Men at Arms tds-15

by Terry Pratchett

  “It wasn't a request, sir.”

  Scores of Assassins watched them walk across the courtyard.

  The black gates were shut.

  No-one seemed about to open them.

  “I agree with you, but perhaps you should have put that another way,” said Vimes. “They don't look at all happy—”

  The doors shattered. A six-foot iron arrow passed Carrot and Vimes and removed a large section of wall on the far side of the courtyard.

  A couple of blows removed the rest of the gates, and Detritus stepped through. He looked around at the assembled Assassins, a red glow in his eyes. And growled.

  It dawned on the smarter Assassins that there was nothing in their armoury that could kill a troll. They had fine stiletto knives, but they needed sledgehammers.

  They had darts armed with exquisite poisons, none of which worked on a troll. No-one had ever thought trolls were important enough to be assassinated. Suddenly, Detritus was very important indeed. He had Cuddy's axe in one hand and his mighty crossbow in the other.

  Some of the brighter Assassins turned and ran for it. Some were not as bright. A couple of arrows bounced off Detritus. Their owners saw his face as he turned towards them, and dropped their bows.

  Detritus hefted his club.

  “Acting-Constable Detritus!”

  The words rang out across the courtyard.

  “Acting-Constable Detritus! Atten-shun!”

  Detritus very slowly raised his hand.

  Dink.

  “You listen to me, Acting-Constable Detritus,” said Carrot. “If there's a heaven for Watchmen, and gods I hope there is, then Acting-Constable Cuddy is there right now, drunk as a bloody monkey, with a rat in one hand and a pint of Bearhugger's in the other, and he's looking up30 at us right now and he's saying: my friend Acting-Constable Detritus won't forget he's a guard. Not Detritus.”

  There was a long dangerous moment, and then another dink.

  “Thank you, Acting-Constable. You'll escort Mr Vimes to the University.” Carrot looked around at the Assassins. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. We may be back.”

  The three Watchmen stepped over the wreckage.

  Vimes said nothing until they were well out in the street, and then he turned to Carrot.

  “Why did he call you—”

  “If you'll excuse me, I'll take her back to the Watch House.”

  Vimes looked down at Angua's corpse and felt a train of thought derail itself. Some things were too hard to think about. He wanted a nice quiet hour somewhere to put it all together. Personal isn't the same as important. What sort of person could think like that? And it dawned on him that while Ankh in the past had had its share of evil rulers, and simply bad rulers, it had never yet come under the heel of a good ruler. That might be the most terrifying prospect of all.

  “Sir?” said Carrot, politely.

  “Uh. We'll bury her up at Small Gods, how about that?” said Vimes. “It's sort of a Watch tradition…”

  “Yes, sir. You go off with Detritus. He's all right when you give him orders. If you don't mind, I don't think I'll be along to the wedding. You know how it is…”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Um. Carrot?” Vimes blinked, to drive away suspicions that clamoured for consideration. “We shouldn't be too hard on Cruces. I hated the bastard like hell, so I want to be fair to him. I know what the gonne does to people. We're all the same, to the gonne. I'd have been just like him.”

  “No, captain. You put it down.”

  Vimes smiled wanly.

  “They call me Mister Vimes,” he said.

  Carrot walked back to the Watch House, and laid the body of Angua on the slab in the makeshift morgue. Rigor mortis was already setting in.

  He fetched some water and cleaned her fur as best he could.

  What he did next would have surprised, say, a troll or a dwarf or anyone who didn't know about the human mind's reaction to stressful circumstances.

  He wrote his report. He swept the main room's floor; there was a rota, and it was his turn. He had a wash. He changed his shirt, and dressed the wound on his shoulder, and cleaned his armour, rubbing with wire wool and a graded series of cloths until he could, once again, see his face in it.

