“Er…can we maybe go ashore under cover of cover?” said Sergeant Colon.
“In fact these extra ships will make our plan that much easier,” said the Patrician, ignoring him.
“Our plan?” said Colon.
“People within the Klatchian hegemony come in every shape and color.” Vetinari glanced at Nobby. “Practically every shape and color,” he added. “So our appearance on the streets should not cause undue comment.” He glanced at Nobby again. “To any great extent.”
“But we’re wearing our uniforms, sir,” said Sergeant Colon. “It’s not like we can say we’re on our way to a fancy-dress party.”
“Well, I’m not taking mine off,” said Nobby firmly. “I’m not running around in my drawers. Not in a port. Sailors are at sea a long time. You hear stories.”
“That’d be
worse
,” said the sergeant, without wasting time calculating how long any sailor would need to be at sea before the vision of Nobby Nobbs would present itself as anything other than a target, “’cos if we’re not in uniform, we’ll be spies—and you know what happens to spies.”
“Are you going to tell me, sarge?”
“Excuse me, your lordship?” Sergeant Colon raised his voice. The Patrician looked up from a conversation with Leonard.
“Yes, sergeant?”
“What do they do to spies in Klatch, sir?”
“Er…let me see…” said Leonard. “Oh, yes…I believe they give you to the women.”
Nobby brightened up. “Oh, well, that doesn’t sound too bad—”
“Er, no, Nobby—” Colon began.
“—’cos I’ve seen the pictures in that book
The Perfumed Allotment
that Corporal Angua was reading, and—”
“—no,
listen
, Nobby, you’ve got the wrong—”
“—I mean, blimey, I didn’t know you could
do
that with a—”
“—Nobby,
listen
—”
“—and then there’s this bit where she—”
“Corporal Nobbs!” Colon yelled.
“Yes, sarge?”
Colon leaned forward and whispered in Nobby’s ear. The corporal’s expression changed, slowly.
“They really—”
“
Yes
, Nobby.”
“They
really
—”
“Yes, Nobby.”
“They don’t do that at home.”
“We ain’t at home, Nobby. I wish we was.”
“Although you hear stories about the Agony Aunts, sarge.”
“Gentlemen,” said Lord Vetinari. “I am afraid Leonard is being rather fanciful. That may apply to some of the mountain tribes, but Klatch
is
an ancient civilization and that sort of thing is not done officially. I should imagine they’d give you a cigarette.”
“A cigarette?” said Fred.
“Yes, sergeant. And a nice sunny wall to stand in front of.”
Sergeant Colon examined this for any downside. “A nice roll-up and a wall to lean against?” he said.
“I think they prefer you to stand up straight, sergeant.”
“Fair enough. No need to be sloppy just because you’re a prisoner. Oh,
well
. I don’t mind risking it, then.”
“Well done,” said the Patrician calmly. “Tell me, sergeant…in your long military career, did anyone ever consider promoting you to an officer?”
“Nossir!”
“I cannot think why.”
Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.
Life emerged from the burrows and fissures. Soon, the desert was filled with the buzz and click and screech of creatures which, lacking mankind’s superior brainpower, did not concern themselves with finding someone to blame and instead tried to find someone to eat.
At around three in the morning Sam Vimes walked out of the tent for a smoke. The cold air hit him like a door. It was
freezing
. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen in deserts, was it? Deserts were all hot sand and camels and…and…he struggled for a while, as a man whose geographical knowledge got severely cramped once you got off paved road…camels, yes, and dates. And possibly bananas and coconuts. But the temperature here made your breath tinkle in the air.
He waved his cigar packet theatrically at a D’reg who was lounging near the tent. The man shrugged.
The fire was just a heap of gray, but Vimes poked around in the vain hope of finding a glowing ember.
He was amazed at how angry he was. Ahmed was the key, he
knew
it. And now they were stuck out here in the desert, the man had gone, and they were in the hands of…quiet, likeable people, fair enough. Brigands, maybe, the dry land equivalent of pirates, but Carrot would have said they were jolly good chaps for all that. If you were content to be their guest then they were as nice as pie, or sheep’s eyeball and treacle or whatever you got out here—
Something moved in the moonlight. A shadow slipped down the side of a dune.
Something howled, out in the desert night.
Tiny hairs rose, all down Vimes’s back, just like they had for his distant ancestors.
The night is always old. He’d walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and go, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep. Terrors unfolded in the velvet shadows and while the nature of the talons may change, the nature of the beast does not.
He stood up quietly, and reached for his sword.
It wasn’t there.
They’d taken it away. They’d not even—
“A fine night,” said a voice beside him.
Jabbar was standing by his shoulder.
“Who is out there?” Vimes hissed.
“An enemy.”
“Which one?”
Teeth gleamed in the shadows.
“We will find out, offendi.”
“Why would they attack you now?”
“Maybe they think we have something they want, offendi.”
More shadows slid across the desert.
And one rose up right behind Jabbar, reached down and picked him up. A huge gray hand dragged his sword out of his belt.
“What do you want me to do with him, Mr. Vimes?”
“
Detritus
?”
The troll saluted with the hand that still held the D’reg.
“All present and correct, sir!”
“But—” And then Vimes realized. “It’s freezing cold! Your brain’s working again?”
“With rather more efficiency, sir.”
“Is this a djinn?” said Jabbar.
“I don’t know, but I could certainly do with one,” said Vimes. He finally managed to locate some matches in his pocket, and lit one. “Put him down, sergeant,” he said, puffing his cigar into life. “Jabbar, this is Sergeant Detritus. He could break every bone in your body, including some of the small ones in the fingers which are quite hard to do—”
The darkness went
shwup
and something whispered past the back of his neck, just a slice of a second before Jabbar cannoned into him and bore him to the ground.
