The steam over the cattle pens mingled with the fog. Hundreds of dark eyes watched Dorfl curiously as he walked between the fences. They were always quiet when the golem was around.
He stopped by one of the largest pens. There were voices from behind.
'Don't tell me it's going to slaughter the lot of 'em! We'll never get that lot jointed this shift!'
'I heard where there was one at a carpenter's that went odd and made five thousand tables in one night. Lost count or something.'
'It's just staring at them...'
'I mean, five thousand tables? One of them had twenty-seven legs. It got stuck on legs...'
Dorfl brought the cleaver down hard and sliced the lock off the gate. The cattle watched the golem, with that guarded expression which cattle have that means they're waiting for the next thought to turn up.
He walked on to the sheep pens and opened them, too. The pigs were next, and then the poultry.
'All of them?' said Mr Sock.
The golem walked calmly back down the line of pens, ignoring the watchers, and re-entered the slaughterhouse. He came out very shortly afterwards leading the ancient and hairy billygoat on a piece of string. He went past the waiting animals until he reached the wide gates that led on to the main road, which he opened. Then he let the goat loose.
The animal sniffed the air and rolled its slotted eyes. Then, apparently deciding that the distant odour of the cabbage fields beyond the city wall was much preferable to the smells immediately around it, it trotted away up the road.
The animals followed it in a rush, but with hardly any other noise than the rustle of movement and the sounds of their hooves. They streamed around the stationary figure of Dorfl, who stood and watched them go.
A chicken, bewildered by the stampede, landed on the golem's head and started to cluck.
Anger finally overcame Sock's terror. 'What the hell are you doing?' he shouted, trying to field a few stray sheep as they bolted out of the pens. 'That's money walking out of the gate, you - '
Dorfl's hand was suddenly around his throat. The golem picked him up and held the struggling man at arm's-length, turning his head this way and that as if considering his next course of action.
Finally he tossed away the cleaver, reached up under the chicken that had taken up residence, and produced a small brown egg. With apparent ceremony the golem smashed it carefully on Sock's scalp and dropped him.
The golem's former co-workers jumped back out of the way as Dorfl walked back through the slaughterhouse.
There was a tally board by the entrance. Dorfl looked at it for a while, then picked up the chalk and wrote:
NO MASTER...
The chalk crumbled in his fingers. Dorfl walked out into the fog.
Cheri looked up from her workbench.
'The wick's full of arsenous acid,' she said. 'Well done, sir! This candle even weighs slightly more than other candles!'
'What an evil way to kill anyone,' said Angua.
'Certainly very clever,' said Vimes. 'Vetinari sits up half the night writing, and in the morning the candle's burned down. Poisoned by the light. The light's something you don't see. Who looks at the light? Not some plodding old copper.'
'Oh, you're not that old, sir,' said Carrot, cheerfully.
'What about plodding?'
'Or that plodding, either,' Carrot added quickly. 'I've always pointed out to people that you walk in a very purposeful and meaningful manner.'
Vimes gave him a sharp look and saw nothing more than a keen and innocently helpful expression.
'We don't look at the light because the light is what we look with,' said Vimes. 'Okay. And now I think we should go and have a look at the candle factory, shouldn't we? You come, Littlebottom, and bring your... have you got taller, Little-bottom?'
'High-heeled boots, sir,' said Cheri.