Guards! Guards!

offer. His eyes swiveled back and forth in their sockets, like two rodents trying to find a way out. “Can’t afford to be without it,” he hissed. “Anti-dragon cream. Personal guarantee: if you’re incinerated you get your money back, no quibble.”
    “What you’re saying,” said Vimes slowly, “if I understand the wording correctly, is that if I am baked alive by the dragon you’ll return the money?”
    “Upon personal application,” said Cut-me-own-Throat. He unscrewed the lid from a jar of vivid green ointment and thrust it under Vimes’s nose. “Made from over fifty different rare spices and herbs to a recipe known only to a bunch of ancient monks what live on some mountain somewhere. One dollar a jar, and I’m cutting my own throat. It’s a public service, really,” he added piously.
    “You’ve got to hand it to those ancient monks, brewing it up so quickly,” said Vimes.
    “Clever buggers,” agreed Cut-me-own-Throat. “I must be all that meditation and yak yogurt.”
    “So what’s happening, Throat?” said Vimes. “Who’re all the guys with the big swords?”
    “Dragon hunters, Cap’n. The Patrician announced a reward of fifty thousand dollars to anyone who brings him the dragon’s head. Not attached to the dragon, either; he’s no fool, that man.”
    “What?”
    “That’s what he said. It’s all written on posters.”
    “Fifty thousand dollars!”
    “Not chicken feed, eh?”
    “More like dragon fodder,” said Vimes. It’d bring trouble, you mark his words. “I’m amazed you’re not grabbing a sword and joining in.”
    “I’m more in what you might call the service sector, Cap’n.” Throat looked both ways conspiratorially, and then passed Vimes a slip of parchment.
    It said:

    Anti-dragon mirror shields A$500
    Portable lair detectors A$250
    Dragon-piercing arrows A$100 per each
    Shovels A$5 Picks A$5 Sacks A$1

    Vimes handed it back. “Why the sacks?” he said.
    “On account of the hoard,” said Throat.
    “Oh, yes,” said Vimes gloomily. “Of course.”
    “Tell you what,” said Throat, “tell you what. For our boys in brown, ten percent off.”
    “And you’re cutting your own throat, Throat?”
    “Fifteen percent for officers!” urged Throat, as Vimes walked away. The cause of the slight panic in his voice was soon apparent. He had plenty of competition.
    The people of Ankh-Morpork were not by nature heroic but were, by nature, salesmen. In the space of a few feet Vimes could have bought any number of magical weapons Genuine certyfycate of orthenticity with everyone , a cloak of invisibility—a good touch, he thought, and he was really impressed by the way the stallowner was using a mirror with no glass in it—and, by way of lighter relief, dragon biscuits, balloons and windmills on sticks. Copper bracelets guaranteed to bring relief from dragons were a nice thought.
    There seemed to be as many sacks and shovels about as there were swords.
    Gold, that was it. The hoard. Hah!
    Fifty thousand dollars! An officer of the Watch earned thirty dollars a month and had to pay to have his own dents beaten out.
    What he couldn’t do with fifty thousand dollars…
    Vimes thought about this for a while and then thought of the things he could do with fifty thousand dollars. There were so many more of them, for a start.
    He almost walked into a group of men clustered around a poster nailed to the wall. It declared, indeed, that the head of the dragon that had terrorized the city would be worth A$50,000 to the brave hero that delivered it to the palace.
    One of the cluster, who from his size, weaponry and that way he was slowly tracing the lettering with his finger Vimes decided was a leading hero, was doing the reading for the others.
    “—to ter-her pal-ack-ee,” he concluded.
    “Fifty thousand,” said one of them reflectively, rubbing his chin.
    “Cheap job,” said the intellectual. “Well below the rate. Should be half the kingdom and his daughter’s hand in marriage.”
    “Yes, but he ain’t a king. He’s a Patrician.”
    “Well, half his Patrimony or whatever. What’s his daughter like?”
    The assembled hunters didn’t know.
    “He’s not married,” Vimes volunteered. “And he hasn’t got a daughter.”
    They turned and looked him up and down. He could see the disdain in their eyes. They probably got through dozens like him every day. “Not got a daughter?” said one of them. “Wants people to kill dragons and he hasn’t got a