Jingo

Terry Pratchett

Summary

A new land has surfaced from the sea of Discworld, and suddenly you can tell which way the wind is blowing.

And as two armies march, Commander Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch has got just a few hours to deal with a crime so big that there's no law against it. It's called "war."

He's facing unpleasant foes who are out to get him... and that's just the people on his side. The enemy might be even worse. And his pocket Dis-organiser says he's got Die under "Things To Do Today."

But he'd better not, because the world's cleverest inventor and its most devious politician are on their way to the battlefield with a little package that's guaranteed to stop a battle...

Discworld goes to war, with armies of sardines, warriors, fishermen, squid and at least one very camp follower.

Quotes

The Curious Squid were very small, harmless, difficult to find and reckoned by connoisseurs to have the foulest taste of any creature in the world. This made them very much in demand in a certain kind of restaurant where highly skilled chefs made, with great care, dishes containing no trace of the squid whatsoever.

The sinking of continents is usually accompanied by volcanoes, earthquakes, and armadas of little boats containing old men anxious to build pyramids and mystic stone circles in some new land where being the possessor of genuine ancient occult wisdom might be expected to attract girls.

Solid Jackson: "Don't you touch that building! This country belongs to Ankh-Morpork!"
Greasy Arif: "I claim this land in the name of the Seriph of Al-Khali!"
Solid Jackson: "We saw it first! Les, you tell him we saw it first!"
Greasy Arif: "We saw it first before you saw it first!"

Les caught Akhan's eye. They exchanged a very brief glance which was nevertheless modulated with a considerable amount of information, beginning with the sheer galactic-sized embarassment of having parents and working up from there.

As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

There was a tradition of soap-box public speaking in Sator Square ... traditionally, people said whatever was on their minds and at the top of their voices. The Patrician, it was said, looked kindly on the custom. He did. And very closely, too. He probably had someone make notes.

It wasn't spying, Commander Vimes told himself. Spying was when you crept around peeking in windows. It wasn't spying when you had to stand back a bit so that you weren't deafened.

...Vimes's grin was as funny as the one that moves very fast towards drowning men. And has a fin on top.

"They don't have trolls in Klatch, do they?" [Vimes] said.

"Nossir. It's der heat. Troll brains don't work in der heat. If I was to go to Klatch," said Detritus, his knuckles making little bink-bink noises as he dragged them over the cobbles, "I'd be really stoopid."

"Detritus?"

"Yessir?"

"Never go to Klatch."

Detritus: "Aagragaah. It mean lit'rally der time when you see dem little pebbles and you jus' know dere's gonna be a great big landslide on toppa you and it already too late to run. Dat moment, dat's aagragaah."
Vimes: "...Where does the word come from?"
Detritus: "Maybe it names after der soun' you make just as a t'ousand ton of rock hit you."

Detritus's intelligence wasn't too bad for a troll, falling somewhere between a cuttlefish and a linedancer, but you could rely on him not to let it slow him down.

...Corporal Littlebottom had pointed out that Ankh-Morpork's pigeons were, because of many centuries of depredation by the city's gargoyle population, considerably more intelligent than most pigeons, although Vimes considered that this was not difficult because there were things growing on old damp bread that were more intelligent than most pigeons.

...he listened with great care because what people said was what they wanted him to hear. He paid a lot of attention to the spaces outside the words, though. That's where the things were that they hoped he didn't know and didn't want him to find out.

Boggis: "Why are our people going out [to the island]?"
Vetinari: "Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and ... additional wealth in a new land."
Downey: "What's in it for the Klatchians?"
Vetinari: "Oh, they've gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for nothing."
Burleigh: "A masterful summation, if I may say so, my lord."
Vetinari: "Oh, I do beg your pardon. I seem to have read those last two sentences in the wrong order."

...the man had been a zombie for several hundred years although historical accounts suggested that the only difference dying had made to Mr. Slant was that he'd started to work through his lunch break.

"Sir Samuel, the Klatchian language does not even have a word for lawyer," said Mr. Slant.

"Doesn't it?" said Vimes. "Good for them."

Selachii: "It's about time Johnny Klatchian was taught a lesson. Remember all that business last year with the cabbages? Ten damn boatloads they wouldn't accept!"
Vimes: "And everyone knows caterpillars add to the flavour."
Selachii: "That's right! Good honest protein! And you remember all that trouble Captain Jenkins had over that cargo of mutton? They were going to imprison him! In a Klatchian jail!"
Vimes: "Surely not? Meat is at its best when it's going green."

"Some of these are powerful nations, gentlemen. Many of them don't like Klatch's current expansionist outlook, but they don't like us much, either."

"Whyever not?" said Lord Selachii.

"Well, because during our history those we haven't occupied we've tended to wage war on," said Lord Vetinari. "For some reason the slaughter of thousands of people tend to stick in the memory."

"...why don't they like us now? Do we owe them money?"

"No. Mostly they owe us money. Which is, of course, a far better reason for their dislike."

"What about mercenaries?" said Boggis.

"The problem with mercenaries," said the Patrician, "is that they need to be paid to start fighting. And, unless you are very lucky, you end up paying them even more to stop."

Selachii thumped the table.

"Very well, then, by jingo!" he snarled. "Alone!"

"We could certainly do with one," said Lord Vetinari.

"Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo."

"Gentlemen, please," said the Patrician. He shook his head. "Let's have no fighting, please. This is, after all, a council of war."

-- From Lord Vetinari, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Ankh-Morpork

"I do like entertaining people after the faculty of Unseen University have entertained them to lunch. They tend not to move about much and they'll agree to practically anything if they think there's a chance of a stomach powder and a small glass of water."

There were about fifty youths in the wide alleyway. Average age in years, about eleven. Average age in cynicism and malevolent evil: about 163.

Reg Shoe: "But they're thugs, captain! Young killers! Villains!"
Carrot: "Oh, they're a bit cheeky, but nice enough boys undeneath, when you take the time to understand--"
Reg Shoe: "I heard they never give anyone enough time to understand! Does Mr. Vimes know you're doing this?"
Carrot: "He sort of knows, yes. I said I'd like to start a club for the street kids and he said it was fine provided I took them camping on the edge of some really sheer cliff somewhere in a high wind."

"My mum's uncle was a sailor," said Nobby. "But after the big plague he got press-ganged. Bunch of farmers got him drunk, he woke up next morning tied to a plough."

Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He'd been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a post-graduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.

Nobby: "I heard where they've got a lot of odd gods."
Colon: "Yeah, and mad priests. Foaming at the mouth, half of 'em. Believe all kinds of loony things."
Nobby: "So how exactly are they different from ours, then? I mean, some of our priests are--"
Colon: "I hope you ain't being unpatriotic."

"Seems to be about it, sir," said Reg Shoe, peering around the edge of the cart. "We've got them down for everything but the Hide Park Flasher--"

"We did that!" screamed someone.

"--and that was a woman..."

"We did it!" This time the voice was a lot higher. "Now please can we come out?"

-- Werewolves make poor hostages

"Here, you're a zombie!"

"That's right, kick a man when he's dead," said Constable Shoe sharply.

Vimes's approach to paperwork was not to touch it until someone was shouting, and then at least there would be someone to help him sort through the stacks.

