Jingo

“Thank you,” she said, wrapping it around her. “And before anyone says anything, I just bit him on the bum. Hard. And that was not the soft option, let me tell you.”

Jabbar looked back into the desert, and then down at the sand, and then at Angua. Vimes could see him thinking, and put a fraternal arm around his shoulders.

“I'd better explain—” he began.

“There's a couple of hundred soldiers out there!” Angua snapped.

“—later.”

“They're taking up positions all round you! And they don't look nice! Has anyone got any clothes that might fit? And some decent food? And a drink! There's no water in this place!”

“They will not dare attack before dawn,” said Jabbar.

“And what will you do, sir?” said Carrot.

“At dawn we will charge!”

“Ah. Uh. I wonder if I could suggest an alternative approach?”

“Alternative? It is right to charge! Charging is what dawn is for.”

Carrot saluted Vimes. “I've been reading your book, sir. While you were… asleep. Tacticus's got quite a lot to say about how to deal with overwhelming odds, sir.”

“Yes?”

“He says take every opportunity to turn them into underwhelming odds, sir. We could attack now.”

“But it's dark, man!”

“It's just as dark for the enemy, sir.”

“I mean it's pitch black! You wouldn't know who the hell you were fighting! Half the time you'd be shooting your own side!”

“We wouldn't, sir, because there'd only be a few of us. Sir? All we need to do is crawl out there, make a bit of noise, and then let them get on with it. Tacticus says all armies are the same size in the night, sir.”

“There might be something in that,” said Angua. “They're crawling around in ones and twos, and they're dressed pretty much like—” She waved a hand at Jabbar.

“This is Jabbar,” said Carrot. “He's sort of not the leader.”

Jabbar grinned nervously. “It happens often in your country, where dogs turn into naked women?”

“Sometimes days can go past and it doesn't happen at all,” Angua snapped. “I'd like some clothes, please. And a sword, if there's going to be fighting.”

“Um, I think Klatchians have a very particular view about women fighting—” Carrot began.

“Yes!” said Jabbar. “We expect them to be good at it, Blue Eyes. We are D'regs!”

The Boat surfaced in the scummy dead water under a jetty. The lid opened slowly.

“Smells like home,” said Nobby.

“You can't trust the water,” said Sergeant Colon.

“But I don't trust the water at home, sarge.”

Fred Colon managed to get a foothold on the greasy wood. It was, in theory, quite a heroic enterprise. He and Nobby Nobbs, the bold warriors, were venturing forth in hostile territory. Unfortunately, he knew they were doing it because Lord Vetinari was sitting in the Boat and would raise his eyebrows in no uncertain manner if they refused.

Colon had always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they'd get yelled at if they didn't.

He reached down.

“Come on up, Nobby,” he said. “And remember we're doing this for the gods, Ankh-Morpork and—” It seemed to Colon that a foodstuff would indeed be somehow appropriate. “And my mum's famous knuckle sandwich!”

“Our mum never made us knuckle sandwiches,” said Nobby, as he hauled himself on to the planks. “But you'd be amazed at what she could do with a bit of cheese…”

“Yeah, all right, but that aint much of a battle cry, is it? ‘For the gods, Ankh-Morpork and amazing things Nobby's mum can do with cheese’? That'll strike fear in the hearts of the enemy!” said Sergeant Colon, as they crept forward.

“Oh, well, if that's what you're after, you want my mum's Distressed Pudding and custard,” said Nobby.

“Frightening, is it?”

“They wouldn't want to know about it, sarge.”

The docks of Al-Khali were like docks everywhere, because all docks everywhere are connected. Men have to put things on and off boats. There are only a limited number of ways to do this. So all docks look the same. Some are hotter, some are damper, there are always piles of vaguely forgotten-looking things.

In the distance there was the glow of the city, which seemed quite unaware of the enemy incursion.

“‘Get us some clothes so that we'll blend in,’” muttered Colon. “That's all very well to say.”

“Nah, nah, that's easy,” said Nobby. “Everyone knows how to do that one. You lurk in an alley somewhere, right, and you wait until a couple of blokes come by and you lure them into the alley, see, and there's a couple of thumps, and then you come out wearing their clothes.”

“That works, does it?”

“Never fails, sarge,” said Nobby confidently.

The desert looked like snow in the moonlight.