The Fifth Elephant

on the cobbles, with a woman kneeling beside him. She looked tearfully at Vimes and said something in Uberwaldean. All he could do was nod.
    Wolfgang jumped down from a perch on top of the statue to Bad Sculpting and landed a few yards away, grinning.
    “Mister Civilized! You want another Game?”
    “You see this badge I am holding up?” said Vimes.
    “It is a very small one!”
    “But you see it?”
    “Yes, I see your little badge!” Wolfgang started to move sideways, arms hanging loosely by his sides.
    “And I’m armed. Did you hear me tell you I’m armed?”
    “With that silly bow?”
    “But you just heard me say I’m armed, yes?” said Vimes, loudly, turning to face the moving werewolf. He puffed on his cigar, letting a glow build up.
    “Yes! Is this what you call civilized?”
    Vimes grinned. “Yes, this is how we do it.”
    “My way is better!”
    “And now you’re under arrest,” said Vimes. “Come along and make no fuss and we’ll tie you securely and hand you over to whatever passes for justice around here. I realize this may be difficult.”
    “Hah! Your Ankh-Morpork sense of humor!”
    “Yes, any minute now I’ll drop my trousers. So…you’re resisting arrest?”
    “Why these stupid questions?” Now Wolfgang was almost dancing.
    “Are you resisting arrest?”
    “Yes indeed! Oh yes! Good joke!”
    “Look at me laughing.”
    Vimes tossed the crossbow aside and swung a tube out from under his cloak. It was made of cardboard, and a red cone protruded from one end.
    “A stupid silly firework!” shouted Wolfgang, and charged.
    “Could be,” said Vimes.
    He didn’t bother to aim. These things were never designed for accuracy. He simply removed his cigar from his mouth and, as Wolfgang ran toward him, pressed it into the fuse hole.
    The mortar jerked as the charge went off and its payload came out tumbling slowly and trailing smoke in a lazy spiral. It looked like the stupidest weapon since the toffee spear.
    Wolfgang danced back and forth under it, grinning, and as it passed several feet over his head he leapt up gracefully and caught it in his mouth.
    And then it exploded.
    The flares were made to be seen twenty miles away. Even with his eyes tightly shut, Vimes saw the glare through the lids.
    When the body had stopped rolling, Vimes looked around the square. People were watching from the coaches. The crowds were silent.
    There were a lot of things he could say. “Son of a bitch!” would have been a good one. Or he could say “Welcome to civilization!” He could have said “Laugh this one off!” He might have said “Fetch!”
    But he didn’t, because if he had said any of those things, then he’d know that what he had just done was murder.
    He turned away, tossed the empty mortar over his shoulder, and muttered: “The hell with it.”
    At times like this, teetotalism bit down hard.
    Tantony was watching.
    “Don’t say a word out of place,” said Vimes, without altering his stride. “Just don’t.”
    “I thought…those things shot very fast…”
    “I cut the charge down,” said Vimes, tossing Detritus’s penknife in the air and catching it again. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
    “I heard you warn him that you were armed. I heard him twice resist arrest. I heard everything. I heard everything you wanted me to hear.”
    “Yes.”
    “Of course, he might not have known that law.”
    “Oh, really? Well, I didn’t know it was legal in these parts to chase some poor sod across the country and maul him to death and, do you know, that didn’t stop anyone.”
    The crowds parted ahead of Vimes. He could hear whispers around him.
    “On the other hand,” said Tantony, “you did only fire that thing to warn him…”
    “Huh?”
    “ Clearly you were not to know that he would automatically try to catch the…explosive,” said Tantony, and it seemed to Vimes that he was rehearsing the line. “The…doglike qualities of a werewolf would hardly have occurred to a man from the big city.”
    Vimes held his gaze for a moment, and then patted him on the shoulder.
    “Hold on to that thought,” he said.
    A coach pulled to a halt beside him as he continued on his way. It slid to a stop so silently, not a jingle of harness, not a clop of horseshoe, that Vimes jumped sideways out of shock.
    The horses were black, with black plumes on their heads. The coach was a hearse, the traditional long glass windows now filled with smoked black glass. There was no driver;