Pratchett Terry David John. Guards! Guards!

   "Dunno. I suppose so. Although, Nobby, I've told you before it is not right to…"
   "And where's the spot, like?"
   "Oh, a different place on each dragon. You wait till it flies over and then you say, there's the voonerable spot, and then you kill it," said Carrot. "Something like that."
   Sergeant Colon stared blankly into space.
   "Hmm," said Nobby.
   They watched the panorama of panic for a while. Then Sergeant Colon said, "You sure about the voonerables?"
   "Yes. Oh, yes."
   "I wish you hadn't been, lad."
   They looked at the terrified city again.
   "You know," said Nobby, "you always told me you used to win prizes for archery in the army, Sergeant. You said you had a lucky arrow, you always made sure you got your lucky arrow back, you said you…"
   "All right! All right! But this isn't the same thing, is it? Anyway, I'm not a hero. Why should I do it?"
   "Captain Vimes pays us thirty dollars a month," said Carrot.
   "Yes," said Nobby, grinning, "and you get five dollars extra responsibility allowance."
   "But Captain Vimes has gone," said Colon wretchedly.
   Carrot looked at him sternly. "I am sure," he said, "that if he were here, he'd be the first to…"
   Colon waved him into silence. "That's all very well," he said. "But what if I miss?"
   "Look on the bright side," said Nobby. "You'll probably never know it.''
   Sergeant Colon's expression mutated into an evil, desperate grin. "We'll never know it, you mean," he said.
   "What?"
   "If you think I 'm standing on some rooftop on my tod, you can think again. I order you to accompany me. Anyway," he added, "you get one dollar responsibility allowance, too."
   Nobby's face twisted in panic. "No I don't!" he croaked. "Captain Vimes said he was docking it for five years for being a disgrace to the species!"
   "Well, you might just get it back. Anyway, you know all about voonerables. I've watched you fight."
   Carrot saluted smartly. "Permission to volunteer, sir," he said. "And I only get twenty dollars a month training pay and I don't mind at all, sir."
   Sergeant Colon cleared his throat. Then he straightened the hang of his breastplate. It was one of those with astonishingly impressive pectoral muscles embossed upon it. His chest and stomach fitted into it in the same way that jelly fits into a mould.
   What would Captain Vimes do now? Well, he'd have a drink. But if he didn't have a drink, what would he do?
   "What we need," he said slowly, "is a Plan."
   That sounded good. That sentence alone sounded worth the pay. If you had a Plan, you were halfway there.
   And already he thought he could hear the cheering of crowds. They were lining the streets, and they were throwing flowers, and he was being carried triumphantly through the grateful city.
   The drawback was, he suspected, that he was being carried in an urn.
 
   Lupine Wonse padded along the draughty corridors to the Patrician's bedroom. It had never been a sumptuous apartment at best, and contained little more than a narrow bed and a few battered cupboards. It looked even worse now, with one wall gone. Sleepwalk at night now and you could step right into the vast cavern that was the Great Hall.
   Even so, he shut the door behind him for a semblance of privacy. Then, cautiously and with many nervous glances at the great space beyond, he knelt down in the centre of the floor and pried up a board.
   A long black robe was dragged into view. Then Wonse reached further down into the dusty space between the floors and rummaged around. He rummaged still further. Then he lay down and stuck both arms into the gap and flailed desperately.
   A book sailed across the room and hit him in the back of the head.
   "Looking for this, were you?" said Vimes.
   He stepped out of the shadows.
   Wonse was on his knees, his mouth opening and shutting.
   What's he going to say, Vimes thought. Is it going to be: I know what this looks like, or will it be: How did you get in here, or maybe it'll be: Listen, I can explain everything. I wish I had a loaded dragon in my hands right now.
   Wonse said, "Okay. Clever of you to guess."
   Of course, that was always an outside chance, Vimes added.
   "Under the floorboards," he said aloud. "First place anyone'd look. Rather foolish, that was."
   "I know. I suppose he didn't think anyone would be searching," said Wonse, standing up and brushing the dust off himself.
