Jingo

hoped was a helpful and friendly voice.
    A guard waved him away. “ H you be off!”
    “Ah…” said Vimes. He looked down at the cobbles of the gateway and then back up at the guard. Somewhere in the flames someone was screaming.
    “You! Come here! You see this?” he shouted at the guard, pointing down. The man took a hesitant step forward.
    “That’s Ankh-Morpork soil down there, my friend,” said Vimes. “And you’re standing on it and you’re obstructing me in my—” he rammed his fist as hard as he could into the guard’s stomach “—duty!”
    He was already kicking out as the other guard rushed him. He caught him on the knee. Something went click. It felt like Vimes’s own ankle.
    Cursing and limping slightly, he ran on into the embassy and caught a scurrying man by his robe.
    “Are there people still in there? Are there people in there?”
    The man gave Vimes a panicky look. The armfuls of paper he’d been carrying spilled on to the ground.
    Someone else grabbed his shoulder. “Can you climb, Mr. Vimes?”
    “Who’re—”
    The newcomer turned to the cowering paper-carrier and struck him heavily across the face. “Rescuer of paper!”
    As the man fell back his turban was snatched from his head.
    “This way!” The figure plunged off through the smoke. Vimes hurried after him until they reached a wall, with a drainpipe attached.
    “How did you—?”
    “Up! Up!”
    Vimes put one foot in the man’s cupped hands, managed to get the other one on a bracket, and forced himself upward.
    “Hurry!”
    He managed to half climb, half pull himself up the pipe, little fireworks of pain exploding up and down his legs as he reached a parapet and hauled himself over. The other man rose behind him as if he’d run up the wall.
    There was a strip of cloth hiding the lower half of his face. He thrust another strip toward Vimes.
    “Across your nose and mouth!” he commanded. “For the smoke!”
    It was boiling across the roof. Beside Vimes a chimneypot gushed a roaring tongue of flame.
    The rest of the unwound turban was thrust into his hands.
    “You take this side, I’ll take the other,” said the apparition, and darted away again into the smoke.
    “But wh—”
    Vimes could feel the heat through his boots. He edged away across the roof, and heard the shouting coming from below.
    When he leaned over the edge here he could see the window some way below him. Someone had smashed a pane, because a hand was waving.
    There was more commotion down in the courtyard. Amid a press of figures he could make out the huge shape of Constable Dorfl, a golem and quite definitely fireproof. But Dorfl was bad enough at stairs as it was. There weren’t many that could take the weight.
    The hand in the smoke stopped waving.
    Vimes looked down again.
    Can you fly, Mr. Vimes ?
    He looked at the chimney, belching flame.
    He looked at the unwound turban.
    A lot of Sam Vimes’s brain had shut down, although the bits relaying the twinges of pain from his legs were operating with distressing efficiency. But there were still some thoughts operating down around the core, and they delivered for his consideration the insight:
    … tough-looking cloth …
    He looked back at the chimney. It looked stout enough.
    The window was about six feet below.
    Vimes began to move automatically.
    So, purely theoretically, if a man were to wrap one end of the cloth round the belching stack like this and pay it out like this and lower himself over the parapet like this and kick himself away from the wall like this , then when he swung back again his feet ought to be able to smash his way through the other panes of the window, like this —

    A cart squeaked along the wet street. Its progress was erratic because no two of its wheels were the same size, so it rocked and wobbled and skidded and probably involved more effort to pull than it saved overall, especially since its contents appeared to be rubbish. But then, so did its owner.
    Who was about the size of a man, but bent almost double, and was covered with hair or rags or quite possibly a matted mixture of both that was so felted and unwashed that small plants had taken root on it. If the thing had stopped walking and crouched down, it would have given an astonishingly good impression of a long-neglected compost heap. As it walked along, it snuffled.
    A foot was stuck out to impede its progress.
    “Good evening, Stoolie,” said Carrot as the cart halted.
    The heap stopped. Part of it