Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [116]
“There’s other gates down there, sah,” said Dickins doubtfully.
“Yes, but if they take Shambling they get right into Elm Street and have a nice long gallop, right into where we’re not expecting them,” said Vimes.
“But…you are expecting them, sah.”
Vimes just gave him a blank look, which sergeants are quite good at deciphering.
“As good as done, sah!” said Dickins happily.
“But I want a decent presence at all the barricades,” said Vimes. “And a couple of patrols that can go wherever there’s trouble. Sergeant, you know how to do it.”
“Right, sah.” Dickins saluted smartly and grinned.
He turned to the assembled citizenry.
“All right, you shower!” he yelled. “Some of you has been in a regiment, I know it! How many of you knows ‘All the Little Angels’?”
A few of the more serious class of mementoes rose in the air.
“Very good! Already we has a choir! Now, this is a soldier’s song, see? You don’t look like soldiers but by the gods I’ll see you sounds like ’em! You’ll pick it up as we goes along! Right turn! March! ‘All the little angels rise up, rise up, all the little angels rise up high!’ Sing it, you sons of mothers!”
The marchers picked up the response from those who knew it.
“How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high? They rise heads up, heads up, heads up—” sang out Dickins as they turned the corner.
Vimes listened as the refrain died away.
“That’s a nice song,” said young Sam, and Vimes realized that he was hearing it for the first time.
“It’s an old soldiers’ song,” he said.
“Really, Sarge? But it’s about angels.”
Yes, thought Vimes, and it’s amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It’s a real soldiers’ song: sentimental, with dirty bits.
“As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,” he said. “I’ve seen old men cry when they sing it,” he added.
“Why? It sounds cheerful.”
They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You’ll learn. I know you will.
After a while, the patrols came back. Major Mountjoy-Standfast was bright enough not to ask for written reports. They took too long and weren’t very well spelled. One by one, the men told the story. Sometimes Captain Wrangle, who was plotting things on the map, would whistle under his breath.
“It’s huge, sir. It really is! Nearly a quarter of the city’s behind barricades down there!”
Major rubbed his forehead and turned to Trooper Gabitass, the last man in and the one who seemed to have taken pains to get the most information.
“They’re all on a sort of line, sir. So I rode up to the one in Heroes Street, with me helmet off and looking off-duty, sort of thing, and I asked what was it all about. A man shouted down that everything was all right, thank you very much, and they’d finished all the barricades for now. I said what about law and order, and they said we’ve got plenty, thank you.”
“No one fired at you?”
“No, sir. Wish I could say the same round here, people were throwing stones at me and an old lady empty a pissp—a utensil all over me from her window. Er…there’s something else, sir. Er…”
“Out with it, man.”
“I, er, think I recognized a few people. Up on the barricades. Er…they were some of ours, sir…”
Vimes shut his eyes in the hope that the world might become a better place. But when he opened them, it was still full of the pink face of only-just Sergeant Colon.
“Fred,” he said, “I wonder if you fully understand the basic idea here? The soldiers—that’s the other people, Fred—they stay on the outside of the barricade. If they are in the inside, Fred, we don’t, in any real sense, have a bloody barricade. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir. But—”
“You want to do a spell in a regiment, Fred, and one of the things I think you’ll find they’re very hot on indeed is knowing who’s on your side and who is not, Fred.”
“But, sir, they are—”
“I mean, how long have I known you, Fred?”
“Two or three days, sir.”
“Er…right. Yeah. Of course. Seems longer. So why, Fred,