‘If he lays a finger on either of ’em, with all their friends watching,’ said Nobby, ‘the plan is, we run away like hell—’
Veins stood out on Carrot’s mighty neck. He stuck his hands on his waist and bellowed:
‘Lance-Constable Detritus! Salute!’
They’d spent hours trying to teach him. Detritus’ brain took some time to latch on to an idea, but once it was there, it didn’t fade away fast.
He saluted.
His hand was full of dwarf.
So he saluted while holding Lance-Constable Cuddy, swinging him up and over like a small angry club.
The sound of their helmets meeting echoed off the buildings, and it was followed a moment later by the crash of them both hitting the ground.
Carrot prodded them with the toe of his sandal.
Then he turned and strode towards the dwarf marchers, shaking with anger.
In the alleyway, Sergeant Colon started to suck the rim of his helmet out of terror.
‘You’ve got weapons, haven’t you?’ snarled Carrot at a hundred dwarfs. ‘Own up! If the dwarfs who’ve got weapons don’t drop them right this minute the entire parade, and I mean the entire parade, will be put in the cells! I’m serious about this!’
The dwarfs in the front row took a step backwards. There was a desultory tinkle of metallic objects hitting the ground.
‘All of them,’ said Carrot menacingly. ‘That includes you with the black beard trying to hide behind Mr Hamslinger! I can see you, Mr Stronginthearm! Put it down. No one’s amused!’
‘He’s going to die, isn’t he,’ said Angua, quietly.
‘Funny, that,’ said Nobby. ‘If we was to try it, we’d be little bits of mince. But it seems to work for him.’
‘Krisma,’ said Sergeant Colon, who was having to lean on the wall.
‘Do you mean charisma?’ said Angua.
‘Yeah. One of them things. Yeah.’
‘How does he manage it?’
‘Dunno,’ said Nobby. ‘S’pose he’s an easy lad to like?’
Carrot had turned on the trolls, who were smirking at the dwarfs’ discomfiture.
‘And as for you,’ he said, ‘I shall definitely be patrolling around Quarry Lane tonight, and I won’t be seeing any trouble. Will I?’
There was a shuffling of huge oversized feet, and a general muttering.
Carrot cupped his hand to his ear.
‘I couldn’t quite hear,’ he said.
There was a louder mutter, a sort of toccata scored for one hundred reluctant voices on the theme of ‘No, Corporal Carrot.’
‘Right. Now off you go. And let’s have no more of this nonsense, there’s good chaps.’
Carrot brushed the dust off his hands and smiled at everyone. The trolls looked puzzled. In theory, Carrot was a thin film of grease on the street. But somehow it just didn’t seem to be happening …
Angua said, ‘He just called a hundred trolls “good chaps”. Some of them are just down off the mountains! Some of them have got lichen on them!’
‘Smartest thing on a troll,’ said Sergeant Colon.
And then the world exploded.
The Watch had left before Captain Vimes got back to Pseudopolis Yard. He plodded up the stairs to his office, and sat down in the sticky leather chair. He gazed blankly at the wall.
He wanted to leave the Guard. Of course he did.
It wasn’t what you could call a way of life. Not life.
Unsocial hours. Never being certain from one day to the next what the Law actually was, in this pragmatic city. No home life, to speak of. Bad food, eaten when you could; he’d even eaten some of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler’s sausages-in-a-bun before now. It always seemed to be raining or baking hot. No friends, except for the rest of the squad, because they were the only people who lived in your world.
Whereas in a few days he would, as Sergeant Colon had said, be on the gravy boat. Nothing to do all day but eat his meals and ride around on a big horse shouting orders at people.
At times like this the image of old Sergeant Kepple floated across his memory. He’d been head of the Watch when Vimes was a recruit. And, soon afterwards, he retired. They’d all clubbed together and bought him a cheap watch, one of those that’d keep going for a few years until the demon inside it evaporated.
Bloody stupid idea, Vimes thought moodily, staring at the wall. Bloke leaves work, hands in his badge and hourglass and bell, and what’d we get him? A watch.
But he’d still come in to work the next day, with his new watch. To show everyone the ropes, he said; to tidy up a few loose ends, haha. See you youngsters don’t get into trouble, haha. A month later he was bringing the coal in and sweeping the floor and running errands and helping people write reports. He was still there five years later. He was still there six years later, when one of the Watch got in early and found him lying on the floor …
And it emerged that no one, no one, knew where he lived, or even if there was a Mrs Kepple. They had a whip-round to bury him, Vimes remembered. There were just guards at the funeral …
Come to think of it, there were always just guards at a guard’s funeral.
Of course it wasn’t like that now. Sergeant Colon had been happily married for years, perhaps because he and his wife arranged their working lives so that they only met occasionally, normally on the doorstep. But she left him decent meals in the oven, and there was clearly something there; they’d got grandchildren, even, so obviously there had been times when they’d been unable to avoid each other. Young Carrot had to fight young women off with a stick. And Corporal Nobbs … well, he probably made his own arrangements. He was said to have the body of a twenty-five year old, although no one knew where he kept it.
The point was that everyone else had someone, even if in Nobby’s case it was probably against their will.
So, Captain Vimes, what is it really? Do you care for her? Don’t worry too much about love, that’s a dicey word for the over-forties. Or are you just afraid of becoming some old man dying in the groove of his life and buried out of pity by a bunch of youngsters who never knew you as anything other than some old fart who always seemed to be around the place and got sent out to bring back the coffee and hot figgins and was laughed at behind his back?
He’d wanted to avoid that. And now Fate was handing him a fairy tale.
Of course he’d known she was rich. But he hadn’t expected the summons to Mr Morecombe’s office.
Mr Morecombe had been the Ramkins’ family solicitor for a long time. Centuries, in fact. He was a vampire.{11}
Vimes disliked vampires. Dwarfs were law-abiding little buggers when they were sober, and even trolls were all right if you kept them where you could see them. But all the undead made his neck itch. Live and let live was all very well, but there was a problem right there, when you thought about it logically …
Mr Morecombe was scrawny, like a tortoise, and very pale. It had taken him ages to come to the point, and when it came the point nailed Vimes to his chair.
‘How much?’
‘Er. I believe I am right in saying the estate, including the farms, the areas of urban development, and the small area of unreal estate near the University, are together worth approximately … seven million dollars a year. Yes. Seven million at current valuation, I would say.’
‘It’s all mine?’
‘From the hour of your wedding to Lady Sybil. Although she instructs me in this letter that you are to have access to all her accounts as of the present moment.’