Night Watch tds-27

by Terry Pratchett

  The sound of running feet indicated that Sergeant Detritus was bringing some of the latest trainees back from their morning run. He could hear the jody Detritus had taught them. Somehow, you could tell it was made up by a troll:

  “Now we sing dis stupid song!

  Sing it as we run along!

  Why we sing dis we don't know!

  We can't make der words rhyme prop'ly!”

  “Sound off!”

  “One! Two!”

  “Sound off!”

  “Many! Lots!”

  “Sound off.”

  “Er…what?”

  It still irked Vimes that the little training school in the old lemonade factory was turning out so many coppers who quit the city the moment their probation was up. But it had its advantages. There were Sammies almost as far as Uberwald now, all speeding up the local promotion ladder. It helped, knowing names, and knowing that those names had been taught to salute him. The ebb and flow of politics often meant that the local rulers weren't talking to one another, but via the semaphore towers, the Sammies talked all the time.

  He realized he was humming a different song under his breath. It was a tune he'd forgotten for years. It went with the lilac, scent and song together. He stopped, feeling guilty.

  He was finishing the letter when there was a knock at the door.

  “Nearly done!” he shouted.

  “It'th me, thur,” said Constable Igor, pushing his head round the door, and then he added, “Igor, sir.”

  “Yes, Igor?” said Vimes, wondering not for the first time why anyone with stitches all round his head needed to tell anyone who he was.1

  “I would just like to thay, sir, that I could have got young Thtronginthearm back on his feet, thur,” said Igor, a shade reproachfully.

  Vimes sighed. Igor's face was full of concern, tinged with disappointment. He had been prevented from plying his…craft. He was naturally disappointed.

  “We've been through this, Igor. It's not like sewing a leg back on. And dwarfs are dead set against that sort of thing.”

  “There's nothing thupernatural about it, thur. I am a man of Natural Philothophy! And he was still warm when they brought him in—”

  “Those are the rules, Igor. Thanks all the same. We know your heart is in the right place—”

  “They are in the right places, sir,” said Igor reproachfully.

  “That's what I meant,” Vimes said, without missing a beat, just as Igor never did.

  “Oh, very well, sir,” said Igor, giving up. He paused, and then said: “How is her ladyship, sir?”

  Vimes had been expecting this. It was a terrible thing for a mind to do, but his had already presented him with the idea of Igor and Sybil in the same sentence. Not that he disliked Igor. Quite the reverse. There were watchmen walking around the streets right now who wouldn't have legs if it wasn't for Igor's genius with a needle. But—

  “Fine. She's fine,” he said abruptly.

  “Only I heard that Mrs Content was a bit worr—”

  “Igor, there are some areas where…Look, do you know anything about…women and babies?”

  “Not in so many wordth, sir, but I find that once I've got someone on the slab and had a good, you know, rummage around, I can thort out most thingth—”

  Vimes's imagination actually shut down at this point.

  “Thank you, Igor,” he managed, without his voice trembling, “but Mrs Content is a very experienced midwife.”

  “Jutht as you say, sir,” said Igor, but doubt rode on the words.

  “And now I've got to go,” said Vimes. “It's going to be a long day.”

  He ran down the stairs, tossed the letter to Sergeant Colon, nodded to Carrot and they set off at a fast walk for the palace.

  After the door had shut one of the watchmen looked up from the desk where he'd been wrestling with a report and the effort of writing down, as policemen do, what ought to have happened.

  “Sarge?”

  “Yes, Corporal Ping?”

  “Why're some of you wearing purple flowers, sarge?”

  There was a subtle change in the atmosphere, a suction of sound caused by many pairs of ears listening intently. All the officers in the room had stopped writing.

