Guards! Guards! (3 page)

The Brethren shuffled uneasily. Then Brother Dunnykin spoke.

“Huh.
Wizards
. What do they know about a day’s work?”

The Supreme Grand Master breathed deeply.
Ah
…

The air of mean-minded resentfulness thickened noticeably.

“Nothing, and that’s a fact,” said Brother Fingers. “Goin’ around with their noses in the air, too good for the likes a’us. I used to see ’em when I worked up the University. Backsides a mile wide, I’m telling you. Catch ’em doing a job of honest toil?”

“Like thieving, you mean?” said Brother Watchtower, who had never liked Brother Fingers much.

“O’course, they
tell
you,” Brother Fingers went on, pointedly ignoring the comment, “that you shouldn’t go around doin’ magic on account of only them knowin’ about not disturbin’ the universal harmony and whatnot. Load of rubbish, in my opinion.”

“We-ell,” said Brother Plasterer, “I dunno, really. I mean, you get the mix wrong, you just got a lot of damp plaster around your ankles. But you get a bit of magic wrong, and they say ghastly things comes out the woodwork and stitches you
right
up.”

“Yeah, but it’s the wizards that say that,” said Brother Watchtower thoughtfully. “Never could stand them myself, to tell you the truth. Could be they’re onto a good thing and don’t want the rest of us to find out. It’s only waving your arms and chanting, when all’s said and done.”

The Brethren considered this. It sounded plausible. If
they
were onto a good thing,
they
certainly wouldn’t want anyone else muscling in.

The Supreme Grand Master decided that the time was ripe.

“Then we are agreed, brethren? You are prepared to practice magic?”

“Oh,
practice
,” said Brother Plasterer, relieved. “I don’t mind
practicing
. So long as we don’t have to do it for real—”

The Supreme Grand Master thumped the book.

“I mean carry out real spells! Put the city back on the right lines! Summon a dragon!” he shouted.

They took a step back. Then Brother Doorkeeper said, “And then, if we get this dragon, the rightful king’ll turn up, just like that?”

“Yes!” said the Supreme Grand Master.

“I can see that,” said Brother Watchtower supportively. “Stands to reason. Because of destiny and the gnomic workings of fate.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, and then a general nodding of cowls. Only Brother Plasterer looked vaguely unhappy.

“We-ell,” he said. “It won’t get out of hand, will it?”

“I assure you, Brother Plasterer, that you can give it up any time you like,” said the Supreme Grand Master smoothly.

“Well…all right,” said the reluctant Brother. “Just for a bit, then. Could we get it to stay here long enough to burn down, for example, any oppressive vegetable shops?”

Ah
…

He’d won. There’d be dragons again. And a king again. Not like the old kings. A king who would do what he was told.

“That,” said the Supreme Grand Master, “depends on how much help you can be. We shall need, initially, any items of magic you can bring…”

It might not be a good idea to let them see that the last half of de Malachite’s book was a charred lump. The man was clearly not up to it.

He could do a lot better. And absolutely no one would be able to stop him.

Thunder rolled…

It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are—who knows?

Best not to speculate.

Thunder rolled…

It rolled a six.

Now pull back briefly from the dripping streets of Ankh-Morpork pan across the morning mists of the Disc, and focus in again on a young man heading for the city with all the openness, sincerity and innocence of purpose of an iceberg drifting into a major shipping lane.

The young man is called Carrot. This is not because of his hair, which his father has always clipped short for reasons of Hygiene. It is because of his shape.

It is the kind of tapering shape a boy gets through clean living, healthy eating, and good mountain air in huge lungfuls. When he flexes his shoulder muscles, other muscles have to move out of the way first.

He is also bearing a sword presented to him in mysterious circumstances. Very mysterious circumstances. Surprisingly, therefore, there is something very unexpected about this sword. It isn’t magical. It hasn’t got a name. When you wield it you don’t get a feeling of power, you just get blisters; you could believe it was a sword that had been used so much that it had ceased to be anything other than a quintessential sword, a long piece of metal with very sharp edges. And it hasn’t got destiny written all over it.

It’s practically unique, in fact.

Thunder rolled.

The gutters of the city gurgled softly as the detritus of the night was carried along, in some cases protesting feebly.

When it came to the recumbent figure of Captain Vimes, the water diverted and flowed around him in two streams. Vimes opened his eyes. There was a moment of empty peace before memory hit him like a shovel.

It had been a bad day for the Watch. There had been the funeral of Herbert Gaskin, for one thing. Poor old Gaskin. He had broken one of the fundamental rules of being a guard. It wasn’t the sort of rule that someone like Gaskin could break twice. And so he’d been lowered into the sodden ground with the rain drumming on his coffin and no one present to mourn him but the three surviving members of the Night Watch, the most despised group of men in the entire city. Sergeant Colon had been in tears. Poor old Gaskin.

Poor old Vimes, Vimes thought.

Poor old Vimes, here in gutter. But that’s where he started. Poor old Vimes, with the water swirling in under breastplate. Poor old Vimes, watching rest of gutter’s contents ooze by. Prob’ly even poor old Gaskin has got better view now, he thought.

Lessee…he’d gone off after the funeral and got drunk. No, not drunk, another word, ended with “er.” Drunker, that was it. Because world all twisted up and wrong, like distorted glass, only came back into focus if you looked at it through bottom of bottle.

Something else now, what was it.

Oh, yes. Night-time. Time for duty. Not for Gaskin, though. Have to get new fellow. New fellow coming anyway, wasn’t that it? Some stick from the hicks. Written letter. Some tick from the shicks…

Vimes gave up, and slumped back. The gutter continued to swirl.

Overhead, the lighted letters fizzed and flickered in the rain.

