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‘Look here, my boy,’ he said to his son, who was leaning on his work bench. ‘I’ve heard what you said about the grags being the salvation of dwarfs, and this morning I found this: it’s an iconograph of me in Koom Valley. The last time. Oh, yes, I was there, nearly everybody was there. We’d been told by the grags that the trolls were our enemies and I thought of them as nothing more than nasty big lumps of rock out to crush us! Well, we were all lined up facing the buggers, and then somebody shouted, “Trolls, put down your weapons! Dwarfs, put down your weapons! Humans, put down your weapons!”
‘And there we stood and we could all hear other voices in different languages and right in front of me there was this bloody big troll, oh my! He had his great big hammer ready to pulverize me. That was not to say that my axe wasn’t about to take his bloody knees off at the same time, but the voices were so loud that everybody stopped and looked around and he looked at me and I looked at him and he said, “What’s happening here, mister?” and I said, “I’m damned if I know!”
‘But I could see the other side of the valley and there was a great big kerfuffle between the top brass, all screaming about dropping our weapons, and I looked at the troll and he looked at me, and he said, “Are we going to have a war, or what?” and I said, “Oh, and I’m pleased to meet you, my name is Maelog Cheerysson,” and he sort of grinned and said, “They call me Smack, and I’m pleased to meet you.”
‘And all around us people were wandering around and asking one another what the hell was going on and were we fighting or were we not fighting and if we were fighting what were we fighting for? So some of the lads sat down and lit a fire for a brew-up, while at the other end of the valley the flags were fluttering and everybody was walking around like it was a holiday or something.
‘And then a dwarf came up to us and said, “Good fortune, lads, you’re going to see something that no one else has seen for millions of years,” and we did, I reckon. We were some way away from the front of the queue because trolls and humans and dwarfs were coming back out of the cavern, and every single one of them going past us looked as if he’d been hypnotized.
‘Now, I’ve told you about the miracle of Koom Valley before, my lad, but you haven’t seen this iconograph of me and Smack. It was took at the time just after we realized we weren’t going to be fighting that day and we all went in ones and twos into that cavern and saw the two kings: the king of the dwarfs and the king of the trolls, entombed in shining rock, playing Thud! And we saw it! And it was true! They’d been friends in death. And that gave us the signal that we needn’t be enemies in life.
‘And that was it until later Smack and me tried to find something both of us could drink. A lot of the people were doing the same thing, but the potion he gave me nearly blew my bloody head off. It certainly made my boots burn. Smack has got two kids now, you see, doing all right, working in Ankh-Morpork. Trolls ain’t all that good at writing, but I think of him and I think of Koom Valley every day.’
The old cobbler looked sideways at his son’s face and said, ‘You’re a smart boy. Smarter than your brother was … and I reckon you’ve got a question to ask me.’
The boy coughed and said, ‘If you saw them playing Thud, Dad, can you remember which one was about to win?’
The old dwarf laughed. ‘I asked that when I met Commander Vimes, and he wouldn’t tell me. We reckoned he probably broke a few pieces off so no one knew who the winner would be so some curious little fellow like you wouldn’t go off and try to start the whole damn war again.’
‘Commander Vimes? The Blackboard Monitor?’
‘Yes, it was him all right. Shook my hand. Shook both our hands.’
The boy’s tone was suddenly reverential. ‘You actually shook hands with the actual Commander Vimes!’
‘Oh, yes,’ said his father nonchalantly, as if meeting the famed Blackboard Monitor was all in a day’s work. ‘I suspect you have another question, my lad.’
And the boy frowned. ‘So, Dad, what’s going to happen to my brother?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. I sent a petition to Lord Vetinari, saying that Llevelys is a good lad who got into bad company. And I received a reply, and his lordship said that a young dwarf set fire to a clacks tower while people were working on it. And his punishment will be at his lordship’s leisure. And so I sent him another letter, saying that I had fought at Koom Valley. And I received another reply, and his lordship said that he understood that I didn’t fight at Koom Valley because fortunately nobody did, but he understood that I must do what I can for my eldest son, and as his lordship said, he will cogitate.’
The old dwarf sighed. ‘I’m still waiting, but as your mother says, while we’re not hearing anything, then he’s still alive. Now don’t tell me, my lad, that the grag extremists are on our side, because they ain’t. They’re the ones that’ll tell you that the dead kings have been made up in Ankh-Morpork and were dummies and so were we if we thought they were real. And, my boy, the dumb believe it! But I was there. What I touched I felt, and so did everybody else on that day and that’s why I get angry when the grags start preaching about the horrible humans and the terrible trolls.
r /> ‘They want us to be frightened of one another, thinking there must be an enemy, but the only enemy now is the grags and those poor fools like your brother, who set fire to a clacks tower and got badly burned for his trouble. They are the victims of the sneaking bastards in the darkness.’
Far away in the Oblong Office Drumknott put the midday edition of the Times in front of Lord Vetinari and looked down at Mr Cheerysson’s latest frantic petition, saying, ‘They’ve torched two more clacks towers, my lord, but so far no one has died. Except on their side, of course. Young dwarfs, badly advised. They should have known better.’
The silence enveloped Lord Vetinari. ‘Indeed,’ said his lordship, ‘but it is easy to be an idiot when you are seventeen and I would warrant that the grags who put them up to it are much older. There is no sense in breaking the arrow if, by acting sensibly, you may capture the archer. I’ll leave the Cheerysson boy thinking about his fortune in the Tanty for a while and will make a note to have him brought over to talk to me in a month or two. If he’s clever, his parents won’t be grieving, and I’ll have a number of names and, above all, the goodwill of his parents. Always worth thinking about, don’t you agree, Drumknott?’
‘Damage to property,’ said Drumknott speculatively.
‘Yes,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘That’s it.’
A few days later, Crossly quietly entered the master bedroom of the house in Scoone Avenue, nudged Moist, and, when that had no effect, finally pinched his ear in order to get his attention.
He whispered, ‘Excuse me, sir, but his lordship requires your presence at the palace immediately, and I am sure that neither of us would like to see the mistress troubled at this time, yes?’
At home and, for once, in bed at the same time as Moist, Adora Belle Dearheart was gently snoring, although she was certain that she did not.
Moist groaned. It was the crack of seven and he was allergic to the concept of two seven o’clocks in one day. Nevertheless he dressed with a speed and silence trained by experience, walked noiselessly downstairs, left the house and got a trolley bus to the palace. He ran up the steps to the Oblong Office, reflecting that, day or night, he had never seen it empty. This time Lord Vetinari was at his desk, looking, if the word could be applied to Lord Vetinari, chipper.
‘Good morning, good morning, Mister Lipwig! Rather speedier than last time, yes? I imagine you haven’t had time to look at your newspaper today? Something rather droll has happened.’
‘Is it something interesting to do with the railway, perhaps, my lord?’
Lord Vetinari looked puzzled for a moment and then said, ‘Well, there is something, yes, since you ask.’
He sniffed as if what he was dealing with was not in the great scheme of things all that important and continued, ‘I am being told that everybody is going to Harry King’s compound to see the marvel of the steaming train, which seems to have caught the public fancy. I understand that Sir Harry, with his usual business acumen, is already turning this into a commercial enterprise.
