Discworld 39 - Snuff

by Terry Pratchett

  He looked at the brass knuckles. They hadn’t even bent: good old Ankh-Morpork know-how. The country may have the muscle but the city has got the technology, he thought, as he slipped them back in his pocket.

  “Okay, Mr. Feeney, let’s get them in, shall we? Find Stinky, he’s the brains of the outfit.”

  Possibly Stinky was the brains of the outfit. Even at the end Vimes was never certain just what Stinky was. But the goblins, spurred by his crunchy chattering, ran and leapt like ugly gazelles past Vimes and into the boat. He took one look at the growling death behind them, made the last jump into the boat and helped Feeney shut and bolt the doors. And that meant that now, with the ventilation gone, the bulls in the basement were getting nostrils full of goblin. It wasn’t, Vimes thought, all that bad when you got used to it—more alchemical than midden—but down below there was a lot of shouting and a jerk as the beasts tried to stampede inside their treadmill.

  Vimes ignored it, despite the shuddering of the boat, and shouted, “Let go of the barges, chief constable! I hope you really do know how!”

  Feeney nodded and opened the hatch in the floor. Spray blew in and stopped when he knelt down and stuck his hand into the hole.

  “Takes quite a few turns before they drop, commander. If I was you I’d be holding on to something when the iron ore goes!”

  Vimes elbowed his way through the terrified goblins, pulled himself with care up into the wheelhouse again, and tapped Gastric on the shoulder. “We’re dropping the barges any minute!” The pilot, still clinging to the wheel and squinting into the dark, gave a brief nod; nothing less than a scream would be heard in the wheelhouse now. The wind and debris had smashed every window.

  Vimes looked out of the rear window and saw the great, floating, flying desolation of lightning-laced wood, mud and tumbling rock closing in. For a moment he thought he saw a naked marble lady tumbling with the debris and clutching her marble shift as if defending the remains of her modesty from the deluge. He blinked and she was gone … Perhaps he’d imagined it … He shouted, “I hope you can swim, sir?” just as the damn slam caught up and the apparition called Stratford dived through the window and was fielded neatly by Vimes, to Stratford’s great surprise.

  “Do you think I’m a baby, Mr. Stratford? Do you think that I don’t think?”

  Stratford squirmed out of Vimes’s grip, spun neatly and threw a punch which Vimes very nearly dodged. It was harder than he had expected, and, to give a devil his due, Stratford knew how to defend and, perish the thought, was younger than Vimes, much younger. Yes, you could tell the eyes of a murderer, at least after they had done more than three or so and got away with it. Their eyes held the expression some gods probably had. But a killer in the process of trying to kill was always absorbed, constantly calculating, drawing upon some hideous strength. If you cut their leg off they wouldn’t notice until they fell over. Tricks didn’t work, and the floor was slippery with the debris of half a forest. As they kicked and punched their way back and forth across the wheelhouse deck, Stratford was winning. When had Vimes last eaten, or had a decent drink of water, or slept properly?

  And then from below was the cry “Barges away!” And the Wonderful Fanny bucked like a thoroughbred, throwing both of the fighters to the floor, where Vimes barely had room to kick and fend off blows. Water poured over them, filling the cabin to waist level, reducing Vimes’s stamina to almost nothing. Stratford had his hands around his throat, and Vimes’s world turned dark blue and full of chuckling water, banging against his ears. He tried to think of Young Sam and Sybil, but the water kept washing them away … except that the pressure was suddenly gone, and his body, deciding that his brain had at last gone on holiday, flailed upward.

  And there was Stratford, kneeling in water that was falling away very fast, a matter probably of no concern to him now since he was holding his head and screaming, owing to the fact that suddenly there was Stinky, spreadeagled on Stratford’s head, reaching down and kicking and scratching anything that could be kicked off, scratched or, to one lengthy scream, pulled.

  His Grace the Duke of Ankh, assisted by Sir Samuel Vimes, with the help of Commander Vimes, got to his feet, with the last-minute assistance of Blackboard Monitor Vimes, and all of them coalesced into one man as he leapt across the shaking deck just too late to stop Stratford pulling Stinky—and a certain amount of hair—off his head, and throwing him to the streaming deck and stamping on him heavily. There was no mistaking it. He’d heard the crack of bones even while airborne, and so what hit Stratford was the full force of the law, and its rage.

