The dragon stretched its claws luxuriantly.
   Then the need is not mine, it is yours, it thought. Now get out of my sight.
   Wonse sagged as it left his mind.
   The dragon slithered over the cut-price hoard, leapt up on to the ledge of one of the hall's big windows, and smashed the stained glass with its head. The multicoloured image of a city father cascaded into the other debris below.
   The long neck stretched out into the early evening air, and turned like a seeking needle. Lights were coming on across the city. The sound of a million people being alive made a muted, deep thrumming.
   The dragon breathed deeply, joyfully.
   Then it hauled the rest of its body on to the ledge, shouldered the remains of the window's frame aside, and leapt into the sky.
 
   "What is it?" said Nobby.
   It was vaguely round, of a woodish texture, and when struck made a noise like a ruler plucked over the edge of a desk.
   Sergeant Colon tapped it again.
   "I give in," he said.
   Carrot proudly lifted it out of the battered packaging.
   "It's a cake," he said, shoving both hands under the thing and raising it with some difficulty. "From my mother." He managed to put it on the table without trapping his fingers.
   "Can you eat it?" said Nobby. "It's taken months to get here. You'd think it would go stale."
   "Oh, it's to a special dwarfish recipe," said Carrot. "Dwarfish cakes don't go stale."
   Sergeant Colon gave it another sharp rap. "I suppose not," he conceded.
   "It's incredibly sustaining," said Carrot. "Practically magical. The secret has been handed down from dwarf to dwarf for centuries. One tiny piece of this and you won't want anything to eat all day."
   "Get away?" said Colon.
   "A dwarf can go hundreds of miles with a cake like this in his pack," Carrot went on.
   "I bet he can," said Colon gloomily, "I bet all the time he'd be thinking, 'Bloody hell, I hope I can find something else to eat soon, otherwise it's the bloody cake again.' "
   Carrot, to whom the word irony meant something to do with metal, picked up his pike and after a couple of impressive rebounds managed to cut the cake into approximately four slices.
   "There we are," he said cheerfully. "One for each of us, and one for the captain." He realized what he had said. "Oh. Sorry."
   "Yes," said Colon flatly.
   They sat in silence for a moment.
   "I liked him," said Carrot. "I'm sorry he's gone."
   There was some more silence, very similar to the earlier silence but even deeper and more furrowed with depression.
   "I expect you'll be made captain now," said Carrot.
   Colon started. "Me? I don't want to be captain! I can't do the thinking. It's not worth all that thinking, just for another nine dollars a month."
   He drummed his fingers on the table.
   "Is that all he got?" said Nobby. "I thought officers were rolling in it."
   "Nine dollars a month," said Colon. "I saw the pay scales once. Nine dollars a month to add and two dollars plumes allowance. Only he never claimed that bit. Funny, really."
   "He wasn't the plumes type," said Nobby.
   "You're right," said Colon. "The thing about the captain, see, I read this book once . . . you know we've all got alcohol in our bodies . . . sort of natural alcohol? Even if you never touch a drop in your life, your body sort of makes it anyway ... but Captain Vimes, see, he's one of those people whose body doesn't do it naturally. Like, he was born two drinks below normal."
   "Gosh," said Carrot.
   "Yes ... so, when he's sober, he's really sober. Knurd, they call it. You know how you feel when you wake up if you've been on the piss all night, Nobby? Well, he feels like that all the time. "
   "Poor bugger," said Nobby. "I never realized. No wonder he's always so gloomy."
   "So he's always trying to catch up, see. It's just that he doesn't always get the dose right. And, of course," Colon glanced at Carrot, 'he was brung low by a woman. Mind you, just about anything brings him low."
   "So what do we do now, Sergeant?" said Nobby.
   "And do you think he'd mind if we eat his cake?" said Carrot wistfully. "It'd be a shame to let it go stale."
   Colon shrugged.
   The older men sat in miserable silence as Carrot macerated his way through the cake like a bucket-wheel rockcrusher in a chalk pit. Even if it had been the lightest of souffles they wouldn't have had any appetite.
   They were contemplating life without the captain. It was going to be bleak, even without dragons. Say what you liked about Captain Vimes, he'd had style. It was a cynical, black-nailed style, but he'd had it and they didn't. He could read long words and add up. Even that was style, of a sort. He even got drunk in style.
   They'd been trying to drag the minutes out, trying to stretch out the time. But the night had come.
   There was no hope for them.
   They were going to have to go out on the streets.
