‘There’s other gates down there, sah,’ said Dickins doubtfully.
‘Yes, but if they take Shambling they get into Elm Street and have a nice long gallop, right into where we’re not expecting them,’ said Vimes.
‘But… you are expecting them, sah.’
Vimes just gave him a blank look, which sergeants are quite good at deciphering.
‘As good as done, sah!’ said Dickins happily.
‘But I want a decent presence at all the barricades,’ said Vimes. ‘And a couple of patrols that can go wherever there’s
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trouble. Sergeant, you know how to do it.’
‘Right, sah.’ Dickins saluted smartly, and grinned.
He turned to the assembled citizenry. ‘All right, you shower!’
he yelled. ‘Some of you has been in a regiment, I know it! How many of you knows “All The Little Angels”?’
A few of the more serious class of mementoes rose in the air.
‘Very good! Already we has a choir! Now, this is a soldiers’
song, see? You don’t look like soldiers but by the gods I’ll see you sounds like ’em! You’ll pick it up as we goes along! Right turn! March! “All the little angels rise up, rise up, All the little angels rise up high!” Sing it, you sons of mothers!’
The marchers picked up the response from those who knew it.
‘How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high?’
‘They rise heads up, heads up, heads up-‘ sang out Dickins, as they turned the corner.
Vimes listened as the refrain died away.
‘That’s a nice song,’ said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time.
‘It’s an old soldiers’ song,’ he said.
‘Really, sarge? But it’s about angels.’
Yes, thought Vimes, and it’s amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It’s a real soldiers’ song: sentimental, with dirty bits.
‘As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,’ he said. I’ve seen old men cry when they sing it,’ he added.
‘Why? It sounds cheerful.’
They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You’ll learn. I know you will.
After a while, the patrols came back. Major Mountjoy-
Standfast was bright enough not to ask for written reports. They
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took too long and weren’t very well spelled. One by one, the men told the story. Sometimes Captain Wrangle, who was
plotting things on the map, would whistle under his breath.
‘It’s huge, sir. It really is! Nearly a quarter of the city’s behind barricades down there!’
The major rubbed his forehead and turned to Trooper
Gabitass, the last man in and the one who seemed to have taken pains to get the most information.
‘They’re all on a sort of line, sir. So I rode up to the one in Heroes Street, with me helmet off and looking offduty, sort of thing, and I asked what it was all about. A man shouted down that everything was all right, thank you very much, and they’d finished all the barricades for now. I said what about law and order, and they said we’ve got plenty, thank you.’
‘No one fired at you?’
‘No, sir. Wish I could say the same about round here. People were throwing stones at me and an old lady emptied a pissp- a utensil all over me from her window. Er… there’s something else, sir. Er…’
‘Out with it, man.’
‘I, er, think I recognized a few people. Up on the barricades.
Er… they were some of ours, sir…’
Vimes shut his eyes, in the hope that the world would be a better place. But when he opened them, it was still full of the pink face of onlyjust Sergeant Colon.
‘Fred,’ he said, ‘I wonder if you fully understand the basic idea here? The soldiers – that’s the other people, Fred – they stay on the outside of the barricade. If they are on the inside, Fred, we don’t, in any real sense, have a bloody barricade. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir. But-‘
‘You want to do a spell in a regiment, Fred, and one of the
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things I think you’ll find they’re very hot on indeed is knowing who’s on your side and who is not, Fred.’
‘But, sir, they are-‘
‘I mean, how long have I known you, Fred?’
‘Two or three days, sir.’
‘Er… right. Yeah. Of course. Seems longer. So why, Fred, do I arrive here and find you’ve let in what seems like a platoon?
You haven’t been thinking metaphysically again, have you?’
‘It started with Billy Wiglet’s brother, sir,’ said Colon nervously. ‘A few of his mates came with him. All local lads.
And there’s a lad Nancyball grew up with and a bloke who’s the son of Waddy’s nextdoor neighbour who he used to go out drinking with, and then there’s-‘
‘How many, Fred?’ said Vimes wearily.
‘Sixty, sir. Might be a few more by now.’
‘And it doesn’t occur to you that they might be part of some clever plan?’
‘No, sarge, it never did. ‘cos I can’t see Wally Wiglet being part of a clever plan, sarge, on account of him not being much of a thinker, sir. They only allowed him to be in the regiment after he got someone to paint L and R on his boots. See, we know ’em all sarge. Most of the lads join up for a bit, just to get out of the city and maybe show Johnny Foreigner who’s boss. They never expected to have old grannies spitting on them in their own city, sarge. That can get a lad down, that sort of thing. And getting cobblestones chucked at them too, of course.’
Vimes gave in. It was all true. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But if this goes on, everyone is going to be inside the barricade, Fred.’
And there could be worse ways of ending it, he thought.
People had lit fires in the streets. Some cooking pots had been brought out. But most of the people were engaging in Ankh-Morpork’s traditional pastime, which was hanging around to see
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what’d happen next.
‘What’s going to happen next, sarge?’ said Sam.
‘I think they’ll attack in two places,’ said Vimes. The cavalry will go right outside the city and try to come in through the Shambling Gate because that’ll look easy. And the soldiers and…
the rest of the Watch who aren’t on our side will probably creep across Misbegot Bridge under cover.’
‘Are you sure, sir?’
‘Positive,’ said Vimes. After all, it had already happened… or something…
He pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t quite
remember when he’d slept last. Slept, not dozed or been unconscious. He knew his thinking was a little fuzzy around the edges. But he did know how the Treacle Mine Road barricade had been broken. It had been only one sentence in the history book, but he remembered it. Sieges that weren’t broken via treachery were breached via some small door around the back. It was a fact of history.
‘But it won’t be for an hour or two,’ he said aloud. ‘We’re not important enough. It’s all been quiet down here. It’s when they start to wonder why that the midden will hit the windmill.’
‘Lots of people are getting through, sarge. Some of the men said they could hear screaming in the distance. People are just piling in. There’s robberies and everything going on out there…’
‘Lanceconstable?’
‘Yes, sarge?’
‘You know when you wanted to swing a club at that torturing bastard and I stopped you?’
‘Yes, sarge?’
‘That’s why, lad. Once we break down, it all breaks down.’
‘Yes, sarge, but you do bop people over the head.’
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‘Interesting point, lanceconstable. Logical and well made, too, in a clear tone of voice bordering on the bloody cheeky. But there’s a big difference.’
‘And what’s that, sarge?’
‘You’ll find out,’ said Vimes. And privately thought: the answer is, It’s Me Doing It. I’ll grant that it is not a good answer, because people like Carcer use it too, but that’s what it boils down to. Of course, it’s also to stop me knifing them and, let’s be frank, them knifing me. That’s quite important, too.
Their walk had brought them to a big fire in the centre of the street. A cauldron was bubbling on it, and people were queuing up, holding bowls.
‘Smells good,’ he said, to the figure gently stirring the cauldron’s contents with a ladle. ‘Oh, it’s you, er, Mr Dibbler…’
‘It’s called Victory Stew, sergeant,’ said Dibbler. ‘Tuppence a bowl or I’ll cut my throat, eh?’
‘Close enough,’ said Vimes, and looked at the strange (and, what was worse, occasionally hauntingly familiar) lumps seething in the scum. ‘What’s in it?’
‘It’s stew,’ explained Dibbler. ‘Strong enough to put hairs on your chest.’
‘Yes, I can see that some of those bits of meat have got bristles on them already,’ said Vimes.