Men at Arms (9 page)
He sorted through a bin of metal offcuts to find a piece of steel, and then selected a file.
“I’d like to make a few sketches afterwards,” he said.
About thirty seconds later there was a
pop
and a cloud of smoke.
Bjorn Hammerhock picked himself up, shaking his head.
“That was lucky!” he said. “Could have been a nasty accident there.”
He tried to fan some of the smoke away, and then reached for the file again.
His hand went through it.
AHEM.
Bjorn tried again.
The file was as insubstantial as the smoke.
“What?”
AHEM.
The owner of the strange device was staring in horror at something on the floor. Bjorn followed his gaze.
“Oh,” he said. Realization, which had been hovering on the edge of Bjorn’s consciousness, finally dawned. That was the thing about death. When it happened to you, you were among the first to know.
His visitor grabbed the device from the bench and rammed it into a cloth bag. Then he looked around wildly, picked up the corpse of Mr. Hammerhock, and dragged it through the door toward the river.
There was a distant splash, or as close to a splash as you could get from the Ankh.
“Oh dear,” said Bjorn. “And I can’t swim, either.”
THAT WILL NOT, OF COURSE, BE A PROBLEM, said Death.
Bjorn looked at him.
“You’re a lot shorter than I thought you’d be,” he said.
THIS IS BECAUSE I’M KNEELING DOWN, MR. HAMMERHOCK.
“That damn thing
killed
me!”
YES.
“That’s the first time anything like that has
ever
happened to me.”
TO ANYONE. BUT NOT, I SUSPECT, THE LAST TIME.
Death stood up. There was a clicking of knee joints. He no longer cracked his skull on the ceiling. There wasn’t a ceiling any more. The room had gently faded away.
There were such things as dwarf gods. Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they’d seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, “Oh, random fluctuations-in-the-space-time-contiuum!” or “Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!”
Bjorn didn’t waste time asking questions. A lot of things become a shade urgent when you’re dead.
“I believe in reincarnation,” he said.
I KNOW.
“I tried to live a good life. Does that help?”
THAT IS NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE,…SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION…YOU’LL BE BJORN AGAIN.
He waited.
“Yes. That’s right,” said Bjorn. Dwarfs are known for their sense of humor, in a way. People point them out and say: “Those little devils haven’t
got
a sense of humor.”
UM. WAS THERE ANYTHING AMUSING IN THE STATEMENT I JUST MADE?
“Uh. No. No…I don’t think so.”
IT WAS A PUN, OR PLAY ON WORDS. BJORN AGAIN.
“Yes?”
DID YOU NOTICE IT?
“I can’t say I did.”
OH.
“Sorry.”
I’VE BEEN TOLD I SHOULD TRY TO MAKE THE OCCASION A LITTLE MORE ENJOYABLE.
“Bjorn again.”
YES.
“I’ll think about it.”
THANK YOU.
“Hright,” said Sergeant Colon, “this, men, is your truncheon, also nomenclatured your night stick or baton of office.” He paused while he tried to remember his army days, and brightened up.
“
Hand
you will look
after
hit,” he shouted. “You will eat with hit, you will sleep with hit, you—”
“’Scuse me.”
“Who said that?”
“Down here. It’s me, Lance-Constable Cuddy.”
“Yes, pilgrim?”
“How do we eat with it, sergeant?”
Sergeant Colon’s wound-up machismo wound down. He was suspicious of Lance-Constable Cuddy. He strongly suspected Lance-Constable Cuddy was a trouble-maker.
“What?”
“Well, do we use it as a knife or a fork or cut in half for chopsticks or what?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Excuse me, sergeant?”
“What
is
it, Lance-Constable Angua?”
“How exactly do we sleep with it, sir?”
“Well, I…I meant…
Corporal Nobbs, stop that sniggering right now!
” Colon adjusted his breastplate and decided to strike out in a new direction.
“Now, hwat we have ’ere is a puppet, mommet or heffigy”—indicating a vaguely humanoid shape made of leather and stuffed with straw, mounted on a stake—“called by the hnickname of Harthur, weapons training, for the use hof. Forward, Lance-Constable Angua. Tell me, Lance-Constable, do you think you could kill a man?”