   It was six of the clock. And all wasn't well.
   "I miss Errol, too," said Carrot
   "He was the captain's, really," said Nobby. "Anyway, Lady Ramkin'll know how to look after him."
   "It's not as though we could leave anything around, either," said Colon. "I mean, even the lamp oil. He even drank the lamp oil."
   "And mothballs," said Nobby. "A whole box of mothballs. Why would anyone want to eat mothballs? And the kettle. And sugar. He was a devil for sugar."
   "He was nice, though," said Carrot. "Friendly."
   "Oh, I'll grant you," said Colon. "But it's not right, really, a pet where you have to jump behind a table every time it hiccups."
   "I shall miss his little face," said Carrot.
   Nobby blew his nose, loudly.
   It was echoed by a hammering on the door. Colon jerked his head. Carrot got up and opened it.
   A couple of members of the palace guard were waiting with arrogant impatience. They stepped back when they saw Carrot, who had to bend a bit to see under the lintel; bad news like Carrot travels fast.
   "We've brung you a proclamation," said one of them. "You've got to…"
   "What's all that fresh paint on your breastplate?" said Carrot politely. Nobby and the sergeant peered around him.
   "It's a dragon," said the younger of the guards.
   "The dragon," corrected his superior.
   " 'Ere, I know you," said Nobby. 'You're Skully Maltoon. Used to live in Mincing Street. Your mum made cough sweets, din't she, and fell in the mixture and died. I never have a cough sweet but I think of your mum."
   "Hallo, Nobby," said the guard, without enthusiasm.
   "I bet your old mum'd be proud of you, you with a dragon on your vest," said Nobby conversationally. The guard gave him a look made of hatred and embarrassment.
   "And new plumes on your hat, too," Nobby added sweetly.
   "This here is a proclamation what you are commanded to read," said the guard loudly. "And post up on street corners also. By order."
   "Whose?" said Nobby.
   Sergeant Colon grabbed the scroll in one ham-like fist.
   "Where As," he read slowly, tracing the lettering with a hesitant finger, "It hathe Pleas-Sed the Der-Rer-Aa-Ger-the dragon, Ker-Ii-king of kings and Aa-Ber-Ess-Uh-Ler-" sweat beaded on the broad pink cliff of his forehead-"absolute, that is, Rer-Uh-Ler-Eh-Rer, ruler of-"
   He lapsed into the tortured silence of academia, his fingertip jerking slowly down the parchment.
   "No," he said at last. "That's not right, is it? It's not going to eat someone?"
   "Consume," said the older guard.
   "It's all part of the social. . . social contract," said his assistant woodenly. "A small price to pay, I'm sure you will agree, for the safety and protection of the city."
   "From what?" said Nobby. "We've never had an enemy we couldn't bribe or corrupt."
   "Until now," said Colon darkly.
   "You catch on fast," said the guard. "So you're going to broadcast it. On pain of pain."
   Carrot peered over Colon's shoulder.
   "What's a virgin?" he said.
   "An unmarried girl," said Colon quickly.
   "What, like my friend Reel?" said Carrot, horrified.
   "Well, no," said Colon.
   "She's not married, you know. None of Mrs Palm's girls are married."
   "Well, yes," said Colon.
   "Well, then," said Carrot, with an air of finality. "We're not having any of that kind of thing, I hope."
   "People won't stand for it," said Colon. "You mark my words."
   The guards stepped back, out of range of Carrot's rising wrath.
   "They can please themselves," said the senior guard. "But if you don't proclaim it, you can try explaining things to His Majesty."
   They hurried off.
   Nobby darted out into the street. "Dragon on your vest!" he shouted. "If your old mum knew about this she'd turn in her vat, you goin' around with a dragon on your vest!"
   Colon wandered back to the table and spread out the scroll.
   "Bad business," he mumbled.
   "It's already killed people," said Carrot. "Contrary to sixteen separate Acts in Council."
   "Well, yes. But that was just like, you know, the hurly-burly of this and that," said Colon. "Not that it wasn't bad, I mean, but people sort of participating, just handing over some slip of a girl and standing round watching as if it's all proper and legal, that's much worse."
   "I reckon it all depends on your point of view," said Nobby thoughtfully.
   "What d'you mean?"
   "Well, from the point of view of someone being burned alive, it probably doesn't matter much," said Nobby philosophically.
   "People won't stand for it, I said," said Colon, ignoring this. "You'll see. They'll march on the palace, and what will the dragon do then, eh?"
