Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

...

They didn't. None of them did.

The first problem was the palace guard.

Vimes had never liked them. They'd never liked him. Okay, so maybe the rank were only one step away from petty scofflaws, but in Vimes's professional opinion the palace guard these days were only one step away from being the worst criminal scum the city had ever produced. A step further down. They'd have to reform a bit before they could even be considered for inclusion in the Ten Most Unwanted list.

They were rough. They were tough. They weren't the sweepings of the gutter, they were what you still found sticking to the gutter when the gutter sweepers had given up in exhaustion. They had been extremely well-paid by the Patrician, and presumably were extremely well-paid by someone else now, because when Vimes walked up to the gates a couple of them stopped lounging against the walls and straightened up while still maintaining just the right amount of psychological slouch to cause maximum offense.

“Captain Vimes,” said Vimes, staring straight ahead. “To see the king. It's of the utmost importance.”

“Yeah? Well, it'd have to be,” said a guard. “Captain Slimes, was it?”

“Vimes,” said Vimes evenly. “With a Vee.”

One of the guards nodded to his companion.

“Vimes,” he said. “With a Vee.”

“Fancy,” said the other guard.

“It's most urgent,” said Vimes, maintaining a wooden expression. He tried to move forward.

The first guard sidestepped neatly and pushed him sharply in the chest.

“No-one is going nowhere,” he said. “Orders of the king, see? So you can push off back to your pit, Captain Vimes with a Vee.”

It wasn't the words which made up Vimes's mind. It was the way the other man sniggered.

“Stand aside,” he said.

The guard leaned down. “Who's going to make me,” he rapped on Vimes's helmet, “copper?”

There are times when it is a veritable pleasure to drop the bomb right away.

“Lance-constable Carrot, I want you to charge these men,” said Vimes.

Carrot saluted. “Very good, sir,” he said, and turned and trotted smartly back the way they had come.

“Hey!” shouted Vimes, as the boy disappeared around a corner.

“That's what I like to see,” said the first guard, leaning on his speak. “That's a young man with initiative, that young man. A bright lad. He doesn't want to stop along here and have his ears twisted off. That's a young man who's going to go a long way, if he's got any sense.”

“Very sensible,” said the other guard.

He leaned the spear against the wall.

“You Watch men make me want to throw up,” he said conversationally. “Poncing around all the time, never doing a proper job of work. Throwing your weight about as if you counted for something. So me and Clarence are going to show you what real guarding is all about, isn't that right?”

I could just about manage one of them, Vimes thought as he took a few steps backward. If he was facing the other way, at least.

Clarence propped his spear against the gateway and spat on his hands.

There was a long, terrifying ululation. Vimes was amazed to realise it wasn't coming from him.

Carrot appeared around the corner at a dead run. He had a felling axe in either hand.

His huge leather sandals flapped on the cobblestones as he bounded closer, accelerating all the time. And all the time there was this cry, deedahdeedahdeedah, like something caught in a trap at the bottom of a two-tone echo canyon.