“How long will I have?”
There was a pause while they picked up Corporal Nobbs and patted him on the back until he settled down.
“Very well,” said Sergeant Colon, “what you must do now is take your truncheon like
so
, and on the command one, proceed smartly to Harthur and on the command two, tap him smartly upon the bonce. Hwun…two…”
The truncheon bounced off Arthur’s helmet.
“Very good, only one thing wrong. Anyone tell me what it was?”
They shook their heads.
“From
behind
,” said Sergeant Colon. “You hit ’em from
behind
. No sense in risking trouble, is there? Now you have a go, Lance-Constable Cuddy.”
“But sarge—”
“Do it.”
They watched.
“Perhaps we could fetch him a chair?” said Angua, after an embarrassing fifteen seconds.
Detritus sniggered.
“Him too
little
to be a guard,” he said.
Lance-Constable Cuddy stopped jumping up and down.
“Sorry, sergeant,” he said, “this isn’t how dwarfs do it, see?”
“It’s how
guards
do it,” said Sergeant Colon. “All right, Lance-Constable Detritus—
don’t salute
—you give it a try.”
Detritus held the truncheon between what must technically be called thumb and forefinger, and smashed it over Arthur’s helmet. He stared reflectively at the truncheon’s stump. Then he bunched up his, for want of a better word, fist, and hammered Arthur over what was briefly its head until the stake was driven three feet into the ground.
“Now the dwarf, he can have a go,” he said.
There was another embarrassed five seconds. Sergeant Colon cleared his throat.
“Well, yes, I think we can consider him thoroughly apprehended,” he said. “Make a note, Corporal Nobbs. Lance-Constable Detritus—
don’t salute!
—deducted one dollar for loss of truncheon. And you’re supposed to be able to ask ’em questions afterwards.”
He looked at the remains of Arthur.
“I think around about now is a good time to demonstrate the fine points of harchery,” he said.
Lady Sybil Ramkin looked at the sad strip of leather that was all that remained of the late Chubby.
“Who’d do something like this to a poor little dragon?” she said.
“We’re trying to find out,” said Vimes. “We…we think maybe he was tied up next to a wall and exploded.”
Carrot leaned over the wall of a pen.
“Coochee-coochee-coo?” he said. A friendly flame took his eyebrows off.
“I mean, he was as tame as anything,” said Lady Ramkin. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly, poor little thing.”
“How could someone make a dragon blow up?” said Vimes. “Could you do it by giving it a kick?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sybil. “You’d lose your leg, mind you.”
“Then it wasn’t that. Any other way? So you wouldn’t get hurt?”
“Not really. It’d be easier to make it blow itself up. Really, Sam, I don’t like talking about—”
“I have to know.”
“Well…at this time of year the males fight. Make themselves look big, you know? That’s why I always keep them apart.”
Vimes shook his head. “There was only one dragon,” he said.
Behind them, Carrot leaned over the next pen, where a pear-shaped male dragon opened one eye and glared at him.
“Whosagoodboyden?” murmured Carrot. “I’m sure I’ve got a bit of coal somewhere—”
The dragon opened the other eye, blinked, and then was fully awake and rearing up. Its ears flattened. Its nostrils flared. Its wings unfurled. It breathed in. From its stomach came the gurgle of rushing acids as sluices and valves were opened. Its feet left the floor. Its chest expanded—
Vimes hit Carrot at waist height, bearing him to the ground.
In its pen the dragon blinked. The enemy had mysteriously gone. Scared off!
It subsided, blowing off a huge flame.
Vimes unclasped his hands from his head and rolled over.
“What’d do you do that for, captain?” said Carrot. “I wasn’t—”
“It was attacking a dragon!” shouted Vimes. “One that wouldn’t back down!”
He pulled himself to his knees and tapped Carrot’s breastplate.
“You polish that up real bright!” he said. “You can see yourself in it. So can anything else!”
“Oh, yes, of course there’s
that
,” said Lady Sybil. “Everyone knows you should keep dragons away from mirrors—”
“Mirrors,” said Carrot. “Hey, there were bits of—”
“Yes. He showed Chubby a mirror,” said Vimes.
“The poor little thing must have been trying to make himself bigger than himself,” said Carrot.