   "Burn 'em all," said Nobby promptly.
   Colon looked puzzled. "It wouldn't do that, would it?" he said.
   "Don't see what's to prevent it, do you?" said Nobby. He glanced out of the doorway. "He was a good lad, that boy. Used to run errands for my grandad. Who'd have thought he'd go around with a dragon on his chest ..."
   "What are we going to do, Sergeant?" said Carrot.
   "I don't want to be burned alive," said Sergeant Colon. "My wife'd give me hell. So I suppose we've got to wossname, proclaim it. But don't worry, lad," he said, patting Carrot on one muscular arm and repeating, as if he hadn't quite believed himself the first time, "it won't come to that. People'll never stand for it."
 
   Lady Ramkin ran her hands over Errol's body.
   "Damned if I know what's going on in there," she said. The little dragon tried to lick her face. "What's he been eating?"
   "The last thing, I think, was a kettle," said Vimes.
   "A kettle of what?"
   "No. A kettle. A black thing with a handle and spout. He sniffed it for ages, then he ate it."
   Enrol grinned weakly at him, and belched. They both ducked.
   "Oh, and then we found him eating soot out of the chimney," Vimes went on, as their heads rose again over the railings.
   They leaned back over the reinforced bunker that was one of Lady Ramkin's sickbay pens. It had to be reinforced. Usually one of the first things a sick dragon did was lose control of its digestive processes.
   "He doesn't look sick, exactly," she said. "Just fat."
   "He whines a lot. And you can sort of see things moving under his skin. You know what I think? You know you said they can rearrange their digestive system?"
   "Oh, yes. All the stomachs and pancreatic crackers can be hooked up in various ways, you see. To take advantage…"
   "…of whatever they can find to make flame with," said Vimes. "Yes. I think he's trying to make some sort of very hot flame. He wants to challenge the big dragon. Every time it takes to the air he just sits there whining."
   "And doesn't explode?"
   "Not that we've noticed. I mean, I'm sure if he did, we'd spot it."
   "He just eats indiscriminately?"
   "Hard to be sure. He sniffs everything, and eats most things. Two gallons of lamp oil, for example. Anyway, I can't leave him down there. We can't look after him properly. It's not as if we need to find out where the dragon is now," he added bitterly.
   "I think you're being a bit silly about all this," she said, leading the way back to the house.
   "Silly? I was sacked in front of all those people!"
   "Yes, but it was all a misunderstanding, I'm sure."
   "I didn't misunderstand it!"
   "Well, I think you're just upset because you're impotent."
   Vimes's eyes bulged. "Whee?" he said.
   "Against the dragon," Lady Ramkin went on, quite unconcerned. "You can't do anything about it."
   "I reckon this damn city and the dragon just about deserve one another," said Vimes.
   "People are frightened. You can't expect much of people when they're so frightened." She touched him gingerly on his arm. It was like watching an industrial robot being expertly manipulated to grasp an egg gently.
   "Not everyone's as brave as you," she added, timidly.
   "Me?"
   "The other week. When you stopped them killing my dragons."
   "Oh, that. That's not bravery. Anyway, that was just people. People are easier. I'll tell you one thing for nothing, I'm not looking up that dragon's nose again. I wake up at days thinking about that."
   "Oh." She seemed deflated. "Well, if you're sure . . . I've got a lot of friends, you know. If you need any help, you've only got to say. The Duke of Sto Helit is looking for a guard captain, I'm sure. I'll write you a letter. You'll like them, they're a very nice young couple."
   "I'm not sure what I shall do next," said Vimes, more gruffly than he intended. "I'm considering one or two offers."
   "Well, of course. I'm sure you know best."
   Vimes nodded.
   Lady Ramkin twisted her handkerchief round and round in her hands.
   "Well, then," she said.
   "Well," said Vimes.
   "I, er, expect you'll be wanting to be off, then."
   "Yes, I expect I had better be going."
   There was a pause. Then they both spoke at once.
   "It's been very…"
   "I'd just like to say…"
   "Sorry."
   "Sorry."
   "No, you were speaking."
   "No, sorry, you were saying?"
   "Oh." Vimes hesitated. "I'll be off, then."
   "Oh. Yes." Lady Ramkin gave him a washed-out smile. "Can't keep all these offers waiting, can you," she said.
   She thrust out a hand. Vimes shook it carefully.
   "So I'll just be going, then," he said.
