Feet of Clay

took the largest cleaver from the blood-stained rack on the wall.
    Sock began to shake.
    “I-I-I was always g-g-good to you,” he said. “A-a-always let you h-have your h-holy d-d-days off—”
    Dorfl stared at him again. It’s only red light , Sock gibbered to himself…
    But it seemed more focused. He felt it entering his head though his own eyes and examining his soul.
    The golem pushed him aside and stepped out of the slaughter-house and towards the cattle pens.
    Sock unfroze. They never fought back, did they? They couldn’t . It was how the damn’ things were made .
    He stared around at the other workers, humans and trolls alike. “Don’t just stand there! Get it!”
    One or two hesitated. It was a big cleaver in the golem’s hand. And when Dorfl stopped to look around at them there was something different about the golem’s stance, too. It didn’t look like something that wouldn’t fight back.
    But Sock didn’t employ people for the muscles in their heads. Besides, no one had really liked a golem around the place.
    A troll aimed a pole-axe at him. Dorfl caught it one-handed without turning his head and snapped the hickory handle with his fingers. A man with a hammer had it plucked from his hand and thrown so hard at the wall that it left a hole.
    After that they followed at a cautious distance. Dorfl took no notice of them.
    The steam over the cattle pens mingled further with the fog. Hundreds of dark eyes watched Dorfl curiously as it walked between the fences. They were always quiet when the golem was around.
    He stopped by one of the largest pens. There were voices from behind.
    “Don’t tell me it’s going to slaughter the lot of ’em! We’ll never get that lot jointed this shift!”
    “I heard where there was one at a carpenter’s that went odd and made five thousand tables in one night. Lost count or something.”
    “It’s just staring at them…”
    “I mean, five thousand tables? One of them had twenty-seven legs. It got stuck on legs…”
    Dorfl brought the cleaver down hard and sliced the lock off the gate. The cattle watched the golem, with that guarded expression which cattle have that means they’re waiting for the next thought to turn up.
    He walked on to the sheep pens and opened them, too. The pigs were next, and then the poultry.
    “ All of them?” said Mr. Sock.
    The golem walked calmly back down the line of pens, ignoring the watchers, and re-entered the slaughterhouse. He came out very shortly afterwards leading the ancient and hairy billygoat on a piece of string. He went past the waiting animals until he reached the wide gates that opened into the main road, which it opened. Then he let the goat loose.
    The animal sniffed the air and rolled its slotted eyes. Then, apparently deciding that the distant odor of the cabbage fields beyond the city wall was much preferable to the smells immediately around it, it trotted away up the road.
    The animals followed it in a rush, but with hardly any other noise than the rustle of movement and the sounds of their hooves. They streamed around the stationary figure of Dorfl, who stood and watched them go.
    A chicken, bewildered by the stampede, landed on the golem’s head and started to cluck.
    Anger finally overcame Sock’s terror. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, trying to field a few stray sheep as they bolted out of the pens. “That’s money walking out of the gate, you—”
    Dorfl’s hand was suddenly around his throat. The golem picked him up and held the struggling man at arm’s-length, turning its head this way and that as if considering its next course of action.
    Finally he tossed away the cleaver, reached up under the chicken that had taken up residence, and produced a small brown egg. With apparent ceremony the golem smashed it carefully on Sock’s scalp and dropped him.
    The golem’s former co-workers jumped back out of the way as Dorfl walked back through the slaughterhouse.
    There was a tally board by the entrance. Dorfl looked at it for a while, then picked up the chalk and wrote:
    NO MASTER…
    The chalk crumbled in its fingers. Dorfl walked out into the fog.

    Cheri looked up from her workbench.
    “The wick’s full of arsenous acid,” she said. “Well done, sir! This candle even weighs slightly more than other candles!”
    “What an evil way to kill anyone,” said Angua.
    “Certainly very clever,” said Vimes. “Vetinari sits up half the night writing, and in the morning the