Night Watch

clouds in his head.
    You could almost understand a thug, simple as a fist, being paid decent money for doing something he didn’t mind doing. But Swing had brains…
    Who really knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men?
    M E.
    Who knew what sane men were capable of?
    S TILL ME , I ’M AFRAID.
    Vimes glanced at the door of the last room. No, he wasn’t going in there again. No wonder it stank here.
    Y OU CAN’T HEAR ME, CAN YOU? O H . I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT , said Death, and went back to waiting.
    Vimes helped young Sam bring Nancyball around. Then they half-carried, half-walked the prisoners out along the passage up into the warehouse. They laid them down, and went back and dragged out the clerk, whose name was Trebilcock. Vimes explained to him the advantages of turning King’s Evidence, as it was still known. They were not major advantages, except when they were compared with the huge disadvantages that would follow swiftly if he refused to do so. At that point, Trebilcock, entirely of his own free will, volunteered.
    And Vimes stepped out into the early evening. Colon and the squad were still waiting; the whole business had taken only twenty minutes or so.
    The corporal saluted, and then his nose wrinkled.
    “Yes, we stink,” said Vimes. He unbuckled his belt and pulled off his breastplate and chain-mail undershirt. The filth of the place had crawled everywhere. “Okay,” he said when he felt he was no longer standing in a sewer. “I want a couple of men at the entrance over there in the warehouse, a couple round the back with truncheons, and the rest ready out here. Just like we talked about, okay? Wallop them first, arrest them later.”
    “Right, sir,” Colon nodded. Men set off.
    “And now give me that brandy,” Vimes added.
    He unwrapped his neckerchief, soaked it in the spirit, and tied it around the neck of the bottle. He heard the angry murmur from the squad. They’d just seen Sam and Nancyball bringing out some of the prisoners.
    “There was worse,” said Vimes, “believe me. Top middle window, Fred.”
    “ Right, Sarge,” said Fred Colon, dragging his eyes away from the walking wounded. He raised his crossbow and neatly took out two windowpanes and a glazing bar.
    Vimes located his silver cigar case, removed a cigar, lit it, applied the match to the brandy-soaked rag, waited for it to catch, and hurled the bottle through the window.
    There was a tinkle, a whoomph of exploding spirit, and a flame that rapidly grew.
    “Nice one, Sarge,” said Fred. “Er, I don’t know if this is the right time, Sarge, but we brought an extra bottle while we were about it…”
    “Really, Fred? And what d’you say?”
    Fred Colon glanced at the prisoners again.
    “I say we use it,” he said.
    It went through one of the ground-floor windows. Smoke was already curling out from under the eaves.
    “We haven’t seen anyone go in or out apart from those guards,” said Fred as they watched it. “I don’t reckon there’s many left in there.”
    “Just so long as we destroy the nest,” said Vimes.
    The front door opened slightly, increasing the draft to the fires. Someone was checking.
    “They’ll wait until the last minute and come out fighting, Fred,” Vimes warned.
    “Good, Sarge. It’s getting darker,” said Colon grimly. He pulled out his truncheon.
    Vimes walked around to the back of the building, nodded at the watchmen waiting there, and locked the door with his stolen key ring. It was a narrow door, anyway. Anyone inside would surely go for the big doors at the front, where they could spread out quickly and an ambush wasn’t so easy.
    He checked on the warehouse. But that was an unlikely exit for the same reason. Besides, he’d locked the door to the cellar, hadn’t he?
    Young Sam grinned at him.
    “That’s why you left the torturer tied up, eh, Sarge?” he said.
    Damn! That hadn’t occurred to him. He’d been so angry with the clerk he’d forgotten all about the brute in the chair.
    Vimes hesitated. But burning was a horrible death. He reached for his knife, and remembered it was back in its sheath on his sword belt. Smoke was already drifting up the passage in the warehouse.
    “Give me your knife, Sam,” he said. “I’ll just go and…check on him.”
    The lance constable handed over the knife with some reluctance.
    “What’re you going to do, Sarge?”
    “You just get on with your job, Lance Constable, and I’ll do mine…”
    Vimes slipped down into the passage.