It wasn’t only the fresh mountain air that had given Carrot his huge physique. Being brought up in a gold mine run by dwarfs and working a twelve-hour day hauling wagons to the surface must have helped.

He 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.

He’d always known he was different. More bruised for one thing. And then one day his father had come up to him or, rather, come up to his waist, and told him that he was not, in fact, as he had always believed, a dwarf.

It’s a terrible thing to be nearly sixteen and the wrong species.

“We didn’t like to say so before, son,” said his father. “We thought you’d grow out of it, see.”

“Grow out of what?” said Carrot.

“Growing. But now your mother thinks, that is, we
both
think, it’s time you went out among your own kind. I mean, it’s not fair, keeping you cooped up here without company of your own height.” His father twiddled a loose rivet on his helmet, a sure sign that he was worried. “Er,” he added.

“But
you’re
my kind!” said Carrot desperately.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” said his father. “In another manner of speaking, which is a rather more precise and accurate manner of speaking, no. It’s all this genetics business, you see. So it might be a very good idea if you were to go out and see something of the world.”

“What, for good?”

“Oh, no! No. Of course not. Come back and visit whenever you like. But, well, a lad your age, stuck down here…It’s not right. You know. I mean. Not a child anymore. Having to shuffle around on your knees most of the time, and everything. It’s not right.”

“What is my own kind, then?” said Carrot, bewildered.

The old dwarf took a deep breath. “You’re human,” he said.

“What, like Mr. Varneshi?” Mr. Varneshi drove an ox-cart up the mountain trails once a week, to trade things for gold. “One of the Big People?”

“You’re six foot six, lad. He’s only five foot.” The dwarf twiddled the loose rivet again. “You see how it is.”

“Yes, but—but maybe I’m just tall for my height,” said Carrot desperately. “After all, if you can have short humans, can’t you have tall dwarfs?”

His father patted him companionably on the back of the knees.

“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.

“Hold on,” said Carrot, his honest brow wrinkling with the effort of calculation. “You’re a dwarf, right? And mam’s a dwarf. So I should be a dwarf, too. Fact of life.”

The dwarf sighed. He’d hoped to creep up on this, over a period of months maybe, sort of break it to him gently, but there wasn’t any time anymore.

“Sit down, lad,” he said. Carrot sat.

“The thing is,” he said wretchedly, when the boy’s big honest face was a little nearer his own, “we found you in the woods one day. Toddling about near one of the tracks…um.” The loose rivet squeaked. The king plunged on.

“Thing is, you see…there were these carts. On fire, as you might say. And dead people. Um, yes. Extremely dead people. Because of bandits. It was a bad winter that winter, there were all sorts coming into the hills…So we took you in, of course, and then, well, it was a long winter, like I said, and your mam got used to you, and, well, we never got around to asking Varneshi to make enquiries. That’s the long and the short of it.”

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. A dwarf is not considered old enough to have the technical processes explained to him
¹
until he has reached puberty.
²

“All right, dad,” he said, and leaned down so as to be level with the dwarf’s ear. “But you know, me and—you know Minty Rocksmacker? She’s really beautiful, dad, got a beard as soft as a, a, a very soft thing—we’ve got an understanding, and—”

“Yes,” said the dwarf, coldly. “I know. Her father’s had a word with me.” So did her mother with your mother, he added silently, and then
she
had a word with me. Lots of words.

It’s not that they don’t like you, you’re a steady lad and a fine worker, you’d make a good son-in-law.
Four
good sons-in-law. That’s the trouble. And she’s only sixty, anyway. It’s not proper. It’s not right.

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…

He’d discussed it with Varneshi. A good solid man, Varneshi. Of course, he’d known the man’s father. And his grandfather, now he came to think about it. Humans didn’t seem to last long, it was probably all the effort of pumping blood up that high.

“Got a problem there, king.
¹
Right enough,” the old man had said, as they shared a nip of spirits on a bench outside Shaft #2.

“He’s a good lad, mind you,” said the king. “Sound character. Honest. Not exactly brilliant, but you tell him to do something, he don’t rest until he’s done it. Obedient.”

“You could chop his legs off,” said Varneshi.

“It’s not his legs that’s going to be the problem,” said the king darkly.

“Ah. Yes. Well, in
that
case you could—”

“No.”

“No,” agreed Varneshi, thoughtfully. “Hmm. Well, then what you should do is, you should send him away for a bit. Let him mix a bit with humans.” He sat back. “What you’ve got here, king, is a duck,” he added, in knowledgeable tones.

“I don’t think I should tell him that. He’s refusing to believe he’s a human as it is.”

“What I mean is, a duck brought up among chickens. Well-known farmyard phenomenon. Finds it can’t bloody well peck and doesn’t know what swimming is.” The king listened politely. Dwarfs don’t go in much for agriculture. “But you send him off to see a lot of other ducks, let him get his feet wet, and he won’t go running around after bantams anymore. And Bob’s your uncle.”

Varneshi sat back and looked rather pleased with himself.

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. But after two hundred years of talking to humans the king had, as it were, developed a painstaking mental toolkit which was nearly adequate for the job of understanding them.

“Surely Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle,” he pointed out, slowly.

“Same thing.”

There was a pause while the king subjected this to careful analysis.

“You’re saying,” he said, weighing each word, “that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle.”

“He’s a fine lad. Plenty of openings for a big strong lad like him,” said Varneshi.

“I have heard that dwarfs go off to work in the Big City,” said the king uncertainly. “And they send back money to their families, which is very commendable and proper.”

“There you are then. Get him a job in, in—” Varneshi sought for inspiration–“in the Watch, or something. My great-grandfather was in the Watch, you know. Fine job for a big lad, my grandad said.”