He got his breath back, and peered through the fog.
“Anyone human still up here?” he whispered.
Carrot’s voice sounded dead and featureless in the dull air.
“Here I am, Sergeant,” he said.
“I was just checking if you were still here,” said Colon.
“I’m still here, Sergeant,” said Carrot, obediently.
Colon joined him.
“Just checking you were not et,” he said, trying to grin.
“I haven’t been et,” said Carrot.
“Oh,” said Colon. “Good, then.” He tapped his fingers on the damp stonework, feeling he ought to make his position absolutely clear.
“Just checking,” he repeated. “Part of my duty, see. Going around, sort of thing. It’s not that I’m frightened of being up on the roofs by myself, you understand. Thick up here, isn’t it.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Everything all okay?” Nobby’s muffled voice sidled its way through the thick air, quickly followed by its owner.
“Yes, Corporal,” said Carrot.
“What you doing up here?” Colon demanded.
“I was just coming up to check Lance-constable Carrot was all right,” said Nobby innocently. “What were you doing, Sergeant?”
“We’re all all right,” said Carrot, beaming. “That’s good, isn’t it.”
The two NCOs shifted uneasily and avoided looking at one another. It seemed like a long way back to their posts, across the damp, cloudy and, above all, exposed rooftops.
Colon made an executive decision.
“Sod this,” he said, and found a piece of fallen statuary to sit on. Nobby leaned on the parapet and winkled a damp dog-end from the unspeakable ashtray behind his ear.
“Heard the procession go by,” he observed. Colon filled his pipe, and struck a match on the stone beside him.
“If that dragon’s alive,” he said, blowing out a plume of smoke and turning a small patch of fog into smog, “then it’ll have got the hell away from here, I’m telling you. Not the right sort of place for dragons, a city,” he added, in the tones of someone doing a great job of convincing himself. “It’ll have gone off to somewhere where there’s high places and plenty to eat, you mark my words.”
“Somewhere like the city, you mean?” said Carrot.
“Shut up,” said the other two in unison.
“Chuck us the matches, Sergeant,” said Nobby.
Colon tossed the bundle of evil yellow-headed lucifers across the leads. Nobby struck one, which was immediately blown out. Shreds of fog drifted past him.
“Wind’s getting up,” he observed.
“Good. Can’t stand this fog,” said Colon. “What was I saying?”
“You were saying the dragon’ll be miles away,” prompted Nobby.
“Oh. Right. Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? I mean, I wouldn’t hang around here if I could fly away. If I could fly, I wouldn’t be sitting on a roof on some manky old statue. If I could fly, I’d-”
“What statue?” said Nobby, cigarette halfway to his mouth.
“This one,” said Colon, thumping the stone. “And don’t try to give me the willies, Nobby. You know there’s hundreds of mouldy old statues up on Small Gods.”
“No I don’t,” said Nobby. “What I do know is, they were all taken down last month when they re-leaded the roof. There’s just the roof and the dome and that’s it. You have to take notice of little things like that,” he added, “when you’re detectoring.”
In the damp silence that followed Sergeant Colon looked down at the stone he was sitting on. It had a taper, and a scaly pattern, and a sort of indefinable tail-like quality. Then he followed its length up and into the rapidly-thinning fog.
On the dome of Small Gods the dragon raised its head, yawned, and unfolded its wings.
The unfolding wasn’t a simple operation. It seemed to go on for some time, as the complex biological machinery of ribs and pleats slid apart. Then, with wings outstretched, the dragon yawned, took a few steps to the edge of the roof, and launched itself into the air.
After a while a hand appeared over the edge of the parapet. It flailed around for a moment until it got a decent grip.
There was a grunt. Carrot hauled himself back on to the roof and pulled the other two up behind him. They lay flat out on the leads, panting. Carrot observed the way that the dragon’s talons had scored deep grooves in the metal. You couldn’t help noticing things like that.
“Hadn’t,” he panted, “hadn’t we better warn people?”
