Thud!

the mountains. Tell them to look out for a party of dark dwarfs. They’ve got what they came for and they’re doing a runner, I know it.”
    “You want they should try to stop ’em?” the sergeant asked.
    “No! No one should try it! Say they’ve got weapons that shoot fire! Just let me know where they’re headed!”
    “I’ll tell dem dat, sir.”
    And I’m going home, Vimes repeated to himself. Everyone wants something from Vimes, even though I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Hell, I’m probably a spoon. Well, I’m going to be Vimes, and Vimes reads Where’s My Cow? to Young Sam at six o’clock. With the noises done right.
    He went home at a brisk walk, using all the little shortcuts, his mind sloshing backwards and forwards like thin soup, his ribs nudging him occasionally to say yes, they were still here and twinging. He arrived at the door just as Willikins was opening it.
    “I shall tell her ladyship you are back, sir,” he called out as Vimes hurried up the stairs. “She is mucking out the dragon pens.”
    Young Sam was standing up in his cot, watching the door. Vimes’s day went soft and pink.
    The chair was littered with the favored toys of the hour—a rag ball, a little hoop, a wooly snake with one button eye. Vimes pushed them onto the rug, sat down, and took off his helmet. Then he took off his damp boots. You didn’t need to heat a room after Sam Vimes had taken his boots off. On the wall, the nursery clock ticked, and with every tick and tock a little sheep jumped back and forth over a fence.
    Sam unfolded the rather chewed, rather soggy book.
    “Where’s my cow?” he announced, and Young Sam chuckled. Rain rattled on the window.
Where’s my cow?
Is that my cow?
    …A “thing” that talks, he thought as his mouth and eyes took over the task at hand. I’m going to have to find out about that. Why’d it make dwarfs want to kill one another?
It goes baa!
It is a sheep!
    …Why did we go into that mine? Because we heard there’d been a murder, that’s why!
No, that’s not my cow!
    …Everyone knows that dwarfs gossip. It was stupid to tell them to keep it from us!
    That’s the deep-downers for you, they think they just have to say a thing and it’s true!
Where’s my cow?
    …Water dripping on a stone.
Is that my cow?
    Where did I see one of those Thud boards recently?
It goes naaaay!
    Oh, yes, Helmclever. He was very worried, wasn’t he?
It is a horse!
    He had a board. He said he was a keen player.
No, that’s not my cow!
    That was a dwarf under pressure if ever I saw one; he looked as if he was dying to tell me something…
Where’s my cow?
    That look in his eyes…
Is that my cow?
    I was so angry . Don’t tell the Watch? What did they expect? You’d have thought he would have known…
It goes HRUUUGH!
    He knew I’d go postal!
It is a hippopotamus!
    He wanted me to be angry!
No, that’s not my cow!
    He damn well wanted me to be angry!
    Vimes snorted and crowed his way through the rest of the zoo, missing out not one bark or squeak, and tucked up his son with a kiss.
    There was the sound of tinkling glass from downstairs. Oh, someone’s dropped a glass, said his front brain. But his back brain, which had steered him safely through these mean streets for more than fifty years, whispered: Like hell they did!
    Purity would be up in her room. Cook had the evening off. Sybil was out feeding the dragons. That left Willikins. Butlers didn’t drop things.
    From below, there was a quiet “ugh,” and then the thud of something hitting meat.
    And Vimes’s sword was on the hook at the other end of the hall, because Sybil didn’t like him wearing it in the house.
    As quietly as possible, he sought around for something, anything, that could be turned into a weapon. Regrettably, they had, when choosing toys for Young Sam, completely neglected the whole area of hard things with sharp edges. Bunnies, chickies, and piggies there were in plenty, but—ah! Vimes spotted something that would do, and wrenched it free.
    Moving soundlessly on thick, over-darned socks, he crept down the stairs.
    The door to the wine cellar was open. Vimes didn’t drink these days, but guests did, and Willikins, in accordance with some butlerian duty to generations only just or as yet unborn, cared for it and bought the occasional promising vintage. Was there the crackle of glass being trodden on? Okay, did the stairs creak? He’d find out.
    He reached the vaulted, damp cellar, and stepped