The Fifth Elephant

“You ought to come here right now!”
    She was white-faced. Vimes nudged Detritus. “If they separate, just grab him, right? Just try to hold him still!”
    Igor was lying in the kitchen, surrounded by broken glass. Wolfgang must have landed on him, and then took out his perpetual anger on a soft target. The patchwork man was bleeding heavily and lay like a doll that had been flung hard against a wall.
    “Marthter,” he groaned.
    “Can you do anything for him, Cheery?”
    “I wouldn’t know where to start , sir!”
    “Marthter, you got to remember thith, right?” Igor groaned.
    “Er…yes…what?”
    “You got to get me into the icehouthe downthtairth and let Igor know, underthtand?”
    “Which Igor?” said Vimes desperately.
    “Any Igor!” Igor clutched at Vimes’s sleeve. “Me heart’th had it, but me liver’th right ath ninepence, tell him! Nothing wrong with my brain that a good bolt of lightnin’ won’t sort out. Then Igor can have me right hand, he’th got a cuthtomer waiting. There’s yearth of good thervice left in my lower intethtine. Left eye not up to much, but I darethay thome poor thoul can find a uthe for it. The right knee ith nearly new. Old M’th Prodzky down the road would value my hip jointh, tell him. Got all that?”
    “Yes…yes, I think so.”
    “Right. Remember…what goeth around, cometh around…”
    Igor sank down.
    “He’s gone, sir,” said Cheery.
    But he’ll soon be up and on someone else’s feet, Vimes thought. He didn’t say it aloud. Cheery was softhearted. Instead he said: “Can you get him into his icehouse? By the sound of it Angua’s winning—”
    He ran back into the hall. It was a wreck. As he arrived Angua managed to get a headlock on Wolfgang and ran him into a wooden pillar. He staggered, and she spun and scythed his legs from under him with a kick.
    I taught her that, Vimes thought, as her brother landed heavily. Some of that dirty fighting—that’s Ankh-Morpork fighting, that is.
    But Wolfgang was up again like a rubber ball and somersaulting over her head. That brought him to the front door. He smashed it open with a blow and leapt out into the street.
    And…that was it. A room full of debris, snowflakes blowing in, and Angua sobbing on the floor.
    He picked her up. She was bleeding in a dozen places. That was as much of a diagnosis as Sam Vimes, not used these days to surveying naked young women at close quarters, thought he could decently attempt.
    “It’s all right, he’s gone,” he said, because he had to say something.
    “It’s not all right! He’ll lie low for a while and then he’ll be back! I know him! It won’t matter where we go! You’ve seen him! He’ll just track us down and follow us and then he’ll kill Carrot!”
    “Why?”
    “Because Carrot’s mine!”
    Sybil advanced down the stairs, carrying Vimes’s crossbow.
    “Oh, you poor thing…” she said. “Come here, let’s find something to cover you up. Sam, isn’t there something you can do?”
    Vimes stared at her. Built into Sybil’s expression was the unquestioning assumption that he could do something.
    An hour ago he’d been having breakfast. Ten minutes ago he’d been putting on this stupid uniform. In a real room, with his wife. And it had been a real world, with a real future. And suddenly the dark was back, spattered with red rage.
    And if he gave in to it, he’d lose. That was the beast screaming, inside, and Wolfgang was a better beast. Vimes knew he didn’t have the knack, the mindless, driving nastiness; sooner or later his brain would start operating, and kill him.
    Perhaps, said his brain, you start by using me…
    “Ye-es,” he said. “Yes…I think there is something I can do…”
    Fire and silver, thought Vimes. Well, silver’s in pretty short supply in Uberwald.
    “You want I should come?” said Detritus, who could pick up signals.
    “No, I think…I think I want to make an arrest. I don’t want to start a war. Anyway, you need to wait here in case he doubles back. But you could lend me your penknife…”
    Vimes found a sheet in one of the broken boxes, and tore off a long strip. Then he took his crossbow from his wife.
    “You see, now he’s committed a crime in Ankh-Morpork,” he said. “That makes him mine .”
    “Sam, we’re not—”
    “You know, everyone kept telling me I wasn’t in Ankh-Morpork so often that I believed it. But this embassy is Ankh-Morpork and, right now,” he hefted the bow, “I am the