Guards! Guards!

by Terry Pratchett

Page 46

 

  Errol balanced on his flame. He seemed to be thinking.

  Then he nonchalantly kicked his back legs out as though hovering on your own stomach gases was something dragons had mastered over millions of years, somersaulted, and fled. For a moment he was visible as a silver streak, and then he was out over the city walls and gone.

  A groan followed him. It came from ten thousand throats.

  Vimes threw up his hands.

  “Dont you worry, guv,” said Nobby quickly. “Hes-hes probably gone to, to have a drink. Or something. Maybe its the end of round one. Or something. ”

  “I mean, he ate our kettle and everything,” said Colon uncertainly. “He wouldnt just run away after eating a kettle. Stands to reason. Anyone who could eat a kettle wouldnt run away from anything. ”

  “And my armour polish,” said Carrot. “It was nearly a whole dollar for the tin. ”

  “There you are then,” said Colon. “Its like I said. ”

  “Look,” said Vimes, as patiently as he could manage. “Hes a nice dragon, I liked him as much as you, a very nice little chap, but hes just done the sensible thing, for gods sake, hes not going to get burned to bits just to save us. Life just doesnt work like that. You might as well face it. ”

  Overhead the great dragon strutted through the air and flamed a nearby tower. It had won.

  “Ive never seen that before,” said Lady Ramkin. “Dragons normally fight to the death. ”

  “At last theyve bred one whos sensible,” said Vimes morosely. “Lets be honest: the chances of a dragon the size of Errol beating something that big are a million-to-one”

  There was one of those silences you get after one clear bright note has been struck and the world pauses.

  The rank looked at one another.

  “Million-to-one?” asked Carrot nonchalantly.

  “Definitely,” said Vimes. “Million-to-one. ”

  The rank looked at one another again.

  “Million-to-one,” said Colon.

  “Million-to-one,” agreed Nobby.

  “Thats right,” said Carrot. “Million-to-one. ”

  There was another high-toned silence. The members of the rank were wondering who was going to be the first to say it.

  Sergeant Colon took a deep breath.

  “But it might just work,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?” snapped Vimes. “Theres no-”

  Nobby nudged him urgently in the ribs and pointed out across the plains.

  There was a column of black smoke out there. Vimes squinted. Running ahead of the smoke, speeding over the cabbage fields and closing fast, was a silvery bullet.

  The great dragon had seen it too. It flamed defiance and climbed for extra height, mashing the air with its enormous wings.

  Now Errols flame was visible, so hot as to be almost blue. The landscape rolled away underneath him at an impossible speed, and he was accelerating.

  Ahead of him the king extended its claws. It was almost grinning.

  Errols going to hit it, Vimes thought. Gods help us all, itll be a fireball.

  Something odd was happening out in the fields. A little way behind Errol the ground appeared to be ploughing itself up, throwing cabbage stalks into the air. A hedgerow erupted in a shower of sawdust . . .

  Errol passed silently over the city walls, nose up, wings folded down to tiny flaps, his body honed to a mere cone with a flame at one end. His opponent blew out a tongue of fire; Vimes watched Errol, with a barely noticeable flip of a wing stub, roll easily out of its path. And then he was gone, speeding out towards the sea in the same eerie silence.

  “He miss-” Nobby began.

  The air ruptured. An endless thunderclap of noise dragged across the city, smashing tiles, toppling chimneys. In mid-air, the king was picked up, flattened out and spun like a top in the sonic wash. Vimes, his hands over his own ears, saw the creature flame desperately as it turned and became the centre of a spiral of crazy fire.

  Magic crackled along its wings. It screamed like a distressed foghorn. Then, shaking its head dazedly, it began to glide in a wide circle.

  Vimes groaned. It had survived something that tore masonry apart. What did you have to do to beat it? You cant fight it, he thought. You cant burn it, you cant smash it. Theres nothing you can do to it.

  The dragon landed. It wasnt a perfect landing. A perfect landing wouldnt have demolished a row of cottages. It was slow, and it seemed to go on for a long time and rip up a considerable stretch of city.

  Wings flapping aimlessly, neck waving and spraying random flame, it ploughed on through a debris of beams and thatch. Several fires started up along the trail of destruction.

  Finally it came to rest at the end of the furrow, almost invisible under a heap of former architecture.

  The silence that it left was broken only by the shouts of someone trying to organise yet another bucket chain from the river to douse the fires.

  Then people started to move.

  From the air Ankh-Morpork must have looked like a disturbed anthill, with streams of dark figures flowing towards the wreck of the dragon.

  Most of them had some kind of weapon.

  Many of them had spears.

  Some of them had swords.

  All of them had one aim in mind.

  “You know what?” said Vimes aloud. “This is going to be the worlds first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab. ”

  “Then youve got to stop them. You cant let them kill it!” said Lady Ramkin.

  Vimes blinked at her.

  “Pardon?” he said.

  “Its wounded!”

  “Lady, that was the intention, wasnt it? Anyway, its only stunned,” said Vimes.

