The youngest sister sighed and looked out of the window. She gasped. "There"s a man running through the cherry orchard!"
"A man? Vot could he possibly vant?"
The youngest sister strained to see. "It looks like he wants... a pair of trousers..."
"Ah," said the middle sister dreamily. "Trousers ver better then."
The hurrying pack stopped in a chilly blue valley when the howling filled the air. Angua loped back to the sledge, lifted out her bag of clothes with her jaws, glanced at Carrot and disappeared among the drifts. A few moments later she walked back again, doing up her shirt.
"Wolfgang"s got some .poor devil playing the game," she said. "I"m going to put a stop to it. It was bad enough that Father kept the tradition going, but at least he played fair. Wolfgang cheats. They never win." ;You will not be badly treated. This is our way" said Dee. "I will return when I have news."
"Hey - "
But Dee was a retreating shape in the crepuscular, almost-not-there light.
In Vimes"s cell the glow beetle was doing its best. All it managed to achieve, though, was to turn the darkness into a variety of green shadows. You could find your way around without walking into walls, but that was about the extent of it.
One shot, which they didn"t know you had.
That"d probably get him out of the door. Into a corridor. Underground. Full of dwarfs.
On the other hand, it was amazing how the evidence could stack up against you when people wanted it to.
Anyway, Vimes was an ambassador! What had happened to diplomatic immunity? But that was hard to argue when you were faced with uncomplicated people with weaponry; there was a risk that they"d experiment to see if it was true.
One shot they didn"t expect...
Some time later there was a rattling of keys and the door was pulled open. Vimes could make out the shape of two dwarfs. One was holding an axe, the other was bearing a tray.
The dwarf with the axe motioned Vimes to step back.
An axe wasn"t a good idea, Vimes considered. It was always the weapon of choice amongst dwarfs, but it wasn"t sensible in a confined space.
He raised his hands and, as the other dwarf walked cautiously over to the stone slab, let them move towards the back of his neck.
These dwarfs were nervous of him. Perhaps they didn"t see humans very often. They"d remember this one.
"Want to see a trick?" said Vimes.
"Grz"dak?"
"Watch this," said Vimes, and brought his hands around and shut his eyes just before the match flared.
He heard the axe drop as its owner tried to cover his face. That was an unexpected bonus, but there wasn"t time to thank the god of desperate men. Vimes plunged forward, kicked as hard as he could, and heard an "oof" of expelled breath. Then he leapt into the patch of darkness that contained the other dwarf, found a head, spun around and rammed it into an unseen wall.
The first dwarf was trying to get to his feet. Vimes fumbled for him in the gloom, pulled him up by his jerkin and rasped: "Someone left me a weapon. They wanted me to kill you. Remember that. I could have killed you."
He punched the dwarf in the stomach. This was no time to play by the Marquis of Fantailler rules.
Then he turned, snatched the little cage containing the light beetle and headed for the door.
There was a feeling of passageway, stretching off in both directions. Vimes paused for just long enough to sense the draught on his face and headed that way.
Another glow beetle was hanging in a cage a little distance off. It illuminated, if such a bright word could be used for a light that merely made the darkness less black, a huge circular opening in which a fan turned lazily.
The blades were so slow that Vimes was able to step between them, into the velvet cavern beyond.
Someone really wants me dead, he thought, as he inched his way along the nearest invisible wall with his face to the draught. One shot they weren"t expecting... but someone was expecting it, weren"t they?