Terry Pratchett - Snuff

They jumped together on to the last barge and found a hatch that was locked. However, a crowbar is a universal pass key. And there, under the hatch, were goblins, tied hand and foot, every one, and they had been stacked like cabbages. There were hundreds of them. Overwhelmed, Vimes looked around for Stinky, who turned out to be behind him.

‘Okay, my friend, over to you. We’ll cut them loose, certainly, but I wouldn’t mind a bit of reassurance that I won’t suddenly have a load of angry goblins twisting my head backwards and forwards to see which way would take it off, understand?’

Stinky, already as skinny as a skeleton, looked even thinner when he shrugged. He pointed at the groaning heaps. ‘Too sore, too stiff, too hungry, too …’ Stinky looked closely at a goblin at the bottom of a pile and touched a flaccid hand, ‘too dead to chase anyone, Mister Po-leess-maan. Hah! But later, give food, give water and they chase. Oh, they chase like the buggery, you bet! Once I talk to them, oh you bet! But I will say to them, po-leess-maan, him big arsehole, okay, but kind arsehole. I will say to them, you whack him, I whack you on account that I po-leess-maan now. Special po-leess-maan Stinky!’

Vimes considered that was the best valedictory he could expect in the circumstances. Just then Feeney managed to lever the lid off a large drum, one of several rolling around on the deck. Immediately the terrible stench in the barge doubled in intensity, and he backed away with his hands over his mouth. Stinky, on the other hand, sniffed approvingly. ‘Hot damn! Turkey gizzards! Food of the gods! Bastard murder voyage, but okay catering.’

Vimes stared at him. Well, okay, he thought, he hangs around near humans so he picks up a vocabulary, but maybe that is suspiciously clever. Perhaps Miss Beedle gave him language lessons? Or maybe he’s just some occult adventurer from hell knows where having fun at the expense of a hardworking copper. Not for the first time.

Feeney was already cutting ropes, and Vimes tried to resurrect as many goblins as he could in a hurry. It was no errand for anyone with a concern for hygiene or even a notion of what the word meant — though after an hour in a storm on Old Treachery, it had no meaning anyway. They staggered up, and fell down again, found their way to the upended barrel of dead turkey bits and stumbled over slippery decks to a sloshing and now half-empty water trough that Feeney had found and was filling by the simple expedient of sticking a bucket over the side. They were coming back to life; mostly they were coming back to life.

The barge bounced off a bank again, and amid tumbling goblins Vimes grabbed for a handhold. Half the entire barge was full of barrels which, if you sniffed anywhere near them, were certainly not full of sweet roses. He braved the rocking deck again and said, ‘I don’t think all this is for a little voyage to the seaside, do you? There’s more barrels of stinking turkey entrails than this lot of poor devils could possibly get through in a week! Someone was expecting a long journey! Good grief!’

The barge had smacked into something and, by the sound of breaking glass, that something had been smashed. Feeney stood up, holding on to a rope, and, wiping turkey gizzard off his coat, said, ‘Voyage, sir. Not journey, sir. You wouldn’t need all this stuff if you’re travelling on land. I reckon they’re bound for somewhere a long way away.’

‘Do you think it’ll be a holiday of sun, sea, surf and fun?’ said Vimes.

‘No, sir,’ said Feeney, ‘and they wouldn’t like it if it was, would they? Goblins like the dark.’

Vimes slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Okay, Chief Constable Upshot, don’t hit somebody who surrenders and, if a man drops his weapon, be a little bit wary of him until you’re certain he hasn’t got another one tucked away somewhere, right? If in doubt, knock ’em out. And you know how to do that: use the old Bang Suck Cling Buck on them, eh?’

‘Yes, sir, that’s a recipe for shoe polish, sir, but I’ll bear it in mind.’

Vimes turned to Stinky, who already looked slightly fatter than usual. ‘Stinky, I don’t have the faintest idea what is going to happen next. I can see your chums are starting to look alive, and so you’ve got the chance that we all get, sink or swim, and I can’t say better than that. Come on, let’s go, Feeney.’

This close, the Wonderful Fanny was now a rolling, creaking mess, half covered by flying weeds and sticks. Apart from the storm and the clanging and creaking of the mechanisms, it was silent.

‘Okay,’ said Feeney quietly, ‘we’d better go in by the cattle door at the stern, sir, or as you would say, “the back”. It won’t be a difficult jump, there’s lots of handholds because the loadmaster has to come out here to see to the barges. Can you see that double door and the little wicket gate? We go in that way. There’ll likely be more cargo along the cattle ramp, because a loadmaster never wastes floor space, and then we go midships …’

‘That is to say “the middle of the ship”?’ said Vimes.

Feeney smiled. ‘Yes, sir, and watch out because it’s a mass of machinery. You’ll see what I mean, because you’re smart. Take the wrong step and you could fall into a gear or on top of an ox, never a happy occasion. It’s noisy, smelly and dangerous, so if there are many bandits on this boat I wouldn’t expect to find them there.’

I would, Vimes thought; our Mr Stratford is the kind of maniac who would want to keep going in suicidal circumstances. Why? So that the cargo is a long way away before anyone knows about it? And Stratford works for Lord Rust and the Rusts believe the world belongs to them. We’re taking goblins somewhere, but they want to keep them alive — why?

The shock of another collision brought him back to the dreadful here and now, and he said, ‘I’d expect to find any crew here being watched like hawks in case they put a spanner in the works.’

‘Oh, very smart, sir, very smart indeed. There has to be some light in there for safety’s sake, but not much and all behind glass ’cos of …’

Feeney hesitated, so Vimes suggested, ‘Fire, perhaps? I’ve never known an engineer who doesn’t shove grease wherever he can.’

‘Oh, it’s not exactly the grease, sir, it’s the beasts. The gas does build up, so it does! And if the glass breaks, well, it’s regrettably spectacular. Two years ago the Glorious Peggy was blown out of the water for just such a reason!’

‘Do they eat the Hang Suck Butt Dog with turnips around here?’

‘No, sir, not as far as I know, but Bhangbhangduc fusion cookery is very popular on the boats, it’s true. Anyway, further on you’ll find the pilot’s cabin, the sleeping quarters and then the wheelhouse, which has very wide windows, which is another good reason to attack from behind.’

Refreshingly, it was a short leap with a good handhold at the end of it. Vimes had no worries about being heard. The deck creaked under his feet as he crept inside the Wonderful Fanny and sidled towards the middle of the ship, or whatever the hell the real term for it was, but then she creaked everywhere, and all the time, and groaned, too. The boat was so noisy that a sudden patch of silence might have drawn attention to itself. And I’m looking for somebody who looks like everybody else, he thought, right up until he looks like the vicious killer he is. Well, that seems straightforward.

Vimes was vaguely aware of huge wheels spinning frantically off to either side and chains travelling overhead and now, here, at the top of the flight of stairs, was somebody who clearly wasn’t where they should have been …

It was a woman, with a small girl clinging to her dress. They had been loosely tied to a creaking beam, and a small oil lamp overhead held them in the centre of its circle of light. And this was probably because there was a man sitting a little way away from them on a stool, with a crossbow lying on his lap.