Night Watch

thought. He wasn’t. He was a decent man and he did his best, that’s all. He’s well out of it now.
    “What’re we gonna do now, Sarge?” said Lance Constable Vimes.
    “We’ll patrol,” said Vimes. “Close in. Just these few streets.”
    “What good’ll that do?”
    “More good than if we didn’t, lad. Didn’t you take the oath when you joined up?”
    “What oath, Sarge?”
    He didn’t, Vimes remembered. A lot of them hadn’t. You just got your uniform and your bell and you were a member of the Night Watch.
    A few years ago Vimes wouldn’t have bothered about the oath either. The words were out of date, and the shilling on a string was a joke. But you needed something more than the wages, even in the Night Watch. You needed something else to tell you that it wasn’t just a job.
    “Snouty, nip up to the captain’s office and get the shilling, will you?” said Vimes. “Let’s get this lot sworn in. And where’s Sergeant Knock?”
    “Pushed off, Sarge,” said Wiglet. “Dunno if it helps, but he said ‘to hell with him’ when he went out the door.”
    Vimes counted heads.
    It would be said later on that all the Watch Houses stayed on. They hadn’t, of course. Some had slipped away, some hadn’t come back on duty at all. But it was true about Keel and the Line.
    “Okay, lads,” he said, “it’s like this. We know what’s been going on. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like it. Once you get troops on the streets, it’s only a matter of time before it goes bad. Some kid throws a stone, next minute there’s houses on fire and people getting killed. What we’re going to do is keep the peace. That’s our job. We’re not going to be heroes, we’re just going to be…normal. Now,” he shifted position, “it might just be that someone will say we’re doing something wrong. So I’m not going to order you.”
    He drew his sword and scratched a line across the mud and stones.
    “If you step over the line, then you’re in,” he said. “If you don’t, then that’s fine. You didn’t sign up for this and I doubt that there’ll be any medals, whatever happens. I’ll just ask you to go, and the best of luck to you.”
    It was almost depressing how quickly Lance Constable Vimes crossed the line. Fred Colon came next, and Waddy, and Billy Wiglet. And Spatchcock, Cul-weather, and Moist, and Leggy Gaskin, and Horace Nancyball, and…Curry, wasn’t it?…and Evans, and Pounce…
    A dozen crossed the line, the last few with the reluctance caused by a battle between peer pressure and a healthy regard for their skin. A few others, more than Vimes had hoped, evaporated at the back.
    That left Ned Coates. He crossed his arms.
    “You’re all bloody mad,” he said.
    “We could use you, Ned,” said Vimes.
    “I don’t want to die,” said Ned, “and I don’t intend to. This is stupid. There’s not a dozen of you. What can you do? All that stuff about ‘keeping the peace’—it’s rubbish, lads. Coppers do what they’re told by the men in charge. It’s always like that. What’ll you do when the new captain comes in, eh? And who’re you doing this for? The people? They attacked the other houses, and what’s the Night Watch ever done to hurt them?”
    “Nothing,” said Vimes.
    “There you are, then.”
    “I mean the Watch did nothing, and that’s what hurt them,” said Vimes.
    “What could you do, then? Arrest Winder?”
    Vimes felt he was building a bridge of matchsticks over a yawning abyss, and now he could feel the chilly winds below him.
    He’d arrested Vetinari, back in the future. Admittedly the man had walked free, after what passed for the due process of law, but the City Watch had bee—was going to be big enough and strong enough and well-connected enough to actually arrest the ruler of the city. How had they ever got to that stage? How had he even dreamed that a bunch of coppers could slam the cell door on the boss?
    Well, perhaps it had started here. Lance Constable Vimes was watching him intently.
    “Of course we can’t,” he said, “but we ought to be able to. Maybe one day we will. If we can’t then the law isn’t the law, it’s just a way of keeping people down.”
    “Looks like you’ve woken up and smelled the cacky,” said Coates, “because that’s exactly what you’re in. Sorry, lads, but you’re going to die. That’s what’ll happen if you tangle with real soldiers. Remember Dolly Sisters the other night? Three dead and they