   "Do call again," said Lady Ramkin, more coldly, "if you are ever in this area. And so on. I'm sure Errol would like to see you."
   "Yes. Well. Goodbye, then."
   "Goodbye, Captain Vimes."
   He stumbled out of the door and walked hurriedly down the dark, overgrown path. He could feel her gaze on the back of his neck as he did so or, at least, he told himself that he could. She'd be standing in the doorway, nearly blocking out the light. Just watching me. But I'm not going to look back, he thought. That would be a really silly thing to do. I mean, she's a lovely person, she's got a lot of common sense and an enormous personality, but really . . .
   I'm not going to look back, even if she stands there while I walk all the way down the street. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
   So when he heard the door shut when he was only halfway down the drive he suddenly felt very, very angry, as if he had just been robbed.
   He stood still and clasped and unclasped his hands in the darkness. He wasn't Captain Vimes any more, he was Citizen Vimes, which meant that he could do things he'd once never dreamt of doing. Perhaps he could go and smash some windows.
   No, that wouldn't be any good. He wanted more than that. To get rid of that bloody dragon, to get his job back, to get his hands on whoever was behind all this, to forget himself just once and hit someone until he was exhausted . . .
   He stared at nothing. Down below the city was a mass of smoke and steam. He wasn't thinking of that, though.
   He was thinking of a running man. And, further back in the fuddled mists of his life, a boy running to keep up.
   And under his breath he said, "Any of them get out?"
 
   Sergeant Colon finished the proclamation and looked around at the hostile crowd.
   "Don't blame me," he said. "I just read the things. I don't write 'em."
   "That's human sacrifice, that is," said someone.
   "There's nothing wrong with human sacrifice," said a priest.
   "Ah, per say, " said the first speaker quickly. "For proper religious reasons. And using condemned criminals and so on.[19] But that's different from bunging someone to a dragon just because it's feeling peckish."
   "That's the spirit!" said Sergeant Colon.
   "Taxes is one thing, but eating people is another."
   "Well said!"
   "If we all say we won't put up with it, what can the dragon do?"
   Nobby opened his mouth. Colon clamped a hand over it and raised a triumphant fist in the air.
   "It's just what I've always said," he said. "The people united can never be ignited!"
   There was a ragged cheer.
   "Hang on a minute," said a small man, slowly. "As far as we know, the dragon's only good at one thing. It flies around the city setting fire to people. I'm not actually certain what is being proposed that would stop it doing this."
   "Yes, but if we all protest…" said the first speaker, his voice modulated with uncertainty.
   "It can't burn everybody, " said Colon. He decided to play his new ace again and added, proudly, "The people united can never be ignited!" There was rather less of a cheer this time. People were reserving their energy for worrying.
   "I'm not exactly sure I understand why not. Why can't it burn everyone and fly off to another city?"
   "Because ..."
   "The hoard," said Colon. "It needs people to bring it treasure."
   "Yeah."
   "Well, maybe, but how many, exactly?"
   "What?"
   "How many people? Out of the whole city, I mean. Perhaps it won't need to burn the whole city down, just some bits. Do we know what bits?"
   "Look, this is getting silly," said the first speaker. "If we go around looking at the problems the whole time, we'll never do anything."
   "It just pays to think things through first, that's all I'm saying. Such as, what happens even if we beat the dragon?''
   "Oh, come on!" said Sergeant Colon.
   "No, seriously. What's the alternative?"
   "A human being, for a start!"
   "Please yourself," said the little man primly. "But I reckon one person a month is pretty good compared to some rulers we've had. Anyone remember Nersh the Lunatic? Or Giggling Lord Smince and his Laugh-A-Minute Dungeon?"
   There was a certain amount of mumbling of the "he's got a point" variety.
   "But they got overthrown!" said Colon.
   "No they didn't. They were assassinated."
   "Same thing," said Colon. "I mean, no one's going to assassinate the dragon. It'd take more than a dark night and a sharp knife to see it off, I know that.''
   I can see what the captain means, he thought. No wonder he always has a drink after he thinks about things. We always beat ourselves before we even start. Give any Ankh-Morpork man a big stick and he'll end up clubbing himself to death.
   "Look here, you mealy-mouthed little twerp," said the first speaker, picking up the little one by his collar and curling his free hand into a fist, "I happen to have three daughters, and I happen to not want any of them et, thank you very much."
   "Yes, and the people united . . . will . . . never .. .be ..."
   Colon's voice faltered. He realized that the rest of the crowd were all staring upward.
