Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett [4]
“Your name, lad?” said Jackrum.
“Igor, thur.”
Jackrum counted the stitches.
“You know, I had a feeling it was going to be,” he said. “And I see you’re eighteen.”
“Awake—!”
“Oh, gods…”
Commander Samuel Vimes put his hands over his eyes.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace?” said the Ankh-Morpork consul to Zlobenia. “Are you ill, Your Grace?”
“What’s your name again, young man?” said Vimes. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been traveling for two weeks and not getting a lot of sleep and I’ve spent all day being introduced to people with difficult names. That’s bad for the brain.”
“It’s Clarence, Your Grace. Clarence Chinny.”
“Chinny?” said Vimes, and Clarence read everything in his expression.
“I’m afraid so, sir,” he said.
“Were you a good fighter at school?” said Vimes.
“No, Your Grace, but no one could beat me over the one-hundred-yard dash.”
Vimes laughed.
“Well, Clarence, any national anthem that starts with ‘Awake!’ is going to lead to trouble. They didn’t teach you this in the Patrician’s Office?”
“Er…no, Your Grace,” said Chinny.
“Well, you’ll find out. Carry on, then.”
“Yes, sir.” Chinny cleared his throat. “The Borogravian National Anthem,” he announced, for the second time.
Awake sorry, Your Grace, ye sons of the Motherland
Taste no more the wine of the sour apples
Woodsman, grasp your choppers!
Farmers, slaughter with the tool formerly used for lifting
beets the foe!
Frustrate the endless wiles of our enemies
We into the darkness march singing
Against the whole world in arms coming
But see the golden light upon the mountain tops!
The new day is a great big fish!
“Er…” Vimes said. “That last bit…?”
“That is a literal translation, Your Grace,” said Clarence nervously. “It means something like ‘an amazing opportunity’ or ‘a glittering prize,’ Your Grace.”
“When we’re not in public, Clarence, ‘sir’ will do. ‘Your Grace’ is just to impress the natives.” Vimes slumped back in his uncomfortable chair, chin in his hand, and then winced.
“Two thousand three hundred miles,” he said, shifting his position. “And it’s freezing on a broomstick, however low they fly. And then the barge, and then the coach…” He winced again. “I read your report. Do you think it’s possible for an entire nation to be insane?”
Clarence swallowed. He’d been told that he was talking to the second most powerful man in Ankh-Morpork, even if the man himself acted as though he was ignorant of the fact. His desk in this chilly tower room was rickety; it had belonged to the head janitor of the Kneck garrison until yesterday. Paperwork cluttered its scarred surface and was stacked in piles behind Vimes’s chair.
Vimes himself did not look, to Clarence, like a duke. He looked like a watchman, which, in fact, Clarence understood, he was. This offended Clarence Chinny. People at the top should look as though they belonged there.
“That’s a very…interesting question, sir,” he said. “You mean the people—”
“Not the people, the nation,” said Vimes. “Borogravia looks off its head to me, from what I’ve read. I expect the people just do the best they can and get on with raising their kids, which, I might say, I’d rather be doing right now, too. Look, you know what I mean. You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.”
“It’s a fascinating idea, sir,” said Clarence diplomatically.
Vimes looked around the room. The walls were bare stone. The windows were narrow. It was damn cold, even on a sunny day. All that bad food, and that bumping about and sleeping on bad beds…and all that traveling in the dark, too, on dwarf barges in their secret canals under the mountains, the gods alone knew what intricate diplomacy Lord Vetinari had pulled off to get that, although the Low King owed Vimes a few favors…
—all of that for this cold castle over this cold river between these stupid countries, with their stupid war. He knew what he wanted to do.