Jingo - Terry Pratchett [65]
“Here would be a good landing area,” he said, pointing with his stick.
His equerry tried to look helpful. “The El Kinte peninsula,” he said. “That’s the closest point to us, sir.”
“Exactly! We can be across the straits in jig time.”
“Very good, sir,” said Lieutenant Hornett, “but…you don’t think the enemy might be expecting us there? It being such an obvious landing site?”
“Not obvious at all to the trained military thinker, sir! They won’t be expecting us there precisely because it is so obvious, d’y’see?”
“You mean…they’ll think only a complete idiot would land there, sir?”
“Correct! And they know we’re not complete idiots, sir, and therefore that will be the last place they will be expecting us, d’y’see? They’ll be expecting us somewhere like”—his stick stabbed into the sand—“here.”
Hornett looked closely. In the street outside, someone started to bang a drum.
“Oh, you mean Eritor,” he said. “Where I believe there is a concealed landing area, and two days’ forced march through good cover would have us at the heart of the empire, sir.”
“Exactly!”
“Whereas landing at El Kinte means three days over sand dunes and past the fortified city of Gebra…”
“Precisely. Wide-open spaces! And that is where we can practice the art of warfare.” Lord Rust raised his voice above the drumming. “That’s how you settle these things. One decisive battle. Us on one side, the Klatchians on the other. THAT IS HOW THESE THINGS ARE D—”
He threw down his pointer. “Who the devil is making that infernal noise?”
The equerry walked across to the window. “It’s someone else recruiting, sir,” he said.
“But we’re all here!”
The equerry hesitated, as the bearers of bad tidings to short-tempered men often do.
“It’s Vimes, sir…”
“Recruiting for the Watch?”
“Er…no, my lord. For a regiment. Er…the banner says ‘Sir Samuel Vimes’s First of Foot,’ my lord—”
“The arrogance of the man. Go and—No, I’ll go myself!”
There was a crowd in the street. In the center there rose the bulk of Constable Dorfl, and a key thing about the golem was that if he was banging a drum then no one was going to ask him to stop. No one except possibly Lord Rust, who strode up and snatched the drumsticks out of his hands.
“Yerss, it are species of your choice’s life in der First of Foot!” shouted Sergeant Detritus, unaware of the events going on behind him. “You learnin’ a trade! You learnin’ self-respek! Also you get spiffy uniform plus all der boots you can eat—here, dat’s my banner!”
“What’s the meaning of this?” said Rust, flinging the homemade banner on to the ground. “Vimes can’t do this!”
A figure detached itself from the wall, where it had been watching the show.
“You know, I rather think I can,” said Vimes. He handed Rust a piece of paper. “It’s all here, my lord. With references citing the highest authorities, in case you are in any doubt.”
“Citing the—?”
“On the role of a knight, my lord. In fact the duties of a knight, funnily enough. A lot of it is pretty damn stupid stuff, riding around the place on one of those bloody great horses with curtains round it and so on, but one of them says in time of need a knight has to raise and maintain—you’ll laugh when I tell you this—a body of armed soldiers! No one could have been more surprised than me, I don’t mind telling you! Seems there’s nothing for it but I have to go out and get some chaps together. Of course, most of the Watch have joined, well, you know how it is, disciplined lads, anxious to do their bit, so that saved me a bit of effort. Except for Nobby Nobbs, ’cos he says if he leaves it till Thursday he’s going to have enough white feathers for a mattress.”
Rust’s expression would have preserved meat for a year.
“This is a nonsense,” he said. “And you, Vimes, certainly are no knight. Only a king can make—”
“There’s a good few lordships in this city created by the Patricians,