The Night Watch wasn't respected or well-staffed but it was all Vimes had to be Captain of. And in a town like Ankh-Morpork, where wizards worked any spells they pleased, the thieves and assassins belonged to well-established guilds. For Vimes it also meant turning to drink for solace while the two men under his command studiously avoided anyplace where a crime might actually be committed.
But it didn't take long for this comfortable routine to be destroyed by the arrival of Carrot, a well over six-feet-tall dwarf determined to become the best guard Ankh-Morpork had evern seen, even if it meant arresting everyone in the city.
Add to that an ambitious man's tampering with long-forbidden magic to call forth the biggest dragon imaginable. The ensuing chaos would see Vimes and his guards take on everything from wild magic to a mad lady dragon breeder to the highest and lowest denizens of the palace itself...
Under night's damp cloak assassins assassinated, thieves thieved, hussies hustled.
* * *
The only light was a faint octarine flicker from the tiny windows of the new High Energy Magic building, where keen-edged minds were probing the very fabric of the universe, whether it liked it or not.
* * *
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
* * *
...[the Librarian] had been allowed to keep his job, which he was rather good at, although "allowed" is not really the right word. It was the way he could roll his upper lip back to reveal more incredibly yellow teeth than any other mouth the University Council had ever seen before that somehow made sure the matter was never really raised.
* * *
No mere doorway got that grim without effort, one felt. It looked as though the architect had been called in and given specific instructions. We want something eldritch in dark oak, he'd been told. So put an unpleasnat gargoyle thing over the archway, give it a slam like the footfall of a giant and make it clear to everyone, in fact, that this isn't the kind of door that goes "ding-dong" when you press the bell.
* * *
Fingers: "'The significant owl hoots in the night.'"
Doorman: "'Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men.'"
Fingers: "'Hooray, hooray for the spinster's sister's daughter."
Doorman: "'To the axeman, all supplicants are the same height.'"
Fingers: "'Yet verily, the rose is within the thorn.'"
Doorman: "'The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy.'"
Fingers: "What?"
Doorman: "'The good mother makes bean soup for the errant boy.'"
Fingers: "Are you sure the ill-built tower doesn't tremble mightily at a butterfly's passage?"
Doorman: "Nope. Bean soup it is. I'm sorry."
Fingers: "What about the caged whale?"
Doorman: "What about it?"
Fingers: "It should know nothing of the mighty deeps, if you must know."
Doorman: "Oh, the caged whale. You want the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Three doors down."
* * *
What a shower, [the Grand Master] told himself. A bunch of incompetents no other secret society would touch with a ten-foot Sceptre of Authority. The sort to dislocate their fingers with even the simplest secret handshake.
* * *
"But so what? Let's say a skion turns up, walks up to the Patrician, says 'What ho, I'm king, here's the birthmark as per spec, now bugger off'. What's he got then? Life expectancy of maybe two minutes, that's what."
* * *
"My landlord oppresses me something wicked. Banging on the door and going on and on about all the rent I allegedly owe, which is a total lie. And the people next door oppress me all night long. I tell them, I work all day, a man's got to have some time to learn to play the tuba."
* * *
There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.
* * *
"And it would obey your every command."
That stopped them. That pulled them up. That dropped in front of their weaselly little minds like a lump of meat in a dog pound.
* * *
Lessee ... he'd gone off after the funeral and got drunk. No, not drunk, another word, ended with "er". Drunker, that was it.
* * *
[Carrot] walked with a stoop. What will do that is being brought up in a gold mine run by dwarfs who thought that five feet was a good height for a ceiling.
* * *
It's a terrible thing to be nearly sixteen and the wrong species.
* * *
Carrot: "But you're my kind!"
Dad: "In a manner of speaking, yes. In another manner of speaking, which is a rather more precise and accurate manner of speaking, no."
* * *
Carrot: "What is my own kind, then?"
Dad: "You're human."
Carrot: "What, like Mr. Varneshi? One of the Big People?"
Dad: "You're six foot six, lad. He's only five foot."
* * *
"You've got to face facts, boy. You'd be much more at home up on the surface. It's in your blood. The roof isn't so low, either." You can't keep knocking yourself out on the sky, he told himself.
* * *
Carrot took this fairly calmly, mostly because he didn't understand nearly all of it. Besides, as far as he was aware, being found toddling in the woods was the normal method of childbirth.
* * *
All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.
* * *
He'd heard about children being reared by wolves. He wondered whether the leader of the pack ever had to sort out something tricky like this. Perhaps he'd have to take him into a quiet clearing somewhere and say, Look, son, you might have wondered why you're not as hairy as everyone else...
