08 Guards! Guards! by Pratchett Terry

Author:Pratchett, Terry [Terry, Pratchett,]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-10T22:08:28.541000+00:00

Terry Pratchett

The air started to smell like burning tin.

Lady Ramkin's coach rattled into the plaza making a noise like a roulette wheel and pounded straight for Vimes, stopping in a skid that sent it juddering around in a semi-circle and forced the horses either to face the other way or plait their legs. A furious vision in padded leather, gauntlets, tiara and thirty yards of damp pink tulle leaned down towards him and screamed: "Come on, you bloody idiot!"

One glove caught him under his unresisting shoulder and hauled him bodily on to the box.

"And stop screaming!" the phantom ordered, focusing generations of natural authority into four syllables. Another shout spurred the horses from a bewildered standing start to a full gallop.

The coach bounced away over the flagstones. An exploratory tendril of flickering light brushed the reins for a moment and then lost interest.

"I suppose you haven't got any idea what's happening?" shouted Vimes, against the crackling of the spinning fire.

"Not the foggiest!"

The crawling lines spread like a web over the city, growing fainter with distance. Vimes imagined them creeping through windows and sneaking under doors.

"It looks as though it's searching for something!" he shouted.

"Then getting away before it finds it is a first-class idea, don't you think?"

A tongue of fire hit the dark Tower of Art, slid blindly down its ivy-grown flanks, and disappeared through the dome of Unseen University's Library.

The other lines blinked out.

Lady Ramkin brought the coach to a halt at the far side of the square.

"What does it want the Library for?" she said, frowning.

"Maybe it wants to look something up?"

"Don't be silly," she said breezily. "There's just a lot of books in there. What would a flash of lightning want to read?"

"Something very short?"

"I really think you could try to be a bit more help."

The line of light exploded into an arc between the Library's dome and the centre of the plaza and hung in the air, a band of brilliance several feet across.

GUARDS! GUARDS!

155

Then, in a sudden rush, it became a sphere of fire which grew swiftly to encompass almost all the plaza, vanished suddenly, and left the night full of ringing, violet shadows.

And the plaza full of dragon.

Who would have thought it? So much power, so close at hand. The dragon could feel the magic flowing into it, renewing it from second to second, in defiance of all boring physical laws. This wasn't the poor fare it had been given before. This was the right stuff. There was no end to what it could do, with power like this.

But first it had to pay its respects to certain people. . .

It sniffed the dawn air. It was searching for the stink of minds.

Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.

The air became very still, so still that you could almost hear the slow fall of dust. The Librarian swung on his knuckles between the endless bookshelves. The dome of the Library was still overhead but then, it always was.

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