Guards! Guards! tds-8

by Terry Pratchett

  "But perhaps there were limpid blue pools and deep mountain streams," said the sergeant hopefully. "And icy tarns in hidden valleys and that. Not to mention subterranean lakes. He'd be bound to have learned. In and out of the water all day, I expect."

  They stared at the greasy grey surface.

  "It was probably that Protective," said Nobby. "P'raps it filled with water and dragged him down."

  Colon nodded gloomily.

  "I'll hold your helmet," said Nobby, after a while.

  "But I'm your superior officer!"

  "Yes," said Nobby reasonably, "but if you get stuck down there, you're going to want your best man up here, ready to rescue you, aren't you?"

  "That's . . . reasonable," said Colon eventually. "That's a good point."

  "Right, then."

  "Drawback is, though ..."

  "What?"

  ". . .I can't swim," Colon said.

  "How did you get out of that, then?"

  Colon shrugged. "I'm a natural floater."

  Their eyes, once again, turned to the dankness of the pond. Then Colon stared at Nobby. Then Nobby, very slowly, unbuckled his helmet.

  "There isn't someone still in there, is there?" said Carrot, behind them.

  They looked around. He hoicked some mud out of an ear. Behind him the remains of the brewery smouldered.

  "I thought I'd better nip out quickly, see what was going on," he said brightly, pointing to a gate leading out of the yard. It was hanging by one hinge.

  "Oh," said Nobby weakly. "Jolly good."

  "There's an alley out there," said Carrot.

  "No dragons in it, are there?" said Colon suspiciously.

  "No dragons, no humans. There's no one around," said Carrot impatiently. He drew his sword. "Come on!" he said.

  "Where to?" said Nobby. He'd pulled a damp butt from behind his ear and was looking at it with an expression of deepest sorrow. It was obviously too far gone. He tried to light it anyway.

  "We want to fight the dragon, don't we?" said Carrot.

  Colon shifted uncomfortably. "Yes, but aren't we allowed to go home for a change of clothes first?"

  "And a nice warm drink?" said Nobby.

  "And a meal," said Colon. "A nice plate of…"

  "You should be ashamed of yourselves," said Carrot. "There's a lady in distress and a dragon to fight and all you can think of is food and drink!"

  "Oh, I'm not just thinking about food and drink," said Colon.

  "We could be all that stands between the city and total destruction!"

  "Yes, but…" Nobby began.

  Carrot drew his sword and waved it over his head.

  "Captain Vimes would have gone!" he said. "All for one!"

  He glared at them, and rushed out of the yard.

  Colon gave Nobby a sheepish look.

  "Young people today," he said.

  "All for one what?" said Nobby.

  The sergeant sighed. "Come on, then."

  "Oh, all right."

  They staggered out into the alley. It was empty.

  "Where'd he go?" said Nobby.

  Carrot stepped out of the shadows, grinning all over his face.

  "Knew I could rely on you," he said. "Follow me!"

  "Something odd about that boy," said Colon, as they limped after him. "He always manages to persuade us to follow him, have you noticed?"

  "All for one what?" said Nobby.

  "Something about the voice, I reckon."

  "Yes, but all for one what?"

  The Patrician sighed and, carefully marking his place, laid aside his book. To judge from the noise there seemed to be an awful lot of excitement going on out there. It was highly unlikely any palace guards would be around, which was just as well. The guards were highly-trained men and it would be a shame to waste them.

  He would need them later on.

  He padded over to the wall and pushed a small block that looked exactly like all the other small blocks. No other small block, however, would have caused a section of flagstone to grind ponderously aside.

  There was a carefully chosen assortment of stuff in there-iron rations, spare clothes, several small chests of precious metals and jewels, tools. And there was a key. Never build a dungeon you couldn't get out of.

  The Patrician took the key and strolled over to the door. As the wards of the lock slid back in their well-oiled grooves he wondered, again, whether he should have told Vimes about the key. But the man seemed to have got so much satisfaction out of breaking out. It would probably have been positively bad for him to have told him about the key. Anyway, it would have spoiled his view of the world. He needed Vimes and his view of the world.