   "I'm sorry?" said Vimes pleasantly.
   "Vetinari. You know how he was for scheming and things. He was involved in most of the plots against himself, that was how he ran things. He enjoyed it. Obviously he called it up and couldn't control it. Something even more cunning than he was."
   "So what were you doing?" said Vimes.
   "I wondered if it might be possible to reverse the spell. Or maybe call up another dragon. They'd fight then."
   "A sort of balance of terror, you mean?" said Vimes.
   "Could be worth a try," said Wonse earnestly. He took a few steps closer. "Look, about your job, I know we were both a bit overwrought at the time, so of course if you want it back there'll be no prob…"
   "It must have been terrible," said Vimes. "Imagine what must have gone through his mind. He called it up, and then found it wasn't just some sort of tool but a real thing with a mind of its own. A mind just like his, but with all the brakes off. You know, I wouldn't mind betting that at the start he really thought that what he was doing was all for the best. He must have been insane. Sooner or later, anyway."
   "Yes," said Wonse hoarsely. "It must have been terrible."
   "Ye gods, but I'd like to get my hands on him! All those years I’ve known the man, and I'd never realized ..."
   Wonse said nothing.
   "Run," said Vimes softly.
   "What?"
   "Run. I want to see you run."
   "I don't underst…."
   "I saw someone run away, the night the dragon flamed that house. I remember thinking at the time that he moved in a funny way, sort of bounding along. And then the other day I saw you running away from the dragon. Could almost have been the same man, I thought. Skipping, almost. Like someone running to keep up. Any of them get out, Wonse?"
   Wonse waved a hand in what he might have thought was a nonchalant way. "That's just ridiculous, that's not proof," he said.
   "I noticed you sleep in here now," said Vimes. "I suppose the king likes to have you handy, does he?"
   "You've got no proof at all," whispered Wonse.
   "Of course I haven't. The way someone runs. The eager tone of voice. That's all. But that doesn't matter, does it? Because it wouldn't matter even if I did have proof," said Vimes. "There's no one to take it to. And you can't give me my job back."
   "I can!" said Wonse. "I can, and you needn't just be captain…"
   "You can't give me my job back," repeated Vimes. "It was never yours to take away. I was never an officer of the city, or an officer of the king, or an officer of the Patrician. I was an officer of the law. It might have been corrupted and bent, but it was law, of a sort. There isn't any law now except: 'you'll get burned alive if you don't watch out'. Where's the place in there for me?"
   Wonse darted forward and grabbed him by the arm.
   "But you can help me!" he said. "There may be a way to destroy the dragon, d'you see, or at least we can help people, channel things to mitigate the worst of it, somehow find a meeting point…"
   Vimes's blow caught Wonse on the cheek and spun him around.
   "The dragon's here, "he snapped. "You can't channel it or persuade it or negotiate with it. There's no truce with dragons. You brought it here and we're stuck with it, you bastard. "
   Wonse lowered his hand from the bright white mark where the punch had connected.
   "What are you going to do?" he said.
   Vimes didn't know. He'd thought of a dozen ways that the thing could go, but the only one that was really suitable was killing Wonse. And, face to face, he couldn't do it.
   "That's the trouble with people like you," said Wonse, getting up. "You're always against anything attempted for the betterment of mankind, but you never have any proper plans of your own. Guards! Guards!"
   He grinned maniacally at Vimes.
   "Didn't expect that, did you?" he said. "We've still got guards here, you know. Not so many, of course. Not many people want to come in."
   There were footsteps in the passage outside and four of the palace guards padded in, swords drawn.
   "I wouldn't put up a fight, if I were you," Wonse went on. "They're desperate and uneasy men. But very highly paid."
   Vimes said nothing. Wonse was a gloater. You always stood a chance with gloaters. The old Patrician had never been a gloater, you could say that for him. If he wanted you dead, you never even heard about it.
   The thing to do with gloaters was play the game according to the rules.
   "You'll never get away with it," he said.
