Guards! Guards! (34 page)

Colon’s hands shook. The dragon seemed to be aiming at his throat, and it was moving too fast, far too fast…

“This is it!” said Carrot. He glanced toward the Hub, in case any gods had forgotten what they were there for, and added, speaking slowly and distinctly, “It’s a million-to-one-chance, but it might just work!”

“Fire the bloody thing!” screamed Nobby.

“Picking my spot, lad, picking my spot,” quavered Colon. “Don’t you worry, lads, I told you this is my lucky arrow. First-class arrow, this arrow, had it since I was a lad, you’d be amazed at the things I shot at with this, don’t you worry.”

He paused, as the nightmare bore down on him on wings of terror.

“Er, Carrot?” he said meekly.

“Yes, Sarge?”

“Did your old grandad ever say what a voonerable spot
looks
like?”

And then the dragon wasn’t approaching anymore, it was there, passing a few feet overhead, a streaming mosaic of scales and noise, filling the entire sky.

Colon fired.

They watched the arrow rise straight and true.

Vimes half-ran, half-staggered over the damp cobbles, out of breath and out of time.

It can’t be like this, he thought wildly. The hero always cuts it fine, but he always gets there just in the nick of time. Only the nick of time was probably five minutes ago.

And I’m not a hero. I’m out of condition, and I need a drink, and I get a handful of dollars a month without plumes allowance. That’s not hero’s pay. Heroes get kingdoms and princesses, and they take regular exercise, and when they smile the light glints off their teeth,
ting
. The bastards.

Sweat stung his eyes. The rush of adrenalin that had carried him out of the palace had spent itself, and was now exacting its inevitable toll.

He stumbled to a halt, and grabbed a wall to keep him upright while he gasped for air. And thus he saw the figures on the rooftop.

Oh, no! he thought. They’re not heroes either! What do they think they’re playing at?

It was a million-to-one chance. And who was to say that, somewhere in the millions of other possible universes, it might not have worked?

That was the sort of thing the gods really liked. But Chance, who sometimes can overrule even the gods, has 999,999 casting votes.

In
this
universe, for example, the arrow bounced off a scale and clattered away into oblivion.

Colon stared as the dragon’s pointed tail passed overhead.

“It…missed…” he mouthed.

“But it couldn’t of missed!” He stared red-eyed at the other two. “It was a sodding last desperate million-to-one chance!”

The dragon twisted its wings, swung its huge bulk around on a pivot of air, and bore down on the roof.

Carrot grabbed Nobby around the waist and laid a hand on Colon’s shoulder.

The sergeant was weeping with rage and frustration.

“Million-to-bloody-one last desperate bloody chance!”

“Sarge—”

The dragon flamed.

It was a beautifully controlled line of plasma. It went through the roof like butter.

It cut through stairways.

It crackled into ancient timbers and made them twist like paper. It sliced into pipes.

It punched through floor after floor like the fist of an angry god and, eventually, reached the big copper vat containing a thousand gallons of freshly-made mature whiskey-type spirit.

It burned into that, too.

Fortunately, the chances of anyone surviving the ensuing explosion were exactly a million-to-one.

The fireball rose like a—well, a rose. A huge orange rose, streaked with yellow. It took the roof with it and wrapped it around the astonished dragon, lifting it high into the air in a boiling cloud of broken timber and bits of piping.

The crowd watched in bemusement as the superhot blast flung it into the sky and barely noticed Vimes as he pushed his way, wheezing and crying, through the press of bodies.

He shouldered past a row of palace guards and shambled as fast as he could across the flagstones. No one was paying him much attention at the moment.

He stopped.

It wasn’t a rock, because Ankh-Morpork was on loam. It was just some huge remnant of mortared masonry, probably thousands of years old, from somewhere in the city foundations. Ankh-Morpork was so old now that what it was built on, by and large, was Ankh-Morpork.

It had been dragged into the center of the plaza, and Lady Sybil Ramkin had been chained to it. She appeared to be wearing a nightie and huge rubber boots. By the look of her she had been in a fight, and Vimes felt a momentary pang of sympathy for whoever else had been involved. She gave him a look of pure fury.

