Night Watch

green space in that part of the city. People played games there, and, of course, there was always the progress of the corpse on the gibbet to inspect. Besides, they were troops, ordinary foot soldiers, people’s sons and husbands, taking a bit of a rest and having a drink.
    Oh, that was right—afterward, it was said that the troops were drunk. And that they shouldn’t have been there. Yep, that was the reason, Vimes reflected. No one should have been there.
    But they were, and when that captain got an arrow in his stomach and was groaning on the ground, some of the crossbowmen fired in the direction of the shot. That’s what the history books said. They fired at the house windows, where people had been watching. Perhaps the shot had come from one of them.
    Some arrows fell short, some did not. And there were people who fired back.
    And then, one after another, horrible things would happen. By then it was too late for them not to. The tension would unwind like a spring, scything through the city.
    There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who’d had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing, with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called “The People.” Vimes had spent his life on the streets and had met decent men, and fools, and people who’d steal a penny from a blind beggar, and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he’d never met The People.
    People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
    As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up.
    What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn’t be a revolution or a riot. It’d be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when all the machinery of a city faltered, the wheels stopped turning, and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn’t try to bite the sheep next to them.
    By sunset, a uniform would automatically be a target. Then it wouldn’t matter where a watchman’s sympathies lay. He’d be just another man in armor—
    “What?” he said, snapping back to the present.
    “You all right, Sarge?” said Corporal Colon.
    “Hmm?” said Vimes, as the real world returned.
    “You were well away,” said Fred. “Staring at nothing. You ought to have had a proper sleep last night, Sarge.”
    “There’s plenty of time to sleep in the grave,” said Vimes, looking at the ranks of the Watch.
    “Yeah, I heard that, Sarge, but no one wakes you up with a cup of tea. I got ’em lined up, Sarge.”
    Fred had made an effort, Vimes could see. So had the men themselves. He’d never seen them looking quite so…formal. Usually they had a helmet and a breastplate apiece. Beyond that, equipment was varied and optional. But today, at least, they looked neat.
    Shame about the heights. No man could easily inspect a row that included Wiglet at one end and Nancyball at the other. Wiglet was so short that he’d once been accused of naveling a sergeant, being far too short to eyeball anyone, while Nancyball was always the first man on duty to know when it was raining. You had to stand well back to get both of them into vision without eyestrain.
    “Well done, lads,” he managed, and heard Rust coming down the stairs.
    It must have been the first time the man had seen his new command in full. In the circumstances, he bore up quite well. He merely sighed.
    He turned to Vimes and said: “I require something to stand on.”
    Vimes looked blank. “Sir?”
    “I wish to address the men in order to inspire them and stiffen their resolve. They must understand the political background to the current crisis.”
    “Oh, we know all about Lord Winder being a loony, sir,” said Wiglet cheerfully.
    Frost nearly