Caught out by the sudden approach of footsteps, Sacharissa and Otto quickly looked around the Patrician's office, searching frantically for a place to hide. The curtains would do, she decided at the last minute. They made a last minute dive for cover.

The iconograph got tangled in the curtain and refused to hide properly. Otto made one last attempt to tug it to safety and that gave up. He just hoped whoever came through the passage failed to observe it.

He waited behind the curtain looking as stuffed as the Count in Sesame street.

So it was that Sacharissa and Otto were lurking in the shadows provided by the heavy velvet curtains that framed the windows of the Patricians office when Samantha Carter and Angua walked through the office on their way back to the Watchhouse.

"So that is normally a secret passage," Carter said, looking over her shoulder at the corridor of pain through which she had just delicately woven her path.

"Designed to keep either some one in or someone out," Angua commented. "I just wish I knew which of those it was."

Gaspode trotted along behind them.

Angua gave one sniff on the way past, as though she was searching for something illusive, a certain difficult-to-identify perfume, but the smell of Gaspode slinking along behind them overrode the smell of vampire and human and so Angua missed the lurking reporters.

Carter and Angua began chatting animatedly about the combined IQ of military or police males as they made their way out of the office and into the hallway. They quickly drew the conclusion that lower than average IQ combined with testosterone led to some interesting side-effects. Examples were quoted. They spent a few moments trying to top one another's anecdotes, each delivered with a sardonic air and a certain patient patronising affection, sort of like telling a story about how clever your pet dog sometimes manages to be. They were both still laughing when their voices faded into the background noise of down town Ankh Morpork..

"Secret passage," Sacharissa muttered while she tugged Otto from behind the curtains. "Come on," she said. "I think we'll be OK now."

"I am Coming," said Otto.

"Keep someone out? Keep someone in?" she wondered out loud.

And together they raced toward the entrance to the not-so-secret-any-more passageway. Otto seemed to have no problem keeping up with Sacharissa despite the bulky iconograph he carried over his shoulder.

Sacharissa stepped into the passageway.

"Oh," She said when she realised just what it was that all the sharp things dangling from the ceiling were intended to do to anyone that happened to be walking along the corridor. She skidded to an abrupt halt.

Her sudden halt caught Otto completely off guard. He had been watching behind him, trying to make sure that the palace staff didn't spot them sneaking into the passage. Since their surreptitious entrance through the servant's entrance, Otto and Sacharissa had already been through a couple of close shaves where guards had rounded bends almost in time to catch them in the act (thank goodness for the plethora of curtains and tapestries), and he was starting to get a trifle worried about the consequences if they were found. It was one thing to be a vampire and essentially a member of the un-dead (or 'differently corporeal' depending on the publisher of your politically correct dictionary) but it was quite another to be caught sneaking into the Patrician's palace.

Thus went his thinking and Otto was so caught up with the whole paranoia thing that he missed Sacharissa's sudden stop. That was all he missed. He managed to hit everything else.

Sacharissa was the first thing he failed to miss.

Sacharissa made one violent lurch and very nearly somersaulted into the zone of weapon's deployment.

Amid a frantic wind milling of arms and the expulsion of one huge breath she managed to right herself at the lip of the last cobblestone before the danger zone.

Otto wasn't so lucky.

He took one whirling fist beneath the jaw during Sacharissa's attempts to right her momentum, and then he stumbled. His feet tangled in the legs of the iconograph. He tripped. Sacharissa watched in dread when he went down. She was nothing like fast enough to prevent his fall. He landed on the up turned blade of a broad sword. It punctured his chest and poked through his vest like a metal version of the thing climbing out of the astronauts chest in Alien. Afterward, Otto sprawled on the floor, looking just like a bat that had been accidentally collected by a butterfly collector.

"Otto!" Sacharissa screamed.

"Oh," Otto said. He touched the tip of the sword with a tentative finger. "It's nothing. It's not even vood. Just help me to my feet and I'll be as good as new."

