The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett [119]
Vimes heard a sound down beside him. Gavin was watching intently, making urgent little noises in his throat. A tiny part of Vimes, the little rock hard core of cynicism, thought: All right for you, then.
Steam was rising off Wolfgang. He shone in the torchlight. The blond hair across his shoulders gleamed like a slipped halo.
Angua knelt down by the body, face impassive. Vimes had been expecting a scream of rage.
He heard her crying.
Beside Vimes, Gavin whined. Vimes stared down at the wolf. He looked at Angua, trying to lift Carrot, and then he looked at Wolfgang. And then back again.
“Anyone else?” said Wolfgang, dancing back and forth on the boards. “How about you, Civilized?”
“Sam!” hissed Sybil. “You can’t—”
Vimes drew his sword. It wouldn’t make any difference, now. Wolfgang wasn’t playing now, he wasn’t punching and running away. Those arms could push a fist through Vimes’s rib cage and out the other side—
A blur went past at shoulder height. Gavin struck Wolfgang in the throat, knocking him over. They rolled across the bridge, Wolfgang changing back to wolf shape to lock jaw against jaw. They broke, circled, and went for one another again.
Dreamlike, Vimes heard a small voice say: “He wouldn’t last five minutes back home fightin’ like that. The silly bugger’s gonna get creamed, fightin’ like that! Stuff the Marquis of flamin’ Fantailler!”
Gaspode was sitting bolt upright, stubby tail vibrating.
“The daftie! This is how you win a dogfight!”
As the wolves rolled over and over, Wolfgang tearing at Gavin’s belly, Gaspode arrived growling and yapping and launched himself in the general direction of the werewolf’s hindquarters.
There was a yip. Gaspode’s growling was suddenly muffled. Wolfgang leapt vertically. Gavin sprang. The three hit the parapet of the bridge together, knocked the crumbling stones aside, hung for a moment in a snarling ball, and then dropped down into the roaring whiteness of the river.
The whole of it, from the moment Tantony had crossed the bridge, had taken much less than a minute.
The baroness was staring down into the gorge. Keeping his eye on her, Vimes spoke to Detritus.
“Are you sure you’re werewolf-proof, Sergeant?”
“Pretty much, sir. Anyway, I got the bow wound up again.”
“Go into the castle and fetch the resident Igor, then,” said Vimes calmly. “If anyone even tries to stop you, shoot them. And shoot anyone standing near them.”
“No problem about dat, sir.”
“We’re not at home to Mister Reasonable, Sergeant.”
“I do not hear him knockin’, sir.”
“Go to it, then. Sergeant Angua?”
She did not look up.
“Sergeant Angua!”
Now she looked up.
“How can you be so…so cool?” she snarled. “He’s hurt…”
“I know. Go and talk to those watchmen hanging around on the other end of the bridge. They look scared. I don’t want any accidents. We’re going to need them. Cheery, cover Carrot and Tantony with something. Keep them warm.”
I wish there was something to keep me warm, he thought. The thoughts came slowly, like drips of freezing water. He felt that ice would crackle off him if he moved, that frost would sparkle in his footsteps, that his mind was full of crisp snow.
“And now, madam,” he said, turning back to the baroness, “you will give me the Scone of Stone.”
“He’ll be back!” hissed the baroness. “That fall was nothing! And he’ll find you.”
“For the last time…the stone of the dwarfs. The wolves are waiting out there. The dwarfs are waiting down in the city. Give me the stone, and we all might survive. This is diplomacy. Don’t let me try anything else.”
“I have only to say the word—”
Angua began to growl. Sybil strode toward and grabbed the baroness.
“You never answered a single letter! All those years I wrote to you!”
The baroness stared at her in amazement, as people so often did when struck with Sybil’s sharp non sequiturs.
“If you know we’ve got the Scone,” she said to Vimes, “then you know it’s not the real one. And much good may it do the dwarfs!”
“Yes, you had it made in Ankh-Morpork. Made in Ankh-Morpork! They should