The crowd watched in bemusement as the superhot blast flung it into the sky and barely noticed Vimes as he pushed his way, wheezing and crying, through the press of bodies.
He shouldered past a row of palace guards and shambled as fast as he could across the flagstones. No one was paying him much attention at the moment.
He stopped.
It wasn't a rock, because Ankh-Morpork was on loam. It was just some huge remnant of mortared masonry, probably thousands of years old, from somewhere in the city foundations. Ankh-Morpork was so old now that what it was built on, by and large, was Ankh-Morpork.
It had been dragged into the centre of the plaza, and Lady Sybil Ramkin had been chained to it. She appeared to be wearing a nightie and huge rubber boots. By the look of her she had been in a fight, and Vimes felt a momentary pang of sympathy for whoever else had been involved. She gave him a look of pure fury.
'You!'
'You!'
He waved the cleaver vaguely.
'But why you…?' he began.
'Captain Vimes,' she said sharply, 'you will oblige me by not waving that thing about and you will start putting it to its proper use!'
Vimes wasn't listening.
'Thirty dollars a month!' he muttered. 'That's what they died for! Thirty dollars! And I docked some from Nobby. I had to, didn't I? I mean, that man could make a melon go rusty!'
'Captain Vimes!'
Вы читаете Guards! Guards!
