Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett [50]
Half an hour went by. Hails of arrows greeted a passing cloud, several unfortunate bats, and the rising moon.
“Bugger this for a game of soldiers,” said Nobby, eventually. “It’s been scared off.”
Sgt. Colon lowered his pike. “Looks like it,” he conceded.
“And it’s getting chilly up here,” said Carrot. He politely nudged Captain Vimes, who was slumped against the chimney, staring moodily into space.
“Maybe we ought to be getting down, sir?” he said. “Lots of people are.”
“Hmm?” said Vimes, without moving his head.
“Could be coming onto rain, too,” said Carrot.
Vimes said nothing. For some minutes he had been watching the Tower of Art, which was the center of Unseen University and reputedly the oldest building in the city. It was certainly the tallest. Time, weather and indifferent repairs had given it a gnarled appearance, like a tree that has seen too many thunderstorms.
He was trying to remember its shape. As is the case with many things that are totally familiar, he hadn’t really looked at it for years. Now he was trying to convince himself that the forest of little turrets and crenellations at its top looked just the same tonight as they had done yesterday.
It was giving him some difficulty.
Without taking his eyes off it, he grabbed Sgt. Colon’s shoulder and gently pointed him in the right direction.
He said, “Can you see anything odd about the top of the tower?”
Colon stared up for a while, and then laughed nervously. “Well, it looks like there’s a dragon sitting on it, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. That’s what I thought.”
“Only, only, only when you sort of look properly, you can see it’s just made up out of shadows and clumps of ivy and that. I mean, if you half-close one eye, it looks like two old women and a wheelbarrow.”
Vimes tried this. “Nope,” he said. “It still looks like a dragon. A huge one. Sort of hunched up, and looking down. Look, you can see its wings folded up.”
“Beg pardon, sir. That’s just a broken turret giving the effect.”
They watched it for a while.
Then Vimes said, “Tell me, Sergeant—I ask in a spirit of pure inquiry—what do you think’s causing the effect of a pair of huge wings unfurling?”
Colon swallowed.
“I think that’s caused by a pair of huge wings, sir,” he said.
“Spot on, Sergeant.”
The dragon dropped. It wasn’t a swoop. It simply kicked away from the top of the tower and half-fell, half-flew straight downward, disappearing from view behind the University buildings.
Vimes caught himself listening for the thump.
And then the dragon was in view again, moving like an arrow, moving like a shooting star, moving like something that has somehow turned a thirty-two feet per second plummet into an unstoppable upward swoop. It glided over the rooftops at little more than head height, all the more horrible because of the sound. It was as though the air was slowly and carefully being torn in half.
The Watch threw themselves flat. Vimes caught a glimpse of huge, vaguely horse-like features before it slid past.
“Sodding assholes,” said Nobby, from somewhere in the guttering.
Vimes redoubled his grip on the chimney and pulled himself upright. “You are in uniform, Corporal Nobbs,” he said, his voice hardly shaking at all.
“Sorry, Captain. Sodding assholes, sir.”
“Where’s Sergeant Colon?”
“Down here, sir. Holding onto this drainpipe, sir.”
“Oh, for goodness sake. Help him up, Carrot.”
“Gosh,” said Carrot, “look at it go!”
You could tell the position of the dragon by the rattle of arrows across the city, and by the screams and gurgles of all those hit by the misses and ricochets.
“He hasn’t even flapped his wings yet!” shouted Carrot, trying to stand on the chimney pot. “Look at him go!”
It shouldn’t be that big, Vimes told himself, watching the huge shape wheel over the river. It’s as long as a street!
There was a puff of flame above the docks, and for a moment the creature passed in front of the moon. Then it flapped its wings, once, with a sound like