Sacharissa blinked a couple of times before she leapt to the vampire's aid. "You're sure you're OK?" she asked disbelievingly.

"Not even a flesh vound. They should be more careful leaving these things laying around. Somevun might get hurt."

Sacharissa took his outstretched hand and dragged the Vampire to his feet. She looked at the dry hole in his vest and then shook her head to clear it. "OK," was all she said.

Otto spent a moment to dust himself off before continuing. "Vot do ve do now?"

Sacharissa took a few moments to get her mind around the events of the last few minutes. "OK. OK," She took one large breath and slowed her heart as much as she could under the circumstances. "Get an iconograph of this hall," she hissed.

"I'll need ze flash," Otto said warily. "You vill spot for me if I should over do it?"

Sacharissa understood this one. She nodded. "Yes, but hurry."

Otto fussily arranged the iconograph on the tripod and held up the flash. It went zap and the room lit up more than it would have been if the roof was pulled off and it was exposed to daylight. The sound of furious brush strokes filled the iconograph.

"Oh, sh…." Said Otto and fluttered to the floor, reduced to a cloud of fine ash particles by the light.

The tiny glass vial that had, until quite recently, been dangling around his neck hit the floor with a muffled thud. It failed to break, thus not releasing the drop of blood that would have reconstituted the body of the vampire. They had tested this repeatedly, just in case the photographic Vampire had this kind of problem while in the field, and it had worked every time in testing.

The vial rolled across the floor heading directly for one of the openings in the wall through which one of the weapons had had been hiding.

"Oh –ing hell," Sacharissa said with considerable feeling. She dived onto the floor and scrambled frantically after the vial.

Like all good narrative devices, this is an opportunity that we cannot ignore. Despite her best efforts, Sacharissa only managed to tap the vial with the tips of her fingers, so that instead of stopping just on the threshold of the hole like it would have done if she had just waited for it to come to a halt naturally, the blood filled vial accelerated further into the hole and disappeared from sight.

Sacharissa climbed to her feet and cursed. She looked down at herself and realised that she was covered in a layer of fine powder. She dusted at it absently while she stared at the hole in the wall, scheming ways to get her hands on the little glass vial.

Something about what she was doing didn't seem right and she looked slowly down at herself disbelievingly. Slowly she realised what she was doing.

"Arghhhh," she said and held her hands as far from herself as possible. "Otto…" she said weakly and looked at her left hand. The dust that was caked there represented his left leg.

*

"So you're the one they call Daniel Jackson," Vimes said. He drew a huge draft through his cigar. He pulled the thing from his mouth and hissed the smoke through his teeth.

"What, oh yes," Jackson looked up from his inspection of one of Leonard De Quirm's papers. It was a struggle but he found he was able to read it with a bit of effort, provided he frowned in just the right way and bit his tongue. He stood up hurriedly and offered his hand to Sam Vimes.

Vimes placed his cigar back in his mouth and shook the proffered hand. "Is your commander always that trigger happy?"

"No not usually," Jackson answered carefully. He had the idea this discussion was going to prove very important to their long term prospects of getting through this mission in one piece (well four pieces really). "He's been under a lot of stress lately and…"

Vimes wasn't really interested in the explanation. He decided to let Jackson have a few more minutes to begin making up a better one. "Mr Sibbons isn't it?" Vimes asked the still slightly befuddled wizard. He was sitting on the floor nursing his sore head.

Ponder climbed laboriously to his feet. "Yes it is," he answered and stepped away from his nemesis.

Teal'c sat in the cup of Detritus' hand and watched the wizards movements with the sort of superior air that only a large green bullfrog can conjure up.

"Would you please go fetch Mr Ridcully from the University?" Vimes suggested. "I can't see our gunman catching up with him, not in this town."

Ponder nodded agreeably and then stepped from the room, visibly relieved to be free of the influence of that malevolent frog.

