Jingo

“Ah, good. I was very specifically told to find you. It's quite amazing, you know. No one had even broken into the boathouse, although I must say I did design the locks rather well. And all I've had to do is replace the leatherwork around the joints and grease it up… oh, do excuse me, I've got rather ahead of myself. Now… there was a message I had to give you… what was it now?… Something about your hands…” He reached down into the large canvas bag by his feet and pulled out a long tube, which he handed to Nobby.

“I do apologize about this,” he said, producing a smaller tube and handing it to Colon. “I had to do things in such a hurry, there really was no time to finish it off properly, and frankly the materials are not very good—”

Colon looked at his tube. It was pointed at one end.

“This is a firework rocket,” he said. “Look, it's s got ‘A riot of coloured balls and stars’ on it…”

“Yes, I do so apologize,” said the man, lifting a complex little arrangement of wood and metal out of the bag. “May I have the tube back, corporal?” He took it and screwed the arrangement on to one end. “Thank you… yes, I'm afraid that without my lathe and, indeed, my forge, I really have had to make do with what I could find lying around… Could I have the rocket back, please? Thank you.”

“They don't go properly without a stick,” said Nobby.

“Oh, in fact they do,” said the man. “Just not very accurately.”

He raised the tube to shoulder height and peered into a small wire grid.

“That seems about right,” he said.

“And they don't go along,” said Nobby. “They just go up.”

“A common misconception,” said Leonard of Quirm, turning to face them.

Colon could see the tip of the rocket in the depths of the tube, and had a sudden image of stars and balls.

“Now, apparently you two have to step into this alley here and come with me,” said Leonard. “I'm very sorry about this, but his lordship has explained to me at great length how the needs of society as a whole may have to overrule the rights of a particular individual. Oh, and I've just remembered. You have to put your hands up.”

Sand had been spilled across the big table in the Rats Chamber.

Lord Rust felt a sensation akin to pleasure as he surveyed it. There were the little square boxes for the towns and cities, and cut-out palm trees to indicate the known oasisies. And, although he was uneasy about the word “oasisies”, Lord Rust looked at it and saw that it was good. Especially since it was a map of Klatch and everyone knew that Klatch was sand anyway, which made it rather satisfying in an existential sort of way, although this sand here had been commandeered from the heap behind Chalky the troll's wholesale pottery and bore the occasional cigarette end and trace of feline incontinence that would probably not be found in the real desert, or certainly not to scale.

“Here would be a good landing area,” he said, pointing with his stick.

His equerry tried to look helpful. “The El Kinte peninsula,” he said. “That's the closest point to us, sir.”

“Exactly! We can be across the straits in jig time.”

“Very good, sir,” said Leiutenant Hornett, “but… you don't think the enemy might be expecting us there? It being such an obvious landing site?”

“Not obvious at all to the trained military thinker, sir! They won't be expecting us there precisely because it is so obvious, d'y'see?”

“You mean… they'll think only a complete idiot would land there, sir?”

“Correct! And they know we're not complete idiots, sir, and therefore that will be the last place they will be expecting us, d'y'see? They'll be expecting us somewhere like” – his stick stabbed into the sand – “here.”

Hornett looked closely. In the street outside, someone started to bang a drum.

“Oh, you mean Eritor,” he said. “Where I believe there is a concealed landing area, and two days' forced march through good cover would have us at the heart of the empire, sir.”

“Exactly!”

“Whereas landing at El Kinte means three days over sand dunes and past the fortified city of Gebra…”

“Precisely. Wide-open spaces! And that is where we can practise the art of warfare.” Lord Rust raised his voice above the drumming. “That's how you settle these things. One decisive battle. Us on one side, the Klatchians on the other. THAT IS HOW THESE THINGS ARE D—”

He threw down his pointer. “Who the devil is making that infernal noise?”

The equerry walked across to the window. “It's someone else recruiting, sir,” he said.

“But we're all here!”

The equerry hesitated, as the bearers of bad tidings to short-tempered men often do.

“It's Vimes, sir…”

“Recruiting for the Watch?”

“Er… no, my lord. For a regiment. Er… the banner says ‘Sir Samuel Vimes's First of Foot’, my lord—”

“The arrogance of the man. Go and– No, I'll go myself!”