  He heard, far off, Fondel's “Wedding March” scored for Monstrous Organ with Miscellaneous Farmyard Noises accompaniment. He fished out a half bottle of rum from what Sergeant Colon thought was his secure hiding place, poured himself a very small amount, and drank a toast to the sound, saying, “Here's to Mr Vimes and Lady Ramkin!” in a clear, sincere voice which would have severely embarrassed anyone who had heard it.

  There was a scratching at the door. He let Gaspode in. The little dog slunk under the table, saying nothing.

  Then Carrot went up to his room, and sat in his chair and looked out of the window.

  The afternoon wore on. The rain stopped around teatime.

  Lights came on, all over the city.

  Presently, the moon rose.

  The door opened. Angua entered, walking softly.

  Carrot turned, and smiled.

  “I wasn't certain,” he said. “But I thought, well, isn't it only silver that kills them? I just had to hope.”

  It was two days later. The rain had set in. It didn't pour, it slouched out of the grey clouds, running in rivulets through the mud. It filled the Ankh, which slurped once again through its underground kingdom. It poured from the mouths of gargoyles. It hit the ground so hard there was sort of a mist of ricochets.

  It drummed off the gravestones in the cemetery behind the Temple of Small Gods, and into the small pit dug for Acting-Constable Cuddy.

  There were always only guards at a guard's funeral, Vimes told himself. Oh, sometimes there were relatives, like Lady Ramkin and Detritus' Ruby here today, but you never got crowds. Perhaps Carrot was right. When you became a guard, you stopped being everything else.

  Although there were other people today, standing silently at the railings around the cemetery. They weren't at the funeral, but they were watching it.

  There was a small priest who gave the generic fill-in-deceased's-name-here service, designed to be vaguely satisfactory to any gods who might be listening. Then Detritus lowered the coffin into the grave, and the priest threw a ceremonial handful of dirt on to the coffin, except that instead of the rattle of soil there was a very final splat.

  And Carrot, to Vimes' surprise, made a speech. It echoed across the soggy ground to the rain-dripping trees. It was really based around the only text you could use on this occasion: he was my friend, he was one of us, he was a good copper.

  He was a good copper. That had got said at every guard funeral Vimes had ever attended. It'd probably be said even at Corporal Nobbs' funeral, although everyone would have their fingers crossed behind their backs. It was what you had to say.

  Vimes stared at the coffin. And then a strange feeling came creeping over him, as insidiously as the rain trickling down the back of his neck. It wasn't exactly a suspicion. If it stayed in his mind long enough it would be a suspicion, but right now it was only a faint tingle of a hunch.

  He had to ask. He'd never stop thinking about it if he didn't at least ask.

  So as they were walking away from the grave he said, “Corporal?”

  “Yessir?”

  “No-one's found the gonne, then?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Someone said you had it last.”

  “I must have put it down somewhere. You know how busy it all was.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. I'm pretty sure I saw you carry most of it out of the Guild…”

  “Must have done, sir.”

  “Yes. Er. I hope you put it somewhere safe, then. Do you, er, do you think you left it somewhere safe?”

  Behind them, the gravedigger began to shovel the wet, clinging loam of Ankh-Morpork into the hole.

  “I think I must have done, sir. Don't you? Seeing as no-one has found it. I mean, we'd soon know if anyone'd found it!”

 
“Maybe it's all for the best, Corporal Carrot.”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “He was a good copper.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vimes went for broke.

  “And… it seemed to me, as we were carrying that little coffin… slightly heavier…?”

  “Really, sir? I really couldn't say I noticed.”

  “But at least he's got a proper dwarf burial.”

  “Oh, yes. I saw to that, sir,” said Carrot.

  The rain gurgled off the roofs of the Palace. The gargoyles had taken up their stations at every corner, straining gnats and flies via their ears.

  Corporal Carrot shook the drops off his leather rain cape and exchanged salutes with the troll on guard. He strolled through the clerks in the outer rooms and knocked respectfully on the door of the Oblong Office.

  “Come.”

  Carrot entered, marched to the desk, saluted and stood at ease.

