There's loads of them,' said Nobby generously. They're free. You don't have to pay.'
'Even so - '
'I can get six in my mouth at once. Watch - '
'Amazing, my lord. I was wondering, however, whether you would care to join a few of us in the smoking-room?'
'Fghmf? Mfgmf fgmf mgghjf?'
'Indeed.' A friendly arm was put around Nobby's shoulders and he was adroitly piloted away from the buffet, but not before he had grabbed a plate of chicken legs. 'So many people want to talk to you...'
'Mgffmph?'
Sergeant Colon tried to clean himself up, but trying to clean yourself up with water from the Ankh was a difficult manoeuvre. The best you could hope for was an all-over grey.
Fred Colon hadn't reached Vimes's level of sophisticated despair. Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. Colon, being by nature more optimistic and by intellect a good deal slower, was still at the Clues are Important stage.
Why had he been tied up with string? There were still loops of it around his arms and legs.
'You sure you don't know where I was?' he said.
'Yez walked into the place,' said Wee Mad Arthur, trotting along beside him. 'How come yez don't know?'
Cos it was dark and foggy and I wasn't paying attention, that's why. I was just going through the motions.'
'Aha, good one!'
'Don't mess about. Where was I?'
'Don't ask me,' said Wee Mad Arthur. 'I just hunts under the whole cattle-market area. I don't bother about what's up top. Like I said, them runs go everywhere.'
'Anyone along there make string?'
'It's all animal stuff, I tell yez. Sausages and soap and stuff like that. Is this the bit where yez gives me the money?'
Colon patted his pockets. They squelched.
'You'll have to come to the Watch House, Wee Mad Arthur.'
'I got a business to run here!'
'I'm swearin' you in as a Special Watchman for the night,' said Colon.
'What's the pay?'
'Dollar a night.'
Wee Mad Arthur's tiny eyes gleamed. They gleamed red.
'Ye gods, you look awful,' said Colon. 'What're you looking at my ear for?'
Wee Mad Arthur said nothing.
Colon turned.
A golem was standing behind him. It was taller than any he'd seen before, and much better proportioned - a human statue rather than the gross shape of the usual golems, and handsome, too, in the cold way of a statue. And its eyes shone like red searchlights.
It raised a fist above its head and opened its mouth. More red light streamed out.