Men at Arms (Discworld #15)(103)

The three Watchmen stepped over the wreckage.

Vimes said nothing until they were well out in the street, and then he turned to Carrot.

'Why did he call you—'

'If you'll excuse me, I'll take her back to the Watch House.'

Vimes looked down at Angua's corpse and felt a train of thought derail itself. Some things were too hard to think about. He wanted a nice quiet hour somewhere to put it all together. Personal isn't the same as important. What sort of person could think like that? And it dawned on him that while Ankh in the past had had its share of evil rulers, and simply bad rulers, it had never yet come under the heel of a good ruler. That might be the most terrifying prospect of all.

'Sir?' said Carrot, politely.

'Uh. We'll bury her up at Small Gods, how about that?' said Vimes. 'It's sort of a Watch tradition . . .'

'Yes, sir. You go off with Detritus. He's all right when you give him orders. If you don't mind, I don't think I'll be along to the wedding. You know how it is . . .'

'Yes. Yes, of course. Um. Carrot?' Vimes blinked, to drive away suspicions that clamoured for consideration. 'We shouldn't be too hard on Cruces. I hated the bastard like hell, so I want to be fair to him. I know what the gonne does to people. We're all the same, to the gonne. I'd have been just like him.'

'No, captain. You put it down.'

Vimes smiled wanly.

'They call me Mister Vimes,' he said.

Carrot walked back to the Watch House, and laid the body of Angua on the slab in the makeshift morgue. Rigor mortis was already setting in.

He fetched some water and cleaned her fur as best he could.

What he did next would have surprised, say, a troll or a dwarf or anyone who didn't know about the human mind's reaction to stressful circumstances.

He wrote his report. He swept the main room's floor; there was a rota, and it was his turn. He had a wash. He changed his shirt, and dressed the wound on his shoulder, and cleaned his armour, rubbing with wire wool and a graded series of cloths until he could, once again, see his face in it.

He heard, far off, Fondel's 'Wedding March' scored for Monstrous Organ with Miscellaneous Farmyard Noises accompaniment. He fished out a half bottle of rum from what Sergeant Colon thought was his secure hiding place, poured himself a very small amount, and drank a toast to the sound, saying, 'Here's to Mr Vimes and Lady Ramkin!' in a clear, sincere voice which would have severely embarrassed anyone who had heard it.

There was a scratching at the door. He let Gaspode in. The little dog slunk under the table, saying nothing.

Then Carrot went up to his room, and sat in his chair and looked out of the window.

The afternoon wore on. The rain stopped around teatime.

Lights came on, all over the city.

Presently, the moon rose.

The door opened. Angua entered, walking softly.

Carrot turned, and smiled.

'I wasn't certain,' he said. 'But I thought, well, isn't it only silver that kills them? I just had to hope.'

It was two days later. The rain had set in. It didn't pour, it slouched out of the grey clouds, running in rivulets through the mud. It filled the Ankh, which slurped once again through its underground kingdom. It poured from the mouths of gargoyles. It hit the ground so hard there was sort of a mist of ricochets.

It drummed off the gravestones in the cemetery behind the Temple of Small Gods, and into the small pit dug for Acting-Constable Cuddy.

There were always only guards at a guard's funeral, Vimes told himself. Oh, sometimes there were relatives, like Lady Ramkin and Detritus' Ruby here today, but you never got crowds. Perhaps Carrot was right. When you became a guard, you stopped being everything else.

Although there were other people today, standing silently at the railings around the cemetery. They weren't at the funeral, but they were watching it.

There was a small priest who gave the generic fill-in-deceased's-name-here service, designed to be vaguely satisfactory to any gods who might be listening. Then Detritus lowered the coffin into the grave, and the priest threw a ceremonial handful of dirt on to the coffin, except that instead of the rattle of soil there was a very final splat.

And Carrot, to Vimes' surprise, made a speech. It echoed across the soggy ground to the rain-dripping trees. It was really based around the only text you could use on this occasion: he was my friend, he was one of us, he was a good copper.

He was a good copper. That had got said at every guard funeral Vimes had ever attended. If d probably be said even at Corporal Nobbs' funeral, although everyone would have their fingers crossed behind their backs. It was what you had to say.

Vimes stared at the coffin. And then a strange feeling came creeping over him, as insidiously as the rain trickling down the back of his neck. It wasn't exactly a suspicion. If it stayed in his mind long enough it would be a suspicion, but right now it was only a faint tingle of a hunch.

He had to ask. He'd never stop thinking about it if he didn't at least ask.

So as they were walking away from the grave he said, 'Corporal?'

'Yessir?'

'No-one's found the gonne, then?'

'No, sir.'

'Someone said you had it last.'

'I must have put it down somewhere. You know how busy it all was.'

'Yes. Oh, yes. I'm pretty sure I saw you carry most of it out of the Guild . . .'