Now it’s time to see that dragon off and have a good old-fashioned hero ceremony. We’re about to finish Guards! Guards!
Summary
Vimes is digging away the mortar between the bars of the cell while the Patrician reads. The rank are discussing odds around killing the dragon with Colon’s lucky arrow, and finding the math wanting. They try to adjust the odds by suggesting ways to make the shot harder, so it truly is a million-to-one chance. The Librarian shows up at the dungeon, stretches the bars apart and yanks Vimes through. They make to escape by heading through the kitchens where some guards are eating lunch, and a fight ensues. Vimes makes it out to the street with a cleaver and heads off to face the dragon. The rank see a woman being tied to a rock for sacrifice and realize it’s Lady Ramkin. The rank see the dragon coming and Colon fires his arrow despite not knowing where the “voonerable” spot on the dragon is, and Vimes sees the boys up on the roof and wonders what any of them are doing because they’re not really heroes anyway. The arrow misses and the dragon turns on them and sprays a large fireball in their direction. There’s an explosion.
Buy the Book
The Witness for the Dead
Vimes finds Lady Ramkin and begins hacking at her chains with the cleaver. He is horrified that the rank have all died for nothing, and once he’s done freeing Sibyl, the dragon shows up. The rank are not dead, in fact, and Colon and Nobby are worried that Carrot fell in the water and maybe can’t swim, so they argue about who should dive in after him. Carrot is not in the water; he went to have a look about, and now insists that they should head back to the fight. The Patrician opens a compartment in the wall that contains rations, clothes, riches… and the key to the dungeon. (He hadn’t told Vimes about that because he believed breaking out was more satisfying to him, and wants him to maintain his view of the world.) He leaves the dungeon. The dragon kennels explode due to Errol, and the dragon flies up to hover over the smoke. The noble dragon sees him and they begin to fight, but Lady Ramkin doesn’t hold out much hope for Errol in this situation. Eventually the swamp dragon flees, which is also a mystery—dragons usually fight to the death. Errol returns and elicits something like a thunderclap that lays the noble dragon out. The citizens of the city head for the dragon with weapons, ready to kill it, which Sibyl is still against. Vimes doesn’t want to worry about that, but Nobby and Colon inform him that Carrot arrested the dragon, and prisoners must be kept safe, so…
They arrive where the dragon has landed and try to warn the citizens off. One of them hits Carrot in the breastplate with a rock and Lady Ramkin goes off on them all. Carrot reads the dragon its rights, and in the moment Errol returns, something strange happens—the noble dragon lets out a sound like a kitten. They finally realize that the noble dragon is female and that Errol has initiated a sort of mating ritual. Vimes tells the group to leave and head for the palace while everyone is distracted. They run, and when they arrive, they begin charging any of the guards who think to stand in their way. Wonse runs into the Patrician in the private audience room and tries to make a run for it. Everywhere he goes, the Patrician shows up. Wonse calls in the guards, but the Watch shows up instead. The Patrician tries to set things in order, but Vimes tells him to shut up and has Carrot read Wonse his rights. Wonse tries to rush the Patrician; Vimes stops him, then tells Carrot to “throw the book at him,” forgetting the problem with dwarfs and metaphors. Carrot throws The Laws and Ordinances of Ankh and Morpork at him, sending Wonse backwards out the window, and killing him stone dead.
Death comes to collect Wonse; the Patrician tells Vimes to give his men the rest of the day off. He tells Vimes that the truth of the world is that there are no good people, only bad people on different sides. Vimes is flummoxed by this perspective, but comes across the Librarian, who is retrieving his book from Wonse’s body, along with the law book. He points Vimes to a passage on dragons and what they truly are. Vimes tells him to put the book somewhere safe along with the law book, then they go for a drink. Later, the Watch arrive to be thanked for their services to the city, and the Patrician asks what reward they would like. Vimes hadn’t thought of it, so Colon and Nobby think to ask for small raises for their officers, a new kettle, and a dartboard. The Patrician is utterly baffled by this request and Vimes begins to laugh hysterically. He later goes to Lady Ramkin’s house, meets a bunch of wealthy women who are helping to put the dragon kennel back together, and has dinner with her. There’s clearly something between them. The rank have a beer and discuss kinghood. The dragons strike out together into the unknown.
Commentary
The whole ending sequence of this book is just perfectly written. The parody, the physical comedy, the cinematic quality to the entire thing. Picturing them all fast walking, then trotting, and full out running to the palace. Reading everyone their rights in the most useless manner possible. (Also, apparently there is historical precedent for arresting animals in our own world too? So, you know, Carrot is perfect.) Lord Vetinari appearing around every corner to hound Wonse. And then the greatest character death in any book I’ve ever read, made by a metaphor becoming a reality and dropping someone out a window. Also, my petty streak really appreciates the moments where Vimes gets the chance to tell Vetinari to shut up. And I love that they just ask for a solid pay bump and a kettle at their little hero ceremony while Vetinari looks on in shock. I’d have laughed like Vimes too.
