Snuff (Discworld 39)

Vimes lit his cigar and savored, just for a moment, the forbidden fruit. Then he offered the packet to the blacksmith, who waved it away without a word.

“Very sensible,” said Vimes. “Now then, I’d better tell you that at least once a week, even these days, I have to fight people who’re trying to kill me with everything from swords to chairs and in one case a very large salmon. They probably don’t actually want to kill me, but they’ll try to stop me arresting them. Look,” he waved a hand at the landscape in general, “all this…stuff, just happened, whether I wanted it to or not. By trade I’m just a copper.”

“Yeah,” said Jethro, glaring at him. “Stamping on the faces of the struggling masses!”

Vimes was used to this sort of thing, and put it mildly. “Can’t tread on their faces these days, my grinder gets in the way. All right, not very funny, I admit.” Vimes was aware that people were coming back down the lane. They included women and children. It looked as though the pub’s clientele had roused the neighborhood. He turned to Jethro. “Are we going to do this by the Marquis of Fantailer’s Rules?”

“What are they?” said the blacksmith, waving at the oncoming horde.

“Rules of sparring by the Marquis of Fantailer,” said Vimes.

“If they was written by a marquis I don’t want no truck with them!”

Vimes nodded. “Willikins?”

“I heard that, commander, and have recorded it in my notebook: ‘refused Fantailer.’ ”

“Well then, Mr. Jefferson,” said Vimes. “I suggest we ask Mr. Jiminy to start the proceedings?”

“I want your lackey to write down in that book of his that my mum won’t get put out of her cottage, whatever happens, right?”

“It’s a deal,” said Vimes. “Willikins, please make a memorandum that Mr. Jefferson’s old mum should not be thrown out of her cottage, hit with sticks, put in the stocks, or otherwise manhandled in any way, understand?”

Willikins, trying ineffectually to hide a smile, licked his pencil and wrote industriously. Vimes, less noisily, made a mental note and the note said: “The ferocity is draining out of this lad. He is wondering if he actually might get killed. I haven’t thrown a punch, not one l

ittle punch, and he is already preparing for the worst. Of course, the right way about it is to prepare for the best.”

The crowd was growing by the second. Even as Vimes looked on, people came down the lane carrying a very old man on a mattress, their progress accelerated by his delight in hitting them on the back of the legs with his walking stick. Mothers toward the back of the crowd were holding up their children for a better look and, all unknown, every man had a weapon. It was like a peasants’ revolt, without the revolt and with a very polite class of peasant. Men touched their forelocks when Vimes looked in their direction, women curtsied, or at least bobbed up and down a bit, disturbingly out of sequence, like organ pedals trembling.

Jiminy approached Vimes and the blacksmith cautiously and, to judge by the glistening of his face, very apprehensively. “Now then, gents, I’m choosing to consider this a little demonstration of fisticuffs, a jolly trial of strength and prowess such as may be found on any summer evening, all friends under the skin, okay?” There was a pleading look in his eyes as he went on. “And when you’ve got it out of your systems there’ll be a pint waiting for each of you on the bar. Please don’t break anything.” He produced an overused handkerchief from a waistcoat pocket and held it in the air. “When this touches the ground, gentlemen…” he said, backing away very quickly.

The slip of linen seemed to defy gravity for a while, but the moment it touched the ground Vimes caught the blacksmith’s boot in both hands as it swung toward him and said very quietly to the struggling man, “A bit previous, weren’t you? And what good has it done you? Hear them all sniggering? I’ll let you off, this time.”

Vimes gave a push as he loosened his grip on the foot, causing Jethro to stagger backward. Vimes felt a certain pleasure in seeing the man losing it this early, but the blacksmith pulled himself together and rushed at him, and paused, possibly because Vimes was grinning.

“That’s the ticket, my lad,” said Vimes, “you just saved yourself a dreadful pain in the unmentionables.” He made fists and beckoned suggestively to his bewildered adversary over the top of his left fist. The man came swinging and got a kick on the kneecap, which floored him, and he was picked up by Vimes, which metaphorically floored him again.

“Whyever did you think I was going to box? That’s what we professionals call misdirection. You want to go for the hug? I would if I were a big bloke like you, but you ain’t going to get the chance.” Vimes shook his head sorrowfully. “Should have gone for the Marquis of Fantailer. I believe that has been carved on many a gravestone.” He took a generous pull of his cigar; the ash had yet to be disturbed.

