Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett [5]
Vimes picked up some paperwork, fiddled with it, and threw it down again.
“To hell with this,” he said. “What’s happening out there?”
“I understand there are a few pockets of resistance in some of the more inaccessible areas of the Keep, but they are being dealt with. For all practical purposes the Keep is in our hands. That was a clever ruse of yours, Your Gr—sir.”
Vimes sighed. “No, Clarence, it was a dull old ruse. It should not be possible to get men into a fortress dressed as washerwomen. Three of them had moustaches, for goodness sake!”
“The Borogravians are rather…old-fashioned about things like that, sir. On that subject, we appear to have zombies in the lower crypts. Dreadful things. A lot of high-ranking Borogravian military men were interred down there over the centuries, apparently.”
“Really? What are they doing now?”
Clarence raised his eyebrows. “Lurching, sir, I think. Groaning. Zombie things. Something seems to have stirred them up.”
“Us, probably,” said Vimes. He got up, strode across the room, and pulled open the big heavy door.
“Reg!” he yelled.
After a moment, another watchman appeared and saluted. He was gray-faced and Clarence couldn’t help noticing when the man saluted that the hand and fingers were held together with stitching.
“Have you met Constable Shoe, Clarence?” said Vimes cheerfully. “One of my staff. Been dead for more than thirty years and loves every minute of it, eh, Reg?”
“Right, Mister Vimes,” said Reg, grinning and revealing a lot of brown teeth.
“Some fellow countrymen of yours down in the cellar, Reg,” said Vimes.
“Oh, dear. Lurching, are they?”
“’Fraid so, Reg.”
“I shall go and have a word with them,” said Reg. He saluted again and marched out, with a hint of a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? He’s, er, from here?” said Chinny, who had gone quite pale.
“Oh, no. The undiscovered country,” said Vimes. “He’s dead. However, credit where it’s due, he hasn’t let that stop him. You didn’t know we have a zombie in the Watch, Clarence?”
“Er…no, sir. I haven’t been back to the city in five years.” He swallowed. “I gather things have changed.”
Horribly so, in Clarence Chinny’s opinion. Being consul to Zlobenia had been an easy job, which left him a lot of time to get on with his business. And then the big semaphore towers marched through, all along the valley, and suddenly Ankh-Morpork was an hour away. Before the clacks, a letter from Ankh-Morpork would take more than two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect a reply overnight! He’d been quite glad when Borogravia had destroyed several of those wretched towers. And then all hell had been let loose.
“We’ve got all sorts in the Watch,” said Vimes. “And we bloody well need ’em now, Clarence, with Zlobenians and Borogravians scrapping in the streets over some damn quarrel that began a thousand years ago. It’s worse than dwarfs and trolls! All because someone’s great-to-the-power-of-umpteen grandmother slapped the face of someone’s great-ditto uncle! Borogravia and Zlobenia can’t even agree on a border! They chose the river, and that changes course every spring! Suddenly the clacks towers are now on Borogravian soil—or mud, anyway—so the idiots burn them down for religious reasons!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their