Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

“Only I've got a summons for Lady Sybil Ramkin,” he said uncertainly.

Her voice was withering. "What do you mean, a summons?''

“To attend upon the palace, you see.”

“I can't imagine why that is necessary at this time in the morning,” she said, and made to slam the door. It wouldn't shut, though, because of the sword point jammed into it at the last moment.

“If you don't come,” said the guard, “I have been ordered to take steps.”

The door shot back and her face pressed against his, almost knocking him unconscious with the scent of rotting rose petals.

“If you think you'll lay a hand on me-” she began.

The guard's glance darted sideways, just for a moment, to the dragon kennels. Sybil Ramkin's face went pale.

“You wouldn't!” she hissed.

He swallowed. Fearsome though she was, she was only human. She could only bite your head off metaphorically. There were, he told himself, far worse things than Lady Ramkin although, admittedly, they weren't three inches from his nose at this point in time.

“Take steps,” he repeated, in a croak.

She straightened up, and eyed the row of guards behind him.

“I see,” she said coldly. “That's the way, is it? Six of you to fetch one feeble woman. Very well. You will, of course, allow me to fetch a coat. It is somewhat chilly.”

She slammed the door.

The palace guards stamped their feet in the cold and tried not to look at one another. This obviously wasn't the way you went around arresting people. They weren't allowed to keep you waiting on the doorstep, this wasn't the way the world was supposed to work. On the other hand, the only alternative was to go in there and drag her out, and it wasn't one anyone could summon any enthusiasm for. Besides, the guard captain wasn't sure he had enough men to drag Lady Ramkin anywhere. You'd need teams of thousands, with log rollers.

The door creaked open again, revealing only the musty darkness of the hall within.

“Right, men-” said the captain, uneasily.

Lady Ramkin appeared. He got a brief, blurred vision of her bounding through the doorway, screaming, and it might well have been the last thing he remembered if a guard hadn't had the presence of mind to trip her up as she hurtled down the steps. She plunged forward, cursing, ploughed into the overgrown lawn, hit her head on a crumbling statue of an antique Ramkin, and slid to a halt.

The double-handed broadsword she had been holding landed beside her, bolt upright, and vibrated to a standstill.

After a while one of the guards crept forward cautiously and tested the blade with his finger.

“Bloody hell,” he said, in a voice of mixed horror and respect. “And the dragon wants to eat her?”

“Fits the bill,” said the captain. “She's got to be the highest-born lady in the city. I don't know about maiden,” he added, “and right at this minute I'm not going to speculate. Someone go and fetch a cart.”

He fingered his ear, which had been nicked by the tip of the sword. He was not, by nature, an unkind man, but at this moment he was certain that he would prefer the thickness of a dragon's hide between himself and Sybil Ramkin when she woke up.

“Weren't we supposed to kill her pet dragons, sir?” said another guard. “I thought Mr Wonse said something about killing all the dragons.”

“That was just a threat we were supposed to make,” said the captain.

The guard's brow furrowed. “You sure, sir? I thought-”

The captain had had enough of this. Screaming harpies and broadswords making a noise like tearing silk in the air beside him had severely ruined his capacity for seeing the other fellow's point of view.

“Oh, you thought, did you?” he growled. “A thinker, are you? Do you think you'd be suitable for another posting, then? City guard, maybe? They're full of thinkers, they are.”

There was an uncomfortable titter from the rest of the guards.

“If you'd thought, ” added the captain sarcastically, "you'd have thought that the king is hardly going to want other dragons dead, is he? They're probably distant relatives or something. I mean, it wouldn't want us to go around killing its own kind, would it?''