Men at Arms

breathed Gaspode.
    They heard Big Fido’s irate yapping.
    “Cowards! That’s not twenty feet across! That’s nothing to a wolf!”
    The dogs measured the distance doubtfully. Sometimes a dog has to get right down and ask himself: what species am I?
    “It’s easy! I’ll show you! Look!”
    Big Fido ran back a little way, paused, turned, ran…and leapt.
    There was hardly a curve to the trajectory. The little poodle accelerated out into space, powered less by muscles than by whatever it was that burned in his soul.
    His forepaws touched the slates, clawed for a moment on the slick surface, and found no hold. In silence he skidded backward down the roof, over the edge—
    —and hung.
    He turned his eyes upward, to the dog that was gripping him.
    “Gaspode? Is that you?”
    “Yeff,” said Gaspode, his mouth full.
    There was hardly any weight to the poodle but, then, there was hardly any weight to Gaspode. He’d darted forward and braced his legs to take the strain, but there was nothing much to brace them against. He slid down inexorably until his front legs were in the gutter, which began to creak.
    Gaspode had an amazingly clear view of the street, three stories down.
    “Oh, hell !” said Gaspode.
    Jaws gripped his tail.
    “Let him go,” said Angua indistinctly.
    Gaspode tried to shake his head.
    “Stop ftruggling!” he said, out of the corner of his mouth. “Brave Dog Faves the Day! Valiant Hound in Wooftop Wefcue! No!”
    The gutter creaked again.
    It’s going to go, he thought. Story of my life…
    Big Fido struggled around.
    “What are you holding me up by?”
    “Yer collar,” said Gaspode, through his teeth.
    “What? To hell with that !”
    The poodle tried to twist, flailing viciously at the air.
    “Ftop it, you daft fbugger! You’ll haf uff all off!” Gaspode growled. On the opposite roof, the dog pack watched in horror. The gutter creaked again.
    Angua’s claws scored white lines on the slates.
    Big Fido wrenched and spun, fighting the grip of the collar.
    Which, finally, snapped.
    The dog turned in the air, hanging for a moment before gravity took hold.
    “Free!”
    And then he fell.
    Gaspode shot backward as Angua’s paws slipped from under her, and landed further up the roof, legs spinning. Both of them made it to the crest and hung there, panting.
    Then Angua bounded away, clearing the next alley before Gaspode had stopped seeing a red mist in front of his eyes.
    He spat out Big Fido’s collar, which slid down the roof and vanished over the edge.
    “Oh, thank you!” he shouted. “Thank you very much! Yes! Leave me here, that’s right! Me with only three good legs! Don’t you worry about me! If I’m lucky I’ll fall off before I starve! Oh yes! Story of my life! You and me, kid! Together! We could have made it!”
    He turned and looked at the dogs lining the roofs on the other side of the street.
    “You lot! Go home! BAD DOG!” he barked.
    He slithered down the other side of the roof. There was an alley there, but it was a sheer drop. He crept along the roof to the adjoining building, but there was no way down. There was a balcony a story below, though.
    “Lat’ral thinking,” he muttered. “That’s the stuff. Now, a wolf, your basic wolf, he’d jump, and if he couldn’t jump, he’d be stuck. Whereas me, on account of superior intelligence, can assess the whole wossname and arrive at a solution through application of mental processes.”
    He nudged the gargoyle squatting on the angle of the gutter.
    “Ot oo oo ont?”
    “If you don’t help me down to that balcony, I’ll widdle in your ear.”

    BIG FIDO?
    “Yes?”
    HEEL.

    There were, eventually, two theories about the end of Big Fido.
    The one put forward by the dog Gaspode, based on observational evidence, was that his remains were picked up by Foul Ole Ron and sold within five minutes to a furrier, and that Big Fido eventually saw the light of day again as a set of ear muffs and a pair of fleecy gloves.
    The one believed by every other dog, based on what might tentatively be called the truth of the heart, was that he survived his fall, fled the city, and eventually led a huge pack of mountain wolves who nightly struck terror into isolated farmsteads. It made digging in the middens and hanging around back doors for scraps seem…well, more bearable. They were, after all, only doing it until Big Fido came back.
    His collar was kept in a secret place and visited regularly by dogs until they forgot about