Night Watch
Page 36

Vimes's hand came up holding the steel ruler. The smack of its flat steel knocked the sword right out of the captain's grasp. Vimes pulled himself upright as though in a dream, following on the curve of the stroke. Send it back into the dark until you need it. . . He turned the ruler as the backstroke began and it whispered through the air edge-first, leaving the hazy smoke rolling and coiling behind it. The tip caught Swing across the neck. Behind Vimes the white smoke tumbled out of the corridor. The ceiling of the bloody chamber was falling in. But he stayed, watching Swing with the same blank, intent expression. The man had raised his hands to his throat, blood spurting from between his fingers. He rocked, gasping for a breath that couldn't come, and fell backwards. Vimes tossed the ruler on top of him and limped away. Outside, there was the thunder of moving barricades. Swing opened his eyes. The world around him was grey, except for the black-clad figure in front of him. He sought, as he always did, to learn more about the new person by carefully examining their features. 'Um, your eyes are ... er ... your nose is ... your chin He gave up. YES, said Death, I'M A BIT OF A TRICKY ONE. THIS WAY MR. SWING. Lord Winder was, thought Vetinari, impressively paranoid. He'd even put a guard on the top of the whisky distillery that overlooked the palace grounds. Two guards, in fact. One of them was clearly visible as you rose over the parapet, but the other was lurking in the shadows by the chimneys. The late Hon. John Bleedwell had spotted only the first one. Vetinari watched impassively as the young man was dragged away. If you were an Assassin, being killed in the pursuit of your craft was all part of the job, albeit the last part. You couldn't complain. And it meant there was only one guard now, the other one taking Bleedwell, who had lived up to his name, downstairs. Bleedwell had worn black. Assassins always did. Black was cool and, besides, it was the rules. But only in a dark cellar at midnight was black a sensible colour. Elsewhere, Vetinari preferred dark green, or shades of dark grey. With the right colouring, and the right stance, you vanished. People's eyes would help you vanish. They erased you from their vision, they fitted you into the background.
Of course, he'd be expelled from the Guild if caught wearing such clothing. He'd reasoned that this was much better than being expelled from the land of the upright and breathing. He'd rather not be cool than be cold. The guard, three feet away, lit a cigarette with no consideration for other people. What a genius Lord Winstanleigh Greville-Pipe had been. What an observer. Havelock would love to have met him, or even to have visited his grave, but apparently that was inside a tiger somewhere which, to Greville- Pipe's gratified astonishment, he hadn't spotted until it was too late. Vetinari had done him a private honour, though. He had hunted down and melted the engraver's plates of Some Observations on the Art of Invisibility. He tracked down the other four extant copies, too, but had felt unable to burn them. Instead he'd had the slim volumes bound together inside the cover of Anecdotes of the Great Accountants, Vol. 3. He felt that Lord Winstanleigh Greville-Pipe would rather appreciate that. Vetinari lay comfortably on the lead of the roof, patient as a cat, and watched the palace grounds below. Vimes lay face down on a table in the Watch House, wincing occasionally. 'Please hold still,' said Dr Lawn. 'I've nearly finished. I suppose you'd laugh if I told you to take it easy?'
'Ha. Ha. Uh!'
'It's only a flesh wound, but you ought to get some rest.'
'Ha. Ha.'
'You've got a busy night ahead of you. So have I, I suspect.'
'We should be okay if we've got the barricades all the way to Easy Street,' said Vimes, and was aware of a telling silence. He sat up on the table that Lawn was using as a bench. 'We have got them to Easy Street, haven't we?' he demanded. 'The last I heard, yes,' said the doctor. 'The last you heard?'
'Well, technically no,' said Lawn. 'It's all getting . . . bigger, John. The actual last I heard was someone saying “why stop at Easy Street?”'
'Oh, good grief. 'Yes. I thought so, too.' Vimes dragged his breeches up, fastened his belt and limped out into the road and also into an argument.
There was Rosie Palm, and Sandra, and Reg Shoe and half al dozen others sitting around another table, in the middle of the street. As Vimes stepped out into the evening, a plaintive voice said, 'You cannot fight for “reasonably priced love”.'
'You can if you want me and the rest of the girls on board,' said Rosie. ' “Free” is not a word we wish to see used in these circumstances.'
'Oh, very well,' said Reg, making a note on a clipboard. 'We're all happy with Truth, Justice and Freedom, are we?'
'And better sewers.' This was the voice of Mrs Rutherford. 'And something done about the rats.'
'I think we should be thinking about higher things, comrade Mrs Rutherford,' said Reg. 'I am not a comrade, Mr Shoe, and nor is Mr Rutherford,' said Mrs Rutherford. 'We've always kept ourselves to ourselves, haven't we, Sidney?'
'I've got a question,' said someone in the crowd of onlookers. 'Harry Supple's my name. Got a shoe shop in New Cobblers . . .' Reg seized on this as an opportunity to avoid talking to Mrs Rutherford. Revolutionaries should not have to meet someone like Mrs Rutherford on their first day. 'Yes, comrade Supple?' he said. 'Nor are we boyjoys,' said Mrs Rutherford, not willing to let things go. 'Er, bourgeoisie,' said Reg. 'Our manifesto refers to bourgeoisie. That's like bore, er, shwah, er, zee.'
'Bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie,' said Mrs Rutherford, turning the word over on her tongue. That. . . doesn't sound too bad. What, er, sort of thing do they do?'
