Guards! Guards!

circle of gold. Then, with extreme delicacy, it extended one meter-long claw and hooked the thing out of the priest’s trembling fingers.
    “What d’you mean, sensitive?” said Vimes, watching the claw travel slowly toward the long, horse-like face.
    “A really incredible sense of taste. They’re so, well, chemically orientated.”
    “You mean it can probably taste gold?” whispered Vimes, watching the crown being carefully licked.
    “Oh, certainly. And smell it.”
    Vimes wondered what the chances were of the crown being made of gold. Not high, he decided. Gold foil over copper, perhaps. Enough to fool human beings. And then he wondered what someone’s reaction would be if they were offered sugar which turned out, once you’d put three spoonfuls in your coffee, to be salt.
    The dragon removed the claw from its mouth in one graceful movement and caught the high priest, who was just sneaking away, a blow which knocked him high into the air. When he was screaming at the top of the arc the great mouth came around and—“Gosh!” said Lady Ramkin.
    There was a groan from the watchers.
    “The temperature of the thing!” said Vimes. “I mean, nothing left! Just a wisp of smoke!”
    There was another movement in the rubble. Another figure pulled itself upright and leaned dazedly against a broken spar.
    It was Lupine Wonse, under a coating of soot.
    Vimes watched him look up into a pair of nostrils the size of drain-covers.
    Wonse broke into a run. Vimes wondered what it felt like, running away from something like that, expecting any minute your backbone to reach, very briefly, a temperature somewhere beyond the vaporization point of iron. He could guess.
    Wonse made it halfway across the square before the dragon darted forward with surprising agility for such a bulk and snatched him up. The talon swept on upward until the struggling figure was being held a few feet from the dragon’s face.
    It appeared to examine him for some time, turning him this way and that. Then, moving on its three free legs and flapping its wings occasionally to help with its balance, it trotted away across the plaza and headed toward the—what once had been the Patrician’s palace. To what once had been the king’s palace, too.
    It ignored the frightened spectators silently pressing themselves against the walls. The arched gateway was shouldered aside with depressing ease. The doors themselves, tall and iron-bound and solid, lasted a surprising ten seconds before collapsing into a heap of glowing ash.
    The dragon stepped through.
    Lady Ramkin turned in astonishment. Vimes had started to laugh.
    There was a manic edge to it and there were tears in his eyes, but it was still laughter. He laughed and laughed until he slid gently down the edge of the fountain, his legs splaying out in front of him.
    “Hooray, hooray, hooray!” he giggled, almost choking.
    “What on earth d’you mean?” Lady Ramkin demanded.
    “Put out more flags! Blow the cymbals, roast the tocsin! We’ve crowned it! We’ve got a king after all! What ho!”
    “Have you been drinking?” she snapped.
    “Not yet!” sniggered Vimes. “Not yet! But I will be!”
    He laughed on, knowing that when he stopped black depression was going to drop on him like a lead soufflé. But he could see the future stretching out ahead of them…
    …after all, it was definitely noble . And it didn’t carry money, and it couldn’t answer back. It could certainly do something for the inner cities, too. Like torching them to the bedrock.
    We’ll really do it, he thought. That’s the Ankh-Morpork way. If you can’t beat it or corrupt it, you pretend it was your idea in the first place.
    Vivat Draco .
    He became aware that the small child had wandered up again. It waved its flag gently at him and said, “Can I shout hurrah again now?”
    “Why not?” said Vimes. “Everyone else will.”
    From the palace came the muffled sounds of complicated destruction…

    Errol pulled a broomstick across the floor with his mouth and, whimpering with effort, hauled it upright. After a lot more whimpering and several false starts he managed to winkle the end of it between the wall and the big jar of lamp oil.
    He paused for a moment, breathing like a bellows, and pushed.
    The jar resisted for a moment, rocked back and forth once or twice, and then fell over and smashed on the flagstones. Crude, very badly-refined oil spread out in a black puddle.
    Errol’s huge nostrils twitched.