We get a wrap up in our morals for the story between Vetinari and the passages that the Librarian has Vimes read from the Summoning Dragons book, and there’s a lot being said, really. Of course, the Patrician is a terrifyingly smart guy, but his logic is cold and hard and utterly lacking in humanity. His insistence that people are all bad and that the best route is simply keeping an order to things is how he can account for his own choices, which is not something I imagine he’s ever admitted to himself, if he’s had the thought at all. (I also imagine it is a belief that a certain sort of person far worse than the Patrician cleaves to as well.) It’s harder to be a person like Vimes, someone who believes that there are good people, or at least that people can be good and therefore should be protected. To Vetinari, this is a flaw in Vimes’ character, but one that he thinks is worthwhile for him to exploit.
On the other side, we have the passage about how dragons are their own sort of metaphor, that calling upon a dragon is the dragon of your own mind. The noble dragon was a manifestation of every terrible thing about Wonse. But the book also says that someone pure of heart could call on a dragon as a force for good… and the rest of the pages are burnt away, so who really knows where that was going. In the end, I’d argue that the real point is that everyone has their own opinions and how good or bad people are, and this shapes how they handle the world. After all, the dragon may have been part of Wonse’s terrible qualities, but she’s also just a very large dragon, as Lady Ramkin says, and one that sets out as Errol’s mate by the end of this story. Not particularly evil, wouldn’t you say? Vetinari can be as cynical as he wants, but the fact that Vimes cares about people is what fixed this whole mess.
Unrelatedly, there’s a bit when Vimes is talking to all the other wealthy women big on dragons who are helping Sibyl clean her place up, and he notes that they get to be dirty and messy in a way that’s different from actual poor people. Specifically the line about there being a special type of poverty that only the rich could afford. This particular note always makes me think of fashion, specifically the fact that designers at all price points will wear their clothes down to cut them up due to a perceived “authenticity” that comes with worn clothes.
The fashion aspect is further explored in Vimes’ own thoughts around the quality of said garments; he notices that all these women are wearing clothes that likely belonged to parents or grandparents, but that the clothing was of such good quality that they could still wear it. I went down a weird rabbit hole on the history of American sportswear once (not athletic-wear, but the chinos and boat shoes uniform you usually see on people who frequent the Hamptons), and read something similar—that the mark of real wealth and style was not wearing your own sport coat, but one that belonged to your father.
There’s something awfully bittersweet to Carrot’s final letter in that it’s the first one where he doesn’t ask after Minty. It’s a good thing, sure, a sign that he’s growing up a bit, but it’s also just stings. And then, of course, we get the conversation at the end that lets us know if anyone’s actually a secret king in this story it’s probably him—he’s got the crown-shaped birthmark, and the very telling ordinary-but-useful sword, and the fact that he can usually get Colon and Nobby (and most people, really) to do whatever he wants. This is really more of a premonition for later escapades, though, and I kinda wish it wasn’t. It would be great if an Arthurian archetype like that just stuck to their everyday life and never did anything all that extraordinary. But he’s a legit hero now and will continue to be, so that’s not really where we end up.
And that’s the first City Watch book! Which is really even more special to me for how it begins to fill out Ankh-Morpork as a city. Because I love books about cities, and the people who live in them, and how life works in them in all their beauty and detritus. (…the troll. Working the front of the pub.)
Asides and little thoughts:
- Describing the Librarian as the “longest arm of the law” because he’s an orangutan. Lol.
- Dibbler really does get his stuff from those monks he claims to get it from, which we find out in a very long parenthetical (which I might prefer more than footnotes honestly, but that’s just my chaos talking).
- Again, that Casablanca line from Vimes to Lady Ramkin. It just… doesn’t really work for me. It’s too winky wink in a moment that should feel a little more genuinely romantic. Sibyl gets all the good lines in this scene, really. And the narration is really where it’s at anyhow. I forgot how much that “the woman was a city” line hits you.
Pratchettisms:
The sun rose higher, rolling through the mists and stale smoke like a lost balloon.
Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn’t make an issue of it because a man angry enough to lift 300lbs of orangutan without noticing is a man with too much on his mind.
There is an art to throwing knives and, even then, you need the right kind of knife. Otherwise it does just what this one did, which is miss completely.
The fireball rose like a—well, a rose.
This was one of those points where the Trousers of Time bifurcated themselves, and if you weren’t careful you’d go down the wrong leg—
There seemed to be a special kind of poverty that only the very, very rich could possibly afford…
She bore down upon him like a glittering siege engine.
