The Fifth Elephant Read online

  “Hmm?”

  “What else are we to call it, sir, when a young man of such promise throws away his career for the pursuit of a girl?”

  The Patrician stroked his beard and smiled at something.

  There was a line across the map: the progress of the semaphore towers. It was mathematically straight, a statement of intellect in the crowding darkness of miles and miles of bloody Uberwald.

  “Possibly…a bonus,” he said. “Uberwald has much to teach us. Fetch me the papers on the werewolf clans, will you? Oh…and although I swore I would never ever do this…please prepare a message for Sergeant Colon, too. Promotion, alas, beckons.”

  A grubby cloth cap lay on the pavement.

  On the pavement beside the cap, someone had written in damp chalk:

  Plese HelP This LiTTle doGGie

  Beside it sat a small dog.

  It was not cut out by nature to be a friendly little waggy-tailed dog, but was making the effort. Whenever someone walked by it sat up on its hind legs and whined pitifully.

  Something landed in the cap. It was a washer.

  The charitable pedestrian had gone only a few steps farther along the road when he heard: “And I hope your legs falls off, mister.”

  He turned. The dog was watching him intently.

  “Woof?” it said.

  He looked puzzled, shrugged, and then turned and walked on.

  “Yeah…bloody woof woof,” said the strange voice, as he was about to turn the corner.

  A hand reached down and picked up the dog by the scruff of its neck.

  “Hello, Gaspode. I believe I’ve solved a little mystery.”

  “Oh no…” the dog moaned.

  “That’s not being a good dog, Gaspode,” said Carrot, lifting the dog so they could meet eye to eye.

  “All right, all right, put me down, will you? This hurts, you know.”

  “I need your help, Gaspode.”

  “Not me. I don’t help the Watch. Nothing personal, but it doesn’t do anything for my street cred.”

  “I’m not talking about helping the Watch, Gaspode. This is personal. I need your nose.” Carrot lowered the dog to the pavement, and rubbed his hand on his shirt. “Unfortunately, this means I need the rest of you as well, although of course I am aware that under that itchy exterior beats a heart of gold.”

  “Really,” said Gaspode. “Nothing good starts with ‘I need your help.’”

  “It’s Angua.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “I want you to track her.”

  “Huh, not many dogs could track a werewolf, mister. They’re cunning.”

  “Always go to the best, I always say,” said Carrot.

  “Finest nose known to man or beast,” said Gaspode, wrinkling it. “Where’s she gone, then?”

  “To Uberwald, I think.”

  Carrot moved fast. Gaspode’s flight was hindered by the hand gripping his tail.

  “That’s hundreds of miles away! And dog miles is seven times longer! Not a chance!”

  “Oh? All right, then. Silly of me to suggest it,” said Carrot, letting go. “You’re right. It’s ridiculous.”

  Gaspode turned, suddenly full of suspicion.

  “No, I didn’t say it was ridiculous,” he said. “I just said it was hundreds of miles away…”

  “Yes, but you said you had no chance.”

  “No, I said that you had no chance of getting me to do it.”

  “Yes, but winter’s coming on and, as you say, a werewolf is very hard to track and on top of that Angua’s a copper. She’ll work out that I’d use you, so she’ll be covering her trail.”

  Gaspode whined. “Look, mister, respect is hard to earn in this dog’s town. If I’m not smelled around the lampposts for a couple of weeks my stock is definitely in the gutter, right?”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. I’ll make some other arrangements. Nervous Nigel’s still around, isn’t he?”

  “What? That spaniel? He couldn’t smell his own bottom if you put it in front of him!”

  “They say he’s pretty good, nasally.”

  “And he widdles every time anyone looks at him!” snapped Gaspode.

  “I heard he can smell a dead rat two miles away.”

  “Yeah? Well, I can smell what color it is!”

  Carrot sighed. “Well, I’ve got no choice, I’m afraid. You can’t do it, so I’ll—”

  “I didn’t say—” Gaspode stopped, and then went on. “I’m going to do it, aren’t I? I’m bloody well going to do it. You’re going to trick me or blackmail me or whatever it takes, aren’t you…”

  “Yes. How do you manage to write, Gaspode?”

