"Yeah?"
"Yes. We"re both wearing nothing, we"re standing in what, you may have noticed, is increasingly turning into mud, and we"re squaring up to fight. Okay. But there"s something missing, yes?"
"And that is ... ?"
"A paying audience? We could make a fortune." Sally winked. "Or we could do the job we came here to do?"
Angua forced her body to relax. She should have been saying that. She was the sergeant, wasn"t she?
"All right, all right," she said. "We"re both here, okay? Let"s leave it at that. Were you saying that these dwarfs were killed by some ... thing from the well?"
"Possibly. But if they were, it used an axe," said Sally. "Take a look. Scrape some of the mud away. It"s been oozing over them since I arrived. That"s probably why you missed it," she added generously.
Angua hauled one dwarf out of the shining slime.
"I see," she said, letting the body fall back. "This one hasn"t been dead two days. Not much effort made to hide them, I notice."
"Why bother? They"ve stopped pumping out these tunnels; the props look pretty temporary; the mud"s coming back. Besides, who"d be stupid enough to come down here?"
A piece of wall slithered down, with a sticky, organic, cow-pat sort of noise. Little plops and trickles filled the tunnel. Ankh-Morpork"s underworld was stealthily reclaiming its own.
Angua closed her eyes and concentrated. The slime reek, the vampire"s smell and the water that was now ankle deep all jostled for attention, but this was competition time. She couldn"t let a vampire take the lead. That would be so ... traditional.
"There were other dwarfs," she murmured. "Two - no, three ... er ... four more. I"m getting ... the black oil. Distant blood. Down the tunnel." She stood up so sharply that she nearly hit her head on the tunnel roof. "C"mon!"
"It"s getting a bit unsafe-"
"We could solve this! Come on! You can"t be afraid of dying!" Angua plunged away.
"And you think spending a few thousand years buried in sludge is likely to be fun?" shouted Sally, but she was talking only to dripping mud and fetid air. She hesitated a moment, groaned and followed Angua.
Further along the main tunnel, there were more passages branching off. On either side, rivers of mud, like cool lava, were already flowing out of them. Sally splashed past something that
looked like a huge copper trumpet, turning gently on the current.
The tunnel was better built here than the sections nearer the well. And there at the end of it was a pale light and Angua, crouched by one of the big round dwarf doors. Sally paid her no attention. She barely glanced at the dwarf slumped with his back against the bottom of the door.
Instead, she stared at the symbol scrawled large on the metal. It was big and crude and might be a round, staring eye with a tail, and it gleamed with the greeny-white glow of vurms.
"He wrote it in his blood," said Angua, without looking up. "They left him for dead but he was only dying, you see. He managed to make it to here, but the killers had shut the door. He scratched at it - smell here - and he"s worn away his fingernails. Then he made that sign in his own warm blood and sat here, holding the wound shut, watching the vurms turn up. I"d say he"s been dead for eighteen hours or so. Hmm?"
"I think we should get out of here right now," said Sally, backing away. "Do you know what that sign means?"
"I know it"s mine-sign, that"s all. Do you know what it means?"
"No, but I know it"s one of the really bad ones. It"s not good seeing it here. What"re you doing with that body?" Sally backed away further.
"Trying to find out who he was," said Angua, searching the dwarf"s clothing. "It"s the sort of thing we do in the Watch. We don"t stand around getting worried about drawings on the wall. What"s the problem?"
"Right now?" said the vampire. "He"s ... oozing a bit. .
"If I can stand it, so can you. You see a lot of blood in this job. Don"t attempt to drink it, that"s my advice," said Angua, still rummaging. "Ah ... he"s got a rune necklace. And" - she pulled a hand out of the dead dwarf"s jerkin -"can"t make this out very well, but I can smell ink so it may be a letter. Okay. Let"s get out of here." She looked round at Sally. "Did you hear me?"
"The sign was written by someone dying," said Sally, still keeping her distance.
"Well?"
"Then it"s probably a curse."