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He’d enjoyed it immensely, too. It wasn’t just the pursuit that was so invigorating, with his velvet cloak left behind on a tree and his hat in a puddle somewhere, it was the knowledge that while he was doing this he wasn’t eating very small sandwiches and making even smaller talk.
‘We are talking about spying, commander. Sabotage, even,’ said Lord Rust. ‘To be frank … the city is to be placed under martial law.’ ‘Yessir? What kind of law’s that, sir?’ said Vimes, staring straight ahead. ‘You know very well, Vimes.’ ‘Is it the kind where you shout “Stop!” before you fire, sir, or the other kind?’
‘You seem to feel, Vimes, that the law is some kind of big glowing light in the sky which is not subject to control. And you are wrong. The law is what we tell it to be.
It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them.
Theft was the only crime, whether the loot was gold, innocence, land or life.
When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.
And Sergeant Colon once again knew a secret about bravery. It was arguably a kind of enhanced cowardice – the knowledge that while death may await you if you advance it will be a picnic compared to the certain living hell that awaits should you retreat.
And the camel rocked from side to side. There was no real way of judging distance, except by haemorrhoids.
Vimes glanced down and pulled the baton out of his pocket. It glinted in the moonlight. What damn good was something like this? All it really meant was that he was allowed to chase the little criminals, who did the little crimes. There was nothing he could do about the crimes that were so big you couldn’t even see them. You lived in them.
