Slipping Between Worlds – 37
Philip Holtack was pleased to be able to recognise the line of Broad Way and the Patrician's Palace from the air. He could also see the sense of having a "no flying" rule above the Palace: flying straight and true down the Broad Way with the bulk of the palace getting ever closer, it felt as if he was on a bombing run. It would be just too easy… on a magic carpet, I suppose you'd just have a couple of barrels of gunpowder, or something, light the fuses, and tip them over the side. But, mother of invention and all that, if magic powers the aircraft, what sort of anti-aircraft magic would they use in place of a ground to air missile?
As the carpet powered down towards the flat roof of the Palace that served as a makeshift helipad, he got a first-class view of the Army and Watch clearing the square in front of the palace.
Somebody down there's been thinking. They've equipped those red-jacketed squaddies with helmets and shields and batons and kept them in line. That even looks like a snatch-squad, ready to go…
It all looked oddly familiar.
He even recognised a couple of very obvious sergeants, standing aloof from the infantry lines, red sashes over their jackets, holding the long pikes that Holtack had seen in military museums and heard descriptions of, but had never seen used in action. He recalled that in Napoleonic times, in those diabolical stand-up-and-shoot-at-each-other-at –fifty-paces encounters, the sergeants had stood behind the infantry lines, using their pikes to prod and cajole reluctant soldiers into standing there and taking it until the enemy broke first. And that pike, in 1815, was the sole survivor of a time two hundred years earlier where every man had been pike-armed, and warfare had been the press of pikes, two bodies of armed men running at each other like enraged and lethal hedgehogs…
But those tactics look just like twentieth century Northern Ireland, he reflected. A thought was scratching at the back of his mind, like a cat at the kitchen door mewling for admittance.
Sergeant Williams?
And then, as they came into land on the roof, the first wave of petrol bombs arched over. Holtack saw one of the sergeants start with surprise, then bellow at his snatch squad to get a bloody move on and go in and grab somebody!
The voice had a familiar ring of command to it… and then, to his horror, it occurred to him that nobody else on this world would know to get out of the way… even as Constable Millward was suddenly enveloped in fire and flame, he was shouting to Joe Le Tahksi to get him down to ground level, right now, over there where the command post seems to be, where Commander Vimes is.
Jocasta plucked urgently at his arm.
"Put my cloak on!" she shouted. "Your uniform is too distinctive!"
He remembered the front page of a newspaper he'd seen, where the artist had made a very good attempt at DP battledress and the caption had proclaimed that this was alien uniform. He took the borrowed cloak with thanks, and pulled it closely round himself. Then he was running to join Vimes, who was shouting orders. He couldn't see the Army sergeant anywhere.
Vimes had been present while HEX had re-run a Northern Irish riot for their education. Even so, he saw the glowing sparks in the sky before recognising where he'd seen them before. He was running, yelling at people not to just bloody well stand there, move! But he was too far away and moving too slowly, his words largely lost in the clamour all around.
He screamed the sort of word Sybil would have been very disapproving of, as he realised he was going to be too late. As a curious Millward looked up, wondering what the hell it was, then only belatedly appeared to realise it was some sort of flaming missile, he lifted his shield just too late…
…and the firebomb exploded at his feet, sending a shower of blazing liquid and red-hot glass shards upwards with some force, the blazing molten liquid sizzling slightly in the drizzling cold rain, but not going out...
He screamed, hit the ground, and rolled in agony. Vimes, Carrot, and at the rear, Philip Holtack, were converging on him.
Carrot was first there, taking his cloak off and using it to suffocate the fire that had travelled to Millward's clothing. The sticken Watchman shuddered and screamed at the touch. His bare legs were alternately burnt raw and streaming blood from a dozen glass-strikes.
"These are your petrol bombbes, are they?" Vimes said, coldly.
"I'm afraid so." said Holtack. "Which means there's a petrol bomber out there somewhere."
Vimes nodded down.
"Get him to an Igor. Quickly." he directed.
Holtack watched two of the huge lumbering trolls storming into the residual crowd, those luckless enough to be in the way being picked up and hurled aside. Those things can certainly move when they're angry!
He recognised one as the police-troll Detritus. The other, bizarrely, also had three stripes carved into each arm, and was painted red above the waist and blue below it. He blinked.
Another petrol bomb arched out of the crowd and hit the leading troll full on the chest. There was a fiery explosion. Detritus barely blinked, slapping out the flames, and altering his rush in the direction from which the bomb had come.
"Dat scorch dis troll's hide. Dat like sunburn to a human – but it make me angry!" he bellowed. Holtack noticed there was another sort of troll that was lumbering forward, as if in back-up. He'd glimpsed one of those in the police station: the smoother-bodied, terracotta red trolls with the fiery red eyes, as if they had been made from flowerpots.
