Men at Arms tds-15 Page 21

  Colon helped him up.

  “Been in a fight, Skully?”

  Skully looked up at Detritus, and whimpered.

  “The buggers attacked the Watch House!”

  “Who?”

  “Them!”

  Carrot patted him on the shoulder.

  “This isn't a troll,” he said. “This is Lance-Constable Detritus—don't salute. Trolls attacked the Day Watch?”

  “They're chucking cobbles!”

  “You can't trust 'em,” said Detritus.

  “Who?” said Skully.

  “Trolls. Nasty pieces of work in my opinion,” said Detritus, with all the conviction of a troll with a badge. “They need keeping a eye on.”

  “What's happened to Quirke?” said Carrot.

  “I don't know! You lot have got to do something”.'

  “We're stood down,” said Colon. “Official.”

  “Don't give me that!”

  “Ah,” said Carrot, brightly. He pulled a stub of pencil out of his pocket and made a little tick in his black book. “You still got that little house in Easy Street, Sergeant Muldoon?”

  “What? What? Yes! What about it?”

  “Is the rent worth more than a farthing a month?”

  Muldoon stared at him with his one operating eye.

  “Are you simple or what?”

  Carrot gave him a big smile. “That's right, Sergeant Muldoon. Is it, though? Worth a farthing, would you say?”

  “There's dwarfs running around the streets looking for a fight and you want to know about property prices?”

  “A farthing?”

  “Don't be daft! It's worth at least five dollars a month!”

  “Ah,” said Carrot, ticking the book again. “That'd be inflation, of course. And I expect you've got a cooking pot… do you own at least two-and-one-third acres and more than half a cow?”

  “All right, all right,” said Muldoon. “It's some kind of joke, right?”

  “I think probably the property qualification can be waived,” said Carrot. “It says here that it can be waived for a citizen in good standing. Finally, has there been, in your opinion, an irreparable breakdown of law and order in the city?”

  “They turned over Throat Dibbler's barrow and made him eat two of his sausages-inna-bun!”

  “Oh, I say!” said Colon.

  “Without mustard!”

  “I think we can call that a Yes,” said Carrot. He ticked the page again, and closed the book with a definite snap.

  “We'd better be going,” he said.

  “We were told—” Colon began.

  “According to the Laws and Ordinances of Ankh-Morpork,” said Carrot, “any residents of the city, in times of the irreparable breakdown of law and order, shall, at the requeft of an officer of the city who is a citizen in good standing—there's a lot of stuff here about property and stuff, and then it goes on—form themfelves into a militia for city defence.”

  “What does that mean?” said Angua.

  “Militia…” mused Sergeant Colon.

  “Hang on, you can't do that!” said Muldoon. “That's nonsense!”

  “It's the law. Never been repealed,” said Carrot.

  “We've never had a militia! Never needed one!”

  “Until now, I think.”

  “Now look here,” said Muldoon, “you come back with me to the Palace. You're men of the Watch—”

  “And we're going to defend the city,” said Carrot.

  People were streaming past the Watch House. Carrot stopped a couple by the simple expedient of sticking out his hand.

  “Mr Poppley, isn't it?” he said. “How's the grocery business? Hello, Mrs Poppley.”

  “Ain't you heard?” said the flustered man. “The trolls have set fire to the Palace!”

  He followed Carrot's gaze up Broad Way, to where the Palace stood squat and dark in the early evening light. Ungovernable flames failed to billow from every window.

  “My word,” said Carrot.

  “And there's dwarfs breaking windows and everything!” said the grocer. “A dog's not safe!”

  “You can't trust 'em,” said Cuddy.

  The grocer stared at him. “Are you a dwarf?” he said.

  “Amazing! How do people do it,” said Cuddy.

  “Well, I'm off! I'm not stopping to see Mrs Poppley ravished by the little devils! You know what they say about dwarfs!”

  The Watch watched the couple head off into the crowd again.

  “Well, I don't,” said Cuddy, to no-one in particular. “What is it they say about dwarfs?”