  The street is old and cunning; but the street is always willing to learn and that is why Vimes, in mid air, felt his legs unfold and the full majesty of the law hit Stratford with the traditionally unstoppable One Man He Up Down Very Sorry. Even Vimes was surprised and wondered if he would be able to do it again.

  “We’re on the wave!” Gastric shouted. “We’re on it, not under it! We’re surfing all the way to Quirm, commander! There’s light ahead! Glory be!”

  Vimes grunted as he wrapped the last of the rope from his pocket around the stunned Stratford, tying him tightly to a stanchion. “Sink or swim, you’re going to pay, Mr. Stratford, from heaven, hell or high water, I don’t care which.”

  And then there was a creaking and a bellowing as the frantic oxen redoubled their attempts to escape the stench of the goblins immediately behind them, a surge skyward and while it would be most poetic to say that the waters were on the face of the earth, in truth they were mostly on the face of Samuel Vimes.

  Vimes woke in damp and utter darkness with sand under his cheek. Some parts of his body reported for duty, others protested that they had a note from their mother. After a while little insistent clues evolved: there was the sound of surf, the chatter of people and, for some reason, what sounded like the trumpeting of an elephant.

  At this point something stuck a finger in one of his nostrils and pulled hard. “Upsee-daisy, Mr. Po-leess-maan, otherwise you biggest pancake I ever seen! Upsee-daisy! Save Goblins! Big hero! Hurrah! Everybody get clap!”

  It was a familiar voice, but it couldn’t have been Stinky, because Vimes had seen the little goblin completely crushed. But Vimes tried to pull himself up anyway and this was almost impossible because of the stinking fishy-smelling debris that covered him like a shroud. He couldn’t bring his arm around to swat whatever blasted thing it was that was still tugging at his nostril, but he did manage to at least raise himself enough to realize that there was a lot of debris on top of him.

  He could make out what seemed like the thump of an elephant’s footfall, and in his state of comfortable hallucination wondered idly what an elephant was doing at the seaside, and how much care said elephant would take to avoid just another load of flotsam. This thought crystallized just as the tugging at his nose stopped and the cracked voice shouted, “Rise and shine, Mr. Vimes, ’cos here come Jumbo!”

  Vimes managed the champion press-up of all time and sprang clear, dripping driftwood and barnacles, just as a foot the size of a dustbin thumped down where his head had been.

  “Hooray, no flattery for Mr. Vimes!”

  Vimes looked down and saw, about half an inch from the family-sized toenail of the elephant, who incidentally now wore an expression of some embarrassment, the figure of Stinky bouncing up and down excitedly on the tip of its trunk. Other people had spotted Vimes too, and were hurrying toward him, and it was with a terrifying relief that he spotted the distinctive helmets of the Quirm City Watch, which he had always thought were far too fussy and militaristic for proper coppers, but now viewed as shining beacons of sanity.

  An officer with a captain’s helmet said, “Commander? Are you all right? Everyone thought you’d been washed away!”

  Vimes tried to brush mud and sand off his torn shirt and managed to say, “Well, the lads back in Ankh-Morpork gave me a bucket and spa
de for my holiday, so I thought I ought to try it out. Never mind about me, what about the Fanny? What about the people?”

  “All fine, sir, as far as we can tell. A few bangs and bruises, of course. It was amazing, sir, the men who look after the elephants at Quirm Zoo saw it happen! They take the creatures down to the surf in the morning to have a wash and a bit of a play before the crowds come along, and one said he saw the Fanny go right over the top of the dock on the crest of the wave, sir, and it sort of settled down on the beach. I had a look inside, and I’d say she’ll need a month or so in the boat yard, and the paddle wheels are smashed to blazes, but it’ll be the talk of the river for years!”

