The Fifth Elephant (Discworld #24)

The Fifth Elephant (Discworld #24) Page 19

"Only... Angua will be back soon, and... and..."

"Sergeant Angua"s family, captain, are in the habit of running around the woods in the snow stark bol - stark naked!"

"Yes, sir, but... I mean... you know... it"s not really..."

"I"ll give you five minutes to find a clothes shop, shall I? Otherwise -  Look, where the hell are all the werewolves, eh? I was expecting to drop into a heap of snarling jaws, and now you"re here, thank you very much, and there"s no werewolves!"

"Gavin"s people chased them away, sir. You must"ve heard the howl go up."

"Gavin"s people, eh? Well, that"s good! That"s very good! I"m pleased about that! Well done, Gavin! Now, who the hell is Gavin?"

A howl went up from a distant hill.

"That"s Gavin," said Carrot.

"A wolf? Gavin"s a wolf? I"ve been saved from werewolves by wolves?"

"It"s all right, sir. When you think about it, it"s not really any different from being saved from werewolves by people."

"When I think about it, I think perhaps I was better off lying down," said Vimes weakly.

"Let"s get to the sleigh, sir. I was trying to say we have got your clothes. That"s how Angua tracked you."

Ten minutes later Vimes was sitting in front of a fire with a blanket around him, and the world seemed to make a little more sense. A slice of venison was going down well, and Vimes was far too hungry to bother much that the butcher appeared to have used his teeth.

"The wolves spy on the werewolves?" he said.

"Sort of, sir. Gavin keeps an eye on things for Angua. They"re... old friends."

The moment of silence went on just slightly too long.

"He sounds like a very bright wolf," said Vimes, in the absence of anything more diplomatic to say.

"More than that. Angua thinks he might be part werewolf, from way back."

"Can that happen?"

"She says so. Did I tell you that he came all the way into Ankh-Morpork? A big city? Can you imagine what that must have been like?"

Vimes turned at a faint sound behind him.

A large wolf was standing at the edge of the firelight. It was looking at him intently. It wasn"t just the look of an animal sizing him up on the level of food/threat/thing. Behind that stare wheels were turning. And there was a small but rather proud mongrel at his side, scratching furiously.

"Is that Gaspode?" said Vimes. "The dog that"s always hanging around the Watch House?"

"Yes, he... helped me get here," said Carrot.

"I just don"t want to ask," said Vimes. "Any minute now a door"s going to open in a tree and Fred and Nobby are going to step out, am I right?"

"I hope not, sir."

Gavin lay down a short distance from the fire and started watching Carrot.

"Captain?" said Vimes.

"Yes, sir?"

"You"ll notice I haven"t pressed you on why you"re here as well as Angua."

"Yes, sir."

"Well?" said Vimes. And now he thought he recognized the look on Gavin"s face, even though it was on a face of an unusual shape. It was the look you got on the face of a gentleman lounging on a corner by a bank, watching the comings and goings, seeing how the place worked.

"I was admiring your diplomacy, sir."

"Hmm? What?" said Vimes, still staring at the wolf.

"I appreciated the way you were avoiding asking questions, sir."

Angua walked into the firelight. Vimes saw her glance around the circle and squat down on the snow exactly halfway between Carrot and Gavin.

"They"re miles away now. Oh, hello, Mister Vimes."

There was some more silence.

"Is anyone going to tell me something?" said Vimes.

"My family are trying to upset the coronation," said Angua. "They"re working with some dwarfs that don"t want - that want to keep Uberwald separate."

"I think I"ve worked that one out. Running for your life through a freezing cold forest gives you a bit of an insight."

"I have to tell you, sir, my brother killed the clacks signallers. His scent"s all over the place up there."

Gavin made a noise in his throat.

"And another man that Gavin didn"t recognize, except that he spent a lot of time hiding in the forest and watching our castle."

"I think that might have been a man called Sleeps. One of our... agents," said Vimes.

"He did well. He managed to get to a boat a few miles downriver. Unfortunately there was a werewolf waiting in it."

"It was a waterfall that did for me," said Vimes.

"Permission to speak honestly, sir?" said Angua.

"Don"t you always?"

"They could have got you any time they liked, sir. Really they could. They wanted you to get as far as the tower before they really attacked. I expect Wolfgang thought that"d be nicely symbolic or something."

"I got three of them!"