* * *
When you spend a large part of your life underground, you develop a very literal mind. Dwarfs have no use for metaphor and simile. Rocks are hard, the darkness is dark. Start messing around with descriptions like that and you're in big trouble, is their motto.
* * *
"What is a Watch?" said the king.
"Oh," said Varneshi ... "they goes about making sure people keep the laws and do what they're told."
"That is a very proper concern," said the king who, since he was usually the one doing the telling, had very solid views about people doing what they were told.
* * *
"I shall write to their king."
"I don't think they have a king there," said Varneshi. "Just some man who tells them what to do."
The king of the dwarfs took this calmly. This seemed to be about ninety-seven per cent of the definition of kingship, as far as he was concerned.
* * *
All dwarfs are by nature dutiful, serious, literate, obedient and thoughtful people whose only minor failing is a tendency, after one drink, to rush at enemies screaming "Arrrrrrgh!" and axing their legs off at the knee.
* * *
[The shirt] was made from the wool of Ramtop sheep, which had all the warmth and softness of hog bristles. It was one of the legendary woolly dwarf vests, the kind of vest that needs hinges.
* * *
"Codpiece like in fish?" said Carrot, mystified.
"No. It's for the fighting," mumbled Varneshi. "You should wear it all the time. Protects your vitals, like."
Carrot tried it on.
"It's a bit small, Mr. Varneshi."
"That's because you don't wear it on your head, you see."
* * *
It was a five hundred mile journey and, surprisingly, quite uneventful. People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else."
* * *
Grand Master: "You have to focus your concentration. Think hard about dragons. All of you."
Doorkeeper: "That's all, is it?"
Grand Master: "Yes."
Doorkeeper: "Don't we have to chant a mystic prune or something?"
Grand Master: "You can if you like. Now, I want you-- yes, what is it, Brother Dunnykin?"
Dunnykin: "Don't know any mystic prunes, Grand Master. Not to what you might call chant..."
Grand Master: "Hum!"
* * *
Brother Doorkeeper managed to look as defiant in the face of oppression as an anonymous shadow in a black cowl could look.
* * *
It was about to be the worst night of his life for Zebbo Mooty, Thief Third Class, and it wouldn't have made him any happier to know that it was also going to be the last one.
* * *
In the night time streets of Ankh-Morpork caution is an absolute. There is no such thing as moderately cautious. You are either very cautious, or you are dead. You might be walking around and breathing, but you're dead, just the same.
* * *
Finding that you are dead is mitigated by also finding that there really is a you who can find you dead.
* * *
Mooty: "Did you know, a fortune teller once told me I'd die in my bed, surrounded by grieving great-grandchildren. What do you think of that, eh?"
Death: I THINK SHE WAS WRONG.
* * *
The Supreme Grand Master opened his eyes. He was lying on his back. Brother Dunnykin was preparing to give him the kiss of life. The mere thought was enough to jerk anyone from the borders of consciousness.
* * *
He said, anyone wanting to join the guard needed their head examined.
Mr. Varneshi did not mention this. Perhaps it is done for reasons of Hygiene.
* * *
He says, Don't you worry about Thieves' Guilds, This is all what you have to do, you walk along the Streets at Night, shouting, It's Twelve O'clock and All's Well. I said, What if it is not all well, and he said, You bloody well find another street.
* * *
The Patrician was not a man you shook a finger at unless you wanted to end up being able to count only to nine.
* * *
"I shall deal with the matter momentarily," [the Patrician] said. It was a good word. It always made people hesitate. They were never quite sure whether he meant he'd deal with it now, or just deal with it briefly. And no-one ever dared ask.
* * *
"Thank you. Do not let me detain you," said the Patrician, once again giving the language his own individual spin.
* * *
One of the remarkable innovations introduced by the Patrician was to make the Thieves' Guild responsible for theft, with annual budgets, forward planning and, above all, rigid job protection. Thus, in return for an agreed average level of crime per annum, the thieves themselves saw to it that unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in it.
* * *
You had to had it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.
* * *
Crime was always with us, he reasoned, and therefore, if you were going to have crime, it at least should be organised crime.
* * *
"Right you are, Mr. Secretary," he said. "I'll see to it that he learns that arresting thieves is against the law."
* * *
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC.
-- Motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch
* * *
Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.
* * *
The only reason you couldn't say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal kingdom would get up and walk away.
* * *
Vimes: "You sent a raw recruit out with Nobby?"
Colon: "Well, sir, experienced man, I thought, Corporal Nobbs could teach him a lot--"
Vimes: "Let's just hope he's a slow learner."
