Thud! - Terry Pratchett [53]
“I expect they’ve set up a morgue,” said Carrot quickly. “The death rites are quite complex.”
Morgue? A home away from home for you, my dear! snarled Angua’s inner wolf.
The vurms were spreading out now, crawling across the wall with a purpose.
She crouched down, to bring her nose nearer to the floor. I can smell dwarfs, lots of dwarfs, Angua thought. Hard to smell trolls, especially underground. Blood on the club, like a flower. Dwarf smell on the club, but there’s dwarf smell everywhere. I can smell—hang on, that’s familiar…
The floor mostly smelled of slime and loam. Carrot’s footprints showed up, and so did hers. There was a lot of dwarf smell, and she could still just make out the smell of their concern. This is where they found the body, then? But this patch of mud here, this was different. It had been trodden into the floor, but it smelled just like the heavy clay from up around Quarry Lane. Who lived in Quarry Lane? Most of the trolls in Ankh-Morpork.
A clue.
She smiled in the dwindling darkness. And the trouble with clues, as Mister Vimes always said, was that they were so easy to make. You could walk around with a pocket full of the bloody things.
The darkness was disappearing because the light was growing. Angua looked up.
There was a huge, bright symbol on the wall where Carrot had touched it. He dragged some meat across it, she thought. They’ve turned up for the feast…
Ardent came back in, with Helmclever trailing after him.
He got as far as: “The door here can be opened again but, alas, we—” and stopped.
They were happy vurms. By the standards of greeny-white glow, they were brilliant.
Behind Carrot there was now a gently glowing circle, with two diagonal lines slashed through it. Both dwarfs stared at it as if in shock.
“Well, let’s take a look, shall we?” said Carrot, apparently oblivious to all this.
“—we, alas, the water…water…not entirely watertight…the other doors…the troll caused flooding…” Ardent murmured, not taking his eyes off the glow.
“But you say we can go through here, at least?” said Carrot politely, pointing to the sealed door.
“Er…yes. Yes. Certainly.”
The steward hurried forward and produced a key. The wheel, unlocked, turned easily. Angua was acutely aware of how the muscles on Carrot’s bare arms glistened and pumped as he pulled the metal door open.
Oh no, not yet, surely! She ought to have at least another day! It was the vampire, that’s what it was, standing there looking so innocent. Bits of her body wanted her to become a wolf, right now, to defend herself…
There was a pillared room on the other side of the door. It smelled damp and unfinished. There were vurms on the ceiling, but the floor was muddy and squelched underfoot.
Angua could make out another dwarf door across the room, and there was one on either side as well.
“We take spoil to a heap on the waste ground outside,” said Ardent. “We, er, believe the troll got in that way. It was an unpardonable oversight.” He still sounded uneasy.
“And the troll was not seen?” said Carrot, kicking at the mud.
“No. These chambers are finished. The diggers are elsewhere, but they came as soon as they could. We believe the grag had come up here for solitude. To die at the random hand of an abomination!”
“Lucky for the troll, wasn’t it, sir?” said Angua sharply. “He just happened to wander in and stumble across Hamcrusher?”
Carrot’s boot struck something metallic. He kicked some more mud away.
“You’ve laid rails?” he said. “You must be shifting a lot of spoil, sir.”
“Better to push than to carry,” said Ardent. “Now, I have arranged for—”
“Hold on, what’s this?” said Carrot. He squatted down and pulled at something pale. “It’s a piece of bone, by the look of it. On a string.”
“There are plenty of old bones,” said Ardent. “Now, I—”
It came free with a gloop, and grinned at them in the sickly light.
“It doesn’t look very old, sir,” said Carrot.
Just one breath was enough for Angua.
“It’s a sheep skull,” she said. “About three months dead.” Oh, another clue, she added