Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

The air ruptured. An endless thunderclap of noise dragged across the city, smashing tiles, toppling chimneys. In mid-air, the king was picked up, flattened out and spun like a top in the sonic wash. Vimes, his hands over his own ears, saw the creature flame desperately as it turned and became the centre of a spiral of crazy fire.

Magic crackled along its wings. It screamed like a distressed foghorn. Then, shaking its head dazedly, it began to glide in a wide circle.

Vimes groaned. It had survived something that tore masonry apart. What did you have to do to beat it? You can't fight it, he thought. You can't burn it, you can't smash it. There's nothing you can do to it.

The dragon landed. It wasn't a perfect landing. A perfect landing wouldn't have demolished a row of cottages. It was slow, and it seemed to go on for a long time and rip up a considerable stretch of city.

Wings flapping aimlessly, neck waving and spraying random flame, it ploughed on through a debris of beams and thatch. Several fires started up along the trail of destruction.

Finally it came to rest at the end of the furrow, almost invisible under a heap of former architecture.

The silence that it left was broken only by the shouts of someone trying to organise yet another bucket chain from the river to douse the fires.

Then people started to move.

From the air Ankh-Morpork must have looked like a disturbed anthill, with streams of dark figures flowing towards the wreck of the dragon.

Most of them had some kind of weapon.

Many of them had spears.

Some of them had swords.

All of them had one aim in mind.

“You know what?” said Vimes aloud. “This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.”

“Then you've got to stop them. You can't let them kill it!” said Lady Ramkin.

Vimes blinked at her.

“Pardon?” he said.

“It's wounded!”

“Lady, that was the intention, wasn't it? Anyway, it's only stunned,” said Vimes.

“I mean you can't let them kill it like this,” said Lady Ramkin insistently. “Poor thing!”

“What do you want to do, then?” demanded Vimes, his temper unravelling. “Give it a strengthening dose of tar oil and a nice comfy basket in front of the stove?”

“It's butchery!”

“Suits me fine!”

“But it's a dragon! It's just doing what a dragon does! It never would have come here if people had left it alone!”

Vimes thought: it was about to eat her, and she can still think like this. He hesitated. Perhaps that did give you the right to an opinion . . .

Sergeant Colon sidled up as they glared, white-faced, at one another, and hopped desperately from one squelching foot to the other.

“You better come at once, Captain,” he said. "It's going to be bloody murder!''

Vimes waved a hand at him. “As far as I'm concerned,” he mumbled, avoiding Sybil Ramkin's glare, “it's got it coming to it.”

“It's not that,” said Colon. "It's Carrot. He's arrested the dragon.''

Vimes paused.