Night Watch

training. Fine. So if we’re attacked by a lot of sacks of straw hanging from a beam, I can rely on you. And until then shut up, keep your ears open and your eyes peeled, and learn something.”
    Snapcase is the man to save us, he thought glumly. Yeah, I used to believe that. A lot of folk did. Just because he rode around in an open carriage occasionally and called people over and talked to them, the level of the conversation being on the lines of “So, you’re a carpenter, are you? Wonderful! What does that job entail?” Just because he said publicly that perhaps taxes were a bit on the high side. Just because he waved .
    “You been here before, Sarge?” said Sam as they turned a corner.
    “Oh, everyone’s visited Ankh-Morpork, lad,” said Vimes jovially.
    “Only we’re doing the Elm Street beat perfectly, Sarge, and I’ve been letting you lead the way.”
    Damn. That was the kind of trouble your feet could get you into. A wizard once told Vimes that there were monsters up near the Hub that were so big they had to have extra brains in their legs, ’cos they were too far away for one brain to think fast enough. And a beat copper grew brains in his feet, he really did.
    Elm Street, left into The Pitts, left again into The Scours…it was the first beat he’d ever walked, and he could do it without thinking. He had done it without thinking.
    “I do my homework,” he said.
    “Did you recognize Ned?” said Sam.
    Perhaps it was a good thing that he was leaving his feet to their own devices, because Vimes’s brain suddenly filled with warning bells.
    “Ned?” he said.
    “Only before you came he said he thought he remembered you from Pseudopolis,” said Sam, oblivious to the clamor. “He was in the Day Watch there before he came here ’cos of better promotion prospects. Big man, he said.”
    “Can’t say I recall him,” said Vimes with care.
    “You’re not all that big, Sarge.”
    “Well, Ned was probably shorter in those days,” said Vimes while his thoughts shouted: shut up, kid! But the kid was…well, him. Niggling at little details. Tugging at things that didn’t seem to fit right. Being a copper, in fact. Probably he ought to feel proud of his younger self, but he didn’t.
    You’re not me, he thought. I don’t think I was ever as young as you. If you’re going to be me, it’s going to take a lot of work. Thirty damn years of being hammered on the anvil of life, you poor bastard. You’ve got it all to come.

    Back at the Watch House, Vimes wandered idly over to the Evidence and Lost Property cupboard. It had a big lock on it, which was not, however, ever locked. He soon found what he was looking for. An unpopular copper needed to think ahead, and he intended to be unpopular.
    Then he had a bite of supper and a mug of the thick brown cocoa on which the Night Watch ran, and took Sam out on the hurry-up wagon.
    He’d wondered how the Watch was going to play it, and wasn’t surprised to find they were using, with gleeful malignancy, the old dodge of obeying orders to the letter. At the first point he made, Lance Corporal Coates and Constable Waddy were waiting with four sullen or protesting insomniacs.
    “Four, sah ,” said Coates, ripping off a textbook salute. “All we’ve apprehended sah . All written down on this chitty what I am giving to you at this moment in time sah !”
    “Well done, Lance Corporal,” said Vimes drily, taking the paperwork, signing one copy, and handing it back. “You may have a half-holiday at Hogswatch, and give my regards to your granny. Help ’em in with ’em, Sam.”
    “We usually only get four or five on a round, sir!” Sam whispered as they pulled away. “What’ll we do?”
    “Make several journeys,” said Vimes.
    “But the lads were taking the pi—the michael, sir! They were laughing!”
    “It’s past curfew,” said Vimes. “That’s the law.”
    Corporal Colon and Constable Wiglet were waiting at their post with three miscreants.
    One of them was Miss Palm.
    Vimes gave Sam the reins and jumped down to open the back of the wagon and fold down the steps.
    “Sorry to see you here, Miss,” he said.
    “Apparently some new sergeant’s been throwing his weight around,” said Rosie Palm in a voice of solid ice. She refused his hand haughtily and climbed up into the wagon.
    Vimes realized that one of the other detainees was a woman, too. She was shorter than Rosie, and was giving him a look of pure bantam defiance. She was also