"Yes, sir. But you wouldn"t have been able to get three of them all at once. Wolfgang was having some fun. That"s how he"s always played the game. He"s good at thinking ahead. He likes ambushes. He likes some poor soul to get within a few yards of the finish before he leaps out on them." Angua sighed. "Look, sir, I don"t want there to be trouble - "

"He"s been killing people!"

"Yes, sir. But my mother"s just a rather ignorant snob and my father"s half-gone now. He spends so much time as a wolf he hardly knows how to act human any more. They don"t live in the real world. They really think Uberwald can stay the same. There isn"t a lot up here, really, but it"s ours. Wolfgang"s a murderous idiot who thinks that werewolves were born to rule. The trouble is, sir, he hasn"t broken the lore."

"Oh, ye gods!"

"I bet he could find plenty of witnesses to say that he gave everyone the start the lore requires. That"s the rules of the game."

"And meddling with the dwarfs" affairs? He"s stolen the Scone or swapped it or... something, I haven"t worked it all out yet, but one poor dwarf"s already dead because of it! Cheery and Detritus are under arrest! Inigo is dead! Sybil"s locked up somewhere! And you"re saying it"s all Okay?"

"Things are different here, sir," said Carrot. "It wasn"t until ten years ago that they replaced trial by ordeal here with trial by lawyer, and that was only because they found that lawyers were nastier."

"I"ve got to get back to Bonk. If they"ve harmed Sybil I don"t care what the damn lore is."

"Mister Vimes! You look done in as it is!" said Carrot.

"I"ll keep going. Come on. Get some of the wolves to pull the sleigh - "

"You don"t get them to, sir. You ask Gavin if they will," said Carrot.

"Oh. Er, can you explain the situation to him?"

I"m standing in the cold in the middle of a forest, thought Vimes a moment later, watching a quite handsome young woman growling a conversation with a wolf who is watching her. This does not often happen. Not in Ankh-Morpork, anyway. It"s probably a daily occurrence up here.

Eventually six wolves allowed themselves to be harnessed, and Vimes was carried up the hill to the road.

"Stop!"

"Sir?" said Carrot.

"I want a weapon! There"s got to be something in the tower I can use!"

"Sir, you can use my sword! And there"s the... hunting spears."

"You know what you can do with the hunting spears!"

Vimes kicked the door at the base of the tower. Fresh snow had blown in, smoothing the edges of wolf and human tracks.

He felt drunk. Bits of his brain were going on and off. His eyeballs felt as though they were lined with towelling. His legs seemed only vaguely under his control.

Surely the signallers must"ve had something?

Even the sacks and barrels had gone. Well, there were plenty of peasants in the hills, and winter was coming on, and the men who"d been here certainly had no further use for the food. Even Vimes wouldn"t call that theft.

He climbed up to the next floor. The thrifty people of the forest had been up here, too. But they hadn"t taken the bloodstains off the floor, or Inigo"s little round hat which inexplicably was wedged into the wooden wall.

He pulled it out and saw where the thin felt on the brim had been pushed back to reveal the razor-sharp edge.

An assassin"s hat, he thought. And then, no, not an assassin"s hat. He remembered the street fights he"d seen when he was a kid, among the hard-drinking men who thought that even bareknuckle fighting was posh. Some of them would sew a razorblade into the brim of their cap, for a bit of help in a melee. This was the hat of a man who was always looking for that extra edge.

It hadn"t worked here.

He dropped it on the floor and his eye caught, in the gloom, the box of mortars. Even that had been ransacked, but the tubes had simply been scattered across the floor. The gods alone knew what the scavengers thought they were.

He put them back in their box. Inigo was right about them, at least. A weapon so inaccurate that it probably couldn"t hit a barn wall from inside the barn was no good as a weapon. But other things had been scattered around, too. The men who"d been living rough here had left a few personal items. Pictures had been thumbtacked to the wall. There was a diary, a pipe, someone"s shaving gear. Boxes had been tipped out on the floor...

"We"d better be getting on, sir," said Carrot from the ladder.

They"d been killed. They"d been sent racing off into the dark with monsters at their heels, and then some blank-faced peasants who"d done nothing to help had come in here and picked over the little things they"d left behind.

Damn it! Vimes growled and swept everything into a box and dragged it over to the ladder.

"We"ll drop this lot off at the embassy," he said. "I"m not leaving anything here for scavengers. Don"t think about arguing with me."