“You!”

“
You!
”

He waved the cleaver vaguely.

“But why you—?” he began.

“Captain Vimes,” she said sharply, “you will oblige me by not waving that thing about and you will start putting it to its proper use!”

Vimes wasn’t listening.

“Thirty dollars a month!” he muttered. “That’s what they died for! Thirty dollars! And I docked some from Nobby. I had to, didn’t I? I mean, that man could make a
melon
go rusty!”

“Captain Vimes!”

He focused on the cleaver.

“Oh,” he said. “Yes. Right!”

It was a good steel cleaver, and the chains were elderly and rather rusty iron. He hacked away, raising sparks from the masonry.

The crowd watched in silence, but several palace guards hurried toward him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said one of them, who didn’t have much imagination.

“What the hell do you think
you’re
doing?” Vimes growled, looking up.

They stared at him.

“What?”

Vimes took another hack at the chains. Several loops tinkled to the ground.

“Right, you’ve asked for—” one of the guards began. Vimes’s elbow caught him under his rib cage; before he collapsed, Vimes’s foot kicked savagely at the other one’s kneecaps, bringing his chin down ready for another stab with the other elbow.

“Right,” said Vimes absently. He rubbed the elbow. It was sheer agony.

He moved the cleaver to his other hand and hammered at the chains again, aware at the back of his mind that more guards were hurrying up, but with that special kind of run that guards had. He knew it well. It was the run that said, there’s a dozen of us, let someone else get there first. It said, he looks ready to kill, no one’s paying me to get killed, maybe if I run slowly enough he’ll get away…

No point in spoiling a good day by catching someone.

Lady Ramkin shook herself free. A ragged cheer went up and started to grow in volume. Even in their current state of mind, the people of Ankh-Morpork always appreciated a performance.

She grabbed a handful of chain and wrapped it around one pudgy fist.

“Some of those guards don’t know how to treat—” she began.

“No time, no time,” said Vimes, grabbing her arm. It was like trying to drag a mountain.

The cheering stopped, abruptly.

There was a sound behind Vimes. It was not, particularly, a loud noise. It just had a peculiarly nasty carrying quality. It was the click of four sets of talons hitting the flagstones at the same time.

Vimes looked around and up.

Soot clung to the dragon’s hide. A few pieces of charred wood had lodged here and there, and were still smoldering. The magnificent bronze scales were streaked with black.

It lowered its head until Vimes was a few feet away from its eyes, and tried to focus on him.

Probably not worth running, Vimes told himself. It’s not as if I’ve got the energy anyway.

He felt Lady Ramkin’s hand engulf his.

“Jolly well done,” she said. “It nearly worked.”

Charred and blazing wreckage rained down around the distillery. The pond was a swamp of debris, covered with a coating of ash. Out of it, dripping slime, rose Sergeant Colon.

He clawed his way to the bank and pulled himself up, like some sea-dwelling lifeform that was anxious to get the whole evolution thing over with in one go.

Nobby was already there, spread out like a frog, leaking water.

“Is that you, Nobby?” said Sergeant Colon anxiously.

“It’s me, Sergeant.”

“I’m glad about that, Nobby,” said Colon fervently.

“I wish it wasn’t me, Sergeant.”

Colon tipped the water out of his helmet, and then paused.

“What about young Carrot?” he said.

Nobby pushed himself up on his elbows, groggily.

“Dunno,” he said. “One minute we were on the roof, next minute we were jumping.”

They both looked at the ashen waters of the pond.

“I suppose,” said Colon slowly, “he can swim?”

“Dunno. He never said. Not much to swim in, up in the mountains. When you come to think about it,” said Nobby.

“But perhaps there were limpid blue pools and deep mountain streams,” said the sergeant hopefully. “And icy tarns in hidden valleys and that. Not to mention subterranean lakes. He’d be bound to have learned. In and out of the water all day, I expect.”

They stared at the greasy gray surface.

“It was probably that Protective,” said Nobby. “P’raps it filled with water and dragged him down.”

Colon nodded gloomily.

“I’ll hold your helmet,” said Nobby, after a while.

“But I’m your superior officer!”