"Daniel Jackson," Vimes said with exaggerated significance. "This is your chance to get your thoughts in order and then… How about you explain to me what this is all about? Especially this last bit." He waved his hand at the open window, thus taking in the whole Ridcully and O'Neill thing. "I don't want the same vague story that your commander fed me. I think I might need a lot more detail than that. I want to know why your commanding officer thought it a good idea to shoot that gonne of his at one of our leading citizens, and why this man," he pointed at the frog, "has a snake in his stomach. And I want to know what it is that we might have to do to protect this town from whatever it is that you people are so paranoid about. Take your time. I have the distinct impression that you're going to need it."

"Well," said Daniel. He was thinking frantically. How was he supposed to put all that into a short oral presentation?

*

On their way to the Watch-house - Pseudopolis Yard - Samantha Carter had her first chance to take a good look around the streets of Ankh Morpork. It was also her first chance to marvel at the haphazard nature of the local architecture. The buildings appeared to be built on top of other buildings (which in fact was true. When the city caught fire, they close the gates on the River Ankh and let it back up and flood the city. Given that there are lava tracts in Hawaii with lower density than the River Ankh, the street level has a habit of rising every time they do it.)

Angua let Carter have her moment of dumbfounded wonder. Angua had gotten over her own fascination with the variety offered by the town a long time ago. Spend a few moments running from whatever it was the city had to offer (or offered to hide) and the new visitor developed a healthy antipathy toward the town. On top of that Angua had once been escorted through the wonders and marvels of Ankh Morpork by its one-man tourism-advertising department - Carrot Ironfounderson - and as a result she was quite immune to urban wonder.

"I don't want to seem rude," Samantha began and then interrupted herself to stare at something across the road. Angua followed her sight line and wondered what it was that so attracted Carter's attention. Her eyes appeared to be tracking a pack of dwarfs. There was seven of them and they were heading into a bar. Nothing unusual in that. Over each shoulder each dwarf carried a giant battle-axe. They were all dressed in chain mail, armour and leather. Again there was nothing unusual in that. They were singing a song about gold. The words were simple. It went; "Gold, gold, gold, gold…" And that was so typical, no one even noticed.

Perhaps it was the dark haired young girl dressed in blue who was following along behind them…

Angua shrugged. Not for her to know, obviously.

Carter appeared to be choking.

"Yes," said Angua, carefully not aiding Samantha in her attempt to say whatever it was she intended to say. She could get past this one on her own.

"OK," said Carter finally.

"You were going to say something…"

"Oh, yeah," Carter began. "How does a human and…a…" How did she put this delicately? Morphologically challenged? Hirsute-ly augmented? What was the politically correct term?

"A werewolf," Angua supplied.

Ah, that was how, Samantha realised. "Yes!"

They stepped around Arnold Sideways. Carter looked at his cart closely, noting the absence of legs with absent disregard, noting the proffered cup in his right hand even more absently, but paying her full attention to the smell. Her nose wrinkled so much she was going to need ironing.

In his other hand Arnold was proffering a newspaper. Angua stopped and bought one from him. The copper coin she tossed his way clattered in the bottom of the cup.

"On the full moon," Angua told Carter absently while she thumbed through the paper, "there's the dog basket and the doggy flap in the door and the rest of the time…Oh damn."

Angua flipped through the paper from the back to the front. It was the front-page news that caught her eye. De Worde had figured out the reference to the gonne and had even found the references to the previous use of the thing in Ankh Morpork. Damn but the man was good.

"The excrement is really going to fly into the ventilator's impellor now," Angua muttered.

"What is it?" Carter asked. Angua handed her the newspaper with the air of a woman deep in thought. Carter read the front-page article, but was really none the wiser. She finished reading and waited for an explanation.

Angua crouched before the tiny ball of fur and ticks that had been following them. "Gaspode," she said, "I need you to go find Carrot and tell him what happened." She went nto a long explanation of what she needed Gaspode to tell Carrot.

