Men at Arms

“He, er, doesn't appear much in the history books,” said Vimes. “Sometimes there has to be a civil war, and sometimes, afterwards, it's best to pretend something didn't happen. Sometimes people have to do a job, and then they have to be forgotten. He wielded the axe, you know. No-one else'd do it. It was a king's neck, after all. Kings are,” he spat the word, “special. Even after they'd seen the… private rooms, and cleaned up the… bits. Even then. No-one'd clean up the world. But he took the axe and cursed them all and did it.”

“What king was it?” said Carrot.

“Lorenzo the Kind,” said Vimes, distantly.

“I've seen his picture in the palace museum,” said Carrot. “A fat old man. Surrounded by lots of children.”

“Oh yes,” said Vimes, carefully. “He was very fond of children.”

Carrot waved at a couple of dwarfs.

“I didn't know this,” he said. “I thought there was just some wicked rebellion or something.”

Vimes shrugged. “It's in the history books, if you know where to look.”

“And that was the end of the kings of Ankh-Morpork.”

“Oh, there was a surviving son, I think. And a few mad relatives. They were banished. That's supposed to be a terrible fate, for royalty. I can't see it myself.”

“I think I can. And you like the city, sir.”

“Well, yes. But if it was a choice between banishment and having my head chopped off, just help me down with this suitcase. No, we're well rid of kings. But, I mean… the city used to work.”

“Still does,” said Carrot.

They passed the Assassins' Guild and drew level with the high, forbidding walls of the Fools' Guild, which occupied the other corner of the block.

“No, it just keeps going. I mean, look up there.”

Carrot obediently raised his gaze.

There was a familiar building on the junction of Broad Way and Alchemists. The façade was ornate, but covered in grime. Gargoyles had colonized it.

The corroded motto over the portico said “NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT CAN STAY THESE MESENGERS ABOT THIER DUTY” and in more spacious days that may have been the case, but recently someone had found it necessary to nail up an addendum which read:

DONT ASK US ABOUT:

rocks

troll's with sticks

All sorts of dragons

Mrs Cake

Huje green things with teeth

Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows

Rains of spaniel's.

fog.

Mrs Cake

“Oh,” he said. “The Royal Mail.”

“The Post Office,” corrected Vimes. “My granddad said that once you could post a letter there and it'd be delivered within a month, without fail. You didn't have to give it to a passing dwarf and hope the little bugger wouldn't eat it before…”

His voice trailed off.

“Uh. Sorry. No offence meant.”

“None taken,” said Carrot cheerfully.

“It's not that I've got anything against dwarfs. I've always said you'd have to look very hard before you'd find a, a better bunch of highly skilled, law-abiding, hard-working—”

“—little buggers?”

“Yes. No!”

They proceeded.

“That Mrs Cake,” said Carrot, “definitely a strong-minded woman, eh?”

“Too true,” said Vimes.

Something crunched under Carrot's enormous sandal.

“More glass,” he said. “It went a long way, didn't it.”

“Exploding dragons! What an imagination the girl has.”

“Woof woof,” said a voice behind them.

“That damn dog's been following us,” said Vimes.

“It's barking at something on the wall,” said Carrot.

Gaspode eyed them coldly.

“Woof woof, bloody whine whine,” he said. “Are you bloody blind or what?”

It was true that normal people couldn't hear Gaspode speak, because dogs don't speak. It's a well-known fact. It's well known at the organic level, like a lot of other well-known facts which overrule the observations of the senses. This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no-one would ever get anything done.8 Besides, almost all dogs don't talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored.

However, Gaspode had found he did tend to get heard on a subconscious level. Only the previous day someone had absent-mindedly kicked him into the gutter and had gone a few steps before they suddenly thought: I'm a bastard, what am I?

“There is something up there,” said Carrot. “Look… something blue, hanging off that gargoyle.”

“Woof woof, woof! Would you credit it?”

Vimes stood on Carrot's shoulders and walked his hand up the wall, but the little blue strip was still out of reach.

The gargoyle rolled a stony eye towards him.

“Do you mind?” said Vimes. “It's hanging on your ear…”

With a grinding of stone on stone, the gargoyle reached up a hand and unhooked the intrusive material.

“Thank you.”

“'on't ent-on it.”

Vimes climbed down again.

“You like gargoyles, don't you, captain,” said Carrot, as they strolled away.

“Yep. They may only be a kind of troll but they keep themselves to themselves and seldom go below the first floor and don't commit crimes anyone ever finds out about. My type of people.”