To Moist’s amazement, Dick suddenly ripped out at him like a lion. He could almost hear the growl.

‘Who are you to talk, Mister Moist? What have you made, built, fretted over? I see none of your fingernails are torn and you can talk well in a fancy way, but what is it you’ve made? What is it you are?’

‘Me, Dick? Well, now I come to look at it I’m the grease that turns the wheels and changes minds and moves the world along. Or you might say that I’m a kind of a cook, but it is a special kind of cookery. It’s a bit like the sliding rule; you just move things about at the right time and you get the answer you need. In short, Dick, I make things happen, and that includes your railway.’

The young man swayed in front of him and Moist’s tone became gentle. ‘And I now see that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You’ve run out of steam, Dick. Look, we’re well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it’s daylight and we’re out of the mountains it’s going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We’re all going to need our wits about us when we get near the Pass. Surely you can take some rest?’

Simnel blinked as if he’d not seen Moist the first time, and said, ‘Yes, you’re right.’

And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man’s speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compartment, put him to bed and noted that the engineer didn’t so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it. And that job done, he went to the guard’s van where Vimes was drinking coffee and carefully going through the paperwork relating to the captive delvers, who in the pinch sang like most canaries.

‘Commander Vimes, can you help me a moment?’

‘Problem, Mister Lipwig?’

‘The lads are working all the time and they seem to think it’s the badge of a man never to go to sleep.’

‘I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night’s rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can.’

‘Very good,’ said Moist. ‘Now look at them here. Still working on the sliding rules and fretting themselves because they’ve spent too much time trying to put one over on the universe.’

‘It seems like that,’ said Vimes, getting up.

Together they wandered along the train forcing the engineers to at least lie down in their bunks or face the wrath of Sir Harry King. And in a few cases Moist suggested Of the Twilight the Darkness should dose them with one of his harmless little potions. Not all of them, of course, in case there was an emergency. You never knew when you might need an engineer.

In his cell Albrecht Albrechtson had had plenty of time to consider Ardent’s tactics. Ardent was a mere stripling youth,^[75] but was already revealed as a manipulative chancer, seeking advancement come what may and by any means he deemed necessary. He wormed his way into everything and in that sentence Albrecht thought the important word was ‘worm’.