“Beg to report thirty-one offenses of Making an Affray, sir, and fifty-six cases of Riotous Behavior, forty-one offenses of Obstructing an Officer of the Watch in the Execution of his Duty, thirteen offenses of Assault with a Deadly Weapon, six cases of Malicious Lingering, and—and—Corporal Nobby hasn’t even shown me one rope yet—”
He fell backward, breaking a table.
Captain Vimes coughed. He wasn’t at all sure what you were supposed to do next. As far as he knew, the Watch had never been in this position before.
“I think you should get him a drink, Sergeant,” he said.
“Yessir.”
“And get me one, too.”
“Yessir.”
“Have one yourself, why don’t you.”
“Yessir.”
“And you, Corporal, will you please—
what
are you doing?”
“Searchingthebodiesir,” said Nobby quickly, straightening up. “For incriminating evidence, and that.”
“In their money pouches?”
Nobby thrust his hands behind his back. “You never know, sir,” he said.
The sergeant had located a miraculously unbroken bottle of spirits in the wreckage and forced a lot of its contents between Carrot’s lips.
“What we going to do with all this lot, Captain?” he said over his shoulder.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” said Vimes, sitting down. The Watch jail was just about big enough for six very small people, which were usually the only sort to be put in it. Whereas these—
He looked around him desperately. There was Nork the Impaler, lying under a table and making bubbling noises. There was Big Henri. There was Grabber Simmons, one of the most feared barroom fighters in the city. All in all, there were a lot of people it wouldn’t pay to be near when they woke up.
“We could cut their froats, sir,” said Nobby, veteran of a score of residual battlefields. He had found an unconscious fighter who was about the right size and was speculatively removing his boots, which looked quite new and about the right size.
“That would be entirely wrong,” said Vimes. He wasn’t sure how you actually went about cutting a throat. It had never hitherto been an option.
“No,” he said, “I think perhaps we’ll let them off with a caution.”
There was a groan from under the bench.
“Besides,” he went on quickly, “we should get our fallen comrade to a place of safety as soon as possible.”
“Good point,” said the sergeant. He took a swig of the spirits, for the sake of his nerves.
The two of them managed to sling Carrot between them and guide his wobbling legs up the steps. Vimes, collapsing under the weight, looked around for Nobby.
“Corporal Nobbs,” he rasped, “why are you kicking people when they’re down?”
“Safest way, sir,” said Nobby.
Nobby had long ago been told about fighting fair and not striking a fallen opponent, and had then given some creative thought to how these rules applied to someone four feet tall with the muscle tone of an elastic band.
“Well, stop it. I want you to caution the felons,” said the captain.
“How, sir?”
“Well, you—” Captain Vimes stopped. He was blowed if he knew. He’d never done it.
“Just do it,” he snapped. “Surely I don’t have to tell you everything?”
Nobby was left alone at the top of the stairs. A general muttering and groaning from the floor indicated that people were waking up. Nobby thought quickly. He shook an admonitory cheese-straw of a finger.
“Let that be a lesson to you,” he said.
“Don’t do it again.”
And ran for it.
Up in the darkness of the rafters the Librarian scratched himself reflectively. Life was certainly full of surprises. He was going to watch developments with interest. He shelled a thoughtful peanut with his feet, and swung away into the darkness.
The Supreme Grand Master raised his hands.
“Are the Thuribles of Destiny ritually chastised, that Evil and Loose Thinking may be banished from this Sanctified Circle?”
“Yep.”
The Supreme Grand Master lowered his hands.
“Yep?” he said.
“Yep,” said Brother Dunnykin happily. “Done it myself.”
“You are
supposed
to say ‘Yea, O Supreme One,’” said the Supreme Grand Master. “Honestly, I’ve told you enough times, if you’re not all going to enter into the spirit of the thing—”
“Yes, you listen to what the Supreme Grand Master tells you,” said Brother Watchtower, glaring at the errant Brother.
“I spent hours chastising them thuribles,” muttered Brother Dunnykin.
“Carry on, O Supreme Grand Master,” said Brother Watchtower.
“Very well, then,” said the Grand Master. “Tonight we’ll try another experimental summoning. I trust you have obtained suitable raw material, brothers?”