  Carrot fielded a man pushing a barrow.

  “Would you mind telling me what's going on, sir?” he said.

  “And do you know what it is they say about dwarfs?” said a voice behind him.

  “That's not a sir, that's Throat,” said Colon. “And will you look at the colour of him!”

  “Should he be all shiny like that?” said Detritus.

  “Feeling fine! Feeling fine!” said Dibbler. “Hah! So much for people importuning the standard of my merchandise!”

  “What's happening, Throat?” said Colon.

  “They say—” Dibbler began, green in the face.

  “Who says?” said Carrot.

  “They say,” said Dibbler. “You know. They. Everyone. They say the trolls have killed someone up at Dolly Sisters and the dwarfs have smashed up Chalky the troll's all-night pottery and they've broken down the Brass Bridge and—”

  Carrot looked up the road.

  “You just came over the Brass Bridge,” he said.

  “Yeah, well… that's what they say,” said Dibbler.

  “Oh, I see.” Carrot straightened up.

  “Did they happen to say… sort of, in passing… anything else about dwarfs?” said Cuddy.

  “I think we're going to have to go and have a word with the Day Watch about the arrest of Coalface,” Carrot said.

  “We ain't got no weapons,” said Colon.

  “I'm certain Coalface has nothing to do with the murder of Hammerhock,” said Carrot. “We are armed with the truth. What can harm us if we are armed with the truth?”

  “Well, a crossbow bolt can, e.g., go right through your eye and out the back of your head,” said Sergeant Colon.

  “All right, sergeant,” said Carrot, “so where do we get some more weapons?”

  The bulk of the Armoury loomed against the sunset.

  It was strange to find an armoury in a city which relied on deceit, bribery and assimilation to defeat its enemies but, as Sergeant Colon said, once you'd won their weapons off 'em you needed somewhere to store the things.

  Carrot rapped on the door. After a while there were footsteps, and a small window slid back. A suspicious voice said: “Yes?”

  “Corporal Carrot, city militia.”

  “Never heard of it. Bugger off.”

  The hatch snapped back. Carrot heard Nobby snigger.

  He thumped on the door again.

  “Yes?”

  “I'm Corporal Carrot—” The hatch moved, but hit Carrot's truncheon as he rammed it in the hole.

  “—and I'm here to collect some arms for my men.”

  “Yeah? Where's your authority?”

  “What? But I'm—”

  The truncheon was knocked away and the hatch thudded into place.

  “'Scuse me,” said Corporal Nobbs, pushing past. “Let me have a go. I've been here before, sort of thing.”

  He kicked the door with his steel capped boots, known and feared wherever men were on the floor and in no position to fight back.

  Snap. “I told you to bug—”

  “Auditors,” said Nobby.

  There was a moment's silence.

  “What?”

  “Here to take inventory.”

  “Where's your auth—”

  “Oh? Oh? He says where's my authority?” Nobby leered at the guards. “Oh? Keeps me hanging around here while his cronies can nip out the back to bring the stuff
back out of hock, eh?”

  “I nev—”

  “And, and then, yeah, we'll get the old thousand swords trick, yeah? Fifty crates stacked up, turns out the bottom forty are full of rocks?”

  “I—”

  “What's your name, mister?”

  “I—”

  “You open this door right now!”

  The hatch shut. There was the sound of bolts being pulled back by someone who was not at all convinced it was a good idea and would be asking searching questions in a minute.

  “Got a piece of paper on you, Fred? Quick!”

  “Yes, but—” said Sergeant Colon.

  “Any paper! Now!”

  Colon fumbled in his pocket and handed Nobby his grocery bill just as the door opened. Nobby swaggered in at high speed, forcing the man inside to walk backwards.

  “Don't run off!” he shouted, “I haven't found anything wrong—”

  “I wasn't r—”

  “—YET!”

  Carrot had time to get an impression of a cavernous place full of complicated shadows. Apart from the man, who was fatter than Colon, there were a couple of trolls who appeared to be operating a grindstone. Current events did not seem to have penetrated the thick walls.

