Men at Arms (Discworld #15)(43)

Draw their fire, draw their fire . . . he picked up his helmet and balanced it on the end of another quarrel. The thing to do was crouch below the window and . . .

He thought for a moment. Then he shuffled across the floor to the corner, where there was a pole with a hook on the end. Once upon a time it had been used to open the upper windows, now long rusted shut.

He balanced his helmet on the end, wedged himself into the corner, and with a certain amount of effort moved the pole so that the helmet just showed over the window si . . .

Pock.

Splinters flew up from a point on the floor where it would undoubtedly have severely inconvenienced anyone lying on the boards cautiously raising a decoy helmet on a stick.

Vimes smiled. Someone was trying to kill him, and that made him feel more alive than he had done for days.

And they were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer.

He dropped the pole, picked up the crossbow, spun past the window, fired at an indistinct shape on the opera house roof opposite as if the bow could possibly carry across that range, leapt across the room and wrenched at the door. Something smashed into the doorframe as the door swung to behind him.

Then it was down the back stairs, out of the door, over the privy roof, into Knuckle Passage, up the back steps of Zorgo the Retrophrenologist,[15] into Zorgo's operating room and over to the window.

Zorgo and his current patient looked at him curiously.

Pugnant's roof was empty. Vimes turned back and met a pair of puzzled gazes.

' 'Morning, Captain Vimes,' said the retrophrenologist, a hammer still upraised in one massive hand.

Vimes smiled manically.

'Just thought—'he began, and then went on,'—I saw an interesting rare butterfly on the roof over there.'

Troll and patient stared politely past him.

'But there wasn't,' said Virnes.

He walked back to the door.

'Sorry to have bothered you,' he said, and left.

Zorgo's patient watched him go with interest.

'Didn't he have a crossbow?' he said. 'Bit odd, going after interesting rare butterflies with a crossbow.'

Zorgo readjusted the fit of the grid on his patient's bald head.

'Dunno,' he said, 'I suppose it stops them creating all these damn thunderstorms.' He picked up the mallet again. 'Now, what were we going for today? Decisiveness, yes?'

'Yes. Well, no. Maybe.'

'Right.' Zorgo took aim. 'This,' he said with absolute truth, 'won't hurt a bit.'

It was more than just a delicatessen. It was a sort of dwarf community centre and meeting place. The babble of voices stopped when Angua entered, bending almost double, but started up again with slightly more volume and a few laughs when Carrot followed. He waved cheerfully at the other customers.

Then he carefully removed two chairs. It was just possible to sit upright if you sat on the floor.

'Very . . . nice,' said Angua. 'Ethnic.'

'I come in here quite a lot,' said Carrot. 'The food's good and, of course, it pays to keep your ear to the ground.'

'That'd certainly be easy here,' said Angua, and laughed.

'Pardon?'

1S6

'Well, I mean, the ground is . . . so much . . . closer . . .'

She felt a pit opening wider with every word. The noise level had suddenly dropped again.

'Er,' said Carrot, staring fixedly at her. 'How can I put this? People are talking in Dwarfish . . . but they're listening in Human.'

'Sorry.'

Carrot smiled, and then nodded at the cook behind the counter and cleared his throat noisily.

'I think I might have a throat sweet somewhere —' Angua began.

'I was ordering breakfast,' said Carrot.

'You know the menu off by heart?'

'Oh, yes. But it's written on the wall as well.'

Angua turned and looked again at what she'd thought were merely random scratches.

'It's Oggham,' said Carrot. 'An ancient and poetic runic script whose origins are lost in the mists of time but it's thought to have been invented even before the Gods.'

'Gosh. What does it say?'

Carrot really cleared his throat this time.

'Soss, egg, beans and rat 12p Soss, rat and fried slice l0p Cream-cheese rat 9p Rat and beans 8p Rat and ketchup 7p Rat 4p'

'Why does ketchup cost almost as much as the rat?' said Angua.

'Have you tried rat without ketchup?' said Carrot. 'Anyway, I ordered you dwarf bread. Have you ever eaten dwarf bread?'

'No.'

'Everyone should try it once,' said Carrot. He appeared to consider this. 'Most people do,' he added.[16]

Three and a half minutes after waking up, Captain Samuel Vimes, Night Watch, staggered up the last few steps to the roof of the city's opera house, gasped for breath and threw up allegro ma non troppo.

Then he leaned against the wall, waving his crossbow vaguely in front of him.

There wasn't anyone else on the roof. There were just the leads, stretching away, drinking up the morning sunlight. It was already almost too hot to move.

When he felt a bit better he poked around among the chimneys and skylight. But there were a dozen ways down, and a thousand places to hide.