Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

“We can do that at my house,” said Sgt Colon. “We could listen all night, really hard.”

“Tha's a good point,” said Nobby. In fact, it sounded better and better the more he thought about it.

“But first,” he announced, “I got to pay a visit.”

“Me too,” said the sergeant. “This detecting business gets to you after a while, doesn't it.”

They stumbled out into the alley behind the tavern. There was a full moon up, but a few rags of scruffy cloud were drifting across it. The pair inconspicuously bumped into one another in the darkness.

“Is that you, Detector Sergeant Colon?” said Nobby.

“Tha's right! Now, can you detect the door to the privy, Detector Corporal Nobbs? We're looking for a short, dark door of mean appearance, ahahaha.”

There were a couple of clanks and a muffled swearword from Nobby as he staggered across the alley, followed by a yowl when one of Ankh-Morpork's enormous population of feral cats fled between his legs.

“Who loves you, pussycat?” said Nobby under his breath.

“Needs must, then,” said Sgt Colon, and faced a handy corner.

His private musings were interrupted by a grunt from the corporal.

“You there, Sgt?”

“Detector Sergeant to you, Nobby,” said Sgt Colon pleasantly.

Nobby's tone was urgent and suddenly very sober. “Don't piss about, Sergeant, I just saw a dragon fly over!”

“I've seen a horsefly,” said Sgt Colon, hiccuping gently. “And I've seen a housefly. I've even seen a greenfly. But I ain't never seen a dragon fly.”

“Of course you have, you pillock,” said Nobby urgently. “Look, I'm not messing about! He had wings on him like, like, like great big wings!”

Sergeant Colon turned majestically. The corporal's face had gone so white that it showed up in the darkness.

“Honest, Sergeant!”

Sgt Colon turned his eyes to the damp sky and the rain-washed moon.

“All right,” he said, “show me.”

There was a slithering noise behind him, and a couple of roof tiles smashed on to the street.

He turned. And there, on the roof, was the dragon.

“There's a dragon on the roof!” he warbled. “Nobby, it's a dragon on the roof! What shall I do, Nobby? There's a dragon on the roof! It's looking right at me, Nobby!”

“For a start, you could do your trousers up,” said Nobby, from behind the nearest wall.

...

Even shorn of her layers of protective clothing, Lady Sybil Ramkin was still toweringly big. Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra'd, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. When she spoke, every word was like a hearty slap on the back and clanged with the aristocratic self-assurance of the totally well-bred. The vowel sounds alone would have cut teak.

Vimes's ragged forebears were used to voices like that, usually from heavily-armoured people on the back of a war charger telling them why it would be a jolly good idea, don'tcherknow, to charge the enemy and hit them for six. His legs wanted to stand to attention.

Prehistoric men would have worshipped her, and in fact had amazingly managed to carve lifelike statues of her thousands of years ago. She had a mass of chestnut hair; a wig, Vimes learned later. No-one who had much to do with dragons kept their own hair for long.

She also had a dragon on her shoulder. It had been introduced as Talonthrust Vincent Wonderkind of Quirm, referred to as Vinny, and seemed to be making a large contribution to the unusual chemical smell that pervaded the house. This smell permeated everything. Even the generous slice of cake she offered him tasted of it.

“The, er, shoulder ... it looks . . . very nice,” he said, desperate to make conversation.