Maskerade

an alternative had to be sought.
    There was a coach waiting outside one of the houses. He lurched over to it, pulled himself up, grabbed the reins and briefly turned his attention to the driver.
    “Get orfff.”
    Greebo’s teeth shone in the moonlight. The coachman, with great presence of mind and urgent absence of body, somersaulted backward into the night.
    The horses reared, and tried to break into a gallop from a standing start. Animals are less capable of being fooled than are humans; they knew that what they had behind them was a very large cat, and the fact that it was man-shaped didn’t make them any happier.
    The coach lumbered off. Greebo looked over his twitching shoulder at the torchlit crowd and waved a paw derisively. The effect pleased him so much that he clambered onto the roof of the swaying coach and continued to jeer.
    It is a catlike attribute to spit defiance at the enemy from a place of safety. In the circumstances it would have been better if catlike attributes had included the ability to steer.
    A wheel hit the parapet of the Brass Bridge and scraped along it, the iron rim kicking up sparks. The shock knocked Greebo from his perch in midgesture. He landed on his feet in the middle of the road, while the terrified horses continued on with the coach rocking dangerously from side to side.
    The pursuers stopped.
    “What’s he doing now?”
    “He’s just standing there.”
    “There’s only one of him and there’s lots of us, right? We could easily overpower him.”
    “Good idea. On the count of three, we’ll all rush him, right? One…two…three…” Pause. “You didn’t run.”
    “Well, nor did you.”
    “Yes, but I was the one saying ‘one, two, three.’”
    “Remember what he did to Mr. Pounder!”
    “Yes, well, I never liked the man all that much…”
    Greebo snarled. Ticklish things were happening to his body. He threw his head back and roared.
    “Look, at worst he’d only be able to get one or two of us—”
    “Oh, that’s good, is it?”
    “Here, why’s he twisting around like that?”
    “Maybe he hurt himself falling off the coach—”
    “Let’s get him!”
    The mob closed in. Greebo, struggling against a morphogenic field swinging wildly between species, punched the first man in the face with a hand and clawed the shirt off another man with something more like a giant paw.
    “Oh, shiiiooooo—”
    Twenty hands grabbed him. And then, in the mêlée and the darkness, twenty hands were holding just cloth and emptiness. Vengeful boots connected with nothing more than air. Clubs that had been swung at a snarling face whirled through empty space and returned to hit their owner on the ear.
    “—ooooaaawwwwl!”
    Quite unnoticed in the scrum, a flat-eared bullet of gray fur shot out from between the scuffling legs.
    The kicking and punching stopped only when it became apparent that all the mob was attacking was itself. And, since the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters, it was never very clear to anyone what had happened. Obviously they’d closed in on the Ghost, and he certainly couldn’t have escaped. All that was left was a mask and some torn clothing. So, the mob reasoned, he must have ended up in the river. And good riddance, too.
    Happy in the knowledge of a job well done, they adjourned to the nearest pub.
    This left Sergeant Count de Tritus and Corporal the Count de Nobby Nobbs, who lurched to the middle of the bridge and regarded the few scraps of cloth.
    “Commander Vimes isn’t…isn’t…isn’t goin’ to like dis,” said Detritus. “You know he likes prisoners to be alive.”
    “Yeah, but this one would’ve been hung anyway,” said Nobby, who was trying to stand upright. “This way was just a bit more…democratic. A great saving in terms of rope, not to mention wear and tear on locks and keys.”
    Detritus scratched his head. “Shouldn’t there be some blood?” he ventured.
    Nobby gave him a sour look. “He couldn’t’ve got away,” he said. “So don’t go asking questions like that.”
    “Only, if humans is hit hard enough, they leaks all over der place,” said Detritus.
    Nobby sighed. That was the caliber of people you got in the Watch these days. They had to make a mystery of things. In days gone by, when it had been just the old gang and an unofficial policy of lazy fair , they’d have said a heartfelt “Well done, lads” to the vigilantes and turned in early. But now old