He took the packages and scanned the flimsies with the speed of a dwarf who had learned to assimilate the written word quickly. And he spoke with interest to the young goblin, a caste he had hitherto dismissed as a waste of space at best and a nuisance otherwise, but they seemed to be more level-headed than most of his fellow dwarfs, especially that fool Ardent, and it was amazing how they could get about in the darkness of Schmaltzberg and make use of every rat hole before making use of the rat.

And this one waited patiently while Albrecht sorted out some flimsies of his own to go back to the locomotive. And then the old dwarf did something else that surprised him.

He said: ‘What’s your name, young goblin? And may I beg your pardon for not enquiring earlier? Please forgive an old dwarf who hasn’t kept up with the times.’

The goblin looked stunned and said, ‘Well, guv, if it don’t hurt anything, I am The Rattle of the Wheels. Railwaymen friends is calling me Rat for short name. That makes oldies very annoy.’

Albrecht held out a hand. The Rattle of the Wheels stepped back and then came forward sheepishly.

‘Nice to meet you, Rattle of the Wheels. Have you any family?’

‘Yes, your worship. My mother is Of the Happiness the Heart, father is Of the Sky the Rim and small brother is Of the Water the Crane.’

And after a moment the goblin said, ‘Actually, sir, you can stop holding my hand.’

‘Oh, yes. I suppose that my name should be Of the Moment the Stupefied. Good luck to you and your family. You know, in a way I’m jealous of you. And now I’ve finished my work for the day I’d like you to take my paperwork, such as it is, and hide it somewhere around here where no dwarf is going to look.’

‘We cleans toilets, sir. Knows plenty-many places that not visited. Same time tomorrow?’

The handshake fulfilled, the goblin disappeared into a hole that even a rat might find difficult to get into. And as the sounds of the goblin scrabbling through the hole faded away, Albrecht thought, I would never have done that before. What a fool I was.

Miss Gwendolyn Avery of Schmarm awoke in the middle of the night to the shaking and rattle of the multiple bottles of age-defying unguents on her dresser. And then she realized that the whole house was shaking to a rhythmic thudding.

When she described this episode in dramatic tones to her friend Daphne the following morning, she said that it was like the sound of a lot of men marching past. She put it down to the cherry brandy she had had before going to bed whilst Daphne, knowing Gwendolyn’s regrettable spinster status, put it down to wishful thinking.

The Slake ranges were half tundra, half desert, mostly windswept. In short, a fossil of a landscape where nothing generally grew but stumbleweed,^[76] and the occasional gregarious pine, the nuts of which were said to be an antidote to melancholy.