‘Mr Vimes saved the day!’ said Sergeant Colon excitedly. ‘Just went straight in and saved everyone, in the finest tradition of the Watch!’
‘Fred?’ said Vimes, wearily.
‘Yessir?’
‘Fred, the finest tradition of the Watch is having a quiet smoke somewhere out of the wind at 3 a.m. Let’s not get carried away, eh?’
Colon looked crestfallen. ‘Well—’ he began.
Vimes staggered to his feet and patted his sergeant on the back.
‘Oh, all right, it’s a tradition,’ he conceded. ‘You can do the next one, Fred. And now,’ he steadied himself as he stood up, ‘I’m going down to the Yard to write my report.’
‘You’re covered in ash and you’re swaying,’ said Carrot. ‘I should just get on home, sir.’
‘Oh no,’ said Vimes. ‘Got to do the paperwork. Anyone know the time?’
‘Bingeley-bingeley beep!’ said a cheerful voice from his pocket.
‘Damn!’ said Vimes, but it was too late.
‘It is’, said the voice, which had the squeaky friendly quality that begs to be strangled, ‘about… nineish.’
‘Nineish?’
‘Yep. Nineish. Precisely about nineish.’
Vimes rolled his eyes. ‘Precisely about nineish?’ he said, pulling a small box out of his pocket and opening the lid. The demon inside gave him an angry look.
‘Yesterday you said,’ it said, ‘that if I, and I quote, Didn’t Stop all that Eight Fifty-Six and Six Seconds Precisely business I Would Be Looking at a Hammer From Below. And when I said, Mr Insert Name Here, that this would invalidate my warranty, you said that I could take my warranty and—’
‘I thought you’d lost that thing,’ said Carrot.
‘Hah,’ said the Dis-organizer,{49} ‘really? You thought he did? I don’t call putting something in your trouser pockets just before they go into the wash losing it.’
‘That was an accident,’ muttered Vimes.
‘Oh? Oh? And dropping me in the dragon’s feeding bowl, that was accidental too, was it?’ The demon mumbled to itself for a moment and then said, ‘Anyway, do you want to know your appointments for this evening?’
Vimes looked at the smouldering wreckage of the embassy.
‘Do tell,’ he said.
‘You don’t have any,’ said the demon sulkily. ‘You haven’t told me any.’
‘You see?’ said Vimes. ‘That’s what drives me livid! Why should I have to tell you? Why didn’t you tell me, “Eightish: break up riot at Mundane Meals and stop Detritus shooting people,” eh?’
‘You didn’t tell me to tell you!’
‘I didn’t know! And that’s how real life works! How can I tell you to warn me about things that no one knows are going to happen? If you were any good, that’d be your job!’
‘He writes in the manual,’ said the demon nastily. ‘Did you know that, everybody? He writes in the manual.’
‘Well, of course I make notes—’
‘He’s actually sneakily trying to keep his diary in the manual so his wife won’t find out he’s never bothered to learn how to use me,’ said the demon.
‘What about the Vimes manual, then?’ snapped Vimes. ‘I notice you’ve never bothered to learn how to use me!’
The demon hesitated. ‘Humans come with a manual?’ it said.
‘It’d be a damn good idea!’ said Vimes.
‘True,’ murmured Angua.
‘It could say things like “Chapter One: Bingeley-bingeley beep and other damn fool things to spring on people at six in the morning,”’ said Vimes, his eyes wild. ‘And “Troubleshooting: my owner keeps trying to drop me in the privy, what am I doing wrong?” And—’
Carrot patted him gently on the back. ‘I should sign off now, sir,’ he said gently. ‘It’s been a busy few days.’
Vimes rubbed his forehead. ‘I daresay I could do with a rest,’ he said. ‘Come on, there’s nothing more to see here. Let’s go home.’
‘I thought you said you weren’t going—’ Carrot began, but Vimes’s mind was already scolding him.
‘I meant the Yard, of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll go home afterwards.’
A ball of lamplight floated through the Ramkin library, drifting across the shelves of huge, leather-bound books.
Many of them had never been read, Sybil knew. Various ancestors had simply ordered them from the engravers and put them on the shelves, because a library was something you had to have, don’tcher-know, like a stableyard and a servants’ wing and some ghastly landscaping mistake created by ‘Bloody Stupid’ Johnson, although in the latter case her grandfather had shot the man before he could do any real damage.
She held the lamp higher.
Ramkins looked down their noses at her from their frames, through the brown varnish of the centuries. Portraits were another thing that had been collected out of unregarded habit.
Most of them were of men. They were invariably in armour and always on horseback. And every single one of them had fought the sworn enemies of Ankh-Morpork.
In recent times this had been quite difficult and her grandfather, for example, had to lead an expedition all the way to Howondaland in order to find some sworn enemies, although there was an adequate supply and a lot of swearing by the time he left. Earlier, of course, it had been a lot easier. Ramkin regiments had fought the city’s enemies all over the Sto Plains and had inflicted heroic casualties, quite often on people in the opposing armies.[8]
There were a few women among the sitters, none of them holding anything heavier than a glove or a small pet dragon. Their job had largely been to roll bandages and await the return of their husbands with, she liked to think, resolution and fortitude and a general hope that said husbands would return with as many of their bits as possible.
The point was, though, that they never thought about it. There was a war, and off they went. If there wasn’t a war, they looked for one. They didn’t even use words like ‘duty’. It was all built in at bone level.
She sighed. It was all so difficult these days, and Lady Sybil came from a class that was not used to difficulty, or at least the kind that couldn’t be sorted out by shouting at a servant. Five hundred years ago one of her ancestors had cut off a Klatchian’s head in battle and had brought it home on a pole, and no one thought any the worse of him, given what the Klatchians would have cut off if they’d caught him. That seemed straightforward. You fought them, they fought you, everyone knew the rules, and if you got your head cut off you jolly well didn’t blub about it afterwards.
Certainly, things were better now. But they were just… more difficult.
And of course some of those antique husbands were away for months or years at a time, and for them wives and families were pretty much like the library and stableyard and the Johnson Exploding Pagoda. You got them sorted out and then didn’t think much about it. At least Sam was home every day.
Well, most days. Every night, anyway.
Well… part of most nights, certainly.
At least they ate meals together.
Well, most meals.
Well, at least they made a start on most meals.
Well, at least she knew he was never very far away, just somewhere where he was trying to do too much and run too fast and people were trying to kill him.
All in all, she considered, she was jolly lucky.
Vimes stared at Carrot, who was standing in front of his desk.
8
It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.