And this is because the natural condition of the common swamp dragon is to be chronically ill, and the natural state of an unhealthy dragon is to be laminated across the walls, floor and ceiling of whatever room it is in. A swamp dragon is a badly run, dangerously unstable chemical factory one step from disaster. One quite small step.
It has been speculated that its habit of exploding violently when angry, excited, frightened or merely plain bored is a developed survival trait[3] to discourage predators. Eat dragons, it proclaims, and you’ll have a case of indigestion to which the term ‘blast radius’ will be appropriate.
Vimes therefore pushed the door open carefully. The smell of dragons engulfed him. It was an unusual smell, even by Ankh-Morpork standards – it put Vimes in mind of a pond that had been used to dump alchemical waste for several years and then drained.
Small dragons whistled and yammered at him from pens on either side of the path. Several excited gusts of flame sizzled the hair on his bare shins.
He found Sybil Ramkin with a couple of the miscellaneous young women in breeches who helped run the Sanctuary; they were generally called Sara or Emma, and all looked exactly the same to Vimes. They were struggling with what seemed to be an irate sack. She looked up as he approached.
‘Ah, here’s Sam,’ she said. ‘Hold this, there’s a lamb.’
The sack was thrust into his arms. At the same moment a talon ripped out of the bottom of the sack and scraped down his breastplate in a spirited attempt to disembowel him. A spiky-eared head thrust its way out of the other end, two glowing red eyes focused on him briefly, a tooth-serrated mouth gaped open and a gush of evil-smelling vapour washed over him.
Lady Ramkin grabbed the lower jaw triumphantly, and thrust the other arm up to the elbow down the little dragon’s throat.
‘Got you!’ She turned to Vimes, who was still rigid with shock. ‘Little devil wouldn’t take his limestone tablet. Swallow. Swallow!, there! Who’s a good boy then? You can let him go now.’
The sack slipped from Vimes’ arms.
‘Bad case of Flameless Gripe,’ said Lady Ramkin. ‘Hope we’ve got it in time—’
The dragon ripped its way out of the sack and looked around for something to incinerate. Everyone tried to get out of the way.
Then its eyes crossed, and it hiccuped.
The limestone tablet pinged off the opposite wall.
‘Everybody down!’
They leapt for such cover as was provided by a watertrough and a pile of clinkers.
The dragon hiccuped again, and looked puzzled.
Then it exploded.
They stuck their heads up when the smoke had cleared and looked down at the sad little crater.
Lady Ramkin took a handkerchief out of a pocket of her leather overall and blew her nose.
‘Silly little bugger,’ she said. ‘Oh, well. How are you, Sam? Did you go to see Havelock?’
Vimes nodded. Never in his life, he thought, would he get used to the idea of the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork having a first name, or that anyone could ever know him well enough to call him by it.
‘I’ve been thinking about this dinner tomorrow night.’ he said desperately. ‘You know, I really don’t think I can—’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Lady Ramkin. ‘You’ll enjoy it. It’s time you met the Right People. You know that.’
He nodded mournfully.
‘We shall expect you up at the house at eight o’clock, then,’ she said. ‘And don’t look like that. It’ll help you tremendously. You’re far too good a man to spend his nights traipsing around dark wet streets. It’s time you got on in the world.’
Vimes wanted to say that he liked traipsing around dark wet streets, but it would be no use. He didn’t like it much. It was just what he’d always done. He thought about his badge in the same way he thought about his nose. He didn’t love it or hate it. It was just his badge.
‘So just you run along. It’ll be terrific fun. Have you got a handkerchief?’ Vimes panicked. ‘What?’ ‘Give it to me.’ She held it close to his mouth. ‘Spit. . .’ she commanded.
She dabbed at a smudge on his cheek. One of the Interchangeable Emmas gave a giggle that was just audible. Lady Ramkin ignored it.
‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s better. Now off you go and keep the streets safe for all of us. And if you want to do something really useful, you could find Chubby.’
