Guards! Guards! (19 page)

“Well, tickling them behind their ears often works.”

“Oh,” said Vimes weakly.

“And a good sharp ‘no!’ and taking away their food bowl.”

“Ah?”

“And hitting them on the nose with a roll of paper is what I do in
extreme
cases.”

In the slow, brightly-outlined, desperate world Vimes was now inhabiting, which seemed to revolve around the craggy nostrils a few meters away from him, he became aware of a gentle hissing sound.

The dragon was taking a deep breath.

The intake of air stopped. Vimes looked into the darkness of the flame ducts and wondered whether he’d see anything, whether there’d be some tiny white glow or something, before fiery oblivion swept over him.

At that moment a horn rang out.

The dragon raised its head in a puzzled way and made a noise that sounded vaguely interrogative without being in any way a word.

The horn rang out again. The noise seemed to have a number of echoes that lived a life of their own. It sounded like a challenge. If that wasn’t what it was, then the horn blower was soon going to be in trouble, because the dragon gave Vimes a smoldering look, unfolded its enormous wings, leapt heavily into the air and, against all the rules of aeronautics, flew slowly away in the direction of the sound.

Nothing in the world should have been able to fly like that. The wings thumped up and down with a noise like potted thunder, but the dragon moved as though it was idly sculling through the air. If it stopped flapping, the movement suggested, it would simply glide to a halt. It floated, not flew. For something the size of a barn with an armor-plated hide, it was a pretty good trick.

It passed over their heads like a barge, heading for the Plaza of Broken Moons.

“Follow it!” shouted Lady Ramkin.

“That’s not right, it flying like that. I’m pretty sure there’s something in one of the Witchcraft Laws,” said Carrot, taking out his notebook. “
And
it’s damaged the roof. It’s really piling up the offenses, you know.”

“You all right, Captain?” said Sergeant Colon.

“I could see right up its nose,” said Captain Vimes dreamily. His eyes focused on the worried face of the sergeant. “Where’s it gone?” he demanded. Colon pointed along the street.

Vimes glowered at the shape disappearing over the rooftops.

“Follow it!” he said.

The horn sounded again.

Other people were hurrying toward the plaza. The dragon drifted ahead of them like a shark heading toward a wayward airbed, its tail flicking slowly from side to side.

“Some loony is going to fight it!” said Nobby.

“I thought someone would have a go,” said Colon. “Poor bugger’ll be baked in his own armor.”

This seemed to be the opinion of the crowds lining the plaza. 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. You didn’t get the chance every day to see someone baked alive in their own armor. It would be something for the children to remember.

Vimes was jostled and bounced around by the crowd as more people flooded into the plaza behind them.

The horn sounded a third challenge.

“That’s a slug-horn, that is,” said Colon knowledgeably. “Like a tocsin, only deeper.”

“You sure?” said Nobby.

“Yep.”

“It must have been a bloody big slug.”

“Peanuts! Figgins! Hot sausages!” whined a voice behind them. “Hallo, lads. Hallo, Captain Vimes! In at the death, eh? Have a sausage. On the house.”

“What’s going on, Throat?” said Vimes, clinging to the vendor’s tray as more people spilled around them.

“Some kid’s ridden into the city and said he’d kill the dragon,” said Cut-me-own-Throat. “Got a magic sword, he says.”

“Has he got a magic skin?”

“You’ve got no romance in your soul, Captain,” said Throat, removing a very hot toasting fork from the tiny frying pan on his tray and applying it gently to the buttock of a large woman in front of him. “Stand aside, madam, commerce
is
the lifeblood of the city, thank you very much. O’course,” he continued, “by rights there should be a maiden chained to a rock. Only the aunt said no. That’s the trouble with some people. No sense of tradition. This lad says he’s the rightful air, too.”

Vimes shook his head. The world was definitely going mad around him. “You’ve lost me there,” he said.

“Air,” said Throat patiently. “You know. Air to the throne.”

“What throne?”

“The throne of Ankh.”

“What throne of Ankh?”

