The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

belonged to my great-grandad,’ he said. ‘He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayers for soldiers, ‘cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in thetop pocket of his jerkin, ‘cos he couldn’t afford armour, and next day in battle - whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look. You can see the hole.’
    ‘Pretty miraculous,’ Carrot agreed.
    ‘Yeah, it was, I s’pose,’ said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the battered volume. ‘Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really.’

    Another little memory burst open as silently as a mouse passing wind in a hurricane .

    ‘He is a D’reg!’
    ‘Dreg?’ said Angua.
    ‘A warlike desert tribe,’ said Carrot. ‘Very fierce. Honourable, though. They say that if a D’reg is your friend he’s your friend for the rest of your life.’
    ‘And if he’s not your friend?’
    ‘That’s about five seconds.’
    *
    ‘Everything’s gone all to pot these days.’
    ‘Not like when we were kids, sarge.’
    ‘Not like when we were kids indeed, Nobby’
    ‘People trusted one another in them days, didn’t they, sarge?’
    ‘People trusted one another, Nobby.’
    Yes, sarge. I know. And people didn’t have to lock their doors, did they?’
    ‘That’s right, Nobby. And people were always ready to help. They were always in and out of one another’s houses.’
    “sright, sarge,’ said Nobby vehemently. ‘I know no one ever locked their houses down our street.’
    ‘That’s what I’m talking about. That’s my point.’
    ‘It was ‘cos the bastards even used to steal the locks.’
    Colon considered the truth of this.
    Yes, but at least it was each other’s stuff they were nicking, Nobby’
    *
    Lord Rust’s expression would have preserved meat for a year.
    ‘You, Vimes, certainly are no knight. Before a knight is created he must spend a night’s vigil watching his armour—’
    ‘Practically every night of my life,’ said Vimes. ‘A man doesn’t keep an eye on his armour round here, that man’s got no armour in the morning.’
    ‘In prayer,’ said Rust sharply.
    ‘That’s me,’ said Vimes. ‘Not a night has gone by without me thinking, “Ye gods, I hope I get through this alive.”‘
    ‘—and he must have proved himself on the field of combat. Against other trained men, Vimes. Not vermin and thugs.’
    Vimes started to undo the strap of his helmet.
    ‘Well, this isn’t the best of moments, my lord, but if someone’ll hold your coat I can spare you five minutes …’
    *
    ‘It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country. This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.’
    *
    The Engravers’ Guild was against printing. There was something pure, they said, about an engraved page of text. It was there, whole, unsullied. Their members could do very fine work at very reasonable rates. Allowing unskilled people to bash lumps of type together showed a disrespect for words and no good would come of it.
    The only attempt ever to set up a printing press in Ankh-Morpork had ended in a mysterious fire and the death by suicide of the luckless printer. Everyone knew it was suicide because he’d left a note. The fact that this had been engraved on the head of a pin was considered an irrelevant detail.
    *
    71-hour Ahmed was not superstitious. He was substitious, which put him in a minority among humans. He didn’t believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren’t true. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no one else believed. There are many such substi-tions, ranging from ‘It’ll get better if you don’t pick at it’ all the way up to ‘Sometimes things just happen.’

    ‘So what’re you going to do when we catch the other ship?’
    ‘Er …’ Vimes hadn’t given this a lot of thought. But he recalled a very bad woodcut he’d once seen in a book about pirates.
    ‘We’ll swing across on to them with our cutlasses in our teeth?’ he said.
    ‘Really?’ said Jenkins. ‘That’s good. I haven’t seen that done in years. Only ever seen it done once, in fact.’
    ‘Oh, yes?’
    ‘Yes, this lad’d seen the idea in a book and he swung across into the other ship’s rigging with his cutlass clenched, as you say, between his teeth.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Topless