  “I mean you cant let them kill it like this,” said Lady Ramkin insistently. “Poor thing!”

  “What do you want to do, then?” demanded Vimes, his temper unravelling. “Give it a strengthening dose of tar oil and a nice comfy basket in front of the stove?”

  “Its butchery!”

  “Suits me fine!”

  “But its a dragon! Its just doing what a dragon does! It never would have come here if people had left it alone!”

  Vimes thought: it was about to eat her, and she can still think like this. He hesitated. Perhaps that did give you the right to an opinion . . .

  Sergeant Colon sidled up as they glared, white-faced, at one another, and hopped desperately from one squelching foot to the other.

  “You better come at once, Captain,” he said. "Its going to be bloody murder!

  Vimes waved a hand at him. “As far as Im concerned,” he mumbled, avoiding Sybil Ramkins glare, “its got it coming to it. ”

  “Its not that,” said Colon. "Its Carrot. Hes arrested the dragon.

  Vimes paused.

  “What do you mean, arrested?” he said. “You dont mean what I think you mean, do you?”

  “Could be sir,” said Colon uncertainly. “Could be. He was up on the rubble like a shot, sir, grabbed it by a wing and said Youre nicked, chummy, sir. Couldnt believe it, sir. Sir, the thing is . . . ”

  “Well?”

  The sergeant hopped from one foot to the other. “You know you said prisoners werent to be molested, sir . . . ”

  . . .

  It was quite a large and heavy roof timber and it scythed quite slowly through the air, but when it hit people they rolled backwards and stayed hit.

  “Now look,” said Carrot, hauling it in and pushing back his helmet, “I dont want to have to tell anyone again, right?”

  Vimes shouldered his way through the dense crowd, staring at the bulky figure atop the mound of rubble and dragon. Carrot turned slowly, the roof beam held like a staff. His gaze was like a lighthouse beam. Where it fell, the crowd lowered their weapons and looked merely sullen and uncomfortable.

  “I must warn you,” Carrot went on, “that interfering with an officer in the execution of his duty
is a serious offence. And I shall come down like a ton of bricks on the very next person who throws a stone. ”

  A stone bounced off the back of his helmet. There was a barrage of jeers.

  “Let us at it!”

  “Thats right!”

  “We dont want guards ordering us about!”

  “Quis custodiet custard?”

  “Yeah? Right!”

  Vimes pulled the sergeant towards him. “Go and organise some rope. Lots of rope. As thick as possible. I suppose we can-oh, tie its wings together, maybe, and bind up its mouth so it cant flame. ”

  Colon peered at him.

  “Are you serious, sir? Were really going to arrest it?”

  “Doit!”

  Its been arrested, he thought, as he pushed his way forward. Personally I would have preferred it to drop in the sea, but its been arrested and now weve got to deal with it or let it go free.

  He felt his own feelings about the bloody thing evaporate in the face of the mob. What could you do with it? Give it a fair trial, he thought, and then execute it. Not kill it. Thats what heroes do out in the wilderness. You cant think like that in cities. Or rather, you can, but if youre going to then you might as well burn the whole place down right now and start again. You ought to do it . . . well, by the book.

  Thats it. We tried everything else. Now we might as well try and do it by the book.

  Anyway, he added mentally, thats a city guard up there. Weve got to stick together. Nobody else will have anything to do with us.

  A burly figure in front of him drew back an arm with a halfbrick in it.

  “Throw that brick and youre a dead man,” said Vimes, and then ducked and pushed his way through the press of people while the would-be thrower looked around in amazement.

  Carrot half-raised his club in a threatening gesture as Vimes climbed up the rubble pile.

  “Oh, hallo, Captain Vimes,” he said, lowering it, “I have to report I have arrested this-”

  “Yes, I can see,” said Vimes. “Did you have any suggestions about what we do next?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. I have to read it its rights, sir,” said Carrot.

  “I mean apart from that. ”

  “Not really, sir. ”

  Vimes looked at those parts of the dragon still visible under the rubble. How could you kill one of these? Youd have to spend a day at it.

  A lump of rock ricocheted off his breastplate.

  “Who did that?”

  The voice lashed out like a whip.

  The crowd went quiet.

  Sybil Ramkin scrambled up on the wreckage, eyes afire, and glared furiously at the mob.

  “I said,” she said, “who did that? If the person who did it does not own up I shall be extremely angry! Shame on you all!”

  She had their full attention. Several people holding stones and things let them drop quietly to the ground.

  The breeze flapped the remnants of her nightshirt as her Ladyship took up a new haranguing position.

  “Here is the gallant Captain Vimes-”

  “Oh gods,” said Vimes in a small voice, and pulled his helmet down over his eyes.

  “-and his dauntless men, who have taken the trouble to come here today, to save your-”

  Vimes gripped Carrots arm and manoeuvred him down the far side of the heap.

  “You all right, Captain?” said the lance-constable. “Youve gone all red. ”

  “Dont you start,” snapped Vimes. “Its bad enough getting all those leers from Nobby and the sergeant. ”