Terry Pratchett: Men at Arms

“I've been thinking about this dinner tomorrow night.” he said desperately. “You know, I really don't think I can—”

“Don't be silly,” said Lady Ramkin. “You'll enjoy it. It's time you met the Right People. You know that.”

He nodded mournfully.

“We shall expect you up at the house at eight o'clock, then,” she said. “And don't look like that. It'll help you tremendously . You're far too good a man to spend his nights traipsing around dark wet streets. It's time you got on in the world.”

Vimes wanted to say that he liked traipsing around dark wet streets, but it would be no use. He didn't like it much. It was just what he'd always done. He thought about his badge in the same way he thought about his nose. He didn't love it or hate it. It was just his badge.

“So just you run along. It'll be terrific fun. Have you got a handkerchief?”

Vimes panicked.

“What?”

“Give it to me.” She held it close to his mouth. “Spit…” she commanded.

She dabbed at a smudge on his cheek. One of the Interchangeable Emmas gave a giggle that was just audible. Lady Ramkin ignored it.

“There,” she said. “That's better. Now off you go and keep the streets safe for all of us. And if you want to do something really useful, you could find Chubby.”

“Chubby?”

“He got out of his pen last night.”

“A dragon?”

Vimes groaned, and pulled a cheap cigar out of his pocket. Swamp dragons were becoming a minor nuisance in the city. Lady Ramkin got very angry about it.

People would buy them when they were six inches long and a cute way of lighting fires and then, when they were burning the furniture and leaving corrosive holes in the carpet, the floor and the cellar ceiling underneath it, they'd be shoved out to fend for themselves.

“We rescued him from a blacksmith in Easy Street,” said Lady Ramkin. “I said, ‘My good man, you can use a forge like everyone else’. Poor little thing.”

“Chubby,” said Vimes. “Got a light?”

“He's got a blue collar,” said Lady Ramkin.

“Right, yes.”

“He'll follow you like a lamb if he thinks you've got a charcoal biscuit.”

“Right.” Vimes patted his pockets.

“They're a little bit over-excited in this heat.”

Vimes reached down into a pen of hatchlings and picked up a small one, which flapped its stubby wings excitedly. It spurted a brief jet of blue flame. Vimes inhaled quickly.

“Sam, I really wish you wouldn't do that.”

“Sorry.”

“So if you could get young Carrot and that nice Corporal Nobbs to keep an eye out for—”

“No problem.”

For some reason Lady Sybil, keen of eye in every other respect, persisted in thinking of Corporal Nobbs as a cheeky, lovable rascal. It had always puzzled Sam Vimes. It must be the attraction of opposites. The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.

As he walked down the street in his old leather and rusty mail, with his helmet screwed on his head, and the feel of the cobbles through the worn soles of his boots telling him he was in Acre Alley, no-one would have believed that they were looking at a man who was very soon going to marry the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork.

Chubby was not a happy dragon.

He missed the forge. He'd quite liked it in the forge. He got all the coal he could eat and the blacksmith hadn't been a particularly unkind man. Chubby had not demanded much out of life, and had got it.

Then this large woman had taken him away and put him in a pen. There had been other dragons around. Chubby didn't particularly like other dragons. And people'd given him unfamiliar coal.

He'd been quite pleased when someone had taken him out of the pen in the middle of the night. He'd thought he was going back to the blacksmith.

Now it was dawning on him that this was not happening. He was in a box, he was being bumped around, and now he was getting angry…

Sergeant Colon fanned himself with his clipboard, and then glared at the assembled guards.

He coughed.

“Right then, people,” he said. “Settle down.”

“We are settled down, Fred,” said Corporal Nobbs.

“That's Sergeant to you, Nobby,” said Sergeant Colon.

“What do we have to sit down for anyway? We didn't used to do all this. I feel a right berk, sitting down listenin' to you goin' on about—”

“We got to do it proper, now there's more of us,” said Sergeant Colon. “Right! Ahem. Right. OK. We welcome to the guard today Lance-Constable Detritus— don't salute!— and Lance-Constable Cuddy, also Lance-Constable Angua. We hope you will have a long and—what's that you've got there, Cuddy?”

“What?” said Cuddy, innocently.

“I can't help noticing that you still has got there what appears to be a double-headed throwing axe, lance-constable, despite what I vouchsafed to you earlier re Guard rules.”

“Cultural weapon, sergeant?” said Cuddy hopefully.

“You can leave it in your locker. Guards carry one sword, short, and one truncheon.”

With the exception of Detritus, he added mentally. Firstly, because even the longest sword nestled in the troll's huge hand like a toothpick, and secondly, because until they'd got this saluting business sorted out he wasn't about to see a member of the Watch nail his own hand to his own ear. He'd have a truncheon, and like it. Even then, he'd probably beat himself to death.

Trolls and dwarfs! Dwarfs and trolls! He didn't deserve it, not at his time of life. And that wasn't the worst of it.

He coughed again. When he read from his clipboard, it was in the sing-song voice of someone who learned his public speaking at school.

“Right,” he said again, a little uncertainly. “So. Says here—”

“Sergeant?”

“Now wh—Oh, it's you, Corporal Carrot. Yes?”

“Aren't you forgetting something, sergeant?” said Carrot.

“I dunno,” said Colon cautiously. “Am I?”

“About the recruits, sarge. Something they've got to take?” Carrot prompted.

Sergeant Colon rubbed his nose. Let's see… they had, as per standing orders, taken and signed for one shirt (mail, chain) one helmet, iron and copper, one breastplate, iron (except in the case of Lance-Constable Angua, who'd need to be fitted special, and Lance-Constable Detritus, who'd signed for a hastily adapted piece of armour which had once belonged to a war elephant), one truncheon, oak, one emergency pike or halberd, one crossbow, one hourglass, one short sword (except for Lance-Constable Detritus) and one badge, office of, Night Watchman's, copper.

“I think they've got the lot, Carrot,” he said. “All signed for. Even Detritus got someone to make an X for him.”

“They've got to take the oath, sarge.”

“Oh. Er. Have they?”

“Yes, sarge. It's the law.”

Sergeant Colon looked embarrassed. It probably was the law, at that. Carrot was much better at this sort of thing. He knew the laws of Ankh-Morpork by heart. He was the only person who did. All Colon knew was that he'd never taken an oath when he joined, and as for Nobby, the best he'd ever get to an oath was something like “bugger this for a game of soldiers”.

“All right, then,” he said. “You've all, er, got to take the oath… eh… and Corporal Carrot will show you how. Did you take the, er, oath when you joined us, Carrot?”

“Oh, yes, sarge. Only no-one asked me, so I gave it to myself, quiet like.”

“Oh? Right. Carry on, then.”

Carrot stood up and removed his helmet. He smoothed down his hair. Then he raised his right hand.

“Raise your right hands, too,” he said. “Er… that's the one nearest Lance-Constable Angua, Lance-Constable Detritus. And repeat after me…” He closed his eyes and his lips moved for a moment, as though he was reading something off the inside of his skull.