Even so, oxen were powerful beasts. Enough of them would
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have no problem at all in dragging the cart as well as the barricade. But the nice thing, the nice thing, was that people thought of a barricade as something people tried to get into, not out of…
Vimes slipped out into the noisy, confusing night. There were soldiers, and watchmen, and refugees, all cursing at cross purposes. In the flickering shadows, Vimes was just another shape. He pushed his way confidently around to the straining oxen and their driver, who was prodding them with a stick. He was heartened by the fact that the man looked the kind of man who’d get six out of ten when answering the question: ‘What is your name?’
Vimes didn’t even stop. The important thing was not to let the other person have a chance to say ‘But-‘, let alone ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ He pushed the man aside and glared at the sweating beasts.
‘Ah, right, I can see your problem right here,’ he said, in the voice of one who knows everything there is to know about oxen.
‘They’ve got the glaggies. But we can fix that. Hold up that one’s tail. Hurry up, man!’
The ox poker responded to the voice of authority. Vimes palmed a lump of ginger. Here goes, he thought. At least it’s somewhere warm on a cold night…
‘Okay. Now the other one… right. Okay. Now, I’ll just go around and, er… just go round…’ said Vimes, hurrying back into the shadows.
He shouldered his way through the throng and dived through the tiny hole.
‘It’s all right, sarge, I spied you coming through Mrs
Rutherford’s diningroom chairs,’ said Fred Colon, hauling him upright. ‘Well, you stopped it, sarge, and no mistake. You really… urrrhg…’
‘Yes, don’t shake hands with me until I’ve had a wash,’ said
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Vimes, heading for the pump.
He kept an ear cocked for any strange noises on the other side of the barricade. There were none for several seconds. And then he heard it…
Nothing much had happened for some while after his visit to the oxen except that, very slowly, their eyes had begun to cross and then, also quite slowly, turn red. It takes a long time for anything to happen inside the head of an ox, but, when it does, it happens extensively.
The moo started off low and rose slowly. It was a visceral sound that had rolled across the ancient tundra and told early man that here came dinner or death, and either way it was pissed off. It was the sound of a big beast that was still too small to restrain all the emotions that were welling up inside it. And it was a duet.
Vimes, hauling himself up the barricade, saw people running.
Then the whole of Big Mary shuddered. That didn’t look too impressive unless you knew that a couple of tons of wood had just jumped sideways. Then there was the sound of splintering, two of Big Mary’s locked wheels collapsed, and she toppled sideways in a mass of flame, splinters, smoke and dust.
Vimes counted under his breath, and had only reached two when a cartwheel rolled out of the smoke and away down the road. This always happens.
It wasn’t over, though. The oxen, tangled in the remains of the shafts and harness, and now an enraged joint creature that could get only six legs out of eight on the ground, headed erratically but with surprising speed in the opposite direction.
The other oxen, which had been waiting for the big pull, watched it approach. They were already spooked by the crash, and now they caught the stink of terror and fury and began a slow stampede away from it and towards, as it turned out, the waiting bowmen behind them who, in turn, tried to run into the
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cavalry. The horses were not inclined to be well behaved towards armed men in any case and were also in a state of some apprehension. They relieved this by kicking the hell out of anyone close.
It was hard for the watchers along the barricade to see much of what happened after that, but the noises were very interesting for quite some time.
Sergeant Colon’s mouth shut. ‘Bloody hell, sarge,’ he said, admiringly. In the distance, glass shattered.
‘They’ll be back,’ said Vimes.
‘Yeah, but not all of ’em,’ said Wiglet. ‘Well done, sarge.’
Vimes turned, and saw Sam staring at him in wideeyed hero worship.
‘I was lucky, lad,’ he said. ‘But it helps to remember little details and not mind getting your hands dirty.’
‘But we could win now, sarge,’ said Sam.
‘No, we can’t. But we can put off losing until it doesn’t hurt too much.’ Vimes turned to the others. ‘Right, lads, back to work. We’ve had some fun, but dawn’s a long way off.’
The news had got around even before he’d climbed down
from the barricade. There was a cheer from the crowd, and a general struttiness about the armed men. We’d shown them, eh?
They don’t like the taste of cold steel, those… er… other people from Ankh-Morpork! We’ll show ’em, eh?
And it had taken a few wedges, some raw ginger and a lot of luck. That wouldn’t happen twice.
Maybe it wouldn’t need to. He remembered hearing about the assassination. It was all very mysterious. Winder had been killed in a room full of people, and no one saw a thing. Magic had been suggested, and hotly denied by the wizards. Some
historians had said that it happened because troops around the palace had been sent to attack the barricades, but that didn’t
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answer the question. Anyone who could stab a man to death in a brightly lit room full of people surely wouldn’t find some guards in the darkness any kind of obstacle…
Of course, with Snapcase as new Patrician, no one had tried very hard to establish the facts in any case. People said things like ‘quite possibly we shall never know the truth’ which meant, in Vimes’s personal lexicon, ‘I know, or think I know what the truth is, and hope like hell it doesn’t come out, because things are all smoothed over now.’
Supposing we don’t lose?
Keel hadn’t killed Big Mary. She hadn’t been used in the other present. The soldiers hadn’t been stupid enough to try it. That sort of thing was okay to deal with little local affairs manned by civilians, but it was a joke if you put it up against stout defences manned by professionals. Now she was a wreck, the attackers would have to think up a new plan in a hurry, and time was moving on…
Supposing we don’t lose?
All they had to do was hold out. The people at the top had very short memories. Winder is mysteriously dead, long live Lord Snapcase! And suddenly all the rebels become glorious freedom fighters. And there’s seven unfilled graves in the cemetery…
Would he be able to go back, then? Supposing Madam was
right and he got offered the post of Commander, not as a bribe, but because he’d earned it? That’d change history!
He took out the cigar case and stared hard at the inscription.
Let’s see, he thought… if I never met Sybil, we wouldn’t get married and she wouldn’t buy me this, and so I couldn’t be looking at it…
He stared hard at the curly engraving, almost willing it to disappear. It didn’t.
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On the other hand, that old monk had said that whatever happens, stays happened. And now Vimes had a mental picture of Sybil and Carrot and Detritus and all the rest of them, frozen in a moment that’d never have a next moment.
He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew… then it was too high.
It wasn’t a decision that he was making, he knew. It was happening far below the areas of the brain that made decisions.
It was something built in. There was no universe, anywhere, where a Sam Vimes would give in on this, because if he did then he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes any more.
The writing stayed on the silver but it was blurred now because of the tears welling up. They were tears of anger, mostly at himself. There was not a thing that he could do. He hadn’t bought a ticket and he hadn’t wanted to come, but now he was on the ride and couldn’t get off until the end.
What else had the old monk said? History finds a way? Well, it was going to have to come up with something good, because it was up against Sam Vimes now.