Thud!

to cut people dead with a look, but you, Willikins, you know how to cut them dead with—”
    “Listen, sir! He’s got outside, sir!” said Willikins urgently. “So is Lady Sybil!”
    Vimes’s grin froze.
    “Shall I take the young man, sir?” Willikins said, reaching.
    Vimes backed away. A troll with a crowbar and a tub of grease would not have wrested his son from him.
    “No! But give me that knife! And go and make sure Purity is all right!”
    Clutching Young Sam to him, he ran back downstairs, across the hall, and out into the garden. It was stupid, stupid, stupid. He told himself that later. But right now Sam Vimes was thinking only in primary colors. It had been hard, hard, to go into the nursery in the face of the images that thronged his imagination. He was not going to go through that ever again. And the rage flowed back, easily, under control now. Smooth like a river of fire. He’d find them all, all of them, and they would burn…
    The main dragon shed could only be reached now by dodging around three big cast-iron flame-deflector shields, put in place two months ago; dragon breeding was not a hobby for sissies or people who minded having to repaint the whole side of the house occasionally. There were big iron doors at either end; Vimes headed toward one at random, ran into the dragon shed, and bolted the door behind him.
    It was always warm in there, because the dragons burped all the time; it was that or explode, which occasionally did happen. And there was Sybil, in full dragon-keeping gear, walking calmly between the pens with a bucket in each hand, and behind her the doors at the other end were opening, and there was a short, dark figure, and there was a rod with a little pilot flame on the end, and—
    “Look out! Behind you!” Vimes yelled.
    His wife stared at him, turned around, dropped the buckets, and started to shout something.
    And then the flame blossomed. It hit Sybil in the chest, splashed across the pens, and went out abruptly. The dwarf looked down and began to thump the pipe desperately.
    The pillar of flame that was Lady Sybil said, in an authoritative voice that brooked no disobeying:
    “Lie down, Sam. Right now.” And Sybil dropped to the sandy floor as, all down the lines of pens, dragon heads rose on long dragon necks.
    Their nostrils were flaring. They were breathing in.
    They’d been challenged. They’d been offended. And they’d just had their supper.
    “ Good boys,” said Sybil, from the floor.
    Twenty-six streams of answering dragon fire rose to the occasion. Vimes, lying on the floor so that his body shielded Young Sam, felt the hairs crisp on the back of his neck.
    This wasn’t the smoky red of the dwarf fire; this was something only a dragon’s stomach could cook up. The flames were practically invisible. At least one of them must have hit the dwarf’s weapon, because there was an explosion and something went through the roof. The dragon pens were built like a fireworks factory: the walls were very thick, and the roof was as thin as possible, to provide a faster exit to heaven.
    When the noise had died to an excited hiccuping, Vimes risked looking up. Sybil was also getting to her feet, a little clumsily, because of all the special clothing every dragon breeder wore. *
    The iron of the far doors glowed around the black outline of a dwarf. A little way in front of them, two iron boots were cooling from white heat in a puddle of molten sand.
    Metal went plink .
    Lady Sybil reached up with heavy-gloved hands, patted out some patches of burning oil on her leather apron, and lifted off her helmet. It landed on the sand with a thud.
    “Oh, Sam…” she said softly.
    “Are you all right? Young Sam is fine. We’ve got to get out of here!”
    “Oh, Sam…”
    “Sybil, I need you to take him!” Vimes said, speaking slowly and clearly to get through the shock. “There could be others out there!”
    Lady Sybil’s eyes focused.
    “Give him to me,” she ordered. “And you take Raja!”
    Vimes looked where she was indicating. A young dragon with floppy ears and an expression of mildly concussed good humor blinked at him. He was a Golden Wouter, a breed with a flame so strong that one of them had once been used by thieves to melt their way into a bank vault.
    Vimes picked him up carefully, and still winced. Ye gods, the ache in his hand had gone all the way to the elbow…
    “Coal him up,” Sybil commanded.
    Good old Sybil, he told himself as he fed