“Yes,” said Nobby reasonably, “but if you get stuck down there, you’re going to want your best man up here, ready to rescue you, aren’t you?”

“That’s…reasonable,” said Colon eventually. “That’s a good point.”

“Right, then.”

“Drawback is, though…”

“What?”

“…I can’t swim,” Colon said.

“How did you get out of that, then?”

Colon shrugged. “I’m a natural floater.”

Their eyes, once again, turned to the dankness of the pond. Then Colon stared at Nobby. Then Nobby, very slowly, unbuckled his helmet.

“There isn’t someone still in there, is there?” said Carrot, behind them.

They looked around. He hoicked some mud out of an ear. Behind him the remains of the brewery smoldered.

“I thought I’d better nip out quickly, see what was going on,” he said brightly, pointing to a gate leading out of the yard. It was hanging by one hinge.

“Oh,” said Nobby weakly. “Jolly good.”

“There’s an alley out there,” said Carrot.

“No dragons in it, are there?” said Colon suspiciously.

“No dragons, no humans. There’s no one around,” said Carrot impatiently. He drew his sword. “Come on!” he said.

“Where to?” said Nobby. He’d pulled a damp butt from behind his ear and was looking at it with an expression of deepest sorrow. It was obviously too far gone. He tried to light it anyway.

“We want to fight the dragon, don’t we?” said Carrot.

Colon shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, but aren’t we allowed to go home for a change of clothes first?”

“And a nice warm drink?” said Nobby.

“And a meal,” said Colon. “A nice plate of—”

“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” said Carrot. “There’s a lady in distress and a dragon to fight and all you can think of is food and drink!”

“Oh, I’m not just thinking about food and drink,” said Colon.

“We could be all that stands between the city and total destruction!”

“Yes, but—” Nobby began.

Carrot drew his sword and waved it over his head.

“Captain Vimes would have gone!” he said. “All for one!”

He glared at them, and rushed out of the yard.

Colon gave Nobby a sheepish look.

“Young people today,” he said.

“All for one what?” said Nobby.

The sergeant sighed. “Come on, then.”

“Oh, all right.”

They staggered out into the alley. It was empty.

“Where’d he go?” said Nobby.

Carrot stepped out of the shadows, grinning all over his face.

“Knew I could rely on you,” he said. “Follow me!”

“Something odd about that boy,” said Colon, as they limped after him. “He always manages to persuade us to follow him, have you noticed?”

“All for one what?” said Nobby.

“Something about the voice, I reckon.”

“Yes, but all for one what?”

The Patrician sighed and, carefully marking his place, laid aside his book. To judge from the noise there seemed to be an awful lot of excitement going on out there. It was highly unlikely any palace guards would be around, which was just as well. The guards were highly-trained men and it would be a shame to waste them.

He would need them later on.

He padded over to the wall and pushed a small block that looked exactly like all the other small blocks. No other small block, however, would have caused a section of flagstone to grind ponderously aside.

There was a carefully chosen assortment of stuff in there—iron rations, spare clothes, several small chests of precious metals and jewels, tools. And there was a key. Never build a dungeon you couldn’t get out of.

The Patrician took the key and strolled over to the door. As the wards of the lock slid back in their well-oiled grooves he wondered, again, whether he should have told Vimes about the key. But the man seemed to have got so much satisfaction out of breaking out. It would probably have been positively bad for him to have told him about the key. Anyway, it would have spoiled his view of the world. He needed Vimes and his view of the world.

Lord Vetinari swung the door open and, silently, strode out into the ruins of his palace.

They trembled as, for the second time in a couple of minutes, the city rocked.

The dragon kennels exploded. The windows blew out. The door left the wall ahead of a great billow of black smoke and sailed into the air, tumbling slowly, to plow into the rhododendrons.

Something very energetic and hot was happening in that building. More smoke poured out, thick and oily and solid. One of the walls folded in on itself, and then another one toppled sluggishly onto the lawn.

Swamp dragons shot determinedly out of the wreckage like champagne corks, wings whirring frantically.

Still the smoke unrolled. But there was something in there, some point of fierce white light that was gently rising.