I bet he is smart, Vimes thought. So they come here, do a little light pastoral work and rabble-rousing, and search for the cube in a very dwarfish way. They find it. But the poor bastards who were doing the digging hear what it"s got to say. Well, everyone knows dwarfs gossip, so the dark guards make sure these four don"t have a chance to.
Then friend Hamcrusher doesn"t like what he hears, either. He wants to destroy this thing. In the struggle in the dark one of the other grags does the world a favour and fetches him a crack on the noggin. But, whoops, big mistake, because the mob is going to miss him and his jolly urging to wholesale troll slaughter. You know how dwarfs gossip, and you can"t kill "em all. So while it"s still just us together in the dark, we need a plan! Forward, Mr Ardent, who says "I know! We"ll take the corpse out to a tunnel that a troll just might have got into, and bash its head in with a club. "A troll did it. What right-thinking dwarf could possibly believe anything else?
"Why the candles?" said Vimes. "The old grags were sitting in brilliant candlelight when I saw them."
"The grags ordered it," Helmclever whispered. "They feared what might come for them in darkness."
"And what was it that might come?"
Helmclever"s hand stopped in mid-air. For several seconds nothing moved in the little circle of yellow light except the candle flames themselves; in the darkness beyond, the shadows craned to hear.
"I ... cannot say," whispered the dwarf.
Vimes glared at the board. Where"d that troll come from? Helmclever had whipped three dwarfs off the board in one go!
"Ardent said there"s always a troll. A troll got into the mine," said Helmclever. "The grags said yes, that must have been it."
"But they knew the truth!" Three more dwarfs gone, just like that ...
"Truth is what a grag says it is, said Helmclever. "The sunlight world is a bad dream anyway. Ardent said no one was to speak about it. He said I was to tell all the guards ... about the troll."
Blame it on a troll, Vimes thought. For a dwarf, that came naturally. A big troll did it and ran away. This isn"t just a can of worms, it"s a nest of bloody vipers!
He stared at the board. Bloody hell. I"m running into a wall here. What am I left with? Brick saw a dwarf hitting another dwarf, but that wasn"t the murder - that was Ardent or someone giving Hamcrusher"s dead body that distinctive "bashed-by-a-troll" look. I"m not actually certain that"s a major crime. The murder was done in the dark by one of six dwarfs, and the other five might not even know who did it! Okay, maybe I can say they conspired to conceal a crime ... Hold on ...
"But it wasn"t Ardent who said that the Watch should not be told," he said. "That was you, wasn"t it? Did you want me to be angry, Mr Helmclever?" He moved a dwarf.
Helmclever looked down.
Since no answer was forthcoming, Vimes captured the wandering troll and placed it beside the board.
"I did not think you would come." Helmclever"s voice was barely audible. "Hamcrusher was ... I think ... I didn"t ... Ardent said you wouldn"t worry because the grag was such a danger. He said the grag had ordered the miners to be killed, and so now it was ended. But I thought it ... I ... it wasn"t right. Things were wrong! I heard you were full of pride. I had to get you ... interested. He ... he. .
"You thought I wouldn"t be? A troll is accused of murdering a dwarf, at a time like this, and I wouldn"t be interested?" said Vimes.
"Ardent said that you wouldn"t be because no humans were involved. He said you would not care what happens to dwarfs."
"He ought to get out in the fresh air more!"
Helmclever"s eyes and nose were running now, and dripping on the board. A storm stops the battle, Vimes thought. Then the dwarf lifted his head and wailed: "It was the club the troll Mr Shine gave me for winning five games in a row," he wailed. "He was my friend! He said I was as good as a troll so I should have a club! I told Ardent it was a war trophy! But he took it and bashed that poor dead body!"
Water dripping on a stone, Vimes thought. And it depends on where the drops fall, right, Mr Shine? What good has it done this poor devil? He wasn"t in the right job to have doubt enter his life!
"All right, Mr Helmclever, thank you for this," he said, sitting back. "There is just one thing, though. Do you know who sent those dwarfs to my house?"
"What dwarfs?"
Vimes stared into the weeping, red-rimmed eyes. Their owner was either telling the truth or the stage had missed a major talent.
"They came to attack me and my family," he said.
"I ... did hear Ardent talking to the captain of the guard," Helmclever murmured. "Something about ... a warning ...,
"A warning? Do you call-" Vimes began, and stopped when he saw Bashfullsson shaking his head. Right. Right. No point in taking it out on this one. He"s had all the stuffing knocked out of him in any case.
"They are very frightened now," Helmclever said. "They don"t understand the city. They don"t understand why trolls are allowed here. They don"t understand people who don"t ... understand them. They fear you. They fear everything now."
"Where have they gone?"