Men at Arms (Discworld 15)

'What kind of good advice?'

'About mining, usually. Moving rocks. You know. Propping and shoring. You can't get things wrong in a mine. You have to do things right.'

His pencil scritched on the paper.

The door was still ajar, but there was a tentative tap on it which said, in a kind of metaphorical morse code, that the tapper could see very well that Carrot was in his room with a scantily clad woman and was trying to knock without actually being heard.

Sergeant Colon coughed. The cough had a leer in it.

'Yes, sergeant?' said Carrot, without looking around.

'What do you want me to do next, sir?'

'Send them out in squads, sergeant. At least one human, one dwarf and one troll in each.'

'Yessir. What'll they be doing, sir?'

'They'll be being visible, sergeant.'

'Right, sir. Sir? One of the volunteers just now . . . it's Mr Bleakley, sir. From Elm Street? He's a vampire, well. technic'ly, but he works up at the slaughterhouse so it's not really—'

'Thank him very much and send him home, sergeant.'

Colon glanced at Angua.

'Yessir. Right,' he said reluctantly. 'But he's not a problem, it's just that he needs these extra homogoblins in his bio—'

'No!'

'Right. Fine. I'll, er, I'll tell him to go away, then.'

Colon shut the door. The hinge leered.

'They call you sir,' said Angua. 'Do you notice that?'

'I know. It's not right. People ought to think for themselves, Captain Vimes says. The problem is, people only think for themselves if you tell them to. How do you spell “eventuality”?'

'I don't.'

'OK.' Carrot still didn't look around. 'We'll hold the city together through the rest of the night, I think. Everyone's seen sense.'

No they haven't, said Angua in the privacy of her own head. They've seen you. It's like hypnotism.

People live your vision. You-dream, just like Big Fido, only he dreamed a nightmare and you dream for everyone. You really think everyone is basically nice. Just for a moment, while they are near you, everyone else believes it too.

From somewhere outside came the sound of marching knuckles. Detritus' troop was making another circuit.

Oh, well. He's got to know sooner or later . . .

'Carrot?'

'Hmm?'

'You know . . . when Cuddy and the troll and me pined the Watch – well, you know why it was us three, don't you?'

'Of course. Minority group representation. One troll, one dwarf, one woman.'

'Ah.' Angua hesitated. It was still moonlight outside. She could tell him, run downstairs, Change and be well outside the city by dawn. She'd have to do it. She was an expert at running away from cities.