Men at Arms

carpet.
    “Yo, bitch,” said a voice behind her.
    She turned her head. Gaspode looked no better through canine vision, except that he was at the center of a cloud of mixed odors.
    “Oh. It’s you.”
    “’S’right,” said Gaspode, feverishly scratching himself. He gave her a hopeful look. “Just askin’, you understand, just gettin’ it over with right now, for the look of the thing, for wossname’s sake as it might be, but I s’pose there’s no chance of me sniffing—”
    “None.”
    “Just askin’. No offense meant.”
    Angua wrinkled her muzzle.
    “How come you smell so bad? I mean, you smelled bad enough when I was human, but now—”
    Gaspode looked proud.
    “Good, innit,” he said. “It didn’t just happen. I had to work at it. If you was a true dog, this’d be like really great aftershave. By the way, you want to get a collar, miss. No one bothers you if you’ve got a collar.”
    “Thanks.”
    Gaspode seemed to have something on his mind.
    “Er…you don’t rip hearts out, do you?”
    “Not unless I want to,” said Angua.
    “Right, right, right,” said Gaspode hurriedly. “Where’re you going?”
    He broke into a waddling, bow-legged trot to keep up with her.
    “To have a sniff around Hammerhock’s place. I didn’t ask you to come.”
    “Got nothing else to do,” said Gaspode. “The House of Ribs don’t put its rubbish out till midnight.”
    “Haven’t you got a home to go to?” said Angua, as they trotted under a fish-and-chip stall.
    “Home? Me? Home? Yeah. Of course. No problemo. Laughing kids, big kitchen, three meals a day, humorous cat next door to chase, own blanket and spot by the fire, he’s an old softy but we love him, ekcetra. No problem there. I just like to get out a bit,” said Gaspode.
    “Only, I see you haven’t got a collar.”
    “It fell off.”
    “Right?”
    “It was the weight of all them rhinestones.”
    “I expect it was.”
    “They let me do pretty much as I like,” said Gaspode.
    “I can see that.”
    “Sometimes I don’t go home for, oh, days at a time.”
    “Right?”
    “Weeks, sometimes.”
    “Sure.”
    “But they’re always so glad to see me when I do,” said Gaspode.
    “I thought you said you slept up at the University,” said Angua, as they dodged a cart in Rime Street.
    For a moment Gaspode smelled uncertain, but he recovered magnificently.
    “Yeah, right,” he said. “We-ell, you know how it is, families…All them kids picking you up, giving you biscuits and similar, people pattin’ you the whole time. Gets on yer nerves. So I sleeps up there quite often.”
    “Right.”
    “More often than not, point of fact.”
    “Really?”
    Gaspode whimpered a little.
    “You want to be careful, you know. A young bitch like you can meet real trouble in this dog’s city.”
    They had reached the wooden jetty behind Hammerhock’s workshop.
    “How d’you—” Angua paused.
    There was a mixture of smells here, but the overpowering one was as sharp as a saw.
    “Fireworks?”
    “And fear,” said Gaspode. “Lots of fear.”
    He sniffed the planks. “Human fear, not dwarf. You can tell if it’s dwarfs. It’s the rat diet, see? Phew! Must have been real bad to stay this strong.”
    “I smell one male human, one dwarf,” said Angua.
    “Yeah. One dead dwarf.”
    Gaspode stuck his battered nose along the line of the door, and snuffled noisily.
    “There’s other stuff,” he said, “but it’s a bugger what with the river so close and everything. There’s oil and…grease…and all sorts—hey, where’re you going?”
    Gaspode trotted after her as Angua headed back to Rime Street, nose close to the ground.
    “Following the trail.”
    “What for? He won’t thank you, you know.”
    “Who won’t?”
    “Your young man.”
    Angua stopped so suddenly that Gaspode ran into her.
    “You mean Corporal Carrot? He’s not my young man!”
    “Yeah? I’m a dog, right? It’s all in the nose, right? Smell can’t lie. Pheremonies. It’s the ole sexual alchemy stuff.”
    “I’ve only known him a couple of nights!”
    “Aha!”
    “What do you mean, aha? ”
    “Nothing, nothing. Nothing wrong with it, anyway—”
    “There isn’t any it to be wrong!”
    “Right, right. Not that it would be,” said Gaspode, adding hurriedly, “even if there was. Everyone likes Corporal Carrot.”
    “They do, don’t they,” said Angua, her hackles settling down. “He’s very…likeable.”
    “Even Big Fido only bit his