Night Watch (Discworld 29)

'Looks like you've woken up and smelled the cacky,' said Coates, 'because that's exactly what you're in. Sorry, lads, but you're going to die. That's what'll happen if you tangle with real soldiers. Hear about Dolly Sisters last night? Three dead and they weren't even trying.'

'Come on, Ned, no one's going to have a go at us if we're just patrolling,' mumbled Colon. 'Patrolling for what?' said Coates. 'To keep the peace? What'll you do when there's no peace left to keep? Well, I'm not going to stand around and see you get killed. I'm off.' He turned and strode out of the yard and into the Watch House. You bloody fool, you're right, Vimes thought. I just wish you weren't so right. 'Still with us, lads?' he said, to the group caught behind the line. 'That's right, sarge!' said Lance-Constable Vimes. The rest of the volunteers seemed slightly less certain. 'Are we gonna get killed?' said Wiglet. 'Who said it's going to come to a fight?' said Vimes, watching Coates's retreating back. 'Wait a moment, I want a word with Ned-'

'Got the Shilling, sarge,' Snouty announced, advancing across the yard. 'And the captain wants a word with you.'

'Tell him I'll be up in just a few-'

'It's the new captain,' said Snouty quickly. 'He's here already, hnah. Keen. Milit'ry. Not the patient type, sarge.' I used to have Carrot and Detritus and Angua and Cheery for this, Vimes thought bitterly. I'd say you do this, and you do that, and all I had to do was fret and deal with the soddin' politics . . . 'Get Fred to swear the men in,' he said. 'And tell the officer I'll be with him shortly.'

He ran through the Watch House and out of the front door. There were a lot of people in the street, more than usual. It wasn't a mob as such, but it was Ankh-Morpork's famous ur-mob, the state you got just before a real mob happened. It spread across the city like web and spider and, when some triggering event happened, twanged its urgent message through the streets and thickened and tightened around the spot. The Dolly Sisters Massacre had got around and the numbers had grown in the telling. Vimes could sense the tension in the web. It was just waiting for some idiot to do the wrong thing, and Nature is bountiful where idiots are concerned. 'Coates!' he yelled. To his surprise, the man stopped and turned. 'Yeah?'

'I know you're with the revolutionaries.'

'You're just guessing.'

'No, you had the password in your notebook,' said Vimes. The same one Dibbler was passing out in pies. You must know I was able to get into the lockers. Look, do you think you and Dibbler'd still be walking around if I was a spy for Swing?'

'Sure. You're not after us, we can be mopped up later. Swing wants the leaders.' Vimes stood back. 'Okay. Why haven't you told the lads?'

'Things are moving, that's why. It's all starting,' said Ned. 'Who you are doesn't matter any more. But you're going to get the lads killed. They'd have been on our side, if it wasn't for you. I was working on 'em. You know Spatchcock always drops his sword on his foot and Nancyball wets himself when he's threatened and Vimesy is simple, and now you're going to stick 'em all right in the middle and they're gonna die. And all for no reason!'

'Why haven't you told them?' Vimes repeated. 'Maybe you've got friends in high places,' Ned snarled. Vimes glanced up at the rooftops. 'Have we finished?' said Ned. 'Give me your badge,' said Vimes. 'You what?'

'You're quitting. Fair enough. Give me your badge.' Coates recoiled as if he'd been stung. 'Blow that!'

'Then leave the city,' said Vimes. 'It'd be for your own good.'

'Is that a threat?'

