Guards! Guards! tds-8 Page 12

  He beamed. He'd managed to get all the way through it without actually needing to engage his brain.

  "Are you saying," said the assassin slowly, "that what we've got here is the first civic dragon?"

  "That's evolution for you," said the wizard, happily. "It should do well, too," he added. "Plenty of nesting sites, and a more than adequate food supply."

  Silence greeted this statement, until the merchant said. "What exactly is it that they do eat?"

  The thief shrugged. "I seem to recall stories about virgins chained to huge rocks," he volunteered.

  "It'll starve round here, then," said the assassin. "We 're on loam."

  "They used to go around ravening," said the thief. "Dunno if that's any help ..."

  "Anyway," said the leader of the merchants, "it seems to be your problem again, my lord."

  Five minutes later the Patrician was striding the length of the Oblong Office, fuming.

  "They were laughing at me," said the Patrician. "I could tell!"

  "Did you suggest a working party?" said Wonse.

  "Of course I did! It didn't do the trick this time. You know, I really am inclined to increase the reward money."

  "I don't think that would work, my lord. Any proficient monster slayer knows the rate for the job."

  "Ha! Half the kingdom," muttered the Patrician.

  "And your daughter's hand in marriage," said Wonse.

  "I suppose an aunt isn't acceptable?" the Patrician said hopefully.

  "Tradition demands a daughter, my lord."

  The Patrician nodded gloomily.

  "Perhaps we can buy it off," he said aloud. "Are dragons intelligent?"

  "I believe the word traditionally is 'cunning', my lord," said Wonse. "I understand they have a liking for gold."

  "Really? What do they spend it on?"

  "They sleep on it, my lord."

  "What, do you mean in a mattress?"

  "No, my lord. On it. "

  The Patrician turned this fact over in his mind. "Don't they find it rather knobbly?" he said.

  "So I would imagine, sir. I don't suppose anyone has ever asked."

  "Hmm. Can they talk?"

  "They're apparently good at it, my lord."

  "Ah. Interesting."

  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.

  "And they are said to be silver tongued," said Wonse. The Patrician leaned back in his chair.

  "Only silver?" he said.

  There was the sound of muted voices in the passageway outside and Vimes was ushered in.

  "Ah, Captain," said the Patrician, "what progress?"

  "I'm sorry, my lord?" said Vimes, as the rain dripped off his cape.

  "Towards apprehending this dragon," said the Patrician firmly.

  "The wading bird?" said Vimes.

  "You know very well what I mean," said Vetinari sharply.

  "Investigations are in hand," said Vimes automatically.

  The Patrician snorted. "All you have to do is find its lair," he said. "Once you have the lair, you have the dragon. That's obvious. Half the city seems to be looking for it."

  "If there is a lair," said Vimes.

  Wonse looked up sharply.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "We are considering a number of possibilities," said Vimes woodenly.

  "If it has no lair, where does it spend its days?" said the Patrician.

  "Inquiries are being pursued," said Vimes.

  "Then pursue them with alacrity. And find the lair," said the Patrician sourly.

  "Yes, sir. Permission to leave, sir?"

  "Very well. But I shall expect progress by tonight, do you understand?"

  Now why did I wonder if it has a lair? Vimes thought, as he stepped out into the daylight and the crowded square. Because it didn't look real, that's why. If it isn't real, it doesn't need to do anything we expect. How can it walk out of an alley it didn't go into?

  Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right.

  There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time . . .

  ...

  By day the Library buzzed with activity. Vimes moved through it diffidently. Strictly speaking, he could go anywhere in the city, but the University had always held that it fell under thaumaturgical law and he felt it wouldn't be wise to make the kind of enemies where you were lucky to end up the same temperature, let alone the same shape.

  He found the Librarian hunched over his desk. The ape gave him an expectant look.

  "Haven't found it yet. Sorry," said Vimes. "Enquiries are continuing. But there is a little help you can give me."

  "Oook?"

  "Well, this is a magical library, right? I mean, these books are sort of intelligent, isn't that so? So I've been thinking: I bet if I got in here at night, they'd soon kick up a fuss. Because they don't know me. But if they did know me, they'd probably not mind. So whoever took the book would have to be a wizard, wouldn't they? Or someone who works for the University, at any rate."

  The Librarian glanced from side to side, then grasped Vimes's hand and led him into the seclusion of a couple of bookshelves. Only then did he nod his head.

  "Someone they know?"

  A shrug, and then another nod.

  "That's why you told us, is it?"

  "Oook."

  "And not the University Council?"

  "Oook."

  "Any idea who it is?"

  The Librarian shrugged, a decidedly expressive gesture for a body which was basically a sack between a pair of shoulderblades.

  "Well, it's something. Let me know if any other strange things happen, won't you?" Vimes looked up at the banks of shelves. ' 'Stranger than usual, I mean.''

  "Oook."

  "Thank you. It's a pleasure to meet a citizen who regards it as their duty to assist the Watch."

  The Librarian gave him a banana.

