There was a great cloud of misunderstanding in the Low King’s hall, which on every side appeared almost wilful, as if any dispute, however insignificant, had to be thrashed through to the bitter end. It was something in the dwarf psyche. We spend too much time indoors, Rhys thought. He sighed when he realized that Ardent, whose voice had become unbearably loud, now had the floor.
Ardent was a dwarf that the King would have liked to see present at a mine disaster, preferably underneath it. However, Ardent had followers, stupid followers, and he also had powerful friends. And that was it. Politics. Politics was like those little wooden sliding-picture games for children: you had to move all of the pieces in the hope of finding a place where the whole picture slotted together.
At the moment Ardent was insinuating that, in truth, the mining of fat in the Schmaltzberg fat mines was not truly dwarfish, a comment which led an elderly dwarf, whom the King recognized as Sulien Heddwyn, to get to his feet.
Heddwyn put his hands on his axe and said, ‘My father was a fat miner. My grandfather was a fat miner. And so was my grandmother, she was a very fat miner and I was a miner when I was a minor. My mother gave me a tiny pick as soon as I was old enough to hold it. Every one of my relatives back to the dive of the Fifth Elephant was a fat miner and I’ll tell you, the export income from the Plains for our purest fats is what keeps this town running. So I won’t take an insult like this from a b’zugda-hiara[21] too afraid to look at the sunshine.’
The sound of metal on metal echoed around the hall, followed by silence, with everyone waiting to see what was going to happen next. And that meant Rhys Rhysson had to break that silence. After all, he was, was he not, the Low King, the Low King of all the dwarfs?
He smiled, well aware that one wrong word from him would send shock-waves around the cavern and the result, whatever it was, would be his fault. Such is the fate of those who work only for the propagation of peace over warfare, and the way of the conscientious facilitator is a path strewn with thorns.
He looked at the angry councillors brandishing weapons around the huge table. It was as if being a dwarf meant that you lived in a permanent state that the term ‘grumpiness’ simply couldn’t convey. A conference of dwarfs was, in their language, a confusion of dwarfs.
His voice low, Rhys spoke. ‘For what purpose am I King? I will tell you. In a world where we formally recognize trolls, humans and, these days, all manner of species, even goblins, unreconstructed elements of dwarfdom persist in their campaign to keep the grags auditing all that is dwarfish.’
He looked sternly at Ardent as he continued, ‘Dwarfs from every area where dwarfs live in sufficient numbers have tried to modernize, but to no avail apart from those in Ankh-Morpork, and the shame of it is that often those determined to keep dwarfkind in the darkness have somehow inculcated their flocks into believing that change of any sort is a blasphemy, no specific blasphemy, just a blasphemy all by itself, spinning through the cosmos as sour as an ocean of vinegar. This cannot be!’
His voice rose and his fist crashed down on the table. ‘I am here to tell you, my friends and, indeed, my smiling enemies, that if we do not band together against the forces that wish to keep us in darkness dwarfkind will be diminished. We need to work together, talk to one another, deal properly with one another and not spend all our time in one enormous grump that the world isn’t entirely ours any more and, at the finish, ruin it for everyone. After all, who would deal with such as us in a world of new choices? In truth, we should act as sapient creatures should! If we don’t move with the future, the future will twist and roll right over us.’
Rhys paused to accommodate the inevitable outburst of Shame! and Not so! and all the other detritus of rotted debate, and then spoke again. ‘Yes, I recognize you, Albrecht Albrechtson. The floor is yours.’
The elderly dwarf, who had once been favourite to win the last election for Low King, said courteously, ‘Your majesty, you know I have no particular liking for the way that the world is going, nor some of your more modern ideas, but I have been shocked to discover that some of the more headstrong grags are still orchestrating attacks on the clacks system.’
The King said, ‘Are they mad?! We made it clear to this council and all dwarfs, after the message we received from Ankh-Morpork about their clacks being attacked, that this stupidity must cease at once. It’s even worse than the Nugganites,[22] who were, to be sensible about this, totally and absolutely bloody insane.’
Albrecht coughed and said, ‘Your majesty, in this instance I find myself standing shoulder to shoulder with you. I am appalled to see things go this far. What are we but creatures of communication and communication accurately communicated is a benison to be cherished by all species everywhere. I never thought I would say this, but the news I am hearing lately, and am expected to delight in, makes me ashamed to call myself a dwarf. We have our differences and it’s right and proper that we should have them, and discourse and compromise are cornerstones in the proper world of politics, but here and now, your majesty, you have my full and unequivocal support. And as for those who stand in our way, I call down a murrain on them. I say, a murrain!’
There are uproars and there are uproars and this uproar stayed up for a very long time.
Eventually Albrecht Albrechtson brought his axe down on to the table, splitting the wood from top to bottom, bringing terrified silence across the gathered dwarfs, and said, ‘I support my King. That is what a King is for. A murrain, I said. A murrain. And a Ginnungagap for those that say different.’
Rhys Rhysson bowed in the direction of the old dwarf. ‘I thank you, my old friend, for your support. You have my undying gratitude and you leave me in your debt.’
Then, to some onlookers, the Low King might have looked a little taller. Over the hubbub, and there is no hubbub as bubbling as a dwarf hubbub, the King felt strangely buoyant, lifted, like the strange gases found around the crater of the Fifth Elephant. It seemed to the King that some of his councillors were suddenly thinking, actually thinking, and they had listened, actually listened. And now they were trying to think creatively.
Rhys continued, ‘Not for nothing is Ankh-Morpork the residence of even more dwarfs than live here in Uberwald; and we now know that quite a large number of our dwarfs are emigrating to the lands of Diamond King of Trolls. So it is that our traditional enemy is now a friend to the many fleeing from the agents of the grags.’
As he expected, the hubbub bubbled even more: wilful bubbled hatred, bubbled misunderstanding, bubbled spitefulness.
He said, ‘I tell you now that history will run straight over us squabbling dwarfs and I will not stand by and allow that history to end with our race brought down to the status of angry b’zugda-hiara! I am the King, by right, duly elected with all the proper observances. I was anointed on the Scone of Stone in accordance with traditions going back to the time of B’hrian Bloodaxe and I will serve the sacred duty by all means necessary. I declare these grags and their puppets are d’hrarak and I will not suffer their pernicious doctrines any more. I am the King, and I will be King!’
22
Not to be confused with the fabled Nougat Knights, famed in dwarfish mythology as the ancestors who, at the beginning of the world, created the treacle mines and other subterranean sweets.