  Lord Vetinari tensed, very slightly.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Corporal Carrot. I was expecting… something like this. I'm sure you've come to ask me for… something?”

  Carrot unfolded a piece of grubby paper, and cleared his throat.

  “Well, sir… we could do with a new dartboard. You know. For when we're off duty?”

  The Patrician blinked. It was not often that he blinked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “A new dartboard, sir. It helps the men relax after their shift, sir.”

  Vetinari recovered a little.

  “Another one? But you had one only last year!”

  “It's the Librarian, sir. Nobby lets him play and he just leans a bit and hammers the darts in with his fist. It ruins the board. Anyway, Detritus threw one through it. Through the wall behind it, too.”

  “Very well. And?”

  “Well… Acting-Constable Detritus needs to be let off having to pay for five holes in his breastplate.”

  “Granted. Tell him not to do it again.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, I think that's about it. Except for a new kettle.”

  The Patrician's hand moved in front of his lips. He was trying not to smile.

  “Dear me. Another kettle as well? What happened to the old one?”

  “Oh, we still use it, sir, we still use it. But we're going to need another because of the new arrangements.”

  “I'm sorry? What new arrangements?”

  Carrot unfolded a second, and rather larger, piece of paper.

  “The Watch to be brought up to an establishment strength of fifty-six; the old Watch Houses at the River Gate, the Deosil Gate and the Hubwards Gate to be reopened and manned on a twenty-four hour basis—”

  The Patrician's smile remained, but his face seemed to pull away from it, leaving it stranded and all alone in the world.

  “—a department for, well, we haven't got a name for it yet, but for looking at clues and things like dead bodies, e.g., how long they've been dead, and to start with we'll need an alchemist and possibly a ghoul provided they promise not to take anything home and eat it; a special unit using dogs, which could be very useful, and Lance-Constable Angua can deal with that since she can, um, be her own handler a lot of the time; a request here from Corporal Nobbs that Watchmen be allowed all the weapons they can carry, although I'd be obliged if you said no to that; a—”

  Lord Vetinari waved a hand.

  “All right, all right,” he said. “I can see how this is going. And supposing I say no?”

  There was another of those long, long pauses, wherein may be seen the possibilities of several different futures.

  “Do you know, sir, I never even considered that you'd say no?”

  “You didn't?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I'm intrigued. Why not?”

  “It's all for the good of the city, sir. Do you know where the word ‘policeman’ comes from? It means ‘man of the city’, sir. From the old word polis.”

  “Yes. I do know.”

  The Patrician looked at Carrot. He seemed to be shuffling futures in his head. Then:

  “Yes. I accede to all the requests, except the one involving Corporal Nobbs. And you, I think, should be promoted to Captain.”

  “Ye-es. I agree, sir. That would be a good thing for Ankh-Morpork. But I will not command the Watch, if that's what you mean.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I could command the Watch. Because… people should do things because an officer tells them. They shouldn't do it just because Corporal Carrot says so. Just because Corporal Carrot is… good at being obeyed.” Carrot's face was carefully blank.

  “An interesting point.”

  “But there used to be a rank, in the old days. Commander of the Watch. I suggest Samuel Vimes.”

  The Patrician leaned back. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Commander of the Watch. Of course, that became a rather unpopular job, after all that business with Lorenzo the Kind. It was a Vimes who held the post in those days. I've never liked to ask him if he was an ancestor.”

  “He was, sir. I looked it up.”

  “Would he accept?”

  “Is the High Priest an Offlian? Does a dragon explode in the woods?”

  The Patrician steepled his fingers and looked at Carrot over the top of them. It was a mannerism that had unnerved many.

  “But, you see, captain, the trouble with Sam Vimes is that he upsets a lot of important people. And I think that a Commander of the Watch would have to move in very exalted circles, attend Guild functions…”

  They exchanged glances. The Patrician got the best of the bargain, since Carrot's face was bigger. Both of them were trying not to grin.