   "You're right. You're absolutely right. But never is a long time," said Wonse. "None of us get away with anything for that long."
   "You shall have some time to reflect on this," he said and nodded to the guards. "Throw him in the special dungeon. And then go about that other little task."
   "Er," said the leader of the guards, and hesitated.
   "What's the matter, man?"
   "You, er, want us to attack him?" said the guard miserably. Thick though the palace guard were, they were as aware as everyone else of the conventions, and when guards are summoned to deal with one man in overheated circumstances it's not a good time for them. The bugger's bound to be heroic, he was thinking. This guard was not looking forward to a future in which he was dead.
   "Of course, you idiot!"
   "But, er, there's only one of him," said the guard captain.
   "And he's smilin'," said a man behind him.
   "Prob'ly goin' to swing on the chandeliers any minute," said one of his colleagues. "And kick over the table, and that."
   "He's not even armed!" shrieked Wonse.
   "Worst kind, that," said one of the guards, with deep stoicism. "They leap up, see, and grab one of the ornamental swords behind the shield over the fireplace."
   "Yeah," said another, suspiciously. "And then they chucks a chair at you."
   "There's no fireplace! There's no sword! There's only him! Now take him!" screamed Wonse.
   A couple of guards grabbed Vimes tentatively by the shoulders.
   "You're not going to do anything heroic, are you?" whispered one of them.
   "Wouldn't know where to start," he said.
   "Oh. Right."
   As Vimes was hauled away he heard Wonse breaking into insane laughter. They always did, your gloaters.
   But he was correct about one thing. Vimes didn't have a plan. He hadn't thought much about what was going to happen next. He'd been a fool, he told himself, to think that you just had a confrontation and that was the end of it.
   He also wondered what the other task was.
   The palace guards said nothing, but stared straight ahead and marched him down, across the ruined hall, and through the wreckage of another corridor to an ominous door. They opened it, threw him in, and marched away.
   And no one, absolutely no one, noticed the thin, leaf-like thing that floated gently down from the shadows of the roof, tumbling over and over in the air like a sycamore seed, before landing in the tangled gewgaws of the hoard.
   It was a peanut shell.
 
   It was the silence that awoke Lady Ramkin. Her bedroom looked out over the dragon pens, and she was used to sleeping to the susurration of rustling scales, the occasional roar of a dragon flaming in its sleep, and the keening of the gravid females. Absence of any sound at all was like an alarm clock.
   She had cried a bit before going to sleep, but not much, because it was no use being soppy and letting the side down. She lit the lamp, pulled on her rubber boots, grabbed the stick which might be all that stood between her and theoretical loss of virtue, and hurried down through the shadowy house. As she crossed the damp lawn to the kennels she was vaguely aware that something was happening down in the city, but dismissed it as not currently worth thinking about. Dragons were more important.
   She pushed open the door.
   Well, they were still there. The familiar stink of swamp dragons, half pond mud and half chemical explosion, gusted out into the night.
   Each dragon was balancing on its hind legs in the centre of its pen, neck arched, staring with ferocious intensity at the roof.
   "Oh," she said. "Flying around up there again, is it? Showing off. Don't you worry about it, children. Mummy's here."
   She put the lamp on a high shelf and stamped along to Errol's pen.
   "Well now, my lad," she began, and stopped.
   Errol was stretched out on his side. A thin plume of grey smoke was drifting from his mouth, and his stomach expanded and contracted like a bellows. And his skin from the neck down was an almost pure white.
   "I think if I ever rewrite Diseases you'll get a whole chapter all to yourself," she said quietly, and unbolted the gate of the pen. "Let's see if that nasty temperature has gone down, shall we?"
   She reached out to stroke his skin and gasped. She pulled the hand back hurriedly and watched the blisters form on her fingertips.
   Errol was so cold he burned.
   As she stared at him the small round marks that her warmth had melted filmed over with frozen air.
   Lady Ramkin sat back on her haunches.
   "Just what kind of dragon are you-?" she began.