"Constable Shtetl! Constable Dorfl! Fall back! This is an order!" the red-haired Captain Carrot yelled, a sense of urgency in his voice. The two flowerpot trolls retreated, acknowledging the order.
"Aren't they just the sort of officers we need up front right now, Carrot?" Vimes inquired, as a passing Igor who had volunteered his assistance supervised the evacuation of Millward.
"Yes and no, sir" said Carrot. "Yes, because there's nobody for making a snatch-arrest like a golem. "No, absolutely not, because it's raining and they're throwing fire-bombs."
Vimes looked blank for a second. Carrot diplomatically prodded him.
"The Post Office fire, sir? The death of the golem Anghammarad? The only thing that can kill a golem? Cold water and fire, sir?"
Vimes grimaced and made the palm-forehead-slap gesture.
"You're absolutely right, Carrot. I agree we can't risk the golems. And we don't want to give those little sods out there a lesson in killing one. Seems to me they've learnt enough today, from a master."
He looked at Holtack. It was not a sympathetic look.
"I'm sorry about your officer, Commander." he said, awkwardly.
"Well, yes. Just as it happens, so am I!" Vimes retorted.
Holtack grimaced. Crass remark, Philip.
"MacElroy's out there. Only he could have passed that skill on."
"It would appear so. Carrot, put the word out. Male, IC1, middle thirties. Dark haired. Sallow face. We'll circulate the picture from HEX later. Look of a bottle covey about his eyes. Hergenian accent. I want him nicked."
"He very possibly has access to a gonne, Commander." Holtack said, diffidently. "And he's a hard man. Thug, bully, killer. You can back him against a wall with ten men and he'll still try to fight his way out. He's thirty-six and he's done a lot of prison time."
"He'll be doing a lot more once we get him! Or maybe, just enough." Vimes added, darkly. " All officers approach him with extreme caution, gonne-armed, and with none of the constraints on using it that our other visitors have to observe. You, how many of those round things is he likely to have? The things that make a gonne dangerous?"
"No more than ten, Commander. So he'll be looking to conserve them."
The technology apparently exists on this Discworld to construct a gun, of sorts. It caused trouble here before. That's why they're so keen to keep a lid on it and bring us all in. Does the technology exist to refill empty round cases, fill them with propellent, and to cast new bullets? It logically must do. Unless the original Gonne was a flintlock or a muzzle-loader.
"Do you want me to ask Lord Downey for Guild assistance?" Jocasta asked. "If there's a rogue gonneman on the streets, that makes it Guild business too!"
Vimes looked furious for a second, then reflected.
"Thank you, Jocasta. That would be… helpful. Just bring him in alive, if you people get to him first, so he can stand trial."
The troll Detritus lumbered back. He was carrying a feebly struggling youth in one hand by the scruff of the neck. The boy, a typically undernourished Morporkian street rat, held a bottle in one hand and a box of matches in the other. The bottle was full of an oily liquid and a dirty rag had been stuffed in the top. This acted as a wick, drawing the liquid up into itself.
"Now what have we got here!" Vimes shouted, taking in the scene. Holtack drew the borrowed cloak tighter about himself, letting the hood cover his face, and stood immobile.
"I do believe that is one of those bloody petrol-bombbes that have been causing us trouble – and injury!" He took it from the youth and studied it.
"Let me guess. You light the wick here, right. And I see you have a packet of Astfgls(1) in your other hand. You then take care not to hold onto it for too long, because that could be bad for your health. Instead, you throw it in such a way that it causes the maximum injury to one of my bloody Watchmen!"
He bent forward. His face was just inches away from the youth.
"You, sonny, are nicked!"
"You can torture me, peeler! You can beat me up in the cells like you did to Paddy Heggarty until he confessed! You can treat me like one of the Pseudopolis Six!(2) I'll never tell! Toichfàidh a'r là!"(3)
Vimes looked at Carrot.
"It's Hergenian, sir. Our Day Will Come. An old fighting slogan. And his name's Eddie Maguire, sir. From Dimwell. One of the Wild Geas street gang."
Vimes shook his head. He looked at the defiant youth.
"Your day certainly has." he said. "And you get a Monday too, up in front of the Patrician. Whether he gives you a Tuesday is up to His Lordship. And for goodness sake, stop faking that bloody thick Hergenian accent. You were born in this bloody city, regardless of where your parents were from!"
"Cuff him, Carrot!"
"Wait" Holtack said, from inside the hood. Carrot and the youth looked at him, standing next to the fashionably clad lady Assassin who had been watching but who had not said a thing.
