Snuff

By the time the wounded were in any state to comprehend what had happened they were minus one prisoner, who appeared to have picked the lock of his shackles, and plus one guard whose throat had been cut.

It was dark, it was cold, it was foggy and, hunched together, the survivors waited until dawn. After all, how could you find a man in darkness?

Stratford was good at speed. Speed was always useful, and he stayed on the road that was just visible in the murk. It didn’t really matter where he went; after all, he knew no one had ever given a description of him that helped. It was a gift to be indescribable.

After a while, however, he was surprised and delighted to hear a horse trotting along the road behind him. Some brave traveller, he thought, and smiled in the fog and waited. To his further surprise, the horse was reined to a halt a little way from him and the rider slid off. Stratford could barely make out a shape in the shimmering, water- laden air.

‘My word! The famous Mister Stratford,’ said a voice cheerfully, as the stranger strolled towards him. ‘And let me tell you right now, if you make any kind of move you’ll be so dead that the graveyards would have to run backwards.’

‘I know you! Vimes sent you, after me?’

‘Oh, dear me no, sir,’ said Willikins. ‘The commander doesn’t know I’m here at all, sir, and nor will he ever. That is a certainty. No, sir, I’m here, as it might be, out of a matter of professional pride. By the way, sir, if you’re thinking of killing me and taking my horse I’d be most grateful if you’d try that right now.’

Stratford hesitated. There was something about the voice that induced hesitation. It was calm, friendly, and … worrying.

Willikins strolled a little closer and there was a chuckle in his voice. ‘My word, sir, I’m a bit of a fighter myself, and when I heard about you chopping up that girl and that, I thought, goodness me, I thought. And so the other day, when I had my day off in lieu – very important your day off in lieu, if you’re a working man – I took a trip up to Overhang and learned a few things about you, and, my word, did I learn a few things. You really scare people, eh?’

Stratford still hesitated. This didn’t sound right. The man had a straightforward and cheerful voice, like a man you didn’t know very well having a companionable chat in the pub, and Stratford was used to people being very nervous when they spoke to him.

‘Now, me,’ said Willikins, ‘I was raised by the street as a fighter and I fight dirty, you can depend on that, and I’ll fight anybody, but I never punched a girl … oh, except Kinky Elsie, who was always game for that sort of thing and had me by the I’m-not-going-to-mentions at the time and my hands were tied, in more ways than one, as it were, and so I had to give her a sharp nudge with my foot. Happy days. But you? You’re just a killer. Worthless. A bully. I fight because I might get killed and the other bloke might win, or maybe we’d both end up in the gutter, too weak to throw another punch, when, quite likely, we’d prop each other up and go to the pub for a drink and a wash.’

He took another step closer. Stratford took a step back. ‘And you, Mister Stratford, set out to kill Commander Vimes’s little lad, or worse. And do you know what is even worser? I reckon that if you’d done so, the commander would have arrested you and dragged you to the nearest police station. But inside he’d be cutting himself up with razorblades from top to bottom. And he’d be doing that because the poor bugger is scared that he could be as bad as you.’ Willikins laughed. ‘Truth is, Mister Stratford, from where I sit he’s a choirboy, he really is, but there has to be some justice in the world, you see, not necessarily law justice, but justice justice, and that’s why I am going to kill you. Although, because I’m a fair man, I’m going to give you a chance to kill me first. That means one or other of us will die, so whatever happens the world is going to be a better place, eh? Call it … cleaning up. I know you have a weapon because you’d have run if you didn’t, and so I reckon you have a blade from one of those poor buggers from Quirm and I warrant that in all the confusion you probably stabbed him with it.’

‘I did, too,’ said Stratford. ‘And he was a copper and you’re just a butler.’

‘Very true,’ said Willikins, ‘and much older than you and heavier than you and slower than you, but still a bit spry. What’ve you got to lose?’

Only the horse, steaming patiently in the mist, saw what happened next, and being a horse was in no position to articulate its thoughts on the matter. Had it been able to do so it would have given as its opinion that one human ran towards another human carrying a huge metal stick while the other human quite calmly put his hand into his breast pocket. This was followed by a terrible scream, a gurgling noise and then silence.

Willikins staggered to the side of the road and sat down on a stone, panting a little. Stratford certainly had been fast, no doubt about that. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, staring at nothing but the fog. Then he stood up, looked down at the shadow on the ground and said, ‘But not fast enough.’ Then, like a good citizen, Willikins went back to see if he could help the unlucky gentlemen of the law, who appeared to be in difficulties. You should always help the gentlemen of the law. Where would we be without them?

The chief sub-editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times really hated poetry. He was a plain man and had devoted a large part of his career to keeping it out of his paper. But they were a cunning bunch, poets, and could sneak it up on you when your back was turned. And tonight, with the paper already so late that the lads downstairs were into overtime, he stared at the report just delivered by hand from Knatchbull Harrington, the paper’s music critic. A man of whom he was deeply suspicious. He turned to his deputy and waved the page angrily. ‘“Whence came it, that ethereal music?” See what I mean? What’s wrong with “Where did that music come from”? Bloody stupid introductory sentence in any case. And what does ethereal mean, anyway?’

The deputy sub hesitated. ‘I think it means runny. Could be wrong.’

The chief sub-editor stood in misery. ‘Definitely poetry!’

Somebody had played some music that was very good. Apparently it made everybody amazed. Why didn’t that twit in his rather feminine purple silk shirts just write something like that? After all, it said everything that you needed to know, didn’t it? He took out his red pencil, and just as he was applying it to the wretched manuscript there was a sound on the metal staircase and Mr de Worde, the editor, staggered into the office, looking as if he had seen a ghost or, perhaps, a ghost had seen him.

He looked groggily at the two puzzled men and managed to say, ‘Did Harrington send in his stuff?’

The chief sub held out the offending stuff in front of him. ‘Yes, guv, a load of rubbish in my opinion.’

De Worde grabbed it, read it with his lips moving and thrust it back at the man. ‘Don’t you dare change a single