  “I mean, I saw you and Reg and Nobby wearing 'em this time last year, and I wondered if we were all supposed to…” Ping faltered. Sergeant Colon's normally amiable eyes had narrowed and the message they were sending was: you're on thin ice, lad, and it's starting to creak…

  “I mean, my landlady's got a garden and I could easily go and cut a—” Ping went on, in an uncharacteristic attempt at suicide.

  “You'd wear the lilac today, would you?” said Colon quietly.

  “I just meant that if you wanted me to I could go and—”

  “Were you there?” said Colon, getting to his feet so fast that his chair fell over.

  “Steady, Fred,” murmured Nobby.

  “I didn't mean—” Ping began. “I mean…was I where, sarge?”

  Colon leaned on the desk, bringing his round red face an inch away from Ping's nose.

  “If you don't know where there was, you weren't there,” he said, in the same quiet voice.

  He stood up straight again.

  “Now me an' Nobby has got a job to do,” he said. “At ease, Ping. We are going out.”

  “Er…”

  This was not being a good day for Corporal Ping.

  “Yes?” said Colon.

  “Er…standing orders, sarge…you're the ranking officer, you see, and I'm orderly officer for the day, I wouldn't ask otherwise but…if you're going out, sarge, you've got to tell me where you're going. Just in case anyone has to contact you, see? I got to write it down in the book. In pen and everything,” he added.

  “You know what day it is, Ping?” said Colon.

  “Er…twenty-fifth of May, sarge.”

  “And you know what that means, Ping?”

  “Er…”

  “It means,” said Nobby, “that anyone important enough to ask where we're going—”

  “—knows where we've gone,” said Fred Colon.

  The door slammed behind them.

  The cemetery of Small Gods was for the people who didn't know what happened next. They didn't know what they believed in or if there was life after death and, often, they didn't know what hit them. They'd gone through life being amiably uncertain, until the ultimate certainty had claimed them at the last. Among the city's bone orchards the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked misc, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much.

  Most of the Watch got buried there. Policemen, after a few years, found it hard enough to believe in people, let alone anyone they couldn't see.

  For once, it wasn't raining. The breeze shook the sooty poplars around the wall, making them rustle.

  “We ought to have brought some flowers,” said Colon, as they made their way through the long grass.

  “I could nick a few off some of the fresh graves, sarge,” Nobby volunteered.

  “Not the kind of thing I want to hear you saying at this time, Nobby,” said Colon severely.

  “Sorry, sarge.”

  “At a time like this a man ought to be thinking of his immortal soul viz ah viz the endless mighty river that is History. I should do that, if I was you. Nobby.”

  “Right, sarge. Will do. I see someone's doing it already, sarge.”

  Up against one wall, lilac trees were growing. That is, at some point in the past a lilac had been planted there, and had given rise, as lilac will, to hundreds of whippy suckers, so that what had once been one stem was now a thicket. Every branch was covered in pale mauve blooms.

  The graves were still just visible in the tangled vegetation. In front of them stood Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Ankh-Morpork's least successful businessman, with a sprig of lilac in his hat.

  He caught sight of the watchmen and nodded to them. They nodded back. All three stood looking down at
the seven graves. Only one had been maintained. The marble headstone on that one was shiny and moss-free, the turf was clipped, the stone border was sparkling.

  Moss had grown over the wooden markers of the other six, but it had been scraped off the central one, revealing the name:

  John Keel

  And carved underneath, by someone who had taken some pains, was:

  How Do They Rise Up

  A huge wreath of lilac flowers, bound with purple ribbon, had been placed on the grave. On top of it, tied round with another piece of purple ribbon, was an egg.

  “Mrs Palm and Mrs Battye and some of the girls were up here earlier,” said Dibbler. “And of course Madam always makes sure there's the egg.”

  “It's nice, the way they always remember,” said Sergeant Colon.

  The three stood in silence. They were not, on the whole, men with a vocabulary designed for times like this. After a while, though, Nobby felt moved to speak.

  “He gave me a spoon once,” he said, to the air in general.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Colon.