“—scrubbed and scrubbed, not that you get any thanks—”
“All sorted out, Supreme Grand Master,” said Brother Watchtower.
It was, the Grand Master conceded, a slightly better collection. The Brothers had certainly been busy. Pride of place was given to an illuminated tavern sign whose removal, the Grand Master thought, should have merited some sort of civic award. At the moment the E was a ghastly pink and flashed on and off at random.
“
I
got that,” said Brother Watchtower proudly. “They thought I was mending it or something, but I took my screwdriver and I—”
“Yes, well done,” said the Supreme Grand Master. “Shows initiative.”
“
Thank
you, Supreme Grand Master,” beamed Brother Watchtower.
“—knuckles rubbed raw, all red and cracked. Never even got my three dollars back, either, no one as much as says—”
“And now,” said the Supreme Grand Master, taking up the book, “we will begin to commence. Shut up, Brother Dunnykin.”
Every town in the multiverse has a part that is something like Ankh-Morpork’s Shades. It’s usually the oldest part, its lanes faithfully following the original tracks of medieval cows going down to the river, and they have names like the Shambles, the Rookery, Sniggs Alley…
Most of Ankh-Morpork is like that in any case. But the Shades was even more so, a sort of black hole of bred-in-the-brickwork lawlessness. Put it like this: even the
criminals
were afraid to walk the streets. The Watch didn’t set foot in it.
They were accidentally setting foot in it now. Not very reliably. It had been a trying night, and they had been steadying their nerves. They were now so steady that all four were relying on the other three to keep them upright and steer.
Captain Vimes passed the bottle back to the sergeant.
“Shame on, on, on,” he thought for a bit, “you,” he said. “Drun’ in fron’ of a super, super, superererer ofisiler.”
The sergeant tried to speak, but could only come out with a series of esses.
“Put yoursel’ onna charge,” said Captain Vimes, rebounding off a wall. He glared at the brickwork. “This wall assaulted me,” he declared. “Hah! Think you’re tough, eh! Well, ’m a ofisler of, of, of the Law, I’ll have you know, and we don’ take any, any, any.”
He blinked slowly, once or twice.
“What’s it we don’ take any of, Sar’nt?” he said.
“Chances, sir?” said Colon.
“No, no, no. S’other stuff. Never mind. Anyway, we don’ take any of, of, of
it
from anyone.” Vague visions were trotting through his mind, of a room full of criminal types, people that had jeered at him, people whose very existence had offended and taunted him for years, lying around and groaning. He was a little unclear how it had happened, but some almost forgotten part of him, some much younger Vimes with a bright shining breastplate and big hopes, a Vimes he thought the alcohol had long ago drowned, was suddenly restless.
“Shallie, shallie, shallie tell you something, Sarn’t?” he said.
“Sir?” The four of them bounced gently off another wall and began another slow crabwise waltz across the alley.
“This city. This city. This city, Sarn’t. This city is a, is a, is a Woman, Sarn’t. So t’is. A Woman, Sarn’t. Ancient raddled old beauty, Sarn’t. Butifyoufallinlovewithher, then, then, then shekicksyouinnateeth—”
“’s woman?” said Colon.
He screwed up his sweating face with the effort of thought.
“’s eight miles wide, sir. ’s gotta river in it. Lots of, of houses and stuff, sir,” he reasoned.
“Ah. Ah. Ah.” Vimes waggled an unsteady finger at him. “Never, never, never said it wasa
small
woman, did I. Be fair.” He waved the bottle. Another random thought exploded in the froth of his mind.
“We showed ’em, anyway,” he said excitedly, as the four of them began an oblique shuffle back to the opposite wall. “Showed them, dint we? Taught thema forget they won’t lesson inna hurry, eh?”
“S’right,” said the sergeant, but not very enthusiastically. He was still wondering about his superior officer’s sex life.
But Vimes was in the kind of mood that didn’t need encouragement.
“Hah!” he shouted, at the dark alleyways. “Don’ like it, eh? Taste of your, your, your own medicine thingy. Well, now you can bootle in your trems!” He threw the empty bottle into the air.
“Two o’clock!” he yelled. “And all’s weeeellll!”
