The towering fingers of stone were warm to the touch, the dark rock seemingly absorbing all the light and reflecting none of it back, but retaining the warmth. One of the huge pillars seemed to have fallen at one time, knocking others down around it and creating a network of thin crevasses, caves and slopes all made of the same fractured black materials. Vimes scrabbled up and along one of the crevasses, his feet sending mini land slides of tiny black pebbles cascading down onto the sands now some way below.

He reached a sort of plateau, the flat top of a huge pillar where two slabs of stone had fallen against each other to form a long, thin cave. He scrambled inside, the entrance barely large enough to admit a man, bumping his helmet on the ceiling.

Vimes slithered along on his belly, beginning to wonder if creeping in here was the best of ideas. Quite suddenly the cave widened. Vimes was puzzled, from the outside the cave hadn't looked particularly large, no more than a stone tent. It was so dark inside that Vimes was effectively blind but he could sense that the walls were no longer pressing in around him. His hands touched something other than the smooth black stones. It felt like cold ashes from a long dead fire. As he crawled forward again, now on his hands and knees, he collided with a tripod over the ashes.

Vimes removed his helmet and armour. He lay on his back in the dark and tried to make the pain in his shoulder and leg go away. He knew he was going to fall asleep again soon, he was feeling dizzy and sick. Vimes covered his eyes with his hands, lying full length in the darkness and fell asleep.

The sound of a rhythmic wheezing eventually woke Sam Vimes; his own breathing he realised after a while. His leg was so stiff he doubted he could bend his knee, but his other wounds appeared to be healing. He lay very still in the dark, weak from blood loss.

Vimes was stretched out in the curious zone between sleep and waking when Rincewind's face appeared on the roof of his cave. "Are you awake, Mister Vimes?"

Vimes sighed slightly, wondering what Rincewind's reaction would be if he replied 'yes.' "What?" he settled for instead, voice croaking as if his throat was full of sand.

"I think you ought to hunt for some food," Rincewind said, somewhat uncertain of Vimes's reaction.

Vimes laughed, a terrible sound in the dim light, dry and cracked, little more than a wheeze. "You're not serious?"

Rincewind frowned slightly. "Yes. There's some spears in the corner. Get one."

Vimes sat up slowly, still dizzy, and crawled over to the indicated corner. There were indeed some spears; wooden ones with black stone tips. "You made these?"

"Yes," Rincewind replied.

Vimes tested the tip of one of the spears with his thumb, finding them quite sharp. "They're good," he said shortly.

"Go outside. Head high, the scalies like to stay up high and out of the way of the others."

"How fast do they move?" Vimes asked, wiggling his way towards the exit.

"About as fast as a running man," Rincewind said, sighing.

Outside the landscape was exactly as it had been when Vimes had crawled into the cave. Rincewind had disappeared, probably, Vimes realised to allow him to hunt more successfully. Head for the high ground the man had said. Vimes turned his eyes upwards to the huge towering pillars of stone. Surely Rincewind didn't mean climb all the way up?

Apparently he did, the lower levels of the fallen rocks yielded nothing more than black and grey dust, what looked like rabbit droppings and tracks. Vimes, limping on his injured leg surveyed the shiny black stone walls with dismay. There didn't appear to be any hand-holds, or paths or...

... there /was/ a path; almost vertical in places but snaking all the way up to one of the highest rocks. Vimes deflated slightly, realising how far he was going to have to climb, but he gritted his teeth and set off; boots slipping on the loose chippings.

Nearly half an hour later he was clinging to the black rock face that stood at an almost ninety degree angle, spear looped through his belt and fingers sliding on the rocks with sweat. His leg was shaking as he tried to push off from the wall, unable to hold his weight. He managed to get a more firm hold and pulled himself up onto a narrow rock shelf, arms screaming with the effort.

He nearly landed on top of a scaly that was asleep. It leapt up as Vimes rolled. Fumbling for his spear he landed a vicious kick on the creature's head. Stunned, it stumbled, and Vimes bought his spear around and down. It screamed as the black stone pierced its skin. He twisted the spear and the cry rose a tone in agony and then abruptly stopped.

Vimes lay panting on the dusty ledge, slightly stunned that it had been this easy. With a shaking hand he reached out to touch the dead creature, gripping it by the wing. A hiss of laughter escaped through his teeth, tinged with hysteria. He had done it. He pulled his spear free. Now all he had to do was to get himself and dinner back down to the cave.

There was chittering form above and a little dust glittered in the still air for a moment, settling on Vimes's bloody shirt; criss-crossed with the mesh pattern of his chain-mail. He looked upwards as more dust fell. He shifted his grip on his spear.

