Thud!

accumulated were coming back and waving. Angua carefully led him through puddles and across rocks as slippery as wet marble until they reached a stalagmite. It was about eight feet high.
    It was a troll. It wasn’t a rock shaped like a troll, it was a troll. They only got stonier when they died, Vimes knew, but the lines of this one had been softened by the milky rock dripped on the troll’s head.
    “But now look at this, sir,” said Angua, leading him on. “They were destroying them…”
    There was another stalagmite, lying on its side in a pool. It had been smashed off at the base. And it was…a dwarf.
    Dwarfs crumble after death, just like humans, but all the armor, mail, chains, and heavy leather mean there’s no great change to the eye of the casual observer. The flowing rock had covered it all in a glistening shroud.
    Vimes straightened up and looked across the cavern. Shapes loomed in the gloom, all the way to the near wall, where the drip of ages had formed a perfect ivory waterfall, frozen in time.
    “There are more?”
    “About twenty, sir. Half of them had been smashed before you…arrived. Look at this one over here, sir. You can just make them out. They’re sitting back-to-back, sir.”
    Vimes stared at the figures under the glaze, and shook his head. A dwarf and a troll, together, cemented in rock.
    “Is there anything to eat?” he said. It wasn’t the most awe-inspired thing to say, but it came from the stomach, with feeling.
    “Our rations got lost in the excitement, sir. But the dwarfs will share theirs. They aren’t unfriendly, sir. Just cautious.”
    “Share? They have dwarf bread?”
    “I’m afraid so, sir.”
    “I thought it was illegal to give that to prisoners. I think I’ll wait, thanks. And now, Sergeant, you can tell me about the excitement.”

I t hadn’t exactly been an ambush; the dwarfs just caught up with them. Their captain had been given rather wide orders to follow Vimes and his party, and there had been a certain chilliness when he found that the party included two trolls. This was still Koom Valley, after all. Vimes felt a pang of sympathy for him; he’d had a simple job to do, and suddenly it was full of politics. Been there, done that, bought the singlet, thought Vimes.
    Fortunately, Grag Bashfullsson had a way with words. Since they were all going the same way—
    And it had been a long way. The fleeing dwarfs had brought down the ceiling not far from the entrance tunnel, and a journey that had taken Vimes a few minutes had taken the pursuers the best part of a day, even with Sally scouting ahead. Angua spoke of caves even bigger than this, of vast waterfalls in the dark. Vimes said, yes, he knew.
    Then the words of Where’s My Cow? had boomed under Koom Valley, shaking the rock of ages and making the stalactites hum in sympathy, and the rest had been a matter of running…
    “I can remember reading to Young Sam,” said Vimes slowly. “But there were these…strange pictures in my head.” He stopped. All that anger, all that red-hot rage, had flowed out of him in a torrent, without thought. “I killed those damn soldiers…”
    “Most of them, sir,” said Angua cheerfully. “And there’s a couple of miners who got in the way who’ll be aching for months.”
    It was all coming back to Vimes now. He wished it wasn’t. There was always a part of the human brain that objected to fighting dwarfs. They were child-sized. Oh, they were also at least as strong as a human, and more resilient, and would take any advantage in a fight, and if you were lucky, you learned to overcome that prejudice before you were hacked off at the knees, but it was always there…
    “I remember those old dwarfs,” he said. “They were cowering like little maggots. I wanted to smash them…”
    “You resisted for almost four seconds, sir, and then I brought you down,” said Angua.
    “And that was a good thing, was it?” said Vimes.
    “Oh, yes. It’s why you’re still here, Commander,” said Bashfullsson, appearing from behind a stalagmite. “I’m glad to see you up and about again. This is a historical day! And you still have a soul, it appears! Isn’t that nice?”
    “Now you listen to me—” Vimes began.
    “No, you listen to me , Commander. Yes, I knew you’d come to Koom Valley, because the Summoning Dark would come here. It needed you to bring it. No, listen to me, because we don’t have much time. The Summoning Dark symbol commands an entity as old