Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

Carrot examined it for a few seconds. Then he waved it vigorously over his head.

“Twelve o'clock!” he bellowed. “And all's weeeeelllll!”

The echoes bounced back and forth across the street and finally were overwhelmed by a horrible, thick silence. Several dogs barked somewhere in the night. A baby started crying.

“Ssshh!” hissed Nobby.

“Well, it is all well, isn't it?” said Carrot.

“It won't be if you keep on ringing that bloody bell! Give it here. ”

“I don't understand!” said Carrot. “Look, I've got this book Mr Varneshi gave me-” He fumbled for the Laws and Ordinances.

Nobby glanced at them, and shrugged. “Never heard of 'em, ” he said. “Now just shut up your row. You don't want to go making a din like that. You could attract all sorts. Come on, this way. ”

He grabbed Carrot's arm and bustled him along the street.

“What sorts?” protested Carrot as he was pushed determinedly forward.

“Bad sorts, ” muttered Nobby.

“But we're the Watch!”

“Damn right! And we don't want to go tangling with people like that! Remember what happened to Gas-kin!”

“I don't remember what happened to Gaskin!” said Carrot, totally bewildered. “Who's Gaskin?”

“Before your time, ” mumbled Nobby. He deflated a bit. ' 'Poor bugger. Could of happened to any of us. “ He looked up and glared at Carrot. ”Now stop all this, you hear? It's getting on my nerves. Moonlight bloody chases, my bum!"

He stalked along the street. Nobby's normal method of locomotion was a kind of sidle, and the combination of stalking and sidling at the same time created a strange effect, like a crab limping.

“But, but, ” said Carrot, “in this book it says-”

“I don't want to know from no book, ” growled Nobby.

Carrot looked utterly crestfallen.

“But it's the Law-” he began.

He was nearly terminally interrupted by an axe that whirred out of a low doorway beside him and bounced off the opposite wall. It was followed by sounds of splintering timber and breaking glass.

“Hey, Nobby!” said Carrot urgently, “There's a fight going on!”

Nobby glanced at the doorway. “O'course there is, ” he said. “It's a dwarf bar. Worst kind. You keep out of there, kid. Them little buggers like to trip you up and then kick twelve kinds of shit out of you. You come along o'Nobby and he'll-”

He grabbed Carrot's treetrunk arm. It was like trying to tow a building.

Carrot had gone pale.

“Dwarfs drinking? And fighting?” he said.

“You bet, ” said Nobby. “All the time. And they use the kind of language I wouldn't even use to my own dear mother. You don't want to mix it with them, they're a poisonous bunch of-don't go in there!”

...

No-one knows why dwarfs, who at home in the mountains lead quiet, orderly lives, forget it all when they move to the big city. Something comes over even the most blameless iron-ore miner and prompts him to wear chain-mail all the time, carry an axe, change his name to something like Grabthroat Shinkicker and drink himself into surly oblivion.

It's probably because they do live such quiet and orderly lives back home. After all, probably the first thing a young dwarf wants to do when he hits the big city after seventy years of working for his father at the bottom of a pit is have a big drink and then hit someone.