Jingo

thinker than his superior officer, and he was worrying about “special qualities.” Being picked for something because of your “special qualities” was tantamount to being volunteered. Anyway, what was so special about “special qualities”? Limpets had special qualities.
    “Will we go undercover again?” said Colon.
    Leonard blinked. “There…yes, I think I can say there is a strong under element involved. Yes, indeed.”
    “Sarge—”
    “You just be quiet, corporal.” Colon pulled Nobby closer. “Undercover means not getting stabbed and shot at, right?” he whispered. “And what’s the most important thing a professional soldier wants not to happen to him?”
    “Not getting stabbed and shot,” said Nobby automatically.
    “Right! So let’s be going, Mr. Quirm! The call has come!”
    “Well done!” said Leonard. “Tell me, sergeant, are you of a nautical persuasion?”
    Colon saluted again. “Nossir! Happily married man, sir!”
    “I meant, have you ploughed the ocean waves at all?”
    Colon gave him a cunning look.
    “Ah, you can’t catch me with that one, sir,” he said. “Everyone knows the horses would sink.”
    Leonard paused for a moment and retuned his brain to Radio Colon.
    “Have you, in the past, floated around, on the sea, in a boat, at all?”
    “Me, sir? Not me, sir. It’s the sight of the waves going up and down, sir.”
    “Really?” said Leonard. “Well, happily, that will not be a problem.”

    All right, start again…
    Assembling facts, that’s what it was about…
    The world watched. Someone wanted the Watch to say that the assassination had been inspired by Klatch. Who?
    Someone had also beheaded Snowy Slopes where he stood and left him deader than six buckets of fish bait.
    A vision of 71-hour Ahmed’s big curved sword presented itself for his attention. So…
    …let’s assume that Ahmed was Khufurah’s servant or bodyguard, and he’d found out…
    No, how could that work? Who’d tell him?
    Well, maybe he’d found out somehow , and that meant that he might also know who’d paid the man…
    Vimes sat back. It was still a mystery but he’d solve it, he knew he would. He’d assemble the facts, analyze them, look at them from every angle with an open mind, and find out exactly how Lord Rust had organized it .
    Rank bad hat! He didn’t have to sit still for something like that, especially from a man who rhymed “house” with “mice.”
    His eye was caught by the ancient book. General Tacticus. Every kid knew about him. Ankh-Morpork had ruled a huge empire and a lot of it had been in Klatch, thanks to him. Except there wasn’t any thanks for him, strangely enough. Vimes had never quite known why, but the city seemed to be rather ashamed of the general.
    One reason, of course, was that he’d ended up fighting Ankh-Morpork. The city of Genua had run out of royalty, inbreeding having progressed to the point where the sole remaining example consisted mostly of teeth, and senior courtiers had written to Ankh-Morpork asking for help.
    There’d been a lot of that sort of thing, Vimes had been surprised to learn. The little kingdoms of the Sto Plains were forever scrounging spare royalty off one another. The King had sent Tacticus out of sheer exasperation. It’s hard to run a proper empire when you’re constantly getting bloodstained letters on the lines of: Dear sire, I beg to inform you that we have conquered Betrek, Smale and Ushistan. Please send AM$20,000 back pay . The man never knew when to stop. So he was hastily made a duke and packed off to Genua, whereupon his first action was to consider what was that city’s greatest military threat and then, having identified it, to declare war on Ankh-Morpork.
    But what else had anyone expected? He’d done his duty. He’d brought back heaps of spoils, lots of captives and, almost uniquely among Ankh-Morpork’s military leaders, most of his men. Vimes suspected that this last fact was one reason why history didn’t approve. There was a suggestion that this was, in some way, not playing fair.
    “ Veni, vidi, vici .” That was what the man was supposed to have said when he’d conquered…where? Pseudopolis, wasn’t it? Or Al-Khali? Or Quirm? Maybe Sto Lat? That was in the old days when you attacked anyone else’s city on principle, and went back and did them over again if they looked like getting up. And in those days, you didn’t care if the world watched. You wanted them to watch, and learn.