Men at Arms

Angua glanced through the grubby window. The moon would be up soon. That was one trouble with cities. The damn thing could be lurking behind a tower if you weren't careful.

“And I'd better be getting back to my lodgings,” she said.

“I'll accompany you,” said Carrot, quickly. “I ought to go and find Captain Vimes in any case.”

“It'll be out of your way…”

“Honestly, I'd like to.”

She looked at his earnest expression.

“I couldn't put you to the trouble,” she said.

“That's all right. I like walking. It helps me think.”

Angua smiled, despite her desperation.

They stepped out into the softer heat of the evening. Instinctively, Carrot settled into the policeman's pace.

“Very old street, this,” he said. “They say there's an underground stream under it. I read that. What do you think?”

“Do you really like walking?” said Angua, falling into step.

“Oh, yes. There are many interesting byways and historical buildings to be seen. I often go for walks on my day off.”

She looked at his face. Ye gods, she thought.

“Why did you join the Watch?” she said.

“My father said it'd make a man of me.”

“It seems to have worked.”

“Yes. It's the best job there is.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. Do you know what ‘policeman’ means?”

Angua shrugged. “No.”

“It means ‘man of the polis’. That's an old word for city.”

“Yes?”

“I read it in a book. Man of the city.”

She glanced sideways at him again. His face glowed in the light of a torch on the street corner, but it had some inner glow of its own.

He's proud. She remembered the oath.

Proud of being in the damn Watch, for gods' sake—

“Why did you join?” he said.

“Me? Oh, I… I like to eat meals and sleep indoors. Anyway, there isn't that much choice, is there? It was that or become… hah… a seamstress.”11

“And you're not very good at sewing?”

Angua's sharp glance saw nothing but honest innocence in his face.

“Yes,” she said, giving up, “that's right. And then I saw this poster. ‘The City Watche Needs Men! Be A Man In The City Watche!’ So I thought I'd give it a go. After all, I'd only have something to gain.”

She waited to see if he'd fail to pick this one up, too. He did.

“Sergeant Colon wrote the notice,” said Carrot. “He's a fairly direct thinker.”

He sniffed.

“Can you smell something?” he said. “Smells like… a bit like someone's thrown away an old privy carpet?”

“Oh, thank you very much,” said a voice very low down, somewhere in the darkness. “Oh, yes. Thank you very much. That's very wossname of you. Old privy carpet. Oh, yes.”

“Can't smell anything,” Angua lied.

“Liar,” said the voice.

“Or hear anything.”

Captain Vimes' boots told him he was in Scoone Avenue. His feet were doing the walking of their own volition; his mind was somewhere else. In fact, some of it was dissolving gently in Jimkin Bearhugger's finest nectar. If only they hadn't been so damn polite! There were a number of things he'd seen in his life which he'd always try, without success, to forget. Up until now he would have put, at the top of the list, looking at the tonsils of a giant dragon as it drew the breath intended to turn him into a small pile of impure charcoal. He still woke up sweating at the memory of the little pilot light. But he dreaded now that it was going to be replaced by the recollection of all those impassive dwarf faces, watching him politely, and the feeling that his words were dropping into a deep pit.

After all, what could he say? “Sorry he's dead—and that's official. We're putting our worst men on the case”?

The late Bjorn Hammerhock's house had been full of dwarfs—silent, owlish, polite dwarfs. The news had got around. He wasn't telling anyone anything they didn't know. Many of them were holding weapons. Mr Stronginthearm was there. Captain Vimes had talked to him before about his speeches on the subject of the need for grinding all trolls in little bits and using them to make roads. But the dwarf wasn't saying anything now. He was just looking smug. There was an air of quiet, polite menace, that said: We'll listen to you. Then we'll do what we decide to do.

He hadn't even been sure which one was Mrs Hammerhock. They all looked alike to him. When she was introduced—helmeted, bearded—he'd got polite, noncommittal answers. No, she'd locked his workshop and seemed to have mislaid the key. Thank you.

He'd tried to indicate as subtly as possible that a wholesale march on Quarry Lane would be frowned upon by the guard (probably from a vantage point at a safe distance) but hadn't the face to spell it out. He couldn't say: don't take matters into your own hands for the guard are mightily in pursuit of the wrongdoer, because he didn't have a clue where to start. Had your husband any enemies? Yes, someone put a huge great hole in him, but apart from that, did he have any enemies?

So he'd extracted himself with as much dignity as possible, which wasn't very much, and after a battle with himself which he'd lost, he'd picked up half a bottle of Bearhugger's Old Persnickety and wandered into the night.