Night Watch

Around the University buildings, watchmen who'd also seen the order ducked into doorways. They knew about the bow.

There were a few seconds for the troll to work out the spelling, a distant heavy thud, a sound like a swarm of hellish bees, and then a crash of tiles and masonry. Pieces of tile rained down into the square. An entire chimney, still with a wisp of smoke coming from it, smashed down a few yards from where Vimes was standing.

Then there was the patter of dust and small bits of wood, and a gentle shower of pigeon feathers.

Vimes shook some flakes of mortar off his helmet. “Yes, well, I think he's been warned,” he said.

Half a weathercock landed next to the chimney.

Cheery blew some feathers off her telescope and sighted on the top of the tower again. “Buggy says he's stopped moving, sir,” she reported.

“Really? You surprise me.” Vimes adjusted his belt. “And now you can give me your crossbow. I'm going up.”

“Sir, you said no one was to try to arrest him! That's why I sent the signal to you!”

“That's right. I'm going to arrest him. Right now. While he's counting all his bits to check that he's still got 'em. Tell Detritus what I'm doing, 'cos I don't want to end up as 160lbs of cocktail delicacies. No, don't keep opening your mouth like that. By the time we've sorted out backup and armour and got everyone lined up he'll have dug in somewhere else.”

The last words were delivered at a run.

Vimes reached a door and darted inside. New Hall was student accommodation, but it was still only half past ten so most of them would be in bed. A few faces looked around doors as Vimes trotted along the corridor and reached the stairwell at the far end. That took him—walking now, and rather less sure of his future—to the top floor. Let's see, he'd been here before…yes, there was a door ajar, and a glimpse of mops and buckets suggested that this was a janitor's cupboard.

With, at the far end, a ladder leading up to the roof.

Vimes carefully cocked the crossbow.

So Carcer had a Watch crossbow, too. They were good classic single-shot models, but they took a while to reload. If he fired at Vimes and missed, then that was the only shot he'd get. After that…you couldn't plan.

Vimes climbed the ladder, and the song came back.

“They rise feet up, feet up, feet up…” he hissed under his breath.

He stopped just below the edge of the open trapdoor on to the leads. Carcer wouldn't fall for the old “helmet on stick” trick, not with only one shot available. He'd just have to risk it.

Vimes thrust his head up, turned it quickly, ducked out of sight for a moment and then came through the opening in a rush. He rolled clumsily when he hit the leads, and rose into a crouch. There was no one else there. He was still alive. He breathed out.

A sloping, gabled roof rose up beside him. Vimes crept along, wedged himself against a chimneystack peppered with splinters of wood, and glanced up at the tower.

The sky above it was livid blue-black. Storms picked up a lot of personality as they rolled across the plains, and this one looked like a record breaker. But brilliant sunlight picked out the Tower of Art and, at the top, the tiny dots of Buggy's frantic signal…

O…O…O…

Officer In Trouble. A brother is hurtin'.

Vimes spun around. There was no one creeping up on him. He eased himself around the chimneys and there, tucked between another couple of stacks and out of sight of everyone except Vimes and the celestial Buggy, was Carcer.

He was taking aim.

Vimes turned his head to spot the target.

Fifty yards away, Carrot was picking his way across the top of the University's High Energy Magic building.

The bloody fool was never any good at concealment. Oh, he ducked and crept, and against all logic that made him more noticeable. He didn't understand the art of thinking himself invisible. And there he was, furtively shlepping through the debris on the roof and looking as visible as a big duck in a small bathtub. And he'd come up without backup.

The fool…

Carcer was aiming carefully. The roof of the HEM was a maze of abandoned equipment and Carrot was moving along behind the raised platform that held the huge bronze spheres known throughout the city as The Wizards' Balls, which discharged surplus magic if—or more usually when—experiments in the hall below fouled up. Carrot, screened by all that, was not making such a good target.

Vimes raised his crossbow.

Thunder…rolled. It was the roll of a giant iron cube down the stairways of the gods, a crackling, thudding crash that tore the sky in half and shook the building.

Carcer glanced up, and saw Vimes.

“Wotcha doin', mifter?”

Buggy didn't budge from the telescope. A crowbar wouldn't have separated him at this point.

“Shut up, ye daft corbies!” he muttered.

Both men below had fired, and both men had missed because they were trying to fire and dodge at the same time.

Something hard prodded Buggy's shoulder.

“Wot's happ'nin', mifter?” said the insistent voice.