Men at Arms (Discworld 15)

'Good morning, Archchancellor,' he said.

Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, supreme leader of all the wizards in Ankh-Morpork whenever they could be bothered, gave him a cheery nod.

'Good morning, captain,' he said. 'I must say you've got a nice day for it!'

'Hahaha, a nice day for it!' leered the Bursar.

'Oh dear,' said Ridcully, 'he's off again. Can't understand the man. Anyone got the dried frog pills?'

It was a complete mystery to Mustrum Ridcully, a man designed by Nature to live outdoors and happily slaughter anything that coughed in the bushes, why the Bursar (a man designed by Nature to sit in a small room somewhere, adding up figures) was so nervous. He'd tried all sorts of things to, as he put it, buck him up. These included practical jokes, surprise early morning runs, and leaping out at him from behind doors while wearing Willie the Vampire masks in order, he said, to take him out of himself.

The service itself was going to be performed by the Dean, who had carefully made one up; there was no official civil marriage service in Ankh-Morpork, other than something approximating to 'Oh, all right then, if you really must.' He nodded enthusiastically at Vimes.

'We've cleaned our organ especially for the occasion, he said.

'Hahaha, organ!' said the Bursar.

And a mighty one it is, as organs go—' Ridcully stopped, and signalled to a couple of student wizards. 'Just take the Bursar away and make him lie down for a while, will you?' he said. 'I think someone's been feeding him meat again.'

There was a hiss from the far end of the Great Hall, and then a strangled squeak. Vimes stared at the monstrous array of pipes.

'Got eight students pumping the bellows,' said Ridcully, to a background of wheezes. 'It's got three keyboards and a hundred extra knobs, including twelve with “?” on them.'

'Sounds impossible for a man to play,' said Vimes politely.

'Ah. We had a stroke of luck there—'

There was a moment of sound so loud that the aural nerves shut down. When they opened again, somewhere around the pain threshold, they could just make out the opening and extremely bent bars of Fondel's 'Wedding March', being played with gusto by someone who'd discovered that the instrument didn't just have three keyboards but a whole range of special acoustic effects, ranging from Flatulence to Humorous Chicken Squawk. The occasional 'oook!' of appreciation could be heard amidst the sonic explosion.

Somewhere under the table, Vimes screamed at Ridcully: 'Amazing! Who built it!'

'I don't know! But it's got the name B.S. Johnson on the keyboard cover!'

There was a descending wail, one last Hurdy-Gurdy Effect, and then silence.

'Twenty minutes those lads were pumping up the reservoirs,' said Ridcully, dusting himself off as he stood op. 'Go easy on the Vox Dei stop, there's a good chap!'

'Ook!'

The Archchancellor turned back to Vimes, who was wearing the standard waxen pre-nuptial grimace. The hall was filling up quite well now.

'I'm not an expert on this stuff,' he said, 'but you've got the ring, have you?'

'Yes.'

'Who's giving away the bride?'

'Her Uncle Lofthouse. He's a bit gaga, but she insisted.'

'And the best man?'

'What?'

'The best man. You know? He hands you the ring and has to marry the bride if you run away and so on. The Dean's been reading up on it, haven't you, Dean?'

'Oh, yes,' said the Dean, who'd spent all the previous day with Lady Deirdre Waggon's Book of Etiquette. 'She's got to marry someone once she's turned up. You can't have unmarried brides flapping around the place, being a danger to society.'

'I completely forgot about a best man!' said Vimes.