  “I holds the chalk in me mouth. Easy.”

  “You’re a smart dog. I’ve always said so. The world’s only talking dog, too.”

  “Lower your voice, lower your voice!” said Gaspode, looking around. “Here, Uberwald’s wolf country, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I could’ve bin a wolf, you know. With diff’rent parents, of course.”

  Gaspode sniffed, and looked furtively up and down the street again.

  “Steak?”

  “Every night.”

  “Right.”

  Sergeant Colon was a picture of misery, drawn on a lumpy pavement in bad crayon on a wet day. He sat on a chair and occasionally glanced at the message which had just been delivered, as if hoping that the words would somehow fade away.

  “Bloody hell, Nobby,” he moaned.

  “There, there, Fred…” said Nobby, currently a vision in organdy.

  “I can’t be promoted! I’m not an officer! I am base, common and popular!”

  “I’ve always said that about you, Fred. You got common off to a treat.”

  “But it’s writ down, Nobby! Look, His Lordship’s signed it!”

  “We-ell, the way I see it, you’ve got three choices,” said Nobby.

  “Yeah?”

  “You can go and tell him you’re not doing it…”

  The panic in Colon’s face was replaced by glazed gray terror.

  “Thank you very much, Nobby,” he said bitterly. “Let me know if you’ve got any more suggestions like that, ’cos I’ll need to go and change my underwear.”

  “Or you could accept it and make such a screw-up of it that he takes it away from you…”

  “You’re doing this on purpose, Nobby!”

  “Might be worth a try, Fred.”

  “Yeah, but the thing about screw-ups, Nobby, is that it’s hard for you to be, you know, precise. You might think you’re making a little screw-up and then it blows up in your face and it turns out to be in fact a big screw-up, and in those circumstances, Nobby, I’m sort of worried that what His Lordship might take away from me wouldn’t just be the job. I hope I don’t have to draw you a picture?”

  “Good point, Fred.”

  “What I’m saying is, screw-ups is like…well, screw-ups is…well, the thing about screw-ups is you never know what size they’re going to be.”

  “Well, Fred, the third choice is you putting up with it.”

  “That’s not helpful, Nobby.”

  “It’ll only be for a couple of weeks, then Mister Vimes’ll be back.”

  “Yeah, but supposing he isn’t? Nasty place, Uberwald. I heard where it’s a misery wrapped in an enema. That doesn’t sound too good. You can fall down things. Then I’m stuck, right? I don’t know how to do officering.”

  “No one knows how to do officering, Fred. That’s why they’re officers. If they knew anything, they’d be sergeants.”

  Now Colon’s face screwed up again in desperate thought. As a lifelong uniformed man, a three-striped peg that had found a three-striped hole very early in its career, he subscribed automatically and unthinkingly to the belief that officers as a class could not put their own trousers on without a map. He conscientiously excluded Vimes and Carrot from the list, automatically elevating them to the rank of honorary sergeant.

  No
bby was watching him with an expression of combined concern, friendliness and predatory intent.

  “What shall I do, Nobby?”

  “Well, ‘Captain,’” said Nobby, and then he gave a little cough, “what officers mainly have to do, as you know, is sign things—”

  The door was knocked on and opened at the same time, by a flustered constable.

  “Sarge, Constable Shoe says he really does need an officer down at Sonky’s factory.”

  “What, the rubber wally man?” said Colon. “Right. An officer. Right. We’ll be along.”

  “And that’s Captain Colon,” said Nobby quickly.

  “Er…er…yes, and that’s Captain Colon, thank you very much,” said Colon, adding as his resolve stiffened, “and I’ll thank you not to forget it!”

  The constable stared at them, and then stopped trying to understand.

  “And there’s a troll downstairs who insists on speaking to whoever’s in charge—”

  “Can’t Stronginthearm deal with it?”

  “Er…is Sergeant Stronginthearm still a sergeant?” said the constable.

  “Yes!”

  “Even unconscious?”