  Lord Vetinari swung the door open and, silently, strode out into the ruins of his palace.

  They trembled as, for the second time in a couple of minutes, the city rocked.

  The dragon kennels exploded. The windows blew out. The door left the wall ahead of a great billow of black smoke and sailed into the air, tumbling slowly, to plough into the rhododendrons.

  Something very energetic and hot was happening in that building. More smoke poured out, thick and oily and solid. One of the walls folded in on itself, and then another one toppled sluggishly on to the lawn.

  Swamp dragons shot determinedly out of the wreckage like champagne corks, wings whirring frantically.

  Still the smoke unrolled. But there was something in there, some point of fierce white light that was gently rising.

  It disappeared from view as it passed a stricken window, and then, with a piece of roof tile still spinning on the top of his head, Errol climbed above his own smoke and ascended into the skies of Ankh-Morpork.

  The sunlight glinted off his silver scales as he hovered about a hundred feet up, turning slowly, balancing nicely on his own flame . . .

  Vimes, awaiting death on the plaza, realized that his mouth was hanging open. He shut it again.

  There was absolutely no sound in the city now but the noise of Errol's ascent.

  They can rearrange their own plumbing, Vimes told himself bemusedly. To suit circumstances. He's made it work in reverse. But his thingys, his genes . . . surely he must have been halfway to it anyway. No wonder the little bugger has got such stubby wings. His body must have known he wasn't going to need them, except to steer.

  Good grief. I'm watching the first ever dragon to flame backwards.

  He risked a glance immediately above him. The great dragon was frozen, its enormous bloodshot eyes concentrating on the tiny creature.

  With a challenging roar of flame and a pummelling of air the King of Ankh-Morpork rose, all thought of mere humans forgotten.

  Vimes turned sharply to Lady Ramkin.

  "How do they fight?" he said urgently. "How do dragons fight?"

  "I... that is, well, they just flap at each other and blow flame," she said. "Swamp dragons, that is. I mean, who's ever seen a noble dragon fight?" She patted her nightie. "I must take some notes, I've got my memo book somewhere ..."

  "In your nightshirt?"

  "It's amazing how ideas come to one in bed, I've always said."

  Flames roared into the space where Errol had been, but he wasn't there. The king tried to spin in mid-air. The little dragon circled in an easy series of smoke rings, weaving a cat's cradle in the sky with the huge adversary gyrating helplessly in the middle. More flames, hotter and longer, stabbed at him and missed.

  The crowd watched in breathless silence.

  " 'allo, Captain," said an ingratiating voice.

  Vimes looked down. A small and stagnant pond disguised as Nobby grinned sheepishly up at him.

  "I thought you were dead!" he said.

  "We're not," said Nobby.

  "Oh. Good." There didn't seem much else to say.

  "What do you reckon on the fight, then?"

  Vimes looked back up. Smoke trails spiralled across the city.

  "I'm afraid it's not going to work," said Lady Ramkin. "Oh. Hallo, Nobby."

&nb
sp; "Afternoon, ma'am," said Nobby, touching what he thought was his forelock.

  "What d'you mean, it's not going to work?" said Vimes. "Look at him go! It hasn't hit him yet!"

  "Yes, but his flame has touched it several times. It doesn't seem to have any effect. It's not hot enough, I think. Oh, he's dodging well. But he's got to be lucky every time. It has only got to be lucky once."

  The meaning of this sank in.

  "You mean," said Vimes, "all this is just — just show? He's just doing it to impress?"

  " 'S'not his fault," said Colon, materialising behind them. "It's like dogs, innit? Doesn't really dawn on the poor little bugger that he's up against a big one. He's just ready for a scrap."

  Both dragons appeared to realise that the fight was the well-known Klatchian standoff. With another smoke ring and a billow of white flame they parted and retreated a few hundred yards.

  The king hovered, flapping its wings quickly. Height. That was the thing. When dragon fought dragon, height was always the thing . . .

  Errol balanced on his flame. He seemed to be thinking.

