Guards! Guards!

wearing a nightie and huge rubber boots. By the look of her she had been in a fight, and Vimes felt a momentary pang of sympathy for whoever else had been involved. She gave him a look of pure fury.
    “You!”
    “ You! ”
    He waved the cleaver vaguely.
    “But why you—?” he began.
    “Captain Vimes,” she said sharply, “you will oblige me by not waving that thing about and you will start putting it to its proper use!”
    Vimes wasn’t listening.
    “Thirty dollars a month!” he muttered. “That’s what they died for! Thirty dollars! And I docked some from Nobby. I had to, didn’t I? I mean, that man could make a melon go rusty!”
    “Captain Vimes!”
    He focused on the cleaver.
    “Oh,” he said. “Yes. Right!”
    It was a good steel cleaver, and the chains were elderly and rather rusty iron. He hacked away, raising sparks from the masonry.
    The crowd watched in silence, but several palace guards hurried toward him.
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said one of them, who didn’t have much imagination.
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Vimes growled, looking up.
    They stared at him.
    “What?”
    Vimes took another hack at the chains. Several loops tinkled to the ground.
    “Right, you’ve asked for—” one of the guards began. Vimes’s elbow caught him under his rib cage; before he collapsed, Vimes’s foot kicked savagely at the other one’s kneecaps, bringing his chin down ready for another stab with the other elbow.
    “Right,” said Vimes absently. He rubbed the elbow. It was sheer agony.
    He moved the cleaver to his other hand and hammered at the chains again, aware at the back of his mind that more guards were hurrying up, but with that special kind of run that guards had. He knew it well. It was the run that said, there’s a dozen of us, let someone else get there first. It said, he looks ready to kill, no one’s paying me to get killed, maybe if I run slowly enough he’ll get away…
    No point in spoiling a good day by catching someone.
    Lady Ramkin shook herself free. A ragged cheer went up and started to grow in volume. Even in their current state of mind, the people of Ankh-Morpork always appreciated a performance.
    She grabbed a handful of chain and wrapped it around one pudgy fist.
    “Some of those guards don’t know how to treat—” she began.
    “No time, no time,” said Vimes, grabbing her arm. It was like trying to drag a mountain.
    The cheering stopped, abruptly.
    There was a sound behind Vimes. It was not, particularly, a loud noise. It just had a peculiarly nasty carrying quality. It was the click of four sets of talons hitting the flagstones at the same time.
    Vimes looked around and up.
    Soot clung to the dragon’s hide. A few pieces of charred wood had lodged here and there, and were still smoldering. The magnificent bronze scales were streaked with black.
    It lowered its head until Vimes was a few feet away from its eyes, and tried to focus on him.
    Probably not worth running, Vimes told himself. It’s not as if I’ve got the energy anyway.
    He felt Lady Ramkin’s hand engulf his.
    “Jolly well done,” she said. “It nearly worked.”

    Charred and blazing wreckage rained down around the distillery. The pond was a swamp of debris, covered with a coating of ash. Out of it, dripping slime, rose Sergeant Colon.
    He clawed his way to the bank and pulled himself up, like some sea-dwelling lifeform that was anxious to get the whole evolution thing over with in one go.
    Nobby was already there, spread out like a frog, leaking water.
    “Is that you, Nobby?” said Sergeant Colon anxiously.
    “It’s me, Sergeant.”
    “I’m glad about that, Nobby,” said Colon fervently.
    “I wish it wasn’t me, Sergeant.”
    Colon tipped the water out of his helmet, and then paused.
    “What about young Carrot?” he said.
    Nobby pushed himself up on his elbows, groggily.
    “Dunno,” he said. “One minute we were on the roof, next minute we were jumping.”
    They both looked at the ashen waters of the pond.
    “I suppose,” said Colon slowly, “he can swim?”
    “Dunno. He never said. Not much to swim in, up in the mountains. When you come to think about it,” said Nobby.
    “But perhaps there were limpid blue pools and deep mountain streams,” said the sergeant hopefully. “And icy tarns in hidden valleys and that. Not to mention subterranean lakes. He’d be bound to have learned. In and out of the water all day, I