Jingo

Vimes found himself quite at ease with the Tacticus method of fighting. It was how coppers had always fought. A proper copper didn't line up with a lot of other coppers and rush at people. A copper lurked in the shadows, walked quietly and bided his time. In all honesty, of course, the time he bided until was the point when the criminal had already committed the crime and was carrying the loot. Otherwise, what was the point? You had to be realistic. “We got the man what done it” carries a lot more gravitas than “We got the man what looked as if he was going to do it,” especially when people say, “Prove it.”

Somewhere off to the left, in the distance, someone screamed.

Vimes was a bit uneasy in this robe, though. It was like going into battle in a nightshirt.

Because he wasn't at all certain he could kill a man who wasn't actively trying to kill him. Of course, technically any armed Klatchian these days was actively trying to kill him. That was what war was about. But—

He raised his head over the top of the dune. A Klatchian warrior was looking the other way. Vimes crept—

“Bingeley-bingeley beep! This is your seven eh em alarm call, Insert Name Here! At least I hope—”

“Huh?”

“Damn!”

Vimes reacted first and punched the man on the nose. Since there was no point in waiting to see what effect this would have, he threw himself forward and the two of them rolled down the other side of the freezing dune, struggling and punching.

“—but my real-time function seems erratic at the moment—”

The Klatchian was smaller than Vimes. He was younger, too. But it was unfortunate for him that he appeared to be too young to have learned the repertoire of dirty fighting that spelled survival in Ankh-Morpork's back streets. Vimes, on the other hand, was prepared to hit anything with anything. The point was that the opponent shouldn't get up again. Everything else was decoration.

They slid to a halt at the bottom of the dune, with Vimes on top and the Klatchian groaning.

“Things To Do,” the Dis-organizer shrilled: “Ache.”

And then… It was probably throat cutting time. Back home Vimes could have dragged him off to the cells, in the knowledge that everything would look better in the morning, but the desert had no such options.

No, he couldn't do that. Thump the bloke senseless. That was the merciful way.

“Vindaloo! Vindaloo!”

Vimes's fist stayed raised.

“What?”

“That's you, isn't it? Mr Vimes? Vindaloo!”

Vimes pulled a fold of cloth away from the figure's face.

“Are you Goriff's boy?”

“I didn't want to be here, Mr Vimes!” The words came fast, desperate.

“All right, all right, I'm not going to hurt you…”

Vimes lowered his fist and stood up, pulling the boy up after him.

“Talk later,” he muttered. “Come on!”

“No! Everyone knows what the D'regs do to their captives!”

“Well I'm their captive and they'll have to do it to both of us, OK? Keep away from the more amusing food and you'll probably be OK.”

Someone whistled in the darkness.

“Come on, lad!” hissed Vimes. “No harm's going to come to you! Well… less than'd come if you stayed here. All right?”

This time he didn't give the boy time to argue, but dragged him along. As he headed towards the D'regs' camp, other figures slid down the dunes.

One of them had an arm missing and had a sword sticking in him.

“How did you get on, Reg?” said Vimes.

“A bit odd, sir. After the first one chopped my arm off and stabbed me, the rest of them seemed to keep out of my way. Honestly, you'd think they'd never seen a man stabbed before.”

“Did you find your arm?”

Reg waved something in the air.

“That's another thing,” he said. “I hit a few of them with it and they ran off screaming.”

“It's your type of unarmed combat,” said Vimes. “It probably takes some getting used to.”

“Is that a prisoner you've got there?”

“In a way.” Vimes glanced around. “He seems to have fainted. I can't think why.”

Reg leaned closer. “These foreigners are a bit weird,” he said.

“Reg?”

“Yes?”

“Your ear's hanging off.”

“Is it? Wretched thing. You'd think a nail would work, wouldn't you?”

Sergeant Colon looked up at the stars. They looked down at him. At least Fred Colon had a choice.

Beside him, Corporal Nobbs gave a groan. But the attackers had left him his pants. There are some places where the boldest dare not go, and those areas of Nobby upwards of the knees and downwards of the stomach were among them.

Well, Colon thought of them as attackers. Technically, he supposed they were defenders. Aggressive defenders.

“Just run all that past me again, will you?” he said.

“We find a couple of blokes about our height and weight—”

“We did that.”

“We lure them into this alley—”

“We did that.”

“I take a swing at them with a length of wood and hit you by accident in the dark and they get angry and turn out to be thieves and nick all our clothes.”

“We weren't supposed to do that.”

“Well it worked basically,” said Nobby, managing to get to his knees. “We could give it another go.”