‘Will it help with the apple?’ the man demanded.
‘It shoved an apple in his mouth?’
‘Wrong!’
Vimes winced. ‘Ouch . . .’
‘What’s going to be done, eh?’ said the butcher, his face a few inches from Vimes’s.
‘Well, if you can get a grip on the stem’
‘I’m serious! What are you going to do? I’m a taxpayer and I know my rights!’
He prodded Vimes in the breastplate. Vimes’s expression went wooden. He looked down at the finger, and then back up at the man’s large red nose.
‘In that case,’ said Vimes, ‘I suggest you take another apple and’
‘Er, excuse me,’ said Carrot loudly, ‘You’re Mr Maxilotte, aren’t you? Got a shop in the Shambles?’
‘Yes, that’s right. What of it?’
‘It’s just that I don’t recall seeing your name on the register of taxpayers, which is very odd because you said you were a taxpayer, but of course you wouldn’t lie about a thing like that and anyway when you paid your taxes they would have given you a receipt because that’s the law and I’m sure you’d be able to find it if you looked’
The butcher lowered his finger. ‘Er, yes . . .’
‘I could come and help you if you’d like,’ said Carrot.
The butcher gave Vimes a despairing look.
‘He really does read that stuff,’ said Vimes. ‘For pleasure. Carrot, why don’t you scarp? My gods, what the hell is that?
There was a bellow further up the street.
Something big and muddy was approaching at a sort of menacing amble. In the gloom it looked vaguely like a very fat centaur, half-man, half. . . in fact it was, he realized as it bounced nearer, half-Colon, half-bull.
Sergeant Colon had lost his helmet and had a certain look about him that suggested he had been close to the soil.
As the massive bull cantered past, the sergeant rolled his eyes wildly and said, ‘I daren’t get off! I daren’t get off!’
‘How did you get on?’ shouted Vimes.
‘It wasn’t easy, sir! I just grabbed the ‘orns, sir, next minute I was on its back!’
‘Well, hang on!’
‘Yes, sir! Hanging on sir!’
Rogers the bulls were angry and bewildered, which counts as the basic state of mind for full-grown bulls.[16]
But they had a particular reason. Beef cattle have a religion. They are deeply spiritual animals. They believe that good and obedient cattle go to a better place when they die, through a magic door. They don’t know what happens next, but they’ve heard that it involves really good eating and, for some reason, horseradish.
Rogers had been quite looking forward to it. They were getting a bit creaky these days, and cows seemed to run faster than they had done when they were lads. They could just taste that heavenly horseradish . . .
And instead they’d been herded into a crowded pen for a day and then the gate had been opened and there’d been animals everywhere and this did not look like the Promised Lard.
And someone was on their back. They’d tried to buck him off a few times. In Rogers’ heyday the impudent man would by now be a few stringy red stains on the ground, but finally the arthritic bulls had given up until such time as they could find a handy tree on which to scrape him off.
They just wished the wretched man would stop yelling.
Vimes took a few steps after the bull, and then turned.
‘Carrot? Angua? You two get down to Carry’s tallow works. Just keep an eye on it until we get there, understand? Spy out the place but don’t go in, understand? Right? Do not in any circumstances move in. Do I make myself clear? Just remain in the area. Right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Carrot.
‘Detritus, let’s get Fred off that thing.’
The crowds were melting away ahead of the bull. A ton of pedigree bull does not experience traffic congestion, at least not for any length of time.
‘Can’t you jump off, Fred?’ Vimes yelled, as he ran along behind.
‘I do not wish to give that a try, sir!’
‘Well, can you steer it?’
‘How, sir?’
‘Take the bull by the horns, man!’
Colon tentatively reached out and took a horn in each hand. Rogers the bulls turned their head and nearly pulled him off.
‘He’s a bit stronger than me, sir! Quite a lot stronger actually, sir!’
‘I could shoot it through der head wid my bow, Mr Vimes,’ said Detritus, flourishing his converted siege weapon.
