Men at Arms

read it, then? Can you?”
    “No, I tell you to read it. That called del-eg-ay-shun.”
    “Hah! Can’t read! Can’t count! Stupid troll!”
    “Not stupid!”
    “Hah! Yes? Everyone knows trolls can’t even count up to four!” *
    “Eater of rats!”
    “How many fingers am I holding up? You tell me, Mr. Clever Rocks in the Head.”
    “Many,” Detritus hazarded.
    “Har har, no, five. You’ll be in big trouble on payday. Sergeant Colon’ll say, stupid troll, he won’t know how many dollars I give him! Hah! How come you read the notice about joining the Watch, anyway? Got someone to read it to you?”
    “How come you read notice? Get someone to hold you up?”
    They walked into the door of the Alchemists’ Guild.
    “I knock. My job!”
    “I’ll knock!”
    When Mr. Sendivoge, the Guild secretary, opened the door it was to find a dwarf hanging on the knocker and being swung up and down by a troll. He adjusted his crash helmet.
    “Yes?” he said.
    Cuddy let go.
    Detritus’ massive brows knitted.
    “Er. You loony bastard, what you make of this?” he said.
    Sendivoge stared from Detritus to the paper. Cuddy was struggling to get around the troll, who was almost completely blocking the doorway.
    “ What’d you go and call him that for? ”
    “ Sergeant Colon, he said —”
    “I could make a hat out of it,” said Sendivoge, “or a string of dollies, if I could get some scissors—”
    “What my…colleague means, sir, is can you help us in our inquiries in re the writing on this alleged piece of paper here?” said Cuddy. “That bloody hurt!”
    Sendivoge peered at him.
    “Are you Watchmen?” he said.
    “I’m Lance-Constable Cuddy and this,” said Cuddy, gesturing upward, “is Lance-trying-to-be-Constable Detritus— don’t salu - oh…”
    There was a thump, and Detritus slumped sideways.
    “Suicide squad, is he?” said the alchemist.
    “He’ll come round in a minute,” said Cuddy. “It’s the saluting. It’s too much for him. You know trolls.”
    Sendivoge shrugged and stared at the writing.
    “Looks…familiar,” he said. “Seen it somewhere before. Here…you’re a dwarf, aren’t you?”
    “It’s the nose, isn’t it?” said Cuddy. “It always gives me away.”
    “Well, I’m sure we always try to be of help to the community,” said Sendivoge. “Do come in.”
    Cuddy’s steel-tipped boots kicked Detritus back into semisensibility, and he lumbered after them.
    “Why the, er, why the crash helmet, mister?” said Cuddy, as they walked along the corridor. All around them was the sound of hammering. The Guild was usually being rebuilt.
    Sendivoge rolled his eyes.
    “Balls,” he said, “billiard balls, in fact.”
    “I knew a man who played like that,” said Cuddy.
    “Oh, no. Mr. Silverfish is a good shot. That tends rather to be the problem, in fact.”
    Cuddy looked at the crash helmet again.
    “It’s the ivory, you see.”
    “Ah,” said Cuddy, not seeing, “elephants?”
    “Ivory without elephants. Transmuted ivory. Sound commercial venture.”
    “I thought you were working on gold.”
    “Ah, yes. Of course, you people know all about gold,” said Sendivoge.
    “Oh, yes,” said Cuddy, reflecting on the phrase “you people.”
    “The gold,” said Sendivoge, thoughtfully, “is turning out to be a bit tricky…”
    “How long have you been trying?”
    “Three hundred years.”
    “That’s a long time.”
    “But we’ve been working on the ivory for only a week and it’s going very well!” said the alchemist quickly. “Except for some side effects which we’ll doubtless soon be able to sort out.”
    He pushed open a door.
    It was a large room, heavily outfitted with the usual badly ventilated furnaces, rows of bubbling crucibles, and one stuffed alligator. Things floated in jars. The air smelled of a limited life expectancy.
    A lot of equipment had been moved away, however, to make room for a billiard table. Half a dozen alchemists were standing around it in the manner of men poised to run.
    “It’s the third this week,” said Sendivoge, gloomily. He nodded to a figure bent over a cue.
    “Er, Mr. Silverfish—” he began.
    “Quiet! Game on!” said the head alchemist, squinting at the white ball.
    Sendivoge glanced at the score rail.
    “Twenty-one points,” he said. “My word. Perhaps we’re adding just the right amount of camphor to the nitro-cellulose after all—”
    There was a click. The cue ball rolled away, bounced off the