Unseen Academicals

to cost us?’ said the coachman. ‘Wonderful job, if I may say so.’
    ‘How much? How much? How much?’ said Nutt, turning it over in his mind. ‘Have I earned worth, sir?’
    ‘I should say so, mate. I’ve never seen a horse shod as smooth as that.’
    ‘Then worth will do,’ said Nutt. ‘And a ride for myself and my three friends back to Ankh-Morpork.’
    ‘An’ five dollars,’ said Trev, coming away from his lounging spot near the wall with the speed of money.
    The coachman sniffed. ‘A bit steep,’ he said.
    ‘What?’ said Trev. ‘For a late-night job? To better than Burleigh and Stronginthearm specification? Not a bad deal, I think.’
    A murmur from the other watchers backed Trev up. ‘I never seen anyone do anything like that,’ said Juliet. ‘He’d ’ave ’ad that ’orse dancing if you’d asked ’im.’
    The coachman winked at Trev. ‘All right, lad. What can I say? Old Havacook there is a good lad, but a bit bad tempered, as it goes. Once kicked a coachman through the wall. I never thought I’d see him stand there and lift ’is leg up like a trained lap-dog. Your chum has earned his money and his ride.’
    ‘Please take him away,’ said Nutt. ‘But hold him with care because when he gets a little way away from me he might get a tiny bit frisky.’

The crowd dispersed. Nutt methodically damped down the forge and started to pack his tools into the box. ‘If we’re going to go back, we’d better go now. Has anyone seen Miss Glenda?’
    ‘Here,’ said Glenda, advancing out of the shadows. ‘Trev, you and Jools go and get us some seats on the coach. I need to talk to Mister Nutt.’
    ‘Her ladyship was here,’ said Glenda when they’d gone.
    ‘I would not be surprised,’ said Nutt calmly, snapping the catches shut on his box. ‘Just about everybody passes through here and she travels a great deal.’
    ‘Why were you running away?’
    ‘Because I know what will happen,’ said Nutt. ‘I am an orc. It’s as simple as that.’
    ‘But the people on the bus were on your side,’ said Glenda.
    Nutt flexed his hands and the claws slid out, just for a moment. ‘And tomorrow?’ he said. ‘And if something goes wrong? Everybody knows orcs will tear your arms off. Everybody knows orcs will tear your head off. Everybody knows these things. That is not good.’
    ‘Well, then, why are you coming back?’ Glenda demanded.
    ‘Because you are kind and came after me. How could I refuse? But it does not change the things that everybody knows.’
    ‘But every time you make a candle and every time you shoe a horse, you change the things that everybody knows,’ said Glenda. ‘You know that orcs were—’ She hesitated. ‘Sort of made?’
    ‘Oh, yes, it was in the book.’
    She nearly exploded. ‘Well, then, why didn’t you tell me?!’
    ‘Is it important? We are what we are now.’
    ‘But you don’t have to be!’ Glenda yelled. ‘Everybody knows trolls eat people and spit them out. Everybody knows dwarfs cut your legs off. But at the same time everybody knows that what everybody knows is wrong. And orcs didn’t decide to be like they are. People will understand that.’
    ‘It will be a dreadful burden.’
    ‘I’ll help!’ Glenda was shocked at the speed of her response and then mumbled, ‘I’ll help.’
    The coals in the forge crackled as they settled down. Fires in a busy forge seldom die out completely. After a while, Glenda said, ‘You wrote that poem for Trev, didn’t you?’
    ‘Yes, Miss Glenda. I hope she liked it.’
    Glenda thought she’d better raise this carefully. ‘I think I ought to tell you that she didn’t understand a lot of the words exactly . I sort of had to translate it for her.’ It hadn’t been too difficult, she reckoned. Most love poems were pretty much the same under the curly writing.
    ‘Did you like it?’ said Nutt.
    ‘It was a wonderful poem,’ said Glenda.
    ‘I wrote it for you,’ said Nutt. He was looking at her with an expression that stirred together fear and defiance in equal measure.
    The cooling embers brightened up at this. After all, a forge has a soul. As if they had been waiting there, the responses lined themselves up in front of Glenda’s tongue. Whatever you do next is going to be very important, she told herself. Really, extremely, very important. Don’t start wondering about what Mary the bloody housemaid would do in one of those cheap novels you read, because Mary was made up by someone with a name