'I come in here quite a lot,' said Carrot. 'The food's good and, of course, it pays to keep your ear to the ground.'
'That'd certainly be easy here,' said Angua, and laughed.
'Pardon?'
1S6
'Well, I mean, the ground is . . . so much . . . closer . . .'
She felt a pit opening wider with every word. The noise level had suddenly dropped again.
'Er,' said Carrot, staring fixedly at her. 'How can I put this? People are talking in Dwarfish . . . but they're listening in Human.'
'Sorry.'
Carrot smiled, and then nodded at the cook behind the counter and cleared his throat noisily.
'I think I might have a throat sweet somewhere —' Angua began.
'I was ordering breakfast,' said Carrot.
'You know the menu off by heart?'
'Oh, yes. But it's written on the wall as well.'
Angua turned and looked again at what she'd thought were merely random scratches.
'It's Oggham,' said Carrot. 'An ancient and poetic runic script whose origins are lost in the mists of time but it's thought to have been invented even before the Gods.'
'Gosh. What does it say?'
Carrot really cleared his throat this time.
'Soss, egg, beans and rat 12p Soss, rat and fried slice l0p Cream-cheese rat 9p Rat and beans 8p Rat and ketchup 7p Rat 4p'
'Why does ketchup cost almost as much as the rat?' said Angua.
'Have you tried rat without ketchup?' said Carrot. 'Anyway, I ordered you dwarf bread. Have you ever eaten dwarf bread?'
'No.'
'Everyone should try it once,' said Carrot. He appeared to consider this. 'Most people do,' he added.[16]
Three and a half minutes after waking up, Captain Samuel Vimes, Night Watch, staggered up the last few steps to the roof of the city's opera house, gasped for breath and threw up allegro ma non troppo.
Then he leaned against the wall, waving his crossbow vaguely in front of him.
There wasn't anyone else on the roof. There were just the leads, stretching away, drinking up the morning sunlight. It was already almost too hot to move.
When he felt a bit better he poked around among the chimneys and skylight. But there were a dozen ways down, and a thousand places to hide.
He could see right into his room from here. Come to that, he could see into the rooms of most of the city.
Catapult . . . no . . .
Oh, well. At least there'd been witnesses.
He walked to the edge of the roof, and peered over.