Thud!

that were the home and feeding ground of innumerable birds.
    Oh…and there were the skulls, too.
    “I am the coroner as well,” he told Vimes as he unlocked a cupboard in his desk. “We get a few bones washed down here every spring. Mostly tourists, of course. They really will not take advice, alas. But sometimes we get things that are of more…historical interest.” He put a dwarf skull on the leather desktop.
    “About a hundred years old,” he said. “From the last big battle, a hundred years ago. We get the occasional piece of armor, too. We put it all in the charnel house, and occasionally the dwarfs or the trolls come with a cart to sort through it and carry it away. They take it very seriously.”
    “Any treasure?” said Vimes.
    “Hah. Not that I get told about. But I’d hear about it if there was anything big.” The magistrate sighed. “Every year people come to search for it. Sometimes they are lucky.”
    “They find gold?”
    “No, but they get back alive. The others? They wash up out of the caves, in the fullness of time.” He selected a pipe from a rack on his desk and began to fill it. “I’m amazed that anyone feels it necessary to take weapons up the valley. It’ll kill you on a whim. Will you take one of my lads, Commander?”
    “I have my own guide,” said Vimes, and then added, “But thank you.”
    Mr. Waynsbury puffed his pipe.
    “As you wish, of course,” he said. “I shall watch the river, in any case.”

A ngua and Sally had been put in the same bedroom. Angua tried to feel good about that. The woman wasn’t to know. Anyway, it was nice to get between clean sheets, even if the room had a slightly musty smell. More must, less vampire, she thought; look on the bright side.
    In the darkness, she opened one eye.
    Someone had moved silently across the room. They’d made no noise but, nevertheless, their passage had stirred the air and changed the texture of the subtle night sounds.
    They were at the window now. It was bolted shut, and a faint noise was probably the bolt being slipped back.
    It was easy to tell when the window itself was opened; new scents flooded in.
    There was a creak that possibly only a werewolf would have heard, followed by a sudden rustling of many leathery wings. Little leathery wings.
    Angua shut her eye again. The little minx! Maybe Sally just didn’t care anymore? No point in trying to follow her, though. She debated the wisdom of shutting the window and bolting the door, just to see what excuses Sally came up with, but dismissed it. No good telling Mister Vimes yet, either, what could she prove? It’d all be put down to the werewolf/vampire thing…

A nd now Koom Valley stretched away ahead of Vimes, and he could see why he hadn’t made plans. You couldn’t make plans for Koom Valley. It’d laugh at them. It would push them away, like it pushed away roads.
    “Of course, you’re seeing it at its best at this time of year,” said Cheery.
    “By ‘best’ you mean—?” Vimes prompted.
    “Well, it’s not actually trying to murder us, sir. And there’s the birds. And when the sun’s right, you get some wonderful rainbows.”
    There were lots of birds. Insects bred like mad in the wide, shallow pools and dams that littered the floor of the valley in late spring. Most of them would be dry by the late summer, but for now Koom Valley was a smorgasbord of things that went bzz! And the birds had come up from the plains to feast on all of it. Vimes wasn’t good at birds, but they mostly looked like swallows, millions of them. There were nests on the nearest cliff, a good half mile away, and Vimes could hear the chattering from here. And where trees and rocks had piled up in dams, saplings and green plants had sprouted.
    Below the narrow track the party had taken, water gushed from half a dozen caves and joined together for one wild waterfall into the plain.
    “It’s all so…so alive,” said Angua. “I was expecting just barren rock.”
    “Dat’s what it like up at der battle place,” said Detritus, spray glistening on his skin. “My dad took me up dere when we were comin’ to der city. He showed me dis kind o’ rocky place, hit me on der head, and said, ‘Remember.’ ”
    “Remember what?” said Sally.
    “He didn’t say. So I just, you know, gen’rally remembered.”
    I didn’t expect this, Vimes thought. It’s so…chaotic. Oh, well, let’s get clear of the cliff wall, at least. All these bloody great boulders must