Okay, now we’re about to go sideways, because the next book published with Pratchett as an author is, in fact, coauthored with Neil Gaiman. It’s Good Omens! So we’re jumping out of Discworld and over to what might be my favorite Pratchett tome. We’ll read up to “She snatched up the torch and ran from the house.”
For animals in legal cases I recommend The Hour of the Pig (known in the US as The Advocate) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hour_of_the_Pig – try and get the original if you can as the US version is cut down.
That Casablanca line is surprisingly awful for Pratchett. I mean, it’s a great line…but not here. Vimes comes off as burnt-out Bruce Willis or Clint Eastwood cop to me–not suave Bogart. The line is too iconic anyway, it jars almost as much if Vimes had told her that the force will be with her…always.
Nit: the librarian doesn’t stretch the bars; he pulls them right out of their settings.
What should we make of a female dragon coming out of Wonse’s mind? (IMO nothing — it just makes the story work.)
Does Vetinari believe that all people are bad, or is he just gaming Vimes (who at this stage will work harder if goaded by cynicism even worse than his)?
Guess: what happened was that the writer wasn’t pure-of-heart enough; is there anybody human sufficiently pure that summoning something so powerful as dragon out of their mind won’t cause damage? And since you’re doing Good Omens next, note when we’re explicitly told that the Horsemen are “in the minds of men” (not the first time that book tells us that humans can come up with things that appall demons).
The description of dragon breeders’ clothes as so durable they were handed down is a pointer to Vimes’s later epiphany about boots. He also notes the smell, but leaves us to realize that the smell is something the breeders can take off when they’re done mucking out.
ISTM the long-term thread of Carrot is an example of Story, which Pratchett was about before Gaiman made it a Thing. It’s also possible that Carrot winds up doing more good because he doesn’t just get handed a kingdom. I specifically don’t see the omission of Minty as having anything bitter; the book begins with Carrot being told he can’t be a dwarf, the letters give us a long gradual detachment, and in the end he finds a place where he can be while being true to the best of himself. (cf several Cherryh novels that are essentially about finding a place, e.g. Finity’s End, Tripoint, and my sentimental favorite Merchanter’s Luck.)
When Pratchett was GoH at the Worldcon (2004), there was an attempt to replicate the Drum — complete with a workable troll costume (shown at a previous Worldcon masquerade, IIRC).
Making Vimes genuinely romantic this early would be a real break of character; it will be a while before his hard shell opens enough that he can (e.g.) advise the Monstrous Regiment instead of retreating to cliché. (@2: is there a point when suave is just another mask? We opened with Bogart-style cynicism….)
I missed most of the Pratchettisms in this section. One notable: Heroes get kingdoms and princesses, and they take regular exercise, and when they smile the light glints off their teeth, ting. The bastards. (George Pal’s Doc Savage included this effect early enough to let us know he wasn’t taking the subject seriously.)
– is there anybody human sufficiently pure that summoning something so powerful as dragon out of their mind won’t cause damage?
Possibly Carrot.
PS: how far into Good Omens are we reading next week?
I loved this book when first reading it 25 years ago and love it still.
The story, the characters, the twist of the dragon being female are all superb. However I always primarily loved the bookending of Vimes’ thoughts, with the cliché of the city being a woman at one end and the woman being a city at the other just seeming like a perfect way to frame it.
“the long-term thread of Carrot is an example of Story”
and by subverting it, Carrot is more a king, and does more good, than if he had got the sparkly hat.
Ooh, another Good Omens reread! I did a ton of commenting on the 2018 reread here on Tor. Including copy-pasting everything about it in the Annotated Pratchett File, which felt unusually necessary because I think the book has a larger and more time-specific load of cultural references than most Discworld books. I’d like to copy-paste many of my comments into the upcoming reread here, if that’s OK. Only I won’t bad-mouth it (much) this time. I’ve mellowed toward it, since I finally managed to stop having nightmares about the Horsepersons; I’m as obsessed with them as ever, but more enjoyably so.
Back to Discworld:
Now the Cardinal Rule of Discworld Probability comes into play. The men didn’t successfully harm the dragon despite their guesses on how to make it million-to-one, but then survived the explosion because the odds of doing so happened to be million-to-one.
Sometimes, Sybil is me as I long fantasized myself — here standing up for the besieged “monster” even when it poses a threat to her and others.
Guards! Guards! came 69th in the 2003 Big Read, the second-highest rating for a Discworld book (Mort came 65th).
Call-forwards:
Colon can’t swim. This might be due to his embittering childhood experience of wanting to live in the ocean like a certain storybook character and getting stopped from trying to do so. I can deeply relate, but fortunately my bitterness didn’t stop me from swimming. (I also relate to him being a “natural floater”; I float much more easily than I did before I gained a lot of weight in recent years.)
We’ll eventually encounter other small dragons that fly by “flaming backward” (farting fire) as Errol does.
