Jingo (5 page)

“A crown, was it? Maybe a coronet?”

Carrot leaned down to the constable. “Says here a tiara, Reg, can we let—?” He stood up. “We’re prepared to accept ‘coronet.’ Well done!”

He looked down at Constable Shoe again.

“This
is
all right, isn’t it, Reg? It’s not coercion, is it?”

“Can’t see how it can be, captain. I mean,
they
broke in,
they
took a hostage…”

“I suppose you’re right—”

“
Please! No! Good boy! Down!
”

“Seems to be about it, sir,” said Reg Shoe, peering around the edge of the cart. “We’ve got them down for everything but the Hide Park Flasher—”

“We did that!” screamed someone.

“—and that was a woman…”

“We did it!”
This time the voice was a lot higher. “
Now please can we come out
?”

Carrot stood up and raised the megaphone. “If you gentlemen would care to step out with your hands up?”

“Are you joking?” whimpered someone, against the background of another growl.

“Well, at least with your hands where I can see them.”

“You bet, mister!”

Four men stumbled out into the street. Their torn clothing fluttered in the breeze. The apparent leader pointed an angry finger back at the doorway as Carrot walked toward them.

“The owner of that place ought to be prosecuted!” he shouted. “Keeping a wild animal like that in his strongroom, it’s disgraceful! We broke in perfectly peacefully and it just attacked us for no reason at all!”

“You shot at Constable Shoe here,” said Carrot.

“Only to miss! Only to miss!”

Constable Shoe pointed at the arrow sticking into his breastplate.

“Right where it shows!” he complained. “It’s a welding job and we have to pay for our own armor repairs and there’ll always be a mark, you know, no matter what I do.”

Their horrified gaze took in the stitch marks around his neck and on his hands, and it dawned on them that although the human race came in a variety of colors, very few living people were gray with a hint of green.

“Here, you’re a
zombie!
”

“That’s right, kick a man when he’s dead,” said Constable Shoe sharply.

“And you took Corporal Angua hostage. A
lady
,” said Carrot, in the same level voice. It was very polite. But it simply suggested that somewhere a fuse was burning, and it would be a good idea not to wait for it to reach the barrel.

“Yes…sort of…but she must’ve got away when that
creature
turned up…”

“So you left her in there?” said Carrot, still very calm.

The men dropped to their knees. The leader raised his hand imploringly.

“Please! We’re just robbers and thieves! We’re not bad men!”

Carrot nodded to Constable Shoe. “Take them down to the Yard, constable.”

“Right!” said Reg. There was a mean look in his eye as he cocked his crossbow. “I’m down ten dollars thanks to you. So you’d better not try to escape.”

“No, sir. Not us.”

Carrot wandered into the gloom of the building. Fearful faces peered out of doorways. He gave them a reassuring smile as he walked toward the strongroom.

Corporal Angua was adjusting her uniform.

“I didn’t bite anyone, before you start,” she said, as he appeared in the doorway. “Not even flesh wounds. I just tore at their trousers. And that was no bed of roses, I might add.”

A frightened face appeared round the door.

“Ah, Mr. Vortin,” said Carrot. “I think you will find that all is in order. They seem to have dropped everything.”

The diamond merchant looked at him in amazement.

“But they had a hostage—”

“They saw the error of their ways,” said Carrot.

“And…and there were snarling noises…sounded like a wolf…”

“Ah, yes,” said Carrot. “Well, you know, when thieves fall out…” Which was no kind of explanation, but because the tone of voice suggested that it
was
, Mr. Vortin accepted it as such for fully five minutes after Carrot and Angua had left.

“Well, that’s a nice start to the day,” said Carrot.

“Thank you, yes, I wasn’t hurt,” said Angua.

“It makes it all seem worthwhile, somehow.”

“Just my hair messed up and another shirt ruined.”

“Well done.”

“Sometimes I might suspect that you don’t listen to anything I say,” said Angua.

“Glad to hear it,” said Carrot.

The entire Watch was mustering. Vimes looked down at the sea of faces.

My gods, he thought. How many have we got now? A few years ago you could count the Watch on the fingers of a blind butcher’s hand, and now…

There’s
more
coming in!

