In the distance there was the glow of the city, which seemed quite unaware of the enemy incursion.
“‘Get us some clothes so that we’ll blend in,” ‘ muttered Colon. ‘That’s all very well to say.’
‘Nah, nah, that’s easy,’ said Nobby. ‘Everyone knows how to do that one. You lurk in an alley somewhere, right, and you wait until a couple of blokes come by and you lure them into the alley, see, and there’s a couple of thumps, and then you come out wearing their clothes.’
‘That works, does it?’
‘Never fails, sarge,’ said Nobby confidently.
The desert looked like snow in the moonlight.
Vimes found himself quite at ease with the Tacticus method of fighting. It was how coppers had always fought. A proper copper didn’t line up with a lot of other coppers and rush at people. A copper lurked in the shadows, walked quietly and bided his time. In all honesty, of course, the time he bided until was the point when the criminal had already committed the crime and was carrying the loot. Otherwise, what was the point? You had to be realistic. ‘We got the man what done it’ carries a lot more gravitas than ‘We got the man what looked as if he was going to do it,’ especially when people say, ‘Prove it.’
Somewhere off to the left, in the distance, someone screamed.
Vimes was a bit uneasy in this robe, though. It was like going into battle in a nightshirt.
Because he wasn’t at all certain he could kill a man who wasn’t actively trying to kill him. Of course, technically any armed Klatchian these days was actively trying to kill him. That was what war was about. But–
He raised his head over the top of the dune. A Klatchian warrior was looking the other way. Vimes crept–
‘Bingeley–bingeley beep! This is your seven eh em alarm call, Insert Name Here! At least I hope–’
‘Huh?’
‘Damn!’
Vimes reacted first and punched the man on the nose. Since there was no point in waiting to see what effect this would have, he threw himself forward and the two of them rolled down the other side of the freezing dune, struggling and punching.
‘–but my real–time function seems erratic at the moment–’
The Klatchian was smaller than Vimes. He was younger, too. But it was unfortunate for him that he appeared to be too young to have learned the repertoire of dirty fighting that spelled survival in Ankh–Morpork’s back streets. Vimes, on the other hand, was prepared to hit anything with anything. The point was that the opponent shouldn’t get up again. Everything else was decoration.
They slid to a halt at the bottom of the dune, with Vimes on top and the Klatchian groaning.
‘Things To Do,’ the Dis-organizer shrilled: ‘Ache.’
And then… It was probably throat cutting time. Back home Vimes could have dragged him off to the cells, in the knowledge that everything would look better in the morning, but the desert had no such options.
No, he couldn’t do that. Thump the bloke senseless. That was the merciful way.
‘Vindaloo! Vindaloo!’
Vimes’s fist stayed raised.
‘What?’
‘That’s you, isn’t it? Mr Vimes? Vindaloo!’
Vimes pulled a fold of cloth away from the figure’s face.
‘Are you Goriff’s boy?’
‘I didn’t want to be here, Mr Vimes!’ The words came fast, desperate.
‘All right, all right, I’m not going to hurt you.
Vimes lowered his fist and stood up, pulling the boy up after him.
‘Talk later,’ he muttered. ‘Come on!’
‘No! Everyone knows what the D’regs do to their captives!’
‘Well I’m their captive and they’ll have to do it to both of us, OK? Keep away from the more amusing food and you’ll probably be OK.’
Someone whistled in the darkness.
‘Come on, lad!’ hissed Vimes. ‘No harm’s going to come to you! Well… less than’d come if you stayed here. All right?’
This time he didn’t give the boy time to argue, but dragged him along. As he headed towards the D’regs’ camp, other figures slid down the dunes.
One of them had an arm missing and had a sword sticking in him.
‘How did you get on, Reg?’ said Vimes.
‘A bit odd, sir. After the first one chopped my arm off and stabbed me, the rest of them seemed to Keep out of my way. Honestly, you’d think they’d never seen a man stabbed before.’
‘Did you find your arm?’
Reg waved something in the air.
‘That’s another thing,’ he said. ‘I hit a few of them with it and they ran off screaming.’
‘It’s your type of unarmed combat,’ said Vimes. ‘It probably takes some getting used to.’
‘Is that a prisoner you’ve got there?’
