Men at Arms (18 page)

“Tough order,” said Harga.

“You managed it yesterday. And give me some more coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night.”

Harga looked surprised. That wasn’t like Vimes.

“How black’s that, then?” he said.

“Oh, pretty damn black, I should think.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What?”

“You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night.”

Vimes sighed.

“An
overcast
moonless night?” he said.

Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.

“Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?”

“I’m sorry? What did you say?”

“You gets city lights reflected off cumulus, because it’s low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in—”

“A moonless night,” said Vimes, in a hollow voice, “that is as black as that coffee.”

“Right!”

“And a doughnut.” Vimes grabbed Harga’s stained vest and pulled him until they were nose to nose. “A doughnut as doughnutty as a doughnut made of flour, water, one large egg, sugar, a pinch of yeast, cinnamon to taste and a jam, jelly or rat filling depending on national or species preference, OK? Not as doughnutty as something in any way metaphorical. Just a doughnut. One doughnut.”

“A doughnut.”

“Yes.”

“You only had to say.”

Harga brushed off his vest, gave Vimes a hurt look, and went back into the kitchen.

“
Stop!
In the name of the law!”

“What the law’s name, then?”

“How should I know!”

“Why we chasing him?”

“Because he’s running away!”

Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law. There are a whole quiverful of offenses available to a policeman who wishes to pass the time of day with a citizen, ranging from Loitering with Intent through Obstruction to Lingering While Being the Wrong Color/Shape/Species/Sex. It occurred briefly to him that anyone
not
making a dash for it when they saw Detritus knuckling along at high speed behind them was probably guilty of contravening the Being Bloody Stupid Act of 1581. But it was too late to take that into account. Someone was running, and they were chasing. They were chasing because he was running, and he was running because they were chasing.

Vimes sat down with his coffee and looked at the thing he’d picked up from the rooftop.

It looked like a short set of Pan pipes, provided Pan was restricted to six notes, all of them the same. They were made of steel, welded together. There was a strip of serrated metal along one side, like a flattened-out cogwheel, and the whole thing reeked of fireworks.

He laid it carefully beside his plate.

He read Sergeant Colon’s report. Fred Colon had spent some time on it, probably with a dictionary. It went as follows:

“Report of Sgt. F. Colon. Approx. 10am today, Auguste 15, I proseeded in the company of Corporal, C. W. St. J. Nobbs, to the Guild of Fools and Joculators in God Street, whereupon we conversed with clown Boffo who said, clown Beano, the
corpus derelicti
, was definitely seen by him, clown Boffo, leaving the Guild the previous morning just after the explosion. {This is dead bent in my opinion, the reason being, the stiff was dead at least two days, Cpl. C. W. St. J. Nobbs agrees, so someone is telling meat pies, never trust anyone who falls on his arse for a living.} Whereupon Dr. Whiteface met us, and, damn near gave us the
derriere velocite
out of the place. It seemed to us, viz, me and Cpl. C. W. St. J. Nobbs, that the Fools are worried that it might have been the Assassins, but we don’t know why. Also, clown Boffo went on about us looking for Beano’s nose, but he had a nose on when we saw him here, so we said to clown Boffo, did he mean a false nose, he said, no, a real one, bugger off. Whereupon we come back here.”

Vimes worked out what
derriere velocite
meant. The whole nose business looked like a conundrum wrapped up in an enigma, or at least in Sergeant Colon’s handwriting, which was pretty much the same thing. Why be asked to look for a nose that wasn’t lost?

He looked at Cuddy’s report, written in the careful angular handwriting of someone more used to runes. And sagas.

“Captain Vimes, this herewith is the chronicle of me, Lance-Constable Cvddy. Bright was the morning and high ovr hearts when we proceeded to the Alchemists Gvild, where events eventvated as I shall now sing. These inclvded exploding balls. As to the qvest vpon which we were sent, we were informed that the attached piece of paper [attached] is in the handwriting of Leonard of Qvirm, who vanished in mysteriovs circvmstances. It is how to make a powder called No. 1 powder, which is vsed in fireworks. Mr. Silverfish the alchemist says any alchemists knows it. Also, in the margin of the paper, is a drawing of The Gonne, becavse I asked my covsin Grabpot abovt Leonard and he vsed to sell paints to Leonard and he recognized the writing and said Leonard always wrote backwards becavse he was a genivs. I have copied same herewith.”

