I've just been reading "Wee Free Men", and this thing just popped up when I sat down in front of the computer. It's a story about Buggy Swires, who is obviously closely related to the pictsies, but who, for the time being is alone in the big city. The story tells of how he came to be a member of Ankh-Morpork's illustrious Watch, and what happened then… Read on:

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Sergeant Colon was sweating profusely. It had been an unusually warm spring, but that was not the reason. He stood in front of the door to the Yard's larder and hesitated. That was a rare sight, but he had good reasons for doing so. Commander Vimes had sent him there, and not doing what Mister Vimes told him to do was unheard of in Sergeant Colon's world. And yet he hesitated.

There were no people around, but an observer would have seen Sergeant Colon stand there for quite some time, grumbling and muttering to himself. Finally, in spite of his obvious trepidation, he opened the door as quietly as possible, and looked at the contents of the larder with a mixture of longing and fear.

There wasn't much in here, apart from the traditional browning salad and suspicious jar of old mayonnaise that are always found in larders everywhere. Even though it certainly wouldn't have been a good idea for anyone to eat it, the contents of the larder wouldn't have struck the invisible observer as all that awe-inspiring. They were certainly not grounds enough for a food-loving man such as the Sergeant to hesitate for as long as he did. Colon's knees were shaking visibly, making his jowls shudder slightly in counterpoint.

Finally, he reached in for a large loaf of bread that was placed on a plate in the top right-hand corner of the larder, half-hidden behind the mayo jar. Then he apparently changed his mind again.

Colon knew better than to touch the loaf. A green recruit had done so once, when Corporal Nobby Nobbs had sent him there on a fool's errand, and the poor Lance-constable had had three bones broken in his hand before he even knew what had hit him.

It was lucky that they had Constable Igor, Colon thought, or the lad might've lost the use of his hand altogether. As it was, the boy had been back on the beat within little under a month, and Mister Vimes had put Nobby on PPC detail1 for the duration of the lad's recovery, lest he forget to tell any other newcomers about the special procedure used when going to the larder.

But even though Colon knew full well what was required, he still felt a lump of fear in his throat as he leaned forward towards the loaf and whispered something, too quietly for the non-existing observer to hear. As soon as he had done so, he quickly withdrew his harvest moon head, but he wasn't fast enough. Not quite. A muffled cry emanated from the loaf together with a rusty five inch nail that was thrust towards Colon's nose from the inside of the loaf. It would have pierced Colon's nose if he had been leaning just a little bit further into the larder. Colon stood back as far as he could and waited for the unavoidable.

The nail withdrew back inside the bread and then the end of the loaf fell off. A minute head with wild, red hair poked out through the hidden opening.

"Ach, crivens, bigjob!" it said. "Yer ken tha' yer cannae come pokin' yer heid in just like tha'!"

Colon breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed as if the danger had passed for the time being.

"Corporal Swires," he said, "you're needed for a special job."

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Corporal Buggy Swires was attached to the very select part of the Watch that was known as the WAF, or Watch Airborne Force, where he worked as a reconnoitring pilot in the traffic division together with Colon and Nobby. Before Swires had joined the Watch there had been no WAF apart from the homing pigeons, and even though Nobby swore that they were high precision sharpshooters2, they had played only a very limited role in the Watch's law enforcement work.

Not so Swires. Even though he had a background as a rat catcher, and that typically meant crawling through long-forgotten sewers he had taken to his new job like a wizard to breakfast. He claimed that the principle was still the same, and had set about catching traffic offenders with a speed that came as a shock to both his colleagues and to the offenders themselves.

When Swires had suggested this function for himself after Carrot had recruited him, they had a good laugh about the notion. Or rather, they would have, if they hadn't seen what had happened to Constable Stronginthearm. Stronginthearm had made a point of pointing out to Swires on his first day that no job was too small for the Watch, and had ended up with both arms in a sling and a nose like a splatters'. Swires didn't appreciate sizeist remarks, and made sure that people got that into their heads quickly3.

So they hadn't laughed. Instead, Mister Vimes had taken Swires into his office and listened to what he had to say. The next day Swires and Carrot had paid a visit to the best falconer in all of Ankh, and had come back from it with a beautiful bird of prey that they installed on the roof of the Yard, much to the chagrin of the pigeons.4

The bird was a Ramtop redhawk, a fierce breed of bird that was all talons and razor-sharp beak. No one wanted to go anywhere near its cage, but Buggy had gone down to Igor and asked for some rather strange ingredients that he then proceeded to mix into a foul-smelling powder that he brought back up on the roof.

