Men at Arms (Discworld 15)

'Hello, there,' he said. He blinked. It was six storeys down, and not a sight to look at on a recently emptied stomach.

'Er . . . could you come up here, please?' he said.

' 'Ight oo are.'

Vimes stood back. There was a scrape of stone and a gargoyle pulled itself laboriously over the parapet, moving like a cheap stop-motion animation.

He didn't know much about gargoyles. Carrot had said something once about how marvellous it was, an urban troll species that had evolved a symbiotic relationship with gutters, and he had admired the way they funnelled run-off water into their ears and out through fine sieves in their mouths. They were probably the strangest species on the Disc.[17] You didn't get many birds nesting on buildings colonized by gargoyles, and bats tended to fly around them.

'What's your name, friend?'

' 'ornice-oggerooking-Oardway.'

Vimes' lips moved as he mentally inserted all those sounds unobtainable to a creature whose mouth was stuck permanently open. Cornice-overlooking-Broad-way. A gargoyle's personal identity was intimately bound up with its normal location, like a limpet.

'Well now, Cornice,' he said, 'do you know who I am?'

'Oh,' said the gargoyle sullenly.

Vimes nodded. It sits up here in all weather straining gnats through its ears, he thought. People like that don't have a crowded address book. Even whelks get out more.

ink I know who it is,' said Angua. 'I'll see to it.'

She tucked in her shirt.

'Pull the door to if you go out,' Mrs Cake called after her as she went out into the hall. 'Oi'm just off to change the dirt in Mr Winkins' coffin, on account of his back giving him trouble.'

'It looks like gravel to me, Mrs Cake.'

'Orthopaedic, see?'

Carrot was standing respectfully on the doorstep with his helmet under his arm and a very embarrassed expression on his face.

'Well?' said Angua, not unkindly.

'Er. Good morning. I thought, you know, perhaps, you not knowing very much about the city, really. I could, if you like, if you don't mind, not having to go on duty for a while . . . show you some of it. . .?'

For a moment Angua thought she'd contracted pre-science from Mrs Cake. Various futures flitted across her imagination.

'I haven't had breakfast,' she said.

'They make a very good breakfast in Gimlet's dwarf delicatessen in Cable Street.'

'It's lunchtime.'

'It's breakfast time for the Night Watch.'

'I'm practically vegetarian.'

'He does a soya rat.'

She gave in. 'I'll fetch my coat.'

'Har, har,' said a voice, full of withering cynicism.

She looked down. Gaspode was sitting behind Carrot, trying to glare while scratching himself furiously.

'Last night we chased a cat up a tree,' said Gaspode.