Thud

Now the melting pot was full of lumps again.

Gods damn Hamcrusher. Vimes itched to arrest him. Technically, he was doing nothing wrong, but that was no barrier to a copper who knew his business. He could certainly get him under Behaviour Likely To Cause A Breach Of The Peace. Vetinari had been against it, though. He'd said it'd only inflame the situation, but how much worse could it get?

Vimes closed his eyes and recalled that little figure, dressed in heavy black leather robes and hooded so that he would not commit the crime of seeing daylight. A little figure, but with big words. He remembered:

`Beware of the troll. Trust him not. Turn him from your door. He is nothing, a mere accident of forces, unwritten, unclean, the mineral world's pale, jealous echo of living, thinking creatures. In his head, a rock; in his heart, a stone. He does not build, he does not delve, he neither plants nor harvests. His nascency was a deed of theft and everywhere he drags his club he steals. When not thieving, he plans theft. The only purpose in his miserable life is its ending, relieving from the wretched rock his all-too-heavy burden of thought. I say this in sadness. To kill the troll is no murder. At its very worst, it is an act of charity.'

It was round about that time that the mob had broken into the hall.

That was how much worse it could be. Vimes blinked at the newspaper again, this time seeking anything that dared suggest that people in Ankh-Morpork still lived in the real world

'Oh, damn!' He got up and hurried down the stairs, where Cheery practically cowered at his thundering approach.

`Did we know about this?' he demanded, thumping the paper down on the Occurrences Ledger.

`Know about what, sir?' said Cheery.

Vimes prodded a short illustrated article on page four, his finger stabbing at the page. `See that?' he growled. `That pea-brained idiot at the Post Office has only gone and issued a Koom Valley stamp!'

The dwarf looked nervously at the article. `Er ... two stamps, sir,' she said.

Vimes looked closer. He hadn't taken in much of the detail before the red mist descended. Oh yes, two stamps. They were very nearly identical. They both showed Koom Valley, a rocky area ringed by mountains. They both showed the battle. But in one, little figures of trolls were pursuing dwarfs from right to left, and, in the other, dwarfs were chasing trolls from left to right. Koom Valley, where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs and the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. Vimes groaned. Pick your own stupid history, a snip at ten pence, highly collectable.

`The Koom Valley Memorial Issue,' he read. `But we don't want them to remember it! We want them to forget it!'

`It's only stamps, sir,' said Cheery. `I mean, there's no law against stamps. ..'

`There ought to be one against being a bloody fool!'

`If there was, sir, we'd be on overtime every day!' said Cheery, grinning.

Vimes relaxed a little. `Yep, and no one could build cells fast enough. Remember the cabbage-scented stamp last month?

"Send your expatriate sons and daughters the familiar odour of home"? They actually caught fire if you put too many of them together!'

`I still can't get the smell off my clothes, sir.'

`There are people living a hundred miles away who can't, I reckon. What did we do with the bloody things in the end?'

`I put them in No. 4 evidence locker and left the key in the lock,' said Cheery.

`But Nobby Nobbs always steals anything that-' Vimes began.

`That's right, sir!' said Cheery happily. `I haven't seen them for weeks.'

There was a crash from the direction of the canteen, followed by shouting. Something in Vimes, perhaps the very part of him that had been waiting for the first shoe, propelled him across the office, down the passage and to the canteen's doorway at a speed that left dust spiralling on the floor.

What met his eyes was a tableau in various shades of guilt. One of the trestle tables had been knocked over. Food and cheap tinware was strewn across the floor. On one side of the mess was troll Constable Mica, currently being held between troll Constables Bluejohn and Schist; on the other was dwarf Constable Brakenshield, currently being lifted off the ground by probably human Corporal Nobbs and definitely human Constable Haddock.

There were watchmen at the other tables too, all caught in the act of rising. And, in the silence, audible only to the fine-tuned ears of a man searching for it, was the sound of hands pausing an inch away from the weapon of choice, and very slowly being lowered.

`All right,' said Vimes, in the ringing vacuum. `Who's going to be the first to tell me a huge whopper? Corporal Nobbs?'

`Well, Mister Vimes,' said Nobby Nobbs, lowering the mute Brakenshield to the floor,'. .. er ... Brakenshield here ... picked up Mica's ... yes, picked up Mica's mug by mistake, as it were ... and