   There was the distant sound of a knock at the front door of the house. She hesitated for a moment, then blew out the lamp, crept heavily along the length of the kennels and pulled aside the scrap of sacking over the window.
   The first light of dawn showed her the silhouette of a guardsman on her doorstep, the plumes of his helmet blowing in the breeze.
   She bit her lip in panic, scuttled back to the door, fled across the lawn and dived into the house, taking the stairs three at a time.
   "Stupid, stupid," she muttered, realizing the lamp was back downstairs. But no time for that. By the time she went and got it, Vimes might have gone away.
   Working by feel and memory in the gloom she found her best wig and rammed it on her head. Somewhere among the ointments and dragon remedies on her dressing table was something called, as far as she could remember, Dew of the Night or some such unsuitable name, a present long ago from a thoughtless nephew. She tried several bottles before she found something that, by the smell of it, was probably the one. Even to a nose which had long ago shut down most of its sensory apparatus in the face of the overpoweringness of dragons, it seemed, well, more potent than she remembered. But apparently men liked that kind of thing. Or so she had read. Damn nonsense, really. She twitched the top hem of her suddenly far too sensible nightshirt into a position which, she hoped, revealed without actually exposing, and hurried back down the stairs.
   She stopped in front of the door, took a deep breath, twisted the handle and realized even as she pulled the door open that she should have taken the rubber boots off-
   "Why, Captain," she said winsomely, "That is a… who the hell are you?"
   The head of the palace guard took several steps backwards and, because he was of peasant stock, made a few surreptitious signs to ward off evil spirits. They clearly didn't work. When he opened his eyes again the thing was still there, still bristling with rage, still reeking of something sickly and fermented, still crowned with a skewed mass of curls, still looming behind a quivering bosom that made the roof of his mouth go dry.
   He'd heard about these sort of things. Harpies, they were called. What had it done with Lady Ramkin?
   The sight of the rubber boots had him confused, though. Legends about harpies were short on references to rubber boots.
   "Out with it, fellow," Lady Ramkin boomed, hitching up her nightie to a more respectable neckline. "Don't just stand there opening and shutting your mouth. What d'you want?"
   "Lady Sybil Ramkin?" said the guard, not in the polite way of someone seeking mere confirmation but in the incredulous tones of someone who found it very hard to believe the answer could be 'yes'.
   "Use your eyes, young man. Who d'you think I am?"
   The guard pulled himself together.
   "Only I've got a summons for Lady Sybil Ramkin," he said uncertainly.
   Her voice was withering. "What do you mean, a summons?''
   "To attend upon the palace, you see."
   "I can't imagine why that is necessary at this time in the morning," she said, and made to slam the door. It wouldn't shut, though, because of the sword point jammed into it at the last moment.
   "If you don't come," said the guard, "I have been ordered to take steps."
   The door shot back and her face pressed against his, almost knocking him unconscious with the scent of rotting rose petals.
   "If you think you'll lay a hand on me…" she began.
   The guard's glance darted sideways, just for a moment, to the dragon kennels. Sybil Ramkin's face went pale.
   "You wouldn't!" she hissed.
   He swallowed. Fearsome though she was, she was only human. She could only bite your head off metaphorically. There were, he told himself, far worse things than Lady Ramkin although, admittedly, they weren't three inches from his nose at this point in time.
   "Take steps," he repeated, in a croak.
   She straightened up, and eyed the row of guards behind him.
   "I see," she said coldly. "That's the way, is it? Six of you to fetch one feeble woman. Very well. You will, of course, allow me to fetch a coat. It is somewhat chilly."
   She slammed the door.
   The palace guards stamped their feet in the cold and tried not to look at one another. This obviously wasn't the way you went around arresting people. They weren't allowed to keep you waiting on the doorstep, this wasn't the way the world was supposed to work. On the other hand, the only alternative was to go in there and drag her out, and it wasn't one anyone could summon any enthusiasm for. Besides, the guard captain wasn't sure he had enough men to drag Lady Ramkin anywhere. You'd need teams of thousands, with log rollers.
