Snuff

The silence that followed was broken by Carrot, who said, ‘Howondaland is months away by boat, and broomsticks don’t work very well over water, even if we could persuade the wizards to lend us one. Any ideas?’

‘Crivens!’ said Wee Mad Arthur. ‘No problemo! I reckon I could get there in less than a day, ye ken.’

They stared at him. Wee Mad Arthur was small enough to ride on the back of any bird larger than a medium- sized hawk – his aerial broadcasts from the sky concerning traffic hold-ups in the city²³ were a regular feature of Ankh-Morpork street life – but all the way to another continent?

He grinned. ‘As ye ken, I was away for a wee while lately, making the acquaintance o’ my brothers, the Nac mac Feegle. Weel, they fly the birds a lot, and there’s a thing they have called the craw step, ye ken? And I reckon I’m canny enough to use it, ye ken.’

‘That’s three kens in one speech, Wee Mad Arthur,’ said Angua, to laughter from the rest of the watchmen. ‘You really got into the Feegle thing, didn’t you!’

‘Oh, ye may scoff, but I’m the only one of ye scunners who knows why we get so many big birds flying over the city at this time o’ year. Ankh-Morpork is hot! See the big plume of smoke and fumes? That’s all heat. It lifts ye up, a free ride that puts the wind under your wings. Have ye heard of the surreptitious albatross? No, because only me and the Professor of Ornithology at the university know about it, and he only knows because I told the scunner. Outside the mating season it never touches ground. That’s not the only thing that’s odd. It’s an eagle masquerading as a type of albatross. Ye could call it a shark o’ the sky, and I reckon one of them will do me nicely. They like the city. They hover up where you’ll never see them unless you really know how to look. There’s always one about, and I could leave today. What you say?’

‘But, constable,’ said Carrot, ‘you’ll freeze that high up in the sky, won’t you?’

‘Oh aye, I ken my thermal drawers may not be sufficient, which is why the word “brandy” is about to enter this conversation. Trust me on this, captain. I reckon I can be back within twa days.’

‘How many is that?’ said Angua.

Wee Mad Arthur rolled his eyes. ‘Two, captain, for the likes o’ you.’

In fact it took Wee Mad Arthur only an hour to identify the peaceful-looking bird drifting happily high above the city with the meal it had just had courtesy of a seagull, the feathers of which were even now drifting gently towards the cityscape below. The surreptitious albatross had no enemies that it couldn’t easily digest, and paid little attention to the nondescript and relatively harmless hawk soaring towards it, right up until it found Wee Mad Arthur landing on its back. It struggled but was unable to reach the Feegle, because he was sitting comfortably and had his hands around its neck; Wee Mad Arthur tended towards the swift methods of domesticating wildlife.

The surreptitious albatross fought for yet more height by constantly spiralling up on the huge wide pillar of free lift – as Ankh-Morpork was known and understood by the avian community – and Wee Mad Arthur passed the time by memorizing a tiny pencilled map of the world. Really, it wasn’t difficult. On the whole, continents aren’t hard to find, and neither are the edges of continents, where, by general consensus, you tended to find ships moored. Wee Mad Arthur was the world expert at looking for things from above, which amused him, given that most people who wanted to see Wee Mad Arthur had to look down.

Oh well, he thought, let’s go!

It was called the craw step, and the Nac mac Feegle of the chalk country had carefully shown their brother how it works when you are sitting on top of a large bird.

People in Ankh-Morpork looked up at the bang high above and then, given that the sky was still clear, lost interest. Meanwhile, on one astonished surreptitious albatross sat one hugely satisfied Feegle, who settled down in the feathers and began to eat a piece of the single hardboiled egg and two-inch slice of bread that were his rations for the trip,²⁴ while the universe rushed past them making a noise like weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Darkness had lasted about four hours when Vimes was woken by a small boy bouncing up and down on the bed, and therefore on Sam Vimes, and saying, ‘Willikins has found a bird that just died. Dad! Mum says I can di … ssect it if you say it’s all right, Dad!’

Vimes managed a mumbled, ‘Yes, all right, if your mother says so,’ before slipping back into the black. And the black spread around him. He heard himself thinking: the Summoning Dark could tell me everything I need to know, and that is the truth. But would the truth that it told me be the truth, and how would I know that? If I rely on it then in some way I become its creature. Or perhaps it becomes mine? Perhaps we have an accord and it helped me under Koom Valley and because of that the world is a better place? Surely the darkness has no reason to lie? I’ve always liked the night, the dead of night, those nights that are sheer blackness, making dogs nervous and causing sheep to leap their hurdles out of terror. Darkness has always been my friend, but I cannot let it be my master, though sooner or later I will have to take an oath, and if I lie, me, the chief policeman, then what am I? How could I ever again rebuke a copper for looking the other way?

He turned over among the pillows. And yet the cause is good. It is a good cause! The man Stratford did kill the goblin girl, I have the evidence of his associate and the word of a being whose assistance has been of material use to society. Admittedly, I have put a man in fear, but then, people like Flutter are always in fear, and better that he fears me than Stratford, because I at least know when to stop. He’s just another red ball on the baize, and for that matter, I suppose, so is Stratford. He’ll have a boss. They always have a nobby boss because nearly everybody around here is either a worker or nobby, and as far as I know practically everybody doesn’t have a good word to say for goblins. It’s a target-rich environment, and the trouble with a target-rich environment is that it is useless if you don’t know which target you have to aim at.

Vimes dropped back into deep sleep, and was almost instantly shaken awake by the best efforts of his son, industriously pounding on the heap that was Vimes in slumber. ‘Mum says to come, Dad. She says there’s a man.’

Vimes wasn’t a dressing-gown type of person, so he struggled back into his clothing and made himself as presentable as a man could who needed a shave and didn’t appear to have the time to get one.

There was a man sitting in the lounge, wearing a fantailer hat, jodhpurs and a nervous smile, three things that mildly annoyed Vimes. A nervous smile generally meant that somebody was after something they shouldn’t have; he personally thought a fantailer looked silly; and as for the jodhpurs, no man should meet a copper if he is wearing trousers that make his legs look as though he has just burgled a house full of silverware and shoved it hastily down his trousers. In fact, Vimes thought he could see the outline of a teapot, but possibly that was his eyes playing mischievous tricks on him.

The wearer of this presumably self-inflicted triple misfortune stood up as Vimes entered. ‘Your grace?’