Thud! - Terry Pratchett [118]
But always, when it paused by some grating or unguarded chimney, it heard the pursuit. It was slow, but it never stopped following. Sooner or later, it would catch up.
Grag Bashfullsson lodged in a subdivided cellar in Cheap Street. The rent wasn’t much, but he had to admit that neither was the accommodation: he could lie on his very narrow bed and touch all four walls or, rather, three walls and a heavy curtain that separated his little space from that of the family of nineteen dwarfs that occupied the rest of the cellar. But meals were included, and they respected his privacy. It was something, to have a grag as a lodger, even if this one seemed rather young and showed his face. It still impressed the neighbors.
On the other side of the curtain, children were squabbling, a baby was crying, and there was the smell of rat-and-cabbage casserole. Someone was sharpening an axe. And someone else was snoring. For a dwarf in Ankh-Morpork, solitude was something that you had to cultivate on the inside.
Books and papers filled the space that wasn’t bed. Bashfullsson’s desk was a board laid across his knees. He was reading a battered book, its cover cracked and moldy, and the runes passing under his eye said: “It has no strength in this world. To fulfill any purpose, the Dark must find a champion, a living creature it can bend to its will…”
Bashfullsson sighed. He’d read the phrase a dozen times, hoping he could make it mean something other than the obvious. He copied the words into his notebook anyway. Then he put the notebook in his satchel, swung the satchel onto his back, went and paid Toin Footstamper two weeks’ rent in advance, and stepped out into the rain.
Vimes didn’t remember going to sleep. He didn’t remember sleeping. He surfaced from darkness when Carrot shook him awake.
“The coaches are in the yard, Mister Vimes!”
“Fwisup?” murmured Vimes, blinking in the light.
“I’ve told people to load them up, sir, but—”
“But what?” Vimes sat up.
“I think you’d better come and see, sir.”
When Vimes stepped out into the damp dawn, two coaches were indeed standing in the yard. Detritus was idly watching the loading, while leaning on the Piecemaker.
Carrot hurried over when he saw the commander.
“It’s the wizards, sir,” he said. “They’ve done something.”
The coaches looked normal enough to Vimes, and he said so.
“Oh, they look fine,” said Carrot. He reached down and put his hand on the doorsill, and added: “But they do this.”
He lifted the laden coach over his head.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” said Vimes.
“That’s right, sir,” said Carrot, lowering the coach gently onto the cobbles. “It doesn’t get any heavier with people inside, either. And if you come over here, sir, they’ve done something to the horses, too.”
“Any idea what they’ve done, Captain?”
“None whatsoever, sir. The coaches were just outside the university. Haddock and I drove them down here. Very light, of course. It’s the harnesses that are worrying me. See here, sir.”
“I see the leather’s very thick,” said Vimes. “And what’re all these copper knobs? Something magical?”
“Could be, sir. Something happens at thirteen miles an hour. I don’t know what.” Carrot patted the side of the coach, which slid away.
“The thing is, sir, I don’t know how much of an edge this gives you.”
“What? Surely a weightless coach would—”
“Oh, it’ll help, sir, especially on the inclines. But horses can only go so fast for so long, sir, and once they’ve got the coach moving, it’s a rolling weight and not so much of a problem.”
“Thirteen miles an hour,” Vimes mused. “Hmm. That’s pretty fast.”
“Well, the mail coaches are getting nine or ten miles an hour average on many runs now,” said Carrot. “But the roads will get a lot worse when you get near Koom Valley.”
“You don’t think it’ll take wing, do you?”
“I think the wizards would have said so if it was going to do something like that, sir. But it’s funny you should