He leaned sideways to Captain Carrot. “Who’re all these people?”

“Watchmen, sir. You appointed them.”

“Did I? I haven’t even
met
some of them!”

“You signed the paperwork, sir. And you sign the wage bill every month. Eventually.”

There was a hint of criticism in his voice. Vimes’s approach to paperwork was not to touch it until someone was shouting, and then at least there would be someone to help him sort through the stacks.

“But how did they join?”

“Usual way, sir. Swore them in, gave them each a helmet—”

“Hey, that’s Reg Shoe! He’s a zombie! He falls to bits all the time!”

“Very big man in the undead community, sir,” said Carrot.

“How come
he
joined?”

“He came round last week to complain about the Watch harassing some bogeymen, sir. He was very, er, vehement, sir. So I persuaded him that what the Watch needed was some expertise, and so he joined up, sir.”

“No more complaints?”

“Twice as many, sir. All from undead, sir, and all against Mr. Shoe. Funny, that.”

Vimes gave his captain a sideways look.

“He’s very hurt about it, sir. He says he’s found that the undead just don’t understand the difficulties of policing in a multi-vital society, sir.”

Good gods, thought Vimes, that’s just what I would have done. But I’d have done it because I’m not a nice person. Carrot
is
a nice person, he’s practically got medals for it, surely he wouldn’t have…

And he knew that he would never know. Somewhere behind Carrot’s innocent stare was a steel door.

“
You
enrolled him, did you?”

“Nossir. You did, sir. You signed his joining orders and his kit chitty and his posting orders, sir.”

Vimes had another vision of too many documents, hurriedly signed. But he
must
have signed them and they needed the men, true enough. It was just that it ought to be
him
who—

“And anyone of sergeant rank or above can recruit, sir,” said Carrot, as if reading his mind. “It’s in the General Orders. Page twenty-two, sir. Just below the tea stain.”

“And you’ve recruited…how many?”

“Oh, just one or two. We’re still very shorthanded, sir.”

“We are with Reg. His arms keep falling off.”

“Aren’t you going to talk to the men, sir?”

Vimes looked at the assembled…well, multitude. There was no other word. Well, there were plenty, but none that it would be fair to use.

Big ones, short ones, fat ones, troll ones with the lichen still on, bearded dwarf ones, the looming pottery presence of the golem Constable Dorfl, undead ones…and even now he wasn’t certain if that term should include Corporal Angua, an intelligent girl and a very useful wolf when she had to be. Waifs and strays, Colon had said once. Waifs and bloody strays, because normal people wouldn’t be coppers.

Technically they were all in uniform, too, except that mostly they weren’t wearing the same uniform as anyone else. Everyone had just been sent down to the armory to collect whatever fitted, and the result was a walking historical exhibit: Funny-Shaped Helmets Through the Ages.

“Er…ladies and gentlemen—” he began.

“Be quiet, please, and listen to Commander Vimes!” bellowed Carrot.

Vimes found himself meeting the gaze of Angua, who was leaning against the wall. She rolled her eyes helplessly.

“Yes,
yes
, thank you, captain,” said Vimes. He turned back to the massed array of Ankh-Morpork’s finest. He opened his mouth. He stared. And then he shut his mouth, all but a corner of it. And said out of that corner: “What’s that little lump on Constable Flint’s head?”

“That’s Probationary Constable Buggy Swires, sir. He likes to get a good view.”

“He’s a
gnome!
”

“Well done, sir.”

“Another one of yours?”

“
Ours
, sir,” said Carrot, using his reproachful voice again. “Yes, sir. Attached to the Chitterling Street Station since last week, sir.”

“Oh my gods…” murmured Vimes.

Buggy Swires saw his stare and saluted. He was five inches tall.

Vimes regathered his mental balance. The long and the short and the tall…waifs and strays, all of us.

“I’m not going to keep you long,” he said. “You all know me…well,
most
of you know me,” he added, with a sidelong glance at Carrot, “and I don’t make speeches. But I’m sure all of you have noticed the way this Leshp business has got people all stirred up. There’s a lot of loose talk about war. Well, war isn’t our business. War is soldiers’ business. Our business, I think, is to keep the peace. Let me show you this—”

He stood back and pulled something out of his pocket with a flourish. At least, that was the intention. There was a rip as something ceased to be entangled in the lining.