Everyone had just been sent down to the armoury to collect whatever fitted, and the result was a walking historical exhibit: Funny-Shaped Helmets Through the Ages.

Vimes stopped [his speech]. Perplexed expressions in front of him told him that he was building a house of cards with too few cards on the bottom.

He coughed.

"Anyway," he went on, with a glare to indicate that everyone should forget the previous twenty seconds...

"What do you want, Nobby?"

"It's about my... sexual nature, miss."

Angua said nothing. Rain banged off Nobby's ill-fitting helmet.

"I think it's time I looked it full in the face, miss."

Angua cursed her graphic imagination again.

Verity had the opposite of a squint. Both eyes appeared to be endeavouring to see the adjacent ear. When you talked to her, you had to suppress a feeling that she was about to walk off in two directions.

She sighed again. She was familiar with the syndrome. They said they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows.

"The only thing I can sugest," [Angua] said, "is that women are quite often attracted to men who can make them laugh."

Nobby brightened. "Really?" he said. "I ought to be well in there, then."

"Good."

"People laugh at me all the time."

There was a crash somewhere ahead of them, and a scream. Coppers learned to be good at screams. There was to the connoisseur a world of difference between "I'm drunk and I've just trodden on my fingers and I can't get up!" and "Look out! He's got a knife!"

Vimes knew the place as Mundane Meals. Nobby Nobbs had said that Goriff had wanted a word that meant ordinary, everyday, straight-forward, and had asked around until he found one he liked the sound of.

Les: "Who was Mr. Hong?"
Solid Jackson: "How should I know?"
Les: "Only, when we was all heading back for the boats one of the other men said, 'We all know what happened to Mr. Hong when he opened the Three Jolly Luck Take-Away Fish Bar on the site of the old fish-god temple in Dagon Street on the night of the full moon, don't we... ?' Well, I don't know."
Solid Jackson: "Ah... He... closed up and left in a bit of a hurry, lad. So quick he had to leave some things behind."
Les: "Like what?"
Solid Jackson: "If you must know... half an earhole and one kidney."
Les: "Cool!"

...I read him his rites, whereupon, he said up, yours copper. Sgnt Detritus then, cautioned him, upon which he said, ouch...

There may be a lot of things I'm not good at, thought Vimes, but at least I don't treat the punctuation of a sentence like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey...

Vimes's desk was becoming famous. Once there were piles, but they had slipped as piles do, forming this dense compacted layer that was now turning into something like peat. It was said there were plates and unfinished meals somewhere down there. No-one wanted to check. Some people said they'd heard movement.

He winced and tried to do some surreptitious rearranging in an effort to prevent himself becoming the city's first hunchgroin.

It wasn't just the pursuit that was so invigorating, with his velvet cloak left behind on a tree and his hat in a puddle somewhere, it was the knowledge that while he was doing this he wasn't eating very small sandwiches and making even smaller talk. It wasn't proper police work, Vimes considered, unless you were doing something that someone somewhere would much rather you weren't doing.

A few moments later Sergeant Colon walked carefully down to the main office. He had a slightly glassy look and walked back to his desk with the nonchalance that only the extremely worried try to achieve.

He quite liked the wizards. They didn't commit crimes. Not Vimes's type of crimes, anyway. The occult wasn't Vimes's beat. The wizards might well mess up the very fabric of time and space but they didn't lead to paperwork, and that was fine by Vimes.

And there was nothing finer than a wizard dressed up formally, until someone could find a way of inflating a Bird of Paradise, possibly by using an elastic band and some kind of gas.

[Vimes'] gaze went from face to chatting face, and he wondered idly what each person was guilty of. [Footnote: The possibility that they were not guilty of anything was one that he didn't even think worthy of consideration.]

He sidled over to Corporal Nobbs, who was standing by the main doors in the sort of lopsided slouch which was the closest a living Nobbs could come to attention.

"Prince Khufurah," he said. "My carpet got in only two hours ago."

"Carpet? Oh... yes... you flew..."

"Yes, very chilly and of course you just can't get a good meal."

Khufurah: "I was just wondering about the meaning of the word shouted at me as we were on our way down here. ...I believe it was... let me see now... oh, yes... towelhead."
Vimes: "It... refers to your headdress."
Khufurah: "Oh. Is it some kind of obscure joke?"
Vimes: "No. It's an insult."
Khufurah: "Ah? Well, we certainly cannot be held responsible for the ramblings of idiots, commander. I must commend you, incidentally... I must have asked a dozen people that question this morning and, do you know? Not one of them knew what it meant? And they all seemed to have caught a cough."

All in all, the man had a face that any policeman would arrest on sight. There was no possible way it could be innocent of anything.

He caught Vimes's expression and grinned, and Vimes had never seen so much gold in one mouth. He'd never seen so much gold in one place.

"So," [Vimes] said, "are we going to have a scrap over this Leshp business or what?"

The Prince gave a dismissive shrug.

"Pfui," he said. "A few square miles of uninhabited fertile ground with superb anchorage in an unsurpassed strategic position? What sort of inconsequence is that for civilized people to war over?"

"I am afraid, commander, that some of your fellow citizens feel that just because my people invented advanced mathematics and all-day camping we are complete barbarians who'd try to buy their wives at the drop of, shall we say, a turban. I am surprised they're giving me an honorary degree, considering how incredibly backward I am."

No wonder this man was a diplomat. You couldn't trust him an inch, he thought in loops, and you couldn't help liking him despite it.

Vimes: "Why has Mr. Ahmed got such a big curved sword slung on his back?"
Khufurah: "Ah, you are a policeman, you notice such things--"
Vimes: "It's hardly a concealed weapon, is it? It's nearly bigger than him. He's practically a concealed owner!"

What a thing it is to have a copper's mind, Vimes thought... just because someone makes himself pleasant and likeable you start to be suspicious of him, for no other reason than the fact that anyone who goes out of their way to be nice to a copper has got something on their mind.

In the absence of anything resembling a Lord Mayor's Show or a state opening of Parliament, [The Convivium] was one of the few formal opportunities the citizens had of jeering at their social superiors, or at least at people wearing tights and ridiculous costumes.

The procession had halted behind Vimes. Some of the more impressionable people who weren't sure what they should be doing, and those who had partaken too heavily of the University's rather good sherry, started to fumble around on their person for something to throw up in the air and catch. After all, this was a Traditional Ceremony. If you took the view that you were not going to do things because they were apparently ridiculous, you might as well go home right now.

The Barbican had been the fortified gateway in the days when Ankh-Morpork didn't regard an attacking army a marvellous commercial opportunity.

Vimes: "You know what I always say."
Carrot: "Yes, sir. 'Everyone's guilty of something, especially the ones that aren't,' sir."
Vimes: "No, not that one..."
Carrot: "Er... 'Always take into consideration the fact that you might be dead wrong,' sir?"
Vimes: "No, not that one either."
Carrot: "Er, 'How come Nobby ever got a job as a watchman?', sir? You say that a lot."

Vetinari: "Colon and Nobbs are investigating this? Really?"
Vimes: "Yes, sir... They're good men, sir."
Vetinari: "However, some people might consider them to be unimaginative, stolid and... how can I put this?... possessed of an inbuilt disposition to accept the first explanation that presents itself and then bunk off somewhere for a quiet smoke? A certain lack of imagination? An ability to get out of their depth on a wet pavement? A tendency to rush to judgement?"
Vimes: "I hope you are not impugning my men, sir."
Vetinari: "Vimes, Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs have never been pugn'd in their entire lives."

