Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett [7]
“What happens then?”
“Sergeant Colon and Nobby and the rest of ’em will come running along just as soon as they can.”
Lance-Constable Angua scanned the hazy horizon.
She smiled.
Carrot blushed.
Constable Angua had mastered saluting first go. She wouldn’t have a full uniform yet, not until someone had taken a, well, let’s face it, a breastplate along to old Remitt the armorer and told him to beat it out really well here and here, and no helmet in the world would cover all that mass of ash-blond hair but, it occurred to Carrot, Constable Angua wouldn’t need any of that stuff really. People would be queuing up to get arrested.
“So what do we do now?” she said.
“Proceed back to the Watch House, I suppose,” said Carrot. “Sergeant Colon’ll be reading out the evening report, I expect.”
She’d mastered “proceeding”, too. It’s a special walk devised by beat officers throughout the multiverse—a gentle lifting of the instep, a careful swing of the leg, a walking pace that can be kept up hour after hour, street after street. Lance-Constable Detritus wasn’t going to be ready to learn “proceeding” for some time, or at least until he stopped knocking himself out every time he saluted.
“Sergeant Colon,” said Angua. “He was the fat one, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Why has he got a pet monkey?”
“Ah,” said Carrot. “I think it is Corporal Nobbs to whom you refer…”
“It’s human? He’s got a face like a join-the-dots puzzle!”
“He does have a very good collection of boils, poor man. He does tricks with them. Just never get between him and a mirror.”
Not many people were on the streets. It was too hot, even for an Ankh-Morpork summer. Heat radiated from every surface. The river slunk sullenly in the bottom of its bed, like a student around 11 A.M. People with no pressing business out of doors lurked in cellars and only came out at night.
Carrot moved through the baking streets with a proprietorial air and a slight patina of honest sweat, occasionally exchanging a greeting. Everyone knew Carrot. He was easily recognizable. No one else was about two meters tall with flame-red hair. Besides, he walked as if he owned the city.
“Who was that man with the granite face I saw in the Watch House?” said Angua, as they proceeded along Broad Way.
“That was Detritus the troll,” said Carrot. “He used to be a bit of a criminal, but now he’s courting Ruby she says he’s got to—”
“No, that man,” said Angua, learning as had so many others that Carrot tended to have a bit of trouble with metaphors. “Face like thu—face like someone very disgruntled.”
“Oh, that was Captain Vimes. But he’s never been gruntled, I think. He’s retiring at the end of the week, and getting married.”
“Doesn’t look very happy about it,” said Angua.
“Couldn’t say.”
“I don’t think he likes the new recruits.”
The other thing about Constable Carrot was that he was incapable of lying.
“Well, he doesn’t like trolls much,” he said. “We couldn’t get a word out of him all day when he heard we had to advertise for a troll recruit. And then we had to have a dwarf, otherwise they’d be trouble. I’m a dwarf, too, but the dwarfs here don’t believe it.”
“You don’t say?” said Angua, looking up at him.
“My mother had me by adoption.”
“Oh. Yes, but I’m not a troll or a dwarf,” said Angua sweetly.
“No, but you’re a w—”
Angua stopped. “That’s it, is it? Good grief! This is the Century of the Fruitbat, you know. Ye gods, does he really think like that?”
“He’s a bit set in his ways.”
“Congealed, I should think.”
“The Patrician said we had to have a bit of representation from the minority groups,” said Carrot.
“Minority groups!”
“Sorry. Anyway, he’s only got a few more days—”
There was a splintering noise across the street. They turned as a figure sprinted out of a tavern and hared away up the street, closely followed—at least for a few steps—by a fat man in an apron.
“Stop! Stop! Unlicensed thief!”
“Ah,” said Carrot. He crossed the road, with Angua padding along behind him, as the