Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [101]
“Okay. I won’t, then. Now perhaps—”
“That’s how we work, see? None of the cadres knows about the other ones!”
“Really. Do they know about you?” said Vimes.
For a moment, Reg’s face clouded.
“Pardon?”
“Well, you said you don’t know about them,” said Vimes. “So…do they know about you?” He wanted to add: you’re a cell of one, Reg. The real revolutionaries are silent men with poker-player eyes and probably don’t know or care if you exist. You’ve got the shirt and the haircut and the sash and you know all the songs, but you’re no urban guerrilla. You’re an urban dreamer. You turn over rubbish bins and scrawl on walls in the name of The People, who’d clip you round the ear if they found you doing it. But you believe.
“Ah, so you’re a secret operative,” he said, to get the poor man off the hook.
Reg brightened. “That’s right!” he said. “The people are the sea in which the revolutionary swims!”
“Like swordfishes?” Vimes tried.
“Pardon?” said Reg, without a hint of recognition.
And you’re a flounder, thought Vimes. Ned’s a revolutionary. He knows how to fight and he can think, even if it is on the skew. But, Reg, you really ought to be indoors…
“Well, I can see you’re a dangerous individual,” he said. “We’d better put you where we can keep an eye on you. Hey, that’s right. You can undermine the enemy from within.”
The relieved Reg raised a fist in salute and clambered over the new barricade with revolutionary speed. There was some hurried conversation behind the old makeshift barricade, already being denuded of Mrs. Rutherford’s furniture. This was interrupted by the clatter of hoof-beats from Treacle Mine Road and a sudden burst of instant decisiveness on the part of the remainder of the crowd.
They poured toward the new official barricade, with Lance Constable Vimes bringing up the rear, fairly well hampered by a dining-room chair.
“Mind out for that!” shouted a female voice from somewhere behind him. “It’s one of a set!”
Vimes put his hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“Just give me your crossbow, will you?” he said.
The horsemen came closer.
Sam Vimes was not good at horses. And something in him resented being addressed by anyone eight feet above the ground. He didn’t like the sensation of being looked at by nostrils. He didn’t like being talked down to.
By the time they reached the barricade, he’d clambered around to the front of it and was standing in the middle of the street.
They slowed down. It was probably the way he was moving but held the crossbow in the nonchalant way of someone who knows how to use it but has decided not to, for the moment.
“You, there!” said a trooper.
“Yes?” said Vimes.
“Are you in charge?”
“Yes. Can I help you?”
“Where are your men?”
Vimes jerked a thumb toward the growing barricade. On the top of the heap, Mrs. Rutherford’s father was snoring peacefully.
“But that’s a barricade!” said the trooper.
“Well done.”
“There’s a man waving a flag!”
Vimes turned. Surprisingly, it was Reg. Some of the men had brought out the old flag from Tilden’s office and stuck it on the barricade, and Reg was the sort to wave any flag going.
“Probably high spirits, sir,” said Vimes. “Don’t worry. We’re all fine.”
“It’s a damn barricade, man. A rebel barricade!” said the second trooper. Oh boy, thought Vimes. They have shiny, shiny breastplates. And wonderfully fresh, pink faces.
“Not exactly. In fact, it’s—”
“Are you stupid, fellow? Don’t you know that all barricades are to be torn down by order of the Patrician?”
The third horseman, who had been staring at Vimes, urged his horse a little closer.
“What’s that pip on your shoulder, Officer?” he said.
“Means I’m Sergeant-at-Arms. Special rank. And who’re you?”
“He doesn’t have to tell you that!” said the first trooper.
“Really?” said Vimes. The man was getting on his nerves. “Well, you’re just a trooper and I’m a bleedin’ sergeant, and if you dare speak to me like that again, I’ll have you down off that horse and thump you across the ear, understand?”
Even the horse took a step backward.