Vetinari: "What was it, Leonard?"
Leonard: "An experimental device for turning chemical energy into rotary motion. The problem, you see, is getting the little pellets of black powder into the combustion chamber at exactly the right speed and one at a time. If two ignite together, well, what we have is the external combustion engine."
Vetinari: "And, er, what would be the purpose of it?"
Leonard: "I believe it could replace the horse."
Vetinari: "One of the advantages of horses that people often point out is that they very seldom explode. Almost never, in my experience, apart from that unfortunate occurrence in the hot summer a few years ago."

...although [Leonard] had so much cleverness it leaked continually, he couldn't tell you which way the political wind was blowing even if you fitted him with sails.

The sight of a waterfall or a soaring bird would send [Leonard of Quirm] spinning down some new path of practical speculation that invariably ended in a heap of wire and springs and a cry of "I think I know what I did wrong."

...you couldn't plan for every eventuality, because that would involve knowing what was going to happen, and if you knew what was going to happen, you could probably see to it that it didn't, or at least happened to someone else.

And, finally, [the Patrician] kept Leonard around because the man was easy to talk to. He never understood what Lord Vetinari was talking about, he had a world view about as complex as that of a concussed duckling and, above all, never really paid attention.

Leonard: "That? Oh, something of a toy, really. Makes use of the strange properties of some otherwise quite useless metals. They don't like being squeezed. So they go bang. With extreme alacrity."
Vetinari: "Another weapon..."
Leonard: "Certainly not, my lord! It would be no possible use as a weapon! I did think it might have a place in the mining industries, though."
Vetinari: "Really..."
Leonard: "For when they need to move mountains out of the way."

"But the way you put it, these major [Klatchian] achievements were some considerable time ago..." Lord Vetinari sounded like a man straining to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

"Certainly! I would be astonished if they haven't made considerable progress!" said Leonard of Quirm happily.

"Ah?" The Patrician sank a little in his chair. It had turned out that the end of the tunnel was on fire.

Vimes: "Well ... see which way the wind is blowing. Very carefully. And -- trust no-one."
Carrot: "Er ... I can trust Angua, can't I?"
Vimes: "Well, of course you--"
Carrot: "And you, presumably."
Vimes: "Me, well, obviously. That goes without say--"
Carrot: "Corporal Littlebottom? She can be very helpful--"
Vimes: "Cheery, yes, certainly you can trust--"
Carrot: "Sergeant Detritus? I always thought he was very trust--"
Vimes: "Detritus, oh yes, he--"
Carrot: "Nobby? Should I--"

-- It's all Chris Carter's fault

"And don't call me sarge when we're in plain clothes!"

"Right you are, Fred."

"That's--" Colon hesitated in an agony of status. "Well, that's Frederick to you, Nobby."

"Just remember who's the superior civilian around here, all right?"

"It looks like a complete run of Bows and Ammo! And..." Nobby pulled another stack of badly engraved magazines out into the light, "here's Warrior of Fortune, look! And Practical Siege Weapons..."

Colon leafed through page after page of very similar-looking people holding very similar weapons of personal destruction.

"You got to be a bit odd to sit around all day reading this kind of thing," he said.

"Yeah," said Nobby. "Here, don't put that one back, that's last August's issue, I ain't got that one."

"Do you need an excuse to have a war?" said Nobby. "I mean, who for? Can't you just say, 'You got lots of cash and land but I've got a big sword so divvy up right now, chop chop?' That's what I'd do," said Corporal Nobbs, military strategist. "And I wouldn't even say that until after I'd attacked."

"Is, er, there something wrong, dear?" he said.

"Can you remember when we last had dinner together, Sam?"

"Tuesday, wasn't it?"

"That was the Guild of Merchants' annual dinner, Sam."

Vime's brow wrinkled. "But you were there too, weren't you?"

"And then you rushed off afterwards because of that business with the barber in Gleam Street."

"Sweeney Jones," said Vimes. "Well, he was killing people, Sybil. The best you could say is that he didn't mean to. He was just very bad at shaving--"

Forthright was the Boy; it came as news to Vimes that this was an official servant position, but the Boy's job was to light the fires, clean the privies, help the gardener and take the blame.

"But a brown bowler... it's not your style. It doesn't suit you."

"Exactly!" said Carrot. "If it was my style, people would know it's me, right?"

"I mean it makes you look like a twerp, Carrot."

"Do I normally look like a twerp?"

"No, not--"

"Aha!"

-- Carrot goes undercover

"Carrot, these disguises are meant for a potato."

"Are they?"

"Look, they're all on potatoes, see?"

"I thought that was just for display."

The unofficial entrance to the University has always been known only to students. What most students failed to remember was that the senior members of the faculity had also been students once, and also liked to get out and about after the official shutting of the gates. This naturally led to a certain amount of embarassment and diplomacy on dark evenings.

[The Librarian] produced a Watch Special Constable's badge on a string, which he hung around the general area where his neck should have been, and then stood as much to attention as an orang-utan can, which is not a great deal. The central ape gets the idea but outlying areas are slow to catch on.

Carrot picked up a torn copy of Woddeley's Occult Primer. Several loose pages fell out. Angua picked one up.

"'Chapter Fifteen, Elementary Necromancy'", she read out loud. "'Lesson One: Correct Use of Shovel...'"

"Youse don't want to stand here listenin' to me all day!" [Detritus] bellowed. "Dis is der Riot Act and you've all got to read it, right? Pass it round."

"What if we don't read it?" said a voice in the crowd.

"You got to read it. It legal."

"And then what happens?"

"Den I shoot you," said Detritus.

"That's not allowed!" said another voice. "You've got to shout 'Stop! Armed Watchman!' first!"

"Sure, dat suits me," said Detritus. ... "It harder to hit runnin' targets."

"Were you proposing to shoot these people in cold blood, Sergeant?"

"Nossir. Just a warning shot inna head, sir."

"Dis is der Riot Act," he said. "You know what dat means? It means if'n I reads it out and youse don't disb... disp... go away, der Watch can use deadly force, you unnerstand?"

"What did you just use, then?" moaned someone from underneath his feet.

"Dat was you helpin' der Watch," said Detritus, shifting his weight.

The mob dispersed, going ragged at the edges as people legged it down side alleys, threw away their makeshift weapons and emerged at the other end walking the grave, thoughtful walk of honest citizens.

It was a typical Saturday Night Special [crossbow], so badly made and erratic that the only safe place to be when it was first would be directly behind it, and even then you would be running a risk. ... Probably the only way you could reliably hurt someone with it was to beat them over the head.

"Oh, hello, Littlebottom," he said. "What now? Don't tell me -- someone"s set fire to the Klatchian embassy."

"All right, sir," said the dwarf. She stood uncertainly in the middle of the alley, looking worried.

"Well?" said Vimes.

"Er... you said--"

With a sinking feeling Vimes remembered that the generic dwarfish skill with iron was matched only by the fumblefingered grasp of irony.

