DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER: I own no one except Audax, whose name means "bold" in Latation. All canon characters and their related indicia belong to Terry Pratchett, and I'm not nicking them, nor am I picking up unconsidered trifles; I merely wish to borrow them for a little while.
This is gonna be long, I think. I'm writing it at work while trying to look busy. Those of you familiar with medical history will probably think the pump in Marrow Lane rings a bell.
The thing about Ankh-Morpork….the thing you have to remember…is that it's dirty. Big, and dirty. And while parts of it are generally being sterilized by way of accidental dragon-burnings and Alchemists' Guild explosions, it is almost exactly what one would wish for, if one wished for a giant vermin-ridden reservoir for opportunistic microbes. We're not even talking microbes that need a specific vector for transmission; no, these are the sort of microbes that muscle their way into unsuspecting victims and engage in gleeful wholesale destruction. The fact that this hasn't yet occurred to anyone in a position of power in the city is merely further proof that something nasty is going to happen, and when it does, it will be made nastier by the fact that no one will be prepared.
And with that gentle bit of foreshadowing, I invite the reader to follow into the streets of the Big Wahooni (taking good care not to step in anything that looks as if it can dissolve boot soles) and explore. Smell the warm hint of ancient sugar in Treacle Mine Road; walk briskly in the other direction from the Shades; lean negligently in a doorway as a cartload of peaches narrowly misses a cartload of beer barrels; try to avoid smelling the river; saunter down Cable Street, pausing to pick up a deep-fried rat with ketchup at Gimlet's deli; wonder at the things displayed in the Street of Cunning Artificers; dissuade Dibbler from selling you chemically reclaimed pig products inna bun; enjoy the amusing noises coming from behind the walls of Unseen University, and shake a fist at Scoone Avenue's wealthy elite, none of whom would give someone like you the time of day.
But who is this coming down Nob Hill with a brown iron helmet jammed on his head, tossing his truncheon gently in the air and catching it again, cigar drooping from the corner of his mouth? And why does he look as if there is something wound very, very tightly inside him, as if he is never very far away from snapping and using that truncheon to rearrange somebody's skull?
His Grace Commander Sir Samuel Vimes wasn't in a particularly bad mood, actually. No one was currently trying to kill him; nothing was currently trying to destroy, set fire to, maim or invade the city, or at least nobody had told him about it yet, so he didn't feel he had to do anything about it. He wished it was raining, though. That'd make things perfect.
He crossed into Pseudopolis Yard, tapping the truncheon absently against his leg, and nodded to some of the new recruits being led on patrol by Detritus. What had he done without Detritus, he wondered. Yelled a lot, perhaps.
Inside the Watch House, Nobby was taking down particulars from a young woman wearing battered chainmail and smoking a roll-up. Vimes raised an eyebrow, but merely sauntered past them and up the stairs to his office, where—of course—Carrot had neatly arranged his paperwork in little piles. He wished the man wouldn't do that, it destroyed his own organizational system. Which, admittedly, consisted of three or four heaps on and around the desk in constant rotation by urgency, but still, he knew where everything was. Carrot was so innocently keen that Vimes never found he had the heart to tell him not to do things like that, but it did get wearing after a while.
He riffled through the reports from the previous night. Six drunk-and-disorderly, one totally insane and making a disturbance in Sator Square outside the Palace—he rather thought he could smell Foul Ole Ron on that one—and a bizarre and incoherent plea from what Colon described as "A Student of Wizardry, viz. he had on a pointy hat but was not per, say of full Wizarding Size and Dignittie," demanding that they shut down the public pump in Marrow Lane before something horrible happened.
Vimes tossed the stack of reports aside. The pump in Marrow Lane supplied water (of sorts) to a whole neighborhood; there was no way he was going to close it off unless he had a damn good reason, and skinny magic students blithering about horrors weren't, in his opinion, damn good reasons. Colon had sent the Student of Wizardry on his way with a warning not to bother the Watch about nightmares, and maybe watch how many he had next time he was in the Bucket.
He lit another cigar, wondering when Nobby would come and see him about the girl in the chainmail downstairs. Perhaps the seamstresses were trying out a new look? The only women he'd seen in chainmail were the admittedly small number of Watchwomen in the city, and maybe one or two of the smarter kind of adventuresses who'd realized that bronze bikinis don't do much by way of stopping crossbow bolts. He gave a mental shrug and turned his attention to the new crop of angry letters about the ethnic makeup of the Watch, suppressing the thought of Cheery Littlebottom's abortive experiments with eyeliner.
"Er," said Nobby, trying to keep his eyes on the grubby bit of paper in front of him, rather than the new volunteer. "Right. Previous experience, medical officer in Genua Day Watch….Lord Mountballoy's Select Foot…?"
"Very small infantry regiment," said the young woman in the chainmail. "Famous for not taking part at all in any glorious battles, because we were generally sent on ahead to tire the enemy out a bit before the Selachiis or the Venturis brought their boys in." She gave him a rather snaggled grin. Nobby squinted at her teeth, then thought better of it. So what if she had teeth like Angua's?
She noticed him trying not to stare, and her grin widened. "I had them sharpened," she remarked.
"What for?" Nobby couldn't quite keep the fascinated dread out of his voice.
"It had a helpful effect on the sort of criminals we used to catch in Genua." She stared glumly at the end of her roll-up, which had gone out. "Say… were you ever in the military, Corporal Nobbs?"