  “An excellent choice, in fact,” said the Patrician.

  “I'd taken the liberty, sir, of drafting a letter to the cap—to Mr Vimes on your behalf. Just to save you trouble, sir. Perhaps you'd care to have a look?”

  “You think of everything, don't you?”

  “I hope so, sir.”

  Lord Vetinari read the letter. He smiled once or twice. Then he picked up his pen, signed at the bottom, and handed it back.

  “And is that the last of your dema—requests?”

  Carrot scratched his ear.

  “There is one, actually. I need a home for a small dog. It must have a large garden, a warm spot by the fire, and happy laughing children.”

  “Good heavens. Really? Well, I suppose we can find one.”

  “Thank you, sir. That's all, I think.”

  The Patrician stood up and limped over to the window. It was dusk. Lights were being lit all over the city.

  With his back to Carrot he said, “Tell me, captain… this business about there being an heir to the throne… What do you think about it?”

  “I don't think about it, sir. That's all sword-in-a-stone nonsense. Kings don't come out of nowhere, waving a sword and putting everything right. Everyone knows that.”

  “But there was some talk of… evidence?”

  “No-one seems to know where it is, sir.”

  “When I spoke to Captain… to Commander Vimes he said you'd got it.”

  “Then I must have put it down somewhere. I'm sure I couldn't say where, sir.”

  “My word, I hope you absent-mindedly put it down somewhere safe.”

  “I'm sure it's… well guarded, sir.”

  “I think you've learned a lot from Cap—Commander Vimes, captain.”

  “Sir. My father always said I was a quick learner, sir.”

  “Perhaps the city does need a king, though. Have you considered that?”

  “Like a fish needs a… er… a thing that doesn't work underwater, sir.”

  “Yet a king can appeal to the emotions of his subjects, captain. In… very much the same way as you did recently, I understand.”

  “Yes, sir. But what will he do next day? You can't treat people like puppet dolls. No, sir. Mr Vimes always said a man has got to know his limitations. If there was a king, then the best thing he could do would
be to get on with a decent day's work—”

  “Indeed.”

  “But if there was some pressing need… then perhaps he'd think again.” Carrot brightened up. “It's a bit like being a guard, really. When you need us, you really need us. And when you don't… well, best if we just walk around the streets and shout All's Well. Providing all is well, of course.”

  “Captain Carrot,” said Lord Vetinari, “because we understand one another so well, and I think we do understand one another… there is something I'd like to show you. Come this way.”

  He led the way into the throne room, which was, empty at this time of day. As he hobbled across the wide floor he pointed ahead of him.

  “I expect you know what that is, captain?”

  “Oh, yes. The golden throne of Ankh-Morpork.”

  “And no-one has sat in it for many hundreds of years. Have you ever wondered about it?”

  “Exactly what do you mean, sir?”

  “So much gold, when even the brass has been stripped off the Brass Bridge? Take a look behind the throne, will you?”

  Carrot mounted the steps.

  “Good grief!”

  The Patrician looked over his shoulder.

  “It's just gold foil over wood…”

  “Quite so.”

  It was hardly even wood any more. Rot and worms had fought one another to a standstill over the last biodegradable fragment. Carrot prodded it with his sword, and part of it drifted gently away in a puff of dust.

  “What do you think about this, captain?”

  Carrot stood up.

  “On the whole, sir, it's probably just as well that people don't know.”

  “So I have always thought. Well, I will not keep you. I'm sure you have a lot to organize.”

  Carrot saluted.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I gather that you and, er, Constable Angua are getting along well?”

  “We have a very good Understanding, sir. Of course, there will be minor difficulties,” said Carrot, “but, to look on the positive side, I've got someone who's always ready for a walk around the city.”

  As Carrot had his hand on the door handle Lord Vetinari called out to him.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Carrot looked back at the tall thin man, standing in the big bare room beside the golden throne filled with decay.