Angua: "'Get A Head, Get A Burleigh and Stronginthearm "Streetsweeper" and Win By A Neck!' Well, it must be true what they say about men who like big weapons..."
Carrot: "And that is?"
Angua: "They, er... they're rather small."
Carrot: "Oh, that's true. Look at dwarfs. Never happier than with a chopper the same size as them. And Nobby's fascinated by weapons and he's practically dwarf-sized."

Technically, Angua was sure she knew Carrot better than anyone else. ...And yet all the time there was this feeling that the greater part of him was always deep, deep inside, looking out. No-one could be so simple, no-one could be so creatively dumb, without being very intelligent.

Ankh-Morpork no longer had a fire brigade. The citizens had a rather disturbingly direct way of thinking at times, and it did not take long for people to see the rather obvious flaw in paying a group of people by the number of fires they put out.

"Well, that's society for you, I'm afraid," said Carrot. "Everything is dumped on the people below until you find someone who's prepared to eat it."

"Your hair always looks amazing," said Carrot ... "I don't know what you use, but it's a shame he never tried it."

"I doubt if he went to the right shop," said Angua. "It says 'For a Glossy Coat' on the bottles I usually buy--"

-- Werewolves have special needs

"Mr. Vimes saved the day!" said Sergeant Colon excitedly. "Just went straight in and saved everyone, in the finest tradition of the Watch!"

"Fred?" said Vimes, wearily.

"Yessir?"

"Fred, the finest tradition of the Watch is having a quiet smoke somewhere out of the wind at 3 a.m. Let's not get carried away, eh?"

It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker than huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.

...Lady Sybil came from a class that was not used to difficulty, or at least the kind that couldn't be sorted out by shouting at a servant.

"Mr. Wazir sells books in Widdy Street," said Carrot. "Only I asked him for some books on Klatch, you see, and one of the ones he gave me was The Perfumed Allotment, or, The Garden of Delights. And I didn't mind because the Klatchians invented gardens, sir, so I thought it might be a very useful cultural insight. Get inside the Klatchian mind, as it were. Only it, er, it ... er ... well, it wasn't about gardening..."

"Wazir comes from Smale, you see," said Carrot. "And Mr. Gorriff comes from Elharib, and the two countries only stopped fighting ten years ago. Religious differences."

"Ran out of weapons?" said Vimes.

"Ran out of rocks, sir. They ran out of weapons last century."

Vimes shook his head. Carrot was good at picking up this sort of thing. And I know how to ask for vindaloo, he thought. And it turns out that's just a Klatchian word meaning "mouth-scalding gristle for macho foreign idiots".

Vimes: "I wish we understood more about Klatch."
Colon: "Know the enemy, eh, sir?"
Vimes: "Oh, I know the enemy. It's Klatchians I want to find out about."

"Would you care to tell me your problem?" said Mrs. Cake. She looked at Nobby again and, in a state of certainty that had nothing to do with precognition and everything to do with observation, added: "That is, which of your problems do you want to know about?"

At a time like this men like Rust rise to the top. It's like stirring a swamp with a stick. Really big bubbles are suddenly on the surface and there's a bad smell about everything.

Men like [Lord] Rust had a moral code of sorts, and some things weren't honourable. You could own a street of crowded houses where people lived like cockroaches and cockroaches lived like kings and that was perfectly OK, but Rust would probably die before he'd descend to forgery.

Rust: "To be frank ... the city is to be placed under martial law."
Vimes: "Yessir? What kind of law's that, sir?"
Rust: "You know very well, Vimes."
Vimes: "Is it the kind where you yell 'Stop!' before you fire, sir, or the other kind?"

Sergeant Colon took his grimy badge out of his pocket and was a little disappointed that it didn't make a defiant tinkle when he threw it on the table but instead bounced and smashed the water jug.

Already old Fred's face was creasing up in the soft expression of someone who has been mugged in Memory Lane.

"The ladies liked the uniform," said Fred Colon, with the unspoken rider that sometimes a growing lad needed all the help he could get.

Colon looked awkward, as if the bunched underwear of the past was tangling itself in the crotch of recollection.

[Fred Colon] rummaged in a pocket and produced a very small book, which he held up for inspection.

"This belonged to my great-granddad," he said. "He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-grand gave him this book of prayer for soldiers, 'cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, 'cos he couldn't afford armour, and next day in battle -- whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look, you can see the hole."

"Pretty miraculous," Carrot agreed.

"Yeah, it was, I s'pose," said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the battered volume. "Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really."

"I'm afraid, Nobby, that the white feather is to shame you into joining up."

"Oh, that's all right, then," said Nobby, a man for whom shame held no shame.

Nobby: "Well, I always came back with my shield. No problem there."
Colon: "Nobby, you used to come back with your shield, everyone else's shield, a sack of teeth and fifteen pairs of still-warm boots. On a cart."
Nobby: "We-ell, no point in going to war unless you're on the winning side."
Colon: "Nobby, you was always on the winning side, the reason bein', you used to lurk 'round the edges to see who was winning and then pull the right uniform off'f some poor dead sod. I used to hear where the generals kept an eye on what you were wearin' so they'd know how the battle was going."
Nobby: "Lots of soldiers have served in lots of regiments."
Colon: "Right, what you say is true. Only not usually during the same battle."

One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

Vimes: "Did Fred tell you where he said Rust could put his badge?"
Sybil: "Yes. Three times. It seems to be weighing on his mind. Anyway, knowing Ronnie, he'd have to use a hammer."

Men like that thought, they really thought, that the Watch was a kind of sheepdog, to nip at the heels of the flock, bark when spoken to and never, ever, bite the shepherd...

Oh yes. Vimes knew in his bones who the enemy was.

Downstairs, Sybil had cooked him a meal. She wasn't a very good cook. This was fine by Vimes, because he wasn't a very good eater.

"Are you going out, Sam?"

"Yes. I'm just going to kick some arse, dear."

"Oh, good. Just be sure you wrap up well, then."

The boy's father gave him that complicated shrug used by adults in a situation involving adolescents.

They went down the quay towards a waiting boat. It was a Klatchian ship. People lined the rails, people who were getting out with what they could carry before they could only get out with what they wore.

"I can't just let him get away," said Carrot. "He's a suspect! Look, he's laughing at us!"

"With diplomatic immunity," said Angua. "But there's a lot of armed men down there."

"My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure," said Carrot.

"Really? Well, there's eleven of them."

"D'reg?" said Angua.

"A warlike desert tribe," said Carrot. "Very fierce. Honourable, though. They say that if a D'reg is your friend he's your friend for the rest of your life."

"And if he's not your friend?"

"That's about five seconds."

"Don't worry," she said. "If the worst comes to the worst, I'll dive overboard."

"Into the river?"

"Even the river Ankh can't kill a werewolf." Angua glanced at the turgid water. "Probably, anyway."

"And I heard where [Klatchians] eat sheep's eyeballs, too," said Nobby, international gastra-gnome.

"Right again."

"Not decent ordinary stuff like lambs' fry or sweetbreads, then?"

"That's... right."

