Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

“Eeek.”

“Worse than murder?”

“Eeek!” The Librarian knuckled over to the door and bounced up and down urgently.

Carrot gulped. Orders were orders, yes, but this was something else. The people in this city were capable of anything.

He buckled on his breastplate, screwed his sparkling helmet on to his head, and strode towards the door.

Then he remembered his responsibilities. He went back to the desk, found a scrap of paper, and painstakingly wrote: Out Fighting Crime, Pleass Call Again Later. Thankyou.

And then he went out on to the streets, untarnished and unafraid.

...

The Supreme Grand Master raised his arms. “Brethren,” he said, “let us begin ...” It was so easy. All you had to do was channel that great septic reservoir of jealousy and cringing resentment that the Brothers had in such abundance, harness their dreadful mundane unpleasantness which had a force greater in its way than roaring evil, and then open your own mind . . .

. . . into the place where the dragons went.

...

Vimes found himself grabbed by the arm and pulled inside. The heavy door shut behind him with a definite click.

“It's Lord Mountjoy Gayscale Talonthrust III of Ankh,” said the apparition, which was dressed in huge and fearsomely-padded armour. “You know, I really don't think he can cut the mustard.”

“He can't?” said Vimes, backing away.

“It really needs two of you.”

“It does, doesn't it,” whispered Vimes, his shoulder blades trying to carve their way out through the fence.

“Could you oblige?” boomed the thing.

“What?”

“Oh, don't be squeamish, man. You just have to help him up into the air. It's me who has the tricky part. I know it's cruel, but if he can't manage it tonight then he's for the choppy-chop. Survival of the fittest and all that, don't you know.”

Captain Vimes managed to get a grip on himself. He was clearly in the presence of some sex-crazed would-be murderess, insofar as any gender could be determined under the strange lumpy garments. If it wasn't female, then references to “it's me who has the tricky part” gave rise to mental images that would haunt him for some time to come. He knew the rich did things differently, but this was going too far.

“Madam,” he said coldly, “I am an officer of the Watch and I must warn you that the course of action you are suggesting breaks the laws of the city-” and also of several of the more strait-laced gods, he added silently-“and I must advise you that his Lordship should be released unharmed immediately-”

o;I wonder if I made the word 'plain' clear enough?” said Captain Vimes.

“It's what I wear outside work, guv,” said Nobby reproachfully.

“Sir,” corrected Sergeant Colon.

“My voice is in plain clothes too,” said Nobby. “Initiative, that is.”

Vimes walked slowly around the corporal.

“And your plain clothes do not cause old women to faint and small boys to run after you in the street?” he said.

Nobby shifted uneasily. He wasn't at home with irony.

“No, sir, guv,” he said. “It's all the go, this style.”

This was broadly true. There was a current fad in Ankh for big, feathered hats, ruffs, slashed doublets with gold frogging, flared pantaloons and boots with ornamental spurs. The trouble was, Vimes reflected, that most of the fashion-conscious had more body to go between these component bits, whereas all that could be said of Corporal Nobbs was that he was in there somewhere.