   The door creaked open again, revealing only the musty darkness of the hall within.
   "Right, men…" said the captain, uneasily.
   Lady Ramkin appeared. He got a brief, blurred vision of her bounding through the doorway, screaming, and it might well have been the last thing he remembered if a guard hadn't had the presence of mind to trip her up as she hurtled down the steps. She plunged forward, cursing, ploughed into the overgrown lawn, hit her head on a crumbling statue of an antique Ramkin, and slid to a halt.
   The double-handed broadsword she had been holding landed beside her, bolt upright, and vibrated to a standstill.
   After a while one of the guards crept forward cautiously and tested the blade with his finger.
   "Bloody hell," he said, in a voice of mixed horror and respect. "And the dragon wants to eat her?"
   "Fits the bill," said the captain. "She's got to be the highest-born lady in the city. I don't know about maiden," he added, "and right at this minute I'm not going to speculate. Someone go and fetch a cart."
   He fingered his ear, which had been nicked by the tip of the sword. He was not, by nature, an unkind man, but at this moment he was certain that he would prefer the thickness of a dragon's hide between himself and Sybil Ramkin when she woke up.
   "Weren't we supposed to kill her pet dragons, sir?" said another guard. "I thought Mr Wonse said something about killing all the dragons."
   "That was just a threat we were supposed to make," said the captain.
   The guard's brow furrowed. "You sure, sir? I thought…"
   The captain had had enough of this. Screaming harpies and broadswords making a noise like tearing silk in the air beside him had severely ruined his capacity for seeing the other fellow's point of view.
   "Oh, you thought, did you?" he growled. "A thinker, are you? Do you think you'd be suitable for another posting, then? City guard, maybe? They're full of thinkers, they are."
   There was an uncomfortable titter from the rest of the guards.
   "If you'd thought, " added the captain sarcastically, "you'd have thought that the king is hardly going to want other dragons dead, is he? They're probably distant relatives or something. I mean, it wouldn't want us to go around killing its own kind, would it?''
   "Well, sir, people do, sir," said the guard sulkily.
   "Ah, well," said the captain. "That's different." He tapped the side of his helmet meaningfully. "That's 'cos we're intelligent."
 
   Vimes landed in damp straw and also in pitch darkness, although after a while his eyes became accustomed to the gloom and he could make out the walls of the dungeon.
   It hadn't been built for gracious living. It was basically just a space containing all the pillars and arches that supported the palace. At the far end a small grille high on the wall let in a mere suspicion of grubby, second-hand light.
   There was another square hole in the floor. It was also barred. The bars were quite rusty, though. It occurred to Vimes that he could probably work them loose eventually, and then all he would have to do was slim down enough to go through a nine-inch hole.
   What the dungeon did not contain was any rats, scorpions, cockroaches or snakes. It had once contained snakes, it was true, because Vimes's sandals crunched on small, long white skeletons.
   He crept cautiously along one damp wall, wondering where the rhythmic scraping sound was coming from. He rounded a squat pillar, and found out.
   The Patrician was shaving, squinting into a scrap of mirror propped against the pillar to catch the light. No, Vimes realized, not propped. Supported, in fact. By a rat. It was a large rat, with red eyes.
   The Patrician nodded to him without apparent surprise.
   "Oh," he said. "Vimes, isn't it? I heard you were on the way down. Jolly good. You had better tell the kitchen staff," and here Vimes realized that the man was speaking to the rat,"that there will be two for lunch. Would you like a beer, Vimes?"
   "What?" said Vimes.
   "I imagine you would. Pot luck, though, I am afraid. Skrp's people are bright enough, but they seem to have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to labels on bottles."
   Lord Vetinari patted his face with a towel and dropped it on the floor. A grey shape darted from the shadows and dragged it away down the floor grille.
   Then he said, "Very well, Skrp. You may go." The rat twitched its whiskers at him, leaned the mirror against the wall, and trotted off.
   "You're waited on by rats?" said Vimes.