Nobby: "What're you going to do? Join a regiment and go to the front?"
Colon: "We-ell... my fore-tay lies in training, so I reckon I'd better stay here and train up the new recruits."
Nobby: "Here at the back, you might say."
Colon: "We all have to do our bit, Nobby. If it was down to me I'd be out there like a shot to give Johnny Klatchian a taste of cold steel."
Nobby: "...But s'posing the Klatchians attack here? Then you'll be at the front and the front will be at the back."
Colon: "I'll sort of try for a posting in the middle..."
Nobby: "The middle of the front or--"

The man looked at Nobby. Expressions of amazement, dread, interest and charity passed across his otherwise sunny countenance like storm-driven clouds.

Sand had been spilled across the big table in the Rats Chamber. ...it was a map of Klatch and everyone knew that Klatch was sand anyway, which made it rather satisfying in an existential sort of way, although this sand here had been commandeered from the heap behind Chalky the troll's wholesale pottery and bore the occasional cigarette end and trace of feline incontinence that would probably not be found in the real desert, or certainly not to scale.

Lieutenant Hornett: "...you don't think the enemy might be expecting us there? It being such an obvious landing site?"
Lord Rust: "Not obvious at all to the trained military thinker, sir! They won't be expecting us there precisely because it is so obvious, d'y'see?"
Lieutenant Hornett: "You mean... they'll think only a complete idiot would land there, sir?"
Lord Rust: "Correct!"

"Yerss, it are species of your choice's life in der First of Foot!" shouted Sergeant Detritus ... "You learnin' a trade! You learnin' self-respek! Also you get spiffy uniform plus all der boots you can eat--"

"Then if you persist in playing games I will say that before a knight is created he must spend a night's vigil watching his armour--"

"Practically every night of my life," said Vimes. "A man doesn't keep an eye on his armour round here, that man's got no armour in the morning."

"In prayer," said Rust sharply.

"That's me," said Vimes. "Not a night has gone by without me thinking, 'Ye gods, I hope I get through this alive.'"

"...I know what 'training in arms' means, Ronald. There hasn't been a real war in ages. So it's all prancing around wearing padded waistcoats and waving swords with knobs on the end so no-one'll really get hurt, isn't it? But down in the Shades no-one's had any training in arms either. Wouldn't know an épée from a sabre. No, what they're good at is a broken bottle in one hand and a length of four-by-two in the other and when you face 'em, Ronnie, you know you aren't going off for a laugh and a jolly drink afterwards 'cos they want you dead. They want to kill you, you see, Ron? And by the time you've swung your nice shiny broadsword they've carved their name and address on your stomach. And that's where I got my training in arms. Well ... fists and knees and teeth and elbows, mostly."

"You, sir, are no gentleman," said Rust.

"I knew there was something about me that I liked."

He had the look of a lawn mower just after the grass had organised a workers' collective. There was a definite suggestion that, deep inside, he knew this was not really happening. It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence could be safely ignored.

Vimes: "You told them it wasn't compulsory?"
Detritus: "Yessir! I said, 'It ain't compuls'ry, you just gotta,' sir."
Vimes: "Detritus, I wanted volunteers."
Detritus: "'sright, sir. They volunteered all right, I saw to that."

...[Vimes] wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people.

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

"He's a raving genius!"

"He's a looney."

"Yeah, well, they say there's a thin line between genius and madness..."

"He's fallen off it, then."

The watchmen realized that the man holding them up had paused to redesign his weapon and had given it to them to hold while he looked for a screwdriver. This was a thing that did not often happen.

Being picked for something because of your "special qualities" was tantamount to being volunteered. Anyway, what was so special about "special qualities"? Limpets had special qualities.

"'ere, have you got another one of these rockets?" said Nobby, hefting the tube onto his shoulder again. He had the special gleam in his eye that a small man gets when he's laid his hands on a big, big weapon.

"I may have," said Leonard, and the gleam in his eye was the mad twinkle of the naturally innocent when they think they're being cunning.

"Well done!" said Leonard. "Tell me, sergeant, are you of a nautical persuasion?"

Colon saluted again. "Nossir! Happily married man, sir!"

The city of Genua had run out of royalty, inbreeding having progressed to the point where the sole remaining example consisted mostly of teeth...

He'd brought back heaps of spoils, lots of captives and, almost uniquely among Ankh-Morpork's militaryleaders, most of his men. Vimes suspected that this last fact was one reason why history didn't approve. There was a suggestion that this was, in some way, not playing fair.

Veni, vermini, vomui, I came, I got ratted, I threw up? Visi, veneri, vamoosi, I visited, I caught an embarassing disease, I ran away?

"It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country. This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind."

Colon: "You can't ask us to go in that thing, sir! It'll be suicide!"
Vetinari: "No. No, I think you are wrong. I think that, in all probability, going into that thing would be a valiant and possibly rewarding deed. I would venture to suggest that, in fact, it is not going that would be suicidal."

Colon saluted again. You could usually tell his nervousness by the smartness of his salute. You could have cut bread with this one.

Colon: "Er ... what is this thing called?"
Leonard of Quirm: "Well, because it is submersed in a marine environment I've always called it the Going-Under-The-Water-Safely Device."

Some of the more stoic ones had made little camps, defining with bundles and pieces of cloth tiny areas of private property... showing yet another way of drawing a line in the sand. This is Mine, and that is Yours. Trespass on Mine, and you'll get Yours.

There was someone in the bed, she could smell them, but they wouldn't be a problem. Jaw muscles strong enough to sever someone's neck help you to feel relaxed in most situations.

The food was ... dog food. In Ankh-Morpork terms, it meant something that you wouldn't even put in a sausage, and there are very few things that a man with a big enough mincer cannot put in a sausage.

...Carrot really did believe that personal wasn't the same as important ... But there was something slightly creepy about someone who didn't just believe it, but lived their life by it. It was as unnerving as meeting a really poor priest.

...history was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.

...the Patrician was against printing because if people knew too much it would only bother them.

No-one likes being told it's their lucky day. That sort of thing does not bode well. When someone tells you it's your lucky day, something bad is about to happen.

"I do declare," said Vimes, "but that looks to me like a Burleigh and Stronginthearm 'Viper' Mk 3, which kills people but leaves buildings standing."

"Odd thing, ain't it ... you meet people on at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls."

"That's mob rule!"

"Oh, no, surely not," said Vimes. "Call it democratic justice."

"One man, one rock," Detritus volunteered.

"In the words of General Tacticus, let us take history by the scrotum. Of course, he was not a very honourable fighter."

"Are we entirely ready, sir?" said Lieutenant Hornett, with the special inflection that means "We are not entirely ready, sir."

Nobby: "Where're we going?"
Leonard: "His lordship wishes to go to Leshp."
Nobby: "Yes, I thought it'd be something like that. I thought: 'Where don't I want to go?' And the answer just popped into my head, just like that."

The ocean waves may not be ploughable, but the crust of the river Ankh downstream from the city was known to sprout small bushes in the summertime.

Thief-taker, Rust had called him. The man had meant it as an insult, but it'd do. Theft was the only crime, whether the loot was gold, innocence, land or life.

There was a bowl of water, quite fresh by Ankh-Morpork standards. She could see the bottom of the bowl, at least.

"Is there anything to eat?"

"There's some more of that garlic sausage. Or there's the cheese. Or cold beans."

"We're in a tin with no air and we're supposed to eat cheese? I ain't even going to comment on the beans."