  Vimes felt curiously elated as he stepped out into the city's throbbing streets again. He was definitely detecting things. They were little bits of things, like a jigsaw. No one of them made any real sense, but they all hinted at a bigger picture. All he needed to do was find a corner, or a bit of an edge . . .

  He was pretty certain it wasn't a wizard, whatever the Librarian might think. Not a proper, paid-up wizard. This sort of thing wasn't their style.

  And there was, of course, this business about the lair. The most sensible course would be to wait and see if the dragon turned up tonight, and try and see where. That meant a high place. Was there some way of detecting dragons themselves? 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 a better way of finding the thing than waiting until your fingers were burned off.

  ...

  The setting sun spread out on the horizon like a lightly-poached egg.

  The rooftops of Ankh-Morpork sprouted a fine array of gargoyles even in normal times, but now they were alive with as ghastly an array of faces as ever were seen outside a woodcut about the evils of gin-drinking among the non-woodcut-buying classes. Many of the faces were attached to bodies holding a fearsome array of homely weapons that had been handed down from generation to generation for centuries, often with some force.

  From his perch on the roof of the Watch House Vimes could see the wizards lining the rooftops of the University, and the gangs of opportunist hoard-researchers waiting in the streets, shovels at the ready. If the dragon really did have a bed somewhere in the city, then it would be sleeping on the floor tomorrow.

  From s
omewhere below came the cry of Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, or one of his colleagues, selling hot sausages. Vimes felt a sudden surge of civic pride. There had to be something right about a citizenry which, when faced with catastrophe, thought about selling sausages to the participants.

  The city waited. A few stars came out.

  Colon, Nobby and Carrot were also on the roof. Colon was sulking because Vimes had forbidden him to use his bow and arrow.

  These 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.

  "That's right," said Carrot, "the Projectile Weapons (Civic Safety) Act, 1634."

  "Don't you keep on quoting all that sort of stuff," snapped Colon. "We don't have any of them laws any more! That's all old stuff! It's all more wossname now. Pragmatic."

  "Law or no law," said Vimes, "I say put it away."

  "But Captain, I was a dab hand at this!" protested Colon. "Anyway," he added peevishly, "a lot of other people have got them."

  That was true enough. Neighbouring rooftops bristled like hedgehogs. If the wretched thing turned up, it was going to think it was flying through solid wood with slots in it. You could almost feel sorry for it.

  "I said put it away," said Vimes. "I'm not having my guards shooting citizens. So put it away."

  "That's very true," said Carrot. "We're here to protect and to serve, aren't we, Captain."

  Vimes gave him a sidelong look. "Er," he said. "Yeah. Yes. That's right."

  On the roof of her house on the hill, Lady Ramkin adjusted a rather inadequate folding chair on the roof, arranged the telescope, coffee flask and sandwiches on the parapet in front of her, and settled down to wait. She had a notebook on her knee.

  Half an hour went by. Hails of arrows greeted a passing cloud, several unfortunate bats, and the rising moon.

  "Bugger this for a game of soldiers," said Nobby, eventually. "It's been scared off."

  Sgt Colon lowered his pike. "Looks like it," he conceded.

  "And it's getting chilly up here," said Carrot. He politely nudged Captain Vimes, who was slumped against the chimney, staring moodily into space.

  "Maybe we ought to be getting down, sir?" he said. "Lots of people are."

  "Hmm?" said Vimes, without moving his head.

  "Could be coming on to rain, too," said Carrot.

  Vimes said nothing. For some minutes he had been watching the Tower of Art, which was the centre of Unseen University and reputedly the oldest building hi the city. It was certainly the tallest. Time, weather and indifferent repairs had given it a gnarled appearance, like a tree that has seen too many thunderstorms.

  He was trying to remember its shape. As in the case with many things that are totally familiar, he hadn't really looked at it for years. Now he was trying to convince himself that the forest of little turrets and crenellations at its top looked just the same tonight as they had done yesterday.

  It was giving him some difficulty.

  Without taking his eyes off it, he grabbed Sgt Colon's shoulder and gently pointed him in the right direction.

  He said, "Can you see anything odd about the top of the tower?"

  Colon stared up for a while, and then laughed nervously. "Well, it looks like there's a dragon sitting on it, doesn't it?"

  "Yes. That's what I thought."

  "Only, only, only when you sort of look properly, you can see it's just made up out of shadows and clumps of ivy and that. I mean, if you half-close one eye, it looks like two old women and a wheelbarrow."

  Vimes tried this. "Nope," he said. "It still looks like a dragon. A huge one. Sort of hunched up, and looking down. Look, you can see its wings folded up."

  "Beg pardon, sir. That's just a broken turret giving the effect."

  They watched it for a while.

  Then Vimes said, "Tell me, Sergeant — I ask in a spirit of pure inquiry — what do you think 's causing the effect of a pair of huge wings unfurling?"

  Colon swallowed.

  "I think that's caused by a pair of huge wings, sir," he said.

  "Spot on, Sergeant."

  The dragon dropped. It wasn't a swoop. It simply kicked away from the top of the tower and half-fell, half-flew straight downwards, disappearing from view behind the University buildings.

