Guards! Guards! (Discworld 8)

' 'I was wondering how big swamp dragons grow?'' said Vimes, trying to shift position. There was a faint growling noise.

“You came all the way up here to ask me that? Well ... I seem to recall Gayheart Talonthrust of Ankh stood fourteen thumbs high, toe to matiock,” mused Lady Ramkin.

“Er . . .”

“About three foot six inches,” she added kindly.

“No bigger than that?” said Vimes hopefully. In his lap the old dragon began to snore gently.

“Golly, no. He was a bit of a freak, actually. Mostly they don't get much bigger than eight thumbs.”

Captain Vimes's lips moved in hurried calculation. “Two feet?” he ventured.

“Well done. That's the cobbs, of course. The hens are a bit smaller.”

Captain Vimes wasn't going to give in. “A cobb would be a male dragon?” he said.

“Only after the age of two years,” said Lady Ramkin triumphantly. “Up to the age of eight months he's a pewmet, then he's a cock until fourteen months, and then he's a snood-”

Captain Vimes sat entranced, eating the horrible cake, britches gradually dissolving, as the stream of information flooded over him; how the males fought with flame but in the laying season only the hens* breathed fire, from the combustion of complex intestinal gases, to incubate the eggs which needed such a fierce temperature, while the males gathered firewood; a group of swamp dragons was a slump or an embarrassment; a female was capable of laying up to three clutches of four eggs every year, most of which were trodden on by absent-minded males; and that dragons

"Only until their third clutch, of course. After that they're dams.

of both sexes were vaguely uninterested in one another, and indeed everything except firewood, except for about once every two months when they became as single-minded as a buzzsaw.

He was helpless to prevent himself being taken out to the kennels at the back, outfitted from neck to ankle in leather armour faced with steel plates, and ushered into the long low building where the whistling had come from.

The temperature was terrible, but not as bad as the cocktail of smells. He staggered aimlessly from one metal-lined pen to another, while pear-shaped, squeaking little horrors with red eyes were introduced as “Moonpenny Duchess Marchpaine, who's gravid at the moment” and “Moonmist Talonthrust II, who was Best of Breed at Pseudopolis last year”. Jets of pale green flame played across his knees.

Many of the stalls had rosettes and certificates pinned over them.

“And this one, I'm afraid, is Goodboy Bindle Featherstone of Quirm,” said Lady Ramkin relentlessly.

Vimes stared groggily over the charred barrier at the small creature curled up in the middle of the floor. It bore about the same resemblance to the rest of them as Nobby did to the average human being. Something in its ancestry had given it a pair of eyebrows that were about the same size as its stubby wings, which could never have supported it in the air. Its head was the wrong shape, like an anteater. It had nostrils like jet intakes. If it ever managed to get airborne the things would have the drag of twin parachutes.

It was also turning on Captain Vimes the most silently intelligent look he'd ever had from any animal, including Corporal Nobbs.

igure stared at him in astonishment.

“Why?” it said. “It's my bloody dragon.”

...

“Have another drink, not-Corporal Nobby?” said Sergeant Colon unsteadily.

“I do not mind if I do, not-Sgt Colon,” said Nobby.

They were taking inconspicuosity seriously. That ruled out most of the taverns on the Morpork side of the river, where they were very well known. Now they were in a rather elegant one in downtown Ankh, where they were being as unobtrusive as they knew how. The other drinkers thought they were some kind of cabaret.

“I was thinking,” said Sgt Colon.

“What?”

“If we bought a bottle or two, we could go home and then we'd be really inconspicuous.”

Nobby gave this some thought.

“But he said we’ve got to keep our ears open,” he said. “We're supposed to, what he said, detect anything.”