The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [15]
Vimes could just about tell the difference between the Uberwald dwarfs and the ones from Copperhead, who were shorter, noisier and rather more at home among humans. The Uberwald dwarfs were quiet, tended to scuttle around corners, and often didn’t speak Morporkian. In some of the alleys off Treacle Mine Road you could believe you were in another country. But they were what every copper desires in a citizen. They were no trouble. They mostly had jobs working for one another, they paid their taxes rather more readily than humans did, although to be honest there were small piles of mouse droppings that yielded more money than most Ankh-Morpork citizens, and generally any problems they had they sorted out among themselves. If such people ever come to the attention of the police, it’s usually only as a chalk outline.
It turned out, though, that within the community, behind the grubby facades of all those tenements and workshops in Cable Street and Whalebone Lane, there were vendettas and feuds that had their origins in two adjoining mine shafts five hundred miles away and a thousand years ago. There were pubs you only drank in if you were from a particular mountain. There were streets you didn’t walk down if your clan mined a particular lode. The way you wore your helmet, the way you parted your beard, spoke complicated volumes to other dwarfs. They didn’t even hand a piece of paper to Vimes.
“Then there’s the way you krazak your G’ardrgh,” said Corporal Littlebottom.
“I won’t even ask,” said Vimes.
“I’m afraid I can’t explain in any case,” said Cheery.
“Have I got a Gaadrerghuh?” said Vimes. Cheery winced at the mispronunciation.
“Yes, sir. Everyone has. But only a dwarf can krazak his properly,” she said. “Or hers,” she added.
Vimes sighed, and looked down at the pages of scrawl in his notebook, under the heading: UBERWALD. He wasn’t strictly aware of it, but he treated even geography as if he was investigating a crime (Did you see who carved out the valley? Would you recognize that glacier if you saw it again?).
“I’m going to make a lot of mistakes, Cheery,” he said.
“I shouldn’t worry about that, sir. Humans always do. But most dwarfs can spot if you’re trying not to make them.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind coming?”
“Got to face it sooner or later, sir.”
Vimes shook his head sadly.
“I don’t get it, Cheery. There’s all this fuss about a female dwarf trying to act like, like—”
“A lady, sir?”
“Right, and yet no one says anything about Carrot being called a dwarf, but he’s a human—”
“No, sir. Like he says, he’s a dwarf. He was adopted by dwarfs, he’s performed the Y’grad, he observes the j’kargra insofar as that’s possible in a city. He’s a dwarf.”
“He’s six foot high!”
“He’s a tall dwarf, sir. We don’t mind if he wants to be a human as well. Not even the drudak’ak would have a problem with that.”
“I’m running out of cough drops here, Cheery. What was that?”
“Look, sir, most of the dwarfs here are…well, I suppose you’d call them liberal, sir. They’re mainly from the mountains behind Copperhead, you know? They get along with humans. Some of them even acknowledge that…they’ve got daughters, sir. But some of the more…old-fashioned…Uberwald dwarfs haven’t gotten out so much. They still act as if B’hrian Bloodaxe were still alive. That’s why we call them drudak’ak.”
Vimes had a go, but he knew that to really speak Dwarfish you needed a lifetime’s study and, if at all possible, a serious throat infection.
“…‘above ground’…‘they negatively’…” he faltered.
“‘They do not get out in the fresh air enough,’” Cheery supplied.
“Ah, right. And everyone thought the new king was going to be one of these?”
“They say Albrecht’s never seen sunlight