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Men at Arms quotes page 2
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‘I think perhaps Lance-Constable Angua shouldn’t have another go with the longbow until we’ve worked out how to stop her… her getting in the way.’ Cuddy spat on the ground, which didn’t take long on account of its closeness. Murder was a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying ‘Got rocks in your head?’ to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren’t careful. ‘Rather him than me,’ said Colon fervently. ‘I wouldn’t do that for a big clock. They can be fearsome when they’re angry, those little buggers.’ Everyone nodded gloomily, including the little bugger and the bigger little bugger by adoption. Very slowly, like a mighty sequoia beginning the first step towards resurrection as a million Save The Trees leaflets, Detritus toppled backwards. A survey by the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Merchants of tradespeople in the dock areas of Morpork found 987 women who gave their profession as ‘seamstress’. Oh… and two needles. Mr Stronginthearm was there. Captain Vimes had talked to him before about his speeches on the subject of the need for grinding all trolls in little bits and using them to make roads. Sybil Ramkin had a generous heart. She was a woman out for all she could give. Scoone Avenue was higher than most of Morpork and offered unrivalled views of the city, if that was your idea of a good time. There were no proper words afterwards for what [Angua] heard and smelled. If you could see an eighth distinct colour just for a while, and then describe it back in the seven-coloured world, it’d have to be… ‘something like a sort of greenish-purple’. [This of course matches the classic description of the Disc’s eighth colour, octarine.] ‘Dogs have got a Guild? Dogs? Pull one of the other ones, it’s got bells on–’ [This is Angua speaking, and she’s using the same odd turn of phrase that causes William de Worde to think Gaspode is a foreigner in The Truth. I guess it’s to do with ‘pulling someone’s leg’ – while we would only have one other leg to pull, dogs and wolves have a choice of three.] And ten thousand dwarfs eating continuously with knife, fork and shovel wouldn’t make a dent in Ankh-Morpork’s rat population. It was a major feature in dwarfish letters back home: come on, everyone, and bring the ketchup. ‘[…] and there’s the dwarf museum off Rime Street–’ […] ‘Fancy that. What’s in it?’ ‘Many interesting examples of dwarf bread, sir.’ [In fact, this is almost certainly the same dwarf bread museum in which a murder is committed in foc.] ‘A man’d have to be a fool to break into the Assassins’ Guild.’ [This always reminds me of Granny Weatherwax’s equally insightful comment in Wyrd Sisters: ‘You’d have to be a born fool to be a king.’] ‘That’s different. I’ve got a right. That idiot wouldn’t know a troll if it walked over him.’ ‘Oh, he would know if a troll walked over him,’ said Carrot, helpfully. ‘Some of them weigh as much as–’ He passed the paper back to Carrot. ‘What can you make of it?’ Carrot frowned. ‘I could make a hat,’ he said, ‘or a boat. Or a sort of chrysanthemum–’ [Later, Detritus asks the same thing (broadly) of the Alchemists’ Guild secretary, and he gives a similar answer: ‘I could make a hat out of it,’ said Sendivoge, ‘or a string of dollies, if I could get some scissors–’] The river Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of a corpse. ‘Dear Sgt Colon, ‘I hope you are well. The weather is Fine. This is a corpse who, we fished out of the river last night…’ The gamblers are occasionally asked why they continue to maintain an establishment opposite a Guild which accidentally blows up its Guild Hall every few months, and they say: ‘Did you read the sign on the door when you came in?’ ‘I’m Lance-Constable Cuddy and this,’ said Cuddy, gesturing upwards, ‘is Lance-trying-to-be-Constable Detritus – don’t salu-oh.’ There was a thump, and Detritus slumped sideways. ‘Suicide squad, is he?’ said the alchemist. ‘Here… you’re a dwarf, aren’t you?’ ‘It’s the nose, isn’t it?’ said Cuddy. ‘It always gives me away.’ Everyone in the room ducked, except for the two Watchmen, one of whom was in a sense pre-ducked and the other of whom was several minutes behind events. Silverfish looked down. ‘Oh. Are you a dwarf?’ Cuddy gave him a blank stare. ‘Are you a giant?’ he said. ‘Me? Of course not!’ ‘Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes.’ ‘Oh, yes. “If you stick copper and zinc rods in the lemon, hey presto, you get tame lightning.” Man was an idiot!’ [This is the nearest that anyone on the Disc has come to producing electricity, the nearest runner-up being Ponder and his cats and amber rods. The large-scale production of electricity will be difficult on the Disc until someone starts studying the Love of Iron a bit further: the basis for creating electricity in our world is spinning a magnet inside a coil of wire.] ‘No-one’d want to kill young Beano,’ said the clown, in a quiet voice. ‘He was a friendly soul. Friends everywhere.’ ‘Almost everywhere,’ said Colon. ‘Carrot’s got his nose in a book half the time, Angua knows words I has to look up, even the shortarse is brighter’n me. They keep on extracting the urine.’ ‘Oi’m just off to change the dirt in Mr Winkins’ coffin, on account of his back giving him trouble.’ ‘It looks like gravel to me, Mrs Cake.’ ‘Orthopaedic, see?’ [Mr Winkins may be the same person as Arthur Winkings, the reluctant vampire whom we met, along with his wife Doreen, in Reaper Man. Although if it is, he must have moved out of his house (complete with stone-effect wallpapered basement and moat across the back lawn) at this point.] ‘They make a very good breakfast in Gimlet’s dwarf delicatessen in Cable Street.’ [The one who figured prominently offstage in Reaper Man: "‘Those eyes… just like whatsisname... who’s that bloody dwarf who runs the delicatessen in Cable Street…’" and also gets a mention in Lords and Ladies: "'Hair so blond it was nearly white. And eyes like gimlets, I tell you.' Ponder tried to work this out. 'You don't mean that dwarf who runs the delicatessen in-' he began."] Vimes smiled. Someone was trying to kill him, and that made him feel more alive than he had done for days. And they were also slightly less intelligent than he was. This is a quality you should always pray for in your would-be murderer. ‘It’s Oggham,’ said Carrot. [A script to which we were first introduced in Lords And Ladies.] ‘Stop! In the name of the law!’ ‘What the law’s name, then?’ ‘How should I know?’ There are a whole quiverful of offences available to a policeman who wishes to pass the time of day with a citizen, ranging from Loitering with Intent through Obstruction to Lingering While Being the Wrong Colour/Shape/Species/Sex. It occurred briefly to [Cuddy] that anyone not making a dash for it when they saw Detritus knuckling along at high speed behind them was probably guilty of contravening the Being Bloody Stupid act of 1581. |
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Men at Arms quotes page 2
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