   The bugger, he thought, as rationality began to drain away. It must have flannel feet.
   The dragon shifted its position on the ridge of the nearest house, flapped its wings once or twice, yawned, and then stretched its neck down into the street.
   The man blessed with daughters stood, with his fist upraised, in the centre of a rapidly expanding circle of bare cobbles. The little man wriggled out of his frozen grasp and darted into the shadows.
   It suddenly seemed that no man in the entire world was so lonely and without friends.
   "I see," he said quietly. He scowled up at the inquisitive reptile. In fact it didn't seem particularly belligerent. It was looking at him with something approaching interest.
   "I don't care!" he shouted, his voice echoing from wall to wall in the silence. "We defy you! If you kill me, you might as well kill all of us!"
   There was some uneasy shuffling of feet amongst those sections of the crowd who didn't feel that this was absolutely axiomatic.
   "We can resist you, you know!" growled the man. "Can't we, everyone. What was that slogan about being united, Sergeant?"
   "Er," said Colon, feeling his spine turn to ice.
   "I warn you, dragon, the human spirit is-"
   They never found out what it was, or at least what he thought it was, although possibly in the dark hours of a sleepless night some of them might have remembered the subsequent events and formed a pretty good and gut-churning insight, to whit, that one of the things sometimes forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human.
   The dragon flame caught him full on the chest. For a moment he was visible as a white-hot outline before the neat, black remains spiralled down into a little puddle of melting cobbles.
   The flame vanished.
   The crowd stood like statues, not knowing if it was staying put or running that would attract more attention.
   The dragon stared down, curious to see what they were going to do next.
   Colon felt that, as the only civic official present, it was up to him to take charge of the situation. He coughed.
   "Right, then," he said, trying to keep the squeak out of his voice. "If you would just move along there, ladies and gentlemen. Move along, now. Move along. Let's be having you, please."
   He waved his arms in a vague gesture of authority as the people shuffled nervously away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw red flames behind the rooftops, and sparks spiralling in the sky.
   "Haven't you got any homes to go to?" he croaked.
 
   The Librarian knuckled out into the Library of the here and now. Every hair on his body bristled with rage.
   He pushed open the door and swung out into the stricken city.
   Someone out there was about to find that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian.
   With a badge.
 
   The dragon swooped leisurely back and forth over the night-time city, barely flapping its wings. It didn't need to. The thermals were giving it the lift it needed.
   There were fires all over Ankh-Morpork. So many bucket chains had formed between the river and various burning buildings that buckets were getting misdirected and hijacked. Not that you really needed a bucket to pick up the turbid waters of the river Ankh — a net was good enough.
   Downstream, teams of smoke-stained people worked feverishly to close the huge, corroded gates under the Brass Bridge. They were Ankh-Morpork's last defence against fire, since then the Ankh had no outlet and gradually, oozingly, filled the space between the walls. A man could suffocate under it.
   The workers on the bridge were the ones who couldn't or wouldn't run. Many others were teeming through the gates of the city and heading out across the chilly, mist-wreathed plains.
   But not for long. The dragon, looping and curving gracefully above the devastation, glided out over the walls. After a few seconds the guards saw actinic fire stab down through the mists. The tide of humanity flowed back, with the dragon hovering over it like a sheepdog. The fires of the stricken city glowed redly off the underside of its wings.
   "Got any suggestions about what we do next, Sergeant?" said Nobby.
   Colon didn't reply. I wish Captain Vimes were here, he thought. He wouldn't have known what to do either, but he's got a much better vocabulary to be baffled in.
   Some of the fires went out as the rising waters and the confused tangle of fire chains did their work. The dragon didn't appear to be inclined to start any more. It had made its point.
   "I wonder who it'll be," said Nobby.
   "What?" said Carrot.
   "The sacrifice, I mean."
   "Sergeant said people wouldn't put up with it," said Carrot stoically.
   "Yeah, well. Look at it this way: if you say to people, what's it to be, either your house burned down around you or some girl you've probably never met being eaten, well, they might get a bit thoughtful. Human nature, see."
   "I'm sure a hero will turn up in time," said Carrot. "With some new sort of weapon, or something. And strike at its voonerable spot."
   There was the silence of sudden intense listening.
   "What's one of them?" said Nobby.
   "A spot. Where it's voonerable. My grandad used to tell me stories. Hit a dragon in its voonerables, he said, and you've killed it."
   "Like kicking it in the wossnames?" said Nobby, interestedly.