71-hour Ahmed was not superstitious. He was substitious, which put him in a minority among humans. He didn't believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren't true. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no-one else believed. There are many such substitions, ranging from "It'll get better if you don't pick at it" all the way up to "Sometimes things just happen."

"A capital game, Leonard," said Vetinari. "What did you say it was called?"

"I call it the 'Make Words With Letters That Have All Been Mixed Up Game', my lord."

"Ah. Yes. Obviously. Well done."

"Huh, an' I got three points," mumbled Nobby. "They was perfectly good words that you wouldn't let me have, too."

"I'm sure the gentlemen don't want to know those words," said Colon severely.

Jenkins: "So what're you going to do when we catch them?"
Vimes: "Er... We'll swing across on to them with our cutlasses in our teeth?"
Jenkins: "Really? That's good. I haven't seen that done in years. Only ever seen it done once, in fact."
Vimes: "Oh, yes?"
Jenkins: "Yes, this lad'd seen the idea in a book and he swung across into the other ship's rigging with his cutlass clenched, as you say, between his teeth... Topless Harry, we wrote on his coffin."

Jenkins: "Grapnels. You can't beat grapnels. Catch 'em on the other ship and just pull 'em towards you."
Vimes: "And you've got grapnels?"
Jenkins: "Oh, yes. Saw some only today, in fact."
Vimes: "Good. Then--"
Jenkins: "As I recall, it was when your Sergeant Detritus was chucking stuff over the side and he said, 'What shall we do with dese bendy, hooky things, sir?' and someone, can't recall his name just at this minute, said, 'They're dead weight, throw them over'."

"All that yohoho stuff's for landlubbers, or it would be if we ever used words like landlubber."

"Also, this is a frisky wind and me and my crew know how to pull the strings that make the big square canvas things work properly. If your men tried it you'd soon find out how far it is to land."

"How far is it to land?"

"About thirty fathoms, hereabouts."

"According to the Testament of Mezerek, the fisherman Nonpo spent four days in the belly of a giant fish," said Constable Visit.

The thunder seemed particularly loud in the silence.

"Washpot, are we talking miracles here?" said Reg eventually. "Or just a very slow digestive process?"

It was in the nature of a D'reg to open doors carefully. There was generally an enemy on the other side. Sooner or later.

There was a gasp beside [Angua]. She spun around and saw two men holding a net. ... What they hadn't been expecting was a naked woman. The sudden appearance of a naked woman always caused a rethink of anyone's immediate plans.

A werewolf can have considerable power over other animals, whatever shape she's in, although it is largely the power to make them cringe and try to look inedible.

[Angua] was aware that she had a slight advantage over male werewolves in that naked women caused fewer complaints, although the downside was that they got some pressing invitations. Some kind of covering was essential, for modesty and the prevention of inconvenient bouncing, which was why fashioning impromptu clothes out of anything to hand was a lesser-known werewolf skill.

...to a werewolf all humans looked alike: they looked appetizing.

"Oh, Dad," said Les. "Another dinner of limpets and seaweed?"

"Nothing wrong with seaweed," said Jackson. "It's full of nourishing ... seaweed. 's got iron in it. Good for you, iron."

"Why don't we boil an anchor, then?"

"C'mon, sarge, you know it's not a proper tattoo unless no-one can remember how it got there."

"Fortune favours the brave, sir," said Carrot cheerfully.

"Good. Good. Pleased to hear it, captain. What is her position vis à vis heavily armed, well prepared and excessively manned armies?"

"On, no-one's ever heard of Fortune favouring them, sir."

"In fact, men, the general has this to say about ensuring against defeat when out-numbered, out-weaponed and out-positioned. It is..." he turned the page, "'Don't Have a Battle'."

"Look, sir, I know Angua. She's not the useless type. She doesn't stand there and scream helplessly. She makes other people do that."

It was, the crew agreed later, one of the strangest landings in the history of bad seamanship. The shelving of the beach must have been right and the tide as well, because the ship did not so much hit the beach as sail up it, rising out of the water as the keel de-barnacled itself on the sand. Finally the forces of wind, water, impetus and friction all met at the point marked "fall over slowly."

It did so, earning the title of "world's most laughable shipwreck."

"But you know what they say, lad. 'Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.'"

"Look, you see this land? You see it?"

"I see it, Dad."

"It's a land of opportunity."

"But there's no fresh water and all the ground's full of salt, Dad, and it smells bad!"

"That's the smell of freedom, that is."

"Smells like someone did a really big fart, Dad-- Ow!"

"Sometimes the two are very similar!"

Vimes awoke with a noseful of camel. Thare are far worse awakenings, but not as many as you might think.

According to Carrot, knowing the D'regs for five minutes and still being alive at the end of it meant that they really, really liked you.

"They asked if they should untie you but I said you hadn't been getting enough rest lately," Carrot went on.

"Captain, my arms and legs have gone to sleep..." Vimes began.

"Oh, well done, sir! That's a start, at least."

Carrot: "They're not really interested in leaders, sir, to tell you the truth. They look on them as a sort of ornament. You know ... just someone to yell 'Charge!", sir."
Vimes: "A leader has to do other things, Carrot."
Carrot: "The D'regs think 'Charge!' pretty well covers all of them, sir."

Carrot: "And this is Jabbar."
Jabbar: "Offendi."
Carrot: "He's their... well, he's like an official wise man."
Vimes: "Oh, so he's not the one who tells them to charge?"
Carrot: "No, that's the leader. Whenever they have one."
Vimes: "So perhaps Jabbar tells them when it's wise to charge?"
Jabbar: "It's always wise to charge, offendi."

"The best part," said Jabbar, and made appreciative suckling noises. He added something in Klatchian. There was some muffled laughter from the other men around the fire.

"This looks like a sheep's eyeball," said Vimes, doubtfully.

"Yes, sir," said Carrot. "But it is unwise to--"

"You know what?" Vimes went on. "I think this is a little game called 'Let's see what offendi will swallow.' And I'm not swallowing this, my friend."

"We kill merchants, we rob too much, they never come back. Dumb. We let them go, they get rich again, our sons rob them. Such is wisdom."

"Ah... it's a sort of agriculture," said Vimes.

"Right! But if you plant merchants, they don't grow so good."

"[The prince] say, you must be educated. You must be learning to pay taxes. We do not wish to be educated about taxes."

"So many ships," [Vetinari] said. "In such a short time, too. How very well organized. Very well organized. One might almost say ... astonishingly well organized. As they say, 'If you would seek war, prepare for war.'"

"I believe, my lord, the saying is 'If you would seek peace, prepare for war,'" Leonard ventured.

Vetinari put his head on one side and his lips moved as he repeated the phrase to himself. Finally he said, "No, no. I just don't see that one at all."

"Well, I'm not taking [my uniform] off," said Nobby firmly. "I'm not running around in my drawers. Not in a port. Sailors are at sea a long time. You hear stories."

"That'd be worse," said the sergeant, without wasting time calculating how long any sailor would need to be at sea before the vision of Nobby Nobbs would present itself as anything other than a target...

In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.

Soon, the desert was filled with the buzz and click and screech of creatures which, lacking mankind's superior brainpower, did not concern themselves with finding someone to blame and instead tried to find someone to eat.

Only Carrot could whisper like that. He associated whispering with concealment and untruth and compromised by whispering very loudly.