  By now an apologetic zookeeper was steering his charge away from Vimes, allowing him to see a beach covered in damp rubbish and, he was surprisingly pleased to note, quite a large number of chickens, scratching busily for worms. One of them, totally oblivious to Vimes, scratched at some seaweed for a moment, hunkered down with a cross-eyed expression, gurgled once or twice and then stood up, looking rather relieved. He saw that it had left an egg on the sand. At least he supposed it to be an egg. It was square. He picked it up and looked down at the chickens, and in his half-hallucinating state said, “Well, that definitely looks complicated to me.”

  Out on the surf the two oxen were standing nearly neck deep in the water, and perhaps it was only his imagination that led Vimes to believe that the water around them was steaming.

  And now more people were running and chickens were running away, and there was even Ten Gallons, and Mrs. Sillitoe with her daughter, looking damp, and with blankets around them, but most importantly not looking dead. Vimes, who had been holding his breath for too long, breathed out. He breathed out even further when Ten Gallons slapped him on the back, and Mrs. Sillitoe gave him a kiss. “What about Gastric?” he said, “And where’s Feeney?”

  Mrs. Sillitoe smiled. “They’re fine, Commander Vimes, as far we can tell. They’re a bit battered, but sleeping it off. No long-term problems according to the medic. I’m sure they’ll be fine, thanks to you!”

  She stood back as a Quirmian officer handed Vimes a mug of coffee. It had sand in it, but never had sandy coffee tasted better. “All sorted out very well, you might say, sir. We even made sure those damn goblins caught their boat!”

  Never in the field of coffee-making had so much of the stuff been sprayed so far and over so many. Vimes stared beyond the surf where, in the distance, a ship had left the port and was making good sail. He said, “Fetch me Acting Captain Haddock right now!”

  Acting Captain Haddock arrived at a run six minutes later and Vimes couldn’t help noticing that he had a bit of breakfast around the edge of his mouth. “Our relationship with Commandant Fournier is cordial at the moment, is it not?” said Vimes.

  Haddock grinned widely. “Commander, when he gets down here you may have to try hard to stop him kissing you on both cheeks. Mrs. Sillitoe is his daughter.”

  “Was happy to be of assistance,” said Vimes, looking around absently, “and so would you tell these gentlemen that I want a fast boat, one fast enough to catch that ship, and a decent squad of men to crew it, and I want them now, and while I’m waiting I’d like someone to get me a clean shirt and a bacon sandwich … without avec.”

  “They have a pretty swift cutter, commander, for chasing smugglers!”

  “Good, and get me a cutlass. I’ve always wanted to try one.” Vimes thought for a moment and added, “And make that another two bacon sandwiches. And a lot more coffee. And make that one more bacon sandwich. And, Haddock, if you can scavenge a bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s very famous old brown sauce, I swear I’ll make you a full sergeant when your term here is up, ’cos any man who can find a proper down-and-dirty Ankh-Morpork sauce in Quirm, home of five hundred bloody types of mayonnaise, without getting his eye full of spit deserves to be a sergeant in anybody’s force!”

  And then, as whatever had been holding Sam Vimes up drained away, he fell gently backward, dreaming of bacon sandwiches and brown sauce.

  Even Constable Haddock or, as he was now, Acting Captain Haddock, would agree that he was not the sharpest knife in the box, but it was amazing, the things you could open with a blunt instrument. As he hurried away on this prestigious errand he was stopped by one of the Quirm officers, who said, “Hareng!* Have you heard of a watchman called Petit Fou Artour?”

  “Wee Mad Arthur? Yes, he’s one of our lads!”

  “Well, you had better come quickly, my friend, because he is in our Watch House. Strong little fellow, isn’t he? A few of the other officers had laughed at him, he said, but I believe that they have learned the error of their ways—the hard way, as it happened. Apparently he has been sent to find Commandant Vimes.”

  Sam Vimes awoke from a pig’s nightmare to find himself lying on a pile of sacks in a godown in the docks. He was carefully lifted to his feet by Acting Constable Haddock and led unsteadily to a crude table behind which was a chef presiding over the sizzling makings of a bacon sandwich, or rather several bacon sandwiches. “He screamed a bit,” said Haddock, “when I insisted on no mayonnaise, but right now you can do no wrong here, commander. And I have one unopened bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s finest, sir, the only one in the city. I’m afraid, however, that you’ll have to eat on the go, but the chef is packing the sandwiches in a hamper, with hot charcoal to keep them warm. No time to hang about, sir. The cutter will leave the dock in ten minutes.”