  Then he nonchalantly kicked his back legs out as though hovering on your own stomach gases was something dragons had mastered over millions of years, somersaulted, and fled. For a moment he was visible as a silver streak, and then he was out over the city walls and gone.

  A groan followed him. It came from ten thousand throats.

  Vimes threw up his hands.

  "Don't you worry, guv," said Nobby quickly. "He's — he's probably gone to, to have a drink. Or something. Maybe it's the end of round one. Or something."

  "I mean, he ate our kettle and everything," said Colon uncertainly. "He wouldn't just run away after eating a kettle. Stands to reason. Anyone who could eat a kettle wouldn't run away from anything. "

  "And my armour polish," said Carrot. "It was nearly a whole dollar for the tin."

  "There you are then," said Colon. "It's like I said."

  "Look," said Vimes, as patiently as he could manage. "He's a nice dragon, I liked him as much as you, a very nice little chap, but he's just done the sensible thing, for gods' sake, he's not going to get burned to bits just to save us. Life just doesn't work like that. You might as well face it."

  Overhead the great dragon strutted through the air and flamed a nearby tower. It had won.

  "I've never seen that before," said Lady Ramkin. "Dragons normally fight to the death."

  "At last they've bred one who's sensible," said Vimes morosely. "Let's be honest: the chances of a dragon the size of Errol beating something that big are a million-to-one"

  There was one of those silences you get after one clear bright note has been struck and the world pauses.

  The rank looked at one another.

  "Million-to-one?" asked Carrot nonchalantly.

  "Definitely," said Vimes. "Million-to-one."

  The rank looked at one another again.

  "Million-to-one," said Colon.

  "Million-to-one," agreed Nobby.

  "That's right," said Carrot. "Million-to-one."

  There was another high-toned silence. The members of the rank were wondering who was going to be the first to say it.

  Sergeant Colon took a deep breath.

  "But it might just work," he said.

  "What are you talking about?" snapped Vimes. "There's no…"

  Nobby nudged him urgently in the ribs and pointed out across the plains.

  There was a column of black smoke out there. Vimes squinted. Running ahead of the smoke, speeding over the cabbage fields and closing fast, was a silvery bullet.

  The great dragon had seen it too. It flamed defiance and climbed for extra height, mashing the air with its enormous wings.

  Now Errol's flame was visible, so hot as to be almost blue. The landscape rolled away underneath him at an impossible speed, and he was accelerating.

  Ahead of him the king extended its claws. It was almost grinning.

  Errol's going to hit it, Vimes thought. Gods help us all, it'll be a fireball.

  Something odd was happening out in the fields. A little way behind Errol the ground appeared to be ploughing itself up, throwing cabbage stalks into the air. A hedgerow erupted in a shower of sawdust . . .

  Errol passed silently over the city walls, nose up, wings folded down to tiny flaps, his body honed to a mere cone with a flame at one end. His opponent blew out a tongue of fire; Vimes watched Errol, with a barely noticeable flip of a wing stub, roll easily out of its path. And then he was gone, speeding out towards the sea in the same eerie silence.

  "He miss…" Nobby began.

  The air ruptured. An endless thunderclap of noise dragged across the city, smashing tiles, toppling chimneys. In mid-air, the king was picked up, flattened out and spun like a top in the sonic wash. Vimes, his hands over his own ears, saw the creature flame desperately as it turned and became the centre of a spiral of crazy fire.

  Magic crackled along its wings. It screamed like a distressed foghorn. Then, shaking its head dazedly, it began to glide in a wide circle.

  Vimes groaned. It had survived something that tore masonry apart. What did you have to do to beat it? You can't fight it, he thought. You can't burn it, you can't smash it. There's nothing you can do to it.

  The dragon landed. It wasn't a perfect landing. A perfect landing wouldn't have demolished a row of cottages. It was slow, and it seemed to go on for a long time and rip up a considerable stretch of city.

  Wings flapping aimlessly, neck waving and spraying random flame, it ploughed on through a debris of beams and thatch. Several fires started up along the trail of destruction.

