“Well, there's only the cows, and the lads at the tannery, and frankly all they do is stand in a field all day, well, not the tannery boys, obviously, but—”
“Look,” said Reg. “Everything will belong to the people and everyone will be better off. Do you understand?”
The shoemaker's frown grew deeper. He wasn't certain if he was part of the people.
“I thought we just didn't want soldiers down our street and mobs and all that lot,” he said.
Reg had a hunted look. He made a dive for safety. “Well, at least we can agree on Truth, Freedom and Justice, yes?”
There was a chorus of nods. Everyone wanted those. They didn't cost anything.
A match flared in the dark, and they turned to see Vimes light a cigar.
“You'd like Freedom, Truth and Justice, wouldn't you, comrade sergeant?” said Reg encouragingly.
“I'd like a hard-boiled egg,” said Vimes, shaking the match out.
There was some nervous laughter, but Reg looked offended.
“In the circumstances, sergeant, I think we should set our sights a little higher—”
“Well, yes, we could,” said Vimes, coming down the steps. He glanced at the sheets of paper in front of Reg. The man cared. He really did. And he was serious. He really was. “But…well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I'm pretty sure that whatever happens we won't have found Freedom, and there won't be a whole lot of Justice, and I'm
“The People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road!” said Reg proudly. “We are forming a government!”
“Oh, good,” said Vimes. “Another one. Just what we need. Now, does any one of you know where my damn barricades have gone?”
“'ullo, Mr Keel,” said a glutinous voice.
He looked down beside him. There, still wearing his hugely oversize coat but now with the addition of a helmet much too large for him, was Nobby Nobbs.
“How did you get there, Nobby?”
“My mum says I'm insidious,” said Nobby, grinning. A concertina sleeve rose to the vicinity of Nobby's head, and Vimes realized that somewhere in there was a salute.
“She's right,” said Vimes. “So, where—”
“'m a acting constable now, sarge,” said Nobby. “Mr Colon said so. Gave me a spare helmet, 'm carvin' meself a badge out of, of—what's that, like, waxy, kind of like candles but you can't eat it?”
“Soap, Nobby. Remember the word.”
“Right, sarge. Then I'm gonna carve a—”
“Where have the barricades gone. Nobby?”
“That'll cost—”
“I am your
“Urn…prob'ly nearly to Short Street, sarge. It's all got a bit…metaphysical, sarge.”
Major Clive Mountjoy-Standfast stared blankly at the map in front of him, trying to find some comfort. He was, tonight, the senior officer in the field. The commanders had gone to the palace for some party or other. And he was in charge.
Vimes had conceded that the city's regiments had quite a few officers who weren't fools. Admittedly they got fewer the higher you went, but by accident or design every army needs, in key if unglamorous posts, men who can reason and make lists and arrange for provisions and baggage wagons and, in general, have an attention span greater than a duck. It's their job to actually run things, leaving the commanding officer free to concentrate on higher matters.
And the major was, indeed, not a fool, even though he looked like one. He was idealistic, and thought of his men as “jolly good chaps” despite the occasional evidence to the contrary, and on the whole did the best he could with the moderate intelligence at his disposal. When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them.
The major hated the map. It was the map of a city. A city wasn't a place for cavalry, for heavens' sake! Of course there had been casualties among the men. Three of them had been deaths. Even a cavalry helmet is not a lot of use against a ballistic cobblestone. And a trooper had been pulled off his horse in Dolly Sisters and, bluntly, mobbed to death. And that was tragic and terrible and, unfortunately, inevitable, once fools had decided to use cavalry in a city with as many alleys as Ankh-Morpork.
The major didn't think of his superiors as fools, of course, since it would follow that everyone who obeyed them was a fool. He used the term “unwise”, and felt worried when he used it.
