Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett [77]
She looked up as the door shut behind Vimes.
“Oh, there you are. You’re home early,” she said. “I couldn’t stand the fuss, so I came out here. But I’ll have to go and change soon—”
She stopped when she saw his expression. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”
“I’m not going back,” said Vimes.
“Really? Last week you said you’d do a full watch. You said you were looking forward to it.”
Not much gets past old Sybil, Vimes thought.
She patted his hand.
“I’m glad you’re out of it,” she said.
Corporal Nobbs darted into the Watch House and slammed the door behind him.
“Well?” said Carrot.
“It’s not good,” said Nobby. “They say the trolls are planning to march to the Palace to get Coalface out. There’s gangs of dwarfs and trolls wandering around looking for trouble. And beggars. Lettice was very popular. And there’s a lot of Guild people out there, too. The city,” he said, importantly, “is def’nitely a keg of No. I Powder.”
“How do you like the idea of camping out on the open plain?” said Colon.
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“If anyone puts a match to anything tonight, it’s goodbye Ankh,” said the sergeant morosely. “Usually we can shut the city gates, right? But there’s hardly more’n a few feet of water in the river.”
“You flood the city just to put out fires?” said Angua.
“Yep.”
“Another thing,” said Nobby. “People threw stuff at me!”
Carrot had been staring at the wall. Now he produced a small, battered black book from his pocket, and started to thumb through the pages.
“Tell me,” he said, in a slightly distant voice, “has there been an irretrievable breakdown of law and order?”
“Yeah. For about five hundred years,” said Colon. “Irretrievable breakdown of law’n’order is what Ankh-Morpork is all about.”
“No, I mean more than usual. It’s important.” Carrot turned a page. His lips moved silently as he read.
“Throwing stuff at me sounds like a breakdown in law and order,” said Nobby.
He was aware of their expressions.
“I don’t think we could make that stick,” said Colon.
“It stuck all right,” said Nobby, “and some of it went down my shirt.”
“Why throw things at you?” said Angua.
“It’s ’cos I was a Watchman,” said Nobby. “The dwarfs don’t like the Watch ’cos of Mr. Hammerhock, and the trolls don’t like the Watch ’cos of Coalface being arrested, and people don’t like the Watch ’cos of all these angry dwarfs and trolls around.”
Someone thumped at the door.
“That’s probably an angry mob right now,” said Nobby.
Carrot opened the door.
“It’s not an angry mob,” he announced.
“Ook.”
“It’s an orangutan carrying a stunned dwarf followed by a troll. But he is quite angry, if that’s any help.”
Lady Ramkin’s butler, Willikins, had filled him a big bath. Hah! Tomorrow it’d be his butler, and his bath.
And this wasn’t one of the old hip baths, drag-it-in-front-of-the-fire jobs, no. The Ramkin mansion collected water off the roof into a big cistern, after straining out the pigeons, and then it was heated by an ancient geyser* and flowed along drumming, groaning lead pipes to a pair of mighty brass taps and then into an enamelled tub. There were things laid out on a fluffy towel beside it—huge scrubbing brushes, three kinds of soap, a loofah.
Willikins was standing patiently beside the bath, like a barely heated towel rail.
“Yes?” said Vimes.
“His lordship…that is, her ladyship’s father…he required to have his back scrubbed,” said Willikins.
“You go and help the old geyser stoke the furnace,” said Vimes firmly.
Left alone, he struggled out of his breastplate and threw it in the corner. The chainmail shirt followed it, and the helmet, and the money pouch, and various leather and cotton oddments that came between a Watchman and the world.
And then he sank, gingerly at first, into the suds.
“Try soap. Soap’ll work,” said Detritus.
“Hold still, will you?” said Carrot.
“You’re twisting my head off!”
“Go on, soap him head.”
“Soap your own head!”
There was a thung noise and Cuddy’s helmet came free.
Cuddy emerged, blinking, into the light. He focused