Jingo - Terry Pratchett [58]
“You want me an’ some of der boys go and sort out dat Rust later on?” said Detritus. “It no problem. He bound to be guilty o’ somethin’.”
“No!”
Vimes’s head felt so light now that he couldn’t touch the ground with a rope. He left them outside the Yard and let his head drag him on and up the hill and round the corner and into the house and past his astonished wife and up the stairs and into the bedroom, where he fell full length on the bed and was asleep before he hit it.
At nine next morning the first recruits for Lord Venturi’s Heavy Infantry paraded down Broadway.
The watchmen went out to watch. That was all that was left for them to do.
“Isn’t that Mr. Vimes’s butler?” said Angua, pointing to the stiff figure of Willikins in the front rank.
“Yeah, and that’s his kitchen boy banging the drum in front,” said Nobby.
“You were a…military man, weren’t you, Fred?” said Carrot, as the parade passed by.
“Yes, sir. Duke of Eorle’s First Heavy Infantry, sir. The Pheasant Pluckers.”
“Pardon?” said Angua.
“Nickname for the regiment, miss. Oh, from ages ago. They were bivvywhacking on some estate and came across a lot of pheasant pens and, well, you know, having to live off the land and everything…anyway, that’s why we always wore a pheasant feather on our helmets. Traditional, see?”
Already old Fred’s face was creasing up in the soft expression of someone who has been mugged in Memory Lane.
“We even had a marching song,” he said. “Mind you, it was quite hard to sing right. Er…sorry, miss?”
“Oh, it’s all right, sergeant,” said Angua. “I often start to laugh like that for no reason at all.”
Fred Colon once again stared dreamily at nothing. “And o’course before that I was in the Duke of Quirm’s Middleweight Infantry. Saw a lot of action with them.”
“I’m sure you did,” said Carrot, while Angua entertained cynical thoughts about the actual distance of Fred’s vantage point. “Your distinguished military career has obviously given you many pleasant memories.”
“The ladies liked the uniform,” said Fred Colon, with the unspoken rider that sometimes a growing lad needed all the help he could get. “An’ it…weelll…”
“Yes, sarge?”
Colon looked awkward, as if the bunched underwear of the past was tangling itself in the crotch of recollection.
“It was…more easier, sir. Than being a copper, I mean. I mean, you’re a soldier, right, and the other buggers is the enemy. You march into some big field somewhere and all form up into them oblongs, and then a bloke with the feathery helmet gives the order, and you all forms up into big arrows—”
“Good gods, do people really do that? I thought it was just how they drew the battle plans!”
“Well, the old duke, sir, he did it by the book…anyway, it’s just a case of watching your back and walloping any bloke in the wrong uniform. But…” Fred Colon’s face screwed up in agonized thought, “well, when you’re a copper, well, you dunno the good guys from the bad guys without a map, miss, and that’s a fact.”
“But…there’s military law, isn’t there?”
“Well, yes…but when it’s pissing with rain and you’re up to your tonk—your waist in dead horses and someone gives you an order, that ain’t the time to look up the book of rules, miss. Anyway, most of it’s about when you’re allowed to get shot, sir.”
“Oh, I’m sure there’s more to it than that, sergeant.”
“Oh, prob’ly, sir,” Colon conceded diplomatically.
“I’m sure there’s lots of stuff about not killing enemy soldiers who’ve surrendered, for instance.”
“Oh, yerss, there’s that, captain. Doesn’t say you can’t duff ’em up a bit, of course. Give ’em a little something to remember you by.”
“Not torture?” said Angua.
“Oh, no, miss. But…” Memory Lane for Colon had turned into a bad road through a dark valley “…well, when your best mate’s got an arrow in his eye an’ there’s blokes and horses screamin’ all round you and you’re scared shi—you’re really scared, an’ you come across one of the enemy…well, for some reason or other you’re got this kinda urge to give him a bit of a…nudge, sort of thing. Just…you know…like, maybe in twenty years’ time his leg’ll