Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [137]
“An amnesty means we ain’t,” said Dickins. “It means everyone pretends nothing really happened.”
“All right, then,” said Wiglet. “Are we going to get medals? What I mean is, if we’ve been…” he concentrated “…val-i-ent defenders of freedom, that sounds like medal time to me.”
“I reckon we should simply have barricaded the whole city,” said Colon.
“Yeah, Fred,” said Snouty, “but then that’s mean the bad people, hnah, would be in here with us.”
“Right, but we’d be in charge,” said Fred.
Sergeant Dickins puffed on his pipe, and said: “Lads, you’re just flapping your mouths. There’s been fighting, and here you are with all your arms and legs and walking around in the gods’ good sunlight. That’s winning, that is. You’ve won, see. The rest is just gravy.”
No one spoke for a while until young Sam said: “But Nancyball didn’t win.”
“We lost five men in all,” said Dickins. “Two got hit by arrows, one fell off the barricade and one cut his own throat by accident. It happens.”
They stared at him.
“Oh, you thought it didn’t?” said Dickins. “You get a lot of worried people and edged weapons and a lot of scurrying, all in one place. You’d be amazed at the casualties you can get even when you’re fifty miles from an enemy. People die.”
“Did Nancyball have a mum?” said Sam.
“He was brought up by his gran, but she’s dead,” said Wiglet.
“No one else?”
“Dunno. He never talked about them. He never talked about anything much,” said Wiglet.
“What you do is, you have a whip-round,” said Dickins firmly. “Wreath, coffin, the lot. You don’t let anyone else do it. And another thing…”
Vimes sat a little way from the men, watching the street. There were groups of former defenders and veterans and watchmen everywhere. He watched a man buy a pie from Dibbler, and shook his head, and grinned. On a day when you couldn’t give steak away, some people would still buy a pie from Dibbler. It was a triumph of salesmanship and the city’s famously atrophied taste buds.
The song began. Whether it was a requiem or a victory chant he didn’t know, but Dickins started it and the rest joined in, each man singing as though he was all by himself and unaware of the rest.
“—see the little angels rise up high…” Others were picking up the tune.
Reg Shoe was also sitting all alone, on a piece of barricade currently not in dispute, still clutching the flag and looking so miserable that Vimes felt moved to go and speak to him.
“—do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high?”
“It could have been good, Sergeant,” said Reg, looking up. “It really could. A city where a man can breathe free.”
“—they rise ARSE up, arse up, arse up, see the little angels rise up high…”
“Wheeze free, Reg,” said Vimes, sitting down next to him. “This is Ankh-Morpork.” And they all hit that line together, thought the part of him that was listening with the other ear. Strange that they should do that, or maybe not.
“Yeah, make a joke of it. Everyone thinks it’s funny,” said Reg, looking at his feet.
“I don’t know if this’ll help, Reg, but I didn’t even get my hard-boiled egg,” said Vimes.
“And what’s going to happen next?” said Reg, far too sunk in misery to sympathize or, for that matter, notice.
“All the little angels rise up, rise up—”
“I really don’t know. Things’ll get better for a while, I expect. But I don’t know what I’m—”
Vimes stopped. On the far side of the street, oblivious to the traffic, a little wizened old man was sweeping dust out of a doorway.
Vimes stood up and stared. The little man saw him and gave him a wave. And at that moment yet another cart rumbled down the road, piled high with former barricade.
Vimes flung himself flat and stared between the legs and wheels. Yes, the slightly bandy legs and the battered sandals were still there, and still there, too, when the cart had passed, and still there when Vimes started to run across the street, and may have been there when the unregarded