‘Chubby?’
‘He got out of his pen last night.’
‘A dragon?’
Vimes groaned, and pulled a cheap cigar out of his pocket. Swamp dragons were becoming a minor nuisance in the city. Lady Ramkin got very angry about it.
People would buy them when they were six inches long and a cute way of lighting fires and then, when they were burning the furniture and leaving corrosive holes in the carpet, the floor and the cellar ceiling underneath it, they’d be shoved out to fend for themselves.
‘We rescued him from a blacksmith in Easy Street,’ said Lady Ramkin. ‘I said, “My good man, you can use a forge like everyoneelse”. Poor little thing.’
‘Chubby,’ said Vimes. ‘Got a light?’
‘He’s got a blue collar,’ said Lady Ramkin.
‘Right, yes.’
‘He’ll follow you like a lamb if he thinks you’ve got a charcoal biscuit.’
‘Right.’ Vimes patted his pockets.
‘They’re a little bit over-excited in this heat.’
Vimes reached down into a pen of hatchlings and picked up a small one, which flapped its stubby wings excitedly. It spurted a brief jet of blue flame. Vimes inhaled quickly.
‘Sam, I really wish you wouldn’t do that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘So if you could get young Carrot and that nice Corporal Nobbs to keep an eye out for—’
‘No problem.’
For some reason Lady Sybil, keen of eye in every other respect, persisted in thinking of Corporal Nobbs as a cheeky, lovable rascal. It had always puzzled Sam Vimes. It must be the attraction of opposites. The Ram-kins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.
As he walked down the street in his old leather and rusty mail, with his helmet screwed on his head, and the feel of the cobbles through the worn soles of his boots telling him he was in Acre Alley, no-one would have believed that they were looking at a man who was very soon going to marry the richest woman in Ankh-Morpork.
Chubby was not a happy dragon.
He missed the forge. He’d quite liked it in the forge. He got all the coal he could eat and the blacksmith hadn’t been a particularly unkind man. Chubby had not demanded much out of life, and had got it.
Then this large woman had taken him away and put him in a pen. There had been other dragons around. Chubby didn’t particularly like other dragons. And people’d given him unfamiliar coal.
He’d been quite pleased when someone had taken him out of the pen in the middle of the night. He’d thought he was going back to the blacksmith.
Now it was dawning on him that this was not happening. He was in a box, he was being bumped around, and now he was getting angry . . .
Sergeant Colon fanned himself with his clipboard, and then glared at the assembled guards.
He coughed.
‘Right then, people,’ he said. ‘Settle down.’
‘We are settled down, Fred,’ said Corporal Nobbs.
‘That’s Sergeant to you, Nobby,’ said Sergeant Colon.
‘What do we have to sit down for anyway? We didn’t used to do all this. I feel a right berk, sitting down listenin’ to you goin’ on about—’
‘We got to do it proper, now there’s more of us,’ said Sergeant Colon. ‘Right! Ahem. Right. OK. We welcome to the guard today Lance-Constable Detritus – don’t salute! – and Lance-Constable Cuddy, also Lance-Constable Angua. We hope you will have a long and – what’s that you’ve got there, Cuddy?’
‘What?’ said Cuddy, innocently.
‘I can’t help noticing that you still has got there what appears to be a double-headed throwing axe, lance-constable, despite what I vouchsafed to you earlier re Guard rules.’
‘Cultural weapon, sergeant?’ said Cuddy hopefully.
‘You can leave it in your locker. Guards carry one sword, short, and one truncheon.’
With the exception of Detritus, he added mentally. Firstly, because even the longest sword nestled in the troll’s huge hand like a toothpick, and secondly, because until they’d got this saluting business sorted out he wasn’t about to see a member of the Watch nail his own hand to his own ear. He’d have a truncheon, and like it. Even then, he’d probably beat himself to death.
Trolls and dwarfs! Dwarfs and trolls! He didn’t deserve it, not at his time of life. And that wasn’t the worst of it.