‘A monkey’s a monkey,’ said the bearded man, at which several of the Drum’s more percipient customers started to edge for the door. ‘I mean, so what? But these bloody lawn ornaments—’
Hwel’s fist struck out at groin height.
Dwarfs have a reputation as fearsome fighters. Any race of three-foot tall people who favour axes and go into battle as into a championship tree-felling competition soon get talked about. But years of wielding a pen instead of a hammer had relieved Hwel’s punches of some of their stopping power, and it could have been the end of him when the big man yelled and drew his sword if a pair of delicate, leathery hands hadn’t instantly jerked the thing from his grip and, with only a small amount of effort, bent it double.[16]
When the giant growled, and turned around, an arm like a couple of broom handles strung together with elastic and covered with red fur unfolded itself in a complicated motion and smacked him across the jaw so hard that he rose several inches in the air and landed on a table.
By the time that the table had slid into another table and overturned a couple of benches there was enough impetus to start the night’s overdue brawl, especially since the big man had a few friends with him. Since no-one felt like attacking the ape, who had dreamily pulled a bottle from the shelf and smashed the bottom off on the counter, they hit whoever happened to be nearest, on general principles. This is absolutely correct etiquette for a tavern brawl.
Hwel walked under a table and dragged Tomjon, who was watching all this with interest, after him.
‘So this is roistering. I always wondered.’
‘I think perhaps it would be a good idea to leave,’ said the dwarf firmly. ‘Before there’s, you know, any trouble.’
There was a thump as someone landed on the table above them, and a tinkle of broken glass.
‘Is it real roistering, do you suppose, or merely rollicking?’ said Tomjon, grinning.
‘It’s going to be bloody murder in a minute, my lad!’
Tomjon nodded, and crawled back out into the fray. Hwel heard him thump on the bar counter with something and call for silence.
Hwel put his arms over his head in panic.
‘I didn’t mean—’ he began.
In fact calling for silence was a sufficiently rare event in the middle of a tavern brawl that silence was what Tomjon got. And silence was what he filled.
Hwel started as he heard the boy’s voice ring out, full of confidence and absolutely first-class projection.
‘Brothers! And yet may I call all men brother, for on this night—{50}
The dwarf craned up to see Tomjon standing on a chair, one hand raised in the prescribed declamatory fashion. Around him men were frozen in the act of giving one another a right seeing-to, their faces turned to his.
Down at tabletop height Hwel’s lips moved in perfect synchronization with the words as Tomjon went through the familiar speech. He risked another look.
The fighters straightened up, pulled themselves together, adjusted the hang of their tunics, glanced apologetically at one another. Many of them were in fact standing to attention.
Even Hwel felt a fizz in his blood, and he’d written those words. He’d slaved half a night over them, years ago, when Vitoller had declared that they needed another five minutes in Act III of The King of Ankh.
‘Scribble us something with a bit of spirit in it,’ he’d said. ‘A bit of zip and sizzle, y’know. Something to summon up the blood and put a bit of backbone in our friends in the ha’penny seats. And just long enough to give us time to change the set.’
He’d been a bit ashamed of that play at the time. The famous Battle of Morpork, he strongly suspected, had consisted of about two thousand men lost in a swamp on a cold, wet day, hacking one another into oblivion with rusty swords. What would the last King of Ankh have said to a pack of ragged men who knew they were outnumbered, outflanked and out-generalled? Something with bite, something with edge, something like a drink of brandy to a dying man; no logic, no explanation, just words that would reach right down through a tired man’s brain and pull him to his feet by his testicles.
Now he was seeing its effect.
He began to think the walls had fallen away, and there was a cold mist blowing over the marshes, its choking silence broken only by the impatient cries of the carrion birds …
And this voice.
And he’d written the words, they were his, no half-crazed king had ever really spoken like this. And he’d written all this to fill in a gap so that a castle made of painted sacking stretched over a frame could be shoved behind a curtain, and this voice was taking the coal dust of his words and filling the room with diamonds.
I made these words, Hwel thought. But they don’t belong to me. They belong to him.
Look at those people. Not a patriotic thought among them, but if Tomjon asked them, this bunch of drunkards would storm the Patrician’s palace tonight. And they’d probably succeed.
I just hope his mouth never falls into the wrong hands …
As the last syllables died away, their white-hot echoes searing across every mind in the room, Hwel shook himself and crawled out of hiding and jabbed Tomjon on the knee.
‘Come away now, you fool,’ he hissed. ‘Before it wears off.’
He grasped the boy firmly by the arm, handed a couple of complimentary tickets to the stunned barman, and hurried up the steps. He didn’t stop until they were a street away.
‘I thought I was doing rather well there,’ said Tomjon.
‘A good deal too well, I reckon.’
The boy rubbed his hands together. ‘Right. Where shall we go next?’
‘Next?’
‘Tonight is young!’
‘No, tonight is dead. It’s today that’s young,’ said the dwarf hurriedly.
‘Well, I’m not going home yet. Isn’t there somewhere a bit more friendly? We haven’t actually drunk anything.’
Hwel sighed.
‘A troll tavern,’ said Tomjon. ‘I’ve heard about them. There’s some down in the Shades.[17] I’d like to see a troll tavern.’
‘They’re for trolls only, boy. Molten lava to drink and rock music and cheese ‘n’ chutney flavoured pebbles.’
‘What about dwarf bars?’
‘You’d hate it,’ said Hwel, fervently. ‘Besides, you’d run out of headroom.’
‘Low dives, are they?’
‘Look at it like this—how long do you think you could sing about gold?’
‘“It’s yellow and it goes chink and you can buy things with it,” ‘said Tomjon experimentally, as they strolled through the crowds on the Plaza of Broken Moons. ‘Four seconds, I think.’
‘Right. Five hours of it gets a bit repetitive.’ Hwel kicked a pebble gloomily. He’d investigated a few dwarf bars last time they were in town, and hadn’t approved. For some reason his fellow expatriates, who at home did nothing more objectionable than mine a bit of iron ore and hunt small creatures, felt impelled, once in the big city, to wear chain mail underwear, go around with axes in their belts, and call themselves names like Timkin Rumbleguts.{51} And no-one could beat a city dwarf when it came to quaffing. Sometimes they missed their mouths altogether.
‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘you’d get thrown out for being too creative. The actual words are, “Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold”.’
‘Is there a chorus?’
‘“Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold”,’ said Hwel.
‘You left out a “gold” there.’
‘I think it’s because I wasn’t cut out to be a dwarf.’
16
An explanation may be needed at this point. The Librarian of the magic library at Unseen University, the Disc’s premier college of wizardry, had been turned into an orang-utan some years previously by a magical accident in that accident-prone academy, and since then had strenuously resisted all well-meaning efforts to turn him back. For one thing, longer arms and prehensile toes made getting around the higher shelves a whole lot easier, and being an ape meant you didn’t have to bother with all this
17
The Shades is an ancient part of Ankh-Morpork considered considerably more unpleasant and disreputable than the rest of the city. This always amazes visitors.