Terry Pratchett - Snuff

‘In point of fact, sir,’ said Willikins smoothly, ‘I am employed by Commander Vimes as a gentleman’s gentleman, and I require this crossbow because sometimes his socks fight back.’ He looked at Vimes. ‘Do you have any instructions, commander?’ and then he shouted, ‘Don’t move, mister, because as far as I know a blacksmith needs two hands to work with.’ He turned back to Vimes. ‘Do excuse that interjection, commander, but I know his sort.’

‘Willikins, I rather think you are his sort.’

‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir, and I wouldn’t trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.’

‘Now, I want you to put that bloody thing down, Willikins. People could get hurt!’ Vimes said in his formal voice.

‘Yes, sir, that would have been my intention. I could not face her ladyship if anything had happened to you.’

Vimes looked from Willikins to Jethro. Here was a boil that needed lancing. But you couldn’t blame the lad. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought the same way himself, many times. ‘Willikins,’ he said, ‘please put that wretched thing down carefully and get out your notebook. Thank you . Now please write down as follows: “I, Samuel Vimes, somewhat reluctantly the Duke of Ankh, do intend to Duke it out, ha-ha, with my friend Jethro …” What’s your full name again, Jethro?’

‘Now look here, mister, I didn’t—’

‘I asked you your damn name, mister! Jiminy, what’s his surname?’

‘Jefferson,’ said the landlord, holding his truncheon like a security blanket. ‘But look, your grace, you don’t want to go …’

Vimes ignored him and went on, ‘Now where was I? Oh, yes: “my friend Jethro Jefferson, in a friendly fight for the ownership of the Manor and environs, whatever the hell they are, which will go to the which of us that does not first cry ‘uncle’, and should it be myself that utters the same, there will be no repercussions of any sort upon my friend Jethro, or on my man Willikins, who pleaded with me not to engage in this friendly bout of fisticuffs.” Got that, Willikins? I’ll even give you a get-out-of-jail-free card to show to her ladyship if I get bruised. Now give it to me to sign.’

Willikins handed over the notebook with reluctance. ‘I don’t think it’ll work on her ladyship, sir. Look, dukes aren’t expected to go around—’ His voice faltered in the face of Vimes’s smile.

‘You were going to say that dukes shouldn’t fight, weren’t you, Willikins? And if you had, I would have said that the word “duke” absolutely means that you do fight.’

‘Oh, very well, sir,’ said Willikins, ‘but perhaps you ought to warn him …?’

Willikins was interrupted by the pub’s customers pushing their way out at speed and running through the village, leaving Jethro standing alone and bewildered. Halfway towards the man, Vimes turned to look back at Willikins and said, ‘You may think you see me lighting a cigar, Willikins, but on this occasion, I think, your eyes may turn out to be at fault, do you understand?’

‘Yes, and in fact I am deaf as well, commander.’

‘Good lad. Now let’s get outside where there’s less glass and a better view.’

Jethro looked like a man who had had the ground cut from under his feet but didn’t know how to fall down.

Vimes lit his cigar and savoured, just for a moment, the forbidden fruit. Then he offered the packet to the blacksmith, who waved it away without a word.

‘Very sensible,’ said Vimes. ‘Now then, I’d better tell you that at least once a week, even these days, I have to fight people who’re trying to kill me with everything from swords to chairs and in one case a very large salmon. They probably don’t actually want to kill me, but they’ll try to stop me arresting them. Look,’ he waved a hand at the landscape in general, ‘all this … stuff, just happened, whether I wanted it to or not. By trade I’m just a copper.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jethro, glaring at him. ‘Stamping on the faces of the struggling masses!’

Vimes was used to this sort of thing, and put it mildly. ‘Can’t tread on their faces these days, my grinder gets in the way. All right, not very funny, I admit.’ Vimes was aware that people were coming back down the lane. They included women and children. It looked as though the pub’s clientele had roused the neighbourhood. He turned to Jethro. ‘Are we going to do this by the Marquis of Fantailer’s Rules?’

‘What are they?’ said the blacksmith, waving at the oncoming horde.

‘Rules of sparring by the Marquis of Fantailer,’ said Vimes.

‘If they was written by a marquis I don’t want no truck with them!’

Vimes nodded. ‘Willikins?’

‘I heard that, commander, and have recorded it in my notebook: “refused Fantailer”.’

‘Well then, Mister Jefferson,’ said Vimes. ‘I suggest we ask Mister Jiminy to start the proceedings?’

‘I want your lackey to write down in that book of his that my mum won’t get put out of her cottage, whatever happens, right?’

‘It’s a deal,’ said Vimes. ‘Willikins, please make a memorandum that Mister Jefferson’s old mum should not be thrown out of her cottage, hit with sticks, put in the stocks or otherwise manhandled in any way, understand?’

Willikins, trying ineffectually to hide a smile, licked his pencil and wrote industriously. Vimes, less noisily, made a mental note and the note said: ‘The ferocity is draining out of this lad. He is wondering if he actually might get killed. I haven’t thrown a punch, not one little punch, and he is already preparing for the worst. Of course, the right way to go about it is to prepare for the best.’

The crowd was growing by the second. Even as Vimes looked on, people came down the lane carrying a very old man on a mattress, their progress accelerated by his delight in hitting them on the back of the legs with his walking stick. Mothers towards the back of the crowd were holding up their children for a better look and, all unknown, every man had a weapon. It was like a peasants’ revolt, without the revolt and with a very polite class of peasant. Men touched their forelocks when Vimes looked in their direction, women curtsied, or at least bobbed up and down a bit, disturbingly out of sequence, like organ pedals trembling.

Jiminy approached Vimes and the blacksmith cautiously and, to judge by the glistening of his face, very apprehensively. ‘Now then, gents, I’m choosing to consider this a little demonstration of fisticuffs, a jolly trial of strength and prowess such as may be found on any summer evening, all friends under the skin, okay?’ There was a pleading look in his eyes as he went on. ‘And when you’ve got it out of your systems there’ll be a pint waiting for each of you on the bar. Please don’t break anything.’ He produced an overused handkerchief from a waistcoat pocket and held it in the air. ‘When this touches the ground, gentlemen …’ he said, backing away very quickly.

The slip of linen seemed to defy gravity for a while, but the moment it touched the ground Vimes caught the blacksmith’s boot in both hands as it swung towards him and said very quietly to the struggling man, ‘A bit previous, weren’t you? And what good has it done you? Hear them all sniggering? I’ll let you off, this time.’

Vimes gave a push as he loosened his grip on the foot, causing Jethro to stagger backwards. Vimes felt a certain pleasure in seeing the man losing it this early, but the blacksmith pulled himself together and rushed at him, and paused, possibly because Vimes was grinning.

‘That’s the ticket, my lad,’ said Vimes, ‘you just saved yourself a dreadful pain in the unmentionables.’ He made fists and beckoned suggestively to his bewildered adversary over the top of his left fist. The man came swinging and got a kick on the kneecap, which floored him, and he was picked up by Vimes, which metaphorically floored him again.