   "They help out, you know. They're not really very efficient, I'm afraid. It's their paws."
   "But, but, but," said Vimes. "I mean, how?"
   "I suspect Skrp's people have tunnels that extend into the University," Lord Vetinari went on. "Although I think they were probably pretty bright to start with."
   At least Vimes understood that bit. It was well known that thaumic radiations affected animals living around the Unseen University campus, sometimes prodding them towards minute analogues of human civilisation and even mutating some of them into entirely new and specialised species, such as the bookworm and the wallfish. And, as the man said, rats were quite bright to start with. "But they're helping you?" said Vimes.
   "Mutual. It's mutual. Payment for services rendered, you might say," said the Patrician, sitting down on what Vimes couldn't help noticing was a small velvet cushion. On a low shelf, so as to be handy, were a notepad and a neat row of books.
   "How can you help rats, sir?" he said weakly.
   "Advice. I advise them, you know." The Patrician leaned back. "That's the trouble with people like Wonse," he said. "They never know when to stop. Rats, snakes and scorpions. It was sheer bedlam in here when I came. The rats were getting the worst of it, too."
   And Vimes thought he was beginning to get the drift. "You mean you sort of trained them?" he said.
   "Advised. Advised. I suppose it's a knack," said Lord Vetinari modestly.
   Vimes wondered how it was done. Did the rats side with the scorpions against the snakes and then, when the snakes were beaten, invite the scorpions to a celebratory slap-up meal and eat them? Or were individual scorpions hired with large amounts of, oh, whatever it-was scorpions ate, to sidle up to selected leading snakes at night and sting them?
   He remembered hearing once about a man who, locked up in a cell for years, trained little birds and created a sort of freedom. And he thought of ancient sailors, shorn of the sea by old age and infirmity, who spent their days making big ships in little bottles.
   Then he thought of the Patrician, robbed of his city, sitting cross-legged on the grey floor in the dim dungeon and recreating it around him, encouraging in miniature all the little rivalries, power struggles and factions. He thought of him as a sombre, brooding statue amid paving stones alive with slinking shadows and sudden, political death. It had probably been easier than ruling Ankh, which had larger vermin who didn't have to use both hands to carry a knife.
   There was a clink over by the drain. Half a dozen rats appeared, dragging something wrapped in a cloth. They rathandled it past the grille and, with great effort, hauled it to the Patrician's feet. He leaned down and undid the knot.
   "We seem to have cheese, chicken legs, celery, a piece of rather stale bread and a nice bottle, oh, a nice bottle apparently of Merckle and Stingbat's Very Famous Brown Sauce. Beer, I said, Skrp." The leading rat twitched its nose at him. "Sorry about this, Vimes. They can't read, you see. They don't seem to get the hang of the concept. But they're very good at listening. They bring me all the news."
   "I see you're very comfortable here," said Vimes weakly.
   "Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself," said the Patrician, laying out the food on the cloth. "The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that."
   "We all thought you had built secret tunnels and suchlike," said Vimes.
   "Can't imagine why," said the Patrician. "One would have to keep on running. So inefficient. Whereas here I am at the hub of things. I hope you understand that, Vimes. Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn't in the job."
   "Oh."
   He's in a dungeon in his own palace with a raving lunatic in charge upstairs, and a dragon burning the city, and he thinks he's got the world where he wants it. It must be something about high office. The altitude sends people mad.
   "You, er, you don't mind if I have a look around, do you?" he said.
   "Feel free," said the Patrician.
   Vimes paced the length of the dungeon and checked the door. It was heavily barred and bolted, and the lock was massive.
   Then he tapped the walls in what might possibly be hollow places. There was no doubt that it was a well-built dungeon. It was the kind of dungeon you'd feel good about having dangerous criminals put in. Of course, in those circumstances you'd prefer there to be no trapdoors, hidden tunnels or secret ways of escape.
   These weren't those circumstances. It was amazing what several feet of solid stone did to your sense of perspective.
   "Do guards come in here?" he demanded.
