Guards! Guards!

Vimes. “You’d think he’d give in, wouldn’t you?”
    “They fight like blazes,” said Lady Ramkin, as he climbed onto the coach. “It’s a matter of making your opponent explode, you see.”
    “I thought, in Nature, the defeated animal just rolls on its back in submission and that’s an end of it,” said Vimes, as they clattered after the disappearing swamp dragon.
    “Wouldn’t work with dragons,” said Lady Ramkin. “Some daft creature rolls on its back, you disembowel it. That’s how they look at it. Almost human, really.”

    The clouds were clustered thickly over Ankh-Morpork. Above them, the slow golden sunlight of the Discworld unrolled.
    The dragon sparkled in the dawn as it trod the air joyously, doing impossible turns and rolls for the sheer delight of it. Then it remembered the business of the day.
    They’d had the presumption to summon it…
    Below it, the rank wandered from side to side up the Street of Small Gods. Despite the thick fog it was beginning to get busy.
    “What d’you call them things, like thin stairs?” said Sergeant Colon.
    “Ladders,” said Carrot.
    “Lot of ’em about,” said Nobby. He mooched over to the nearest one, and kicked it.
    “Oi!” A figure struggled down, half buried in a string of flags.
    “What’s going on?” said Nobby.
    The flag bearer looked him up and down.
    “Who wants to know, tiddler?” he said.
    “Excuse me, we do,” said Carrot, looming out of the fog like an iceberg. The man gave a sickly grin.
    “Well, it’s the coronation, isn’t it,” he said. “Got to get the streets ready for the coronation. Got to have the flags up. Got to get the old bunting out, haven’t we?”
    Nobby gave the dripping finery a jaundiced look. “Doesn’t look that old to me,” he said. “It looks new. What’re them fat saggy things on that shield?”
    “Those are the royal hippos of Ankh,” said the man proudly. “Reminders of our noble heritage.”
    “How long have we had a noble heritage, then?” said Nobby.
    “Since yesterday, of course.”
    “You can’t have a heritage in a day,” said Carrot. “It has to last a long time.”
    “If we haven’t got one,” said Sergeant Colon, “I bet we’ll soon have had one. My wife left me a note about it. All these years, and she turns out to be a monarchist.” He kicked the pavement viciously. “Huh!” he said. “A man knocks his pipes out for thirty years to put a bit of meat on the table, but all she’s talking about is some boy who gets to be king for five minutes’ work. Know what was for my tea last night? Beef dripping sandwiches!”
    This did not have the expected response from the two bachelors.
    “Cor!” said Nobby.
    “ Real beef dripping?” said Carrot. “The kind with the little crunchy bits on top? And shiny blobs of fat?”
    “Can’t remember when I last addressed the crust on a bowl of dripping,” mused Nobby, in a gastronomic heaven. “With just a bit of salt and pepper, you’ve got a meal fit for a k—”
    “Don’t even say it,” warned Colon.
    “The best bit is when you stick the knife in and crack the fat and all the browny gold stuff bubbles up,” said Carrot dreamily. “A moment like that is worth a ki—”
    “Shutup! Shutup!” shouted Colon. “You’re just— what the hell was that?”
    They felt the sudden downdraft, saw the mist above them roll into coils that broke against the house walls. A blast of colder air swept along the street, and was gone.
    “It was like something gliding past, up there somewhere,” said the sergeant. He froze. “Here, you don’t think—?”
    “We saw it killed, didn’t we?” said Nobby urgently.
    “We saw it vanish ,” said Carrot.
    They looked at one another, alone and damp in the mist-shrouded street. There could be anything up there. The imagination peopled the dank air with terrible apparitions. And what was worse was the knowledge that Nature might have done an even better job.
    “Nah,” said Colon. “It was probably just some…some big wading bird. Or something.”
    “Isn’t there anything we should do?” said Carrot.
    “Yes,” said Nobby. “We should go away quickly. Remember Gaskin.”
    “Maybe it’s another dragon,” said Carrot. “We should warn people and—”
    “No,” said Sergeant Colon vehemently, “because, Ae, they wouldn’t believe us and, Bee, we’ve got a king now. ’S his job, dragons.”
    “S’right,” said Nobby. “He’d probably be really angry. Dragons