“You know. Kings and that.” Throat looked reflective. “Wish I knew what his bloody name is,” he said. “I put an order in to Igneous the Troll’s all-night wholesale pottery for three gross of coronation mugs and it’s going to be a right pain, painting all the names in afterward. Shall I put you down for a couple, Cap’n? To you ninety pence, and that’s cutting me own throat.”

Vimes gave up, and shoved his way back through the throng using Carrot as a lighthouse. The lance-constable loomed over the crowd, and the rest of the rank had anchored themselves to him.

“It’s all gone mad,” he shouted. “What’s going on, Carrot?”

“There’s a lad on a horse in the middle of the plaza,” said Carrot. “He’s got a glittery sword, you know. Doesn’t seem to be doing much at the moment, though.”

Vimes fought his way into the lee of Lady Ramkin.

“Kings,” he panted. “Of Ankh. And Thrones. Are there?”

“What? Oh, yes. There used to be,” said Lady Ramkin. “Hundreds of years ago. Why?”

“Some kid says he’s heir to the throne!”

“That’s right,” said Throat, who’d followed Vimes in the hope of clinching a sale. “He made a big speech about how he was going to kill the dragon, overthrow the usurpers and right all wrongs. Everyone cheered. Hot sausages, two for a dollar, made of genuine pig, why not buy one for the lady?”

“Don’t you mean pork, sir?” said Carrot warily, eyeing the glistening tubes.

“Manner of speaking, manner of speaking,” said Throat quickly. “Certainly your actual pig products. Genuine pig.”

“Everyone cheers any speech in this city,” growled Vimes. “It doesn’t mean anything!”

“Get your pig sausages, five for two dollars!” said Throat, who never let a conversation stand in the way of trade. “Could be good for business, could monarchy. Pig sausages! Pig sausages! Inna bun! And righting all wrongs, too. Sounds like a solid idea to me. With onions!”

“Can I press you to a hot sausage, ma’am?” said Nobby.

Lady Ramkin looked at the tray around Throat’s neck. Thousands of years of good breeding came to her aid and there was only the faintest suggestion of horror in her voice when she said, “My, they look good. What splendid foodstuffs.”

“Are they made by monks on some mystic mountain?” said Carrot.

Throat gave him an odd look. “No,” he said patiently, “by pigs.”

“What wrongs?” said Vimes urgently. “Come on, tell me. What wrongs is he going to right?”

“We-ell,” said Throat, “there’s, well, taxes. That’s wrong, for a start.” He had the grace to look slightly embarrassed. Paying taxes was something that, in Throat’s world, happened only to other people.

“That’s right,” said an old woman next to him. “And the gutter of my house leaks something dreadful and the landlord won’t do nothing. That’s wrong.”

“And premature baldness,” said the man in front of her. “That’s wrong, too.” Vimes’s mouth dropped open.

“Ah. Kings can cure that, you know,” said another protomonarchist knowingly.

“As a matter of fact,” said Throat, rummaging in his pack, “I’ve got one bottle left of this astonishing ointment what is made—” he glared at Carrot—“by some ancient monks who live on a mountain—”

“And they can’t answer back, you know,” the monarchist went on. “That’s how you can tell they’re royal. Completely incapable of it. It’s to do with being gracious.”

“Fancy,” said the leaky-guttering woman.

“Money, too,” said the monarchist, enjoying the attention. “They don’t carry it. That’s how you can always tell a king.”

“Why? It’s not that heavy,” said the man whose remaining hair was spread across the dome of his head like the remnant of a defeated army. “
I
can carry hundreds of dollars, no problem.”

“You probably get weak arms, being a king,” said the woman wisely. “Probably with the waving.”

“I’ve always thought,” said the monarchist, pulling out a pipe and beginning to fill it with the ponderous air of one who is going to deliver a lecture, “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.

“And then there’s wear and tear on peas,” he added.

“Well, there would be,” said the woman, uncertainly.

“Having to sleep on them all the time,” said the monarchist.

“Not to mention hundreds of mattresses.”

“Right.”

“Is that so? I think I could get ’em for him wholesale,” said Throat. He turned to Vimes, who had been listening to all this with leaden depression. “See, Captain? And you’d be in the
royal
guard, I expect. Get some plumes in your helmet.”