‘In a way.’ Vimes glanced around. ‘He seems to have fainted. I can’t think why.’
Reg leaned closer. ‘These foreigners are a bit weird,’ he said.
‘Reg?’
‘Yes?’
‘Your eat’s hanging off.’
‘Is it? Wretched thing. You’d think a nail would work, wouldn’t you?’
Sergeant Colon looked up at the stars. They looked down at him. At least Fred Colon had a choice.
Beside him, Corporal Nobbs gave a groan. But the attackers had left him his pants. There are some places where the boldest dare not go, and those areas of Nobby upwards of the knees and downwards of the stomach were among them.
Well, Colon thought of them as attackers. Technically, he supposed they were defenders. Aggressive defenders.
‘Just run all that past me again, will you?’ he said.
‘We find a couple of blokes about our height and weight–’
‘We did that.’
‘We lure them into this alley–’
‘We did that.’
‘I take a swing at them with a length of wood and hit you by accident in the dark and they get angry and turn out to be thieves and nick all our clothes.’
‘We weren’t supposed to do that.’
‘Well it worked basically,’ said Nobby, managing to get to his knees. – ‘We could give it another go.’
‘Nobby, you’re in a port in a foreign city clad only in your, and I use this word with feeling, Nobby, your unmentionables. This is not the point to start talking about luring people into alleys. There could be talk.’
‘Angua always says that nakedness is the national costume everywhere, sarge.’
‘She was talking about herself, Nobby,’ said Colon, sidling along in the shadows. ‘It’s different for you.’
He peered around the other end of the alley. There was noise and chatter from the building that formed one of the walls. A couple of laden donkeys waited patiently outside.
‘Nip out and grab one of those packs, right?’
‘Why me, sarge?’
‘ ‘cos you’re the corporal and I’m the sergeant. And you’ve got more on than me.’
Grumbling under his breath, Nobby edged into the narrow street and unfastened a tether as fast as he could. The animal followed him obediently.
Sergeant Colon pulled at the pack.
‘If push comes to shove we can wear the sacks,’ he said. ‘That’ll– What’s this?’
He held up something red.
‘Flowerpot?’ said Nobby helpfully.
‘It’s a fez! Some Klatchians wear ’em. Looks like we’ve struck lucky. Whoops, here’s another one. Try it on, Nobby. And… looks like one of them nightshirts they wear… and here’s another one of those, too. We’re home and dry, Nobby.’
‘They’re a bit short, sarge.’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said Colon, struggling into the costume. ‘Go on, put your fez on.’
‘It makes me look like a twit, sarge.’
‘Look, I’ll put mine on, all right?’
‘Then we’ll be fez to fez, sarge.’
Sergeant Colon gave him a severe look. ‘Did you have that one prepared, Nobby?’
‘No, sarge, I just made it up in my head right then.’
‘Well, look, no calling me sarge. That doesn’t sound Klatchian.’
‘Nor does Nobby, sa– Sorry…’
‘Oh, I dunno… you could be… Knobi or Nbobi… or Gnobbee… Sounds pretty Klatchian to me.’
‘What’s a good Klatchian name for you, then? I don’t know hardly any,’ said Nhobi.
Sergeant Colon didn’t answer. He was peering round the corner again.
‘His lordship did say we was not to hang about,’ Nobby murmured.
‘Yeah, but inside that tin can, well, it smells pretty lived-in, if you know what I mean. What I wouldn’t give for–’
There was a bellow behind them. They turned.
There were three Klatchian soldiers. Or possibly watchmen. Nobby and Sergeant Colon didn’t look much further than the swords.
The leader growled a question at them.
‘What did he say?’ Nobby quavered.
‘Dunno!’
‘Where you from?’ said the leader, in Morporkian.
‘What? Oh… er…’ Colon hesitated, waiting for shiny death.
‘Hah, yes.’ The guard lowered his sword and jerked a thumb towards the docks. ‘You get back to your detachment now!’
‘Right!’ said Nobby.
‘What your name?’ one of the guards demanded.
‘Nhobi,’ said Nobby. This seemed to pass.
‘And you, fat one?’
Colon was panicking on the spot. He sought desperately for any name that sounded Klatchian, and there was only one that presented itself and which was absolutely and authentically Klatchian.