  Finally it came to rest at the end of the furrow, almost invisible under a heap of former architecture.

  The silence that it left was broken only by the shouts of someone trying to organise yet another bucket chain from the river to douse the fires.

  Then people started to move.

  From the air Ankh-Morpork must have looked like a disturbed anthill, with streams of dark figures flowing towards the wreck of the dragon.

  Most of them had some kind of weapon.

  Many of them had spears.

  Some of them had swords.

  All of them had one aim in mind.

  "You know what?" said Vimes aloud. "This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab."

  "Then you've got to stop them. You can't let them kill it!" said Lady Ramkin.

  Vimes blinked at her.

  "Pardon?" he said.

  "It's wounded!"

  "Lady, that was the intention, wasn't it? Anyway, it's only stunned," said Vimes.

  "I mean you can't let them kill it like this," said Lady Ramkin insistently. "Poor thing!"

  "What do you want to do, then?" demanded Vimes, his temper unravelling. "Give it a strengthening dose of tar oil and a nice comfy basket in front of the stove?"

  "It's butchery!"

  "Suits me fine!"

  "But it's a dragon! It's just doing what a dragon does! It never would have come here if people had left it alone!"

  Vimes thought: it was about to eat her, and she can still think like this. He hesitated. Perhaps that did give you the right to an opinion . . .

  Sergeant Colon sidled up as they glared, white-faced, at one another, and hopped desperately from one squelching foot to the other.

  "You better come at once, Captain," he said. "It's going to be bloody murder!''

  Vimes waved a hand at him. "As far as I'm concerned," he mumbled, avoiding Sybil Ramkin's glare, "it's got it coming to it."

  "It's not that," said Colon. "It's Carrot. He's arrested the dragon.''

  Vimes paused.

  "What do you mean, arrested?" he said. "You don't mean what I think you mean, do you?"

  "Could be sir," said Colon uncertainly. "Could be. He was up on the rubble like a shot, sir, grabbed it by a wing and said 'You're nicked, chummy', sir. Couldn't believe it, sir. Sir, the thing is ..."
<
br />   "Well?"

  The sergeant hopped from one foot to the other. "You know you said prisoners weren't to be molested, sir . . ."

  It was quite a large and heavy roof timber and it scythed quite slowly through the air, but when it hit people they rolled backwards and stayed hit.

  "Now look," said Carrot, hauling it in and pushing back his helmet, "I don't want to have to tell anyone again, right?"

  Vimes shouldered his way through the dense crowd, staring at the bulky figure atop the mound of rubble and dragon. Carrot turned slowly, the roof beam held like a staff. His gaze was like a lighthouse beam. Where it fell, the crowd lowered their weapons and looked merely sullen and uncomfortable.

  "I must warn you," Carrot went on, "that interfering with an officer in the execution of his duty is a serious offence. And I shall come down like a ton of bricks on the very next person who throws a stone."

  A stone bounced off the back of his helmet. There was a barrage of jeers.

  "Let us at it!"

  "That's right!"

  "We don't want guards ordering us about!"

  "Quis custodiet custard?"

  "Yeah? Right!"

  Vimes pulled the sergeant towards him. "Go and organise some rope. Lots of rope. As thick as possible. I suppose we can-oh, tie its wings together, maybe, and bind up its mouth so it can't flame."

  Colon peered at him.

  "Are you serious, sir? We're really going to arrest it?"

  "Do it!"

  It's been arrested, he thought, as he pushed his way forward. Personally I would have preferred it to drop in the sea, but it's been arrested and now we've got to deal with it or let it go free.

  He felt his own feelings about the bloody thing evaporate in the face of the mob. What could you do with it? Give it a fair trial, he thought, and then execute it. Not kill it. That's what heroes do out in the wilderness. You can't think like that in cities. Or rather, you can, but if you're going to then you might as well burn the whole place down right now and start again. You ought to do it ... well, by the book.

  That's it. We tried everything else. Now we might as well try and do it by the book.

  Anyway, he added mentally, that's a city guard up there. We've got to stick together. Nobody else will have anything to do with us.