'Not from me. But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes. I'll see you later.' He turned his back and hurried away, so that the man wouldn't see his face. Okay. Now it was time. It had to be now, or he'd burst like Mr Salciferous. He had wanted to do this, hadn't dared try it, because those monks could probably do a man a lot of no good if he crossed them, but it had all gone too far now . . . A sense of duty told him there was an officer waiting to see him. He overruled it. It was not in possession of all the facts. Vimes reached the entrance to the Watch House, and stopped. He shut his eyes. If anyone had bothered to look at him, they'd have seen a man apparently trying to grind two cigarette stubs into the road, one with each foot. Thank you, Rosie, for those cardboard soles. He smiled. He thought with the brains in his feet. And as young Sam had noticed, the feet had a memory of their own . . . Rounded cathead cobbles, the usual kind. They hadn't been well set in this part of the city and moved very slightly underfoot . . . then twice before getting to the Watch House his feet had felt larger cobbles, narrow bands of them, where the road surface had been replaced after drains had been laid. And before that, there'd been a similar band but of soft brick rubble, so crushed by cartwheels that it was practically a gully. A few dozen steps earlier they'd twirled him round a couple of times, but the last surface before that had been . . . mud. Vimes, who had been walking with his eyes shut, bumped into a cart. Mud, he thought, getting up and ignoring the strange looks of passers-by. That meant an alley. Let's see . . . ah, yes, over there ... It took twenty minutes. People turned as he walked through the streets, closing his eyes when he dared so that his feet could see better. Sometimes he did look around, though, and there it was again, the thunderstorm sensation of tensions building up, waiting for the first little thing. People were uneasy - the herd was restless - and they didn't quite know why. Everyone he looked at returned his gaze blankly. He stepped onwards. Rough flagstones between two stretches of the ancient cobbles they called trollheads . . . the only place where you got that in this part of the city was here, where Pewter Street crossed Elm, and before that it had been . . . yeah, big stones, some of the most ancient in the city, rutted by hundreds and hundreds of years of iron-bound cartwheels, that was a road that had been right behind a city wall . . . yes; he crossed the Pitts, still on Elm, and then lost his thread. A metal grating on the pavement gave it back to him. Cellar grating. Cool cellar. Coat of arms on it, worn down. Buttermarket. Yeah. Go, feet!

The monks had turned him again here but . . . long bricks, hard-fired in the kiln, and a stretch of quite modern flagstones, well dressed and fitted. It could trick you if you didn't know you were in ... yeah, Masons Road, and there were masons here and they looked after the surface. Now find an alley, mud but with a lot of gravel in it, because the stonemasons dumped their waste here but this one has occasional hummocks across it, where pipes have been laid. Yeah. Now find square- head cobbles . . . He opened his eyes. Yeah. Away on his left, on Clay Lane, was a block of three buildings. A temple sandwiched between two cheapjack corner shops. It was . . . just a temple, slightly foreign-looking, but weren't they all? It looked High Hublandish, where everyone lived on yaks or something. The temple doors were locked. He rattled the handle im-potently, and then hammered on the woodwork with his sword. It had no effect. He didn't even leave a mark on the wood. But the door of the shonky shop next door was open. It was a familiar place. Once upon a time, it was his tailor and bootmaker. And, like a pawn shop, a shonky shop was always open. Vimes stepped inside, and was immediately enveloped in dusty darkness. It was a cave of cloth. Racks of old suits hung from the ceiling. Ancient shelves bent under piles of shirts and vests and socks. Here and there old boxes loomed in the gloom and caught his knees. Piles of derelict boots slipped and slid under his feet. And there was the smell. If poverty had a smell, this was it. If humbled pride had a smell, this was it. And there was a touch of disinfectant as well. Within a few feet of the door, Vimes was already lost. He turned and shoved his way through grey aisle after grey aisle of suffocating cloth and wondered if anyone had ever died in here and how anyone could ever find out. He pulled aside a hanger containing a greasy, threadbare suit- 'You want?' He turned. There was no one there, until his gaze fell slightly and met that of a small, glossy little man, totally bald, very small and thin, and wearing some vague clothing that presumably even a shonky shop hadn't been able to unload on a customer. Who was he? who was he? . . . surprisingly, the name seemed quite fresh in the memory ... 'Ah, er, yeah . . . Mr Shine-'

We had a few visitors,' said Vimes, 'sir.'

'Ah, yes. Misplaced zeal. It does not payto . . . underestimate you, sergeant. You are a man of resource. Alas, the other Houses were not so-'

'-resourceful?'