Which was astonishing news to the various shadowy figures who had been silently shadowing the four of them for some time. Only sheer puzzlement had prevented them making their attentions sharp and plain. These people are clearly guards, they were thinking, they’ve got the right helmets and everything, and yet here they are in the Shades. So they were being watched with the fascination that a pack of wolves might focus on a handful of sheep who had not only trotted into the clearing, but were making playful butts and baa-ing noises; the outcome was, of course, going to be mutton but in the meantime inquisitiveness gave a stay of execution.
Carrot raised his muzzy head.
“Where’re we?” he groaned.
“On our way home,” said the sergeant. He looked up at the pitted, worm-eaten and knife-scored sign above them. “We’re jus’ goin’ down, goin’ down, goin’ down—” he squinted—“Sweetheart Lane.”
“Sweetheart Lane s’not on the way home,” slurred Nobby. “We wouldn’t wanta go down Sweetheart Lane, it’s in the Shades. Catch us goin’ down Sweetheart Lane—”
There was a crowded moment in which realization did the icy work of a good night’s sleep and several pints of black coffee. The three of them, by unspoken agreement, clustered up toward Carrot.
“What we gonna
do
, Captain?” said Colon.
“Er. We could call for help,” said the captain uncertainly.
“What,
here
?”
“You’ve got a point.”
“I reckon we must of turned left out of Silver Street instead of right,” quavered Nobby.
“Well, that’s one mistake we won’t make again in a hurry,” said the captain. Then he wished he hadn’t.
They could hear footsteps. Somewhere off to their left, there was a snigger.
“We must form a square,” said the captain. They all tried to form a point.
“Hey! What was that?” said Sergeant Colon.
“What?”
“There it was again. Sort of a leathery sound.”
Captain Vimes tried not to think about hoods and garrotting.
There were, he knew, many gods. There was a god for every trade. There was a beggars’ god, a whores’ goddess, a thieves’ god, probably even an assassins’ god.
He wondered whether there was, somewhere in that vast pantheon, a god who would look kindly on hard-pressed and fairly innocent law-enforcement officers who were quite definitely about to die.
There probably wasn’t, he thought bitterly. Something like that wasn’t
stylish
enough for gods. Catch any god worrying about any poor sod trying to do his best for a handful of dollars a month. Not them. Gods went overboard for smart bastards whose idea of a day’s work was prising the Ruby Eye of the Earwig King out of its socket, not for some unimaginative sap who just pounded the pavement every night…
“More sort of slithery,” said the sergeant, who liked to get things right.
And then there was a sound—
—perhaps a volcanic sound, or the sound of a boiling geyser, but at any rate a long, dry
roar
of a sound, like the bellows in the forges of the Titans—
—but it was not so bad as the light, which was blue-white and the sort of light to print the pattern of your eyeballs’ blood vessels on the back of the inside of your skull.
They both went on for hundreds of years and then, instantly, stopped.
The dark aftermath was filled with purple images and, once the ears regained an ability to hear, a faint, clinkery sound.
The guards remained perfectly still for some time.
“Well, well,” said the captain weakly.
After a further pause he said, very clearly, every consonant slotting perfectly into place, “Sergeant, take some men and investigate that, will you?”
“Investigate what, sir?” said Colon, but it had already dawned on the captain that if the sergeant took some men it would leave him, Captain Vimes, all alone.
“No, I’ve a better idea. We’ll all go,” he said firmly. They all went.
Now that their eyes were used to the darkness they could see an indistinct red glow ahead of them.
It turned out to be a wall, cooling rapidly. Bits of calcined brickwork were falling off as they contracted, making little pinging noises.
That wasn’t the worst bit. The worst bit was what was on the wall.
They stared at it.
They stared at it for a long time.
It was only an hour or two till dawn, and no one even suggested trying to find their way back in the dark. They waited by the wall. At least it was warm.
They tried not to look at it.
Eventually Colon stretched uneasily and said, “Chin up, Captain. It could have been worse.”
Vimes finished the bottle. It didn’t have any effect. There were some types of sobriety that you just couldn’t budge.
“Yes,” he said. “It could have been us.”
The Supreme Grand Master opened his eyes.
“Once again,” he said, “we have achieved success.”
The Brethren burst into a ragged cheer. The Brothers Watchtower and Fingers linked arms and danced an enthusiastic jig in their magic circle.