The youth gulped, all assertion rapidly fading, as he noticed them for the first time.
Ah. He thinks I'm an Assassin. That could be useful.
"Commander, I'm assured we will be allowed to question this prisoner later?"
Vimes looked at the way the blood had drained from the youth's face, and cottoned on. Jocasta took a dagger from her belt and began to idly clean her fingernails with it, scowling at the detainee.
"We don't normally hand over our prisoners to the Assassins' Guild. But just sometimes.." Vimes mused.
"My colleague here teaches the course module in Interrogation Technique." Jocasta said. "He's very good at it!"
"The scientific application of pain." Holtack reflected. "I might invite some of my students. But they can be so ham-fisted sometimes… still, practice makes perfect!"
Eddie Maguire crumpled.
"What do you want to know?" he whispered, ashen.
"Where did you learn to make those fire-bombs?" Holtack asked, in a friendlier voice.
"There was this fella. Said he'd teach us a new skill. He needed bottles and oil and old rags…"
And the story came out about McElroy, right down to the long bag he carried like it was gold and he wouldn't let anyone else s touch it or see what was in it.
Eventually, Vimes nodded and gestured two Watchmen to drag him away. Another petrol bomber had been brought in by an Army snatch squad and dumped at Vimes' feet by a grinning soldier or two. Holtack looked at them, in their strange Napoleonic-style uniforms, and saw an odd kinship to Headbutt Powell in one of the men. Again, he wondered where Powell and Williams were. But he was beginning to suspect he knew exactly where Sergeant Williams had gone to ground…
"The Wild Geas"(4) Carrot said, conversationally. "One of our wilder street gangs, sir. Entry qualifications are that you have to be Hergenian by birth or by parents. They have a sort of romantic streak in them, yearning for the old days when Hergen was a part of the Ankh-Morporkian Empire, and the fighting that went on to free themselves. "
"But they're not bloody well re-enacting it on my bloody streets!" Vimes said, curtly. "Right, we've established this macElroy character is now public enemy number one, but nobody can tell us where he is nor where he's staying. Book this one, Carrot, and get him into a cell. Patrician tomorrow."
The latest arrestee was dragged, whimpering, off.
Holtack picked up one of the impounded petrol bombs and sniffed it.
"Paraffin oil." Vimes said. "Used for domestic heaters. Good grief, what are you doing, man?"
Holtack took a drip of it on the end of his finger, and gingerly tasted it.
No. Just paraffin.
"There are refinements you sometimes get to these weapons, Commander." he explained. "Burning petrol causes damage, but just drips off like any liquid. Let's say they'd added half a pound of sugar. That burns more deeply, more intensely, and it sticks to things. Ever bitten into hot jam? This is a thousand times worse."
Vimes repressed a shudder. He'd seen the bodies after a fire at a jam factory.
"And this macElroy character knows that trick?"
"I'm afraid he does, sir. Another good reason for pulling him in."
His eyes drooped. He suddenly felt very tired. Vimes leant across and patted him on the shoulder.
"You're all in." he said. "Better see about getting you discharged, if His Lordship has no further use for you. Then you can do me a favour and escort Sybil back to the Manor, she knows the way. She can sort you out a bath and a meal and a bed to sleep in. Looks like I'm going to be out all night yet!"
They walked back to the Palace together, past groups of Watchmen, soldiers and militia who were reforming for the push into the nearby Maul and the city squares. Holtack suddenly saw a very familiar face, no further than ten yards away. The sergeant's stripes were right, but the uniform…
So Sergeant Williams did go undercover, he thought. Looks like he's not seen me; he's busy talking to the local Toms. But now I know he's attached himself to the local army, I'd better manufacture an excuse to visit them and find out what the Hell he's up to. For one thing, Vetinari agreed we are not here to invade or to spy on his country in preparation for an invasion. How the Hell is is going to react when he finds out one of my men has gone undercover in his army?
He walked on alongside Vimes, hoping the shrewd copper hadn't noticed his sudden interest in the sergeant.
Food, a bath and a bed for the night. Wonderful!
Sergeant Williams glanced at the approaching men.
"Sarge, that's Stoneface Vimes, that is! Commands the local Watch".
"Thanks for telling me. The red-haired officer?"
"His deputy, Captain Carrot. The other two, the girl and the man in the cloak and hood, dunno who they are, probably Assassins. If you've never been in this town before, sarge, you do not annoy Assassins!"
Williams nodded, and was about to turn away as the group walked on. Glancing at them from behind, he noticed a gust of wind blew the Assassin's cloak aside, just for an instant. Revealing…
British Army battledress? He watched the receding figures for a while, until he was sure: he had seen that particular gait and carriage on parades several hundred times, if he had seen it once.
