Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett [86]
Vimes slowly unclipped the verdigrised disc of copper, weighed it in his hand, and then tossed it to Wonse without a word.
For a moment he considered pleading, but something rebelled. He turned, and stalked off through the crowd.
So that was it.
As simple as that. After half a lifetime of service. No more City Watch. Huh. Vimes kicked at the pavement. It’d be some sort of Royal Guard now.
With plumes in their damn helmets.
Well, he’d had enough. It wasn’t a proper life anyway, in the Watch. You didn’t meet people in the best of circumstances. There must be hundreds of other things he could do, and if he thought for long enough he could probably remember what some of them were.
Pseudopolis Yard was off the route of the procession, and as he stumbled into the Watch House he could hear the distant cheering beyond the rooftops. Across the city the temple gongs were being sounded.
Now they are ringing the gongs, thought Vimes, but soon they will—they will—they will not be ringing the gongs. Not much of an aphorism, he thought, but he could work on it. He had the time, now.
Vimes noticed the mess.
Errol had started eating again. He’d eaten most of the table, the grate, the coal scuttle, several lamps and the squeaky rubber hippo. Now he lay in his box again, skin twitching, whimpering in his sleep.
“A right mess you’ve made,” said Vimes enigmatically. Still, at least he wouldn’t have to tidy it up.
He opened his desk drawer.
Someone had eaten into that, too. All that was left was a few shards of glass.
Sergeant Colon hauled himself onto the parapet around the Temple of Small Gods. He was too old for this sort of thing. He’d joined for the bell ringing, not sitting around on high places waiting for dragons to find him.
He got his breath back, and peered through the fog.
“Anyone human still up here?” he whispered.
Carrot’s voice sounded dead and featureless in the dull air.
“Here I am, Sergeant,” he said.
“I was just checking if you were still here,” said Colon.
“I’m still here, Sergeant,” said Carrot, obediently.
Colon joined him.
“Just checking you were not et,” he said, trying to grin.
“I haven’t been et,” said Carrot.
“Oh,” said Colon. “Good, then.” He tapped his fingers on the damp stonework, feeling he ought to make his position absolutely clear.
“Just checking,” he repeated. “Part of my duty, see. Going around, sort of thing. It’s not that I’m frightened of being up on the roofs by myself, you understand. Thick up here, isn’t it.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Everything all okay?” Nobby’s muffled voice sidled its way through the thick air, quickly followed by its owner.
“Yes, Corporal,” said Carrot.
“What you doing up here?” Colon demanded.
“I was just coming up to check Lance-constable Carrot was all right,” said Nobby innocently. “What were you doing, Sergeant?”
“We’re all all right,” said Carrot, beaming. “That’s good, isn’t it.”
The two NCOs shifted uneasily and avoided looking at one another. It seemed like a long way back to their posts, across the damp, cloudy and, above all, exposed rooftops.
Colon made an executive decision.
“Sod this,” he said, and found a piece of fallen statuary to sit on. Nobby leaned on the parapet and winkled a damp dog-end from the unspeakable ashtray behind his ear.
“Heard the procession go by,” he observed. Colon filled his pipe, and struck a match on the stone beside him.
“If that dragon’s alive,” he said, blowing out a plume of smoke and turning a small patch of fog into smog, “then it’ll have got the hell away from here, I’m telling you. Not the right sort of place for dragons, a city,” he added, in the tones of someone doing a great job of convincing himself. “It’ll have gone off to somewhere where there’s high places and plenty to eat, you mark my words.”
“Somewhere like the city, you mean?” said Carrot.
“Shut up,” said the other two in unison.
“Chuck us the matches, Sergeant,” said Nobby.
Colon tossed the bundle of evil yellow-headed lucifers across the leads. Nobby