… and in the gloom the locomotive spat live steam, instantly filling the air with a pink fog …

The dwarf waited, unable to move, and a sombre voice said, PLEASE DO NOT PANIC. YOU ARE MERELY DEAD.

The vandal stared at the skeletal figure, managed to get himself in order and said to Death, ‘Oh … I don’t regret it, you know. I was doing the work of Tak, who will now welcome me into paradise with open arms!’

For a person who didn’t have a larynx Death made a good try at clearing his throat. WELL, YOU CAN HOPE, BUT CONSIDERING WHAT YOU INTENDED, IF I WERE YOU I WOULD START HOPING HARDER RIGHT NOW AND, PERHAPS, VERY QUICKLY INDEED. Death continued, in tones as dry as granite, TAK MIGHT INDEED BE GENTLE. STRIVE AS YOU HAVE NEVER STRIVEN. YES, TAK MIGHT BE GENTLE, OR …

The vandal listened to the sound of silence, the sound like a bell with, alas, no clapper, but finally the dreadful silence ended in … NOT.

Iron Girder had screamed the shrill whistling scream of a lady in distress that had cut through the air like a knife, and by the time Corporal Nobby Nobbs and Sergeant Colon reached the shed, running extremely carefully and precisely,[49] all they found besides Iron Girder was some warm dampness, vaguely pink, a tool roll and a few fragments of bone.

‘It looks like the locomotive fought back!’ said Nobby. ‘I know what this is, sarge. It’s eldritch – uncanny, you could say.’

Fred Colon stepped forward and said, ‘It don’t look oblong to me, Nobby. Look at this crowbar and tool roll … You can’t tell me that the engine lies awake at night like an old biddy keeping a poker beside her bed to fight off burglars. I reckon she was being coy. Live steam! It’s a good job me and you were able to scare away all the other assailants!’

‘And they was very heavily armed,’ said Nobby, speaking very deliberately, to make things absolutely clear, ‘but they didn’t have the spunk to face us, that’s what it was.’

Water was dripping from the stout girders high up in the shed. Colon looked around and said, ‘Hey, Nobby, what’s that white thing up there embedded in the roof?’

Nobby squinted and said, ‘Er, it looks like half a skull if you want my opinion, sarge, and it’s still steaming.’

In the distance were sounds of thudding feet as the golem guards came at speed and quickly spread out.

Nobby raised his voice and said, ‘We’d better tell them that the others’ll be ten mile away by now, sarge, at the speed they were going, and I think old Vimesy might give us a day off in lieu for this night’s work.’

‘But look,’ said Colon. ‘We’ve been patrolling past that locomotive time and time again and nothing has happened to us.’