* * *
[Nobby's] age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.
* * *
Nobby: "In the Shades? You're staying there?"
Carrot: "Oh, yes."
Nobby: "Every night?"
Carrot: "Well, every day, really. Yes."
Nobby: "And you've come here to have a man made of you?"
Carrot: "Yes!"
Nobby: "I don't think I should like to live where you come from."
* * *
Nobby: "You don't want to go making a din like that. You could attract all sorts. Come on, this way."
Carrot: "What sorts?"
Nobby: "Bad sorts."
Carrot: "But we're the Watch!"
Nobby: "Damn right! And we don't want to go tangling with people like that!"
* * *
No-one knows why dwarfs, who at home in the mountains lead quiet, orderly lives, forget it all when they move to the big city. Something comes over even the most blameless iron-ore miner and prompts him to wear chain-mail all the time, carry an axe, change his name to something like Grabthroat Shinkicker and drink himself into surly oblivion.
* * *
After all, probably the first thing a young dwarf wants to do when he hits the big city after seventy years of working for his father at the bottom of a pit is have a big drink and then hit someone.
* * *
The fight was one of those enjoyable dwarfish fights with about a hundred participants and one hundred and fifty alliances.
* * *
B'tduz: A popular dwarfish game which consists of standing a few feet apart and throwing large rocks at one another's head.
* * *
Carrot shook his head. "Can you imagine what your poor, white-bearded old mother, slaving away back in her little hole, wondering how her son is getting on tonight, can you imagine what she'd think if she saw you now? Your own dear mothers, who first showed you how to use a pickaxe--"
* * *
He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter [Footnote: Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force].
* * *
The drinkers were the usual bunch of heroes, cut throats, mercenaries, desperados and villians, and only microscopic analysis could have told which was which.
* * *
Carrot: "How do you spell 'contravention'?"
Nobby: "I don't."
* * *
Nobby was endeavoring to pretend that he was totally alone and had no connection whatsoever with anyone who might be standing next to him and coincidentally wearing an identical uniform.
* * *
In times of danger [Nobby] had a way of propelling himself from place to place without apparently moving through the intervening space which could put any ordinary matter transporter to shame.
* * *
Nobby: "'E's fighting in there!"
Vimes: "All by himself?"
Nobby: "No, with everyone!"
* * *
...it isn't Watch policy to interefer in fights. It's a lot simpler to go in afterwards and arrest anyone recumbent.
* * *
The door of the Mended Drum had been torn off during riots so often that specially-tempered hinges had recently been installed, and the fact that the next tremendous crash tore the whole door and doorframe out of the wall only showed that a lot of money had been wasted.
* * *
It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.
* * *
Vimes: "And you Corporal, will you please-- what are you doing?"
Nobby: "Searchingthebodiesir. For incriminating evidence, and that."
Vimes: "In their money pouches?"
Nobby: "You never know, sir."
* * *
Vimes: "Corporal Nobbs, why are you kicking people when they're down?"
Nobby: "Safest way, sir."
* * *
Grand Master: "Are the Thuribles of Destiny ritually chastised, that Evil and Loose Thinking may be banished from this Sanctified Circle?"
Dunnykin: "Yep."
Grand Master: "Yep?"
Dunnykin: "Yep. Done it myself."
Grand Master: "You are supposed to say 'Yea, O Supreme One'. Honestly, I've told you enough times, if you're not all going to enter into the spirit of the thing--"
* * *
...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 inquisiveness gave a stay of execution.
* * *
There was a crowded moment in which realisation did the icy work of a good night's sleep and several pints of black coffee.
* * *
"Do real wizards leap about after a tiny spell and start chanting 'Here we go, here we go, here we go,' Brother Watchtower? Hmm?"
* * *
[Lord Vetinari] appeared to have no vice that anyone could discover. You'd have thought, with that pale, equine face, that he'd incline towards stuff with whips, needles, and young women in dungeons. ... But the Patrician apparently spent his evenings studying reports and, on special occassions, if he could stand the excitement, playing chess.
* * *
It was said that he would tolerate absolutely anything apart from anything that threatened the city [Footnote: And mime artists.]
* * *
And we don't often get any wading birds in the Ankh, mainly because the pollution would eat their legs away and anyway, it's easier for them to walk on the surface.
* * *
Vetinari: "And send some men to paint that wall."
Lupine Wonse: "Is that wise, sir?"
Vetinari: "You don't think a frieze of ghastly shadows will cause comment and speculation?"
Lupine Wonse: "Not as much as fresh paint in the Shades."
