Guards! Guards!

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 an eye 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 backward and forward 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 toward 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 toward 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 enquiry.
    “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 downward. “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