Men at Arms

water droplets flying from her mane, her eyes fixed on Cruces’ neck.
    The gonne fired, four times. It didn’t miss once.
    She hit the man heavily, knocking him backward.
    Vimes rose in an explosion of spray.
    “Six shots! That’s six shots, you bastard! I’ve got you now!”
    Cruces turned as Vimes waded toward him, and scurried toward a tunnel, throwing up more spray.
    Vimes snatched the bow from Carrot, aimed desperately and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
    “Carrot! You idiot! You never cocked the damn thing!”
    Vimes turned.
    “Come on, man! We can’t let him get away!”
    “It’s Angua, captain.”
    “What?”
    “She’s dead!”
    “Carrot! Listen . Can you find the way out in this stuff? No ! So come with me!”
    “I…can’t leave her here. I—”
    “ Corporal Carrot! Follow me !”
    Vimes half ran, half waded through the rising water toward the tunnel that had swallowed Cruces. It was up a slope; he could feel the water dropping as he ran.
    Never give the quarry time to rest. He’d learned that on his first day in the Watch. If you had to chase, then stay with it. Give the pursued time to stop and think and you’d go round a corner to find a sock full of sand coming the other way.
    The walls and ceiling were closing in.
    There were other tunnels here. Carrot had been right. Hundreds of people must have worked for years to build this. What Ankh-Morpork was built on was Ankh-Morpork.
    Vimes stopped.
    There was no sound of splashing, and tunnel mouths all around.
    Then there was a flash of light, up a side tunnel.
    Vimes scrambled toward it, and saw a pair of legs in a shaft of light from an open trapdoor.
    He launched himself at them, and caught a boot just as it was disappearing into the room above. It kicked at him, and he heard Cruces hit the floor.
    Vimes grabbed the edge of the hatchway and struggled through it.
    This wasn’t a tunnel. It looked like a cellar. He slipped on mud and hit a wall clammy with slime. What was Ankh-Morpork built on? Right…
    Cruces was only a few yards away, scrambling and slipping up a flight of steps. There had been a door at the top but it had long ago rotted.
    There were more steps, and more rooms. Fire and flood, flood and rebuilding. Rooms had become cellars, cellars had become foundations. It wasn’t an elegant pursuit; both men slithered and fell, clambered up again, fought their way through hanging curtains of slime. Cruces had left candles here and there. They gave just enough light to make Vimes wish they didn’t.
    And then there was dry stone underfoot and this wasn’t a door, but a hole knocked through a wall. And there were barrels, and sticks of furniture, ancient stuff that had been locked up and forgotten.
    Cruces was lying a few feet away, fighting for breath and hammering another rack of pipes into the gonne. Vimes managed to pull himself up on to his hands and knees, and gulped air. There was a candle wedged into the wall nearby.
    “Got…you,” he panted.
    Cruces tried to get to his feet, still clutching the gonne.
    “You’re…too old…to run…” Vimes managed.
    Cruces made it up upright, and lurched away. Vimes thought about it. “ I’m too old to run,” he added, and leapt.
    The two men rolled in the dust, the gonne between them. It struck Vimes much later that the last thing any man of sense would do was fight an Assassin. They had concealed weapons everywhere. But Cruces wasn’t going to let go of the gonne. He held it grimly in both hands, trying to hit Vimes with the barrel or the butt.
    Curiously enough, Assassins learned hardly any unarmed combat. They were generally good enough at armed combat not to need it. Gentlemen bore arms; only the lower classes used their hands.
    “I’ve got you,” Vimes panted. “You’re under arrest. Be under arrest, will you?”
    But Cruces wouldn’t let go. Vimes didn’t dare let go; the gonne would be twisted out of his grip. It was pulled backward and forward between them in desperate, grunting concentration.
    The gonne exploded.
    There was a tongue of red fire, a firework stink and a zing-zing noise from three walls. Something struck Vimes’ helmet and zinged away toward the ceiling.
    Vimes stared at Cruces’ contorted features. Then he lowered his head and yanked the gonne hard.
    The Assassin screamed and let go, clutching at his nose. Vimes rolled back, gonne in both hands.
    It moved. Suddenly the stock was against his shoulder and his finger was on the