"Wouldn"t dream of it, sir. Wouldn"t. dream of it."

Vimes paused. "Carrot? That wolf and Angua..." He stopped. How the hell did you continue a sentence like that?

"They"re old friends, sir."

"They are?".

There was nothing but the usual completely open honesty anywhere in Carrot"s expression.

"Oh... we... that"s good, then," Vimes finished.

A minute later they were on their way again. Angua was running as a wolf far ahead of the sleigh, alongside Gavin. Gaspode had curled up under the blankets.

And here I am again, thought Vimes, racing the sunset. Heavens know why. I"m in the company of a werewolf and a wolf that looks worse, and sitting in a sleigh drawn by wolves which I can"t steer. Try looking that one up in the manual.

He dozed among the blankets, half-open eyes watching the disc of the sun flickering between pine trees.

How could you steal the Scone from its cave?

He"d said there were dozens of ways and there were, but they were all risky. They all depended too much on luck and sleepy guards. And this didn"t feel like a crime that was going to rely on luck. It had to work.

The Scone wasn"t important. It was important that the dwarfs ended in disarray - no king, violent arguments and fighting in the dark. And it would stay dark in Uberwald, too. And it seemed to be important that the King was blamed. After all, he was the one who"d lost the Scone.

Whatever the plan was, it had to be done quickly. Well, the clacks would have been useful. What had Wolfgang said? "Those clever men in Ankh-Morpork"? Not dwarfs, but men.

Rubber Sonky, floating in his vat...

You dipped in a wooden hand, and out of the vat you got a glove. Hand in glove...

It isn"t where you put it, it"s where people think it is. That"s what matters. That"s the magic.

He remembered the very first thought he"d had when he"d seen Cheery staring at the floor of the Scone"s cave, and the little policemen in Vimes"s head started to clamour.

"What, sir?" said Carrot.

"Hmm?" Vimes forced open his eyes.

"You just shouted, sir."

"What did I shout?"

"You shouted, "The bloody thing was never bloody stolen!" sir."

"The bastards! I knew I nearly had it! It all fits together if you don"t think like a dwarf! Let"s make sure Sybil is all right and then, captain, we"re going to - "

"Prod buttock, sir?"

"Right!"

"Only one thing, sir..."

"What?"

"You are an escaped criminal, aren"t you?"

For a moment there was only the sound of the runners skimming over the snow.

"We-ell," said Vimes, "this isn"t Ankh-Morpork, I know. Everyone keeps telling me. But, captain, wherever you are, wherever you go, watchmen are always watchmen."

A solitary light burned in the window. Captain Colon sat by the candle, staring at nothing.

Regulations called for the Watch House to be manned at all hours, and that"s what he was doing.

The floorboards in the room below creaked into a new position. For many months now they"d been walked on around the clock, because the main office never had fewer than half a dozen people in it. Chairs, too, accustomed "to being warmed continuously by a relay of bottoms, groaned gently as they cooled.

There was only one thought buzzing around Fred Colon"s head.

Mister Vimes is going to go completely bursar. He"s going to go totally Librarian-poo.

His hand went down to the desk and came back automatically, while he looked straight ahead.

There was the crunch of a sugar lump being eaten. .

Snow was falling again. The watchman that Vimes had named Colonesque was leaning in his box by the Hubward gate of Bonk. He"d perfected the art, and it was an art form, of going to sleep upright with his eyes open. It was one of the things you learned on endless nights.

A female voice by his ear said, "Now, there are two ways this could go."

His position didn"t change. He continued to stare straight ahead.

"You haven"t seen anything. That"s the truth, isn"t it? Just nod."

He nodded, once.

"Good man. You didn"t hear me arrive, did you? Just nod."

Nod.

"So you won"t know when I"ve gone, am I right? Just nod."

Nod.

"You don"t want any trouble. Just nod."

Nod.

"They don"t pay you enough for this. Just nod."

This time the nod was quite emphatic.

"You get more than your fair share of night watches as it is; anyway."

Colonesque"s jaw dropped. Whoever was standing in the shadows was clearly reading his mind.

"Good man. You just stand here, then, and make sure no one steals the gate."

Colonesque took care to continue to stare straight ahead. He heard the thud and creak of the gate being opened and closed.

It occurred to him that the speaker had not in fact mentioned what the other way was, and he was quite relieved about that.

