It was unfair really. Ardent said, ‘I invite you to remember that you’re locked in here and I have the only key.’
‘Yes. And of the two of us you are the only one sweating. You’ll be surprised at what I know. How many clacks towers have come back out of the ground like mushrooms? And I know what the Ankh-Morpork dwarfs are saying. You want to know? They say “Why don’t we have the Scone of Stone in Ankh-Morpork? After all, there are more dwarfs in Ankh-Morpork than there are in Schmaltzberg.”’
‘You would countenance our Scone in that wretched place?’
‘Of course not. But neither will I see you on the Scone of Stone. Your grags are losing their followers, not just because of the clacks towers and not because of Ankh-Morpork but because new generations arise and think what’s all this about — how could our parents be so stupid? And you can’t stop people any more than you could stop the train.’
Albrechtson was almost sorry for Ardent now. You could live in denial for a long time, but, like a snake, it doubles back and strikes.
‘You should face facts, Albrecht Albrechtson. You will be amazed at my support. Dwarfs must remain dwarfs, not simulacrums of humans. To follow Rhys Rhysson is to become d’rkza, a half-dwarf, less than that even.’
‘No, it is your kind of thinking that makes dwarfs small, wrapped up in themselves: declaring that any tiny change in what is thought to be dwarf is somehow sacrilege. I can remember the days when even talking to a human was forbidden by idiots such as you. And now you have to understand it’s not about the dwarfs, or the humans, or the trolls, it’s about the people, and that’s where the troublesome Lord Vetinari wins the game. In Ankh-Morpork you can be whoever you want to be and sometimes people laugh and sometimes they clap, and mostly and beautifully, they don’t really care. Do you understand this? Dwarfs now have seen liberty. And that’s heady stuff.’
Ardent almost spat and said, ‘You say that when you’re known to be one of the biggest traditionalists in all the mines?’
‘I still am. And most of our traditions were to keep us safe, just in the way that the grags in their great, heavy clothing exploded the firedamp so that we wouldn’t be burned alive. The rules of the mine. They learned the hard way and the traditions are there for a purpose; they work. But somehow, you and the others don’t realize that outside the caverns the world is different. Oh, I keep the special days and knock twice on every door and follow all the tenets of Tak. And why? Because they bring us together, as did the clacks towers until your blessed delvers started to burn them. Burning words dying in the sky! Is that to be the legacy of the dwarfs?’
He stopped. Ardent had gone pale and seemed to be shivering. But then his eyes blazed, and he snarled, ‘You won’t be driven, Albrecht, and nor will I. Train or no train. It’ll never get here anyway. The world is not ready for locomotion.’
He glared at Albrecht, who said, ‘Yes, of course it isn’t. But what you don’t understand is that the world wasn’t ready for the clacks but now it screams if they are burned down. And I believe that locomotion has not finished with us yet.’
The response was the slamming of the door and the turning of the key. And now the fool had locked him in for the night, just where he wanted to be.
There were guards, Albrecht knew, but like guards everywhere they tended to slumber or go off somewhere to smoke a pipe during the long hours of the night, and in any case very few of them came near to this particular dungeon since sensible guards didn’t want to upset someone like Albrecht. Even if you thought you were on the right side, you never knew who the winner would be and in those circumstances smaller fry might be the ones to get fried …
After a while, Albrecht picked up the little spoon with which he had eaten his meal and there was the subtle scratching of rock dust which led to the appearance of a goblin, who grinned at him in the gloom.
‘Here you are, squire, here’s clacks flimsies, fresh from Commander Vimes. And bottle of oil for lamp. Oh, and toothpaste you asks for. Have been told to tell you that train is moving like no one business. Sure to be here on schedule.’
It was a kind of therapy to hear of the inevitable approach of the famous Iron Girder, day after day.
The aroma of a goblin, Albrecht thought, seemed to be a metaphysical one. After the initial shock, you had to wonder if the goblin smell was somehow arriving inside your head as much as through your nostrils. It wasn’t even all that bad. It had the savour of old sculleries and southernwood.
He took the packages and scanned the flimsies with the speed of a dwarf who had learned to assimilate the written word quickly. And he spoke with interest to the young goblin, a caste he had hitherto dismissed as a waste of space at best and a nuisance otherwise, but they seemed to be more level-headed than most of his fellow dwarfs, especially that fool Ardent, and it was amazing how they could get about in the darkness of Schmaltzberg and make use of every rat hole before making use of the rat.
And this one waited patiently while Albrecht sorted out some flimsies of his own to go back to the locomotive. And then the old dwarf did something else that surprised him.
He said: ‘What’s your name, young goblin? And may I beg your pardon for not enquiring earlier? Please forgive an old dwarf who hasn’t kept up with the times.’
The goblin looked stunned and said, ‘Well, guv, if it don’t hurt anything, I am The Rattle of the Wheels. Railwaymen friends is calling me Rat for short name. That makes oldies very annoy.’
Albrecht held out a hand. The Rattle of the Wheels stepped back and then came forward sheepishly.
‘Nice to meet you, Rattle of the Wheels. Have you any family?’
‘Yes, your worship. My mother is Of the Happiness the Heart, father is Of the Sky the Rim and small brother is Of the Water the Crane.’
And after a moment the goblin said, ‘Actually, sir, you can stop holding my hand.’
‘Oh, yes. I suppose that my name should be Of the Moment the Stupefied. Good luck to you and your family. You know, in a way I’m jealous of you. And now I’ve finished my work for the day I’d like you to take my paperwork, such as it is, and hide it somewhere around here where no dwarf is going to look.’
‘We cleans toilets, sir. Knows plenty-many places that not visited. Same time tomorrow?’
The handshake fulfilled, the goblin disappeared into a hole that even a rat might find difficult to get into. And as the sounds of the goblin scrabbling through the hole faded away, Albrecht thought, I would never have done that before. What a fool I was.
Miss Gwendolyn Avery of Schmarm awoke in the middle of the night to the shaking and rattle of the multiple bottles of age-defying unguents on her dresser. And then she realized that the whole house was shaking to a rhythmic thudding.
When she described this episode in dramatic tones to her friend Daphne the following morning, she said that it was like the sound of a lot of men marching past. She put it down to the cherry brandy she had had before going to bed whilst Daphne, knowing Gwendolyn’s regrettable spinster status, put it down to wishful thinking.
The Slake ranges were half tundra, half desert, mostly windswept. In short, a fossil of a landscape where nothing generally grew but stumbleweed,[75] and the occasional gregarious pine, the nuts of which were said to be an antidote to melancholy.
75
Stumbleweed is like tumbleweed, but less athletic. This tells you everything you need to know about Slake.