Men at Arms tds-15

by Terry Pratchett

  “Right. Yes, you're right. But you're a troll and I'm a dwarf. What do you think would happen if people saw us carrying that along the streets?”

  “Big trouble.”

  “Correct. Come on. Let's follow the footprints back out.”

  “Supposing it gone when we come back?” said Detritus, lumbering to his feet.

  “How? And we're following the tracks out, so if whoever it was who put it there comes back, we'll run straight into them.”

  “Oh, good. I glad you said that.”

  Vimes sat on the edge of his bed while Angua bandaged his hand.

  “Captain Quirke?” said Carrot. “But he's… not a good choice.”

  “Mayonnaise Quirke, we used to call him,” said Colon. “He's a pillock.”

  “Don't tell me,” said Angua. “He's rich, thick and oily, yes?”

  “And smells faintly of eggs,” said Carrot.

  “Plumes in his helmet,” said Colon, “and a breastplate you can see your face in.”

  “Well, Carrot's got one of those too,” said Nobby.

  “Yes, but the difference is, Carrot keeps his armour polished because he… likes nice clean armour,” said Colon loyally. “While Quirke keeps his shiny because he's a pillock.”

  “But he's wrapped up the case,” said Nobby. “I heard about it when I went out for the coffee. He's arrested Coalface the troll. You know, captain? The privy cleaner. Someone saw him near Rime Street just before the dwarf got killed.”

  “But he's massive,” said Carrot. “He couldn't have got through the door.”

  “He's got a motive,” said Nobby.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. Hammerhock was a dwarf.”

  “That's not a motive.”

  “It is for a troll. Anyway, if he didn't do that, he probably did something. There's plenty of evidence against him.”

  “Like what?” said Angua.

  “He's a troll.”

  “That's not evidence.”

  “It is to Captain Quirke,” said the sergeant.

  “He's bound to have done something,” Nobby repeated.

  In this he was echoing the Patrician's view of crime and punishment. If there was crime, there should be punishment. If the specific criminal should be involved in the punishment process then this was a happy accident, but if not then any criminal would do, and since everyone was undoubtedly guilty of something, the net result was that, in general terms, justice was done.

  “He's a nasty piece of work, that Coalface,” said Colon. “A righthand troll for Chrysoprase.”

  “Yes, but he couldn't have killed Bjorn,” said Carrot. “And what about the beggar girl?”

  Vimes sat looking at the floor.

  “What do you think, captain?” said Carrot.

  Vimes shrugged.

  “Who cares?” he said.

  “Well, you care,” said Carrot. “You always care. We can't let even someone like—”

  “Listen to me,” said Vimes, in a small voice. “Supposing we'd found who killed the dwarf and the clown? Or the girl. It wouldn't make any difference. It's all rotten anyway.”

  “What is, captain?” said Colon.

  “All of it. You might as well try and empty a well with a sieve. Let the Assassins try to sort it out. Or the thieves. He can try the rats next. Why not? We're not the people for this. We ought to have just stayed with ringing our bells and shouting ‘All's well!’”

  “But all isn't well, captain,” said Carrot.

  “So what? When has that ever mattered?”

  “Oh, dear,” said Angua, under her breath. “I think perhaps you gave him too much of that coffee…”

  Vimes said, “I'm retiring from the Watch tomorrow. Twenty-five years on the streets—”

  Nobby started to grin nervously and stopped as the sergeant, without apparently shifting position, grabbed one of his arms and twisted it gently but meaningfully up his back.

  “—and what good's it all been? What good have I done? I've just worn out a lot of boots. There's no place in Ankh-Morpork for policemen! Who cares what's right or wrong? Assassins and thieves and trolls and dwarfs! Might as well have a bloody king and have done with it!”

  The rest of the Night Watch stood looking at their feet in mute embarrassment. Then Carrot said, “It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, captain. That's what they say.”

  “What?” Vimes' sudden rage was like a thunderclap. “Who says that? When has that ever been true? It's never been true! It's the kind of thing people without power say to make it all seem less bloody awful, but it's just words, it never makes any difference–”

  Someone hammered at the door.

  “That'll be Quirke,” said Vimes. “You're to hand over your weapons. The Night Watch is being stood down for a day. Can't have coppers running around upsetting things, can we? Open the door, Carrot.”

  “But—” Carrot began.

  “That was an order. I might not be any good for anything else, but I can bloody well order you to open the door, so open the door!”

  Quirke was accompanied by half a dozen members of the Day Watch. They had crossbows. In deference to the fact that they were doing a mildly unpleasant job involving fellow officers, they had them pointing slightly downwards. In deference to the fact that they weren't damn fools, they had the safety catches off.

  Quirke wasn't actually a bad man. He didn't have the imagination. He dealt more in that sort of generalized low-grade unpleasantness which slightly tarnishes the soul of all who come into contact with it.24 Many people are in jobs that are a little beyond them, but there are ways of reacting to the situation. Sometimes they're flustered and nice, sometimes they're Quirke. Quirke handled them with the maxim: it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong, so long as you're definite. There was, on the whole, no real racial prejudice in Ankh-Morpork; when you've got dwarfs and trolls, the mere colour of other, humans is not a major item. But Quirke was the kind of man to whom it comes naturally to pronounce the word negro with two gs.