   "Hardly ever," said the Patrician, waving a chicken leg. "They don't bother about feeding me, you see. The idea is that one should moulder. In fact," he said, "up 'til recently I used to go to the door and groan a bit every now and then, just to keep them happy."
   "They're bound to come in and check, though?" said Vimes hopefully.
   "Oh, I don't think we should tolerate that," said the Patrician.
   ' 'How are you going to prevent them?''
   Lord Vetinari gave him a pained look.
   "My dear Vimes," he said, "I thought you were an observant man. Did you look at the door?"
   "Of course I did," said Vimes, and added, "sir. It's bloody massive.''
   "Perhaps you should have another look?''
   Vimes gaped at him, and then stamped across the floor and glared at the door. It was one of the popular dread portal variety, all bars and bolts and iron spikes and massive hinges. No matter how long he looked at it, it didn't become any less massive. The lock was one of those dwarfish-made buggers that it'd take years to pick. All in all, if you had to have a symbol for something totally immovable, that door was your man. The Patrician appeared alongside him in heart-stopping silence.
   "You see," he said, "it's always the case, is it not, that should a city be overtaken by violent civil unrest the current ruler is thrown into the dungeons? To a certain type of mind that is so much more satisfying than mere execution…."
   "Well, okay, but I don't see…" Vimes began.
   "…And you look at this door and what you see is a really strong cell door, yes?"
   "Of course. You've only got to look at the bolts and…"
   "You know, I'm really rather pleased," said Lord Vetinari quietly.
   Vimes stared at the door until his eyebrows ached. And then, just as random patterns in cloud suddenly, without changing in any way, become a horse's head or a sailing ship, he saw what he'd been looking at all along.
   A sense of terrifying admiration overcame him. He wondered what it was like in the Patrician's mind. All cold and shiny, he thought, all blued steel and icicles and little wheels clicking along like a huge clock. The kind of mind that would carefully consider its own downfall and turn it to advantage.
   It was a perfectly normal dungeon door, but it all depended on your sense of perspective.
   In this dungeon the Patrician could hold off the world.
   All that was on the outside was the lock.
   All the bolts and bars were on the inside.
 
 
   The rank clambered awkwardly across the damp rooftops as the morning mist was boiled off by the sun. Not that there would be any clear air today-sticky swathes of smoke and stale steam wreathed the city and filled the air with the sad smell of dampened cinders.
   "What is this place?" said Carrot, helping the others along a greasy walkway.
   Sergeant Colon looked around at the forest of chimneys.
   "We're just above Jimkin Bearhugger's whisky distillery," he said. "On a direct line, see, between the palace and the plaza. It's bound to fly over here."
   Nobby looked wistfully over the side of the building.
   "I bin in there once," he said. "Checked the door one dark night and it just came open in my hand."
   "Eventually, I expect," said Colon sourly.
   "Well, I had to go in, din't I, to check there was no miscreanting going on. Amazing place in there. All pipes and stuff. And the smell!"
   " 'Every bottle matured for up to seven minutes'," quoted Colon. " 'Ha' a drop afore ye go', it says on the label. Damn right, too. I had a drop once, and I went all day.''
   He knelt down and unwrapped the long sacking package he had been manhandling, with extreme difficulty, during the climb. This revealed a longbow of ancient design and a quiver of arrows.
   He picked up the bow slowly, reverentially, and ran his pudgy fingers along it.
   "You know," he said quietly, "I was damn good with this, when I were a lad. The captain should of let me have a go the other night."
   "You keep on telling us," said Nobby unsympathetically.
   "Well, I used to win prizes." The sergeant unwound a new bowstring, looped it around one end of the bow, stood up, pressed down, grunted a bit ...
   "Er, Carrot?" he said, slightly out of breath.
   "Yes, Sarge?"
   "You any good at stringing bows?"
   Carrot grasped the bow, compressed it easily, and slipped the other end of the string into place.
   "That's a good start, Sarge," said Nobby.
