Thud!

at it, smell here, and he’s worn away his fingernails. Then he made that sign in his own warm blood and sat here, holding the wound shut, watching the vurms turn up. I’d say he’s been dead for eighteen hours or so. Hmm?”
    “I think we should get out of here right now,” said Sally, backing away. “Do you know what that sign means?”
    “I know it’s mine sign, that’s all. Do you know what it means?”
    “No, but I know it’s one of the really bad ones. It’s not good seeing it here. What are you doing with that body?” Sally backed away further.
    “Trying to find out who he was,” said Angua, searching the dwarf’s clothing. “It’s the sort of thing we do in the Watch. We don’t stand around getting worried about drawings on the wall. What’s the problem?”
    “Right now?” said the vampire. “He’s…oozing a bit…”
    “If I can stand it, so can you. You see a lot of blood in this job. Don’t attempt to drink it, that’s my advice,” said Angua, still rummaging. “Ah…he’s got a rune necklace. And…” she pulled a hand out of the dead dwarf’s jerkin, “can’t make this out very well, but I can smell ink, so it may be a letter. Okay. Let’s get out of here.” She stood up. “Did you hear me?”
    “The sign was written by someone dying,” said Sally, still keeping her distance.
    “Well?”
    “It’s probably a curse.”
    “So? We didn’t kill him,” said Angua, getting to her feet with some difficulty.
    They looked down at the liquid mud now rising to their knees.
    “Do you think it cares?” said Sally matter-of-factly.
    “No, but I think there may be another way out in that last tunnel we passed,” said Angua, looking back along the tunnel.
    She pointed. Scuttling along with blind determination, a line of vurms marched along the dripping roof almost as fast as the mud flowed down below. They were heading into the side tunnel in a glowing stream.
    Sally shrugged. “It’s worth a try, yes?”
    They left, and the sound of their splashing soon died away.
    Slowly the mud rose, rustling in the gloom. The trail of vurms gradually disappeared overhead. The vurms that made the sign remained though, because such a feast as this was worth dying for.
    Their glow winked out, one insect at a time.
    The darkness beneath the world caressed the sign, which flamed red and died.
    Darkness remained.

I t was five a.m. Rain rustled out the sky, not hard, but with a gentle persistence.
    In Sator Square, and in the Plaza of Broken Moons, it hissed on the white ash of the bonfires, occasionally exposing the orange glow, which would briefly sizzle and spit.
    A family of gnolls were sniffing around, each one dragging his or her little cart. A few officers were keeping an eye on them. Gnolls weren’t choosy about what they collected, provided it didn’t actually struggle, and even then there were rumors.
    But they were tolerated. Nothing cleaned up the place like a gnoll.
    From here, they looked like little trolls, each with a huge compost heap on its back. That represented everything it owned, and mostly what it owned was rotten.
    Sam Vimes winced at the pain in his side. Just his luck. Two coppers injured in the entire damn affair, and he had to be one of them? Igor had done his best, but broken ribs were broken ribs, and it’d be a week or two before the suspicious green ointment made much difference. His hand twinged in sympathy with them, too.
    Still, he enjoyed a bit of a warm glow about the whole thing. They had used good, old-fashioned policing, and since good, old-fashioned policemen are invariably outnumbered, he’d employed the good, old-fashioned police methods of cunning, deceit, and any damn weapon you could lay your hands on.
    It had hardly been a fight at all. The dwarfs had mostly been sitting and singing gloomy songs, because they fell over when they tried to stand up, or had tried to stand up and were now lying down and snoring. The trolls were, on the other hand, mostly upright, but went over when you pushed them. One or two, a little clearer in the head than the others, had put up a ponderous and laughable fight but had fallen to that most old-fashioned of police methods: the well-placed boot. Well, most of them had. Vimes shifted to ease the aching in his side; he should have seen that one coming.
    But all’s well that ends well, eh? No deaths at all, and just to put a little cherry on the morning cake, he had in his hand an early-morning edition of the