Colon dragged himself forward until he could look across the city.
“I don’t think we need bother,” he said. “I think they’ll soon find out.”
…
The High Priest of Blind Io was stumbling over his words. There had never been an official coronation service in Ankh-Morpork, as far as he could find out. The old kings had managed quite well with something on the lines of: “We hath got the crown, i’faith, and we will kill any whoreson who tries to takes it away, by the Lord Harry.” Apart from anything else, this was rather short. He’d spent a long time drafting something longer and more in keeping with the spirit of the times, and was having some trouble remembering it.
He was also being put off by the goat, which was watching him with loyal interest.
“Get on with it!” Wonse hissed, from his position behind the throne.
“All in good time,” the high priest hissed back. “This is a coronation, I’ll have you know. You might try to show a little respect.”
“Of course I’m showing respect! Now get on-”
There was a shout, off to the right. Wonse glared into the crowd.
“It’s that Ramkin woman,” he said. “What’s she up to?”
People around her were chattering excitedly now. Fingers pointed all the same way, like a small fallen forest. There were one or two screams, and then the crowd moved like a tide.
Wonse looked along the wide Street of Small Gods.
It wasn’t a raven out there. Not this time.
…
The dragon flew slowly, only a few feet above the ground, wings sculling gracefully through the air.
The flags that crisscrossed the street were caught up and snapped like so much cobweb, piling up on the creature’s spine plates and flapping back along the length of its tail.
It flew with head and neck fully extended, as if the great body was being towed like a barge. The people on the street yelled and fought one another for the safety of doorways. It paid them no attention.
It should have come roaring, but the only sounds were the creaking of wings and the snapping of banners.
It should have come roaring. Not like this, not slowly and deliberately, giving terror time to mature. It should have come threatening. Not promising.
It should have come roaring, not flying gently to the accompaniment of the zip and zing of merry bunting.
…
Vimes pulled open the other drawer of his desk and glared at the paperwork, such as there was of it. There wasn’t really much in there that he could call his own. A scrap of sugar bag reminded him that he now owed the Tea Kitty six pence. Odd. He wasn’t angry yet. He would be later on, of course. By evening he’d be furious. Drunk and furious. But not yet. Not yet. It hadn’t really sunk in, and he knew he was just going through the motions as a preventative against thinking.
Errol stirred sluggishly in his box, raised his head and whined.
“What’s the matter, boy?” said Vimes, reaching down. “Upset stomach?”
The little dragon’s skin was moving as though heavy industry was being carried on inside. Nothing in Diseases of the Dragon said anything about this. From the swollen stomach came sounds like a distant and complicated war in an earthquake zone.
That surely wasn’t right. Sybil Ramkin said you had to pay great attention to a dragon’s diet, since even a minor stomach upset would decorate the walls and ceiling with pathetic bits of scaly skin. But in the past few days . . . well, there had been cold pizzas, and the ash from Nobby’s horrible dog-ends, and all-in-all Errol had eaten more or less what he liked. Which was just about everything, to judge by the room. Not to mention the contents of the bottom drawer.
“We really haven’t looked after you very well, have we?” said Vimes. “Treated you like a dog, really.” He wondered what effect squeaky rubber hippos had on the digestion.
Vimes became slowly aware that the distant cheering had turned to screams.
He stared vaguely at Errol, and then smiled an incredibly evil smile and stood up.
There were sounds of panic and the mob on the run.
He placed his battered helmet on his head and gave it a jaunty tap. Then, humming a mad little tune, he sauntered out of the building.
Errol remained quite still for a while and then, with extreme difficulty, half-crawled and half-rolled out of his box. Strange messages were coming from the massive part of his brain that controlled his digestive system. It was demanding certain things that he couldn’t put a name to. Fortunately it was able to describe them in minute detail to the complex receptors in his enormous nostrils. They flared, subjecting the air of the room to an intimate examination. His head turned, triangulating.