"What was the other way?" said Vimes as they hurried through the snow.

"We"d go and look for another way in," said Angua.

There were few people on the streets, which were whitening with the new snow again except where wisps of steam escaped from the occasional grating. In Uberwald, it seemed, sunset made its own curfew. This was just as well, because Gavin was growling continuously under his breath.

Carrot came back from the next corner.

"There"s dwarfs on guard all round the embassy," he said. "They don"t look open to negotiation, sir."

Vimes looked down. They were standing on a grating.

Captain Tantony of the Bonk Watch was not happy with this duty. He"d been at the opera last night, and later on he"d thought he saw things happening in a way which, the burgomaster had instructed him, hadn"t happened. Of course, the thing to do was obey orders. You were safe if you obeyed orders. Everyone in the watch knew that. But these didn"t feel like safe orders.

He"d heard they did things differently in Ankh-Morpork. Milord Vimes would arrest anyone, they said.

Tantony had set up a desk in the embassy"s hall so that he could keep an eye on the main doors. He"d taken some pains to position his men around the inside of the building; he didn"t trust the dwarfs on guard outside. They"d said they"d got orders to kill Vimes on sight, and that didn"t make any sense. There had to be some sort of a trial, didn"t there?

There was a faint noise from upstairs. He stood up carefully and reached for his crossbow. "Corporal Svetlz?"

There was another little sound. Tantony went to the bottom of the stairs.

Vimes appeared at the top of them. There was blood on his shirt, and crusted on the side of his face. To the captain"s horror he began to walk down the steps.

"I will shoot you!"

"That"s the order, is it?" said Vimes.

"Yes! Stop there!"

"But if I"m going to be shot anyway there"s no point in stopping, is there?" said Vimes. "I don"t think you"re the kind to do that, captain. You"ve got a brain." Vimes steadied himself on the banister rail. "Shouldn"t you have called for the rest of the guards by now, by the way?"

"I tell you to stop!"

"You know who I am. If you"re going to fire that damn thing, do it now. But first, I suggest it would be a really good career move to tug the bellpull over there. What"s the worst that would happen? You"ve still got the bow pointed at me. There"s something you really ought to know."

Tantony gave him a suspicious look but took a few steps sideways and tugged the rope.

Igor stepped out from behind a pillar. "Yeth, marthter?"

"Tell this young man where he is, will you?"

"He"th in Ankh-Morpork, marthter," said Igor calmly.

"See?" said Vimes. "And don"t glare at Igor like that. I missed it when he welcomed me here, but it"s true. This is an embassy, my son," he went on, walking forwards again, "and that means it"s officially on the soil of the home country. Welcome to Ankh-Morpork. There"s thousands of Uberwald people living in our city. You don"t want to go starting a war, do you?"

"But... but... they said... my orders... you are a criminal!"

"The word is accused, captain. We don"t kill people in Ankh-Morpork just because they"re accused. Well, not on purpose. And not because someone tells us to."

Vimes took the crossbow out of Tantony"s unresisting hands and fired it into the ceiling.

"Now send your men away," he said.

"I"m in Ankh-Morpork?" said the captain.

Even in his current state Vimes thought he recognized the harmonics.

"That"s right," he said, putting an arm around him. "A city which, incidentally, always has a job in the Watch for a young man of ability - "

Tantony"s body stiffened. He pushed Vimes"s arm away. "You insult me, milord. This is my country!"

"Ah." Vimes was aware of Carrot and Angua watching from the landing.

"But I will not see it dishonoured, either," said the captain. "This isn"t right. I saw what happened last night. You swept up the King and your troll caught the chandelier! And then they said you"d tried to kill the King and you"d killed dwarfs when you escaped..."

"Are you in charge of the Watch here?"

"No. That"s the job of the burgomaster."

"And who gives him his orders?"

"Everyone," said Tantony bitterly. Vimes nodded. Been there, he thought. Been there, done that, bought the doublet...

"Are you going to stop me taking my people out of here?"

"How can you do that? The dwarfs surround us!,

"We"re going to use... diplomatic channels. Just show me where everyone is, and we"ll be off. If it"s any help I can hit you over the head and tie you up..."

"That will not be required. The dwarf and the troll are in the cellar. Her ladyship is... I assume she"s wherever the Baron took her."

Vimes felt the little trickle of superheated ice down his spine. "Took her?" he said hoarsely.

