young man standing there looking tiny and unprotected, the dragon taking a deep breath in a way now very familiar to Vimes . . .
And not flaming. That had surprised Vimes. It had surprised the crowd. It had certainly surprised the dragon, which had tried to squint at its own nose and clawed desperately at its flame ducts. It had remained surprised right up to the moment when the lad ducked in under one claw and thrust the sword home.
And then a thunderclap.
You'd have thought there'd have been some bits of dragon left, really.
Vimes pulled a scrap of paper towards him. He looked at the notes he'd made yesterday:
Itym: Heavy draggon, but yet it can flye right welle;
Itym: The fyre be main hot, yet issueth from ane living Thinge;
Itym: The Swamp dragons be right Poor Thinges, yet this monstrous Form waxeth full mightily;
Itym: From whence it cometh none knowe, nor wither it goeth, nor where it bideth betweentimes;
Itym: Why fore did it burneth so neatlie ?
He pulled the pen and ink towards him and, in a slow round hand, added:
Itym: Can a draggon be destroyed into utterlye noe-thinge?
He thought for a while, and continued:
Itym: Whyfore did it Explode that noone may find It, search they greatly?
A puzzler, that. Lady Ramkin said that when a swamp dragon exploded there was dragon everywhere. And this one had been a damn great thing. Admittedly its insides must have been an alchemical nightmare, but the citizens of Ankh-Morpork should still have been spending the night shovelling dragon off the streets. No-one seemed to have bothered about this. The purple smoke was quite impressive, though.
Errol finished off the coke and started on the fire irons. So far this evening he had eaten three cobblestones, a doorknob, something unidentifiable he'd found in the gutter and, to general astonishment, three of Cut-me-own Throat's sausages made of genuine pork organs. The crunching of the poker going down mingled with the patter of rain on the windows.
Vimes stared at the paper again and then wrote:
Itym: How can Kinges come of noethinge?
Вы читаете Guards! Guards!
