Wolf"s lip curled again. He glanced triumphantly at the others. "Behold... civilization!" he said.
Vimes, puffed life into his cigar and looked around the frozen woodland with as much hauteur as he could muster.
"Four hundred crowns, did you say?" he said.
"Yes!"
Vimes sneered at the forest again. "What is that in Ankh-Morpork dollars, do you know? About a dollar fifty?"
"The question will not arise!" Wolf bellowed.
"Well, I don"t want to have to spend it all here - "
"Run!"
"In the circumstances, then, I won"t ask if you have the money on you."
Vimes walked away from the werewolves, glad that they couldn"t see his face and very much aware that the skin on his back wanted to crawl around to his front.
He kept moving calmly, his wet drawers beginning to crackle in the frosty air, until he was certain he was out of sight of the pack.
So, let"s see... they"ve got better strength than you, they know the country, and if they"re as good as Angua they could track a fart through a skunk"s breakfast, and your legs hurt already.
So what are the pluses here? Well, you"ve made Wolf really angry.
Vimes broke into a run.
Not much of a plus there, then, all things considered.
Vimes broke into a faster run.
Off in the distance, wolves began to howl.
There is a saying: it won"t get better if you picket.
Corporal Nobbs or, rather, Guild President C. W. St J. Nobbs, reflected on this. A little early snow was fizzling in the air over the metal drum which, in approved strike fashion, was glowing red-hot in front of the Watch House.
A main problem, as he saw it, was that there was something philosophically wrong with picketing a building that no one except a watchman wanted to enter in any case. It is impossible to keep people out of something that they don"t want to go into. It can"t be done.
The chant hadn"t worked. An old lady had given him a penny.
"Colon, Colon, Colon! Out! Out! Out!" shouted Reg Shoe happily, waving his placard.
"That doesn"t sound right, Reg," said Nobby. "Sounds like surgery."
He looked at the other placards. Dorfl was holding a large, closely worded text, detailing their grievances in full, with references to Watch procedures and citing a number of philosophical texts. Constable Visit"s sandwich-board, on the other hand, proclaimed: "What Profiteth it a Kingdom if the Oxen be Deflated? Riddles 11, v3."
Somehow, these cogent arguments did not seem to be bringing the city to its knees.
He turned at the sound of a coach pulling up and looked up at a door which had a crest consisting mainly of a black shield. And above that, looking out of the window, was the face of Lord Vetinari.
"Ah, none other than Corporal Nobbs," said Lord Vetinari.
At this point Nobby would have given quite a lot to be anyone other than Corporal Nobbs.
He wasn"t sure whether, as a striker, he should salute. He saluted anyway, on the basis that a salute was seldom out of place.
"I gather you have withdrawn your labour," Lord Vetinari went on. "In your case, I am sure this presented a good deal of difficulty."