"It happens often in your country, where dogs turn into naked women?"

"Um, I think Klatchians have a very particular view about women fighting--" Carrot began.

"Yes!" said Jabbar. "We expect them to be good at it, Blue Eyes."

"Smells like home," said Nobby.

"You can't trust the water," said Sergeant Colon.

"But I don't trust the water at home, sarge."

Colon had always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country, and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they'd get yelled at if they didn't.

...he appeared to be too young to have learned the repertoire of dirty fighting that spelled survival in Ankh-Morpork's back streets. Vimes, on the other hand, was prepared to hit anything with anything. The point was that the opponent shouldn't get up again. Everything else was decoration.

"How did you get on, Reg?" said Vimes.

"A bit odd, sir. After the first one chopped my arm off and stabbed me, the rest of them seemed to keep out of my way. Honestly, you'd think they'd never seen a man stabbed before."

"Did you find your arm?"

Reg waved something in the air.

"That's another thing," he said. "I hit a few of them with it and they ran off screaming.

"It's your type of unarmed combat," said Vimes.

-- Warfare with a zombie has its own surprises

"Nobby, you're in a port in a foreign city clad only in your, and I use this word with feeling, Nobby, your unmentionables. This is not the point to start talking about luring people into alleys. There could be talk."

...Sergeant Colon once again knew a secret about bravery. It was arguably a kind of enhanced cowardice: the knowledge that while death may await you if you advance it will be a picnic compared to the certain living hell that awaits should you retreat.

"It's the waiting that's the worst part," said his sergeant, next to him.

"It might be the worst part," said the commander. "Or, there again, the bit where they suddenly rise out of the desert and cut you in half might be the worst part."

Experience had taught him never to say things like "I don't like it, it's too quiet." There was no such thing as too quiet.

Attacking a dangerous enemy who isn't there is one of the more attractive forms of warfare...

"Have you ever really watched [Carrot]? I bet he'd found out everything about Jabbar by the time he'd talked to him for ten minutes. I bet he knows the name of every camel. And he'll remember it all. People don't take that much interest in other people, usually." Her fingers idly traced a pattern in the sand. "So he makes you feel important."

"Politicians do that--" Vimes began.

"Not the way he does, believe me. I expect Lord Vetinari remembers facts about people--"

"Oh, you'd better believe that!"

"--but Carrot takes an interest. He doesn't even think about it. He makes space in his head for people. He takes an interest, and so people think they're interesting. They feel... better when he's around."

"Well, you can stay if you like and fight for the good name of Ankh-Morpork. It should be a pretty short fight."

In theory, the costume would have been quite revealing, if Corporal Nobbs was something you wished to see revealed...

Animals tended to like Nobby. He didn't smell wrong.

Jugglers will tell you that juggling with items that are identical is always easier than a mixture of all shapes and sizes. This is even the case with chainsaws, although of course when the juggler misses the first chainsaw it is only the start of his problems.

Corporal Nobbs's appearance could best be summarized this way.

One of the minor laws of the narrative universe is that any homely featured man who has, for some reason, to disguise himself as a woman will apparently become attractive to some otherwise perfectly sane men with, as the ardent scrolls say, hilarious results.

In this case the laws were fighting against the fact of Corporal Nobby Nobbs, and gave up.

When the object can be under one of three things, and it's already turned out not to be under two of them, then the one place it was certainly not going to be was under the third. Only some kind of gullible fool would believe something like that. Of course there was going to be a trick. There always was a trick. But you watched it, in order to see a trick done well.

Lord Vetinari raised the melon nevertheless, and the crowd nodded in satisfaction. Of course it wasn't there. It'd be a pretty poor day for street entertainment if things were where they were supposed to be.

"And finally," said the Patrician, "the beautiful Beti will do an exotic dance."

The crowd fell silent.

Then someone at the back said, "How much do we have to pay for her not to?"

Colon: "Didn't know you could juggle, sir."
Vetinari: "You mean you can't, sergeant?"
Colon: "Nossir!"
Vetinari: "How strange. It's hardly a skill, is it? One knows what the objects are and where they want to go. After that it's just a case of letting them occupy the correct positions in time and space."
Colon: "You're very good at it, sir. Practise often, do you?"
Vetinari: "Until today, I've never tried. After Ankh-Morpork, sergeant, a handful of flying melons present a very minor problem indeed."

There were women of every legitimate shape and size, and so far none of them had said "Yuk," an experience hitherto unchronicled in Nobby's personal history. In a detached, light-headed way, Corporal Nobbs felt that he was entering Paradise, and it was only an unfortunate detail that he'd come to via the wrong door.

"Men think war is better than women?"

"It's always fresh, it's always young, and you can make a good fight last all day."

"Did I just hear him say that, Faifal? What do I want to be on a camel for? I'm a plumber!"

"He is the clown with the juggler. I think. The poor man is several palms short of an oasis."

"I mean the bloody things spit and they're a bugger to get up the stairs with your toolbox--"

"So he's a spy. But whose?"

"Really? Who would be so stupid as to use a joke like this as a spy?"

"Ankh-Morpork?"

"Oh, come on! He's pretending to be an Ankh-Morpork spy, perhaps. But they're cunning over there--"

"You think? A people who make curry out of something called curry powder and you think they're clever?"

There was a noise outside the tavern. It was the sound of many women laughing, which is always a disquieting noise to men. [Footnote: Usually because they suspect the joke's on them.]

"I ain't throwing my weight anywhere," said Colon firmly. He was lying full length on the [flying] carpet, both hands gripping it as hard as possible. "It's not natural, just a bit of broadloom betwen you and certain splash."

The Patrician looked down. "We're not over water, sergeant."

"I know what I meant, sir!"

"You are not female, Nobby!"

Beti sniffed. "That's just the sort of sexist remark I'd expect from you."

"Well, you're not!"

"It's the principle of the thing."

"Does Mr. Dibbler still sell his horrible sausages inna bun in Treacle Mine Road?"

"Yes."

"Still the same old Dibbler, eh?"

"Still the same sausages."

"Once tasted, never forgotten."

"Always be a little bit foreign wherever you are, because everyone knows foreigners are a little bit stupid."

That was the voice and tone of Corporal Nobbs in storytelling mode, when wood could scorch at ten yards.

"No one is pushing [the donkey] off'f anything," snarled Beti. "Any one of you tries anything like that and, s'help me, you'll feel the wrong end of--" He stopped, and a wide horrible grin appeared behind the veil. "I mean, I'll give you a great big soppy kiss."

Several men at the back of the crowd took to their heels.

"There"s no need to get nasty," said the guard.

"...all right, it's a donkey, OK, but it's not the same donkey. It's one he had in a hidden pocket... well, no need to look at me like that. I've seen them do it with doves..."

Ahmed: "That business with the fire at the embassy. That was sheer bravery."
Vimes: "It was bloody terror!"
Ahmed: "Well, the dividing line is narrow."

"Be generous, Sir Samuel. Truly treat all men equally. Allow Klatchians the right to be scheming bastards, hmm?"

"Where's the Prince now?"

"Close. And safe. He is safer in the desert than he would ever be in Ankh-Morpork, I can assure you. ... He is being looked after by an old lady whom I trust."

"Your mother?"

