“Good, and get me a cutlass. I’ve always wanted to try one.” Vimes thought for a moment and added, “And make that another two bacon sandwiches. And a lot more coffee. And make that one more bacon sandwich. And, Haddock, if you can scavenge a bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s very famous old brown sauce, I swear I’ll make you a full sergeant when your term here is up, ’cos any man who can find a proper down-and-dirty Ankh-Morpork sauce in Quirm, home of five hundred bloody types of mayonnaise, without getting his eye full of spit deserves to be a sergeant in anybody’s force!”
And then, as whatever had been holding Sam Vimes up drained away, he fell gently backward, dreaming of bacon sandwiches and brown sauce.
Even Constable Haddock or, as he was now, Acting Captain Haddock, would agree that he was not the sharpest knife in the box, but it was amazing, the things you could open with a blunt instrument. As he hurried away on this prestigious errand he was stopped by one of the Quirm officers, who said, “Hareng!* Have you heard of a watchman called Petit Fou Artour?”
“Wee Mad Arthur? Yes, he’s one of our lads!”
“Well, you had better come quickly, my friend, because he is in our Watch House. Strong little fellow, isn’t he? A few of the other officers had laughed at him, he said, but I believe that they have learned the error of their ways—the hard way, as it happened. Apparently he has been sent to find Commandant Vimes.”
Sam Vimes awoke from a pig’s nightmare to find himself lying on a pile of sacks in a godown in the docks. He was carefully lifted to his feet by Acting Constable Haddock and led unsteadily to a crude table behind which was a chef presiding over the sizzling makings of a bacon sandwich, or rather several bacon sandwiches. “He screamed a bit,” said Haddock, “when I insisted on no mayonnaise, but right now you can do no wrong here, commander. And I have one unopened bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s finest, sir, the only one in the city. I’m afraid, however, that you’ll have to eat on the go, but the chef is packing the sandwiches in a hamper, with hot charcoal to keep them warm. No time to hang about, sir. The cutter will leave the dock in ten minutes.”
A notebook was pushed under Vimes’s nose. “What’s this?”
“Your signature to my promotion to full sergeant, commander,” said Haddock carefully. “I hope you don’t mind, but you did promise.”
“Good man,” said Vimes. “Always write things down.”
Haddock looked proud. “I’ve also arranged to have on board a selection of cutlasses for your perusal, commander.”
Vimes struggled into his new shirt, and as his head appeared he said, “I want you to come too, Kipper. You know your way around here better than me. By the way, what did you do with the prisoner?”
Haddock said, “What prisoner would that be, commander?”
And for a moment Vimes’s blood froze. “You didn’t find a man tied up anywhere on the Fanny?”
Now Haddock looked worried. “No, sir, no one by the time we got there. The place was a mess, sir. Sorry, sir, we didn’t know!”
“No reason why you should’ve done. Sorry to shout, but if the Quirm police think the sun is shining out of my arse then tell them they should be looking for a youngish-looking individual known as Stratford. He’s a double murderer, at least…vicious and by now certainly armed. Tell them they’ll be doing everybody a favor if they keep guard on the boat, on the walking wounded and all the lads in your infirmary, and also they should send a clacks to Pseudopolis Yard right now to say that Commander Vimes requires that two members of the Watch should hasten via golem horse to Ramkin Hall to keep guard over Lady Sybil and Young Sam. I don’t want them to hang about: I know those things are bad news to ride, but Stratford is a nut job—they must hurry!”
“Excuse me, commander,” said one of the Quirm officers, “we all speak pretty good Morporkian here. Everybody here speaks Morporkian. If you hear us speaking Quirmian it’s because we want to talk about you behind your back. We salute you, Commander Vimes, we will send your clacks and search everywhere for your murderer and take great care of the wounded. Now, please hurry down to the dock. The Queen of Quirm is pretty ancient, only one step away from being a hulk. Our cutter should catch up with it in a few hours. Shall we go?”
Come on, sir,” said Haddock, “and Wee Mad Arthur will brief you on the way.”
“Wee Mad Arthur!”
“Yes, commander. Apparently he got sent to foreign parts to do with this goblin business, flew back to Ankh-Morpork and then got sent straight here to you. He’s got a story to tell you and no mistake.”
“Where is he?” said Vimes.
“They should be releasing him from custody right now, sir. A laughable misunderstanding, no real harm done, all will be forgiven and all will probably heal, I’m sure.”
Vimes was wise enough to leave it at that.
Of course, the seasickness didn’t help, but that didn’t begin to cut in until afterward, when Wee Mad Arthur had finished his breathless account. “And what did you find in the huts?” said Vimes.
“More goblins, sir, all shapes and sizes, little ones too. Most of them dead, the rest in a very bad way, in my opinion. I did what I could for them, such as it was. To tell ye the truth, sir, I think they were bewildered about everything, the poor wee devils, but there’s grub and water there of a sort and I don’t reckon those guards are going to move in a hurry, ye ken.” He made a face and added, “Really weird, those goblins. I let them out and they just milled around, not knowing what the hell to do. I mean, crivens, if it were me I’d be out of there like a shot and give those scunners a right good kicking in the fork while they was lying down. As for the men, well, I kenned this was urgent and I could always fly back tomorrow and pour some water on them at least, but I thought the Watch should know and so made haste back to Ankh-Morpork and they told me where you’d gone on holiday, and Lady Sybil said you’d gone down that mucky old river, so all I had to do was fly down until I got to Quirm and when I found a big awful terrible mess I kenned that was something to do with you, commander.”
Wee Mad Arthur hesitated. He was never quite sure what Vimes thought of him, given that the man considered Feegles in general a nuisance. When Vimes was slow to reply, he asked, “I hope I did what ye would have done, commander?”
Vimes looked at Wee Mad Arthur as if he was seeing him for the first time. “No, constable, you did not do what I would have done, which is fortunate, because if you had, then you would be in front of me on a charge for using brutally excessive force in the execution of your duties. However, you will get a medal and an official commendation for this, constable. Right now we’re chasing another ship that’s taking more goblins to that wretched place. And although I imagine you must be very tired, I expect you’d like to come along for the ride? Incidentally, may I congratulate you personally, constable: for someone raised as a gnome you really have got the hang of the whole Feegle business, haven’t you? You beat up a dozen armed men single-handed?”
“Oh aye, sir,” said Wee Mad Arthur slyly, “but it was nae fair, I had them outnumbered. Och, and by the way in some of them sheds there was all kinds of like alchemy stuff. Didn’t ken what it was, but ye might find it o’ interest.”
“Well spotted,” said Vimes. “Why don’t you go down below and get a rest?”
“Aye, I will sir, but as soon as I can I have to run an errand regarding Sergeant Colon, who is in a verra bad way indeed.” He looked at Vimes’s blank expression and continued. “Did ye nae know? He got some goblin geegaw given tae him and it’s put some kind of fluence on him quite cruel, and he’s a-screaming and a-shouting and making oot like a goblin all day long according to Sergeant Littlebottom. She’s moved him into the sanatorium.”
“Sergeant Colon!”