Men at Arms (Discworld 15)

He turned and looked at the dogs lining the roofs or, the other side of the street.

'You lot! Go home! BAD DOG!' he barked.

He slithered down the other side of the roof. There was an alley there, but it was a sheer drop. He crept along the roof to the adjoining building, but there was no way down. There was a balcony a storey below, though.

'Lat'ral thinking,' he muttered. 'That's the stuff Now, a wolf, your basic wolf, he'd jump, and if he couldn't jump, he'd be stuck. Whereas me, on account of uperior intelligence, can assess the whole wossname and arrive at a solution through application of mental processes.'

He nudged the gargoyle squatting on the angle of the gutter.

'Ot oo oo ont?'

'If you don't help me down to that balcony, I'll widdk in your ear.'

BIG FIDO?

'Yes?'

HEEL.

There were, eventually, two theories about the end of Big Fido.

The one put forward by the dog Gaspode, based on observational evidence, was that his remains were picked up by Foul Ole Ron and sold within five minutes to a furrier, and that Big Fido eventually saw the light of day again as a set of ear muffs and a pair of fleecy gloves.

The one believed by every other dog, based on what might tentatively be called the truth of the heart, was that he survived his fall, fled the city, and eventually led a huge pack of mountain wolves who nightly struck terror into isolated farmsteads. It made digging in the middens and hanging around back doors for scraps seem . . . well, more bearable. They were, after all, only doing it until Big Fido came back.

His collar was kept in a secret place and visited regularly by dogs until they forgot about it.

Sergeant Colon pushed open the door with the end of his pike.

The Tower had floors, a long time ago. Now it was hollow all the way up, criss-crossed by golden shafts of light from ancient window embrasures.

One of them, filled with glittering motes of dust, lanced down on what, not long before, had been Acting-Constable Cuddy.

Colon gave the body a cautious prod. It didn't move.

Nothing looking like that should move. A twisted axe lay beside it.

'Oh, no,' he breathed.

There was a thin rope, the sort the Assassins used, hanging down from the heights. It was twitching. Colon looked up at the haze, and drew his sword.

He could see all the way to the top, and there was no-one on the rope. Which meant—

He didn't even look around, which saved his life.

His dive for the floor and the explosion of the gonne behind him happened at exactly the same time. He swore afterwards that he felt the wind of the slug as it passed over his head.

Then a figure stepped through the smoke and hit him very hard before escaping through the open door, into the rain.

ACTING-CONSTABLE CUDDY?

Cuddy brushed himself off.

'Oh,' he said. 'I see. I didn't think I was going to survive that. Not after the first hundred feet.'

YOU WERE CORRECT.

The unreal world of the living was already fading, but Cuddy glared at the twisted remains of his axe. It seemed to worry him far more than the twisted remains erf Cuddy.