Vimes laid the papers down and put the piece of metal on top of them.

Then he reached in his pocket and produced a couple of metal pellets.

A stick, the gargoyle had said.

Vimes looked at the sketch. It looked, as Cuddy had noted, like the stock of a crossbow with a pipe on the top of it. There were a few sketches of strange mechanical devices alongside it, and a couple of the little six-pipe things. The whole drawing looked like a doodle. Someone, possibly this Leonard, had been reading a book about fireworks and had scribbled in the margins.

Fireworks.

Well…fireworks? But fireworks weren’t a weapon. Crackers went bang. Rockets went up, more or less, but all you could be sure of them hitting was the sky.

Hammerhock was noted for his skill with mechanisms. That wasn’t a major dwarfish attribute. People thought it was, but it wasn’t. They were skilled with metal all right, and they made good swords and jewelery, but they weren’t too
technical
when it came to things like cogwheels and springs. Hammerhock was unusual.

So…

Supposing there was a weapon. Supposing there was something about it that was different, strange, terrifying.

No, that couldn’t be it. It’d either end up all over the place, or it’d be destroyed. It wouldn’t end up in the Assassins’ museum. What got put in museums? Things that hadn’t worked, or had got lost, or ought to be remembered…so where’s the sense in putting our firework
on show?

There had been a lot of locks on the door. So…not a museum you just wandered into, then. Maybe you had to be a high-up Assassin, and one day one of the Guild leaders’d take you down there at dead, hah, of night, and say…and say…

For some reason the face of the Patrician loomed up at this point.

Once again Vimes felt the edge of something, some fundamental central thing…

“Where’d he go? Where’d he go?”

There was a maze of alleys around the doors. Cuddy leaned against a wall and fought for breath.

“There he go!” shouted Detritus. “Along Whalebone Lane!”

He lumbered off in pursuit.

Vimes put down his coffee cup.

Whoever had shot those lead balls at him had been very accurate across several hundred yards, and had got off six shots faster than anyone could fire an arrow…

Vimes picked up the pipes. Six little pipes, six shots. And you could carry a pocketful of these things. You could shoot further, faster, more accurately than anyone else with any other kind of weapon…

So. A new
type
of weapon. Much, much faster than a bow. The Assassins wouldn’t like that. They wouldn’t like that
at all
. They weren’t even keen on bows. The Assassins preferred to kill up close.

So they’d put the…the
gonne
safely under lock and key. The gods alone knew how they’d come by it in the first place. And a few senior Assassins would know about it. They’d pass on the secret:
beware of things like this
…

“Down there! He went into Grope Alley!”

“Slow down! Slow down!”

“Why?” said Detritus.

“It’s a dead end.”

The two Watchmen lumbered to a halt.

Cuddy knew that he was currently the brains of the partnership, even though Detritus was presently counting, his face beaming with pride, the stones in the wall beside him.

Why had they chased someone halfway across the city? Because they’d run away. No
one
ran away from the Watch. Thieves just flashed their licenses. Unlicensed thieves had nothing to fear from the Watch, since they’d saved up all their fear for the Thieves’ Guild. Assassins always obeyed the letter of the law. And honest men didn’t run away from the Watch.
^*
Running away from the Watch was downright suspicious.

The origin of Grope Alley’s name was fortunately lost in the celebrated mists of time, but it had come to be deserved. It had turned into a kind of tunnel as upper stories were built out and over it, leaving a few inches of sky.

Cuddy peered around the corner, into the gloom.

Click. Click
.

It came from deep in the darkness.

“Detritus?”

“Yeah?”

“Did he have any weapons?”

“Just a stick. One stick.”

“Only…I smell fireworks.”

Cuddy pulled his head back, very carefully.

