’re doing,’ said Sacharissa, unable to resist any more, and hurried away.
The bricks that once had filled the old doorway were already down when she got there. Since the stones of Ankh-Morpork were recycled over the generations no one had ever seen the point of making strong mortar, and especially not for blocking up an old doorway. Sand, dirt, water and phlegm would do the trick, they felt. They always had done up to now, after all. ‘
The dwarfs were peering into the darkness beyond. Each one had stuck a candle on his helmet.
‘I thought your man said they filled up the old street,’ said Boddony.
‘He’s not my man,’ said Sacharissa evenly. ‘What’s in there?’
One of the dwarfs had stepped through with a lantern.
There’s like . . . tunnels,’ he said.
The old pavements,’ said Sacharissa. ‘It’s like this all round this area, I think. After the big floods they built up the sides of the road with timber and filled it in, but they left the pavements on either side because not all the properties had built up yet and people objected.’
‘What?’ said Boddony. ‘You mean the roads were higher than the pavements?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Sacharissa, following him into the gap.
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‘What happened if a horse pi– if a horse made water on the street?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ sniffed Sacharissa.
‘How did people cross the street?’
‘Ladders.’
‘Oh, come on, miss!’
‘No, they used ladders. And a few tunnels. It wasn’t going to be for very long. And then it was simpler just to put heavy slabs over the old pavements. And so there’s these – well, forgotten spaces.’
There’s rats up here,’ said Dozy, who was wandering into the distance.
‘Hot damn!’ said Boddony. ‘Anyone brought the cutlery? Only joking, miss. Hey, what do we have here . . . ?’
He hacked at some planks, which crumbled away under the blows.
‘Someone didn’t want to use a ladder,’ he said, peering into another hole.
‘It goes right under the street?’ said Sacharissa.
‘Looks like it. Must have been allergic to horses.’
‘And . . . er . . . you can find your way?’
‘I’m a dwarf. We are underground. Dwarf. Underground. What was your question again?’
‘You’re not proposing to hack through to the cellars of the Inquirer, are you?’ said Sacharissa.
‘Who, us?’
‘You are, aren’t you.’
‘We wouldn’t do anything like that.’
‘Yes, but you are, aren’t you.’
That’d be tantamount to breaking in, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, and that’s what you’re planning to do, isn’t it?’
Boddony grinned. ‘Well. . . a little bit. Just to have a look round. You know.’
‘Good.’
‘What? You don’t mind?’
‘You’re not going to kill anyone, are you?’
‘Miss, we don’t do that sort of thing!’
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Sacharissa looked a little disappointed. She’d been a respectable young woman for some time. In certain people, that means there’s a lot of dammed-up disreputability just waiting to burst out.
‘Well. . . perhaps just make them a bit sorry, then?’
‘Yes, we can probably do that.’
The dwarfs were already creeping along the tunnel at the other side of the buried street. By the light of their torches she saw old frontages, bricked-up doors, windows filled with rubble.
This should be about the right place,’ said Boddony, pointing to a faint rectangle filled with more low-grade brick.
‘You’re just going to break in?’ said Sacharissa.
‘We’ll say we were lost,’ said Boddony.
‘Lost underground? Dwarfs?’
‘All right, we’ll say we’re drunk. People’ll believe that. Okay, lads. . .’
The rotten bricks fell away. Light streamed out. In the cellar beyond a man looked up from his desk, mouth open.
Sacharissa squinted through the dust. ‘You?’ she said.
‘Oh, it’s you, miss,’ said Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. ‘Hello, boys. Am I glad to see you . . .’
The crew were just leaving when Gaspode arrived at the gallop. He took one look at the other dogs that were huddled around trie fire, then dived under the trailing folds of Foul Ole Ron’s dreadful coat and whined.
It took some time for the whole of the crew to understand what was going on. These were, after all, people who ,’could argue and expectorate and creatively misunderstand their way through a three-hour argument after someone said ‘Good morning’.
It was the Duck Man who finally got the message. ‘These men are hunting terriers?’ he said.
‘Right! It was the bloody newspaper! You can’t bloody trust people who write in newspapers!’
They threw these doggies in the river?’
‘Right!’ said Gaspode. ‘It’s all gone fruit-shaped!’
‘Well, we can protect you too.’
‘Yeah, but I’ve got to be out and about! I’m a figure in this town!
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I can’t lie low! I need a disguise! Look, we could be looking at fifty dollars here, right? But you need me to get it!’
The crew were impressed with this. In their cashless economy fifty dollars was a fortune.
‘Blewitt,’ said Foul Ole Ron.
‘A dog’s a dog,’ said Arnold Sideways. ‘On account of bein’ called a dog.’
‘Gaarck!’ crowed Coffin Henry.
That’s true,’ said the Duck Man. ‘A false beard isn’t going to work.’
‘Well, your huge brains had better come up with somethin’, ‘cos I’m staying put until you do,’ said Gaspode. ‘I’ve seen these men. They are not nice.’
There was a rumble from Altogether Andrews. His face flickered as the various personalities reshuffled themselves, and then settled into the waxy bulges of Lady Hermione.
‘We could disguise him,’ she said.
‘What could you disguise a dog as?’ said the Duck Man. ‘A cat?’
‘A dog is not just a dog,’ said Lady Hermione. ‘Ai think ai have an idea . . .’
The dwarfs were in a huddle when William got back. The epicentre of the huddle, its huddlee, turned out to be Mr Dibbler, who looked just like anyone would look if they’ve been harangued. William had never seen anyone to whom the word ‘harangued’ could be so justifiably applied. It meant someone who had been talked at by Sacharissa for twenty minutes.
‘Is there a problem?’ he said. ‘Hello, Mr Dibbler . . .’
Tell me, William,’ said Sacharissa, while pacing slowly around Dibbler’s chair. ‘If stories were food, what kind of food would Goldfish Eats Cat be?’
‘What?’ William stared at Dibbler. Realization dawned. ‘I think it would be a sort of long, thin kind of food,’ he said.
‘Filled with rubbish of suspicious origin?’
‘Now, there’s no need for anyone to take that tone–‘ Dibbler began, and then subsided under Sacharissa’s glare.
‘Yes, but rubbish that’s sort of attractive. You’d keep on eating it
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even though you wished you weren’t,’ said William. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Look, I didn’t want to do it,’ Dibbler protested.
‘Do what?’ said William.
‘Mr Dibbler’s been writing those stories for the Inquirer,’ said Sacharissa.
‘I mean, no one believes what they read in the paper, right?’ said Dibbler.
William pulled up a chair and sat straddling it, resting his arms on the back.
‘So, Mr Dibbler . . . when did you start pissing in the fountain of Truth?’
‘William!’ snapped Sacharissa.
‘Look, times haven’t been good, see?’ said Dibbler. ‘And I thought, this news business . . . well, people like to hear about stuff from a long way away, you know, like in the Almanacke–‘
‘ “Plague of Giant Weasels in Hersheba”?’ said William.
‘That’s the style. Well, I thought . . . it doesn’t sort of matter if they’re, you know, really true . . . I mean . . .’ William’s glassy grin was beginning to make Dibbler uncomfortable. ‘I mean . . . they’re nearly true, aren’t they? Everyone knows that sort of thing happens