  “What?”

  “He’s flat on the floor right now, Sa—Captain.”

  “What’s the troll want?”

  “Right now he wants to kill someone, but mainly I think he wants someone to take the clamp off’f his foot.”

  Gaspode ran up and down, nose barely an inch from the ground. Carrot waited, holding his horse. It was a good one. Carrot hadn’t spent a lot of his wages, up until now.

  Finally the dog sat down and looked depressed.

  “So tell me about this wonderful nose the Patrician has got, then,” he said.

  “Not a trace?”

  “You better get Vetinari down here, if he’s so good,” said Gaspode. “What’s the point of starting here? Worst place in the whole city! It’s the gate to the cattle market, am I right? Trying not to smell stuff is the trick here, is the point I’m makin’. There’s ground-in stink. If you wanted to get on the trail of somebody, this is the last place I’d start.”

  “Very good point,” said Carrot, carefully. “So…what’s the strongest smell heading hubward?”

  “Dung carts, o’course. Yesterday. Always a big clear-out of the pens first thing Friday morning.”

  “You can follow the smell?”

  Gaspode rolled his eyes. “With my head in a bucket.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  “So,” said Gaspode, as they began to leave the gate’s bustle behind, “We’re chasing this girl, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not like with dogs, then, where there might be twenty or thirty?”

  “No.”

  “So we’re not looking at a bucket of cold water here?”

  “No.”

  Constable Shoe saluted, but a little testily. He’d been waiting rather a long time.

  “Afternoon, Sergeant—”

  “That’s Captain,” said Captain Colon. “See the pip on my shoulder, Reg?”

  Reg looked closely. “I thought it was bird doings, Sarge.”

  “That’s Captain,” said Colon automatically. “It’s only chalk now because I ain’t got time to get it done properly,” he said, “So don’t be cheeky.”

  “What’s up with Nobby?” said Reg. Corporal Nobbs was holding a damp cloth over one eye.

  “Bit of a contry tomps with an illegally parked troll,” said Captain Colon.

  “Shows what kind of troll he was, striking a lady,” muttered Nobby.

  “But you ain’t a lady, Nobby. You’re just wearing your traffic-calming disguise.”

  “He wasn’t to know.”

  “You’d got your helmet on. Anyway, you shouldn’t have clamped him.”

  “He was parked, Fred.”

  “He’d been knocked down by a cart,” said Captain Colon. “And that’s Captain.”

  “Well, they always have excuses,” said Nobby sullenly.

  “You’d better show us the corpus, Reg,” said Colon.

  The body in the cellar was duly inspected.

  “…and I remember Cheery saying there was a smell of cat’s pee and sulfur at the Dwarf Bread Museum,” said Reg.

  “Certainly hangs about,” said Colon. “You wouldn’t have blocked sinuses if you worked here for a day.”

  “And I thought, ‘I wonder if someone’d tried to make a mold of the replica Stone,’ sir,” said Reg.

  “Now that is clever,” said Fred Colon. “You’d get the real one back then, wouldn’t you?”

  “Er…no, Sarge—Captain. But you’d get a copy of the replica.”

  “Would that be legal?”

  “Can’t say, sir. I wouldn’t think so. It wouldn’t fool a dwarf for five minutes.”

  “Then who’d want to kill him?”

  “A father of thirteen kids, maybe?” said Nobby. “Haha.”

  “Nobby, will you stop pinching the merchandise?” said Colon. “And don’t argue, I just saw you put a couple of dozen in your handbag.”

  “Dat don’t matter,” rumbled the troll. “Mister Sonky always said dey was free to the Watch.”

  “That was very…civic of him,” said Captain Colon.

  “Yeah, he said der last fing we wanted was more bloody coppers around the city.”

  A pigeon chose that diplomatic moment to flutter into the factory and land on Colon’s shoulder, where it promoted him. He reached up, removed the message capsule and unfolded the contents.

  “It’s from Visit,” he said. “There’s a clue, he says.”

  “What to?” said Nobby.