   "Don't you be sarcastic with me, Nobby! It ain't strength, it's keenness of eye and steadiness of hand what counts. Now you pass me an arrow. Not that one!"
   Nobby's fingers froze in the act of grasping a shaft.
   "That's my lucky arrow!" spluttered Colon. "None of you is to touch my lucky arrow!"
   "Looks just like any other bloody arrow to me, Sarge," said Nobby mildly.
   "That's the one I shall use for the actual wossname, the coup de grass," said Colon. "Never let me down, my lucky arrow didn't. Hit whatever I shot at. Hardly even had to aim. If that dragon's got any voonerables, that arrow'll find 'em."
   He selected an identical-looking but presumably less lucky arrow and nocked it. Then he looked around the rooftops with a speculative eye.
   "Better get my hand in," he muttered. "Of course, once you learn you never forget, it's like riding a… riding a…riding something you never forget being able to ride."
   He pulled the bowstring back to his ear, and grunted.
   "Right," he wheezed, as his arm trembled with the tension like a branch in a gale. "See the roof of the Assassins' Guild over there?" They peered through the grubby air.
   "Right, then," said Colon. "And do you see the weathervane on it? Do you see it?"
   Carrot glanced at the arrowhead. It was weaving back and forth in a series of figure-eights.
   "It's a long way off, Sarge," said Nobby doubtfully.
   "Never you mind me, you keep your eyes on the weathervane," groaned the sergeant.
   They nodded. The weathervane was in the shape of a creeping man with a big cloak; his outstretched dagger was always turned to stab the wind. At this distance, though, it was tiny.
   "Okay," panted Colon. "Now, d'you see the man's eye?"
   "Oh, come on, " said Nobby.
   "Shutup, shutup, shutup!" groaned Colon. "Do you see it, I said!"
   "I think I can see it, Sarge," said Carrot loyally.
   "Right. Right," said the sergeant, swaying backwards and forwards with effort. "Right. Good lad. Okay. Now keep an eye on it, right?"
   He grunted, and loosed the arrow.
   Several things happened so fast that they will have to be recounted in stop-motion prose. Probably the first was the bowstring slapping into the soft inner part of Colon's wrist, causing him to scream and drop the bow. This had no effect on the path of the arrow, which was already flying straight and true towards a gargoyle on the rooftop just across the road. It hit it on the ear, bounced, ricocheted off a wall six feet away, and headed back towards Colon apparently at a slightly increased speed, going past his ear with a silky humming noise.
   It vanished in the direction of the city walls.
   After a while Nobby coughed and gave Carrot a look of innocent inquiry.
   "About how big," he said, "is a dragon's voonerables, roughly?"
   "Oh, it can be a tiny spot," said Carrot helpfully.
   "I was sort of afraid of that," said Nobby. He wandered to the edge of the roof, and pointed downwards. "There's a pond just here," he said. "They use it for cooling water in the stills. I reckon it's pretty deep, so after the sergeant has shot at the dragon we can jump in it. What d'you say?"
   "Oh, but we don't need to do that," said Carrot. "Because the sergeant's lucky arrow would of hit the spot and the dragon'll be dead, so we won't have anything to worry about."
   "Granted, granted," said Nobby hurriedly, looking at Colon's scowling face. "But just in case, you know, if by a million-to-one chance he misses — I'm not saying he will, mark you, you just have to think of all eventualities — if, by incredible bad luck, he doesn't quite manage to hit the voonerable dead on, then your dragon is going to lose his rag, right, and it's probably a good idea to not be here. It's a long shot, I know. Call me a worry-wart if you like. That's all I'm saying."
   Sergeant Colon adjusted his armour haughtily.
   "When you really need them the most," he said, "million-to-one chances always crop up. Well-known fact."
   "The sergeant is right, Nobby," said Carrot virtuously. "You know that when there's just one chance which might just work-well, it works. Otherwise there'd be no," he lowered his voice,"I mean, it stands to reason, if last desperate chances didn't work, there'd be no ... well, the gods wouldn't let it be any other way. They wouldn't."