'Where's he off to?' boomed Lady Ramkin, emerging from the mists dragging the horses behind her. They didn't want to come, their hooves were scraping up sparks, but they were fighting a losing battle.
'He's still trying to challenge it!' said Vines. 'You'd think he'd give in, wouldn't you?'
'They fight like blazes,' said Lady Ramkin, as he climbed on to the coach. 'It's a matter of making your opponent explode, you see.'
'I thought, in Nature, the defeated animal just rolls on its back hi submission and that's the end of it,' said Vimes, as they clattered after the disappearing swamp dragon.
'Wouldn't work with dragons,' said Lady Ramkin. 'Some daft creature rolls on its back, you disembowel it. That's how they look at it. Almost human, really.'
The clouds were clustered thickly over Ankh-Morpork. Above them, the slow golden sunlight of the Discworld unrolled.
The dragon sparkled in the dawn as it trod the air joyously, doing impossible turns and rolls for the sheer delight of it. Then it remembered the business of the day.
They'd had the presumption to summon it ...
Below it, the rank wandered from side to side up the Street of Small Gods. Despite the thick fog it was beginning to get busy.
'What d'you call them things, like thin stairs?' said Sergeant Colon.
'Ladders,' said Carrot.
'Lot of 'em about,' said Nobby. He mooched over to the nearest one, and kicked it.
'Oi!' A figure struggled down, half buried in a string of flags.
'What's going on?' said Nobby.
The flag bearer looked him up and down.
'Who wants to know, tiddler?' he said.
'Excuse me, we do,' said Carrot, looming out of the fog like an iceberg. The man gave a sickly grin.
'Well, it's the coronation, isn't it,' he said. 'Got to get the streets ready for the coronation.
Вы читаете Guards! Guards!
