Jingo

At around three in the morning Sam Vimes walked out of the tent for a smoke. The cold air hit him like a door. It was freezing. That wasn't what was supposed to happen in deserts, was it? Deserts were all hot sand and camels and… and… he struggled for a while, as a man whose geographical knowledge got severely cramped once you got off paved road… camels, yes, and dates. And possibly bananas and coconuts. But the temperature here made your breath tinkle in the air.

He waved his cigar packet theatrically at a D'reg who was lounging near the tent. The man shrugged.

The fire was just a heap of grey, but Vimes poked around in the vain hope of finding a glowing ember.

He was amazed at how angry he was. Ahmed was the key, he knew it. And now they were stuck out here in the desert, the man had gone, and they were in the hands of… quiet, likeable people, fair enough. Brigands, maybe, the dry land equivalent of pirates, but Carrot would have said they were jolly good chaps for all that. If you were content to be their guest then they were as nice as pie, or sheep's eyeball and treacle or whatever you got out here—

Something moved in the moonlight. A shadow slipped down the side of a dune.

Something howled, out in the desert night.

Tiny hairs rose, all down Vimes's back, just like they had for his distant ancestors.

The night is always old. He'd walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and go, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep. Terrors unfolded in the velvet shadows and while the nature of the talons may change, the nature of the beast does not.

He stood up quietly, and reached for his sword.

It wasn't there.

They'd taken it away. They'd not even—

“A fine night,” said a voice beside him.

Jabbar was standing by his shoulder.

“Who is out there?” Vimes hissed.

“An enemy.”

“Which one?”

Teeth gleamed in the shadows.

“We will find out, offendi.”

“Why would they attack you now?”

“Maybe they think we have something they want, offendi.”

More shadows slid across the desert.

And one rose up right behind Jabbar, reached down and picked him up. A huge grey hand dragged his sword out of his belt.

“What do you want me to do with him, Mr Vimes?”

“Detritus?”

The troll saluted with the hand that still held the D'reg.

“All present and correct, sir!”

“But—” And then Vimes realized. “It's freezing cold! Your brain's working again?”

“With rather more efficiency, sir.”

“Is this a djinn?” said Jabbar.

“I don't know, but I could certainly do with one,” said Vimes. He finally managed to locate some matches in his pocket, and lit one. “Put him down, sergeant,” he said, puffing his cigar into life. “Jabbar, this is Sergeant Detritus. He could break every bone in your body, including some of the small ones in the fingers which are quite hard to do—”

The darkness went shwup and something whispered past the back of his neck, just a slice of a second before Jabbar cannoned into him and bore him to the ground.

“They shoot at the light!”

“Mwwf?”

Vimes raised his head cautiously and spat out sand and fragments of tobacco.

“Mr Vimes?”

Only Carrot could whisper like that. He associated whispering with concealment and untruth and compromised by whispering very loudly. To Vimes's horror the man came round the edge of a tent holding a tiny lamp.

“Put that damn—”

But he didn't have time to finish the sentence because, somewhere out in the night, a man screamed. It was a high-pitched scream and was suddenly cut off.

“Ah,” said Carrot, crouching down by Vimes and blowing out the lamp. “That was Angua.”

“That was nothing like– oh. Yeah, I think I see what you mean,” Vimes said, uneasily. “She's out there, is she?”

“I heard her earlier. She's probably enjoying herself. She doesn't really get much of a chance to let herself go in Ankh-Morpork.”

“Er… no…” Vimes had a mental picture of a werewolf letting go. But surely, Angua wouldn't—

“You two, uh… you're getting along OK, are you?” he said, trying to make out shapes in the darkness.

“Oh, fine, sir. Fine.”

So her turning into a wolf occasionally doesn't worry you? Vimes couldn't bring himself to say it.

“No… problems, then?”

“Oh, not really, sir. She buys her own dog biscuits and she's got her own flap in the door. When it's full moon I don't really get involved.”

There were shouts in the night and then a shape erupted from the darkness, streaked past Vimes, and disappeared into a tent. It didn't wait for a door. It simply hit the cloth at full speed and continued until the tent collapsed around it.

“And what is that?” said Jabbar.

“This may take some explaining,” said Vimes, picking himself up.

Carrot and Detritus were already hauling at the collapsed tent.

“We are D'regs,” said Jabbar reproachfully. “We are supposed to fold tents silently in the night, not—”

There was enough moonlight. Angua sat up and snatched a piece of tent out of Carrot's hands.