  He had a hat with plumes in it.

  “Come in, come in,” said Vimes. “It wasn't as if we were doing anything.”

  “Captain Vimes—”

  “It's all right. We know. Give him your weapons, people. That's an order, Carrot. One official issue sword, one pike or halberd, one night stick or truncheon, one crossbow. That's right, isn't it, Sergeant Colon?”

  “Yessir.”

  Carrot hesitated only a moment.

  “Oh, well,” he said. “My official sword is in the rack.”

  “What's that one in your belt?”

  Carrot said nothing. However, he shifted position slightly. His biceps strained against the leather of his jerkin.

  “Official sword. Right,” said Quirke. He turned. He was one of those people who would recoil from an assault on strength, but attack weakness without mercy. “Where's the gritsucker?” he said. “And the rock?”

  “Ah,” said Vimes, “you are referring to those representative members of our fellow sapient races who have chosen to throw in their lots with the people of this city?”

  “I mean the dwarf and the troll,” said Quirke.

  “Haven't the faintest idea,” said Vimes cheerfully. It seemed to Angua that he was drunk again, if people could get drunk on despair.

  “We dunno, sir,” said Colon. “Haven't seen 'em all day.”

  “Probably fighting up in Quarry Lane with the rest of them,” said Quirke. “You can't trust people of their type. You ought to know that.”

  And it also seemed to Angua that although words like halfpint and gritsucker were offensive, they were as terms of universal brotherhood compared to words like “people of their type” in the mouth of men like Quirke. Much to her shock, she found her gaze concentrating on the man's jugular vein.

  “Fighting?” said Carrot. “Why?”

  Quirke shrugged.

  “Who knows?”

  “Let me think now,” said Vimes. “It could be so
mething to do with a wrongful arrest. It could be something to do with some of the more restless dwarfs just needing any excuse to have a go at the trolls. What do you think, Quirke?”

  “I don't think, Vimes.”

  “Good man. You're just the type the city needs.”

  Vimes stood up.

  “I'll be going, then,” he said. “I'll see you all tomorrow. If there is one.”

  The door slammed behind him.

  This hall was huge. It was the size of a city square, with pillars every few yards to support the roof. Tunnels radiated off it in every direction, and at various heights in the walls. Water trickled out of many of them, from small springs and underground streams.

  That was the problem. The film of running water over the stone floor of the hall had wiped away traces of the footprints.

  A very large tunnel, almost blocked with debris and silt, led off in what Cuddy was pretty sure was the direction of the estuary.

  It was almost pleasant. There was no smell, other than a damp, under-a-stone mustiness. And it was cool.

  “I've seen big dwarf halls in the mountains,” said Cuddy, “but I've got to admit this is something else.” His voice echoed back and forth in the chamber.

  “Oh, yes,” said Detritus, “it's got to be something else, because it's not a dwarf hall in the mountains.”

  “Can you see any way up?”

  “No.”

  “We could have passed a dozen ways to the surface and not known it.”

  “Yes,” said the troll. “It's a knotty problem.”

  “Detritus?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you know you're getting smarter again, down here in the cool?”

  “Really?”

  “Can you use it to think of a way out?”

  “Digging?” the troll suggested.

  There were fallen blocks here and there in the tunnels. Not many; the place had been well built…

  “Nah. Haven't got a shovel,” said Cuddy.

  Detritus nodded.

  “Give me your breastplate,” he said.

  He leaned it up against the wall. His fist pounded into it a few times. He handed it back. It was, more or less, shovel shaped.

  “It's a long way up,” Cuddy said doubtfully.

  “But we know the way,” said Detritus. “It's either that, or stay down here eating rat for rest of your life.”

  Cuddy hesitated. The idea had a certain appeal…

  “Without ketchup,” Detritus added.

  “I think I saw a fallen stone just a way back there,” said the dwarf.

  Captain Quirke looked around the Watch room with the air of one who was doing the scenery a favour by glancing at it.

  “Nice place, this,” he said. “I think we'll move in here. Better than the quarters near the Palace.”

  “But we're here,” said Sergeant Colon.

  “You'll just have to squash up,” said Captain Quirke.

  He glanced at Angua. Her stare was getting on his nerves.

  “There'll be a few changes, too,” he said. Behind him, the door creaked open. A small, smelly dog limped in.

  “But Lord Vetinari hasn't said who's commanding Night Watch,” said Carrot.

  “Ho, yes? Seems to me, seems to me,” said Quirke, “that it's not likely to be one of you lot, eh? Seems to me it's likely the Watches'll be combined. Seems to me there's too much sloppiness around the place. Seems to me there's a bit too much of a ragtag.”

  He glanced at Angua again. The way she was looking at him was putting him off.

  “Seems to me—” Quirke began again, and then noticed the dog. “Look at this!” he said. “Dogs in the Watch House!” He kicked Gaspode hard, and grinned as the dog ran yelping under the table.

  “What about Lettice Knibbs, the beggar girl?” said Angua. “No troll killed her. Or the clown.”

