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‘I regret to report, sire, that Ardent and his friends seem to have disappeared.’
‘So, the stupid troublemaker has run away,’ hissed the Low King in barely suppressed fury. He raised his voice and announced to the crowd, ‘They are banished. All of them. No doubt the cowards will find a place to hide, but anyone who helps them will be treated as traitors, not to me but to the Scone.’
In the privacy of the robing room a little while later, the King was pacing up and down when Aeron arrived with the latest report.
‘They’ve caught some of the small fry, but the main players have indeed got away.’ As he mentioned a couple of names, Rhys Rhysson’s face went as cold as marble. Aeron placed a calming hand on his shoulder and continued, ‘Albrecht and the folk of his mines are on your side, though many of the others appear to be wavering.’
‘Wavering? That’s not good enough. I need their full commitment,’ said the King.
His secretary smiled. ‘You’ll get it, I’m sure. There may be some rogue elements still to be mopped up but we’ll get them soon. But do be careful, Rhys, I can see this is taking a lot out of you and that’s not good. And you do have another card to play.’
The King shook his head. ‘Not yet, but perhaps some time soon, at a point of my choosing. I just have to find the moment.’
Aeron smiled again. And then there was the sound of a kiss.
The dwarf vandal had a stroke of luck. There was Engine One, right below him, the one they called Iron Girder, and there was no time to waste. He was an expert, and cunning, and the grags would pay handsomely if even one wretched locomotive was destroyed.
He dropped down silently from the roof and landed just behind the prestigious engine. It was a good time to throw a monkey wrench in the gears … There were guards, he knew, but they were stupid and sluggish and tonight they were on secondment and patrolling a long way away. He had checked and double-checked. And so he soundlessly approached the loco motive, alone in her cavernous shed.
There were so many things you could do to kill a railway engine and he had imagined them all. And so in the dark, ready to climb up again, out of the skylight, he unrolled his bag of implements, all carefully wrapped in hide so they didn’t clink or rattle, and stepped up purposefully on to the footplate of Iron Girder …
… and in the gloom the locomotive spat live steam, instantly filling the air with a pink fog …
The dwarf waited, unable to move, and a sombre voice said, PLEASE DO NOT PANIC. YOU ARE MERELY DEAD.
The vandal stared at the skeletal figure, managed to get himself in order and said to Death, ‘Oh … I don’t regret it, you know. I was doing the work of Tak, who will now welcome me into paradise with open arms!’
For a person who didn’t have a larynx Death made a good try at clearing his throat. WELL, YOU CAN HOPE, BUT CONSIDERING WHAT YOU INTENDED, IF I WERE YOU I WOULD START HOPING HARDER RIGHT NOW AND, PERHAPS, VERY QUICKLY INDEED. Death continued, in tones as dry as granite, TAK MIGHT INDEED BE GENTLE. STRIVE AS YOU HAVE NEVER STRIVEN. YES, TAK MIGHT BE GENTLE, OR …
The vandal listened to the sound of silence, the sound like a bell with, alas, no clapper, but finally the dreadful silence ended in … NOT.
Iron Girder had screamed the shrill whistling scream of a lady in distress that had cut through the air like a knife, and by the time Corporal Nobby Nobbs and Sergeant Colon reached the shed, running extremely carefully and precisely,fn49 all they found besides Iron Girder was some warm dampness, vaguely pink, a tool roll and a few fragments of bone.
‘It looks like the locomotive fought back!’ said Nobby. ‘I know what this is, sarge. It’s eldritch – uncanny, you could say.’
Fred Colon stepped forward and said, ‘It don’t look oblong to me, Nobby. Look at this crowbar and tool roll … You can’t tell me that the engine lies awake at night like an old biddy keeping a poker beside her bed to fight off burglars. I reckon she was being coy. Live steam! It’s a good job me and you were able to scare away all the other assailants!’
‘And they was very heavily armed,’ said Nobby, speaking very deliberately, to make things absolutely clear, ‘but they didn’t have the spunk to face us, that’s what it was.’
Water was dripping from the stout girders high up in the shed. Colon looked around and said, ‘Hey, Nobby, what’s that white thing up there embedded in the roof?’
Nobby squinted and said, ‘Er, it looks like half a skull if you want my opinion, sarge, and it’s still steaming.’
In the distance were sounds of thudding feet as the golem guards came at speed and quickly spread out.
Nobby raised his voice and said, ‘We’d better tell them that the others’ll be ten mile away by now, sarge, at the speed they were going, and I think old Vimesy might give us a day off in lieu for this night’s work.’
‘But look,’ said Colon. ‘We’ve been patrolling past that locomotive time and time again and nothing has happened to us.’
‘We weren’t proposing to smash her up, now, were we, sarge?’
‘What? Are you saying Iron Girder knows who her friends are? Do me a favour … she’s only a lump of old metal.’ And in the silence something made a little clinking noise. Colon and Nobby held their breath.
‘Wonderful machine, though, ain’t she, Nobby! Look at those beautiful smooth lines!’
There was another pause as breaths continued to be held and Nobby said, ‘Well, the golems are here now, sarge, and it’s the end of our shift. I’ll write a fulsome report as soon as we get back to the yard and that reminds me, you’ve got to give me my pencil back.’
The two of them perambulated away at impressive speed and for a while Iron Girder was alone; and then there was a very small sound that appeared to be half whistle and half giggle.
