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ViME 8: The Mines Are No Place for a Policeman

'Something terrible is happening!' said Legolas. Vimes was never sure if he said it before or after the giant tentacles rose from the dark pool and plunged towards Frodo, knocking the other hobbits flying. If he said it before, that was impressive. If after, it was a bit obvious.

Anyway, Vimes heard the cry and spun round to see what the terrible thing was.

There's a harmonic you learn to recognise with screams. There's the scream of a man who's trapped his fingers in a chest of drawers, the scream of a toddler confronted with bedtime (Vimes winced, remembering those years when even 'Where's My Cow?' had been met with yells of outrage from Young Sam), and then there's the scream of someone in mortal peril. Such as one might scream if, for example, a giant tentacled monstrosity had suddenly seized them by the ankle.

As a policeman, Vimes had honed his ability to distinguish between screams. He knew forty-seven varieties of scream. He knew them all, from the relatively rare, 'there's a wasp up my nostril!' to the much more common, 'drunkenly outmanoeuvred by my own doorstep'.

But you didn't need to be an expert to know this one. This scream was pure fear. 'I'm about to be devoured in graphic detail!' was a scream that even amateurs could recognise. This example was surprisingly loud for such a small hobbit.

Part of Vimes sprung into action immediately, and it cursed at the part of Vimes that was observing the scene detachedly. Watching-Vimes watched Action-Vimes fall on the giant tentacle nearest him.

He was so angry. That was what it was. Fury was driving him, so fear could huddle in the back seat and vomit out the window. Fury was in control. Otherwise Vimes would never have done what he did next.

Maybe it was because he'd been thinking of Young Sam. Maybe he just felt sorry for Frodo, who already looked exhausted (and slightly deranged) from carrying the ring. Maybe he was just grumpy after the snow of Caradhras and lack of decent coffee.

He tried to arrest the creature.

'Assault!' he bellowed. 'Assault, and intent to commit grievous bodily harm if I'm any judge!'

Why? he thought, listening to himself. Why? I was angry enough to bite through the damn thing, and I go and try and arrest it?

He pulled his truncheon out of his sword belt, and then tried to disentangle his handcuffs from his pocket with the same hand. He was dimly aware of the zip of arrows overhead, shouts of pain and challenge, and then a small shape, falling into the arms of Boromir.

'Into the mines!' he heard a voice say, and people were rushing past him. Meanwhile, he was wrestling to get his handcuffs around the slimy tentacle. A huge shape was rising slowly from the pool, injured but still terrible. It opened its maw (and it was definitely a maw. Nothing with that much teeth was a mere mouth).

'Vimes!" Boromir screamed at him. He recognised that scream too. It was a scream he'd screamed himself. It was a scream that said 'Stop being a bloody fool! If you don't come to safety now I'll kill you myself!'

Fair enough, thought Vimes and he wrenched his handcuffs back and ran for it. Frodo was safe, after all. Time to employ the ancient police art of running away.

Boromir grabbed his arm and they ran together through the ancient stone doors. The tentacled thing flailed at them, causing a small rockslide over the entrance of the mines. They would never be able to get out again now.

'Convenient', said Vimes, when his breathing had calmed and his chest was no longer hurting as much. 'Now what?'

'We have no choice, but to face the long dark of Moria.' said Gandalf, with what sounded a little too much like grim satisfaction. Aragorn swore under his breath.

'Does anyone... er... anyone feel that this is a little too inevitable?' Vimes asked. Maybe the Gods of Middle Earth were a bit like the Gods of the Disc: playing games with the lives of mortals and not even bothering to keep to the rulebook. But no-one answered.

Boromir was still beside Vimes. 'I saw what you did, back there,' he said. 'You acted with great courage. I admit I was unsure about you at first, but I now I am proud to fight alongside you: you are a true warrior.'

Oh dear, thought Vimes muzzily. I am brave and stupid after all. He grinned weakly at Boromir.

"I shouldn't have tried to arrest the thing." he said. "It's a creature. It's like arresting the owner of a dangerous dog. The dog itself hasn't got the mens rea."

"I only understood about half of that,' Boromir said. "But didn't you notice how that thing went straight for Frodo? If that thing was sentient, surely it is culpable.'

'Neverthless, I am relieved you did not arrest the thing. Imagine the difficulties in keeping the Watcher in the Water in police custody?" Gandalf broke in, with what looked like a wink, unless his caterpillar-eyebrows were simply spasming.

xxxxxxxx

Drumknott was polishing his favourite pencil sharpener when Vetinari appeared noiselessly in front of him carrying a stack of ancient scrolls.