“We’re dealing here,” said Vimes, “with a twisted mind.”
“Oh, no! You think so?”
“Yes.”
“But…no…you can’t be right. Because Nobby was with us all the time.”
“
Not
Nobby,” said Vimes testily. “Whatever he might do to a dragon, I doubt if he’d make it explode. There’s stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad.”
Carrot’s expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror.
“Gosh,” he said.
Sergeant Colon surveyed the butts. Then he removed his helmet and wiped his forehead.
“I think perhaps Lance-Constable Angua shouldn’t have another go with the longbow until we’ve worked out how to stop her…her getting in the way.”
“Sorry, sergeant.”
They turned to Detritus, who was standing sheepishly behind a heap of broken longbows. Crossbows were out of the question. They sat in his massive hands like a hairpin. In theory the longbow would be a deadly weapon in his hands, just as soon as he mastered the art of when to let go.
Detritus shrugged.
“Sorry, mister,” he said. “Bows aren’t troll weapon.”
“Ha!” said Colon. “As for you, Lance-Constable Cuddy—”
“Just can’t get the hang of aiming, sergeant.”
“I thought dwarfs were famous for their skills in battle!”
“Yeah, but…not these skills,” said Cuddy.
“Ambush,” murmured Detritus.
Since he was a troll, the murmur bounced off distant buildings. Cuddy’s beard bristled.
“You devious troll, I get my—”
“Well now,” said Sergeant Colon quickly, “I think we’ll stop training. You’ll have to…sort of pick it up as you go along, all right?”
He sighed. He was not a cruel man, but he’d been either a soldier or a guard all his life, and he was feeling put-upon. Otherwise he wouldn’t have said what he said next.
“I don’t know, I really don’t. Fighting among yourselves, smashing your own weapons…I mean, who do we think we’re fooling? Now, it’s nearly noon, you take a few hours off, we’ll see you again tonight. If you think it’s worth turning up.”
There was a
spang!
noise. Cuddy’s crossbow had gone off in his hand. The bolt whiffled past Corporal Nobbs’ ear and landed in the river, where it stuck.
“Sorry,” said Cuddy.
“Tsk, tsk,” said Sergeant Colon.
That was the worst part. It would have been better all round if he’d called the dwarf some names. It would have been better if he’d made it seem that Cuddy was worth an insult.
He turned around and walked off towards Pseudopolis Yard.
They heard his muttered comment.
“What him say?” said Detritus.
“‘A fine body of
men
’,” said Angua, going red.
Cuddy spat on the ground, which didn’t take long on account of its closeness. Then he reached under his cloak and produced, like a conjuror extracting a size 10 rabbit from a size 5 hat, his double-headed battle axe. And started to run.
By the time he reached the virginal target he was a blur. There was a rip and the dummy exploded like a nuclear haystack.
The other two wandered up and inspected the result, as pieces of chaff gently drifted to the ground.
“Yes, all right,” said Angua. “But he did say you’re supposed to be able to ask them questions afterwards.”
“He didn’t say they’ve got to be able to answer them,” said Cuddy grimly.
“Lance-Constable Cuddy, deduct one dollar for target,” said Detritus, who already owed eleven dollars for bows.
“‘If it’s worth turning up’!” said Cuddy, losing the axe somewhere about his person again. “Speciesist!”
“I don’t think he meant it that way,” said Angua.
“Ho, it’s all right for
you
,” said Cuddy.
“Why?”
“’Cos you a
man
,” said Detritus.
Angua was bright enough to pause for a moment to think this over.
“A woman,” she said.
“Same thing.”
“Only in broad terms. Come on, let’s go and have a drink…”
The transient moment of camaraderie in adversity completely evaporated.
“Drink with a troll?”
“Drink with a dwarf?”
“All right,” said Angua. “How about
you
and
you
coming and having a drink with
me?
”
Angua removed her helmet and shook out her hair. Female trolls don’t have hair, although the more fortunate ones are able to cultivate a fine growth of lichen, and a female dwarf is more likely to be complimented on the silkiness of her beard than on her scalp. But it was just possible the sight of Angua scraped little sparks off some shared, ancient, cosmic maleness.