  “My dad pinched it off me when he come out of prison, but it was my spoon,” said Nobby persistently. “That means a lot to a kid, your own spoon.”

  “Come to that, he was the first person to make me a sergeant,” said Colon. “Got busted again, of course, but I knew I could do it again then. He was a good copper.”

  “He bought a pie off me, first week I was starting out,” said Dibbler. “Ate it all. Didn't spit out anything.”

  There was more silence.

  After a while Sergeant Colon cleared his throat, a general signal to indicate that some sort of appropriate moment was now over. There was a general relaxation of muscles.

  “Y'know, we ought to come up here one day with a billhook and clear this lot up a bit,” said the sergeant.

  “You always say that, sarge, every year,” said Nobby as they walked away. “And we never do.”

  “If I had a dollar for every copper's funeral I've attended up here,” said Colon, “I'd have…nineteen dollars and fifty pence.”

  “Fifty pence?” said Nobby.

  “That was when Corporal Hildebiddle woke up just in time and banged on the lid,” said Colon. “Before your time, o'course. Everyone said it was an amazin' recovery.”

  “Mr Sergeant?”

  The three men turned. Coming towards them in a high-speed sidle was the black-clad, skinny figure of Legitimate First, the cemetery's resident gravedigger.

  Colon sighed. “Yes, Leggie?” he said.

  “Good morrow, sweet—” the gravedigger began, but Sergeant Colon waved a finger at him.

  “Stop that right now,” he said. “You know you've been warned before. None of that ‘comic gravedigger’ stuff. It's not funny and it's not clever. Just say what you've got to say. No silly bits.”

  Leggie looked crestfallen. “Well, good sirs—”

  “Leggie, I've known you for years,” said Colon wearily. “Just try, will you?”

  “The deacon wants them graves dug up, Fred,” said Leggie in a sulky voice. “It's been more'n thirty years. Long past time they was in the crypts—”

  “No,” said Fred Colon.

  “But I've got a nice shelf for 'em down there, Fred,” Leggie pleaded. “Right up near the front. We need the space, Fred! It's standing room only in here, and that's the truth! Even the worms have to go in single file! Right up near the front, Fred, where I can chat to 'em when I'm having my tea. How about that?”

  The watchmen and Dibbler shared a glance. Most people in the city had been into Leggie's crypts, if only for a dare. And it had come as a shock to most of them to realize that solemn burial was not for eternity but only for a handful of years so that, in Leggie's words, “my little wriggly helpers” could do their work. After that, the last last resting place was the crypts, and an entry in the huge ledgers.

  Leggie lived down there in the crypts. As he said, he was the only one who did, and he liked the company.

  Leggie was generally considered weird, but conscientiously so.

  “This isn't your idea, right?” said Fred Colon.

  Leggie looked down at his feet.

  “The new deacon's a bit, well, new,” he said. “You know…keen. Making changes.”

  “You told him why they're not being dug up?” said Nobby.

  “He said that's just ancient history,” said Leggie. “He says we all have to put the past behind us.”

  “An' did you tell him he should take it up with Vetinari?” said Nobby.

  “Yes, and he said he was sure his lordship was a forward-thinking man who wouldn't cling to relics of the past,” said Leggie.

  “Sounds like he is new,” said Dibbler.

  “Yeah,” said Nobby. “An' not likely to get old. It's okay, Leggie, you can say you've asked us.”

  The gravedigger looked relieved. “Thanks, Nobby,” he said. “And I'd just like to say that when your time comes, gents, you'll be on a good shelf with a view. I've put your names down in my ledger for them as comes after me.”

  “Well, that's, er, very kind of you, Leggie,” said Colon, wondering if it was. Because of pressure of space, bones in the crypt were stored by size, not by owner. There were rooms of ribs. There were avenues of femurs. And shelf after shelf of skulls up near the entrance, of course, because a crypt without a lot of skulls wasn't a proper crypt at all. If some of the religions were right and there really was bodily resurrection one day, Fred mused, there was going to be an awful lot of confusion and general milling about.

