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Men at Arms quotes page 1
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This is all because we have got new recruits because the Patrician who, as I have formerly vouchsafed is the ruler of the city, has agreed the Watch must reflect the ethnic makeup of the City […] which I do not Fulley understand but must have something to do with the dwarf Grabpot Thundergust’s Cosmetic Factory. [This is a bit of continuity with Wyrd Sisters. Grabpot Thundergust is the dwarf that Hwel meets in the dwarf bar and embarrasses by knowing that he owns the Halls of Elven Perfume and Rouge Co. on Hobfast Street.]  [Edward d’Eath] didn’t know what he was looking for and he found it in a note in the margin of an otherwise very dull and inaccurate treatise on the ballistics of crossbows. [A possible contradiction here with later on, when Vimes is studying the piece of paper and it says: ‘Vimes looked at the sketch. […] Someone, possibly Leonard, had been reading a book about fireworks and had scribbled in the margins.’ Fireworks or crossbows? It’s unlikely to have been both. Perhaps Edward wrote on the fireworks paper – but then, why would the writing be backwards?] I don’t mind Telling You that although, I am very happy here I miss the Good Times back Home. Sometimes on my day Off I go and, sit in the Cellar and hit my head with an axe handle but, it is Not the Same. Dwarfs are very attached to gold. Any highwayman demanding ‘Your money or your life’ had better bring a folding chair and packed lunch and a book to read while the debate goes on. ‘And this is a rather good – well done, Bl-enkin – image of the bust of Queen Coanna.’ ‘Thank you, Mr Edward.’ ‘More of her face would have enabled us to be certain of the likeness, however.’ Because they were all aristocrats. Not one among them did not know the name of his or her great-great-great-grandfather and what embarrassing disease he’d died of. ‘You, sir… Lord Monflathers! The first Duke led six hundred men to a glorious and epic de-feat at the Battle of Quirm! Does that mean n-othing?’ ‘Anyway, I’ve always been a bit puzzled about that story. What’s so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work’s already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place, eh?’ [Bit of foreshadowing here…] Edward sat by the dying fire, with a dog-eared copy of Thighbiter’s The Ankh-Morpork Succesfion open on his lap. [Thighbiter sounds rather dwarfish to me, although it seems unlikely that there would be a dwarf expert on Ankh-Morpork royalty. There is also a Constable Thighbiter in the Watch, who appears in foc and tfe – any relation, I wonder?] …located on either side of the river Ankh, a waterway so muddy that it looks as if it is flowing upside down. The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork sat back on his austere chair with the sudden bright smile of a very busy person at the end of a crowded day who’s suddenly found in his schedule a reminder saying: 7.00 – 7.05, Be Cheerful and Relaxed and a People Person. ‘This,’ said Corporal Carrot, ‘is the Hubwards Gate. To the whole city. Which is what we guard.’ ‘What from?’ said Lance-Constable Angua, the last of the new recruits. ‘Oh, you know. Barbarian hordes, warring tribesmen, bandit armies… that sort of thing.’ ‘What? Just us?’ ‘Us? Oh, no!’ Carrot laughed. ‘That’d be silly, wouldn’t it? No, if you see anything like that, you just ring your bell as hard as you like.’ ‘What happens then?’ ‘Sergeant Colon and Nobby and the rest of ’em will come running along just as soon as they can.’ The river slunk sullenly in the bottom of its bed, like a student around 11am. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness. The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery. ‘Guards carry one sword, short, and one truncheon.’ With the exception of Detritus, [Colon] 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. All Colon knew was that he’d never taken an oath when he joined, and as for Nobby, the best he’d ever get to an oath was something like ‘bugger this for a game of soldiers’. ‘Dwarfs and trolls get on like a house on fire,’ said Nobby. ‘Ever been in a burning house, miss?’ ‘Don’t worry, miss,’ said Colon. ‘He –’ ‘Lance-Constable,’ said Angua. ‘What?’ ‘Lance-Constable,’ she repeated. ‘Not miss. Carrot says I don’t have any sex while I’m on duty.’ To the background of Nobby’s frantic coughing, Colon said, very quickly, ‘What I mean is, lance-constable…’ ‘–hah! It was too an ambush! And your mother was an ore –’ There was a louder mutter, a sort of toccata scored for one hundred reluctant voices on the theme of ‘Yes, Corporal Carrot.’ The young Assassin tried to sneer. ‘Hah! Your uniform doesn’t scare me,’ he said. Vimes looked down at his battered breastplate and worn mail. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘This is not a scary uniform. I’m sorry. Forward, Corporal Carrot and Lance-Constable Detritus.’ The Assassin was suddenly aware of the sunlight being blocked out. ‘Now these, I think you’ll agree,’ said Vimes, from somewhere behind the eclipse, ‘are scary uniforms.’ ‘What gives you the right to be here, mister policeman? Walking around as if you own the place?’ Vimes paused, his heart singing. He savoured the moment. He’d like to take this moment and press it carefully in a big book, so that when he was old he could take it out occasionally and remember it. He reached into his breastplate and pulled out the lawyer’s letter. ‘Well, if you would like the most fundamental reason,’ he said, ‘it is because I rather think I do.’ ‘What makes you think it was a dragon, Lance-Constable Angua?’ Angua hesitated. ‘Because a dog told me’ was not, she judged, a career-advancing thing to say at this point. Sergeant Colon had taken the new recruits down to the archery butts in Butts Treat. [Could have been originally ‘Butts Street’ but the spelling and meaning changed over time…] The corroded motto over the portico said ‘NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT CAN STAY THESE MEßENGERS ABOT THIER DUTY’ and in more spacious days that may have been the case, but recently someone had found it necessary to nail up an addendum which read: DONT ARSK US ABOUT: rocks troll’s with sticks All sorts of dragons Mrs Cake Huje green things with teeth Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows Rains of spaniel’s. fog. Mrs Cake Gaspode had found that he did tend to get heard on a subconscious level. Only the previous day someone had absent-mindedly kicked him into the gutter and had gone a few steps before they suddenly thought: I’m a bastard, what am I? It was the throne of Ankh-Morpork and was, indeed, made of gold. [Bit of a contradiction here with gg, when it is revealed that a throne has been ‘hastily created out of wood and gold foil’ for the king’s coronation ceremony, which indicates that there is no traditional throne of Ankh. The dragon also appears to flame that throne and its occupant into a pile of charcoal. The throne mentioned here in maa is also revealed at the end of the book to be made of gold foil over wood, although the wood is very old and rotten so it is unlikely to be the same one as in gg] The maze was so small that people got lost looking for it. When you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, ‘Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!’ or ‘Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!’ Bjorn didn’t waste time asking questions. A lot of things become a shade urgent when you’re dead. ‘I believe in reincarnation,’ he said. I KNOW. ‘I tried to live a good life. Does that help?’ THAT IS NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE… SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION… YOU'LL BE BJORN AGAIN. ‘Hright,’ said Sergeant Colon, ‘this, men, is your truncheon, also nomenclatured your night stick or baton of office.’ He paused while he tried to remember his army days, and brightened up. ‘Hand you will look after hit,’ he shouted. ‘You will eat with hit, you will sleep with hit, you –’ ‘’Scuse me.’ ‘Who said that?’ ‘Down here. It’s me, Lance-Constable Cuddy.’ ‘Yes, pilgrim?’ ‘How do we eat with it, sergeant?’ Sergeant Colon’s wound-up machismo wound down. He was suspicious of Lance-Constable Cuddy. He strongly suspected Lance-Constable Cuddy was a trouble-maker. ‘What?’ ‘Well, do we use it as a knife and fork or cut in half for chopsticks or what?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Excuse me, sergeant?’ ‘What is it, Lance-Constable Angua?’ ‘How exactly do we sleep with it, sir?’ ‘Well, I… I meant… Corporal Nobbs, stop that sniggering right now!’ |
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Men at Arms quotes page 1
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