  Vimes caught himself listening for the thump.

  And then the dragon was in view again, moving like an arrow, moving like a shooting star, moving like something that has somehow turned a thirty-two feet per second plummet into an unstoppable upward swoop. It glided over the rooftops at little more than head height, all the more horrible because of the sound. It was as though the air was slowly and carefully being torn in half.

  The Watch threw themselves flat. Vimes caught a glimpse of huge, vaguely horse-like features before it slid past.

  "Sodding arseholes," said Nobby, from somewhere in the guttering.

  Vimes redoubled his grip on the chimney and pulled himself upright. "You are in uniform, Corporal Nobbs," he said, his voice hardly shaking at all.

  "Sorry, Captain. Sodding arseholes, sir. "

  "Where's Sergeant Colon?"

  "Down here, sir. Holding on to this drainpipe, sir."

  "Oh, for goodness sake. Help him up, Carrot."

  ' 'Gosh,'' said Carrot, "look at it go!"

  You could tell the position of the dragon by the rattle of arrows across the city, and by the screams and gurgles of all those hit by the misses and ricochets.

  "He hasn't even flapped his wings yet!" shouted Carrot, trying to stand on the chimney pot. "Look at him go!''

  It shouldn't be that big, Vimes told himself, watching the huge shape wheel over the river. It's as long as a street!

  There was a puff of flame above the docks, and for a moment the creature passed in front of the moon. Then it flapped its wings, once, with a sound like the damp hides of a pedigree herd being slapped across a cliff.

  It turned in a tight circle, pounded the air a few times to build up speed, and came back.

  When it passed over the Watch House it coughed a column of spitting white fire. Tiles under it didn't just melt, they erupted in red-hot droplets. The chimney stack exploded and rained bricks across the street.

  Vast wings hammered at the air as the creature hovered over the burning building, fire spearing down on what rapidly became a glowing heap. Then, when all that was left was a spreading puddle of melted rock with interesting streaks and bubbles in it, the dragon raised itself with a contemptuous flick of its wings and soared away and upwards, over the city.

  ...

  Lady Ramkin lowered her telescope and shook her head slowly.

  "That's not right," she whispered. "That's not right at all. Shouldn't be able to do anything like that. "

  She raised the lens again and squinted, trying to see what was on fire. Down below, in their long kennels, the little dragons howled.

  ...

  Traditionally, upon waking from blissfully uneventful insensibility, you ask: "Where am I?" It's probably part of the racial consciousness or something.

  Vimes said it.

  Tradition allows a choice of second lines. A key point in the selection process is an audit to see that the body has all the bits it remembers having yesterday.

  Vimes checked.

  Then comes the tantalising bit. Now that the snowball of consciousness is starting to roll, is it going to find that it's waking up inside a body lying in a gutter with something multiple, the noun doesn't matter after an adjective like "multiple", nothing good ever follows "multiple", or is it going to be a case of crisp sheets, a soothing hand, and a businesslike figure in white pulling open the curtains on a bright new day? Is it all over, with nothing worse to look forward to now than weak tea, nourishing gruel, short, strengthening walks in the garden and possibly a brief platonic love affair with a ministering angel, or was this all just a moment's blackout and some looming bas
tard is now about to get down to real business with the thick end of a pickaxe helve? Are there, the consciousness wants to know, going to be grapes?

  At this point some outside stimulus is helpful. "It's going to be all right" is favourite, whereas "Did anyone get his number?" is definitely a bad sign; either, however, is better than "You two hold his hands behind his back".

  In fact someone said, "You were nearly a goner there, Captain."

  The pain sensations, which had taken advantage of Vimes's unconscious state to bunk off for a metaphorical quick cigarette, rushed back.

  Vimes said, "Arrgh." Then he opened his eyes.

  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.

  Ankh-Morpork did not have many hospitals. All the Guilds maintained their own sanitariums, and there were a few public ones run by the odder religious organisations, like the Balancing Monks, but by and large medical assistance was nonexistent and people had to die inefficiently, without the aid of doctors. It was generally thought that the existence of cures encouraged sickness and was in any case probably against Nature's way.

  "Have I already said 'Where am I?' " said Vimes faintly.

  "Yes."

  "Did I get an answer?"

  "Dunno where this place is, Captain. It belongs to some posh bint. She said to bring you up here."

  Even though Vimes's mind appeared to be full of pink treacle he nevertheless grabbed two clues and wrestled them together. The combination of 'rich' and 'up here' meant something. So did the strange chemical smell in the room, which even overpowered Nobby's more everyday odours.

  "We're not talking about Lady Ramkin, are we?" he said cautiously.

  "You could be right. Great big biddy. Mad for dragons." Nobby's rodent face broke into the most horribly knowing grin Vimes had ever seen. "You're in her bed," he said.

  Vimes peered around him, feeling the first overtures of a vague panic. Because now that he could halfway focus, he could see a certain lack of bachelor sockness about the place. There was a faint hint of talcum powder.