"By the way, how did it go in Turn Again Lane?" he said, stretch
ing and breathing deeply.
"Oh, wonnerful, sir," said Detritus happily. "Six alchemists an" fifty pound o" fresh Slide. In an" out, quick an" sweet, all banged up in the Tanty."
"Didn"t know what"d hit "em, eh?" said Vimes.
Detritus looked mildly offended at this. "Oh no, sir," he said, "I made sure they knew I hit "em."
And then Vimes spotted Mr Pessimal, still where he had left him, his face a pale disc in shadows. Well, enough of that game. Maybe the little tit would have learned something, standing here in the rain, waiting to be caught between a couple of screaming mobs. Maybe he"d had time to wonder what it was like to spend your life going through moments like that. A bit harder than pushing paper, eh?
"If I was you, I"d just wait here, Mr Pessimal," he said, as kindly as he could manage. "This might be a bit rough in parts."
"No, commander," said A. E. Pessimal, looking up.
"What?"
"I have been paying attention to what has been said, and intend to face the foe, commander," said A. E. Pessimal.
"Now see here, Mr Pessi- er, see here, A. E.," said Vimes, putting his hand on the little man"s shoulder. He stopped. A. E. Pessimal was trembling so much that his chain mail was faintly jingling. Vimes persevered. "Look, go on home, eh? This isn"t where you belong: He patted the shoulder a few times, totally nonplussed.
"Commander Vimes!" snapped the inspector.
"Er, yes?"
A. E. Pessimal turned up to Vimes a face wetter than the drizzle rightly accounted for. "I am an acting-constable, am I not?"
"Well, yes, I know I said that, but I did not expect you to take it seriously. .
"I am a serious man, Commander Vimes. And there is no place I would rather be now than here!" Acting-Constable Pessimal said, his teeth chattering. "And no time I"d rather be here than now! Let"s do this, shall we?"
Vimes looked at Detritus, who shrugged his massive shoulders. Something was happening here, in the mind of a little man whose back he could probably break with one hand.
"Oh, well, if you say so," he said hopelessly. "You heard the inspector, Sergeant Detritus. Let"s do this, shall we?"
The troll nodded and turned to face the distant troll encampment. He cupped his hands and bellowed a string of trollish which bounced off the buildings.
"Something we can all understand, perhaps?" said Vimes, as the echoes died away.
A. E. Pessimal stepped forward, taking a deep breath. "C"mon if you think you"re hard enoughf he screamed wildly.
Vimes coughed. "Thank you, Mr Pessimal," he said weakly. "I imagine that should do it."
The moon was somewhere beyond the clouds but Angua didn"t need to see it. Carrot had once had a special watch made for her birthday. It was a little moon that turned right around, black side and white side, through every twenty-eight days. It must have cost him a lot of money and Angua now wore it on her collar, the one item of clothing that she could wear all month round. She couldn"t bring herself to tell him she didn"t need it. You knew what was happening.
It was hard to know much else right now, because she was thinking with her nose. That was the problem with the wolf times: the nose took charge.
Currently, Angua was searching the alleys around Treacle Street, spiralling out from the entrance to the dwarf mine. She prowled onward in a world of colour; smells overlaid on one another, drifting and persisting. The nose is also the only organ that can see backwards in time.
She"d already visited the spoil heap on the waste ground. There was the smell of troll there. It had got out that way, but there was no point in following a trail that cold. Hundreds of street trolls wore lichen and skulls these days. But the foul oily stuff, that was a smell that was clinging to her memory. The little devils must have some other ways in, right? And you had to move the air around in a mine, right? So some trace of that oil would find its way out along with the air. It probably wouldn"t be strong, but she didn"t need it to be. A trace was all she needed. It would be more than enough.
As she padded through the alleys, and leapt walls into midnight yards, she kept clenched in her jaws the little leather bag that was a friend to any thinking werewolf, such a creature being defined as one who remembers that your clothes don"t magically follow you.
The bag held a lightweight silk dress and a large bottle of mouthwash, which Angua considered to be the greatest invention of the last hundred years.
She found what she was looking for behind Broadway: it stood out against the familiar organic smells of the city as a tiny black ribbon of stench that left zigzags in the air as breezes and the passage of carts had dragged it this way and that.
She began to move with more care. This wasn"t an area like Treacle Street; people with money lived here, and they often spent that money on big dogs and "Disproportionate Response" signs in their driveways. As it was, she heard the rattle of chains and the occasional whine as she slunk along. She hated being attacked by large ferocious dogs. It always left a mess and the mouthwash afterwords was never strong enough.