* * *
Rain that fell on Ankh-Morpork, though, was rain that was in trouble. They did terrible things to water, in Ankh-Morpork. Being drunk was only the start of its problems.
* * *
The Patrician didn't believe in unnecessary cruelty. [Footnote: While being bang alongside the idea of necessary cruelty, of course.]
* * *
All these years he'd known the man and he'd never realised that, in his secret private life, Corporal Nobbs was a bit of a peacock. A very short peacock, it was true, a peacock that had been hit repeatedly with something heavy, perhaps, but a peacock nonetheless.
* * *
Colon: "This mingling, it would involve going into taverns and drinking and similar, would it?"
Vimes: "To a certain extent."
Colon: "Ah."
Vimes: "In moderation."
Colon: "Right you are, sir."
Vimes: "And at your own expense."
Colon: "Oh."
* * *
People in Scoone Avenue had old money, which was supposed to be much better than new money, although Captain Vimes had never had enough of either to spot the difference.
* * *
Lady Ramkin's house was not hard to find. It commanded an outcrop that gave it a magnificent view of the city, if that was your idea of a good time.
* * *
It had been explained to [Carrot] carefully that, contrary to appearances, laws governing the animal kingdom did not apply to the Librarian. On the other hand, the Librarian himself was never very interested in obeying the laws governing the human kingdom, either.
* * *
The Librarian rolled his eyes. It was interesting, he felt, that so-called intelligent dogs, horses and dolphins never had any difficulty indicating to humans the vital news of the moment, e.g., that the three children were lost in the cave, or the train was about to take the line leading to the bridge that had been washed away or similar, while he, only a handful of chromosomes away from wearing a vest, found it difficult to persuade the average human to come in out of the rain.
* * *
"Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?" said Sergeant Colon unsteadily.
"I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt. Colon," said Nobby.
* * *
Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra'd, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while sinting in a pleasing mezzosoprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a batallion.
* * *
Sybil: "You know, not one Ramkin in the last thousand years has died in his bed."
Vimes: "Yes, ma'am?"
Sybil: "Source of family pride, that."
Vimes: "Yes, ma'am."
Sybil: "Quite a few of them have died in other people's, of course."
* * *
...a group of swamp dragons was a slump or an embarassment; a female was capable of laying up to three clutches of four eggs every year, most of which were trodded on by absent-minded males...
-- Everything you never wanted to know about swamp dragons
* * *
He couldn't help remembering how much he'd wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they'd been starving -- anything with meat on it would have done.
* * *
The little dragon turned on Vimes a gaze that would be guaranteed to win it the award for Dragon the Judges would Most Like to Take Home and Use as A Portable Gas Lighter.
* * *
"A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?"
* * *
The Librarian indicated with some surprisingly economical gestures that most wizards would not find their own bottoms with both hands.
* * *
Sybil: "Golly! Look! It's using the thermals! That's what the fire is for! Do you realise we're very probably seeing something that no-one has seen for centuries?"
Vimes: "Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!"
* * *
The Guild of Firefighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the previous year after many complaints. The point was that, if you bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire. Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients' houses in groups, making loud comments like "Very inflammable looking place, this" and "Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?"
* * *
Apparently having a fire-breathing lizard focusing interestedly on one's nether regions from a distance of a few feet can upset the strongest constitution.
* * *
Nobby: "Well, everyone knows the real old dragons used to go to sleep on a hoard of gold. Well known folk myth."
Vimes: "I expect you'd be really interested in finding out where that hoard is, wouldn't you?"
Nobby: "Well, Cap'n, I was thinking of having a look around. You know. When I'm off duty, of course."
* * *
"Let that be a lesson to all oppressive vegetable sellers."
* * *
It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.
* * *
As for the lad ... he was a distant cousin, keen and vain, and stupid in a passably aristocratic way. Currently he was under guard in a distant farmhouse, with an adequate supply of drink and several young ladies, although what the boy seemed most interested in was mirrors. Probably real hero material, the Supreme Grand Master thought glumly.
* * *
It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis: half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the remainder were here to rob, importune or sell hot dogs to the rest.
* * *
Vimes looked into the grinning, cadaverous face of Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, purveyour of absolutely anything that could be sold hurriedly from an open suitcase in a busy street and was guaranteed to have fallen off the back of an oxcart.
* * *
"Anti-dragon cream. Personal guarantee: if you're incinerated you get your money back, no quibble."
* * *
"The Patrician announced a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone who brings him the dragon's head. Not attached to the dragon, either."
* * *
The people of Ankh-Morpork were not by nature heroic but were, by nature, salesmen.
* * *
What he couldn't do with fifty thousand dollars...
