Have You Noticed Every Time We Meet A Dragon Turns Up?

What exactly went through Sam Vimes mind with the evolving relationship and growing attraction between himself and Lady Ramkin?

"A voice immediately above him rumbled, "Say what you like, I still swear it's a magnificent specimen."

Vimes's gaze travelled upwards until it crested the edge of the fountain's top bowl.

"Have you noticed," said Sybil Ramkin, hauling herself upright by a piece of eroded statuary and dropping down in front of him, "how every time we meet, a dragon turns up?"

She gave him an arch smile. "It's a bit like having your own tune. Or something."

- Guards! Guards! Terry Pratchett

Rating: K+ / T

Disclaimer: Do I look like Pterry? I am just standing in awe at the man's genius.

Note: Guards! Guards! Some italicised quotes from the book. A closer look at all of the meetings between Vimes and Lady Ramkin in G!G!


Chapter 9

Vimes picked his way wetly towards the Plaza of Broken Moons, Errol perched on his shoulder like a scaly Bluebeard's parrot gone wrong, and paused as he entered the square. The rain was lashing down, rivulets pouring between the cobbles on the Plaza and making Vimes shiver beneath his oil skin cape. Stamping his soggy cardboard-soled boots, Vimes picked his way carefully on the treacherous cobbles to the approximate site where the young lad had stood. He looked around for a minute, the bits of bunting, the detritus of the evening's revelers, the vomit, the barely touched genuine pork product sausages from Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler. He realized he was expecting something, anything, to show that the dragon had been there. Residual heat, maybe, or a bit of skin or scale. He fumbled in his pocket, past the miscellaneous small change, keys, bits of string and paper, til his fingers closed over a stub of chalk. Errol jumped down from his shoulder and waddled off, sniffing the broken bottles and litter.

Let's see, Vimes muttered to himself. He wished he had paid slightly more attention to Lady Ramkin's discourse on swamp dragons. He didn't really know anything about dragon anatomy, let alone know how to actually draw a dragon. Just how long was the neck meant to be? And by how much would you need to scale up from a swamp dragon to one the size of a flying barn? Blast….

A rough guess will have to be adequate, he thought. Just a wossname, a guide. So, the head was around about here, now out towards a wing, tail back out here… He changed hands with the chalk, dragging it across the wet cobbles and grimacing as the stub ground down and the cobbles scraped his fingertips. He threw the chalk stub in the gutter and glanced around at Errol. He paused as he watched the little dragon drop the broken bottle he had been crunching. Errol's head tilted upwards, eyes wide and little pear shaped body trembling.

Unnerved, Vimes called out to Errol. "There's nothing there, finish your bottle. Nice bottle." Errol flicked one ear, but continued to ignore him. A thin keening sound broke free as Errol continued to gaze fixedly at the sky. Vimes felt his skin crawl as he watched Errol, the little dragon's behavior unnerving him more than if Nobby had turned honest.

"Look, there's nothing there," he said, unsure if he was trying to convince Errol or himself. He picked up a discarded sausage lying nearby and tossed it into the air. "Look," he told the dragon, watching the sausage reach the apex of its trajectory - and then fall away. Vimes' voice trailed off as he watched the sausage fall as if it had been thrown into a tunnel. And the tunnel was looking back at him.

Vivid purple lightening flashed in the empty air and raced across the wet cobbles towards the buildings on the near side of the Plaza, flickering across the facades for several seconds and then disappearing with the same suddenness from which it came, leaving dancing spots in Vimes' vision. Temporarily blinded and rapidly losing control of his bowels, Vimes staggered backwards. Next to him, Errol was trembling violently. He was desperately trying not to scream.

The light suddenly flashed once more, hitting the rimward wall and shattering into thousands of spidery tentacles across the stones.

The third flash shot straight up into the air, coalescing into a column with flickering purple tendrils and rising fifty feet into the air, rotating slowly. As the column stabilized, purple tendrils raced at speed across the Plaza, sometimes doubling back, sometimes racing across the rooftops, never pausing. Seeking. Searching. Errol clawed his way desperately up Vimes' back and fastened himself firmly on his shoulder, eyes riveted to the spinning column. He huffed next to Vimes' ear and reflexively tightened his claws. The residual agony of Errol's claws up his back reminded Vimes that maybe he should scream again. He tried an "argh." It didn't make him feel any better.


