The atrocity of the attack on the clacks tower at Sto Kerrig, which had so recently been a lifeline to the world for the people in the town, shocked everyone. As Adora Belle Dearheart looked at the wreckage in the gathering dusk, she was not surprised to see a very large and handsome wolf approaching at speed and, unlike most wolves, carrying a package between its jaws. The wolf disappeared behind a haystack, and shortly afterwards out of the haystack came a handsome female, only marginally dishevelled, wearing the uniform of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.
Captain Angua, the most notable werewolf in the Watch, said, ‘Oh my, they’ve certainly made a mess, haven’t they? And are you sure that only one of your people was hurt?’
‘Two goblins, captain, but they bounce well. Quick-witted, too. Can you imagine, they managed to send out a final message saying that their tower was under fire from dwarfs before they legged it. Very conscientious, the goblins, when it comes to machinery. They are always better on the night shift. Can I say, captain, when you find out who did this I’ll press charges and press them very hard indeed, to a point when a police officer like yourself would have to look away for fear of seeing something they didn’t want to.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Miss Dearheart. His lordship takes the view that to interfere with the clacks is to interfere with the proper running of the world. Treason not only to one’s own state, but to all.’
‘At the moment, my friend Shatter of the Icicle, the lead goblin on this tower, has a bit of a battered arm, but he’ll certainly assist in finding the dwarfs who did this. However, I don’t know where Shine on the Moon has got to.’
‘I’ll prowl the area until my back-up gets here. I’m expecting the cart and Igorina for the forensics,’ said Angua. ‘If you hear something screaming it might be me, but don’t worry. Commander Vimes has no time for senseless saboteurs.’
There was a pause, and Adora Belle said gravely, ‘There’s something I think you ought to see. Look under this pile of timber: this dwarf looks very, very dead and horribly mutilated. I assume he probably tripped and fell when he was setting fire to the tower. What do you think, captain?’
Carefully, Captain Angua looked at the corpse and said, ‘He’s lost an ear.’
Adora Belle said, ‘Well, apropos of nothing at all, I understand that when goblins get truly riled up they go all frisky and look for souvenirs.’
‘But I’m quite certain, of course, that none of your clacks goblins would be getting up to anything like that, right?’ Angua asked.
Distantly, Adora Belle replied, ‘Yes, having been almost burned alive by dwarf extremists would be shrugged off as another day in the office and not something to get very excited about.’
She looked at the captain quizzically, who said, ‘Quite so. Undoubtedly any injuries were caused by the incompetence of the terrorists themselves.’
‘Why, yes, indeed, yes,’ said Adora Belle.
‘Wasn’t it amazing how one of them managed to chew his own ear off?’ Angua observed.
‘So, can Shine on the Moon come out of hiding now?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Angua carefully, ‘I didn’t hear what you said over the cracking of the tower.’
The silence in Lord Vetinari’s study was absolute. Nevertheless, the tread of Drumknott’s approach contrived to make it even more silent as the secretary handed his lordship a little slip of paper and told him that a second clacks tower had been torched by people calling themselves, in translation, ‘The Only True Dwarfs’.
Drumknott waited while not a muscle moved in Lord Vetinari’s face before he said, ‘Let it be known that enemy action on the clacks system will be followed by the death of not only those who did it but also those who ordered it to be done, whoever they are. Send this to every embassy, consulate and head of state. Action this night, please.’
Still speaking calmly, Lord Vetinari continued, ‘It is also time, I think, to let the dark clerks deal with the more unusual suspects. I’m sure your concludium has given you some clues, Drumknott, and of course we will assist in any way possible. The Low King must be … unhappy about this. Although the stricken clacks tower was ours, we know that the impact of this problem falls in the last event on the King himself. Therefore, send him a message on the black clacks and let him know that I myself and, undoubtedly, Lady Margolotta will support any new plan he chooses to make. The grags have once again broken a solemn accord and that, Drum knott, batters the pillars of the world and not inconsiderably. After all, if you can’t trust governments, whom can you trust?’
There was a subtle cough from Drumknott and his smile at that point was more like a grimace. Before the secretary was released to his private office and its other intrigues, Lord Vetinari continued fishing in his own stream of consciousness, and said, ‘I seldom get angry, Drumknott, as you know, but I am angry now. I should be grateful if you would send for Commander Vimes in his other incarnation as Blackboard Monitor Vimes. I require his assistance and I don’t think he will be a happy man — which, from my point of view, has no downside in these circumstances. Please put the message out to Mister Trooper that this is not the time to be a nice person.’
He went on, ‘This isn’t war. This is a crime. There will be a punishment.’
Rhys Rhysson, Low King of the dwarfs, was a dwarf of keen intelligence, but he sometimes wondered why someone with that intelligence would go into dwarfish politics, let alone be King of the Dwarfs. Lord Vetinari had it so easy he must hardly know he was born! The King thought humans were, well, reasonably sensible, whereas there was an old dwarf proverb which, translated, said, ‘Any three dwarfs having a sensible conversation will always end up having four points of view’.
It wasn’t quite as bad as all that, but it was near enough these days, he told himself, as he looked over at the assembled members of his council in which, according to the rules, he was the first among equals. He had read somewhere in the scrolls that they owed him fealty, whatever that was. It sounded like a kind of porridge.
When his secretary, Aeron, had returned from a recent visit to Ankh-Morpork, he had described a foot-the-ball game he witnessed, which had, at its centre, a referee. Right now, Rhys was feeling something of what the referee had to go through since all the balls were kicked right at him. How could you be the Low King in a realm where even the factions had factions and those factions had microscopic factions? He envied, oh how he envied, Diamond King of Trolls who, apparently, gave instruction and advice to his myriad subjects. After which they said thank you, something that the Low King didn’t hear very often. Diamond King spoke for all trolls everywhere. The dwarfish race, however, had fractured now almost to the point of disarray and all of this ended up as a problem the Low King had to deal with.
There was today, obviously, an agenda or, rather, a regrettably large number of agendas, one for every faction. Glumly, Rhys wondered what the word was for a large number of agendas, and decided that the term should be a living death of agendaritis. It was the deep-down grags that gave him nightmares because, well, there was something offensive about those thick leather clothes and conical hats. After all, he thought, we’re all dwarfs together, are we not? Tak never mentioned that dwarfs should cover their faces in the society of their friends. It struck Rhys that this practice was deliberately provocative and, of course, disdainful.
Now, on the everlasting agenda, dwarfs from every mine were grumbling about the exodus of the young to the big cities. And, of course, they all had reasons for why this might be the case, all of them wrong. Anyone who wasn’t a dwarf who preferred to live in darkness, in every meaning of the word, knew that the reason the younger generation was now overwhelming Ankh-Morpork, for example, was simply down to those very same grumblers and their activities. On the other hand, those he thought of as progressive dwarfs, the type who would quite happily have a troll as a friend, were bearing down on him, the King, about their race’s tendency to drive itself into a kind of purdah.