'Ah. Yes. I am afraid, sergeant, that some of my keener men feel you are anobstacle ... to our very needful work. I, onthecontrary . . . believe that you are a man of iron adherence to the law and, while this hasledto . . . elements of friction because of your lack of full understanding of

the exigencies of the situation, I know that you are a man after my own heart.' Vimes considered the anatomical choices. 'That would be broadly correct, sir,' he said, 'although I would not aspire that high.'

'Capital. I lookforwardto . . . our future co-operation, sergeant. Your new captain willundoubtedly . . . inform you of other matters, as he sees fit. Good day.' Swing swivelled, and walked his jerky walk back to the gate. His men turned to follow him but one of them, who was wearing a plaster cast on one arm, made a gesture. 'Morning, Henry,' said Vimes. He examined the letter. It was quite thick, and had a big embossed seal. But Vimes had spent too much time in the company of bad men, and knew exactly what to do with a sealed envelope. He also knew how to listen. New captain. So ... it was starting. The men were watching him. 'They calling in more, hnah, soldiers, sarge?' said Snouty. 'I expect so,' said Vimes. 'They gave Captain Tilden the push, didn't they . . .'

'Yes.'

'He was a good captain!' Snouty protested. 'Yes,' Vimes said. No, he thought. He wasn't. He was a decent man and he did his best, that's all. He's well out of it now. 'What're we gonna do now, sarge?' said Lance-Constable Vimes. 'We'll patrol,' said Vimes. 'Close in. Just these few streets.'

'What good'll that do?'

'More good than if we didn't, lad. Didn't you take the oath when you joined up?'

'What oath, sarge?' He didn't, Vimes remembered. A lot of them hadn't. You just got your uniform and your bell and you were a member of the Night Watch. A few years ago Vimes wouldn't have bothered about the oath either. The words were out of date and the shilling on a string was a joke. But you needed something more than the wages, even in the Night Watch. You needed something else to tell you that it wasn't just a job.

'Snouty, nip up to the captain's office and get the Shilling, will you?' said Vimes. 'Let's get this lot sworn in. And where's Sergeant Knock?'

'Pushed off, sarge,' said Wiglet. 'Dunno if it helps, but he said “to hell with him” when he went out the door.' Vimes counted heads. It'd be said, later on, that all the Watch House stayed on. They hadn't, of course. Some had slipped away, some hadn't come back on duty at all. But it was true about Keel and the Line. 'Okay, lads,' he said, 'it's like this. We know what's been going on. I don't know about you, but I don't like it. Once you get troops on the streets, it's only a matter of time before it goes bad. Some kid throws a stone, next minute there's houses on fire and people getting killed. What we're going to do is keep the peace. That's our job. We're not going to be heroes, we're just going to be ... normal. Now,' he shifted position, 'it might just be that someone will say we're doing something wrong. So I'm not going to order you.' He drew his sword and scratched a line across the mud and stones. 'If you step over the line, then you're in,' he said. 'If you don't, then that's fine. You didn't sign up for this and I doubt that there'll be any medals, whatever happens. I'll just ask you to go, and the best of luck to you.' It was almost depressing how quickly Lance-Constable Vimes crossed the line. Fred Colon came next, and Waddy, and Billy Wiglet. And Spatchcock, Culweather and Moist and Leggy Gaskin and Horace Nancyball and . . . Curry, wasn't it? ... and Evans and Pounce . . . A dozen crossed the line, the last few with the reluctance caused by a battle between peer pressure and a healthy regard for their skin. A few others, more than Vimes had hoped, evaporated at the back. That left Ned Coates. He crossed his arms. 'You're all bloody mad,' he said. 'We could use you, Ned,' said Vimes. 'I don't want to die,' said Ned, 'and I don't intend to. This is stupid. There's barely a dozen of you. What can you do? All that stuff about “keeping the peace” - it's rubbish, lads. Coppers do what they're told by the men in charge. It's always like that. What'll you do when the new captain comes in, eh? And who're you doing this for? The people? They attacked the other Houses, and what's the Night Watch ever done to hurt them?'