In her coach now hurtling down Scoone Avenue, Lady Ramkin was desperately trying to convince herself that she must be wrong. We saw it killed! Wait…. There's a problem right there, if you think about it. It disappeared, it didn't die. A disappearance doesn't equate death, does it? When swamp dragons explode you're scraping dragon off the scenery. There wasn't a talon, or scale, or tooth left of that dragon. She turned her eyes to the sky, and realized that she was half expecting the sight of enormous wings and that huge, horse-like head hovering on the horizon. She shook herself. But the swamp dragons….that vigil….they know. They're like little barometers. But if it's back, then what? What is it made of? The wizards couldn't touch it, their fireballs made it angry, and also made it stronger. So, if it's a thaumivore, then it must have found something again, some source of energy. Or magic. Oh no….Lady Ramkin made the logical connections. It's learned to feed. The only thing running through her mind above the panic was to find Vimes. And as quickly as she could.


The air began to smell of burning tin. Vimes smacked his lips a couple of times, trying to get rid of the taste. An almighty commotion made him turn around. Lady Ramkin's coach burst into the Plaza with a sudden cacophony of sound and pounded straight for Vimes, the horses skidding to a halt in a juddering spin that made them either plait their legs or turn 180 degrees.

A furious vision in a damp pink off-the-shoulder ballgown exposing that cleavage that had haunted Vimes' dreams, a diamond tiara, padded leather and steel gauntlets leaned out of the coach and hauled him bodily inside, screaming "Come on, you bloody idiot!" Vimes fell unresistingly on the box, screaming reflexively.

"And stop screaming!" Generations of natural authority were channeled into those four syllables, the tone and diction could have engraved steel. Another shout spurred the horses into a full gallop from a standing start. A winding tendril of purple light flickered briefly against the horses' reins and then flashed away across the cobbles. Against all rationality, the flickering light seemed to have lost interest. Which of course was just not possible, after all a flash of light wasn't a sentient being, was it? At that moment in time, Vimes wasn't about to argue the point. It was scaring the hell out of him, as well as other, more organic, things and he wanted to be wherever it wasn't.

Vimes clung to the seat next to the monstrously padded Lady Ramkin and tried not to stare at her furiously bouncing form next to him.

"I don't suppose you have any idea what's going on?" he shouted over the sound of the crackling fire and the horses' hooves whipping up sparks.

"Not the foggiest," she shouted back.

The purple tendrils were spreading across the city, like a vast spider's web, the lines growing fainter with distance. Vimes couldn't escape the idea that they were somehow alive. The idea made him shudder.

"Don't you think that it looks like it's somehow alive?" Vimes shouted to Lady Ramkin.

She turned her head briefly, giving him a look of appraisal as she considered the idea. He watched her as she glanced over at the purple matrix now covering the city. She nodded slowly.

"Like it's looking for something," he added.

"Then getting away before it finds it would be a first class idea, don't you think?" she shouted back, looking back over the city and shivering. She hadn't realized just how cold it was going to be in her haste to get back to the Plaza.

Vimes was just about to chivalrously unbuckle his cape for Lady Ramkin, when suddenly, all hell broke loose.


Across the city, a tendril of fire was flickering down the flanks of the dark Tower of Art at Unseen University. It disappeared into the undergrowth and down through the dome of the university's library. As it did so, the other lines blinked out.

Watching curiously, Lady Ramkin slowed the horses and came to a halt at the far side of the Plaza.

"Why on earth would it want the library?" she asked frowning.

"Maybe it wants to look something up?" Vimes answered, in an uncharacteristically light hearted fashion, that surprised even him.

"Don't be silly," she said off handedly. "There's just a load of books in there and it's a flash of lightening. What would a flash of lightening read?"

"Something very short?" He really couldn't help himself. Bickering with her was turning out to be, almost unbelievably, such fun. It would be a cold day in hell before he admitted that to anyone.

The look he received told him that she was not amused.

"I really think you could try to be a bit more help…" she began, when behind them a brilliant arc of light landed in the centre of the Plaza, stretching from the dome of Unseen University's library. Suddenly, it became a sphere of fire that grew to encompass the whole Plaza, and then, just as suddenly as it arrived, it went. And left the Plaza full of dragon.


Comments gratefully received.