Heads were appearing, staring down at him from high above. Vaguely chicken like, they regarded Vimes and the dead scaly with a blank-eyed interest. Instinctively Vimes started to move, but it was slightly too late. As one creature twelve of the scalies further up leapt, all fighting to be the first to sink their jaws into their fallen brother. Vimes flailed wildly, trying to defend his kill from the leathery beasts; kicking punching and jabbing with his spear.

He grabbed the body and rolled away from the scalies, slithered over the edge of the rock slope, groped wildly for a handhold as he slid, missed one, and juddered down the rock face to land with a bone jarring crunch at the bottom of the slope.

"Argh!"

There was no time to lie still and recapture the breath that had been knocked from his body, or to worry about how many bones he had broken or bruised in his fall. There was blood in his eyes, he blinked it away as he lurched away as quickly as he could. Incapable of anything other than a sort of high-speed wobble he was amazed five minutes later, back at the mouth of his cave to find that the scalies hadn't followed him. He dropped the carcass on the floor and slumped down next to it, trying to rub the blood out of his eyebrows. From the feel of it he had managed to cut himself above his right eyebrow. There were scrapes on his arms and already bruises were forming on the parts of him that had first come into contact with the ground.

On the upside he was alive, and he had dinner. He lay back on the ground and screwed up his eyes.

"Oh. You caught one then."

Vimes opened his eyes to see Rincewind's face above him, contained in the curious bubble. "Yes," he wheezed, "I caught one."

"Well, there's not a lot of wood available here, you might have noticed. There's some saplings about half a mile away that I used to make the spears. The best thing to burn around here is-"

"Scaly dung?" Vimes said, closing his eyes again.

"Good guess."

"Great," Vimes said, still lying down. "Fantastic."

"Uh, Captain Carrot thought you'd like to know that the Octavo is safe again, Constables Shoe and Visit are fine, and Ahmed is recovering well."

"Even better."

Rincewind sighed slightly, rubbing tired eyes caused by excessive crystal gazing. Although he himself wasn't supplying the raw power to open the link between the Disc and the Dungeon Dimensions it still took a lot of his energy simply to remain focussed on Commander Vimes; to keep the crystal ball 'on target' as it were. Rincewind hated the things as it was. Peering into the orbs had never been much of a wizardly pursuit; it was much preferred by mediums and witches. Wizards had far more important things to do than spy on other people. Eating big dinners, for a start. Or sleeping.

The small figure splayed on the ground, distorted by the curved surface of the ball appeared to reach a decision. "Alright. I'll go and look for some fuel. I've got a few matches, anyway." Vimes's voice was tinny and echoed slightly, as if it was coming from the bottom of a well.

"There should be some left in the cave, actually," Rincewind said and Vimes smiled thinly. For the first time that day things seemed to be going his way.

*

It is, by now, an oft repeated 'fact' that all 'foreign foods' taste like chicken. Vimes had eaten all sorts of things since becoming Sir Samuel rather than just plain old Sam at various diplomatic functions. Rabbit, alligator and other unidentified substances he had ingested all defied sensory description, except for the now legendary statement 'tastes a bit like rubbery chicken.'

Scaly tasted a bit like rubbery chicken. Vimes had skinned it and removed most of the more unidentifiable innards. The smoke from the cooking fire writhed in the sky and stung Vimes's eyes. It worried him slightly, smoke being possibly the best way of announcing his presence to any creature out in the expanses of desert looking for him. Singeing his fingers on the hot flesh and burning his tongue Vimes bolted down as much of the creature as he could manage, storing the rest of it in the cave in a sort of larder Rincewind had constructed from rocks. Then he sat back, enjoying the flickering warmth from the fire and reached into his jacket.

He pulled out his silver cigar case, still nestling in his pocket as always. Its weight was always a comfort to him, but in his brief moment of calm staring at the shining silver he felt a terrible sadness welling up inside him. He opened the case and extracted a cigar, lighting it from the burning fire and sitting back, tracing the letters of the inscription within with his thumb. It seemed strange to Vimes to admit, although not being a strange thing in itself, that he missed his wife and his son. It was not something he'd ever really experienced before... well, obviously he'd missed Sybil on occasions when he had been out of Ankh-Morpork, but generally he'd got more pressing things on his mind; such as who was trying to kill him and how to avoid them. Or how to stop two armies from fighting each other.

But now, even though there was plenty to worry about here, his chief concern was for his family. The nagging anxiety that lurked mostly in the pit of his stomach was mostly to do with how much of his son's 'firsts' he was going to miss. How old were babies when they first smiled? He'd heard six weeks. He hadn't got a clue as to when Sam's first tooth might arrive. Just how long was he going to be stuck here, living off his wits and Rincewind's guidance? How big would Sam be when his father next got to see him? Would he ever get to see him again?

Vimes shut the case with a snap and tried to repress that thought. He tucked the case away again, close to his heart and exhaled slowly. Sleep, he decided; he'd feel better for some sleep. He kicked out the fire and crawled back inside the cave, to slumber.