Feet of Clay

‘Indeed.’ A friendly arm was put around Nobby’s shoulders and he was adroitly piloted away from the buffet, but not before he had grabbed a plate of chicken legs. ‘So many people want to talk to you …’

‘Mgffmph?’

***

Sergeant Colon tried to clean himself up, but trying to clean yourself up with water from the Ankh was a difficult manoeuvre. The best you could hope for was an all-over grey.

Fred Colon hadn’t reached Vimes’s level of sophisticated despair. Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage.

Why had he been tied up with string? There were still loops of it around his arms and legs.

‘You sure you don’t know where I was?’ he said.

‘Yez walked into the place,’ said Wee Mad Arthur, trotting along beside him. ‘How come yez don’t know?’

‘’Cos it was dark and foggy and I wasn’t paying attention, that’s why. I was just going through the motions.’

‘Aha, good one!’

‘Don’t mess about. Where was I?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘I just hunts under the whole cattle-market area. I don’t bother about what’s up top. Like I said, them runs go everywhere.’

‘Anyone along there make string?’

‘It’s all animal stuff, I tell yez. Sausages and soap and stuff like that. Is this the bit where yez gives me the money?’

Colon patted his pockets. They squelched.

‘You’ll have to come to the Watch House, Wee Mad Arthur.’

‘I got a business to run here!’

‘I’m swearin’ you in as a Special Watchman for the night,’ said Colon.

‘What’s the pay?’

‘Dollar a night.’

Wee Mad Arthur’s tiny eyes gleamed. They gleamed red.

‘Ye gods, you look awful,’ said Colon. ‘What’re you looking at my ear for?’

Wee Mad Arthur said nothing.

Colon turned.

A golem was standing behind him. It was taller than any he’d seen before, and much better proportioned — a human statue rather than the gross shape of the usual golems, and handsome, too, in the cold way of a statue. And its eyes shone like red searchlights.

It raised a fist above its head and opened its mouth. More red light streamed out.

It screamed like a bull.

Wee Mad Arthur kicked Colon on the ankle.

‘Are we running or what?’ he said.

Colon backed away, still staring at the thing.

‘It’s … it’s all right, they can’t move fast …’ he muttered. And then his sensible body gave up on his stupid brain and fired up his legs, spinning him around and shoving him in the opposite direction.

He risked looking over his shoulder. The golem was running after him in long, easy strides.

Wee Mad Arthur caught him up.

Colon was used to proceeding gently. He wasn’t built for high speeds, and said so. ‘And you certainly can’t run faster than that thing!’ he wheezed.

‘Just so long as I can run faster’n yez,’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘This way!’

There was a flight of old wooden stairs against the side of a warehouse. The gnome went up them like the rats he hunted. Colon, panting like a steam engine, followed him.

He stopped halfway up and looked around.

The golem had reached the bottom step. It tested it carefully. The wood creaked and the whole stairway, grey with age, trembled.

‘It won’t take the weight!’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘The bugger’s gonna smash it up! Yeah!’

The golem took another step. The wood groaned.

Colon got a grip on himself and hurried on up the stairs.

Behind him, the golem seemed to have satisfied itself that the wood could indeed take its weight, and started to leap from step to step. The rails shook under Colon’s hands and the whole structure swayed.

‘Come on, will yez?’ said Wee Mad Arthur, who had already reached the top. ‘It’s gaining on yez!’

The golem lunged. The stairs gave way. Colon flung out his hands and grabbed the edge of the roof. Then his body thudded into the side of the building.

There was the distant sound of woodwork hitting cobbles.

‘Come on then,’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘Pull yourself up, yer silly bugger!’

‘Can’t,’ said Colon.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s holding on to my foot …’

‘A cigar, your lordship?’

‘Brandy, my lord?’

Lord de Nobbes sat back in the comfort of his chair. His feet only just reached the ground. Brandy and cigars, eh? This was the life all right. He took a deep puff at the cigar.

‘We were just talking, my lord, about the future governance of the city now that poor Lord Vetinari’s health is so bad …’

Nobby nodded. This was the kind of thing you talked about when you were a nob. This was what he’d been born for.

The brandy was giving him a pleasant warm feeling.

‘It would obviously upset the current equilibrium if we looked for a new Patrician at this point,’ said another armchair. ‘What is your view, Lord de Nobbes?’

‘Oh, yeah. Right. The guilds’d fight like cats in a sack,’ said Nobby. ‘Everyone knows that.’

‘A masterly summary, if I may say so.’

There was a general murmur of agreement from the other chairs.