Night Watch

probably desertions,” said Captain Wrangle. “And Big Mary is firewood, of course.”
    “Oh gods…”
    “Do you want to hear the rest, sir?”
    “There’s more?”
    “I’m afraid there is, sir. Before the remains of Big Mary left Heroes Street, sir, she smashed twenty shop windows and various carts, doing damage estimated at—”
    “Fortunes of war, captain. We can’t help that!”
    “No, sir.” The captain coughed. “Do you want to know what happened next, sir?”
    “Next? There was a next?”
    “Um…yes, sir. Quite a lot of next, actually, sir. Um. The three gates through which most of the agricultural produce comes into the city are picketed, sir, on your orders, so the carters and drovers are bringing their stuff in along Short Street, sir. Fortunately, not too many animals at this time of night, sir, but there were six millers’ wagons, one wagon of, er, dried fruits and spices, four dairymen’s wagons, and three hegglers’ carts. All wrecked, sir. Those oxen really were very feisty, sir.”
    “Hegglers? What the hell are hegglers?”
    “Egg marketers, sir. They travel around the farms, pick up the eggs—”
    “Yes, all right! And what are we supposed to do?”
    “We could make an enormous cake, sir.”
    “Tom!”
    “Sorry, sir. But the city doesn’t stop, you see. It’s not like a battlefield. The best place for urban fighting is right out in the countryside, sir, where there’s nothing else in the way.”
    “It’s a bloody big barricade, Tom. Too well defended. We can’t even set fire to the damn thing, it’ll take the city up with it!”
    “Yes, sir. And the point is, sir, that they’re not actually doing anything, sir. Except being there.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “They’re even putting old grannies up on the barricades, shouting down to the lads. Poor Sergeant Franklin, sir, his granny saw him and said that if he didn’t turn it up she’d tell everyone what he did when he was eleven, sir.”
    “The man are armed, aren’t they?”
    “Oh, yes. But we’ve kind of advised them not to shoot unarmed old ladies, sir. We don’t want another Dolly Sisters, do we, sir?”
    The major stared at the map. There was a solution, he felt.
    “Well, what did Sergeant Franklin do when he was—”
    “She didn’t say, sir.”
    A sudden feeling of relief stole over the major. “Captain, you know what this is now?”
    “I’m sure you’ll tell me, sir.”
    “I will, Tom, I will. This is political, Tom. We’re soldiers. Political goes higher up.”
    “You’re right, sir.”
    “Good. Dig out a lieutenant who has been a bit slack lately and send him up to tell their lordships.”
    “Isn’t that a bit cruel, sir?”
    “Of course it is. This is politics now.”

    Lord Albert Selachii didn’t much like parties. There was too much politics. And he particularly didn’t like this one, because it meant he was in the same room as Lord Winder, a man whom, deep down, he believed to be A Bad Sort. In his personal vocabulary, there was no worse term. What made it worse was that, while seeking to avoid him, he also had to try at the same time to avoid Lord Venturi. Their families cordially detested one another. Lord Albert wasn’t sure, now, what event in history had caused the rift, but it must have been important, obviously, otherwise it would be silly to go on like this. Had the Selachiis and the Venturis been hill clans, they would have been a-feudin’ and a-fightin’; since they were two of the city’s leading families, they were chillingly, viciously, icily polite to each other whenever social fate forced them together. And right now his careful orbit of the less dangerously political areas of the damn party had brought him face to face with Lord Charles Venturi. It was bad enough having to campaign with the feller, he thought, without being forced to talk to him over some rather inferior wine, but currently the party’s tides offered no way of escape without being impolite. And, curiously, upper-class etiquette in Ankh-Morpork held that, while you could snub your friends any time you felt like it, it was the height of bad form to be impolite to your worst enemy.
    “Venturi,” he said, raising his glass a carefully calculated fraction of an inch.
    “Selachii,” said Lord Venturi, doing the same thing.
    “This is a party,” said Albert.
    “Indeed. I see you are standing upright.”
    “Indeed. So are you, I see.”
    “Indeed. Indeed. On that subject, I notice