  A notebook was pushed under Vimes’s nose. “What’s this?”

  “Your signature to my promotion to full sergeant, commander,” said Haddock carefully. “I hope you don’t mind, but you did promise.”

  “Good man,” said Vimes. “Always write things down.”

  Haddock looked proud. “I’ve also arranged to have on board a selection of cutlasses for your perusal, commander.”

  Vimes struggled into his new shirt, and as his head appeared he said, “I want you to come too, Kipper. You know your way around here better than me. By the way, what did you do with the prisoner?”

  Haddock said, “What prisoner would that be, commander?”

  And for a moment Vimes’s blood froze. “You didn’t find a man tied up anywhere on the Fanny?”

  Now Haddock looked worried. “No, sir, no one by the time we got there. The place was a mess, sir. Sorry, sir, we didn’t know!”

  “No reason why you should’ve done. Sorry to shout, but if the Quirm police think the sun is shining out of my arse then tell them they should be looking for a youngish-looking individual known as Stratford. He’s a double murderer, at least … vicious and by now certainly armed. Tell them they’ll be doing everybody a favor if they keep guard on the boat, on the walking wounded and all the lads in your infirmary, and also they should send a clacks to Pseudopolis Yard right now to say that Commander Vimes requires that two members of the Watch should hasten via golem horse to Ramkin Hall to keep guard over Lady Sybil and Young Sam. I don’t want them to hang about: I know those things are bad news to ride, but Stratford is a nut job—they must hurry!”

  “Excuse me, commander,” said one of the Quirm officers, “we all speak pretty good Morporkian here. Everybody here speaks Morporkian. If you hear us speaking Quirmian it’s because we want to talk about you behind your back. We salute you, Commander Vimes, we will send your clacks and search everywhere for your murderer and take great care of the wounded. Now, please hurry down to the dock. The Queen of Quirm is pretty ancient, only one step away from being a hulk. Our cutter should catch up with it in a few hours. Shall we go?”

  Come on, sir,” said Haddock, “and Wee Mad Arthur will brief you on the way.”

  “Wee Mad Arthur!”

  “Yes, commander. Apparently he got sent to foreign parts to do with this goblin business, flew back to Ankh-Morpork and then got sent straight here to you. He’s got a story to tell you and n
o mistake.”

  “Where is he?” said Vimes.

  “They should be releasing him from custody right now, sir. A laughable misunderstanding, no real harm done, all will be forgiven and all will probably heal, I’m sure.”

  Vimes was wise enough to leave it at that.

  Of course, the seasickness didn’t help, but that didn’t begin to cut in until afterward, when Wee Mad Arthur had finished his breathless account. “And what did you find in the huts?” said Vimes.

  “More goblins, sir, all shapes and sizes, little ones too. Most of them dead, the rest in a very bad way, in my opinion. I did what I could for them, such as it was. To tell ye the truth, sir, I think they were bewildered about everything, the poor wee devils, but there’s grub and water there of a sort and I don’t reckon those guards are going to move in a hurry, ye ken.” He made a face and added, “Really weird, those goblins. I let them out and they just milled around, not knowing what the hell to do. I mean, crivens, if it were me I’d be out of there like a shot and give those scunners a right good kicking in the fork while they was lying down. As for the men, well, I kenned this was urgent and I could always fly back tomorrow and pour some water on them at least, but I thought the Watch should know and so made haste back to Ankh-Morpork and they told me where you’d gone on holiday, and Lady Sybil said you’d gone down that mucky old river, so all I had to do was fly down until I got to Quirm and when I found a big awful terrible mess I kenned that was something to do with you, commander.”

  Wee Mad Arthur hesitated. He was never quite sure what Vimes thought of him, given that the man considered Feegles in general a nuisance. When Vimes was slow to reply, he asked, “I hope I did what ye would have done, commander?”