"How's he going to do that?" Carter asked bewildered. Carter had come to the tentative conclusion that the werewolf in the Angua/Carrot home might actually be Angua, not Carrot (she was trying to imagine a red dog and couldn't manage to see the giant Carrot as a Red Setter). If she was going to try speaking to a dog, Carter actually expected Angua to bark at it in it's own language, not treat it like Lassie.

"Yeah, no problem babe," Gaspode answered. "Wonder dog to the rescue again," he muttered as he trotted away. "Just once I'd like a bit of credit for what I do. Maybe I should talk to William De Worde." There was a pause while Gaspode thought that through. "On second thought…" The rest was lost because he was around the corner.

Carter stared after the departing dog with an expression on her face that did not do justice to any assessment of her intelligence.

Angua reached up and shut Carter's mouth with a gentle push of her fingers beneath Carter's chin.

Now, she had things that she had to do.

*

O'Neill accompanied Carrot while he walked along the street of cunning artificers. They were approaching the Hippopotamus Bridge on their way to Pseudopolis Yard. They were both silent for their own reasons while they stepped onto the bridge. Carrot was unusually quiet considering he had a captive audience and a walk through the streets of Ankh Morpork where he might spent the moment selling his town. Instead he was digesting the implications of what O'Neill had to say. It was quite a mouthful, and an idea that needed to be chewed thoroughly before swallowing. He thoroughly understood Commander Vimes' new concept of ideas taster right at that moment. This was a bit more than a taste though.

O'Neill looked over the railing and down at the river Ankh. A flock of ducks were walking along the surface, seeking a clean bit of river so they could get their feet wet. They were wasting their time. The Ankh was probably the only river in the universe where the site of a drowning could carry a chalk outline.

"So you people troop all over the galaxy interfering in other people's live and cultures," Carrot said, almost with the air of someone thinking out loud.

"Well, that's not exactly how it is?" O'Neill said defensively. Carrot had a way of looking at things that seemed totally at cross-purposes to the way O'Neill looked at the world around him. It meant he had to be very, very careful in his selection of words. The guy was so literal.

The sight of the river had been enlightening. He thought he had seen rivers of dirt in the outback of Australia, but it was not quite the same thing as what went under this bridge. It was bit like one of those South American landslides where he had been sent to provide humanitarian support as part of a USA aid package.

"And how is it then?" Carrot asked. Carrot leant against the railing beside O'Neill. He looked down into the river with a different kind of eye to the one that O'Neill used. It wasn't just the way they thought about things that was different, it was also the way they looked at things and what they took away from what they saw.

Carrot had fished the occasional body from off the river Ankh and was always aware that anyone who was thrown into the Ankh would probably bounce and then later the Watch would find them. Throwing yourself into the Ankh was jumping out of a building. Somewhat unforgiving.

"We trade information and ideas on how to go about defeating the Goa'uld," O'Neill explained. "We also exchange cultural ideas and artefacts, that sort of thing."

Carrot pointed at the full holster on O'Neill's hip. "By carrying gonnes?"

"Yeah. Well."

"Lots of gonnes. More than one each in fact."

"Yeah, well you never know when you might run into a Goa'uld."

Carrot came across as simple, but that is not the same as unintelligent. "Like Mr Ridcully," Carrot suggested. Carrot was mastering the art of sarcasm. It was Angua's current hobby/project teaching him the nuances, "who's only a wizard, not some evil alien creature that goes around enslaving people. Well, not since they got rid of that sorcerer who was in charge there for a while, anyway."

O'Neill nodded slowly. "OK, so I might not have got that bit right. Perhaps I was a little hasty, but there's still what he did to Teal'c."

"He's only spending a few hours as a frog. It'll enhance his understanding of other's I'm sure," Carrot said charitably.

"Yeah right," O'Neill said.

Gaspode galloped along the road behind them, wheezing and panting like an out of steam engine, while reduced to moving at a clip barely above walking pace. He wobbled to a halt and tottered a few times before Carrot crouched down reached out a gentle hand to steady him lest he fell over.

"What is it?" Carrot asked Gaspode.