Enraged beyond belief, Jethro threw himself at Vimes and caught a glancing blow to his head, receiving at almost the same time a knee in the stomach which knocked all the breath out of him. They went down together with Vimes as the conductor of this orchestra. He made certain he ended on top, where he leaned down and hissed into Jethro’s ear, “Let’s see how smart you are, shall we? Are you a man who can control his temper? ’Cos if you aren’t, then I’ll give you a nose so wide that you’ll have to hold your handkerchief on the end of a stick. Don’t you, for one moment, think I’m not capable of it. But I reckon a blacksmith knows when to cool the metal, and I’m giving you a chance to say that at least you got the duke on the floor in front of all your friends, and we’ll stand up and shake hands like the gentlemen neither of us is, and the crowd will cheer and go into the pub to get happily ratted on the beer that I shall pay for. Are we men of one accord?”

There was a muffled “Yes,” and Vimes stood up, took the blacksmith’s hand in his hand and raised it up high, which caused some slight puzzlement, but when he then said, “Sam Vimes invites you all to take a drink with him in Mr. Jiminy’s establishment!” everybody shrugged bewilderment aside to make room for the beer. The crowd surged into the pub, leaving the blacksmith and Vimes on their own—plus Willikins, who could be remarkably self-effacing when he wanted.

“Blacksmiths should know about temper, too,” said Vimes, as the crowd dispersed pubward. “Sometimes cool is better than hot. I don’t know anything much about you, Mr. Jefferson, but the City Watch needs people who learn fast and I reckon you would soon make it to sergeant. We could use you as a smith, too. It’s amazing how dented the old armor can get when you’re standing on the faces of the poor.”

Jethro stared down at his boots. “All right, you can beat me in a fight, but that doesn’t mean it’s right, all right? You don’t know the half of it!”

There were sounds of merriment coming from the pub. Vimes wondered how embroidered that little scuffle would turn out to be. He turned back to the smith, who hadn’t moved. “Listen to me, you stupid young fool, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth! When I was a kid the only spoons I ever saw were made of wood and you were lucky if there was some edible food on the end of them. I was a street kid, understand? If I had been dumped out here I would have thought it was paradise, what with food jumping out on you from every hedge. But I became a copper because they paid you and I was taught how to be a copper by decent coppers, because believe me, mister, I wake every night knowing that I could have been something else. Then I found a good lady and if I were you, kid, I’d hope that I’d find one of them, too. So I smartened myself up and then one day Lord Vetinari—you have heard of him, haven’t you, kid? Well, he needed a man to get things done, and the title opens doors so that I don’t actually have to kick them open myself, and do you know what? I reckon my boots have seen so much crime down the years that they walk me toward it of their own accord, and I know there’s something that needs kicking. So do you, I can smell it on you. Tell me what it is.”

Jethro still stared at his own boots and said nothing.

Willikins cleared his throat. “I wonder, commander, if it might help if I had a little talk with the young man, from what you might call a less elevated position? Why don’t you take a look at the beauties of the local countryside?”

Vimes nodded. “By all means, if you think it’ll do some good.” And he went away and examined a honeysuckle hedge with considerable interest, while Willikins, with his shiny gentleman’s gentleman shoes and his immaculate jacket, strolled over to Jethro, put an arm around him and said, “This is a stiletto I’m holding to your throat and it ain’t no ladies’ shoe, this is the real thing, the cutting edge, as it were. You are a little twit, and I ain’t the commander and I will slice you to the bone if you make a move. Got that? Now don’t nod your head! Good, we are learning, aren’t we? Now, my lad, the commander here is trusted by the Diamond King of Trolls and the Low King of the Dwarfs, who would only have to utter a word for your measly carcass to come under the caress of a large number of versatile axes, and by Lady Margolotta of Uberwald, who trusts very few people, and by Lord Vetinari of Ankh-Morpork, who doesn’t trust anybody at all. Got that? Don’t nod! And you, my little man, have the damn nerve to doubt his word. I’m an easygoing sort of fellow, but that sort of thing leaves me right out of sorts, I don’t mind telling you. You understand? I said, do you understand? Oh, all right, you can nod now. Incidentally, young man, be careful who you call a lackey, all right? Some people might take violent exception to that sort of thing. A word to the wise, lad: I know the commander, and you thought about your old mum and what might happen to her and I reckon that is why I won’t be seeing you in lavender, because he is a sensitive soul at heart.”

Willikins’ knife disappeared as quickly as it had come, and with the other hand the gentleman’s gentleman produced a small brush and tidied the blacksmith’s collar.

“Willikins,” said Vimes from the distance. “Will you go for a little walk now, please?”