"Ye gods, no! My mother is a D'reg! She'd be terribly offended if I trusted her. She'd say she hadn't brought me up right."

"Personally, I like the little tribes and countries, even their little wars. But I don't mind if they fight Ankh-Morpork because they want to, or because of your horrible personal habits, or your unthinking arrogance ... there's a lot of reasons for fighting Ankh-Morpork. A lie isn't one of them."

"He wants to start a war..." Vimes had to open his mouth because otherwise there was no room to get his head around such a crazy idea...

How could you deal with someone who thought like that? Vimes asked himself. A mere murderer, well, you had a whole range of options. You had criminals and you had policemen, and there was a sort of see-saw there which balanced out in some strange way. But if you took a man who'd sit down and decided to start a war, what in the name of seven hells could you balance him with? You'd need a policeman the size of a country.

"I'LL CUT YER TONKER OFF'F YER YER GREASY-- Oh, is that you, Sir Samuel?"

"Huh? Willikins?"

"Indeed, sir." The butler straightened up.

"Willikins?"

"Do excuse me one moment, sir KNOCK IT OFF YOU MOTHERLOVIN SONS OF BITCHES I had no apprehension of your presence, sir."

Ahmed: "It's kill or be killed, even for butlers. You're not a natural warrior, Sir Samuel."
Vimes: "I'm not a natural killer! See this? See what it says? I'm supposed to keep the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I'm reading the wrong manual!"

"All I know is, there must be a policeman, even for kings."

Lord Rust: "Let us not forget, though, that even General Tacticus was outnumbered ten to one when he took the Pass of Al-Ibi."
Lieutenant Hornett: "Yes, sir. Although I believe his men were all mounted on elephants, sir. And had been well provisioned."
Lord Rust: "Possibly, possibly. But then Lord Pinwoe's cavalry once charged the full might of the Pseudopolitan army and are renowned in song and story."
Lieutenant Hornett: "But they were all killed, sir!"
Lord Rust: "Yes, yes, but it was a famous charge, nevertheless."

His opinion was this: the main force of the Klatchian army had, in recent yeas, been fighting everyone. That suggested, to his uncomplicated mind, that by now the surviving soldiers were the ones who were in the habit of being alive at the end of battles. And were also very experienced at facing all kinds of enemies. The stupid ones were dead.

The current Ankh-Morpork army, on the other hand, had never faced an enemy at all...

He believed, along with General Tacticus, that courage, bravery and the indominable human spirit were fine things which nevertheless tended to take second place to the combination of courage, bravery, the indominable human spirit and a six-to-one superiority of numbers.

It had all sounded straightforward in Ankh-Morpork, he thought... The Klatchians would take one look at our weapons and run away.

Well, the Klatchians had taken a good look this morning. So far they hadn't run. They appeared to be sniggering a lot.

Nor was there such a thing as a game of war. General Tacticus knew that. Learn about your opposite number, yes, and respect his abilities if he had them, certainly. But never pretend that afterwards you were going to meet up for a drink and charge-by-charge replay.

It is impossible to ride a running camel without concentrating on your liver and kidneys, in the hope that they won't be pounded out of your body.

Carrot: "Ankh-Morpork soldiers and Klatchians have started fighting, sir. And the D'regs are fighting both of them."
Vimes: "What, before the battle's officially declared? Can't you get disqualified for that?"

"Vimes, you have gone insane," said Rust. "You can't arrest the commander of an army!"

"Actually, Mr. Vimes, I think we could," said Carrot. "And the army, too. I mean, I don't see why we can't. We could charge them with behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace, sir."

"You are making a mockery of the whole business, Vimes!" said Lord Rust.

"So long as I'm doing something right, then."

Vimes: "Sometimes I dream that we could deal with the big crimes, that we could make a law for countries and not just for people, and people like him would have--"
Ahmed: "I know how it is. I dream too."
Vimes: "You do?"
Ahmed: "Yes. Generally of fish."

"Carrot's a copper, same as me."

"A man like that could inspire a handful of broken men to conquer a country."

"Fine. Just so long as he does it on his day off."

"Kebab, sir?" said Nobby. "There's plenty."

"You certainly got a lot of food from somewhere," said Vimes.

"Klatchian quartermaster, sir," said Nobby, grinning beneath his veil. "Used my sexual wiles on him, sir."

Vimes's kebab stopped halfway to his mouth and dripped lamb fat onto his legs. He saw Angua's eyes slam open and stare in horror at the sky.

"I told him I'd take my clothes off and scream if he didn't give me some grub, sir."

Vetinari: "And when you find this lucky lady, you will give her this bottle of--"
Nobby: "'s called 'Kasbah Nights', sir."
Vetinari: "Of course. Very... floral, isn't it?"
Nobby: "Yessir. That's 'cos of the jasmine and rare ungulants in it, sir."
Vetinari: "And yet at the same time curiously... penetrative."
Nobby: "Good value for money, sir. A little goes a long way."
Vetinari: "Not far enough, possibly?"

"Mrs. Colon will like a stuffed camel hump, will she, sergeant?" said the Patrician doubtfully.

"Yessir. She can put things on it, sir."

"And the set of nested brass tables?"

"To put things on, sir."

"And the" -- there was a clanking -- "set of goat bells, ornamental coffee pot, miniature camel saddle and this ... strange glass tube with little bands of different coloured sand in it ... what are these for?"

"Conversation pieces, sir."

"You mean people will say things like 'What are they for?', do you?"

"It's dragging the good name of Ankh-Morpork through the mud, like Mr. Vimes said."

"For Ankh-Morpork, mud is up."

"But... arrest Vetinari? I can't--"

Vimes stopped, because his ears had caught up. And because that was the point, wasn't it? If you could arrest anyone, then that's what you had to do. You couldn't turn round and say "but not him".

The Rats Chamber was crowded. Guild leaders were entitled to be there, but there were plenty of other people who considered they had a right to be in at the death too. There were even some of the senior wizards. Everyone wanted to be able to say to their grandchildren "I was there." [Footnote: Although of course wizards aren't allowed to, since they're not supposed to have grandchildren.]

"The gardener was saying that Lord Vetinari put one over on the Klatchians, sir..."

"I don't see why not. He's done it with everyone else."

"The war is officially over, is it?" said Carrot.

"The war, captain, never happened. It was a ... misunderstanding."

"Never happened?" said Vimes. "People got killed!"

"Quite so," said Lord Vetinari. "And this suggests, does it not, that we should try to understand one another as much as possible?"

"Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time by being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise hould we be able to keep the historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands."

"Old Stoneface again?" [Vimes] said. "That part of it, is it? A statue to old Stoneface?"

"Well done," said Lord Vetinari. "Not of you, obviously. Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we would be melting the bronze already."

"They're as clever as us," said Vimes.

"We just have to stay ahead of them, then," said Vetinari.

"A brain race, sort of," said Vimes.

"Better than an arms race. Cheaper, too."

Vimes: "I'm bought and sold, aren't I? Bought and sold... We all are. Even Rust. And all those poor buggers who went off to get slaughtered. We're not part of the big picture, right? We're just bought and sold."
Vetinari: "Really? Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight! And you say bought and sold? All right. But not, I think, needlessly spent."

"Veni, vici ...Vetinari."