Thud! - Terry Pratchett [91]
—Young Sam, sleeping peacefully. On the wall, the little lamb rocked the night away.
Sam Vimes picked up his son, wrapped in his blue blanket, and sagged to his knees. He hadn’t drawn breath all the way up the stairs, and now his body cashed its checks, sucking in air and redemption in huge, racking sobs. Tears boiled out of him, shaking him wretchedly…
Through the running, wet blur, he saw something on the floor. There, on the rug, was the rag ball, the hoop, and the wooly snake, lying where they’d fallen.
The ball had rolled, more or less, into the middle of the hoop. The snake lay half-uncoiled, its head resting on the edge of the circle.
Together, in this weak nursery light, they looked at first glance like a big eye with a tail.
“Sir? Is everything all right?”
Vimes looked up and focused on the red face of Willikins, out of breath.
“Er…yeah…what?…yeah…fine…thanks,” he managed, summoning his scattered senses. “Fine, Willikins. Thank you.”
“One must’ve got past me in the dark—”
“Huh? Yeah, very remiss of you, then,” said Vimes, getting to his feet but still clutching his son to him. “I’d just bet most butlers ’round here would have taken out all three with one swipe of their polishing cloth, right?”
“Are you all right, sir? Because—”
“But you went to the Shamlegger School of Butlering!” Vimes giggled. His knees were trembling. Part of him knew what this was all about. After the terror came that drunken feeling, when you were still alive and suddenly everything was funny. “I mean, other butlers just know how to cut people dead with a look, but you, Willikins, you know how to cut them dead with—”
“Listen, sir! He’s got outside, sir!” said Willikins urgently. “So is Lady Sybil!”
Vimes’s grin froze.
“Shall I take the young man, sir?” Willikins said, reaching.
Vimes backed away. A troll with a crowbar and a tub of grease would not have wrested his son from him.
“No! But give me that knife! And go and make sure Purity is all right!”
Clutching Young Sam to him, he ran back downstairs, across the hall, and out into the garden. It was stupid, stupid, stupid. He told himself that later. But right now Sam Vimes was thinking only in primary colors. It had been hard, hard, to go into the nursery in the face of the images that thronged his imagination. He was not going to go through that ever again. And the rage flowed back, easily, under control now. Smooth like a river of fire. He’d find them all, all of them, and they would burn…
The main dragon shed could only be reached now by dodging around three big cast-iron flame-deflector shields, put in place two months ago; dragon breeding was not a hobby for sissies or people who minded having to repaint the whole side of the house occasionally. There were big iron doors at either end; Vimes headed toward one at random, ran into the dragon shed, and bolted the door behind him.
It was always warm in there, because the dragons burped all the time; it was that or explode, which occasionally did happen. And there was Sybil, in full dragon-keeping gear, walking calmly between the pens with a bucket in each hand, and behind her the doors at the other end were opening, and there was a short, dark figure, and there was a rod with a little pilot flame on the end, and—
“Look out! Behind you!” Vimes yelled.
His wife stared at him, turned around, dropped the buckets, and started to shout something.
And then the flame blossomed. It hit Sybil in the chest, splashed across the pens, and went out abruptly. The dwarf looked down and began to thump the pipe desperately.
The pillar of flame that was Lady Sybil said, in an authoritative voice that brooked no disobeying:
“Lie down, Sam. Right now.” And Sybil dropped to the sandy floor as, all down the lines of pens, dragon heads rose on long dragon necks.
Their nostrils were flaring. They were breathing in.
They’d been challenged. They’d been offended. And they’d just had their supper.
“Good boys,