She solved the immediate problem by grabbing the edge of the trough and hauling herself upright.
'Right,'' she said,' 'it's the slipper for you…' Her eyes focused on Vimes for the first time.
' 'What the hell's going on…' she began again, and then caught the scene over his shoulder.
'Oh sod,' she said. 'Pardon my Klatchian.'
Errol was running out of energy. The stubby wings were indeed incapable of real flight, and he was remaining airborne solely by flapping madly, like a chicken. The great talons swished through the air. One of them caught one of the plaza's fountains, and demolished it.
The next one swatted Errol neatly.
He shot over Vimes's head in a straight rising line, hit a roof behind him, and slid down it.
'You've got to catch him!' shouted Lady Vimes. 'You must! It's vital!'
Vimes stared at her, and then dived forward as Errol's pear-shaped body slithered over the edge of the roof and dropped. He was surprisingly heavy.
'Thank goodness,' said Lady Ramkin, struggling to her feet.' 'They explode so easily, you know. It could have been very dangerous.'
They remembered the other dragon. It wasn't the exploding sort. It was the killing-people kind. They turned, slowly.
The creature loomed over them, sniffed and then, as if they were of no importance at all, turned away. It sprang ponderously into the air and, with one slow flap of its wings, began to scull leisurely away down the plaza and up and into the mists that were rolling over the city.
Vimes was currently more concerned with the smaller dragon in his hands. Its stomach was rumbling alarmingly. He wished he'd paid more attention to the book on dragons. Was a stomach noise like this a sign they were about to explode, or was the point you had to watch out for the point when the rumbling stopped?
'We've got to follow it!' said Lady Ramkin. 'What happened to the carriage?'
Vimes waved a hand vaguely in the direction that, as far as he could tell, the horses had take in their panic.
Enrol sneezed a cloud of warm gas that smelled worse than something walled up in a cellar, pawed the air weakly, licked Vimes's face with a tongue like a hot cheese-grater, struggled out of his arms and trotted away.
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