Night Watch

disgusting screw in there.”
    “What, turn out Marilyn, sir?” said Vimes, genuinely shocked.
    “That was an order. Tell him to jump to it.”
    “What do you want us to do with her, sir?”
    “I don’t care! You are a sergeant, you’ve had an order. Presumably there are knackermen? People around here must eat something , no doubt?”
    Vimes hesitated for a moment. Then he saluted.
    “Right you are, sir,” he said.
    “Do you know what I saw on the way here, Sergeant?”
    “Couldn’t say, sir,” said Vimes, staring straight ahead.
    “People were building barricades, Sergeant.”
    “Sir?”
    “I know you heard me, man!”
    “Well, it’s to be expected, sir. It’s happened before. People get jumpy. They hear rumors of mobs and out-of-control soldiers. They try to protect their street—”
    “It is a flagrant challenge to government authority! People can’t take the law into their own hands!”
    “Well, yes. But these things generally run their course—”
    “My gods, man, how did you manage to get promoted?”
    Vimes knew he should leave it at that. Rust was a fool. But at the moment he was a young fool, which is more easily excused. Maybe it was just possible, if caught early enough, that he could be upgraded to idiot.
    “Sometimes it pays to—” he began.
    “Last night every Watch House in the city was mobbed,” said Rust, ignoring him. “Except this one. How do you account for that?” His mustache bristled. Not being attacked was definite proof of Vimes’s lack of moral fiber.
    “It was just a case of—”
    “Apparently a man attempted an assault on you. Where is he now?”
    “I don’t know, sir. We bandaged him up and took him home.”
    “You let him go? ”
    “Yessir. He was—” But Rust was always a man to interrupt an answer with a demand for the answer he was in fact interrupting.
    “Why?”
    “Sir, because at that time I thought it prudent to—”
    “Three watchmen were killed last night, did you know that? There were gangs roaming the streets! Well, martial law has been declared! Today we’re going to show them a firm hand! Get your men together! Now!”
    Vimes saluted, turned about, and walked slowly down the stairs. He wouldn’t have run for a big clock.
    A firm hand. Right. Gangs roaming the streets. Well, we sure as hell never did anything when they were criminal gangs. And when you’ve got madmen and idiots on either side, and everything hangs in the balance…well, trouble is always easy to find when you have enough people looking for it.
    One of the hardest lessons of young Sam’s life had been finding out that the people in charge weren’t in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking.
    Most of the watchmen were clustered around the stairs. Snouty was quite good at internal communications of the worrying kind.
    “Tidy yourselves, lads,” said Vimes. “Captain’ll be down in a few minutes. Apparently it’s time for a show of strength.”
    “What strength?” said Billy Wiglet.
    “Ah, Billy, what happens is, the vicious revolutionaries take one look at us and scuttle off back to their holes,” said Vimes. He was immediately sorry he’d said that. Billy hadn’t learned irony.
    “I mean we just give the uniforms an airing,” he translated.
    “We’ll get cheesed,” said Fred Colon.
    “Not if we stick together,” said Sam.
    “Right,” said Vimes. “After all, we’re heavily armed men going on patrol among civilians who are, by law, unarmed. If we’re careful, we shouldn’t get too badly hurt.”
    Another bad move. Dark sarcasm ought to be taught in schools, he thought. Besides, armed men could get into trouble if the unarmed civilians were angry enough, especially if there were cobblestones on the streets.
    He heard the distant clocks strike three. Tonight, the streets would explode.
    According to the history books, it would be one shot that did it, around about sunset. One of the foot regiments would be assembled in Hen and Chickens Field, awaiting orders. And there would be people watching them. Troops always drew an audience…impressionable kids, the inevitable Ankh-Morpork floating street crowd, and, of course, the ladies whose affection was extremely negotiable.
    The crowd shouldn’t have been there, people said afterward. But where should it have been? The field was a popular spot. It was the only vaguely