Night Watch

“How did you get there, Nobby?”

“My mum says I'm insidious,” said Nobby, grinning. A concertina sleeve rose to the vicinity of Nobby's head, and Vimes realized that somewhere in there was a salute.

“She's right,” said Vimes. “So, where—”

“'m a acting constable now, sarge,” said Nobby. “Mr Colon said so. Gave me a spare helmet, 'm carvin' meself a badge out of, of—what's that, like, waxy, kind of like candles but you can't eat it?”

“Soap, Nobby. Remember the word.”

“Right, sarge. Then I'm gonna carve a—”

“Where have the barricades gone. Nobby?”

“That'll cost—”

“I am your sergeant, Nobby. We are not in a financial relationship. Tell me where the bloody barricades are!”

“Urn…prob'ly nearly to Short Street, sarge. It's all got a bit…metaphysical, sarge.”

Major Clive Mountjoy-Standfast stared blankly at the map in front of him, trying to find some comfort. He was, tonight, the senior officer in the field. The commanders had gone to the palace for some party or other. And he was in charge.

Vimes had conceded that the city's regiments had quite a few officers who weren't fools. Admittedly they got fewer the higher you went, but by accident or design every army needs, in key if unglamorous posts, men who can reason and make lists and arrange for provisions and baggage wagons and, in general, have an attention span greater than a duck. It's their job to actually run things, leaving the commanding officer free to concentrate on higher matters.

And the major was, indeed, not a fool, even though he looked like one. He was idealistic, and thought of his men as “jolly good chaps” despite the occasional evidence to the contrary, and on the whole did the best he could with the moderate intelligence at his disposal. When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them.

The major hated the map. It was the map of a city. A city wasn't a place for cavalry, for heavens' sake! Of course there had been casualties among the men. Three of them had been deaths. Even a cavalry helmet is not a lot of use against a ballistic cobblestone. And a trooper had been pulled off his horse in Dolly Sisters and, bluntly, mobbed to death. And that was tragic and terrible and, unfortunately, inevitable, once fools had decided to use cavalry in a city with as many alleys as Ankh-Morpork.

The major didn't think of his superiors as fools, of course, since it would follow that everyone who obeyed them was a fool. He used the term “unwise”, and felt worried when he used it.

As for the rest of the casualties, three of them had been men knocked senseless by riding into hanging shop signs while pursuing…well, people, when it came down to it, because with the smoke and darkness who could tell who the real enemy was? The idiots had apparently assumed that anyone running away was the enemy. And they'd been the luckier idiots, because men who rode their horses into dark alleys which twisted this way and that and got narrower and narrower, and then realized that it had all gone quiet and their horse couldn't turn round, well, they were men who learned how fast a man could run in cavalry boots.

He totted up the reports. Broken bones, bruises, one man suffering from “friendly stab” by a comrade's sabre…

He looked across the makeshift table at Captain Tom Wrangle of Lord Selachii's Light Infantry, who glanced up from his own paperwork and gave him a weak smile. They'd been at school together and Wrangle, the major knew, was a lot brighter than him.

“What's it look like to you, Tom?” said the major.

“We've lost nearly eighty men,” said the captain.

“What? That's terrible!”

“Oh, about sixty of them are deserters, as far as I can see. You tend to get that in this sort of mess. Some have probably just popped home to see dear ol' mum.”

“Oh, deserters. We've had some of those, too. In the cavalry! What would you call a man who leaves his horse behind?”

“An infantryman? As for the rest, well, as far as I can see only six or seven of them went down to definite enemy action. Three men got stabbed in alleyways, for example.”

“Sounds like enemy action to me.”

“Yes, Clive. But you were born in Quirm.”

“Only because my mother was visiting her aunt and the coach was late!” said the major, going red. “If you cut me in half you'd find Ankh-Morpork written on my heart!”

“Really? Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that,” said Tom. “Anyway, getting murdered in alleyways is just part of life in the big city.”

“But they were armed men! Swords, helmets—”

“Valuable loot, Clive.”

“But I thought the City Watch took care of the gangs—”

Tom looked at his friend over the top of his paperwork.

“Are you suggesting that we ask for police protection? Anyway, there isn't any, not any more. Some of the watchmen are with us, for what good they are, and the rest either got beaten up or ran away—”

“More deserters?”

“Frankly, Clive, everyone's drifting away so fast that by tomorrow we'll be feeling pretty lonely.”

The men paused as a corporal brought in some more messages. They thumbed through them gloomily.

“Well, it's gone quiet, anyway,” said the major.

“Suppertime,” said the captain.

The major threw up his hands. “This isn't war! A man throws a rock, walks around the corner and he's an upstanding citizen again! There's no rules!”

The captain nodded. Their training hadn't covered this sort of thing. They'd studied maps of campaigns, with broad sweeping plains and the occasional patch of high ground that had to be taken. Cities were to be laid siege to, or defended. They weren't for fighting in. You couldn't see, you couldn't group, you couldn't manoeuvre and you were always going to be up against people who knew the place like their own kitchen. And you definitely didn't want to fight an enemy that had no uniform.

“Where's your lordship?” said the captain.

“Gone to the ball, the same as yours.”

“And what were your orders, may I ask?”

“He told me to do whatever I considered necessary to carry out our original objectives.”

“Did he write that down?”

“No.”

“Pity. Neither did mine.”

They looked at one another. And then Wrangle said, “Well…there's no actual unrest at the moment. As such. My father said all this happened in his time. He said it's best just to keep the lid on it. There's only a limited number of cobblestones, he said.”

“It's almost ten,” said the major. “People will be going to bed soon, surely?”

Their joint expression radiated the fervent hope that it had all calmed down. No one in their right mind wanted to be in a position where he was expected to do what he thought best.

“Well, Clive, provided there's no—” the captain began.

There was a commotion outside the tent, and then a man stepped inside. He was bloodstained and smoke-blackened, his face lined with pink where sweat had trickled through the dreadful grime. A crossbow was slung across his back, and he'd acquired a bandolier of knives.

And he was mad. The major recognized the look. The eyes were too bright, the grin too fixed.