Jingo (19 page)

“The ladies liked the uniform,” said Fred Colon, with the unspoken rider that sometimes a growing lad needed all the help he could get. “An’ it…weelll…”

“Yes, sarge?”

Colon looked awkward, as if the bunched underwear of the past was tangling itself in the crotch of recollection.

“It was…more easier, sir. Than being a copper, I mean. I mean, you’re a soldier, right, and the other buggers is the enemy. You march into some big field somewhere and all form up into them oblongs, and then a bloke with the feathery helmet gives the order, and you all forms up into big arrows—”

“Good gods, do people really do that? I thought it was just how they drew the battle plans!”

“Well, the old duke, sir, he did it by the book…anyway, it’s just a case of watching your back and walloping any bloke in the wrong uniform. But…” Fred Colon’s face screwed up in agonized thought, “well, when you’re a copper, well, you dunno the good guys from the bad guys without a map, miss, and that’s a fact.”

“But…there’s
military
law, isn’t there?”

“Well, yes…but when it’s pissing with rain and you’re up to your tonk—your waist in dead horses and someone gives you an order, that ain’t the time to look up the book of rules, miss. Anyway, most of it’s about when you’re allowed to get shot, sir.”

“Oh, I’m sure there’s more to it than that, sergeant.”

“Oh, prob’ly, sir,” Colon conceded diplomatically.

“I’m sure there’s lots of stuff about not killing enemy soldiers who’ve surrendered, for instance.”

“Oh, yerss, there’s
that
, captain. Doesn’t say you can’t duff ’em up a bit, of course. Give ’em a little something to remember you by.”

“Not
torture
?” said Angua.

“Oh,
no
, miss. But…” Memory Lane for Colon had turned into a bad road through a dark valley “…well, when your best mate’s got an arrow in his eye an’ there’s blokes and horses screamin’ all round you and you’re scared shi—you’re
really
scared, an’ you come across one of the enemy…well, for some reason or other you’re got this kinda urge to give him a bit of a…nudge, sort of thing. Just…you know…like, maybe in twenty years’ time his leg’ll twinge a bit on frosty days and he’ll remember what he done, that’s all.”

He rummaged in a pocket and produced a very small book, which he held up for inspection.

“This belonged to my great-grandad,” he said. “He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayers for soldiers, ’cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, ’cos he couldn’t afford armor, and next day in battle—whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look. You can see the hole.”

“Pretty miraculous,” Carrot agreed.

“Yeah, it was, I s’pose,” said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the battered volume. “Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really.”

The drumming died away. The remnant of the Watch tried to avoid one another’s gaze.

Then an imperious voice said, “Why aren’t you in uniform, young man?”

Nobby turned. He was being addressed by an elderly lady with a certain turkey-like cast of feature and a capital punishment expression.

“Me? Got one, missus,” said Nobby, pointing to his battered helmet.

“A
proper
uniform,” snapped the woman, handing him a white feather. “What will
you
be doing when the Klatchians are ravishing us in our beds?”

She glared at the rest of the guards and swept on. Angua saw several others like her passing along the crowds of spectators. Here and there was a flash of white.

“I’ll be thinking: those Klatchians are jolly brave,” said Carrot. “I’m afraid, Nobby, that the white feather is to shame you into joining up.”

“Oh, that’s all right, then,” said Nobby, a man for whom shame held no shame. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“That reminds me…did I tell you what I said to Lord Rust?” said Sergeant Colon, nervously.

“Seventeen times so far,” said Angua, watching the women with the feathers. She added, apparently to herself, “‘Come back with your shield or on it.’”

“I wonder if I can get the lady to give me any more?” said Nobby.

“What was that?” said Carrot.

“These feathers,” said Nobby. “They look like real goose. I’ve got a use for a lot more of these—”

“I
meant
what was it that Angua said?” said Carrot.

“What? Oh…it’s just something women used to say when they sent their men off to war. Come back with your shield, or on it.”

“
On
your shield?” said Nobby. “You mean like…sledging, sort of thing?”