  “All right, no-one panic, just stop what you're doing, stop what you're doing, please. I'm Corporal Nobbs, Ankh-Morpork City Ordnance Inspection City Audit—” The piece of paper was waved in front of the man's eyes at vision-blurring speed, and Nobby's voice faltered a bit as he contemplated the end of the sentence, “—Bureau… Special… Audit… Inspection. How many people work here?”

  “Just me—”

  Nobby pointed at the trolls.

  “What about them?”

  The man spat on the floor.

  “Oh, I thought you said people.”

  Carrot stuck out his hand automatically and it slammed against Detritus' breastplate.

  “OK,” said Nobby, “let's see what we've got here…” He walked fast along the racks, so that everyone else had to run to keep up. “What's this?”

  “Er—”

  “Don't know, eh?”

  “Sure… it's… it's…”

  “A triple-stringed 2,000lb carriage-mounted siege crossbow with the double-action windlass?”

  “Right.”

  “Isn't this a Klatchian reinforced crossbow with the goat-leg cocking mechanism and the underhaft bayonet?”

  “Er… yeah?”

  Nobby gave it a cursory examination, and then tossed it aside.

  The rest of the Night Watch looked on in astonishment. Nobby had never been known to wield any weapon beyond a knife.

  “Have you got one of those Hershebian twelve-shot bows with the gravity feed?” he snapped.

  “Eh? What you see is what we got, mister.”

  Nobby pulled a hunting crossbow from its rack. His skinny arms twanged as he hauled on the cocking lever.

  “Sold the bolts for this thing?”

  “They're right there!”

  Nobby selected one from the shelf and dropped it into its slot. Then he sighted along the shaft. He turned.

  “I like this inventory,” said Nobby. “We'll take it all.”

  The man looked down the sights at Nobby's eye and, to Angua's horrified admiration, didn't faint.

  “That little bow don't scare me,” he said.

  “This little bow scare you?” said Nobby. “No. Right. This is a little bow. A little bow like this wouldn't scare a man like you, because it's such a little bow. It'd need a bigger bow than this to scare a man like you.”

  Angua would have given a month's pay to see the quartermaster's face from the front. She'd watched as Detritus had lifted down the siege bow, cocked it with one hand and a barely audible grunt, and stepped forward. Now she could imagine the eyeballs swivelling as the coldness of the metal penetrated the back of the armourer's fleshy red neck.

  “Now, the one behind you, that's a big bow,” said Nobby.

  It wasn't as if the six-foot iron arrow was sharp. It was supposed to smash through doorways, not do surgery.

  “Can I pull the trigger yet?” Detritus rumbled, into the man's ear.

  “You wouldn't dare fire that thing in here! That's a siege weapon! It'd go right through the wall!”

  “Eventually,” said Nobby.

  “What this bit for?” said Detritus.

  “Now, look—”

  “I hope you keep that thing maintained,” said Nobby. “Them things were a bugger for metal fatigue. Especially on the safety catch.”

  “What are a safety catch?” said Detritus.

  Everything went quiet.

  Carrot found his voice, a long way off.

  “Corporal Nobbs?”

  “Yessir?”

  “I'll take over from this point, if you don't mind.”

  He gently pushed the siege bow away, but Detritus hadn't liked the crack about people and it kept swinging back again.

  “Now,” said Carrot, “I don't like this element of coercion. We're not here to bully this poor man. He's a city employee, just like us. It's very wrong of you to put him in fear. Why not just ask?”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Nobby.

  Carrot patted the armourer on the shoulder.

  “May we take some weapons?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Some weapons? For official purposes?”

  The armourer looked unable to cope with this.

  “You mean I got a choice?” he said.

  “Why, certainly. We practise policing by consent in Ankh-Morpork. If you feel unable to agree to our request, you only have to say the word.”

  There was a faint bong as the tip of the iron arrow once again bounced on the back of the armourer's skull. He sought in vain for something to say, because the only word he could think of right now was “Fire!”

