Thud! - Terry Pratchett [72]
In a dank cellar that once was an attic and was now half-full of mud, the vurms poured out of a small hole where wooden planks had long since worn away.
A fist punched up. Soggy timber split and crumbled.
Angua pulled herself up into this new darkness, then reached down to help Sally, who said: “Well, here’s another fine mess.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Angua. “I think we need to go up at least one more level. There’s an archway here. Come on.”
There had been too many dead ends, forgotten stinking rooms and false hopes, and altogether too much slime.
After a while, the smell became almost tangible, and then it managed to become just another part of the darkness. The women wandered and scrambled from one dripping, fetid room to another, testing the muddy walls for hidden doors, searching for even a pinprick of light in the ceilings hanging with interesting but horrible growths.
Now they heard music. Five minutes wading and slithering brought them to a blocked-in doorway, but since it had been filled by the more modern Ankh-Morpork mortar of sand, horse dung, and vegetable peelings, several bricks had already fallen out. Sally removed most of the rest with one punch.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “It’s a vampire thing.”
The cellar behind the demolished wall had some barrels in it, and looked as though it was regularly used. There was a proper door, too. Rather dull, repetitive music filtered down from between the boards. There was a trapdoor in them.
“O-kay,” said Angua. “There’s people up there, I can smell them—”
“I count fifty-seven hearts beating,” said Sally. Angua gave her a Look.
“You know, that’s one particular talent I’d keep to myself, if I was you,” she said.
“Sorry, Sergeant.”
“It’s not the sort of thing people want to hear,” Angua went on. “I mean, I personally am quite capable of crushing a man’s skull in my jaws, but I don’t go around telling everyone.”
“I shall make a note of it, Sergeant,” said Sally, with a meekness that was quite possibly feigned.
“Good. Now…what do we look like? Swamp monsters?”
“Yes, Sergeant. Your hair looks dreadful. Just like a great lump of green slime.”
“Green?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And my emergency dress is back down there somewhere,” said Angua. “It’s past dawn, too. Can you, er, go bats now?”
“In daylight? One hundred and fifty disoriented bits of me? No! But you could get out as a wolf, couldn’t you?”
“I’d kind of prefer not to be a slime monster coming through the floor, if it’s all the same to you,” said Angua.
“Yes, I can see that. It does not pay to advertise.” Sally flicked away a lump of nameless ooze. “Ugh, this stuff is foul.”
“So, the best we can hope for is that when we make a run for it, no one will recognize us,” said Angua, pulling a lump of wobbly green stuff from her hair. “At least we—oh, no…”
“What’s wrong?” said Sally.
“Nobby Nobbs! He’s up there! I can smell him!” She pointed urgently at the boards overhead.
“You mean Corporal Nobbs? The little…man with the spots?” said Sally.
“We’re not under a Watch house, are we?” said Angua, looking around in panic.
“I don’t think so. Someone’s dancing, by the sound of it. But look, how can you smell one human in the middle of all…this?”
“It never leaves you, believe me.” The smell of old cabbage, acne ointment, and nonmalignant skin disease became transmuted, in Corporal Nobbs, into a strange odor that lay across the nose like a saw blade on a harp. It wasn’t bad, as such, but it was like its host: strange, ubiquitous, and hellishly difficult to forget.
“Well, he’s a fellow officer, isn’t he? Won’t he help us?” said Sally.
“We are naked, Lance Constable!”
“Only technically. This mud really sticks.”
“I mean underneath the mud!” said Angua.
“Yes, but if we had clothes on we’re be naked underneath them, too!” Sally pointed out.
“This is not the time for logic! This is the time for not seeing Nobby grinning at me!”
“But he’s seen you when you’re wolf-shaped, hasn’t he?” said Sally.
“So?” snapped Angua.
“Well, technically you’re naked then, aren’t you?”
“Never