'Just checking,' he repeated. 'Part of my duty, see. Going around, sort of thing. It's not that I'm frightened of being up on the roofs by myself, you understand. Thick up here, isn't it.'
'Yes, Sergeant.'
'Everything all okay?' Nobby's muffled voice sidled its way through the thick air, quickly followed by its owner.
'Yes, Corporal,' said Carrot.
'What you doing up here?' Colon demanded.
'I was just coming up to check Lance-constable Carrot was all right,' said Nobby innocently. 'What were you doing, Sergeant?'
'We're all right,' said Carrot, beaming. 'That's good, isn't it.'
The two NCOs shifted uneasily and avoided looking at one another. It seemed like a long way back to their posts, across the damp, cloudy and, above all, exposed rooftops.
Colon made an executive decision.
'Sod this,' he said, and found a piece of fallen statuary to sit on. Nobby leaned on the parapet and winkled a damp dog-end from the unspeakable ashtray behind his ear.
'Heard the procession go by,' he observed. Colon filled his pipe, and struck a match on the stone beside him.
'If that dragon's alive,' he said, blowing out a plume of smoke and turning a small patch of fog into smog, 'then it'll have got the hell away from here, I'm telling you. Not the right sort of place for dragons, a city,' he added, in the tones of someone doing a great job of convincing himself. 'It'll have gone off to somewhere where there's high places and plenty to eat, you mark my words.'
'Somewhere like the city, you mean?' said Carrot.
Вы читаете Guards! Guards!