Constable Visit, who was a devout Omnian and who had been preaching to the doves in their cots at the time5, claimed that the gnome had climbed up to the bottom of the cage and had got in through the mesh to the carnivorous bird.

But instead of being torn to shreds, which was to be expected, the latest addition to the Force had knocked the bird out cold by head-butting it and had then blown the aforementioned foul powder up its beak. When the hawk came to a couple of minutes later it took one look at the minute person in front of it, and decided that it was mummy.

Buggy's training of the hawk had gone quickly after that, and now the fearsome bird swooped and dove at the gnome's command. He had even had a harness made for the bird in the Street of Cunning Artificers, which meant that within a couple of weeks of his joining the Watch, Buggy Swires had become an invaluable help to Vimes and his – for want of a better word – men. The sight of the hawk circling in the skies over a crowded street soon ensured that traffic progressed in an almost orderly fashion, for no one wanted to suddenly see the bird retract its wings and begin a dramatic dive towards the ground.

When that happened, the offending cart driver or rider would be sure to find himself on the receiving end of Buggy Swire, as he threw himself at them from the bird. The hard-headed gnome himself was enough to knock some offenders over, and if that didn't do it, the nail would. Buggy's home-made sword was made all the more fearsome by the fact that it was rusty and grubby and that it's owner could get inside the victim's clothes before deciding if and where to use it.

Traffic control in Ankh-Morpork was rapidly becoming very effective, and the offenders were only too happy to pay the fines that Colon and Nobby imposed on them, if only it meant that the gnome would get out of their trousers. Colon had even suggested introducing UGHs6 that would be allowed to roam freely over the city, thus ensuring even orderlier traffic, but this had been postponed indefinitely when Nobby realised that such a measure would effectively put an end to their lucrative business.

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"Ach, croon me boon," yawned the little corporal, "ye ken well tha' I ain' on duty today, Sarge."

That was true, Colon knew. That was partly the reason why he had been so afr— careful when waking the corporal. Swires was bad-tempered all the time, but never more so than when he was roused from his bread. He was unusually well disposed today, so Colon hurried up and passed the bucket before the fire had a chance to break out.

"Look, Mister Vimes wants to see you in his office in ten minutes, Corporal," he said. "Best not be late, eh?"

"Yer right, I reckon," Swires grimaced, and sheathed his nail in the sling he had slung over his back for that very purpose.

No one had ever seen Swires without his "sword", which was almost as long as he was, but even though he carried it with him at all times, it was his other special weapon that was known and feared in most taverns around the city. The Buggy head-butt was capable of downing the biggest of brawlers and even trolls had come to respect the gnome's precision strikes, which would have a full-grown troll double over if the minute corporal could get in a good hit "onna rocks".

Colon backed off further still to let Swires jump out of the larder, and followed his colleague meekly down the corridor to the staircase that lead up to the Commander's office.

The door was open when they got there. Swires was incredibly strong and agile for his size, and had less difficulty traversing the stairs than his superior officer did, who came up wheezing slightly in his attempts to keep up.

Inside the Commander's cluttered office where two people. One of them was Mister Vimes, but the other person was a bit of a surprise to both Colon and Swires. It was a woman. That was rare in itself. With the exception for Sergeant Angua and occasional visits by Mrs. Vimes, neither of them could recall ever having seen a human woman enter the Commander's room. What was rarer still was that she seemed to have Mister Vimes quite flustered, which was unheard of.

Old "Stoneface" Vimes wasn't known to his men to be easily swayed by anything, and certainly not by something as fleeting as the affections of a woman. A woman whose affection was very likely negotiable, too, Colon noted. They stopped in the doorway, where Mister Vimes could see them but the woman could not.

". . . and don't think you can wriggle out of this one, Commander," the woman was saying. "I kept you out of trouble with the Patrician when you and your "men" interfered with our work over that madman, and now I'm asking a small favour in return."

Vimes seemed clearly uncomfortable with the way the discussion was going, but didn't offer a reply.

"A tit for a tat, Commander, and I'm expecting a lot of tat from you, considering what I've got to give."

Colon and Swires looked at the massive chest of the woman in front of their Commander and then at each other. Then they nodded. Vimes was blushing furiously.

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1 Pigeon Poo Cleaning.

2 Or, to be more precise, swore over the same fact.

3 Often using his own head to drive home the point.

4 You might say that it was a bit of a coo…

5 In part because it was a long-standing tradition within the Church of Om, where prophets had been known to preach to the ocean and the sky (and thereby sticking to the adage that says that there is no tradition silly enough not to be upheld and indeed revered within a rigid social structure), but mainly because no one else would listen to his sermons for very long.

6 Un-Gnomed Hawks.