  “I've got just the spot—” Leggie began, and then stopped. He pointed angrily towards the entrance. “You know what I said about him coming up here!”

  They turned. Corporal Reg Shoe, a whole bouquet of lilac tied to his helmet, was walking solemnly up the gravel path. He had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder.

  “It's only Reg,” said Fred. “He's got a right to be here, Leggie. You know that.”

  “He's a dead man! I'm not havin' a dead man in my cemetery!”

  “It's full of 'em, Leggie,” said Dibbler, trying to calm the man down.

  “Yeah, but the rest of 'em don't walk in and out!”

  “Come on, Leggie, you act like this every year,” said Fred Colon. “He can't help the way he was killed. Just because you're a zombie doesn't mean you're a bad person. He's a useful lad, Reg. Plus it'd be a lot neater up here if everyone looked after their plots like he does, 'morning, Reg.”

  Reg Shoe, grey-faced but smiling, nodded at the four of them and strolled on.

  “And bringing his own shovel, too,” muttered Leggie. “It's disgusting!”

  “I've always thought it was rather, you know, nice of him to do what he does,” said Fred. “You let him alone, Leggie. If you start throwing stones at him like you did the year before last Commander Vimes'll get to hear about it and there'll be trouble. Be told. You're a good man with a, a—”

  “—cadaver,” said Nobby.

  “—but…well, Leggie, you weren't there,” said Colon. “That's the start and finish of it. Reg was. That's all there is to it, Leggie. If you weren't there, you don't understand. Now you just run along and count the skulls again, I know you like that. Cheerio, Leggie.”

  Legitimate First watched them go as they walked away. Sergeant Colon felt he was being measured up.

  “I've always wondered about his name,” said Nobby, turning and waving. “I mean…Legitimate?”

  “Can't blame a mother for being proud, Nobby,” said Colon.

  “What else should I know today?” said Vimes, as he and Carrot shouldered their way through the streets.

  “We've had a letter from the Black Ribboners2, sir, suggesting that it would be a great step forward for species harmony in the city if you'd see your way clear to—”

  “They want a vampire in the Watch?”

  “Yes, sir. I believe many members of the Watch Committee think that despite your stated reservations it would be a good—”
/>
  “Does it look to you as if my body is dead?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then the answer's no. What else?”

  Carrot riffled through a stuffed clipboard as he half ran to keep up.

  “The Times says Borogravia has invaded Mouldavia,” he announced.

  “Is that good? I can't remember where it is.”

  “Both formerly part of the Dark Empire, sir. Right next door to Uberwald.”

  “Whose side are we on?”

  “The Times said we should be supporting little Mouldavia against the aggressor, sir.”

  “I like Borogravia already,” snapped Vimes. The Times had printed, in his opinion, a particularly unflattering cartoon of him the previous week, and to make matters worse Sybil had requested the original and had had it framed. “And what does this all mean to us?”

  “Probably more refugees, sir.”

  “Ye gods, we've got no more room! Why do they keep coming here?”

  “In search of a better life, sir, I think.”

  “A better life?” said Vimes. “Here?”

  “I think things are worse where they come from, sir,” said Carrot.

  “What kind of refugees are we talking about here?”

  “Mostly human, sir.”

  “Do you mean that most of them will be human, or that each individual will be mostly human?” said Vimes. After a while in Ankh-Morpork, you learned how to phrase that kind of question.

  “Er, apart from humans the only species I've heard of there in any numbers are the kvetch, sir. They live in the deep woods and are covered in hair.”

  “Really? Well, we'll probably find out more about them when we're asked to employ one in the Watch,” said Vimes sourly. “What else?”

  “Rather hopeful news, sir,” said Carrot, smiling. “You know the Hooms? The street gang?”