Frustrate the endless wiles of our enemies
We into the darkness march singing
Against the whole world in arms coming
But see the golden light upon the mountain tops!
The new day is a great big fish!”
“Er…” Vimes said. “That last bit…?”
“That is a literal translation, your grace,” said Clarence nervously. “It means something like ‘an amazing opportunity’ or ‘a glittering prize’, your grace.”
“When we’re not in public, Clarence, ‘sir’ will do. ‘Your grace’ is just to impress the natives.” Vimes slumped back in his uncomfortable chair, chin in his hand, and then winced.
“Two thousand three hundred miles,” he said, shifting his position. “And it’s freezing on a broomstick, however low they fly. And then the barge, and then the coach…” He winced again. “I read your report. Do you think it’s possible for an entire nation to be insane?”
Clarence swallowed. He’d been told that he was talking to the second most powerful man in Ankh-Morpork, even if the man himself acted as though he was ignorant of the fact. His desk in this chilly tower room was rickety; it had belonged to the head janitor of the Kneck garrison until yesterday. Paperwork cluttered its scarred surface and was stacked in piles behind Vimes’s chair.
Vimes himself did not look, to Clarence, like a duke. He looked like a watchman which, in fact, Clarence understood, he was. This offended Clarence Chinny. People at the top should look as though they belonged there.
“That’s a very… interesting question, sir,” he said. “You mean the people—”
“Not the people, the nation,” said Vimes. “Borogravia looks off its head, to me, from what I’ve read. I expect the people just do the best they can and get on with raising their kids which, I might say, I’d rather be doing right now, too. Look, you know what I mean. You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.”
“It’s a fascinating idea, sir,” said Clarence diplomatically.
Vimes looked round the room. The walls were bare stone. The windows were narrow. It was damn cold, even on a sunny day. All that bad food, and that bumping about and sleeping on bad beds… and all that travelling in the dark, too, on dwarf barges in their secret canals under the mountains—the gods alone knew what intricate diplomacy Lord Vetinari had pulled off to get that, although the Low King owed Vimes a few favours…
…all of that for this cold castle over this cold river between these stupid countries, with their stupid war. He knew what he wanted to do. If they’d been people, scuffling in the gutter, he’d have known what to do. He’d have banged their heads together and maybe shoved them in the cells overnight. You couldn’t bang countries together.
Vimes picked up some paperwork, fiddled with it, and threw it down again. “To hell with this,” he said. “What’s happening out there?”
“I understand there are a few pockets of resistance in some of the more inaccessible areas of the Keep, but they are being dealt with. For all practical purposes the Keep is in our hands. That was a clever ruse of yours, your gr– sir.”
Vimes sighed. “No, Clarence, it was a dull old ruse. It should not be possible to get men into a fortress dressed as washerwomen. Three of them had moustaches, for goodness’ sake!”
“The Borogravians are rather… old-fashioned about things like that, sir. On that subject, we appear to have zombies in the lower crypts. Dreadful things. A lot of high-ranking Borogravian military men were interred down there over the centuries, apparently.”
“Really? What are they doing now?”
Clarence raised his eyebrows. “Lurching, sir, I think. Groaning. Zombie things. Something seems to have stirred them up.”
“Us, probably,” said Vimes. He got up, strode across the room, and pulled open the big heavy door. “Reg!” he yelled.
After a moment another watchman appeared, and saluted. He was grey-faced, and Clarence couldn’t help noticing when the man saluted that the hand and fingers were held together with stitching.
“Have you met Constable Shoe, Clarence?” said Vimes cheerfully. “One of my staff. Been dead for more than thirty years, and loves every minute of it, eh, Reg?”
“Right, Mister Vimes,” said Reg, grinning and revealing a lot of brown teeth.
“Some fellow countrymen of yours down in the cellar, Reg.”
“Oh, dear. Lurching, are they?”
“’fraid so, Reg.”
“I shall go and have a word with them,” said Reg. He saluted again and marched out, with a hint of lurch.
“He’s, er, from here?” said Chinny, who had gone quite pale.
“Oh, no. The undiscovered country,” said Vimes. “He’s dead. However, credit where it’s due, he hasn’t let that stop him. You didn’t know we have a zombie in the Watch, Clarence?”
“Er… no, sir. I’ve haven’t been back to the city in five years.” He swallowed. “I gather things have changed.”
