Sam is very angry. He is angry that the revolution they worked towards failed. He is angry that his friends and the only man who has been anything like a father to him have perished in a useless battle. He is angry that people are lying down to accept the new tyrant without so much of a murmur at the watchmen who fought so hard for those he is still young enough to think of as The People, that they receive no recognition and find themselves dwindling in number. He is angry that he is poor. He is angry that his mother is dying because he is poor and cannot afford what she really needs, which is a house with walls thick enough to block out the cold, blankets to warm her body, good food in her stomach and medicine.
He cannot provide her with anything but love, but he has learned that love doesn't keep anyone alive. What he hasn't quite learned yet is anything beyond the fire of self-righteous fury, has not yet discovered the slow burning rage that comes with despair of twenty years being ground into the dirt by the boot of reality that comes smashing swiftly down upon the dreams of foolish boys hoping for a brighter dawn.
So he drinks. Mum doesn't like it when he drinks - it reminds her of the man that she swears died in an unfortunate cart accident - but she doesn't have to know. He is not a large man, and he hasn't drank many times before. It doesn't take him long to get drunk, which is all very well and good because everyone else in the bar is drunk too. Once the lot of them get chucked out, a scuffle begins. No one's sure why or how (perhaps someone was saying something rude about mothers or specific gods or perhaps even one's choice of drink), but Sam's blood is roaring in his veins and the beast he doesn't know exists yet is stirring within him and he wants to fight something real bad.
That someone turns out to be a man at least ten years his senior. He is backed up into a dirty alley - which is typical for Ankh Morpork, though this one is particularly filthy and Sam is quite sure he is treading in a rancid combination of piss and vomit - and learns the important lesson that anger is not the same as strength. The other man is older, stronger and more skilled, and Sam is soon pressed against the wall, blood dripping from his nose, lip and forehead, hands held out in front of him in some facsimile of a defense. The other man raises one bulky fist (tattoos on his knuckles, Sam notes in a haze of liquor and despair, which is indicative of a real Tough Guy), flings back his grizzled head and falters.
"How old're you, kid?" He grunts.
"Nineteen," Sam says and sniffles miserably, the fire in his veins suddenly replaced with sadness in his heart and a chill in his limbs and a hunger that the drink cannot quench.
"Gods," the man hisses, and puts a hand to his forehead. For a moment, Sam can see someone who is not a simple thug, but a man who has had a hard life, a man that may very well be run over by a cart as it may be any day. "I ain't drunk enough for this. You crying?"
"No," Sam says, because he is.
"I could kill you right now. Got a knife in my boot and everythin'." The man regards him solemnly and scrubs his face with the heels of his hands, which only means that he has successfully spread the grime evenly about his face. "Would anyone miss you?"
"Yeah."
"Who? You got a girl?"
"My mum," Sam says, and looks down at his boots because he's pretty sure what his mum would have to say about this, and if she could lift a finger right now she'd give him a thrashing that would last until next week at least. He doesn't have a girl, because girls aren't interested in skinny, sad excuses for watchmen and he hasn't got the nerve to go to a seamstress like some of the others.
The man groans again, then turns his back. "Go back to yer mum, kid. Get the hell outta my sight. I ain't gonna kill you today."
So he goes and tries to pretend that the shame doesn't burn more than any anger ever could.