Moist hadn’t noticed Nobby and Colon in the mêlée but decided that he would not be surprised to hear that they had acquitted themselves with great derring-do and, of course, it was such a pity that it would turn out everyone else had been too busy to see them doing it. Even so, looking around the few groaning grags still on the train, Moist acknowledged that Nobby and Colon, if given no alternative, could fight like tigers, especially tigers with the nasty weaponry of the streets where anything went and wherever it went it could be very, very painful. Colon, in particular, was master of the underhand, and some of the groaning was familiar to Moist as the famous Ankh-Morpork lullaby.

Moist never thought of himself as a leader of men, so he delegated in circumstances such as these. The chore of marshalling went to Fred Colon, known to all for his excellent shouty voice that turned his face an unusual shade of puce and was expelled at a volume that even Iron Girder would have envied.

Such grags as were alive or weren’t definitely dead were trussed up before being taken to the guard’s van, where, Moist suspected, Commander Vimes would have a little talk with them about this and that and names and places and who and when and what dreadful manners they had. Lovely.

And now a figure leaned out of the armoured carriage. It was Aeron.

‘The King is safe! Thank you all! Iron Girder came in for a hammering but the grags that managed to get on to the footplate were shown the furnace by Stoker Blake.’ Moist winced at that. He had been close to the furnace a great many times when it had been opened by the stoker and it was instant suntan time, but if you were standing in the wrong place at the critical moment it was instant fiery death.

The journey onward, with the couplings once more in place, was altogether a sombre ride, for the victors as well as for the surviving dwarfs awaiting their dreaded conversation with the Blackboard Monitor who, it was believed, could cause you and your family never to have existed. Rubbed away, as it were, in the chalk dust of the blackboard.

A little later Iron Girder gently kissed the buffers at the Bonk rail-head, and the first person to step down on to the hastily erected platform was Rhys Rhysson. He was greeted by a very large and extremely agitated rotund man, who had the word ‘burgomaster’ stamped firmly into his demeanour. He was sweating cobs and a fat man can sweat just as much as an engine. He genuflected to the King, an achievement considering his shape which was, not to put too fine a point on it, a globe.

‘Welcome back, sire,’ he said, panting. ‘The humans of Bonk have always had a good relationship with your countrymen and I sincerely hope that this amicable arrangement is going to continue.’

This invitation was uttered at a very high speed and Moist saw it for what it was: a plea saying, please don’t hurt us, we are fairly decent people and have always accepted your highness’s claim to the Scone of Stone. The unsaid codicil being, please don’t hurt us and above all, don’t interfere with the running of our mercantile activities. Please. Please?