Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett Page A

way?”
    “Well, you could put me in the way of a pound of steak. That does wonders for my memory, steak. Makes it go clean away.”
    Angua frowned.
    “People don’t like the word ‘blackmail’,” she said.
    “It ain’t the only word they don’t like,” said the dog. “Take my case, now. I’ve got chronic intelligence. Is that any use to a dog? Did I ask for it? Not me. I just finds a cushy spot to spend my nights along at the High Energy Magic building at the University, no one told me about all this bloody magic leaking out the whole time, next thing I know I open me eyes, head starts fizzing like a dose of salts, oh-oh, thinks I, here we go again, hello abstract conceptualizing, intellectual development here we come…What bloody use is that to me? Larst time it happened, I ended up savin’ the world from horrible wossnames from the Dungeon Dimensions, and did anyone say fanks? Wot a Good Dog, Give Him A Bone? Har har.” It held up a threadbare paw. “My name’s Gaspode. Something like this happens to me just about every week. Apart from that, I’m just a dog.”
    Angua gave up. She grasped the moth-eaten limb and shook it.
    “My name’s Angua. You know what I am.”
    “Forgotten it already,” said Gaspode.

    Captain Vimes looked at the debris scattered across the courtyard from a hole in one of the ground-floor rooms. All the surrounding windows had broken, and there was a lot of glass underfoot. Mirror glass. Of course, assassins were notoriously vain, but mirrors would be in rooms, wouldn’t they? You wouldn’t expect a lot of glass outside. Glass got blown in, not out.
    He saw Lance-Constable Cuddy bend down and pick up a couple of pulleys attached to a piece of rope, which was burned at one end.
    There was a rectangle of card in the debris.
    The hairs on the back of Vimes’ hand prickled.
    He sniffed rankness in the air.
    Vimes would be the first to admit that he wasn’t a good copper, but he’d probably be spared the chore because lots of other people would happily admit it for him. There was a certain core of stubborn bloody-mindedness there which upset important people, and anyone who upsets important people is automatically not a good copper. But he’d developed instincts. You couldn’t live on the streets of a city all your life without them. In the same way that the whole jungle subtly changes at the distant approach of the hunter, there was an alteration in the feel of the city.
    There was something happening here, something wrong, and he couldn’t quite see what it was. He started to reach down—
    “What is the meaning of this?”
    Vimes straightened up. He did not turn around.
    “Sergeant Colon, I want you to go back to the Watch House with Nobby and Detritus,” he said. “Corporal Carrot and Lance-Constable Cuddy, you stay with me.”
    “Yes, sah! ” said Sergeant Colon, stamping heavily and ripping off a smart salute to annoy the Assassins. Vimes acknowledged it.
    Then he turned around.
    “Ah, Dr. Cruces,” he said.
    The Master of Assassins was white with rage, contrasting nicely with the extreme black of his clothing.
    “No one sent for you!” he said. “What gives you the right to be here, mister policeman? Walking around as if you own the place?”
    Vimes paused, his heart singing. He savored the moment. He’d like to take this moment and press it carefully in a big book, so that when he was old he could take it out occasionally and remember it.
    He reached into his breastplate and pulled out the lawyer’s letter.
    “Well, if you would like the most fundamental reason,” he said, “it is because I rather think I do.”
    A man can be defined by the “things he hates. There were quite a lot of things that Captain Vimes hated. Assassins were near the top of the list, just after kings and the undead.
    He had to allow, though, that Dr. Cruces recovered very quickly. He didn’t explode when he read the letter, or argue, or claim it was a forgery. He simply folded