“Like dead,” said Angua. “It meant come back a winner or not at all.”

“Well, I
always
came back with my shield,” said Nobby. “No problem there.”

“Nobby,” sighed Colon, “you used to come back with your shield, everyone
else’s
shield, a sack of teeth and fifteen pairs of still-warm boots. On a cart.”

“We-ell, no point in going to war unless you’re on the winning side,” said Nobby, sticking the white feather in his helmet.

“Nobby, you was
always
on the winning side, the reason bein’, you used to lurk aroun’ the edges to see who was winning and then pull the right uniform off’f some poor dead sod. I used to hear where the generals kept an eye on what you were wearin’ so they’d know how the battle was going.”

“Lots of soldiers have served in lots of regiments,” said Nobby.

“Right, what you say is true. Only not usually during the same battle,” said Sergeant Colon.

They trooped back into the Watch House. Most of the shift had taken the day off. After all, who was in charge? What were they supposed to be doing today? The only ones left were those who never thought of themselves as off duty, and the new recruits who hadn’t had their keen edge blunted.

“I’m sure Mr. Vimes’ll think of something,” said Carrot. “Look, I’d better take the Goriffs back to their shop. Mr. Goriff says he’s going to pack up and leave. A lot of Klatchians are leaving. You can’t blame them, either.”

Dreams rising with him like bubbles, Vimes surfaced from the black fathoms of sleep.

Normally, these days, he treasured the moment of waking. It was when solutions presented themselves. He assumed bits of his brain came out at night and worked on the problems of the previous day, handing him the result just as he opened his eyes.

All that arrived now were memories. He winced. Another memory turned up. He groaned. The sound of his badge bouncing on the table replayed itself. He swore.

He swung his legs off the covers and groped for the bedside table.

“Bingeley-bingeley beep!”

“Oh,
no
…All right, what’s the time?”

“One o’clock pee em! Hello, Insert Name Here!”

Vimes looked blearily at the Dis-organizer. One day, he knew, he really
would
have to try to understand the manual for the damn thing. Either that or drop it off a cliff.
^*

“What—” he began, and then groaned again. The twanging sound made by the unwound turban as it took his weight had just come back to haunt him.

“Sam?” The bedroom door was pushed open and Sybil came in carrying a cup.

“Yes, dear?”

“How do you feel?”

“I’ve got bruises on my brui—” Another memory crawled up from the pit of guilt. “Oh, good grief, did I really call him a long streak of—?”

“
Yes
,” said his wife. “Fred Colon came round this morning and told me all about it. And a very good description, I’d say. I went out with Ronnie Rust once. Bit of a cold fish.”

Another recollection burst like a ball of marsh gas in Vimes’s head.

“Did Fred tell you where he said Rust could put his badge?”

“Yes. Three times. It seems to be weighing on his mind. Anyway, knowing Ronnie, he’d have to use a hammer.”

Vimes had long ago got used to the fact that the aristocracy all seemed to know one another by their first name.

“And did Fred tell you anything else?” he said timidly.

“Yes. About the shop and the fire and everything. I’m proud of you.” She gave him a kiss.

“What do I do now?” he said.

“Drink your tea and have a wash and a shave.”

“I ought to go down to the Watch House and—”

“A shave! There’s hot water in the jug.”

When she had left he hauled himself upright and tottered into his bathroom. There was, indeed, a jug of hot water on the marble washstand.

He looked at the face in the mirror. Unfortunately, it was his. Perhaps if he shaved it first…? And then he could wash the bits that were left.

Fragments of the night before kept on respectfully drawing themselves to his attention. It was a shame about that guard, but sometimes you just couldn’t stand and argue—

He shouldn’t have done that with his badge. It wasn’t like the old days. He had
responsibilities
. He should’ve stayed on and made things just a little less—

No. That never worked.

He managed to get the lather on his face. The Riot Act! Good grief…He stropped his razor thoughtfully. Rust’s milky eyes stared out of his memory. Bastard! Men like that thought, they really thought, that the Watch was a kind of sheepdog, to nip at the heels of the flock, bark when spoken to and never, ever, bite the shepherd…

Oh yes. Vimes knew in his bones who the enemy was.

