Moist looked around at the cobbled town square that lay a short distance from the platform. It would have been better if it hadn’t been the middle of the night, but the mayor saw no problem with this and cheerfully pointed out to the now clustering passengers the locations of the wonderful things they would be able to see when it was daylight.
And it nearly broke Moist’s heart to say to the man, ‘I’m afraid we have to go very soon. Schedules, you know.’
And indeed, he could see the water crane pumping and could hear the rattle of the coal being delivered to the engine, but nothing could stop the mayor in his rampant hospitality.
‘But we’ve arranged for a mayoral banquet.’
‘Ah … will you excuse me for a moment, mister mayor?’
Moist had a private word with Simnel about arrangements for the next leg of the journey and then with Vimes, who nodded and said quietly, ‘Sensible. I wouldn’t mind eating off a plate that wasn’t rattling. There’s no harm in pandering to a little civic pride. The mayor is a decent cove and they’ve got a Watch of sorts. Two watchmen, not too bad in the circumstances, and I know that because I trained them.’
Moist came back to the reception committee, put his arm around the ebullient red-faced mayor and said, ‘Well, sir, I’m sure we can spare the time for a modest banquet before the dreadful pressures of the timetable force us onwards.’
They left Simnel at the station with his fellow engineers to await the arrival of the back-up Flyer, which had left Zemphis a few hours after Iron Girder. The King and Aeron remained ensconced on the train, safely guarded in the armoured carriage, busy with paperwork and plans for their arrival in Uberwald. The rest of the party followed the mayor across the square to his hostelry.
The town really had tried. Something about the mayor’s conviction that the world revolved around their town, or would do if it ever came there, had dribbled into the minds of his ratepayers, who now set to warming up marvellous dishes they had expected to be serving several hours before. And were very understanding, especially after Moist’s description of the fight along the Paps. Admittedly he had put a certain amount of shine on the episode; surely that was what shine was for? And it permeated, even into the consciousness of those who had travelled, and at one point Of the Twilight the Darkness actually stood up and made a bow.
And Moist couldn’t help himself and pointed at the goblin, saying, ‘Of the Twilight the Darkness and his gallant fellows fought alongside Commander Vimes, with great courage.’
And then Moist glanced at the commander, who puffed his cigar and said, ‘Excellent fighters, to a goblin.’
‘Oh, we like goblins,’ said the mayor. ‘They run our clacks tower. And do you know, the snail infestation in my Porraceous Sprouter patch has completely gone since they moved in.’
And there was another toast to the clacks at this point with a side order of goblins. By the time they had all processed back to Iron Girder, she had been covered with petals by the virgins of the town.[73] The Flyer had been and gone some time before, with its crew of engineers supplemented by Cheery Littlebottom — once more playing decoy — and other good fighters. It was even now on the track to Slake, acting as a pathfinder for Iron Girder to confuse the enemy.
As Iron Girder steamed out of Ohulan Cutash, most people headed off to sleep. Moist had loaned the sleeping compartment assigned to him to two of those wounded in the battle and was now bunking down in the guard’s van, comfortable enough when you were dog-tired and Detritus wasn’t snoring. All Moist’s life he’d managed to find a way of sleeping in just about every circumstance and, besides, the guard’s van was somehow the hub of the train; and although he didn’t know how he did it, he always managed to sleep with half of one ear open. And now he savoured the familiar sounds of the journey, the rocking soothing him right up until somewhere down the line when he was catapulted into the real world by the screech once more of the locomotive’s wheels in distress, and the squealing of brakes in torment.
It was still dark outside. Moist drowsily stumbled across the flatbed as doors were being opened and feet were running in the carriage ahead and reached the armoured compartment of the King. It was empty.
There was a dwarf guard, who said, ‘The King went to the footplate.’ The dwarf looked ashamed. ‘I tried to persuade him to let me go with him, but what can you do? He is the King.’
Moist said, ‘Don’t worry, just keep this station. I’ll go and see what’s happening.’
There was a drill for this, he knew, and where was the King? That was the trouble with royalty. However decent they were, and understanding, they were also likely to think that such things as security arrangements were for other people.
Frantically searching, Moist finally dropped down on to the track and ran along to the engine, where he found the King talking to Dick Simnel on the footplate and getting covered in smuts.
Pale flames were visible ahead on the track and Simnel’s expression was grave.
‘It were just as well the King were ’ere because the decoy Flyer has been derailed ahead of us and so would we ’ave been if it weren’t for ’im. He can see in t’dark!’
‘Ah, Commander Vimes,’ said the King to Vimes, who had arrived at speed. ‘You should know about the dark-accustomed eye if any human does. There’s a long straight ahead and Dick hadn’t seen the derailment, but I did, just in time. Now, there may be injured people up there.’
And then the King was running towards the flames, adopting the traditional dwarf strategy of running at the enemy with as much weaponry as you could swing. But Vimes caught up with him and rolled him to the ground just as an explosion rattled the trees and bounced off the mountains. The Flyer’s boiler had blown up. Ahead of them now was just a warm mist and the occasional clink of stricken metal.
Vimes got the King upright and said, ‘Apologies for the lèse-majesté — though you must know that we Vimeses have gone a lot further than that in the past. You should have listened. The whole deal for the crew of the decoy Flyer was to run away as fast as possible if attacked, but not before making sure that the emergency bung in the boiler was strapped right down.’
‘Ah, yes, Blackboard Monitor, how easily we revert to type in an emergency. I’m sorry to have put you to extra trouble.’
‘That’ll teach the buggers a lesson,’ said Dick, panting as he caught up with them. ‘They’ll think twice about messing with one of my engines again.’
The crew of the Flyer were up a little gully, into which they had dived for shelter. It had once been home to frogs. Regrettably, it still was, and several of the designated bodyguards rose from the little swamp with nothing more than torn clothing and a lot of mud, some of which was hopping, but Cheery Littlebottom was as cheery as her name suggested.
There seemed to be no grags, but even as Moist looked around, an arm dropped out of a tree, still holding a club in an iron grip. And hereabouts, if you cared to look, and frankly nobody cared to do so but did nonetheless, there were several signs that grags and delvers and many others of the dark underworld had passed away in this spot, resting at peace and, thanks to the exploding boiler, in pieces.
Detritus appeared out of the gloom, saying, ‘One or two of dem was still out dere. Not any more.’ He slammed down a breastplate with a resounding clang.
‘You all right, lads?’ said Simnel to the engineers. ‘Shame about the Flyer. It hurts, killing a locomotive, and it means we’ve not got either a pathfinder or a back-up engine no more. We need to clear the track now, then we’ll pick up the scrap when we come back, to go towards a new Flyer. After all, we’re getting reet good at building these things. But any bits of micromail you find, like this here’ — he pointed at the arm holding the axe — ‘I’ll have now, mind, call it tit for tat. It’ll be another trophy for Iron Girder.’