'Drumknott, I wish you to look up descriptions of a place called 'Moria' in these.'

Drumknott did so. Then he came to report back. If he had not had the emotional range of a damp spoon, he might have been rather distressed.

'My lord, my Elvish is rusty and this is probably foolish nonsense but apparently the place is... dangerous somehow. Cursed.'

'How interesting,' Vetinari said. 'We must keep a close eye on developments.'

xxxxxxxxxx

It was unlike any dwarf mine Vimes had seen.

He expected the doorway to be guarded. At the very least, the huge rockfall over the entrance should have brought dwarves hurrying to the site of damage. They didn't leave their mines unrepaired for long.

There was no neat tunnelling, no mine signs, no duty dwarves taking anxious note of outsiders, no-one taking messages to the mine's king. No sound of devices whirring, no water being pumped, no hammers...

No dwarf would have let goblin bones pile up like that, or let the place get damp and dank. Moisture damaged the stone, they said, and got in the machinery. Worse, the mine felt bad. Vimes could smell rot, and that wasn't right, not in a dwarf mine. They were obsessively clean in their workplaces (even if not in their taverns). There was no sign of neat industry, no carefully-ordered extractions ready to be carted away. Nothing.

But, if Vimes listened hard, he could hear a faint knocking, somewhere deeper under the earth than he cared to imagine.

'Agi Hammerthief,' he muttered under his breath, and Gimli gave him a curious look.

So Vimes knew that there were no dwarves left alive in Moria long before they found the bodies.

xxxx

There was a sticky moment or two along the way. Gandalf forgot where they were going, and tried to cover it up with bluster and proverbs he'd made up on the spot, a trick Vimes recognised from his dealings with the wizards of Unseen University (although Ridcully himself was always refreshingly frank). They also had to leap over a six-foot wide gap in the narrow ledge they were walking along. Vimes, watching Pippin try and summon up enough courage to make the jump, was again unhappy that hobbits had been chosen for this task. Narratively fitting, he thought bitterly, but bloody unfair.

As if he knew what he was thinking, Pippin leapt the gap and turned immediately to grin cheerily at Vimes.

'Nothing I can't handle!'

xxx

Vimes had lost count of the hours they'd been underground when they reached a room with a well in the centre. His policeman's instincts had been working overtime, sniffing the air and preparing for the worst, so he wasn't overly surprised that the stone slab in the centre of the room was the tomb of the leader of the dwarves they'd been hoping to find. At least, Gimli had been hoping. Vimes noticed Gandalf exchange a heavy look with Aragorn: he clearly wasn't the only member of the Fellowship who'd been a little pessimistic about this whole Moria thing.

Decades of policing had made Vimes incredibly observant. Decades of being incredibly observant occasionally made Vimes wish for blissful ignorance.

The corpses were the worst part. Dwarf corpses looked particularly horrible when semi-mummified. It was something about the beards.

He felt awkward watching Gimli grief, again something he'd had to witness repeatedly as a policeman. This was a part of his job he'd never got used to. Gandalf wrested a book from the hands of one skeleton, with a nasty crunching sound that put Vimes off ever eating celery again.

Scrawled on the cover in the dark stain of old blood was a mine-sign Vimes didn't recognise. It looked something like a flame, with something like a whip curving around it. It looked almost like a stylised version of some kind of creature, but he couldn't tell whether it had wings or not.

'Back home,' Vimes said, 'the dwarves draw signs like this as a kind of outlet for whatever's going on in the mine. I've never seen one like this. What does it mean?'

Gimli answered, swallowing hard to get his voice under control.

'This is a very old sign, very old indeed. I've only seen it in old writings, but its meaning was lost in Moria's long dark, long before my time. Perhaps Gandalf knows what it means?'

Gandalf said nothing, but he looked troubled.

Everyone rested on the cold stone floor, setting their blankets down as far from the well as possible. Vimes felt restless, despite his exhaustion. The well was horrible: he wished he could post Carrot or Cheery, someone reliable and used to underground life, to keep an eye on the well. He wished Angua was there, to guide them through the mines with a nose that was untroubled by darkness.

He wished Pippin hadn't just dropped a stone down that damn well.

'Pippin,' sighed Frodo, 'I do wish you hadn't dropped a stone down that well.'

Maybe, thought Vimes, he had more in common with the rest of the Fellowship than he realised.

xxx