“Ah, pageantry,” said the monarchist, pointing with his pipe. “Very important. Lots of spectacles.”

“What, free?” said Throat.

“We-ell, I think maybe you have to pay for the frames,” said the monarchist.

“You’re all bloody mad!” shouted Vimes. “You don’t know anything about him and he hasn’t even won yet!”

“Bit of a formality, I expect,” said the woman.

“It’s a fire-breathing dragon!” screamed Vimes, remembering those nostrils. “And he’s just a guy on a horse, for heaven’s sake!”

Throat prodded him gently in the breastplate. “You got no soul, Cap’n,” he said. “When a stranger comes into the city under the thrall of the dragon and challenges it with a glittery sword, weeell, there’s only one outcome, ain’t there? It’s probably destiny.”

“Thrall?” shouted Vimes. “
Thrall
? You thieving bugger, Throat, you were flogging cuddly dragon dolls yesterday!”

“That was just business, Cap’n. No need to get excited about it,” said Throat pleasantly.

Vimes went back to the rank in a gloomy rage. Say what you liked about the people of Ankh-Morpork they had always been staunchly independent, yielding to no man their right to rob, defraud, embezzle and murder on an equal basis. This seemed absolutely right, to Vimes’s 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
. Just richer, fatter, more powerful, better dressed and healthier. It had been like that for hundreds of years.

“And now they get one sniff of an ermine robe and they go all gooey,” he muttered.

The dragon was circling the plaza slowly and warily. Vimes craned to see over the heads in front of him.

In the same way that various predators have the silhouette of their prey almost programmed into their genes, it was possible that the shape of someone on a horse holding a sword clicked a few tumblers in a dragon’s brain. It was showing keen but wary interest.

Back in the crowd, Vimes shrugged. “I didn’t even know we were a kingdom.”

“Well, we haven’t been for ages,” said Lady Ramkin. “The kings got thrown out, and jolly good job too. They could be quite frightful.”

“But you’re, well, from a pos—from a high-born family,” he said. “I should have thought you’d be all for kings.”

“Some of them were fearful oiks, you know,” she said airily. “Wives all over the place, and chopping people’s heads off, fighting pointless wars, eating with their knife, chucking half-eaten chicken legs over their shoulders, that sort of thing. Not
our
sort of people at all.”

The plaza went quiet. The dragon had flapped slowly to the far end and was almost stationary in the air, apart from the slow beating of its wings.

Vimes felt something claw gently at his back, and then Errol was on his shoulder, gripping with his hind claws. His stubby wings were beating in time with those of the bigger specimen. He was hissing. His eyes were fixed on the hovering bulk.

The boy’s horse jigged nervously on the plaza’s flagstones as he dismounted, flourished the sword and turned to face the distant enemy.

He certainly looks confident, Vimes told himself. On the other hand, how does the ability to slay dragons fit you for kingship in this day and age?

It was certainly a very
shiny
sword. You had to admit that.

And now it was two of the clock the following morning. And all was well, apart from the rain. It was drizzling again.

There are some towns in the multiverse which think they know how to have a good time. Places like New Orleans and Rio reckon they not only know how to push the boat out but set fire to the harbor as well; but compared to Ankh-Morpork with its hair down they’re a Welsh village at 2 p.m. on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Fireworks banged and sparkled in the damp air over the turbid mud of the river Ankh. Various domesticated animals were being roasted in the streets. Dancers conga’d from house to house, often managing to pick up any loose ornaments while doing so. There was a lot of quaffing going on. People who in normal circumstances would never think of doing it were shouting “Hurrah.”

Vimes stalked gloomily through the crowded streets, feeling like the only pickled onion in a fruit salad. He’d given the rank the evening off.

He wasn’t feeling at all royalist. He didn’t think he had anything against kings as such, but the sight of
Ankh-Morporkians
waving flags was mysteriously upsetting. That was something only silly subject people did, in other countries. Besides, the idea of royal plumes in his hat revolted him. He’d always had a thing about plumes. Plumes sort of, well, bought you off, told everyone that you didn’t belong to yourself. And he’d feel like a bird. It’d be the last straw.