Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett [111]
“We wait for one more shot,” he said. “And then we run for proper cover.”
“I appear…to be losing a lot of blood,” said Lord Vetinari.
“Who would have thought you had it in you,” said Vimes, with the frankness of those probably about to die. “What about you, Carrot?”
“I can move my hand. Hurts like…heck, sir. But you look worse.”
Vimes looked down.
There was blood all over his coat.
“A bit of stone must have caught me,” he said. “I didn’t even feel it!”
He tried to form a mental picture of the gonne.
Six tubes, all in a line. Each one with its lead slug and charge of No.1 powder, delivered into the gonne like crossbow bolts. He wondered how long it’d take to put in another six…
But we’ve got him where we want him! There’s only one way down out of the Tower!
Yep, we might be sitting out here in the open with him shooting lead pellets at us, but we’ve got him just where we want him!
Wheezing and farting nervously, Gaspode moved at a shambling run through the Shades and saw, with a heart that sank even further, a knot of dogs ahead of him.
He pushed and squirmed through the tangle of legs.
Angua was at bay in a ring of teeth.
The barking stopped. A couple of large dogs moved aside, and Big Fido stepped delicately forward.
“So,” he said, “what we have here is not a dog at all. A spy, perhaps? There’s always an enemy. Everywhere. They look like dogs but, inside, they’re not dogs. What were you doing?”
Angua growled.
Oh lor’, thought Gaspode. She could probably take down a few of ’em, but these are street dogs.
He wriggled under a couple of bodies and emerged in the circle. Big Fido turned his red-eyed gaze on him.
“And Gaspode, too,” said the poodle. “I might have known.”
“You leave her alone,” said Gaspode.
“Oh? You’ll fight us all for her, will you?” said Big Fido.
“I got the Power,” said Gaspode. “You know that. I’ll do it. I’ll use it.”
“There’s no time for this!” snarled Angua.
“You won’t do it,” said Big Fido.
“I’ll do it.”
“Every dog’s paw’ll be turned against you—”
“I got the Power, me. You back off, all of you.”
“What power?” said Butch. He was drooling.
“Big Fido knows,” said Gaspode. “He’s studied. Now, me an’ her are going to walk out of here, right? Nice and slow.”
The dogs looked at Big Fido.
“Get them,” he said.
Angua bared her teeth.
The dogs hesitated.
“A wolf’s got a jaw four times stronger’n any dog,” said Gaspode. “And that’s just a ordinary wolf—”
“What are you all?” snapped Big Fido. “You’re the pack! No mercy! Get them!”
But a pack doesn’t act like that, Angua had said. A pack is an association of free individuals. A pack doesn’t leap because it’s told—a pack leaps because every individual, all at once, decides to leap.
A couple of the bigger dogs crouched…
Angua moved her head from side to side, waiting for the first assault…
A dog scraped the ground with its paw…
Gaspode took a deep breath and adjusted his jaw.
Dogs leapt.
“SIT!” said Gaspode, in passable Human.
The command bounced back and forth around the alley, and fifty percent of the animals obeyed. In most cases, it was the hind fifty percent. Dogs in mid-spring found their treacherous legs coiling under them—
“BAD DOG!”
—and this was followed by an overpowering sense of racial shame that made them cringe automatically, a bad move in mid-air.
Gaspode glanced up at Angua as bewildered dogs rained around them.
“I said I got the Power, didn’t I?” he said. “Now run!”
Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things—unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they’re dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog…
But Big Fido’s furious yapping broke the spell.
“Get them!”
Angua galloped over the cobbles. There