  “You got to see the big picture,” said Quirke.

  “Mister Captain,” said a low voice from under the table, audible at a conscious level only to Angua, “you got an itchy bottom.”

  “What big picture's this, then?” said Sergeant Colon.

  “Got to think in terms of the whole city,” said Quirke. He shifted uneasily.

  “Really itchy,” said the sub-table voice.

  “You feeling all right, Captain Quirke?” said Angua.

  The captain squirmed.

  “Prickle, prickle, prickle,” said the voice.

  “I mean, some things are important, some ain't,” said Quirke. “Aargh!”

  “Sorry?”

  “Prickle.”

  “Can't hang around here talking to you all day,” said Quirke. “You. Report to me. Tomorrow afternoon—”

  “Prickle, prickle, prickle—”

  “Abouuut face!”

  The Day Watch scurried out, with Quirke hopping and squirming in, as it were, the rear.

  “My word, he seemed anxious to get away,” said Carrot.

  “Yes,” said Angua. “Can't think why.”

  They looked at one another.

  “Is that it?” said Carrot. “No more Night Watch?”

  It's generally very quiet in the Unseen University library. There's perhaps the shuffling of feet as wizards wander between the shelves, the occasional hacking cough to disturb the academic silence, and every once in a while a dying scream as an unwary student fails to treat an old magical book with the caution it deserves.

  Consider orang-utans.

  In all the worlds graced by their presence, it is suspected that they can talk but choose not to do so in case humans put them to work, possibly in the television industry. In fact they can talk. It's just that they talk in Otang-utan. Humans are only capable of listening in Bewilderment.

  The Librarian of Unseen University had unilaterally decided to aid comprehension by producing an Orang-utan/Human Dictionary. He'd been working on it for three months.

  It wasn't easy. He'd got as far as “Oook.”25

  He was down in the Stacks, where it was cool.

  And suddenly someone was singing.

  He took the pen out of his foot and listened.

  A human would have decided they couldn't believe their ears. Orangs are more sensible. If you won't believe your own ears, whose ears will you believe?

  Someone was singing, underground. Or trying to sing.

  The chthonic voices went something like this:

  “Dlog, glod, Dlog, glod—”

  “Listen, you… troll! It's the simplest song there is. Look, like this ‘Gold, Gold, Gold, Gold’?”

  “Gold, Gold, Gold, Gold—”

  “No! That's the second verse!”

  There was also the rhythmical sound of dirt being shovelled and rubble being moved.

  The Librarian considered matters for a while. So… a dwarf and a troll. He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favour of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian's opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be.

  The muffled voices seemed to be getting closer.

  “Gold, gold, gold—”

  “Now you're singing the chorus!”

  On the other hand, there were proper ways of entering a library.

  He waddled over to the shelves and selected Hump-tulip's seminal work How to Kille Insects. All 2,000 pages of it.

  Vimes felt quite light-hearted as he walked up Scoone Avenue. He was aware that there was an inner Vimes screaming his head off. He ignored him.

  You couldn't be a real copper in Ankh-Morpork and stay sane. You had to care. And caring in Ankh-Morpork was like opening a tin of meat in the middle of a piranha school.

  Everyone dealt with it in their own way. Colon nev
er thought about it, and Nobby didn't worry about it, and the new ones hadn't been in long enough to be worn down by it, and Carrot… was just himself.

  Hundreds of people died in the city every day, often of suicide. So what did a few more matter?

  The Vimes inside hammered on the walls.

  There were quite a few coaches outside the Ramkin mansion, and the place seemed to be infested with assorted female relatives and Interchangeable Emmas. They were baking things and polishing things. Vimes strolled through, more or less unregarded.

  He found Sybil out in the dragon house, in her rubber boots and protective dragon armour. She was mucking out, apparently blissfully unaware of the controlled uproar in the mansion.

  She looked up as the door shut behind Vimes.

  “Oh, there you are. You're home early,” she said. “I couldn't stand the fuss, so I came out here. But I'll have to go and change soon—”

  She stopped when she saw his expression. “There's something wrong, isn't there?”

  “I'm not going back,” said Vimes.

  “Really? Last week you said you'd do a full watch. You said you were looking forward to it.”

  Not much gets past old Sybil, Vimes thought.

  She patted his hand.

  “I'm glad you're out of it,” she said.

  Corporal Nobbs darted into the Watch House and slammed the door behind him.

  “Well?” said Carrot.

  “It's not good,” said Nobby. “They say the trolls are planning to march to the Palace to get Coalface out. There's gangs of dwarfs and trolls wandering around looking for trouble. And beggars. Lettice was very popular. And there's a lot of Guild people out there, too. The city,” he said, importantly, “is def'nitely a keg of No.1 Powder.”

  “How do you like the idea of camping out on the open plain?” said Colon.

  “What's that got to do with it?”

  “If anyone puts a match to anything tonight, it's goodbye Ankh,” said the sergeant morosely. “Usually we can shut the city gates, right? But there's hardly more'n a few feet of water in the river.”

  “You flood the city just to put out fires?” said Angua.

  “Yep.”