“They shoot at the light!”
“Mwwf?”
Vimes raised his head cautiously and spat out sand and fragments of tobacco.
“Mr. Vimes?”
Only Carrot could whisper like that. He associated whispering with concealment and untruth and compromised by whispering very loudly. To Vimes’s horror the man came round the edge of a tent holding a tiny lamp.
“Put that damn—”
But he didn’t have time to finish the sentence because, somewhere out in the night, a man screamed. It was a high-pitched scream and was suddenly cut off.
“Ah,” said Carrot, crouching down by Vimes and blowing out the lamp. “That was Angua.”
“That was nothing like—Oh. Yeah, I think I see what you mean,” Vimes said, uneasily. “She’s out there, is she?”
“I heard her earlier. She’s probably enjoying herself. She doesn’t really get much of a chance to let herself go in Ankh-Morpork.”
“Er…no…” Vimes had a mental picture of a werewolf letting go. But surely, Angua wouldn’t—
“You two, uh…you’re getting along okay, are you?” he said, trying to make out shapes in the darkness.
“Oh, fine, sir. Fine.”
So her turning into a wolf occasionally doesn’t worry you
? Vimes couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“No…problems, then?”
“Oh, not really, sir. She buys her own dog biscuits and she’s got her own flap in the door. When it’s full moon I don’t really get involved.”
There were shouts in the night and then a shape erupted from the darkness, streaked past Vimes, and disappeared into a tent. It didn’t wait for a door. It simply hit the cloth at full speed and continued until the tent collapsed around it.
“And what is
that
?” said Jabbar.
“This may take some explaining,” said Vimes, picking himself up.
Carrot and Detritus were already hauling at the collapsed tent.
“We are D’regs,” said Jabbar reproachfully. “We are supposed to fold tents silently in the night, not—”
There was
enough
moonlight. Angua sat up and snatched a piece of tent out of Carrot’s hands.
“Thank
you
,” she said, wrapping it around her. “And before anyone says anything, I just bit him on the bum. Hard. And that was not the soft option, let me tell you.”
Jabbar looked back into the desert, and then down at the sand, and then at Angua. Vimes could
see
him thinking, and put a fraternal arm around his shoulders.
“I’d better explain—” he began.
“There’s a couple of hundred soldiers out there!” Angua snapped.
“—later.”
“They’re taking up positions all round you! And they don’t look nice! Has anyone got any clothes that might fit? And some decent food? And a drink! There’s no
water
in this place!”
“They will not dare attack before dawn,” said Jabbar.
“And what will you do, sir?” said Carrot.
“At dawn we will charge!”
“Ah. Uh. I wonder if I could suggest an alternative approach?”
“Alternative? It is
right
to charge! Charging is what dawn is
for
.”
Carrot saluted Vimes. “I’ve been reading your book, sir. While you were…asleep. Tacticus’s got quite a lot to say about how to deal with overwhelming odds, sir.”
“Yes?”
“He says take every opportunity to turn them into underwhelming odds, sir. We could attack now.”
“But it’s dark, man!”
“It’s just as dark for the enemy, sir.”
“I mean it’s pitch black! You wouldn’t know who the hell you were fighting! Half the time you’d be shooting your own side!”
“
We
wouldn’t, sir, because there’d only be a few of us. Sir? All we need to do is crawl out there, make a bit of noise, and then let them get on with it. Tacticus says all armies are the same size in the night, sir.”
“There might be something in that,” said Angua. “They’re crawling around in ones and twos, and they’re dressed pretty much like—” She waved a hand at Jabbar.
“This is Jabbar,” said Carrot. “He’s sort of not the leader.”
Jabbar grinned nervously. “It happens often in your country, where dogs turn into naked women?”
“Sometimes days can go past and it doesn’t happen at all,” Angua snapped. “I’d like some clothes, please. And a sword, if there’s going to be fighting.”
“Um, I think Klatchians have a very particular view about women fighting—” Carrot began.
“Yes!” said Jabbar. “We expect them to be good at it, Blue Eyes. We are D’regs!”
The Boat surfaced in the scummy dead water under a jetty. The lid opened slowly.
“Smells like home,” said Nobby.
“You can’t trust the water,” said Sergeant Colon.
“But I don’t trust the water at home, sarge.”
Fred Colon managed to get a foothold on the greasy wood. It was, in theory, quite a heroic enterprise. He and Nobby Nobbs, the bold warriors, were venturing forth in hostile territory. Unfortunately, he knew they were doing it because Lord Vetinari was sitting in the Boat and would raise his eyebrows in no uncertain manner if they refused.
Colon had always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they’d get yelled at if they didn’t.
He reached down.
“Come on up, Nobby,” he said. “And remember we’re doing this for the gods, Ankh-Morpork and—” It seemed to Colon that a foodstuff would indeed be somehow appropriate. “And my mum’s famous knuckle sandwich!”
“Our mum never made us knuckle sandwiches,” said Nobby, as he hauled himself on to the planks. “But you’d be amazed at what she could do with a bit of cheese…”
“Yeah, all right, but that ain’t much of a battle cry, is it? ‘For the gods, Ankh-Morpork and amazing things Nobby’s mum can do with cheese’? That’ll strike fear in the hearts of the enemy!” said Sergeant Colon, as they crept forward.
“Oh, well, if
that’s
what you’re after, you want my mum’s Distressed Pudding and custard,” said Nobby.
“Frightening, is it?”
“They wouldn’t want to know about it, sarge.”
The docks of Al-Khali were like docks everywhere, because all docks everywhere are connected. Men have to put things on and off boats. There are only a limited number of ways to do this. So all docks look the same. Some are hotter, some are damper, there are always piles of vaguely forgotten-looking things.
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.”