‘This is a crowded street, Sergeant. It might hit an innocent person, even in Ankh-Morpork.’
‘Sorry, sir.’ Detritus brightened. ‘But if it did we could always say they’d bin guilty of somethin’, sir?’
‘No, that . . . What’s that chicken doing?’
A small black bantam cock raced up the street, ran between the bull’s legs and skidded to a halt just in front of Rogers. A smaller figure jumped off its back, leapt up, caught hold of the ring through the bull’s nose, swung up further until it was in the mass of curls on the bull’s forehead, and then took firm hold of a lock of hair in each tiny hand.
‘It looks like Wee Mad Arthur der ger-nome, sir,’ said Detritus. ‘He . . . tryin’ to nut der bull . . .’
There was a noise like a slow woodpecker working on a particularly difficult tree, and it punctuated a litany of complaints from somewhere between the animal’s eyes.
‘Take that, yer big lump that yez are . . .’
The bulls stopped. They tried to turn their head so that one or other of the Rogerses could see what the hell it was that was hammering at their foreheads, and might as well have tried looking down their own ears.
They staggered backwards.
‘Fred,’ Vimes whispered. ‘You slip off its back while it’s busy.’
With a panicky look, Sergeant Colon swung a leg over the bull’s huge back and slid down to the ground. Vimes grabbed him and hustled him into a doorway. Then he hustled him out again. A doorway was far too confined a space in which to be anywhere near Fred Colon.
‘Why are you all covered in crap, Fred?’
‘Well, sir, you know that creek that you’re up without a paddle? It started there and it’s got worse,
sir.
‘Good grief. Worse than that?’
‘Permission to go and have a bath, sir?’
‘No, but you could stand back a few more feet. What happened to your helmet?’
‘Last time I saw it, it was on a sheep, sir. Sir, I was tied up and shoved in a cellar and heroically broke free, sir! And I was chased by one of them golems, sir!’
‘Where was this?’
Colon had hoped he wouldn’t be asked that. ‘It was a place in the Shambles,’ he said. ‘It was foggy, so I’
Vimes grabbed Colon’s wrists. ‘What’s this?’
They tied me up with string, sir! But at great pers’nal risk of life and limb I’
This doesn’t look like string to me,’ said Vimes.
‘No, sir?’
‘No, this looks like . . . candlewick.’
Colon looked blank.
That a Clue, sir?’ he said, hopefully.
There was a splatting noise as Vimes slapped him on the back. ‘Well done, Fred,’ he said, wiping his hand on his trousers. ‘It’s certainly a corroboration.’
That’s what I thought!’ said Colon quickly. This is a corrobolaration and I’ve got to get it to Commander Vimes as soon as possible regardless of’
‘Why’s that gnome nutting that bull, Fred?’
That’s Wee Mad Arthur, sir. We owe him a dollar. He was … of some help, sir.’
Rogers the bulls were on their knees, dazed and bewildered. It wasn’t that Wee Mad Arthur was capable of delivering a killing blow, but he just didn’t stop. After a while the noise and the thumping got on people’s nerves.
‘Should we help him?’ said Vimes.
‘Looks like he’s doing all right by himself, sir,’ said Colon.
Wee Mad Arthur looked up and grinned. ‘One dollar, right?’ he shouted. ‘No welching or I’ll come after yez! One of these buggers trod on me grandpa once!’
‘Was he hurt?’
‘He got one of his horns twisted right orf!’
Vimes took Sergeant Colon firmly by the arm. ‘Come on, Fred, it’s all hitting the street now!’
‘Right, sir! And most of it’s splashing!’
‘I say! You there! You’re a watchman, aren’t you? Come over here!’
Vimes turned. A man had pushed his way through the crowds.
On the whole, Colon reflected, it was just possible that the worst moment of his life hadn’t happened yet. Vimes tended to react in a ballistic way to words like ‘I say! You there!’ when uttered in a certain kind of neighing voice.
The speaker had an aristocratic look about him, and the angry air of a man not accustomed to the rigours of life who has just found one happening to him.