Mister Holtack. It must be. Idly, Williams wondered if Holtack had recognised him. He was showing no sign if it. He shrugged. So at least one member of Seven Platoon had been in the Palace. Lovely, that meant he could narrow it down and make a discreet inquiry. Time enough later to gather in Seven Platoon.
"Right, lovely boys, smoke break's over! Move it!" he announced.
"So gallant of you to escort me, Lieutenant!"
"Think nothing of it, ma'am. I'm grateful that you offered me a place to stay."
"Noblesse oblige, and all that. Besides, you're an officer and a gentleman! Can't have you stranded, can we?"
He was travelling in a coach with Lady Sybil. Jocasta had left to go and find Downey, assuring herself that he was in good hands.
The upholstery seemed a bit bashed and there was a distinct chemical taint in the air, acrid and sooty at the same time, and that was a definite scorch mark on the inside of the door.
"Oh, I normally use this for transporting the best animals to shows" she said, to explain the dilapidated state of the interior.
Animal breeder. Thought so.
"Usually it's only me and the dragons who ride in here.".
Holtack sat upright, a sudden vision of the robustly-built Sybil Ramkin as an over-age and rather over-size Dragonrider of Pern intruding on his visual field. How big do dragons get? And after that magic carpet ride I'm wiling to suspend an awful lot of disbelief…
She smiled.
"Lovely little chaps, you must see them!"
She then explained they were swamp-dragons, rather smaller than the ones Holtack had envisioned, and barely capable of a staggering sort of flight no more than three feet above ground level, and then not for very long.
"Oh."
"An easy mistake to make, Lieutenant. You don't have dragons on your world? It must be an awfully dull place. Although we did have the other sort of dragon here, once, briefly." She sighed.
"An absolutely gorgeous specimen of the noble dragon. I would have loved to have bred from it!"
Then she studied his clothing, critically.
"By all accounts you arrived here in a hurry and very unexpectedly" she said. "I can see those clothes are sturdy, and they're awfully practicable for workwear, but you really need something suitable to your rank and social standing." she said. "I know, I'll get Willikins to measure you up, then we'll see if we can't sort something out for you. Lots of clothes around that used to belong to my father and uncles, although they might be a bit big on you…"
He relaxed. Being dressed as a young gentleman by Lady Sybil – well, there could be worse fates. But he could forego food. Bath and bed were what he needed right now.
And the carriage trotted along Body Street, on its way to cross the Ankh at The Cut, and then right of King's Way onto Scoone Avenue and home. Or what would be home for an indefinite period.
Holtack yawned. Confronting Sergeant Williams and asking him what the Hell he thought he was up to could wait. So could Powell and Williams, J.J. He listened to Sybil's animated chat.
"There are at least three Embassies on Scoone Avenue, but we're on good terms with all the Ambassadors, who are all civilised and decent gentlemen. Ambassador van der Graaf, for instance, at the Rimwards Howondalandian. Pieter and Frijda, such lovely people! They have a niece who teaches at the Assassins' Guild School, she's one of Sam's Special Constables. Busy girl, but she still fitted in the time to come and see my dragons…"
He let Sybil's chatter wash over him, while pretending complete attention – it was a knack he had perfected in many classrooms over the years.
And across the city in Hide Park, a tense stand-off was about to begin….
(1) On Roundworld, the early primitive match was called a Lucifer.
(2) In olden days when Hergen was still fighting a civil war for freedom from Ankh-Morpork, a large explosion happened in the city of Pseudopolis that was put down to Hergenian freedom fighters making a gesture. Policing techniques being more robust in those days, with the Watch Commander under pressure to make an arrest, six people of the correct nationality who had all been within fifty miles of Pseudopolis on the night of the blast were rounded up, handed over to the care of the old-style Cable Street Particulars, and treated to the very best hospitality Cable Street could provide until they all cracked and confessed. Parallels the Birmingham Six on Roundworld, a group of people who were all
(i) Irish and
(ii) in Birmingham
on the night of an IRA bomb, and therefore, in the eyes of the West Midlands Police, guilty. Up to twenty-five years later, they were still in prison for crimes they did not commit.
(3) Irish Gaelic: Our Day Will Come! An IRA battle slogan.
(4) In seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, Irish mercenaries serving in other European armies for the sake of the craic and the possibility of taking a slap at the hated British styled themselves as the Wild Geese – having flown a long way from home, in some cases to South America, and living in exile from a country they could not return to. Given the meanings of the word "Geas" on the Discworld, this was irrresistable.