'Anyway, it says here in article seven of this here list-' Mr Supple ploughed on. '-People's Declaration of the Glorious Twenty-fourth of May,' said Reg. 'Yeah, yeah, right . . . well, it says we'll seize hold of the means of production, sort of thing, so what I want to know is, how does that work out regarding my shoe shop? I mean, I'm in it anyway, right? It's not like there's room for more'n me and my lad Garbut and maybe one customer.' In the dark, Vimes smiled. Reg could never see stuff coming. 'Ah, but after the revolution all property will be held in common by the people ... er ... that is, it'll belong to you but also to everyone else, you see?' Comrade Supple looked puzzled. 'But I'll be the one making the shoes?'
'Of course. But everything will belong to the people.'
'So . . . who's going to pay for the shoes?' said Mr Supple. 'Everyone will pay a reasonable price for their shoes and you won't be guilty of living off the sweat of the common worker,' said Reg, shortly. 'Now, if we-'
'You mean the cows?' said Supple. 'What?'
'Well, there's only the cows, and the lads at the tannery, and frankly all they do is stand in a field all day, well, not the tannery boys, obviously, but-'
'Look,' said Reg. 'Everything will belong to the people and everyone will be better off. Do you understand?' The shoemaker's frown grew deeper. He wasn't certain if he was part of the people. 'I thought we just didn't want soldiers down our street and mobs and all that lot,' he said. Reg had a hunted look. He made a dive for safety. 'Well, at least we can agree on Truth, Freedom and Justice, yes?' There was a chorus of nods. Everyone wanted those. They didn't cost anything. A match flared in the dark, and they turned to see Vimes light a cigar. 'You'd like Freedom, Truth and Justice, wouldn't you, comrade sergeant?' said Reg encouragingly. 'I'd like a hard-boiled egg,' said Vimes, shaking the match out. There was some nervous laughter, but Reg looked offended. 'In the circumstances, sergeant, I think we should set our sights a little higher-'
'Well, yes, we could,' said Vimes, coming down the steps. He glanced at the sheets of paper in front of Reg. The man cared. He really did. And he was serious. He really was. 'But . . . well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I'm pretty sure that whatever happens we won't have found Freedom, and there won't be a whole lot of Justice, and I'm damn sure we won't have found Truth. But it's just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg. What's this all about, Reg?'
'The People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road!' said Reg proudly. 'We are forming a government!'
'Oh, good,' said Vimes. 'Another one. Just what we need. Now, does any one of you know where my damn barricades have gone?'
' 'ullo, Mr Keel,' said a glutinous voice.
He looked down beside him. There, still wearing his hugely oversize coat but now with the addition of a helmet much too large for him, was Nobby Nobbs. 'How did you get there, Nobby?'
'My mum says I'm insidious,' said Nobby, grinning. A concertina sleeve rose to the vicinity of Nobby's head, and Vimes realized that somewhere in there was a salute. 'She's right,' said Vimes. 'So, where-'
' 'm a acting constable now, sarge,' said Nobby. 'Mr Colon said so. Gave me a spare helmet, 'm carvin' meself a badge out of, of- what's that, like, waxy, kind of like candles but you can't eat it?'
'Soap, Nobby. Remember the word.'
'Right, sarge. Then I'm gonna carve a-'
'Where have the barricades gone. Nobby?'
'That'll cost-'
'I am your sergeant, Nobby. We are not in a financial relationship. Tell me where the bloody barricades are!'
'Urn . . . prob'ly nearly to Short Street, sarge. It's all got a bit . . . metaphysical, sarge.' Major Clive Mountjoy-Standfast stared blankly at the map in front of him, trying to find some comfort. He was, tonight, the senior officer in the field. The commanders had gone to the palace for some party or other. And he was in charge. Vimes had conceded that the city's regiments had quite a few officers who weren't fools. Admittedly they got fewer the higher you went, but by accident or design every army needs, in key if unglamorous posts, men who can reason and make lists and arrange for provisions and baggage wagons and, in general, have an attention span greater than a duck. It's their job to actually run things, leaving the commanding officer free to concentrate on higher matters. And the major was, indeed, not a fool, even though he looked like one. He was idealistic, and thought of his men as 'jolly good chaps' despite the occasional evidence to the contrary, and on the whole did the best he could with the moderate intelligence at his disposal. When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them. The major hated the map. It was the map of a city. A city wasn't a place for cavalry, for heavens' sake! Of course there had been casualties among the men. Three of them had been deaths. Even a cavalry helmet is not a
lot of use against a ballistic cobblestone. And a trooper had been pulled off his horse in Dolly Sisters and, bluntly, mobbed to death. And that was tragic and terrible and, unfortunately, inevitable, once fools had decided to use cavalry in a city with as many alleys as Ankh-Morpork. The major didn't think of his superiors as fools, of course, since it would follow that everyone who obeyed them was a fool. He used the term 'unwise', and felt worried when he used it. As for the rest of the casualties, three of them had been men knocked senseless by riding into hanging shop signs while pursuing . . . well, people, when it came down to it, because with the smoke and darkness who could tell who the real enemy was? The idiots had apparently assumed that anyone running away was the enemy. And they'd been the luckier idiots, because men who rode their horses into dark alleys which twisted this way and that and got narrower and narrower, and then realized that it had all gone quiet and their horse couldn't turn round, well, they were men who learned how fast a man could run in cavalry boots. He totted up the reports. Broken bones, bruises, one man suffering from 'friendly stab' by a comrade's sabre . . . He looked across the makeshift table at Captain Tom Wrangle of Lord Selachii's Light Infantry, who glanced up from his own paperwork and gave him a weak smile. They'd been at school together and Wrangle, the major knew, was a lot brighter than him. 'What's it look like to you, Tom?' said the major. 'We've lost nearly eighty men,' said the captain. 'What? That's terrible!'