"Er, yeah," he said. "Sev'ral militaries."
"Thought so." She folded her arms. "Can we get on?"
"Yeah. Yeah," he said, changing colours slightly as he tried not to look at her torso. "Right. Reason for leaving prior employment?"
"Genua was getting a little hot," said the new volunteer. "You know how it is."
"Ah," said Nobby, nodding. "Couple things too many went missing, people started asking questions they dint ought to?"
She suppressed a smile. "Sort of."
"Well, we can't be having with any of that sort of thing 'ere," said Nobby firmly, with the selfrighteousness of the true-blue hypocrite. "Old Vimes'd go spare if Watchmen was caught stealing."
"I can assure you, Corporal, that will not be a problem."
Nobby didn't realize until afterwards that this wasn't a very comforting answer at all. He forged ahead. "All right, the pay's fifteen dollars a month, armour an' training taken out of your first month's pay, 's a good life if you don't weaken, come with me and Commander Vimes'll see you."
The volunteer nodded and got up, producing a dog-end from behind her ear and lighting it with a strange little metal cylinder from her pocket. Nobby made a mental note to have a closer look at it at the earliest opportunity.
He knocked on Vimes's door. "Volunteer recruit to see you, sir."
Vimes, sounding incredulous through the door, called back "Tell him to come in."
Nobby gave the young woman an apologetic glance, and fled. She grinned another of those pointy grins at the door, and let herself in.
Vimes was sitting with his feet up on the desk and a cigar balanced carefully on his lower lip, reading the Times. He sat up as she came in and held out her paperwork for him to examine, and stared. She was one of the oddest-looking people he'd ever seen. Short and thin, with unremarkable pale hair and green eyes, a pointed, tired face that looked as if it had seen rather too much of the world for someone still the right side of thirty, and the chainmail hung on a figure that looked rather wirier than he'd expect. She came forward, still holding out the papers, and he shook himself and took them, gesturing for her to sit down.
"Audax, eh?" said Vimes.
"Blame my parents. They had classical educations and wanted a boy." She let smoke trickle from her nostrils, gently. Vimes squinted at her.
"No last name?"
"Nope." No explanations, either. He wasn't sure he liked that, but he was willing to wait for them.
"Well, Audax, you've got an….interesting resume," he continued. "Says here…Medical Officer in the Genua Watch? Where'd you take your medical degree?"
"Here and there," she said, and gave him a little smile, aware that he was getting fed up. "I never got the degree, actually. Sort of learned it on the fly."
He read further. "In the army?"
"Yes. It's surprising how quickly one learns anatomy when it's being opened all around you."
Vimes knew more than he wanted to about anatomy himself. "And bandaging, eh?"
"Tourniquets. And the use of moldy bread poultices to treat wound fever." She shrugged. "You pick it up here and there, like I said."
He frowned. Moldy bread…that reminded him of something Lawn had used. Oh well. "Can you handle a sword?"
"Not prettily," said Audax. "I can make it go where I want it to and I can stop other people from sticking their swords into me."
"None of this Marquis of Fantailler rubbish," Vimes said dryly. "Well, we're short a man since old "Fuggy" Carson quit last month. I'll start you as a lance-constable. We've already got a medical man in the Watch, so I'm not sure we'll need your expertise in that field…"
Audax gave him a weary grin. "I bet he's good," she said.
Vimes raised an eyebrow, filing away the shark's teeth for future reference. "Why do you say that?"
"The stitching. Only met one man who could sew a seam that fine and straight, and he was an…"
"Igor," finished Vimes, fingering the scar on his cheek. It hardly showed up at all now, except when he was really magnificently angry, when it stood out as a red line on a face gone dangerously pale. Normally nobody noticed it at all. "Yes. He's modern, though. Only lisps some of the time."
Audax blinked. "I like it here already," she said. "Sir."
Vimes tapped ash off his cigar. "Good. See how you feel in a week. Go on downstairs and get Nobby or Colon to swear you in and give you your armour. You'll, um, need to take the breastplate round to the armourer's and have it, um, adjusted. Corporal Angua knows a place that does it for cheap."
She got up, saluted crisply. "Yes, sir. Sir?"
"Yes, Lance-Constable Audax?"
"Just….it's nice to finally meet you. You're rather famous now."
"Oh, hell," said Vimes. "We're not going to do the hero-worship thing, are we?"
"No fear," Audax grinned. "You're a lot shorter than I thought. Sir." And she was gone, his office door closing slowly behind her.
Vimes leaned back in his chair and absently reached for the bottom drawer of his desk before realizing what he was doing. Maybe he should have asked if she was some weird new form of undead.
He had a nasty feeling that Lance-Constable Audax might be a lot more trouble than she was worth.
**
Lord Vetinari stared at the piece of paper on his gleaming desk as if this would make it go away. It remained stubbornly extant, the printed words staring back at him with blameless unconcern. He'd read it several times:
TO PATRICIAN OF ANKH-MORPORK STOP PLAGUE IS SPREADING AMONG PLAINS CITIES STOP FIVE THOUSAND DEAD SO FAR STOP CLOSE CITY STOP LET NO ONE ENTER STOP SIGNED QUEEN KELIREHENNA I
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Sto Lat was tiny compared to Ankh-Morpork, and if five thousand were already dead in the Sto Plains, it represented a sizeable portion of the population.
He really, really didn't need this.