Vimes thought about this for a while and then thought of the things he could do with fifty thousand dollars. There were so many more of them, for a start.
* * *
"Bleeding disgusting, not even having a daughter," said one of the [dragon] hunters. "And what's fifty thousand dollars these days? You spend that much in nets."
"S'right," said another. "People think it's a fortune, but they don't reckon on, well, it's not pensionable, there's all the medical expenses, you've got to buy and maintain your own gear--"
* * *
"I knew this cross-eyed gorgon once, oh, she was a terror. Kept turning her own nose to stone."
* * *
He beamed. He'd actually managed to get all the way through it without actually needing to engage his brain.
* * *
Merchant: "What exactly is it that they [dragons] do eat?"
Thief: "I seem to recall stories about virgins chained to rocks."
Assassin: "It'll starve around here, then."
* * *
Lupine Wonse: "I understand [dragons] have a liking for gold."
Vetinari: "Really? What do they spend it on?"
Lupine Wonse: "They sleep on it, my lord."
Vetinari: "What, do you mean in a mattress?"
Lupine Wonse: "No, my lord. On it."
Vetinari: "Don't they find it rather knobbly?"
* * *
The Patrician was thinking: if it can talk, it can negotiate. If it can negotiate, then I have it by the short-- by the small scales, or whatever it is they have.
* * *
He'd had a look at Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler's dragon detectors, which consisted solely of a piece of wood on a metal stick. When the stick was burned through, you'd found your dragon. Like a lot of Cut-me-own-Throat's devices, it was completely efficient in its own special way while at the same time being totally useless.
* * *
There had to be something right about a citizenry which, when faced with catastrophe, thought about selling sausages to the participants.
* * *
[Bows] weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away rather than the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed.
* * *
Nobby: "Sodding arseholes."
Vimes: "You are in uniform, Corporal Nobbs."
Nobby: "Sorry, Captain. Sodding arseholes, sir."
* * *
There was a ceiling. This ruled out one particular range of unpleasant options and was very welcome. His blurred vision also revealed Corporal Nobbs, which was less so. Corporal Nobbs proved nothing; you could be dead and see something like Corporal Nobbs.
* * *
"I've brought you something jolly nourishing."
Somehow Vimes imagined it would be soup. Instead it was a plate stacked high with bacon, fried potatoes and eggs. He could hear his arteries panic just by looking at it.
* * *
"Anyway, we found we've got a lot in common. It's an amazing coincidence, but my grandfather once had his grandfather whipped for malicious lingering."
* * *
"Listen, if anyone ever sets fire to this city, it's going to be me."
* * *
Pseudopolis Yard was on the Ankh side of the river, in quite a high-rent district. The sight of Nobby or Sergeant Colon walking down the street in daylight would probably have the same effect on the area as the opening of a plague hospital.
* * *
Lady Ramkin drawing herself up haughtily was not a sight to forget, although you could try. It was like watching continental drift in reverse as various subcontinents and islands pulled themselves together to form one massive, angry protowoman.
* * *
The reason that cliches become cliches is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of conversation.
* * *
Lady Ramkin's bosom rose and fell like an empire.
* * *
"This is Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off. Now I know what you're thinking. You're wondering, after all this excitement, has it got enough flame left? And, y'know, I ain't so sure myself ... What you've got to ask yourself is: Am I feeling lucky? Well? Are you feeling lucky?"
--Captain Vimes does Dirty Harry
* * *
The phrase "Set a thief to catch a thief" had by this time (after strong representations from the Thieves' Guild) replaced a much older and quintessentially Ankh-Morporkian proverb, which was "Set a deep hole with spring-loaded sides, tripwires, whirling knife blades driven by water power, broken glass and scorpions, to catch a thief."
* * *
It wasn't the loneliness of command that was bothering him. It was the being-fried-alive of command that was giving him problems.
* * *
...when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.
* * *
For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant provence. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt.
* * *
Watchtower: "...yes, like it's sort of ... taking something out of you..."
Plasterer: "Sucked dry."
Watchtower: "Yes, like he said, and we ... well, maybe it's a bit risky..."
Plasterer: "Like stuff's been dragged from your actual living brain by eldrich creatures from the Beyond."
Watchtower: "I'd have said more like a bit of a sick headache, myself."
* * *
"Do you think picking someone up by their ankles and bouncing their head on the floor comes under the heading of Striking a Superior Officer?"
* * *
Colon: "Is that wise, Captain?"
Vimes: "Of course it isn't. If we were wise, we wouldn't be in the Watch."
* * *
It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing.
