Feet of Clay

'I heard where there was one at a carpenter's that went odd and made five thousand tables in one night. Lost count or something.'

'It's just staring at them …'

'I mean, five thousand tables? One of them had twenty-seven legs. It got stuck on legs …'

Dorfl brought the cleaver down hard and sliced the lock off the gate. The cattle watched the golem, with that guarded expression which cattle have that means they're waiting for the next thought to turn up.

He walked on to the sheep pens and opened them, too. The pigs were next, and then the poultry.

'All of them?' said Mr Sock.

The golem walked calmly back down the line of pens, ignoring the watchers, and re-entered the slaughterhouse. He came out very shortly afterwards leading the ancient and hairy billygoat on a piece of string. He went past the waiting animals until he reached the wide gates that led on to the main road, which he opened. Then he let the goat loose.

The animal sniffed the air and rolled its slotted eyes. Then, apparently deciding that the distant odour of the cabbage fields beyond the city wall was much preferable to the smells immediately around it, it trotted away up the road.

The animals followed it in a rush, but with hardly any other noise than the rustle of movement and the sounds of their hooves. They streamed around the stationary figure of Dorfl, who stood and watched them go.

A chicken, bewildered by the stampede, landed on the golem's head and started to cluck.

Anger finally overcame Sock's terror. 'What the hell are you doing?' he shouted, trying to field a few stray sheep as they bolted out of the pens. 'That's money walking out of the gate, you—'

Dorfl's hand was suddenly around his throat. The golem picked him up and held the struggling man at arm's- length, turning his head this way and that as if considering his next course of action.

Finally he tossed away the cleaver, reached up under the chicken that had taken up residence, and produced a small brown egg. With apparent ceremony the golem smashed it carefully on Sock's scalp and dropped him.

The golem's former co-workers jumped back out of the way as Dorfl walked back through the slaughterhouse.

There was a tally board by the entrance. Dorfl looked at it for a while, then picked up the chalk and wrote:

NO MASTER…

The chalk crumbled in his fingers. Dorfl walked out into the fog.

Cheri looked up from her workbench.

'The wick's full of arsenous acid,' she said. 'Well done, sir! This candle even weighs slightly more than other candles!'

'What an evil way to kill anyone,' said Angua.

'Certainly very clever,' said Vimes. 'Vetinari sits up half the night writing, and in the morning the candle's burned down. Poisoned by the light. The light's something you don't see. Who looks at the light? Not some plodding old copper.'

'Oh, you're not that old, sir,' said Carrot, cheerfully.

'What about plodding?'

'Or that plodding, either,' Carrot added quickly. 'I've always pointed out to people that you walk in a very purposeful and meaningful manner.'

Vimes gave him a sharp look and saw nothing more than a keen and innocently helpful expression.

'We don't look at the light because the light is what we look with,' said Vimes. 'Okay. And now I think we should go and have a look at the candle factory, shouldn't we? You come, Littlebottom, and bring your … have you got taller, Little-bottom?'

'High-heeled boots, sir,' said Cheri.

'I thought dwarfs always wore iron boots …'

'Yes, sir. But I've got high heels on mine, sir. I welded them on.'

'Oh. Fine. Right.' Vimes pulled himself together. 'Well, if you can still totter, bring your alchemy stuff with you. Detritus should've come off-duty from the palace. When it comes to locked doors you can't beat Detritus. He's a walking crowbar. We'll pick him up on the way.'

He loaded his crossbow and lit a match.

'Right,' he said. 'We've done it the modern way, now let's try policing like grandfather used to do it. It's time to—'

'Prod buttock, sir?' said Carrot, hurriedly.

'Close,' said Vimes, taking a deep drag and blowing out a smoke ring, 'but no cigar.'

Sergeant Colon's view of the world was certainly changing. Just when something was about to fix itself firmly in his mind as the worst moment of his entire life, it was hurriedly replaced by something even nastier.

Firstly, the drainpipe he was riding hit the wall of the building opposite. In a well-organized world he might have landed on a fire escape, but fire escapes were unknown in Ankh-Morpork and the flames generally had to leave via the roof.

With the pipe thus leaning against the wall, he found himself sliding down the diagonal. Even this might have been a happy outcome were it not for the fact that Colon was a heavy man and, as his weight slid nearer to the middle of the unsupported pipe, the pipe sagged, and cast iron has only a very limited amount of sag before it snaps, which it now did.

Colon dropped, and landed on something soft — at least, softer than the street — and the something went 'mur-r-r-r-r-m!'. He bounced off it and landed on something lower and softer which went 'baaaaarp!', and rolled from this on to something even lower and apparently made of feathers, which went insane. And pecked him.

The street was full of animals, milling around uncertainly. When animals are in a state of uncertainty they get nervous, and the street was already, as it were, paved with anxiety. The only benefit to Sergeant Colon was that this made it slightly softer than would otherwise have been the case.

Hooves trod on his hands. Very large dribbly noses sneezed at him.

Sergeant Colon had not hitherto had a great deal of experience of animals, except in portion sizes. When he'd been little he'd had a pink stuffed pig called Mr Dreadful, and he'd got up to Chapter Six in Animal Husbandry. It had woodcuts in it. There was no mention of hot smelly breath and great clomping feet like soup plates on a stick. Cows, in Sergeant Colon's book, should go 'moo'. Every child knew that. They shouldn't go 'mur-r-r-r-r-m!' like some kind of undersea monster and spray you with spit.

He tried to get up, skidded on some cow's moment of crisis, and sat down on a sheep. It went 'blaaaart!' What kind of noise was that for a sheep to make?

He got up again and tried to make his way to the kerb. 'Shoo! Get out of the damn way, you sheep! Gam!'

A goose hissed at him and stuck out altogether too much neck.

Colon backed off, and stopped when something nudged him in the back. It was a pig.

It was no Mr Dreadful. This wasn't the little piggy that went to market, or the little piggy that stayed at home. It would be quite hard to imagine what kind of foot would have a piggy like this, but it would probably be the kind that also had hair and scales and toenails like cashew nuts.

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.