Night Watch

the party tides was such that they were leaving a wide empty path, stretching from the door all the way to Winder, whose legs didn't want to move.

As it strolled towards him the figure reached both hands behind it and they came back each holding a small pistol bow. There were a couple of small tic noises and the bodyguards collapsed gently towards the floor. Then it tossed the bows behind it, and kept coming. Its footfalls made no sound.

“Brw?” said Winder, staring. His mouth was open, and stuffed with cake. People chattered on. Somewhere, someone had told a joke. There was laughter, perhaps a shade shriller than might normally be the case. The noise level rose again.

Winder blinked. Assassins didn't do this. They snuck around. They used the shadows. This didn't happen in real life. This was how it happened in dreams.

And now the creature was in front of him. He dropped his spoon, and there was a sudden silence after it clanged on the ground.

There was another rule. Wherever possible, the inhumed should be told who the Assassin was, and who had sent him. It was felt by the Guild that this was only fair. Winder did not know this, and it was not widely advertised, but nevertheless, in the midst of terror, eyes wide, he asked the right questions.

“Who sent yer?”

“I come from the city,” said the figure, drawing a thin, silvery sword.

“Who are yer?”

“Think of me as…your future.”

The figure drew the sword back, but it was too late. Terror's own more subtle knife had done its work. Winder's face was crimson, his eyes were staring at nothing, and coming up from the throat, through the crumbs of cake, was a sound that merged a creak with a sigh.

The dark figure lowered its sword, watched for a moment in the echoing silence, and then said: “Boo.”

It reached out one gloved hand and gave the Patrician a push. Winder went over backwards, his plate dropping from his hand and shattering on the tiles.

The Assassin held his bloodless sword at arm's length and let it drop on the floor beside the corpse. Then he turned and walked slowly back across the marble floor. He shut the double doors behind him, and the echoes died away.

Madam counted slowly to ten before she screamed. That seemed long enough.

Lord Winder got to his feet, and looked up at the black-clad figure.

“Another one? Where did you creep in from?”

I DO NOT CREEP.

Winder's mind felt even fuzzier than it had done over the past few years, but he was certain about cake. He'd been eating cake, and now there wasn't any. Through the mists he saw it, apparently close but, when he tried to reach it, a long way away.

A certain realization dawned on him.

“Oh,” he said.

YES, said Death.

“Not even time to finish my cake?”

NO. THERE IS NO MORE TIME, EVEN FOR CAKE. FOR YOU, THE CAKE IS OVER. YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE.

A grapnel thudded into the wall beside Vimes. There were shouts along the barricade. More hooks snaked up and bit into the wood.

Another rain of arrows clattered on the roofs of the houses. The attackers weren't ready to risk hitting their own side, but arrows were snapping and bouncing in the street below. Vimes heard shouts, and the clang of arrows on armour.

A sound made him turn. A helmeted head rose level with his and the face beneath it blanched in terror when it saw Vimes.

“That was my egg, you bastard!” he screamed, punching the nose. “With soldiers!”

The man fell back, by the sound of it, on to other climbers. Men were yelling all along the parapet.

Vimes pulled out his truncheon. “At 'em, lads,” he yelled. “Truncheons! Nothing fancy! Bop 'em on the fingers and let gravity do the work! They're goin' down!”

He ducked, pressing close to the wood, and tried to find a spyhole—

“They're using big catapults,” said Sandra, who'd found a gap a few feet away. “There's a—”

Vimes pulled her away. “What are you doing still up here?” he roared.

“It's safer than the street!” she yelled back, nose to nose with him.

“Not if one of those grapnels hits you it isn't!” He grabbed his knife. “Here, take this…you see a rope anywhere, cut it!”

He scurried along behind the shelter of the wobbling parapet, but the defenders were doing very well. It wasn't exactly rocket magic, in any case. The people at ground level were firing out through any crack they could find and, while aiming was not easy, it didn't need to be. There is nothing like the zip and zing of arrows around them to make people nervous at their work.

And the climbers were too bunched up. They had to be. If they tried attacking on a broad front there'd be three defenders to greet each man. So they were in one another's way, and every falling man would take a couple more down with him, and the barricade was full of little gaps and holes where a defender with a spear could seriously prod those trying to climb up the outside.

This is stupid, Vimes thought. It'd take a thousand men to break through, and that'd only be when the last fifty ran up the slope made of the bodies of all the rest of them. Someone out there is doing the old “hit them at their strongest point to show 'em we mean business” thinking. Ye gods, is this how we won our wars?

So how would I have dealt with this? Well, I'd have said “Detritus, remove the barricade” and made sure that the defenders heard me, that's what I'd have done. End of problem.

There was a scream from further along the parapet. A grapnel had caught one of the watchmen and pulled him hard against the wood. Vimes reached him in time to see a hook dragged into the man's body, through breastplate and mail, as an attacker hauled himself up—

Vimes caught the man's sword arm in one hand and punched him with the other, letting him tumble into the melee below.

The stricken watchman was Nancyball. His face was blue-white, his mouth opened and shut soundlessly, and blood pooled around his feet. It dripped through the planks.

“Let's get the bloody thing out—” Wiglet said, grabbing the hook. Vimes pushed him away, as a couple of arrows hummed overhead.

“That could do more damage. Call up some lads, take him down really carefully and get him to Lawn.” Vimes snatched up Nancyball's truncheon and brought it down on the helmet of another struggling climber.

“He's still breathing, sarge!” said Wiglet.

“Right, right,” said Vimes. It was amazing how willing people were to see life in the corpse of a friend. “So make yourself useful and get him down to the doctor.” And, speaking as one who'd seen some stricken men in his time, he mentally added: and if Lawn can sort him out, he can start his own religion.

A lucky attacker, who'd achieved the top of the barricade and then found himself horribly alone, slashed desperately at Vimes with his sword. Vimes turned back to business.

Ankh-Morpork was good at this, and had become good at it without anyone ever discussing it. Things