Men at Arms

life,” said Colon. “No pensions for widows, see.”
    He looked from one to the other.
    “Is there something wrong?” he said.
    Carrot relaxed his grip, turned, slipped the book into the box, and shut the lid.
    “No,” he said.
    “Look, I’m sorr—” Angua began. Carrot ignored her and nodded at the sergeant.
    “Give him the coffee.”
    “But…fourteen dollars…that’s nearly half his pay!”
    Carrot picked up Vimes’ limp arm and tried to prise his fist open, but even though Vimes was out cold the fingers were locked.
    “I mean, half his pay !”
    “I don’t know what he’s holding in here,” said Carrot, ignoring her. “Maybe it’s a clue.”
    He took the coffee and hauled up Vimes by his collar.
    “You just drink this, captain,” he said, “and everything will look a lot…clearer…”
    Klatchian coffee has an even bigger sobering effect than an unexpected brown envelope from the tax man. In fact, coffee enthusiasts take the precaution of getting thoroughly drunk before touching the stuff, because Klatchian coffee takes you back through sobriety and, if you’re not careful, out the other side , where the mind of man should not go. The Watch was generally of the opinion that Samuel Vimes was at least two drinks under par, and needed a stiff double even to be sober.
    “Careful…careful…” Carrot let a few drops dribble between Vimes’ lips.
    “Look, when I said—” Angua began.
    “Forget it.” Carrot didn’t even look round.
    “I was only—”
    “I said forget it.”
    Vimes opened his eyes, took a look at the world, and screamed.
    “Nobby!”
    “Yes, sarge?”
    “Did you buy the Red Desert Special or the Curly Mountain Straight?”
    “Red Desert, sarge, because—”
    “You could have said. Better get me—” He glanced at Vimes’ grimace of horror “—half a glass of Bearhugger’s. We’ve sent him too far the other way.”
    The glass was fetched and administered. Vimes unstiffened as it took effect.
    His palm uncurled.
    “Oh, my gods,” said Angua. “Have we got any bandages?”

    The sky was a little white circle, high above.
    “Where the hell are we, partner?” said Cuddy.
    “Cave.”
    “No caves under Ankh-Morpork. It’s on loam.”
    Cuddy had fallen about thirty feet but had cushioned the fall because he landed on Detritus’ head. The troll had been sitting, surrounded by rotting woodwork, in…well…a cave. Or, Cuddy thought, as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, a stone-lined tunnel.
    “I didn’t do nothing,” said Detritus, “I just stood there, next minute, everything going past upward.”
    Cuddy reached down into the mud underfoot and brought up a piece of wood. It was very thick. It was also very rotten.
    “We fell through something into something,” he said. He ran his hand over the curved tunnel wall. “And this is good masonry. Very good.”
    “How we get out?”
    There was no way to climb back. The tunnel roof was much higher than Detritus.
    “We walk out, I think,” said Cuddy.
    He sniffed the air, which was dank. Dwarfs have a very good sense of direction underground.
    “This way,” he added, setting off.
    “Cuddy?”
    “Yes?”
    “No one ever say there tunnels under the city. No one know about them.”
    “So…?”
    “So there no way out. Because way out is way in, too, and if no one know about tunnels, then it ’cos no way in.”
    “But they’ve got to lead somewhere.”
    “OK.”
    Black mud, more or less dry, made a path at the bottom of the tunnel. There was slime on the walls, too, indicating that at some point in the recent past the tunnel had been full of water. Here and there huge patches of fungi, luminous with decay, cast a faint glow over the ancient stonework. *
    Cuddy felt his spirits lift as he plodded through the darkness. Dwarfs always felt happier underground.
    “Bound to find a way out,” he said.
    “Right.”
    “So…how come you joined the Watch, then?”
    “Hah! My girl Ruby she say, you want get married, you get proper job, I not marry a troll what people say, him no good troll, him thick as a short plank of wood.” Detritus’ voice echoed in the darkness. “How about you?”
    “I got bored. I worked for my brother-in-law, Durance. He’s got a good business making fortune rats for dwarf restaurants. But I thought, this isn’t a proper job for a dwarf.”
    “Sound like easy job to me.”
    “I had the devil of a time getting them to swallow the fortunes.”
    Cuddy stopped. A