Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [132]
Madam counted slowly to ten before she screamed. That seemed long enough.
Lord Winder got to his feet and looked up at the black-clad figure.
“Another one? Where did you creep in from?”
I DO NOT CREEP.
Winder’s mind felt even fuzzier than it had done over the past few years, but he was certain about cake. He’d been eating cake, and now there wasn’t any. Through the mists, he saw it, apparently close, but, when he tried to reach it, a long way away.
A certain realization dawned on him.
“Oh,” he said.
YES, said Death.
“Not even time to finish my cake?”
NO. THERE IS NO MORE TIME, EVEN FOR CAKE. FOR YOU, THE CAKE IS OVER. YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE.
A grapnel thudded into the wall beside Vimes. There were shouts along the barricade. More hooks snaked up and bit into the wood.
Another rain of arrows clattered on the roofs of the houses. The attackers weren’t ready to risk hitting their own side, but arrows were snapping and bouncing in the street below. Vimes heard shouts and the clang of arrows on armor.
A sound made him turn. A helmeted head rose level with his, and the face beneath it blanched in terror when it saw Vimes.
“That was my egg, you bastard!” he screamed, punching the nose. “With soldiers!”
The man fell back, by the sound of it, onto other climbers. Men were yelling all along the parapet.
Vimes pulled out his truncheon. “At ’em, lads!” he yelled. “Truncheons! Nothing fancy! Bop ’em on the fingers and let gravity do the work! They’re goin’ down!”
He ducked, pressing close to the wood, and tried to find a spyhole—
“They’re using big catapults,” said Sandra, who’d found a gap a few feet away. “There’s a—”
Vimes pulled her away.
“What are you still doing up here?” he roared.
“It’s safer than the street!” she yelled back, nose to nose with him.
“Not if one of those grapnels hits you it isn’t!” He grabbed his knife. “Here, take this…you see a rope anywhere, cut it!”
He scurried along behind the shelter of wobbling parapet, but the defenders were doing very well. It wasn’t exactly rocket magic, in any case. The people at ground level were firing out through any crack they could find and, while aiming was not easy, it didn’t need to be. There is nothing like the zip and zing of arrows around them to make people nervous at their work.
And the climbers were too bunched up. They had to be. If they tried attacking on a broad front there’d be three defenders to greet each man. So they were in one another’s way, and every falling man would take a couple more down with him, and the barricade was full of little gaps and holes where a defender with a spear could seriously prod those trying to climb up the outside.
This is stupid, Vimes thought. It’d take a thousand men to break through, and that’d only be when the last fifty ran up the slope made of the bodies of all the rest of them. Someone out there is doing the old hit-them-at-their-strongest-point-to-show-’em-we-mean-business thinking. Ye gods, is this how we won our wars?
So how would I have dealt with this? Well, I’d have said, “Detritus, remove the barricade” and made sure that the defenders heard me, that’s what I’d have done. End of problem.
There was a scream from further along the parapet. A grapnel had caught one of the watchmen and pulled him hard against the wood. Vimes reached him in time to see a hook dragged into the man’s body, through breastplate and mail, as an attacker hauled himself up—
Vimes caught the man’s sword arm in one hand and punched him with the other, letting him tumble into the melee below.
The stricken watchman was Nancyball. His face was blue-white, his mouth opened and shut soundlessly, and blood pooled around his feet. It dripped through the planks.
“Let’s get the bloody thing out—” Wiglet said, grabbing the hook. Vimes pushed him away, as a couple of arrows hummed overhead.
“That could do more damage. Call up some lads, take him down really carefully, and get him to Lawn.” Vimes snatched up Nancyball’s truncheon and brought it