Witches Abroad (Discworld 12)

'I'm sure it'll be all right,' said the corporal wretchedly. "The captain'll be here directly. Only there's all kinds of trouble if we let the wrong sort in. You'd be amazed at some of the people we get here.'

'Can't go letting the wrong sort in,' said Nanny Ogg. 'We wouldn't want you to let the wrong sort in. I daresay we wouldn't want to come into the kind of city that'd let the wrong sort in, would we, Esme?'

Magrat kicked her on the ankle.

'Good thing we're the right sort,' said Nanny.

'What's happening, corporal?'

The captain of the guard strolled out of a door in the archway and walked over to the witches.

'These . . . ladies want to come in, sir,' said the corporal.

'Well?'

'They're a bit. . . you know, not one hundred per cent clean,' said the corporal, wilting under Granny's stare. 'And one of them's got messy hair - '

'Well!' snapped Magrat.

'- and one of them looks like she uses bad language.'

'What?' said Nanny, her grin evaporating. 'I'll tan your hide, you little bugger!'

'But, corporal, they have got brooms,' said the captain. 'It's very hard for cleaning staff to look tidy all the time.'

'Cleaning staff?' said Granny.

'I'm sure they're as anxious as you are to get tidied up,' said the captain.

'Excuse me,' said Granny, empowering the words with much the same undertones as are carried by words like 'Charge!' and 'Kill!', 'Excuse me, but does this pointy hat I'm wearing mean anything to you?'

The soldiers looked at it politely.

'Can you give me a clue?' said the captain, eventually.

'It means - '

'We'll just trot along in, if it's all the same to you,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Got a lot of cleaning up to do.' She flourished her broomstick. 'Come, ladies.'

She and Magrat grasped Granny's elbows firmly and propelled her under the archway before her fuse burned out. Granny Weatherwax always held that you ought to count up to ten before losing your temper. No-one knew why, because the only effect of this was to build up the pressure and make the ensuing explosion a whole lot worse.

The witches didn't stop until they were out of sight of the gate.

'Now, Esme,' said Nanny soothingly, 'you shouldn't take it personal. And we are a bit mucky, you must admit. They were just doing their job, all right? How about that?'

'They treated us as if we was ordinary people,' said Granny, in a shocked voice.

'This is foreign parts, Granny,' said Magrat. 'Anyway, you said the men on the boat didn't recognize the hat, either.'

'But then I dint want 'em to,' said Granny. 'That's different.'

'It's just an ... an incident, Granny,' said Magrat. 'They were just stupid soldiers. They don't even know a proper free-form hairstyle when they see it.'

Nanny looked around. Crowds milled past them, almost in silence.

'And you must admit it's a nice clean city,' she said.

They took stock of their surroundings.