“Damn…ah…”

He produced a length of shiny black wood from the ragged pocket. There was a large silver knob on the end. The watchmen craned to look.

“This…er…this…” Vimes groped. “This old man turned up from the palace a couple of weeks ago. Gave me this damn thing. Got a label saying ‘
Regalia of the Watch Commandr., Citie of Ankh-Morporke
.’ You know they never throw anything away up at the palace.”

He waved it vaguely. The wood was surprisingly heavy.

“It’s got the coat of arms on the knob, look.” Thirty watchmen tried to see.

“And I thought…I thought, good grief,
this
is what I’m supposed to carry? And I thought about it, and then I thought, no, that’s right, just once someone got it
right
. It’s not even a weapon, it’s just a
thing
. It ain’t for using, it’s just for having. That’s what it’s all about. Same thing with uniforms. You see, a soldier’s uniform, it’s to turn him into part of a crowd of other parts all in the same uniform, but a copper’s uniform is there to—”

Vimes stopped. Perplexed expressions in front of him told him that he was building a house of cards with too few cards on the bottom.

He coughed.

“
Anyway
,” he went on, with a glare to indicate that everyone should forget the previous twenty seconds, “our job is to
stop
people fighting. There’s a lot happening on the street. You’ve probably heard that they’re starting up the regiments again. Well, people can recruit if they like. But we’re not going to have any mobs. There’s a nasty mood around. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’ve got to be there when it does.” He looked around the room. “Another thing. This new Klatchian envoy or whatever he’s called is arriving tomorrow. I don’t think the Assassins’ Guild has anything planned but
tonight
we’re going to check the route the wizards’ procession will be taking. A nice little job for the night shift. And tonight we’re
all
on the night shift.”

There was a groan from the Watch.

“As my old sergeant used to say, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined,” said Vimes. “A nice gentle door-to-door inspection, shaking hands with doorknobs, giving the uniform a bit of an airing. Good old-fashioned policing. Any questions? Good. Thank you very much.”

There was a general rustling and relaxing among the squad as it dawned on them that they were free to go.

Carrot started to clap.

It wasn’t the clap used by middlings to encourage underlings to applaud overlings.
^*
It had genuine enthusiasm behind it which was, somehow, worse. A couple of the more impressionable new constables picked it up and then, in the same way that little pebbles lead the avalanche, the sound of humanoids banging their hands together filled the room.

Vimes glowered.

“Very inspiring, sir!” said Carrot, as the clapping rose to a storm.

Rain poured on Ankh-Morpork. It filled the gutters and overflowed and was then flung away by the wind. It tasted of salt.

The gargoyles had crept out of their daytime shadows and were perched on every cornice and tower, ears and wings outstretched to sieve anything edible out of the water. It was amazing what could fall on Ankh-Morpork. Rains of small fish and frogs were common enough, although bedsteads caused comment.

A broken gutter poured a sheet of water down the window of Ossie Brunt, who was sitting on his bed because there were no chairs or, indeed, any other furniture. He didn’t mind at the moment. In a minute or two he might be very angry. And, then again, possibly not.

It was not that Ossie was insane in any way. Friends would have called him a quiet sort who kept himself to himself, but they didn’t because he didn’t have any friends. There
was
a group of men who went to practice at the archery butts on Tuesday nights, and he sometimes went to a pub with them afterward and sat and listened to them talk, and he’d saved up once and bought a round of drinks, although they probably wouldn’t remember or maybe they’d say, “Oh…yeah…Ossie.” People said that. People tended to put him out of their minds, in the same way that you didn’t pay much attention to empty space.

He wasn’t stupid. He thought a lot about things. Sometimes he’d sit and think for hours, just staring at the opposite wall where the rain came in on damp nights and made a map of Klatch.

Someone hammered on the door. “Mr. Brunt? Are you decent?”

“I’m a bit busy, Mrs. Spent,” he said, putting his bow under the bed with his magazines.