‘Trolls going one way, dwarfs going the other?’ said Carrot.
‘Now there’s a parade you don’t want to miss,’ said Nobby.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Angua.
Carrot waved his hands vaguely in the air. ‘Oh, dear. It’s going to be dreadful. We must do something.’
‘Dwarfs and trolls get along like a house on fire,’ said Nobby. ‘Ever been in a burning house, miss?’
Sergeant Colon’s normally red face had gone pale pink. He buckled on his sword belt and picked up his truncheon.
‘Remember,’ he said, ‘let’s be careful out there.’{9}
‘Yeah,’ said Nobby, ‘let’s be careful to stay in here.’
To understand why dwarfs and trolls don’t like each other you have to go back a long way.
They get along like chalk and cheese. Very like chalk and cheese, really. One is organic, the other isn’t, and also smells a bit cheesy. Dwarfs make a living by smashing up rocks with valuable minerals in them and the silicon-based lifeform known as trolls are, basically, rocks with valuable minerals in them. In the wild they also spend most of the daylight hours dormant, and that’s not a situation a rock containing valuable minerals needs to be in when there are dwarfs around. And dwarfs hate trolls because, after you’ve just found an interesting seam of valuable minerals, you don’t like rocks that suddenly stand up and tear your arm off because you’ve just stuck a pick-axe in their ear.
It was a state of permanent inter-species vendetta and, like all good vendettas, didn’t really need a reason any more. It was enough that it had always existed[5]. Dwarfs hated trolls because trolls hated dwarfs, and vice versa.
The Watch lurked in Three Lamps Alley, which was about halfway down Short Street. There was a distant crackle of fireworks. Dwarfs let them off to drive away evil mine spirits. Trolls let them off because they tasted nice.
‘Don’t see why we can’t let ’em fight it out amongst themselves and then arrest the losers,’ said Corporal Nobbs. ‘That’s what we always used to do.’
‘The Patrician gets really shirty about ethnic trouble,’ said Sergeant Colon moodily. ‘He gets really sarcastic about it.’
A thought struck him. He brightened up a little bit.
‘Got any ideas, Carrot?’ he said.
A second thought struck him. Carrot was a simple lad.
‘Corporal Carrot?’
‘Sarge?’
‘Sort this lot out, will you?’
Carrot peered around the corner at the advancing walls of trolls and dwarfs. They’d already seen each other.
‘Right you are, sergeant,’ he said. ‘Lance-Constables Cuddy and Detritus — don’t salute! — you come with me.’
‘You can’t let him go out there!’ said Angua. ‘It’s certain death!’
‘Got a real sense o’duty, that boy,’ said Corporal Nobbs. He took a minute length of dog-end from behind his ear and struck a match on the sole of his boot.
‘Don’t worry, miss,’ said Colon. ‘He—’
‘Lance-Constable,’ said Angua.
‘What?’
‘Lance-Constable,’ she repeated. ‘Not miss. Carrot says I don’t have any sex while I’m on duty.’
To the background of Nobby’s frantic coughing, Colon said, very quickly, ‘What I mean is, lance-constable, young Carrot’s got krisma. Bags of krisma.’
‘Krisma?’
‘Bags of it.’
The jolting had stopped. Chubby was really annoyed now. Really, really annoyed.
There was a rustling noise. A piece of sacking moved aside and there, staring at Chubby, was another male dragon.
It looked annoyed.
Chubby reacted in the only way he knew how.
Carrot stood in the middle of the street, arms folded, while the two new recruits stood just behind him, trying to keep an eye on both approaching marches at the same time.
Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was.
Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.
Carrot was not stupid. He was direct, and honest, and good-natured and honourable in all his dealings. In Ankh-Morpork this would normally have added up to ‘stupid’ in any case and would have given him the survival quotient of a jellyfish in a blast furnace, but there were a couple of other factors. One was a punch that even trolls had learned to respect. The other was that Carrot was genuinely, almost supernaturally, likeable. He got on well with people, even while arresting them. He had an exceptional memory for names.
For most of his young life he’d lived in a small dwarf colony where there were hardly any other people to know. Then, suddenly, he was in a huge city, and it was as if a talent had been waiting to unfold. And was still unfolding.
He waved cheerfully at the approaching dwarfs. ‘’Morning Mr Cumblethigh! ’Morning, Mr Stronginthearm!’
Then he turned and waved at the leading troll. There was a muffled ‘pop’ as a firework went off.
‘’Morning, Mr Bauxite!’{10}
He cupped his hands.
‘If you could all just stop and listen to me—’ he bellowed.
The two marches did stop, with some hesitation and a general piling up of the people in the back. It was that or walk over Carrot.
If Carrot did have a minor fault, it lay in not paying attention to small details around him when his mind was on other things. So the whispered conversation behind his back was currently escaping him.
‘—hah! It was too an ambush! And your mother was an ore—’
‘Now then, gentlemen,’ said Carrot, in a reasoned and amiable voice, ‘I’m sure there’s no need for this belligerent manner—’
‘—you ambush us too! my great-great-grandfather he at Koom Valley, he tell me!’
‘—in our fair city on such a lovely day. I must ask you as good citizens of Ankh-Morpork—’
‘—yeah? you even know who your father is, do you?’
‘—that, while you must certainly celebrate your proud ethnic folkways, to profit by the example of my fellow officers here, who have sunk their ancient differences—’
‘—I smash you head, you roguesome dwarfs!’
‘—for the greater benefit of—’
‘—I could take you with one hand tied behind my back!’
‘—the city, whose badge they are—’
‘—you get opportunity! I tie BOTH hands behind your back!’
‘—proud and privileged to wear.’
‘Aargh!’
‘Ooow!’
It dawned on Carrot that hardly anyone was paying any attention to him. He turned.
Lance-Constable Cuddy was upside down, because Lance-Constable Detritus was trying to bounce him on the cobbles by his helmet, although Lance-Constable Cuddy was putting the position to good effect by gripping Lance-Constable Detritus around the knee and trying to sink his teeth into Lance-Constable Detritus’ ankle.
The opposing marchers watched in fascination. ‘We should do something!’ said Angua, from the guards’ hiding place in the alley.
‘Weeell,’ said Sergeant Colon, slowly, ‘it’s always very tricky, ethnic.’
‘Can put a foot wrong very easily,’ said Nobby. ‘Very thin-skinned, your basic ethnic.’
‘Thin-skinned? They’re trying to kill one another!’
‘It’s cultural,’ said Sergeant Colon, miserably. ‘No sense us tryin’ to force our culture on ’em, is there? That’s speciesist.’
Out in the street, Corporal Carrot had gone very red in the face.
5
The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.