* * *
It was an intelligence that had already been long basted in guile and marinated in cunning by the time a group of almost-monkeys were wondering whether standing on two legs was a good career move.
* * *
The people of Ankh-Morpork had a straightforward, no-nonsense approach to entertainment, and while they were looking forward to seeing a dragon slain, they'd be happy to settle instead for seeing someone being baked alive in his own armor.
* * *
Dibbler: "Hot sausages, two for a dollar, made of genuine pig, why not buy one for the lady?"
Carrot: "Don't you mean pork, sir?"
Dibbler: "Manner of speaking, manner of speaking. Certainly your actual pig products."
* * *
"I've always though," said the monarchist ... "that one of the major problems of being a king is the risk of your daughter getting a prick."
There was a thoughtful pause.
"And falling asleep for a hundred years," the monarchist went on stolidly.
"Ah," said the others, unaccountably relieved.
* * *
Say what you like about the people of Ankh-Morpork, they had always en staunchly independent, yielding to no man their right to rob, defraud, embezzle and murder on an equal basis. This seemed absolute right, to Vimes' way of thinking. There was no difference at all between the richest man and the poorest beggar, apart from the fact that the former had lots of money, food, power, fine clothes, and good health. But at least he wasn't any better.
* * *
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.
* * *
Errol jumped off his shoulder and waddled away to inspect the detritus of the celebration. He always sniffed everything before he ate it, Vimes noticed. It was a bit of a puzzle why he bothered, because he always ate it anyway.
* * *
Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.
* * *
Somehow the dragon was worse on the ground. In the air it was an elemental thing, graceful even when it was trying to burn you to your boots. On the ground it was just a damn great animal.
* * *
To his shame, Vimes realised that his legs were going to have nothing to do with any mad dash to bring her back. His pride didn't like that, but his body pointed out that it wasn't his pride that stood a very reasonable chance of being thinly laminated to the nearest building.
* * *
The Ramkins hadn't bred for beauty, they'd bred for healthy solidity and big bones, and they'd got very good at it over the centuries.
* * *
"Where's he off to?" boomed Lady Ramkin, emerging from the mists dragging the horses behind her. They didn't want to come, their hooves were scraping up sparks, but they were fighting a losing battle.
* * *
"What're them fat saggy things on that shield?"
"Those are the royal hippos of Ankh," said the man proudly. "Reminders of our noble heritage."
"How long have we had a noble heritage, then?" said Nobby.
"Since yesterday, of course."
* * *
There could be anything up there. The imagination peopled the dank air with terrible apparitions. And what was worse was the knowledge that Nature might have done an even better job.
* * *
Colon: "Yeah, right. But all this business about kings and lords, it's against basic human dignity. We're all born equal. It makes me sick."
Nobby: "Never heard you talk like this before, Frederick."
Colon: "It's Sergeant Colon to you, Nobby."
* * *
The fog itself was shaping up to be a real Ankh-Morpork autumn gumbo. [Footnote: Like a pea-souper, only much thicker, fishier, and with things in it you'd probably rather not know about.]
* * *
"Are the Cups of Integrity well and truly suffused?" intoned Brother Watchtower.
"Aye, suffused full well."
"The Waters of the World, are they Abjured?"
"Yea, abjured full mightily."
"Have the Demons of Infinity been bound with many chains?"
"Damn," said Brother Plasterer, "there's always something."
* * *
The last rats of Brother Watchtower's self-confidence fled the sinking ship of courage.
* * *
You go through your whole life and end up a smear swirling around like cream in a coffee cup. Whatever the gods' games were, they played them in a damn mysterious way.
* * *
Watchtower: "We never intended this. Honestly. No offence. We just wanted what was due to us."
Death: CONGRATULATIONS.
* * *
Brother Fingers was always the one sent out for takeaway food. It was cheaper. He'd never bothered to master the art of paying for things.
* * *
...the man was clearly guilty. You could tell just by looking at him. Not, perhaps, guilty of anything specific. Just guilty in general terms.
* * *
Sybil: "Can't we do something for the poor man?"
Nobby: "I could kick him in the bollocks for you if you like, m'lady."
* * *
Another one of 'em, thought Vimes. Well, there's no law about wearing long black robes and deep cowls. There could be dozens of perfectly innocent reasons why this person is wearing long black robes and a deep cowl and standing in front of a melted-down house at dawn.
* * *
Carrot: "Might have just been an innocent bystander, sir."
Vimes: "What, in Ankh-Morpork?"
Carrot: "Yes, sir."
Vimes: "We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value."
* * *
Creatures evolved to fill every niche in the environment, and some of those in the dusty immensity of L-space were best avoided. They were much more unusual than ordinary unusual creatures.