  “Not to anything, Nobby. Just a clue.” He took off his helmet and wiped his brow. This was what he’d hoped to avoid. In his heart of battered hearts, he suspected that Vimes and Carrot were good at putting clues next to other clues and thinking about them. That was their talent. He had other…well, he was good with people, and he had a shiny breastplate, and he could sergeant in his sleep.

  “All right, write up your report,” he said. “Well done. We’re going back to the Yard.”

  “I can see this is going to get on top of me,” said Colon, as they walked away. “There’s paperwork, too. You know me and paperwork, Nobby.”

  “You’re a very thorough reader, that’s all, Fred,” said Nobby. “I’ve seen you take ages over just one page. Digesting it magisterially, I thought.”

  Colon brightened a little. “Yes, that’s what I do,” he said.

  “Even if it’s only the menu down at the Klatchian takeout, I’ve seen you staring at one line for a minute at a time.”

  “Well, obviously you can’t let people put one over on you,” said Colon, sticking out his chest, or at least sticking it further up.

  “What you need is an aide de camp,” said Nobby, lifting his dress to step over a puddle.

  “I do?”

  “Oh yes. ’Cos of you being a figurehead and setting an example to your men,” said Nobby.

  “Ah. Right. Yes,” said Colon, grasping the idea with relief. “A man can’t be expected to do all that and read long words, am I right?”

  “Exactly. And, of course, we’re down one sergeant at the Yard now,” said Nobby.

  “Good point, Nobby. It’s going to be busy.”

  They walked on for a while.

  “You could promote someone,” Nobby prompted.

  “Could I?”

  “What good’s being the boss if you can’t?”

  “That’s true. And it’s sort of an emergency…Hmm…any thoughts, Nobby?”

  Nobby sighed inwardly. A penny could drop through wet cement faster than it could drop for Fred Colon.

  “A name springs to mind,” he said.

  “Ah, right. Yes. Reg Shoe, right? Good at writing, a keen thinker, and of course he’s coolheaded,” said Colon. “Icy, practically.”

  “But a bit on the dead side
,” said Nobby.

  “Yes, I suppose that counts against him.”

  “And he goes to pieces unpredictably,” said Nobby.

  “That’s true,” said Captain Colon. “No one likes shaking hands and ending up with more fingers than they started with.”

  “So p’raps it might be better to consider someone who has been unreasonably overlooked,” said Nobby, going for broke. “Someone who’s face dunt fit, p’raps. Someone who’s experience in the Watch gen’rally and in Traffic in particular could be great service to the city if people wouldn’t go on about one or two lapses which didn’t happen in any case.”

  The dawn of intelligence rose across the vistas of Colon’s face.

  “Ah,” he said. “I see. Well, why didn’t you come right out with that at the start, Nobby.”

  “Well, it’s your decision, Fred…I mean, Captain,” said Nobby earnestly.

  “But ’sposing Mister Vimes doesn’t agree? He’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”

  “That’ll be long enough,” said Nobby.

  “And you don’t mind?”

  “Me? Mind? Not me. You know me, Fred, always ready to do my bit.”

  “Nobby?”

  “Yes, Fred?”

  “The dress…”

  “Yes, Fred?”

  “I thought we weren’t doing the…traffic calming any more?”

  “Yes, Fred. But I thought I’m keep it on ready to swing into action just in case you decided that we should.”

  A chilly wind blew across the cabbage fields.

  To Gaspode it brought, beside the overpowering fumes of the cabbage and the dark red smell of the dung carts, hints of pine, mountains, snow, sweat and stale cigar smoke. The last came from the cart men’s habit of smoking large, cheap cigars. They kept the flies off.

  It was better than vision. The world of smell stretched before Gaspode.

  “My paws hurt,” he said.

  “There’s a good dog,” said Carrot.

  The road forked. Gaspode stopped, and snuffled around.

  “Well, here’s an int’resting fing,” he said. “Some of the dung’s jumped down off’f the cart and headed away across the fields here. You were right.”

  “Can you smell water anywhere around?” said Carrot, scanning the flat plain.

  Gaspode’s mottled nose wrinkled up in effort.