"Well, yes." Tantony stepped back from Vimes"s expression. "She knew the Baroness, sir! She said they were old friends! She said they could sort it all out! And then..." Tantony"s voice became a mumble, seared into silence by the look on Vimes"s face.

When Vimes spoke, it was in a monotone as threatening as a spear.

"You are standing there in your shiny breastplate and your silly helmet and your sword without a single notch in the blade and your stupid trousers and you are telling me that you let my wife be taken away by werewolves?"

Tantony took a step backwards. "It was the Baron - "

"And you don"t argue with barons. Right. You don"t argue with anyone. Do you know what? I"m ashamed, ashamed to think that something like you is called a watchman. Now give me those keys."

The man had gone red.

"You"ve obeyed any orders," said Vimes. "Don"t... even... think... about... disobeying... that... one."

Carrot reached the bottom of the stairs and put a hand on Vimes"s shoulder.

"Steady, Mister Vimes."

Tantony looked from one to the other and made a life decision.

"I hope you... find your lady, milord." He produced a bunch of keys and handed them over. "I really do."

Vimes, still fighting for breath, wordlessly passed the keys to Carrot. "Let them out," he said.

"Are you going to the werewolves" castle?" Tantony panted.

"Yes."

"You won"t stand a chance, milord. They do as they please."

"Then they"ve got to be stopped."

"You can"t. The old one understood the rules, but Wolfgang, he doesn"t obey anything!"

"All the more reason to stop him, then. Ah, Detritus." The troll saluted. "You"ve got your bow, I see. Treated you well, did they?"

"Dey called me a ficko troll," said Detritus darkly. "One of dem kicked me inna rocks."Was it this one?"

No.

"But he is their captain," said Vimes, stepping away from Tantony. "Sergeant, I order you: shoot him down."

In one movement the troll had the crossbow balanced on his shoulder and was sighting along the massive package of arrows. Tantony went pale.

"Well, go on," said Vimes. "It was an order, sergeant."

Detritus lowered the bow. "I ain"t dat fick, sir."

"I gave you an order!"

"Den you can do wid dat order what Boulder der Lintel did wid his bag of gravel, sir! Wid respect, o"course."

Vimes walked across and patted the shaking Tantony on his shoulder.

"Just making a point," he said.

"However," said Detritus, "if you can find der man dat kicked me inna rocks, I should be happy to give him a flick around der earhole. I know which one it was. He"s der one walkin" wid der limp."

Lady Sybil drank her wine carefully. It didn"t taste very nice. In fact, quite a lot of things weren"t very nice.

She wasn"t a good cook. She"d never been taught proper cookery; at her school it had always been assumed that other people would be doing the cooking and that in any case it would be for fifty people using at least four types of fork. Such dishes as she had mastered were dainty things on doilies.

But she cooked for Sam because she vaguely felt that a wife ought to and, besides, he was an eater who entirely matched her kitchen skills. He liked burnt sausages and fried eggs that went boing when you tried to stick a fork in them. If you gave him caviare, he"d want it in batter. He was an easy man to feed, if you always kept some lard in the house.

But the food here tasted as though it had been cooked by someone who had never even tried before. She"d seen the kitchens, when Serafine had given her the little tour, and they"d just about do for a cottage. The game larders, on the other hand, were the size of barns. She"d never seen so many dead things hanging up.

It was just that she was certain that venison shouldn"t be served boiled, with potatoes that were crunchy. If they were potatoes, of course. Potatoes weren"t usually grey. Even Sam, who liked the black lumpy bits you got in some mashed potatoes, would have commented. But Sybil had been brought up properly; if you can"t find something nice to say about the food, find something else to be nice about.

"These are... really very interesting plates," she said dutifully. "Er, are you sure there"s been no more news?" She tried to avoid watching the Baron. He was ignoring Sybil and his wife, and was prodding the meat around on his plate as if he"d forgotten what a knife and fork were for.

"Wolfgang and his friends are still out searching," said Serafine. "But this is terrible weather for a man to be on the run."

"He is not on the run!" snapped Sybil. "Sam is not guilty of anything!"

"Of course, of course. All the evidence is circumstantial. Of course," said the Baroness soothingly. "Now, I suggest that as soon as they have the passes clear, you and the, er, the staff get back to the safety of Ankh-Morpork before the real winter hits. We know the country, my dear. If your husband is alive, we can soon do something about it."