* * *
Lupine Wonse: "A dragon? You're sure?"
Vimes: "No! I could be bloody mistaken! It may have been something else with sodding great big claws, huge leathery wings and hot, fiery breath! There must be masses of things like that!"
* * *
"Fine Art. It's just men paintin' pictures of young wimmin in the nudd. The altogether," explained Colon the connoisseur. "The caretaker told me. Some of them don't even have any paint on their brushes, you know."
* * *
There must be a million stories in the naked city, thought Vimes. So why do I always have to listen to ones like these?
* * *
Colon: "Do you think that's a good idea, sir?"
Vimes: "Yes, Sergeant, I do. It was one of mine."
* * *
Normally the only decoration in [Harga's House of Ribs] was on Sham Harga's vest and the food was good solid stuff for a cold morning, all calories and fat and protein and maybe a vitamin crying softly because it was all alone.
* * *
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the date last shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.
* * *
There must be hundreds of other things he could do, and if he thought for long enough he could probably remember what some of them were.
* * *
There had never been an official coronation service in Ankh-Morpork, as far as he could find out. The old kings had managed quite well with something on the lines of: "We hath got the crown, i'faith, and we will kill any whoreson who tries to takes it away, by the Lord Harry."
* * *
Within a few seconds the square was empty of all save the stupid and the terminally bewildered. Even the badly trampled were making a spirited crawl for the nearest exit.
* * *
The roads off the square were packed with people. That's the Ankh-Morpork spirit, Vimes thought. Run away, and then stop and see if anything interesting going to happen to other people.
* * *
If there was anything that depressed [Vimes] more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
* * *
They didn't think about all the alternatives. It was enough to think about just one of them.
* * *
Merchant: "I wonder what's the difference between ordinary councillors and privy councillors?"
Assassin: "I think it is because you're expected to eat shit."
* * *
You have the effrontery to be squeamish, [the dragon] thought at him. But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, you ape ... we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.
* * *
"A dwarf can go hundreds of miles with a cake like this in his pack," Carrot went on.
"I bet he can," said Colon gloomily. "I bet all the time he'd be thinking, 'Bloody hell, I hope I can find something else to eat soon, otherwise it's the bloody cake again.'"
* * *
"But it's not right, really, a pet where you have to jump behind a table every time it hiccups."
* * *
A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it. City law said that only condemned criminals should be used, but that was all right because in most of the religions refusing to volunteer for sacrifice was an offence punishable by death.
* * *
"I don't care!" he shouted, his voice echoing from wall to wall in the silence. "We defy you! If you kill me, you might as well kill all of us!"
There was some uneasy shuffling of feet amongst those sections of the crowd who didn't feel that this was absolutely axiomatic.
* * *
Colon didn't reply. I wish Captain Vimes were here, he thought. He wouldn't have known what to do either, but he's got a much better vocabulary to be baffled in.
* * *
And already he thought he could hear the cheering of crowds. They were lining the streets, and they were throwing flowers, and he was being carried triumphantly through the grateful city.
The drawback was, he suspected, that he was being carried in an urn.
* * *
Lupine Wonse: "What's the matter, man?"
Guard Captain: "You, er, want us to attack him?"
Lupine Wonse: "Of course, you idiot!"
Guard Captain: "But, er, there's only one of him."
Guard #2: "And he's smilin'."
Guard #3: "Prob'ly goin' to swing on the chandeliers any minute. And kick over the table, and that."
Lupine Wonse: "He's not even armed!"
Guard #4: "Worst kind, that. They leap up, see, and grab one of the ornamental swords behind the shield over the fireplace."
* * *
"Lady Sybil Ramkin?" said the guard, not in the polite way of someone seeking mere confirmation but in the incredulous tones of someone who found it very hard to believe the answer could be "yes."
* * *
There were, he told himself, far worse things than Lady Ramkin although, admittedly, they weren't three inches from his nose at this point in time.
* * *
...the guard captain wasn't sure he had enough men to drag Lady Ramkin anywhere. You'd need teams of thousands, with log rollers.
* * *
Guard Captain: "If you'd thought, you'd have thought that the king is hardly going to want other dragons dead, is he? They're probably distant relatives or something. I mean, it wouldn't want us to go around killing its own kind, would it?"
Guard: "Well, sir, people do, sir."
Guard Captain: "Ah, well. That's different. That's 'cos we're intelligent."
* * *
Vimes: "I see you're very comfortable here."
Vetinari: "Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that."
* * *
"Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are his heart isn't in the job."