Except—

No badge, no Watch, no job…

Another memory arrived, late.

Lather still dripping down his shirt, he pulled Vetinari’s sealed letter out of his pocket and slit it open with the razor.

There was a blank sheet of paper inside. He turned it over, and there was nothing on the other side either. Mystified, he glanced at the envelope.

Sir Samuel Vimes, Knight
.

Nice of him to be so precise about it, Vimes thought. What was the point of a message with no message? Some people might absentmindedly have slipped the wrong piece of paper in an envelope, but Vetinari wouldn’t. What was the point of sending him a note telling him he was a knight, for gods’ sake, he knew
that
embarrassing fact well enough—

Another little memory burst open as silently as a mouse passing wind in a hurricane.

Who’d said it? Any gentleman—

Vimes stared. Well, he
was
a gentleman, wasn’t he? It was official.

And then he
didn’t
shout, and he
didn’t
run out of the room. He finished shaving, had a wash and put on a change of underwear, very calmly.

Downstairs, Sybil had cooked him a meal. She wasn’t a very good cook. This was fine by Vimes, because he wasn’t a very good eater. After a lifetime of street meals his stomach wasn’t set up right. What it craved was little crunchy brown bits, the food group of the gods, and Sybil reliably always left the pan too long on the dragon.

She eyed him carefully as he chewed his fried egg and stared into the middle distance. Her manner was that of someone with a portable safety net watching a man on the high wire.

After a while, as she watched him crack open a sausage, he said, “Do we have any books on chivalry, dear?”

“Hundreds, Sam.”

“Is there any one which tells you what…you know, what it’s all about? I mean, what you have to do if you’re a knight, say? Responsibilities and so on?”

“Most of them, I should think.”

“Good. I think I shall do a little reading.” Vimes hit the bacon with his fork. It shattered very satisfactorily.

Afterward, he went into the library. Twenty minutes later, he came back out for a pencil and some paper.

Ten minutes after that, Lady Sybil took him a cup of coffee. He was hidden behind a pile of books, and apparently deep in
Life of Chivalrie
. She crept out and went into her own study, where she settled down to update her dragon-breeding records.

It was an hour later when she heard him step out into the hall.

He was humming under his breath, tunelessly, with the faraway look of preoccupation that means that some Big Thought has required the shutting down of all non-essential processes. He was also reradiating the field of angered innocence that was, to her, part of his essential Vimesness.

“Are you going out, Sam?”

“Yes. I’m just going to kick some arse, dear.”

“Oh,
good
. Just be sure you wrap up well, then.”

The Goriff family trudged along silently beside Carrot.

“I’m sorry about your shop, Mr. Goriff,” he said.

Goriff shifted the load he was carrying. “We can start other shops,” he said.

“We’ll certainly keep an eye on it,” said Carrot. “And…when all this is over, you can come back.”

“Thank you.”

His son said something in Klatchian. There was a brief family argument.

“I appreciate your strength of feeling,” said Carrot, going red, “although I must say I think your language was a little strong.”

“My son is sorry,” said Goriff automatically. “He did not remember that you speak Kl—”

“No, I’m not! Why should we run away?” said the boy. “We
live
here! I’ve never
seen
Klatch!”

“Oh, well, that will be something to look forward to,” said Carrot. “I hear it has many fine—”

“Are you
stupid
?” said Janil. He shook himself free of his father’s grasp and confronted Carrot. “I don’t care! I don’t want all this stuff about the moon rising over the Mountains of the Sun! I get that at home all the time! I live
here
!”

“Now, you really ought to listen to your parents—”

“Why? My dad works all the time and now he’s being pushed out! What good’s that? We ought to stay here and defend what’s ours!”

“Ah, well, you shouldn’t take the law into your own hands—”

“Why not?”

“It’s our job—”

“But you’re not doing it!”

There was a rattle of Klatchian from Mr. Goriff.