"Huh, huh, huh," said Gaspode. Saliva dripped off his tongue in great dollops that landed on the pavement in virtually a continuous stream.

"Take your time," Carrot admonished.

O'Neill turned way in disgust. "Haven't we got to be somewhere?" he asked tetchily. Playing straight man to a Rastafarian version of Lassie wasn't high on his list of things to do before he died.

"Huh, huh, huh," said Gaspode some more.

"If Gaspode runs it has to be something important," Carrot explained.

O'Neill rolled his eyes, but he said nothing.

"Angua sent me, huh, huh," Gaspode finally managed. "The paper, huh, huh, huh, is full, huh, huh, of the, huh, huh, gonne, huh, huh, incident."

O'Neill stared opened mouthed at the dog when it answered Carrot

"From the Drum?" Carrot asked carefully. "Is it a report of what happened this morning?"

"No, huh, huh, the last time, huh, huh, when the Assassins, huh, huh, had the thing and Edward, huh, huh, D'eth found it," Gaspode managed between gasps. He gave a hacking cough and that seemed to clear his throat. "De Worde has worked it all out, huh, huh, D'eth, Beano the clown and the way Dr Cruces used the gonne to try to assassinate the Patrician and… Why is that man staring at me? Huh, huh. Hasn't he ever seen, huh, huh, a talking dog for god's sake?"

"Gaspode…" Carrot reminded him to stay of task.

Gaspode was breathing a bit easier now. "Yeah OK. Anyway, she sent me to tell you that it's all over town now. Everybody knows."

"Everybody knows what?" asked Carrot dangerously.

Gaspode's cocked his head to one side. God, how did they get to the top of the food chain? He wondered. "That the assassins have a weapon that can kill from a great distance, that is much more powerful than a cross bow and quicker to load than a regular bow, and can be used by anybody. And that a bunch of them are on the street and they were used at the Drum last night by a bunch of guys wearing clothes just like that guy over there is…Oh damn."

Gaspode cowered behind Carrot's leg. He had just put two and two together and come up with a nasty surprise.

"Yes," Carrot said with a touch as exasperation. "Gaspode, we know."

O'Neill looked from Carrot to Gaspode and back again.

"And…?" O'Neill asked. He was getting impatient.

"You keep away from me," Gaspode ordered with false bravado.

"Did you get all that from the paper?" Carrot asked.

Gaspode eyed O'Neill uneasily but he figured he would be dead already if this one really meant him any harm. "Nah, it's all over the street now," he said. "I got most of that from listening to the mob that's hanging around outside the Assassin's guild building."

"Oh," said Carrot.

"Mob?" said O'Neill.

"Damn," said Carrot.

"People," muttered Gaspode in the tone of voice that questioned their right to be at the top of the food chain, and then he began chewing on a part of his anatomy in way that very few human could physically manage, except in the occasional performance by Circe De Solei.

"That sounds bad," O'Neill supplied.

Carrot took the conversational starter. "Oh yes," said Carrot. He sounded disappointed to O'Neill's ear. "That's just what I would have expected the people of this town to do."

"If it gets much worse down there," Gaspode agreed, "then I won't be able to sneak in there for dinner tonight. The place will be locked up tighter than a fishes a… mumble mumble." Gaspode was having trouble talking through the hand that clamped his muzzle shut.

"This sounds like serious trouble," Carrot muttered.

"Is it going to be a riot?" O'Neill asked. He had picked up that much from the tone of Carrot's distracted monologue.

"Eventually," Carrot agreed. "But first it's just street theatre. They've all turned out to see what happens next. It'll only be after Lord Downey gets upset with their disturbing the neighbourhood and then tries to do something about it that it will become a riot. Come on we have to put as stop to this before it gets out of control."

"And just how do we do that?" O'Neill asked. He was wasting his breath. Carrot was already on his way.

"I had a bad feeling he was going to do something like that," Gaspode muttered.

O'Neill looked down at the dog and then marched after Carrot.

Gaspode trotted reluctantly along behind.