* * *
"'Every bottle matured for up to seven minutes'," quoted Colon. "'Ha' a drop afore ye go', it says on the label. Damn right, too. I had a drop once, and I went all day."
* * *
[The gods] played games with the fates of men, it was said. Exactly what game they thought they were playing at the moment was anyone's guess. But of course there were rules. Everyone knew there were rules. They just had to hope like Hell that the gods knew the rules, too.
* * *
Nobby looked down at the pond again. After a moment's hesitation Colon joined him. They had the speculative faces of men who had seen many things, and knew that while you could of course depend on heroes, and kings, and ultimately on gods, you could really depend on gravity and deep water.
* * *
Carrot: "What's up, Sarge? Do you want to live for ever?"
Colon: "Dunno. Ask me again in five hundred years."
* * *
Colon: "So it'd only work if it's your actual million-to-one chance."
Nobby: "I suppose that's right."
Colon: "So 999,943-to-one, for example--"
Carrot: "Wouldn't have a hope. No-one ever said 'It's a 999,943-to-one chance but it might just work.'"
* * *
It was a good, clean challenge: you knew that if you went on chipping away, you'd win through eventually.
It was the "eventually" that was the problem. Eventually Great A'Tuin would reach the end of the universe. Eventually the stars would go out. Eventually Nobby might have a bath, although that would probably involve a radical rethinking of the nature of Time.
* * *
Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn't make an issue of it because a man angry enough to lift 300 lbs of orangutang without noticing is a man with too much on his mind.
* * *
[Vimes'd] never felt really at home with swords, but a cleaver was a different matter. A cleaver had weight. It had purpose. A sword might have a certain nobility about it ... but what a cleaver had was a tremendous ability to cut things up.
* * *
"Right, you bastards, you're... you're geography--"
* * *
Ankh-Morpork was so old now that what it was built on, by and large, was Ankh-Morpork.
* * *
The pond was a swamp of debris, covered with a coating of ash. Out of it, dripping slime, rose Sergeant Colon.
He clawed his way to the bank and pulled himself up, like some sea-dwelling lifeform that was anxious to get the whole evolution thing over with in one go.
* * *
Carrot: "We could be all that stands between the city and total destruction!"
Nobby: "Yes, but--"
Carrot: "Captain Vimes would have gone! All for one!"
Colon: "Young people today."
Nobby: "All for one what?"
Colon: "Come on, then."
Nobby: "Oh, all right."
* * *
Good grief. I'm watching the first ever dragon to flame backwards.
* * *
Sybil: "I must take some notes, I've got my memo book somewhere..."
Vims: "In your nightshirt?"
Sybil: "It's amazing how ideas come to one in bed, I've always said."
* * *
Sybil: "I've never seen that before. Dragons normally fight to the death."
Vimes: "At last they've bred one who's sensible."
* * *
That's it. We tried everything else. Now we might as well try and do it by the book.
* * *
Sybil: "It's a member of the female gender."
Nobby: "What?"
Vimes: "We meant that if you tried your favourite kick, Nobby, it wouldn't work."
* * *
Officers had a tried and tested way for solving problems like this. It was called a sergeant.
* * *
"One false move and you're ... you're ... you're Home Economics!"
* * *
Nobby: "Up against the wall and spread 'em, motherbreath!"
Colon: "Eh? What's he supposed to spread?"
Nobby: "Dunno. Everything, I reckon. Safest way."
* * *
"...it is my duty to inform you that you have been arrested and will be charged with a number of offences of murder by means of a blunt instrument, to whit, a dragon, and many further offences of generalized abetting..."
* * *
"You have the right to remain silent. You have the right not to be summarily thrown into a piranha tank. You have the right to trial by ordeal..."
* * *
It was the longest step he ever took. For one thing, it lasted the rest of his life.
* * *
Colon: "What a way to go."
Nobby: "That's a fact."
Colon: "Killed by a wossname. A metaphor."
Nobby: "Dunno. Looks like the ground to me."
* * *
"I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides."
* * *
I arrested a dragon but it got away.
* * *
Anyway, what was there to be afraid of? He'd stared into the jaws of death three times; four, if you included telling Lord Vetinari to shut up.
* * *
That was how you got to be a power in the land, he thought. You never cared a toss about whatever anyone else thought and you were never, ever, uncertain about anything.
* * *
Vimes: "But it-- she's a magical animal. What'll happen when the magic goes away?"
Sybil: "Most people seem to manage."
* * *
Real kings had shiny swords, obviously. Except, except, except maybe your real real kings of, like, days of yore, he would have a sword that didn't sparkle one bit but was bloody efficient at cutting things.