  “Uh,” he said. “Uh. Yeah. Right. Sure. Take what you want.”

  “Fine, fine. And Sergeant Colon will give you a receipt, adding of course that you release the weapons of your own free will.”

  “My own free will?”

  “You have absolute choice in the matter, of course.”

  The man's face screwed up in the effort of desperate cogitation.

  “I reckon…”

  “Yes?”

  “I reckon it's OK for you to take 'em. Take 'em right away.”

  “Good man. Do you have a trolley?”

  “And do you happen to know what it is they say about dwarfs?” said Cuddy.

  It crept over Angua once again that Carrot had no irony in his soul. He meant every word. If the man had really held out, Carrot would probably have given in. Of course, there was a bit of a gap between probably and certainly.

  Nobby was down the end of the row, occasionally squeaking with delight as he found an interesting war hammer or an especially evil-looking glaive. He was trying to hold everything, all at once.

  Then he dropped the lot and ran forward.

  “Oh, wow! A Klatchian fire engine! This is more my meteor!”

  They heard him rummaging around in the gloom. He emerged pushing a sort of bin on small squeaky wheels. It had various handles and fat leathery bags, and a nozzle at the front. It looked like a very large kettle.

  “The leather's been kept greased, too!”

  “What is it?” said Carrot.

  “And there's oil in the reservoir!” Nobby pumped a handle energetically. “Last I heard, this thing had been banned in eight countries and three religions said they'd excommunicate any soldiers found using it!27 Anyone got a light?”

  “Here,” said Carrot, “but what's—”

  “Watch!”

  Nobby lit a match, applied it to the tube at the front of the device, and pulled a lever.

  They put out the flames eventually.

  “Needs a bit of adjustment,” said Nobby, through his mask of soot.

  “No,” said Carrot. For the rest of his life he'd remember the jet of fire scorching his face en ro
ute to the opposite wall.

  “But it's—”

  “No. It's too dangerous.”

  “It's meant to be—”

  “I mean it could hurt people.”

  “Ah,” said Nobby, “right. You should have said. We're after weapons that don't hurt people, right?”

  “Corporal Nobbs?” said Sergeant Colon, who'd been even closer to the flame than Carrot.

  “Yes, sarge?”

  “You heard Corporal Carrot. No heathen weapons. Anyway, how come you know so much about all this stuff?”

  “Milit'ry service.”

  “Really, Nobby?” said Carrot.

  “Had a special job, sir. Very responsible.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Quartermaster, sir,” said Nobby, saluting smartly.

  “You were a quartermaster?” said Carrot. “In whose army?”

  “Duke of Pseudopolis, sir.”

  “But Pseudopolis always lost its wars!”

  “Ah… well…”

  “Who did you sell the weapons to?”

  “That's a slander, that is! They just used to spend a lot of time away for polishing and sharpening.”

  “Nobby, this is Carrot talking to you. How much time, approximately?”

  “Approximately? Oh. About a hundred per cent, if we're talking approximately, sir.”

  “Nobby?”

  “Sir?”

  “You don't have to call me sir.”

  “Yessir.”

  In the end, Cuddy remained faithful to his axe, but added a couple more as an afterthought; Sergeant Colon chose a pike because the thing about a pike, the important thing, was that everything happened at the other end of it, i.e., a long way off; Lance-Constable Angua selected, without much enthusiasm, a short sword, and Corporal Nobbs—

  –Corporal Nobbs was a kind of mechanical porcupine of blades, bows, points and knobbly things on the end of chains.

  “You sure, Nobby?” said Carrot. “There's nothing you want to leave?”

  “It's so hard to choose, sir.”

  Detritus was hanging on to his huge bow.

  “That all you're taking, Detritus?”

  “No sir! Taking Flint and Morraine, sir!”

  The two trolls who had been working in the armoury had formed up behind Detritus.

  “Swore 'em in, sir,” said Detritus. “Used troll oath.”

  Flint saluted amateurishly.