Men at Arms

the window.
    Images flashed through his mind. The dead dwarf. The hole in the wall…
    A thought seemed to start in the small of his back and spread upward to his brain. These were lath and plaster walls, and old ones at that; you could push a finger through them with a bit of effort. As for a lump f metal—
    He hit the floor at the same time as a pock coincided with a hole punched through the wall on one side of the window. Plaster dust puffed into the air.
    His crossbow was leaning against the wall. He wasn’t an expert but, hells, who was? You pointed it and you fired it. He pulled it toward him, rolled on his back, stuck his foot in the stirrup and hauled on the string until it clicked into place.
    Then he rolled back on to one knee and slotted a quarrel into the groove.
    A catapult, that’s what it was. It had to be. Troll-sized, perhaps. Someone up on the roof of the opera house or somewhere high…
    Draw their fire, draw their fire…he picked up his helmet and balanced it on the end of another quarrel. The thing to do was crouch below the window and…
    He thought for a moment. Then he shuffled across the floor to the corner, where there was a pole with a hook on the end. Once upon a time it had been used to open the upper windows, now long rusted shut.
    He balanced his helmet on the end, wedged himself into the corner, and with a certain amount of effort moved the pole so that the helmet just showed over the windowsi…
    Pock .
    Splinters flew up from a point on the floor where it would undoubtedly have severely inconvenienced anyone lying on the boards cautiously raising a decoy helmet on a stick.
    Vimes smiled. Someone was trying to kill him, and that made him feel more alive than he had done for days.
    And they were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer.
    He dropped the pole, picked up the crossbow, spun past the window, fired at an indistinct shape on the opera house roof opposite as if the bow could possibly carry across that range, leapt across the room and wrenched at the door. Something smashed into the doorframe as the door swung to behind him.
    Then it was down the back stairs, out of the door, over the privy roof, into Knuckle Passage, up the back steps of Zorgo the Retrophrenologist, * into Zorgo’s operating room and over to the window.
    Zorgo and his current patient looked at him curiously.
    Pugnant’s roof was empty. Vimes turned back and met a pair of puzzled gazes.
    “’Morning, Captain Vimes,” said the retrophrenologist, a hammer still upraised in one massive hand.
    Vimes smiled manically.
    “Just thought—” he began, and then went on, “—I saw an interesting rare butterfly on the roof over there.”
    Troll and patient stared politely past him.
    “But there wasn’t,” said Vimes.
    He walked back to the door.
    “Sorry to have bothered you,” he said, and left.
    Zorgo’s patient watched him go with interest.
    “Didn’t he have a crossbow?” he said. “Bit odd, going after interesting rare butterflies with a crossbow.”
    Zorgo readjusted the fit of the grid on his patient’s bald head.
    “Dunno,” he said, “I suppose it stops them creating all these damn thunderstorms.” He picked up the mallet again. “Now, what were we going for today? Decisiveness, yes?”
    “Yes. Well, no. Maybe.”
    “Right.” Zorgo took aim. “This,” he said with absolute truth, “won’t hurt a bit.”

    It was more than just a delicatessen. It was a sort of dwarf community center and meeting place. The babble of voices stopped when Angua entered, bending almost double, but started up again with slightly more volume and a few laughs when Carrot followed. He waved cheerfully at the other customers.
    Then he carefully removed two chairs. It was just possible to sit upright if you sat on the floor.
    “Very…nice,” said Angua. “Ethnic.”
    “I come in here quite a lot,” said Carrot. “The food’s good and, of course, it pays to keep your ear to the ground.”
    “That’d certainly be easy here,” said Angua, and laughed.
    “Pardon?”
    “Well, I mean, the ground is…so much…closer…”
    She felt a pit opening wider with every word. The noise level had suddenly dropped again.
    “Er,” said Carrot, staring fixedly at her. “How can I put this? People are talking in Dwarfish…but they’re listening in Human.”
    “Sorry.”
    Carrot smiled, and then nodded at the cook behind the counter