Horribly so, in Clarence Chinny’s opinion. Being consul to Zlobenia had been an easy job, which left him a lot of time to get on with his business. And then the big semaphore towers marched through, all along the valley, and suddenly Ankh-Morpork was an hour away. Before the clacks, a letter from Ankh-Morpork would take more than a two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expected a reply overnight. He’d been quite glad when Borogravia had destroyed several of those wretched towers. And then all hell had been let loose.
“We’ve got all sorts in the Watch,” said Vimes. “And we bloody well need ’em now, Clarence, with Zlobenians and Borogravians scrapping in the streets over some damn quarrel that began a thousand years ago. It’s worse than dwarfs and trolls! All because someone’s great-to-the-power-of-umpteen grandmother slapped the face of someone’s great-ditto uncle! Borogravia and Zlobenia can’t even agree a border. They chose the river, and that changes course every spring. Suddenly the clacks towers are now on Borogravian soil—or mud, anyway—so the idiots burn them down for religious reasons.”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets… written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbour’s ox…”
“Um… Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er… updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer… get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” said Chinny helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People
put blank pages in and the Abominations… turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random. “Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like that, so fair enough… cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold is an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened there?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, your grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “your grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke. He leafed through the pages, and stopped. “The colour blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the colour blue? It’s just a colour! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly. “Nuggan, sir… um… is rather… tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine p.m.?”
“Um… we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted of Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to dwarfs, cats and the colour blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, your gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er… people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young Duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like… living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to someone in a picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr Chinny?”
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment Vimes laughed. “And he’s wondering how auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess was alive. The only thing that really works is the aimy.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was night-time. Cooking-fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov– oops, sorry, all freedom–loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice… where was that report… ah, yes… it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
Igor stood mutely in front of the recruiting table.
“Don’t often see you people these days,” said Jackrum.
“Yeah, run out of fresh brains, ’ave yer?” said the corporal nastily.
“Now then, corporal, no call for that,” said the sergeant, leaning back in his creaking chair. “There’s plenty of lads out there walking around on legs they wouldn’t still have if there hadn’t been a friendly Igor around, eh, Igor?”
“Yeah? Well, I heard about people waking up and findin’ their friendly Igor had whipped out their brains in the middle of the night and buggered off to flog ’em,” said the corporal, glaring at Igor.
“I promith you your brain ith entirely thafe from me, corporal,” said Igor. Polly started to laugh, and stopped when she realized absolutely no one else was doing so.
“Yeah, well, I met a sergeant who said an Igor put a man’s legs on backwards,” said Corporal Strappi. “What good’s that to a soldie
r, eh?”
“Could advance and retreat at the thame time?” said Igor levelly. “Thargent, I know all the thtorieth, and they are nothing but vile calumnieth. I theek only to therve my country. I do not want trouble.”
“Right,” said the sergeant. “Nor do we. Make your mark, and you’ve got to promise not to mess about with Corporal Strappi’s brain, right? Another signature? My word, I can see we’ve got ourselves a bleedin’ college of recruits today. Give him his cardboard shilling, corporal.”
“Thank you,” said Igor. “And I would like to give the picture a wipe, if it’th all the thame to you.” He produced a small cloth.
“Wipe it?” said Strappi. “Is that allowed, sergeant?”
“What do you want to wipe it for, mister?” said Jackrum.
“To remove the invithible demonth,” said Igor.
“I can’t see any invis—” Strappi began, and stopped.
“Just let him, all right?” said Jackrum. “It’s one of their funny little ways.”
“Dun’t seem right,” muttered Strappi. “Practically treason…”
“Can’t see why it’d be wrong just to give the old girl a wash,” said the sergeant shortly. “Next. Oh…”
Igor, after carefully wiping the stained picture and giving it a perfunctory peck, came and stood next to Polly, giving her a sheepish grin. But she was watching the next recruit.
He was short and quite slim, which was fairly usual in a country where it was rare to get enough food to make you fat. But he was dressed in black and expensively, like an aristocrat; he even had a sword. The sergeant was, therefore, looking worried. Clearly a man could get into trouble talking wrong to a nob who might have important friends.
“You sure you’ve come to the right place, sir?” he said.
“Yes, sergeant. I wish to enlist.”
Sergeant Jackrum shifted uneasily. “Yes, sir, but I’m not sure a gentleman like you—”
“Are you going to enlist me or not, sergeant?”
“Not usual for a gentleman to enlist as a common soldier, sir,” mumbled the sergeant.
“What you mean, sergeant, is: is anyone after me? Is there a price on my head? And the answer is no.”
Monstrous Regiment tds-28 Page 2
