Men at Arms

change in the air suggested a vaster tunnel up ahead.
    And, indeed, the tunnel opened into the side of a much larger one. There was deep mud on the floor, in the middle of which ran a trickle of water. Cuddy fancied he heard rats, or what he hoped were rats, scuttle away into the dark emptiness. He even thought he could hear the sounds of the city—indistinct, intermingled—filtering through the earth.
    “It’s like a temple,” he said, and his voice boomed away into the distance.
    “Writing here on wall,” said Detritus.
    Cuddy peered at the letters hacked deeply into the stone.
    “‘VIA CLOACA’,” he said. “Hmm. Well, now…via is an old word for street or way. Cloaca means…”
    He peered into the gloom.
    “This is a sewer,” he said.
    “What that?”
    “It’s like…well, where do trolls dump their…rubbish?” said Cuddy.
    “In street,” said Detritus. “Hygienic.”
    “This is…an underground street just for…well, for crap,” said Cuddy. “I never knew Ankh-Morpork had them.”
    “Maybe Ankh-Morpork didn’t know Ankh-Morpork had them,” said Detritus.
    “Right. You’re right. This place is old . We’re in the bowels of the earth.”
    “In Ankh-Morpork even the shit have a street to itself,” said Detritus, awe and wonder in his voice. “Truly, this a land of opportunity.”
    “Here’s some more writing,” said Cuddy. He scraped away some slime.
    “‘ Cirone IV me fabricat ’,” he read aloud. “He was one of the early kings, wasn’t he? Hey…do you know what that means?”
    “No one’s been down here since yesterday,” said Detritus.
    “No! This place…this place is more than two thousand years old. We’re quite probably the first people to come down here since—”
    “Yesterday,” said the troll.
    “Yesterday? Yesterday? What’s yesterday got to do with it?”
    “Footprints still fresh,” said Detritus.
    He pointed.
    There were footprints in the mud.
    “How long have you lived here?” said Cuddy, suddenly feeling very conspicuous in the middle of the tunnel.
    “Nine-er years. That is the number of years I have lived here. Nine-er,” said Detritus, proudly. “It only one of a large…number of numbers I can count to.”
    “Have you ever heard of tunnels under the city?”
    “No.”
    “Someone knows about them, though.”
    “Yes.”
    “What shall we do?”
    The answer was inevitable. They’d chased a man into the pork futures warehouse, and nearly died. Then they’d ended up in the middle of a small war, and nearly died. Now they were in a mysterious tunnel where there were fresh footprints. If Corporal Carrot or Sergeant Colon said, “And what did you do then?”, neither of them could face up to the thought of saying “We came back.”
    “The footprints go this way,” said Cuddy, “and then they return. But the ones coming back aren’t so deep as the ones going. You can see they’re later ones because they’re over the top of the other ones. So he was heavier going than he was coming back, yes?”
    “Right,” said Detritus.
    “So that means…?”
    “He lose weight?”
    “He was carrying something, and he left it…up ahead somewhere.”
    They stared at the darkness.
    “So we go and find what it was?” said Detritus.
    “I think so. How do you feel?”
    “Feel OK.”
    Different species though they were, their minds had focused on a single image, involving a muzzle flash and a lead slug singing through the subterranean night.
    “He came back,” said Cuddy.
    “Yes,” said Detritus.
    They looked at the darkness again.
    “It has not been a nice day,” said Cuddy.
    “That the truth.”
    “I’d just like to know something, in case…I mean…look, what happened in the pork store? You did all that maths! All that counting!”
    “I…dunno. I saw it all.”
    “All what?”
    “Just all of it. Everything. All the numbers in the world. I could count them all.”
    “What did they equal?”
    “Dunno. What does equal mean?”
    They trudged on, to see what the future held.
    The trail led eventually into a narrower tunnel, barely wide enough for the troll to stand upright. Finally they could go no further. A stone had dropped out of the roof and rubble and mud had percolated through, blocking the tunnel. But that didn’t matter because they’d found what they were looking for, even though they hadn’t been looking for it.
    “Oh dear,” said Detritus.
    “Very definitely,” said Cuddy. He looked around vaguely.
    “You