Thud

`Isn't progress a wonderful thing, captain?' said Vimes, pouring as much sarcasm into his tone as possible, since Carrot was so bad at recognizing it. `When we have our Koom Valley, our friend Otto will be able to take a colour iconograph of it in a fraction of a second. Wonderful. It's been a long time since this city was last burned to the ground.'

He ought to be springing into action. Once upon a time, he would have done. But now, perhaps he should take these precious moments to work out what he should do before he sprang.

Vimes tried to think. Don't think of it all as one big bucket of

snakes. Think of it as one snake at a time. Try to sort it out. Now, what needs to be done first?

Everything.

All right, try a different approach.

`What are these mine signs all about?' he said. `That Helmclever sort of drew one at me. I saw one on the wall, too. And you drew one.

"'The Following Dark",' said Carrot. `Yes. It was scrawled all over the place.'

`What does it mean?'

`Dread, sir,' said Carrot earnestly. `A warning of terrible things to come.

`Well, if one of those little sods so much as surfaces with one of those flame weapons in his hand that will be true. But you mean they scrawl it on walls?'

Carrot nodded. `You have to understand about a dwarf mine, sir. It's a kind of-'

-emotional hothouse, was how Vimes understood it, although no dwarf would ever describe it that way. Humans would have gone insane living like that, cramped together, no real privacy, no real silence, seeing the same faces every day for years on end. And since there were a lot of pointy weapons around, it'd only be a matter of time before the ceilings dripped blood.

Dwarfs didn't go mad. They stayed thoughtful and sombre and keen on their job. But they scrawled mine-sign.

It was like an unofficial ballot, voting by graffiti, showing your views on what was going on. In the confines of a mine any problem was everyone's problem, stress leapt from dwarf to dwarf like lightning. The signs earthed it. They were an outlet, a release, a way of showing what you felt without challenging anyone (because of all the pointy weapons).

The Following Dark: We await what follows with dread. Another translation might mean, in effect: Repent, ye sinners!

`There are hundreds of runes for darkness,' said Carrot. `Some of them are part of ordinary dwarfish, of course, like the Long Dark. There's plenty like that. But some are ...'

`Mystical?' Vimes suggested.

`Unbelievably mystical, sir. There's books and books about them. And the way dwarfs think about books and words and runes ... well, you wouldn't believe it, sir. W- They think the world was written, sir. All words have enormous power. Destroying a book is worse than murder to a deep-downer.'

`I've rather gathered that,' said Blackboard Monitor Vimes. `Some deep-downers believe that the dark signs are real,' Carrot went on.

`Well, if you can see the writing on the wall-' Vimes began.

`Real like alive, sir,' said Carrot. `Like they exist somewhere down in the dark under the world, and they cause themselves to be written. There's the Waiting Dark ... that's the dark that fills a new hole. The Closing Dark ... I don't know about that one, but there's an Opening Dark, too. The Breathing Dark, that's rare. The Calling Dark, very dangerous. The Speaking Dark, the Catching Dark. The Secret Dark, I've seen that. They're all fine. But the Following Dark is a very bad sign. I used to hear the older dwarfs talking about that. They said it could make lamps go out, and much worse things. When people start drawing that sign, things have got very bad.'

`This is all very interesting, but-'

`Everyone in the mine is as nervous as heck, sir. Stressed like wires. Angua said she could smell it, but so could I, sir. I grew up in a mine. When something is wrong, everyone catches it. On days like that, sir, my father used to stop all mining operations. You get too many accidents. Frankly, sir, the dwarfs are mad with worry. The Following Dark signs are everywhere. It's probably the miners they've hired since they came here. They feel that something is very wrong, but the only thing they can do about it is sign.'

`Well, their top grag has been killed-'

`I can feel the atmosphere in a mine, sir. Any dwarf can. And that one is rancid with fear and dread and horrible confusion. And there's worse things in the Deeps than the Following Dark.'

Vimes had a momentary vision of vengeful darkness rising through caves like a tide, faster than a man could run ...

... which was stupid. You couldn't see dark.