Feet of Clay

This piggy was the size of a pony. This piggy had tusks. And it wasn’t pink. It was a blue-black colour and covered with sharp hair but it did have — let’s be fair, thought Colon — little red piggy eyes.

This little piggy looked like the little piggy that killed the boarhounds, disembowelled the horse and ate the huntsman.

Colon turned around, and came face-to-face with a bull like a beef cube on legs. It turned its huge head from side to side so that each rolling eye could get a sight of the sergeant, but it was clear that neither of them liked him very much.

It lowered its head. There wasn’t room for it to charge, but it could certainly push.

As the animals crowded around him, Colon took the only way of escape possible.

There were men slumped all over the alley.

‘Hello, hello, hello, what’s all this, then?’ said Carrot.^{87}

A man who was holding his arm and groaning looked up at him. ‘We were viciously attacked!’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ said Vimes.

‘We may have,’ said Angua. She tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the wall opposite, on which was written in a familiar script:

NO MASTER …

Carrot hunched down and spoke to the casualty. ‘You were attacked by a golem, were you?’ he said.

‘Right! Vicious bugger! Just walked out of the fog and went for us, you know what they’re like!’

Carrot gave the man a cheerful smile. Then his gaze travelled along the man’s body to the big hammer lying in the gutter, and moved from that to the other tools strewn around the scene of the fight. Several had their handles broken. There was a long crowbar, bent nearly into a circle.

‘It’s lucky you were all so well armed,’ he said.

‘It turned on us,’ said the man. He tried to snap his fingers. ‘Just like that — aargh!’

‘You seem to have hurt your fingers …’

‘You’re right!’

‘It’s just that I don’t understand how it could have turned on you and just walked out of the fog,’ said Carrot.

‘Everyone knows they’re not allowed to fight back!’

‘“Fight back”,’ Carrot repeated.

‘It’s not right, them walking around the streets like that,’ the man muttered, looking away.

There was the sound of running feet behind them and a couple of men in blood-stained aprons caught up with them. ‘It went that way!’ one yelled. ‘You’ll be able to catch up with it if you hurry!’

‘Come on, don’t hang around! What do we pay our taxes for?’ said the other.

‘It went all round the cattle yards and let everything out. Everything! You can’t move on Pigsty Hill!’

‘A golem let all the cattle out?’ said Vimes. ‘What for?’

‘How should I know? It took the yudasgoat out of Sock’s slaughterhouse so half the damn things are following it around! And then it went and put old Fosdyke in his sausage machine—’

‘What?’

‘Oh, it didn’t turn the handle. It just shoved a handful of parsley in his mouth, dropped an onion down his trousers, covered him in oatmeal and dropped him in the hopper!’

Angua’s shoulders started to shake. Even Vimes grinned.

‘And then it went into the poultry merchant’s, grabbed Mr Terwillie, and’ — the man stopped, aware there was a lady present, even if she was making snorting noises while trying not to laugh, and continued in a mumble — ‘made use of some sage and onion. If you know what I mean …’

‘You mean he—?’ Vimes began.

‘Yes!’

His companion nodded. ‘Poor old Terwillie won’t be able to look sage and onion in the face again, I reckon.’

‘By the sound of it, that’s the last thing he’ll do,’ said Vimes.

Angua had to turn her back.

‘Tell him about what happened in your pork butcher’s,’ said the man’s companion.

‘I don’t think you’ll need to,’ said Vimes. ‘I’m seeing a pattern here.’

‘Right! And poor young Sid’s only an apprentice and didn’t deserve what it done to him!’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Carrot. ‘Er … I think I’ve got an ointment that might be—’

‘Will it help with the apple?’ the man demanded.

‘It shoved an apple in his mouth?’

‘Wrong!’

Vimes winced. ‘Ouch …’

‘What’s going to be done, eh?’ said the butcher, his face a few inches from Vimes’s.

‘Well, if you can get a grip on the stem—’

‘I’m serious! What are you going to do? I’m a taxpayer and I know my rights!’

He prodded Vimes in the breastplate. Vimes’s expression went wooden. He looked down at the finger, and then back up at the man’s large red nose.

‘In that case,’ said Vimes, ‘I suggest you take another apple and—’

‘Er, excuse me,’ said Carrot loudly. ‘You’re Mr Maxilotte, aren’t you? Got a shop in the Shambles?’

‘Yes, that’s right. What of it?’

‘It’s just that I don’t recall seeing your name on the register of taxpayers, which is very odd because you said you were a taxpayer, but of course you wouldn’t lie about a thing like that and anyway when you paid your taxes they would have given you a receipt because that’s the law and I’m sure you’d be able to find it if you looked—’

The butcher lowered his finger. ‘Er, yes …’

‘I could come and help you if you’d like,’ said Carrot.

The butcher gave Vimes a despairing look.