There had been the smell of fireworks in Hammerhock’s workshop. And Mr. Hammerhock ended up with a big hole in his chest. And a sense of named dread, which is much more specific and terrifying than nameless dread, was stealing over Cuddy. It was similar to the feeling you get when you’re playing a high stakes game and your opponent suddenly grins and you realize that you don’t know
all
the rules but you
do
know you’ll be lucky to get out of this with, if you are very fortunate, your shirt.

On the other hand…he could picture Sergeant Colon’s face. We chased this man into an alley, sarge, and then we came away…

He drew his sword.

“Lance-Constable Detritus?”

“Yes, Lance-Constable Cuddy?”

“Follow me.”

Why? The damn thing was made of metal, wasn’t it? Ten minutes in a hot crucible and that’d be the end of the problem. Something like that, something dangerous, why not just get rid of it? Why keep it?

But that wasn’t human nature, was it? Sometimes things were too fascinating to destroy.

He looked at the strange metal tubes. Six short pipes, welded together, sealed firmly at one end. There was a small hole in the top side of each of the pipes…

Vimes slowly picked up one of the lumps of lead…

The alley twisted once or twice, but there were no other alleys or doors off it. There was one at the far end. It was larger than a normal door, and heavily constructed.

“Where are we?” whispered Cuddy.

“Don’t know,” said Detritus. “Back of the docks somewhere.”

Cuddy pushed open the door with his sword.

“Cuddy?”

“Yeah?”

“We walked seven-ty-nine steps!”

“That’s nice.”

Cold air rushed past them.

“Meat store,” whispered Cuddy. “Someone picked the lock.”

He slipped through and into a high, gloomy room, as large as a temple, which in some ways it resembled. Faint light crept through the high, ice-covered windows. From rack upon rack, all the way to the ceiling, hung meat carcasses.

They were semi-transparent and so very cold Cuddy’s breath turned to crystals in the air.

“Oh, my,” said Detritus. “I think this the pork futures warehouse in Morpork Road.”

“What?”

“Used to work here,” said the troll. “Used to work everywhere. Go away, you stupid troll, you too thick,” he added, gloomily.

“Is there any way out?”

“The main door is in Morpork Street. But no one comes in here for months. Till pork exists.”
^*

Cuddy shivered.

“You in here!” he shouted. “It’s the Watch! Step out now!”

A dark figure appeared from between a couple of pre-pigs.

“Now what we do?” said Detritus.

The distant figure raised what looked like a stick, holding it like a crossbow.

And fired. The first shot zinged off Cuddy’s helmet.

A stony hand clamped on to the dwarf’s head and Detritus pushed Cuddy behind him, but then the figure was running, running toward them, still firing.

Detritus blinked.

Five more shots, one after another, punctured his breastplate.

And then the running man was through the open door, slamming it behind him.

“Captain Vimes?”

He looked up. It was Captain Quirke of the Day Watch, with a couple of his men behind him.

“Yes?”

“You come with us. And give me your sword.”

“What?”

“I think you heard me, captain.”

“Look, it’s
me
, Quirke. Sam Vimes? Don’t be a fool.”

“I ain’t a fool. I’ve got men with crossbows.
Men
. It’s you that’d be the fool if you resist arrest.”

“Oh? I’m under arrest?”

“Only if you don’t come with us…”

The Patrician was in the Oblong Office, staring out of the window. The multi-belled cacophony of five o’clock was just dying away.

Vimes saluted. From the back, Vetinari looked like a carnivorous flamingo.

“Ah, Vimes,” he said, without looking around, “come here, will you? And tell me what you see.”

Vimes hated guessing games, but he joined the Patrician anyway.

The Oblong Office had a view over half the city, although most of it was rooftops and towers. Vimes’ imagination peopled the towers with men holding gonnes. The Patrician would be an easy target.

“What do you see out there, captain?”

“City of Ankh-Morpork, sir,” said Vimes, keeping his expression carefully blank.

“And does it put you in mind of anything, captain?”

Vimes scratched his head. If he was going to play games, he was going to play games…