"I will not have him shamed like this! You saw him save the King!"

"I"m sure he did, Sybil. I"m afraid I was talking to my husband at the time, but I don"t disbelieve you for a minute. Is it true that he killed all those men in the Wilinus Pass?"

"What? But they were bandits!"

At the other end of the table the Baron had picked up a lump of meat and was trying to tear it apart with his teeth.

"Well, of course. Yes. Of course."

Sybil pinched the bridge of her nose. Most of her would not have considered Sam Vimes guilty of murder, actual murder, even on the evidence of three gods and a message written on the sky. But stories did get back to her, in a roundabout way. Sam got wound up about things. Sometimes he unwound all at once. There"d been that bad business with that little girl and those men over at Dolly Sisters, and when Sam had broken into the men"s lodging he found one of them had stolen one of her shoes, and she"d heard Detritus say that if he hadn"t been there only Sam would have walked out of the room alive.

She shook her head. "I really would like a bath," she said. There was a clatter from the other end of the table.

"Dear, you will have to eat your dinner in the changing room," said the Baroness, without looking round. She flashed Lady Sybil a brief, brittle smile. "We do not, in fact, have a... have such a, a device in the castle." A thought occurred to her. "We use the hot springs. So much more hygienic."

"Out in the forest?"

"Oh, it"s quite close. And a quick run around in the snow really tones up the body."

"I think perhaps I"ll have a lie-down instead," said Lady Sybil firmly. "But thank you all the same."

She made her way to the musty bedroom, fuming in a ladylike way.

She couldn"t bring herself to like Serafine, and this was shocking, because Lady Sybil even liked Nobby Nobbs, and that took breeding. But the werewolf scraped across her nerves like a file. She remembered that she"d never liked her at school, either.

Among the other unwanted baggage that had been heaped on the young Sybil to hamper her progress through life was the injunction to be pleasant to people and say helpful things. People took this to mean that she didn"t think.

She"d hated the way Serafine had talked about dwarfs. She"d called them "sub-human". Well, obviously most of them lived underground, but Sybil rather liked dwarfs. And Serafine spoke of trolls as if they were things. Sybil hadn"t met many trolls, but the ones she knew seemed to spend their lives raising their children and looking for the next dollar just like everyone else.

Worst of all, Serafine simply assumed that Sybil would naturally agree with her stupid opinions because she was a Lady. Sybil Ramkin had not had an education in these things, moral philosophy not having featured much in a curriculum that was heavy on flower-arranging, but she had a shrewd idea that in any possible debate the right side was where Serafine wasn"t.

She"d only ever written all those letters to her because it was what you did. You always wrote letters to old friends, even if you weren"t very friendly with them.

She sat on the bed and stared at the wall until the shouting started, and when the shouting started she knew Sam was alive and well, because only Sam made people that angry.

She heard the key click in the lock.

Sybil rebelled.

She was large and she was kind. She hadn"t enjoyed school much. A society of girls is not a good one in which to be large and kind, because people are inclined to interpret that as "stupid" and, worse, "deaf".

Lady Sybil looked out of the window. She was two floors up.

There were bars across it, but they"d been designed to keep something out; from the inside they could be lifted out of their slots. And there were musty but heavy sheets and blankets on the bed. None of this might have suggested very much to the average person, but life in a rather strict school for well brought-up young ladies can give someone a real insight into the tricks of escapology.

Five minutes after the key had turned there was only one bar in the window and it was jerking and creaking in the stonework, suggesting that quite a heavy weight was on the sheets that had been neatly knotted around it.

Torches streamed along the castle walls. The ghastly red and black flag snapped in the wind. Vimes looked over the side of the badge. The water was a long way down, and pure white even before it reached the waterfall. Forward and back were the only possible directions here.

He reviewed his troops. Unfortunately this did not take long. Even a policeman could count up to five. Then there was Gavin and his wolves, who were lurking in the trees. And finally, very definitely finally, there was Gaspode, the Corporal Nobbs of the canine world, who"d attached himself to the group uninvited.

What else was on his side? Well, the enemy preferred not to use weapons. This bonus evaporated somewhat when you remembered that they had, at will, some very nasty teeth and claws.

He sighed and turned to Angua. "I know this is your family," he said. "I won"t blame you if you hang back."

"We"ll see, sir, shall we?"