Wonse’s successor, Rufus Drumknott, will be much more likable and longstanding.
‘Society, he managed to think, didn’t know what was going to hit it.’ Vimes seems to be thinking of Sybil here, but he might as well have been thinking of himself.
Pratchettisms:
“Anyone who could eat a kettle wouldn’t run from anything.”
“Right, you bastards, you’re — you’re geography!”
The kitchen on the other side of the door was almost deserted, the staff having finally lost their nerve and decided that all prudent chefs refrained from working at an establishment where there was a mouth bigger than they were. [Sometimes chefs have the same reason to be afraid even when Prudence Incarnate is trapped in a distant galaxy. #keystothekingdom]
The thunderclap is a sonic boom — Errol flew off far enough that he could accelerate to Mach 2 or thereabouts. (In the movie/miniseries in my mind, the music for the acceleration run is something very like “Highway to the Danger Zone.”)
@@.-@: a definite point. But I suppose he’d find a handful of ordinances against it.
Staircase thought on the final scene between Ramkin and Vimes: both are acting out of character and into cliché. (I wonder how far Sybil had to excavate to uncover that bottle of perfume.) And I wonder whether the remark about Vimes’s “wildly resonating mind” was intended to cite the way bits creep from another story — or world — into Discworld. (This doesn’t happen often enough to become annoying, but IIRC it pops up elsewhere as well.)
“Speaking of kings, does anyone want a crisp?”
it’s a perfect ending and the Bogart line fits in, IMNSHO, as a nod to Bogie as a private eye despite it being from the wrong film.
Like everyone else, I love this book (even Colon, the unpunished accessory to murder). Looking forward to GO as it contains the most brilliant footnote in the entirety of world literature
High points:
The discussion of the million to one shot and the necessity of it being exactly a million “No one ever said ‘it’s a 999,943-to-one chance but it just might work.'”
The discussion of heroic film tropes by the guards when they arrest Vimes.
The realization that the dragon is a female. Which points out the prejudice people have about power equals masculinity.
The new charge by Vimes of generalized abetting, “Persistent and reckless abetment.” Carrot picks up on this when he charges Wonse.
@0 – I think Vetinari’s overstating his cynicism, since he does get up in the morning, but not by much. His world view is that most people are bad at their core but can do good things while Vimes reverses that.
As far as “here’s looking at you, kid” I find it just the right level of a romantic but noncommittal phrase for this stage of Vimes’ relationship with Sybil. Million-to-one chances sometimes take a while to work.
A couple quesitons:
“An honest midden was preferable to the way Ankh-Morpork was going these days. It was probably allegorical, or something.”
What’s the allegory here?
“[Vetinari] needed Vimes and his view of the world.”
Why? Vimes and the Watch proved useful in taking care of the dragon, but it seems that was largely luck, and heretofore they had been almost a non-entity. Why does Vetinari need Vimes, and the Watch in general?
If the Ankh is the only “water” around it might be difficult to learn to swim.
Ankh-Morpork where even atheists can walk on water!
@13. dashmaster
I belive the word Ankh is the key here. It is supposed to mean life in ancient myth. So the «life» in the city can be rather sewer-like. Combine that with what @14 and @15 said and the idea of the book that the city as a hole can be rather «rotten»… ;-)
@13 et al. – A midden is a trash heap. But in Ankh-Morpork at this time people don’t put their trash in a heap, they just dump it in the streets. The allegory is that the city is descending from a more ordered psst to a disordered (and smellier) present.
This will gradually change many books from now.
Love this book, that’s all I need to say. Among all the other good things about it, I like that it’s our first “proper” introduction to Lord Vetinari (one of my favourite Discworld characters), and he’s already pretty on form, which is shown particularly in that scene in the dungeon.
I remember it being pretty clear from Carrot’s first appearance that he was the returning King of Ankh: orphaned foundling, has a significant sword, etc. All the usual “long-lost heir” tropes.
“It would be great if an Arthurian archetype like that just stuck to their everyday life and never did anything all that extraordinary. But he’s a legit hero now and will continue to be, so that’s not really where we end up.”
I don’t know, I think that’s kind of what the story is doing. Sure, he’s a protagonist, but he’s very much working in concert with the rest of the Watch, not as a solitary hero. And of course, he doesn’t step up and claim the throne, despite the fact that that’s what various outside forces try to force him to do.
@13 (Q2): Vetinari can’t be everywhere all the time all by himself; we will see more about how he relies on manipulating leaders, presumably leaving them to issue subdivided orders to subordinates. It’s possible he’s concluded that Ankh-Morpork needs just a little more order, or that having someone visibly up to good (as most of the people he manages are not) will make handling the rest of the city easier.
My understanding is that an allegory is a (usually subtle) reference to real life in a work of fiction. So is Pratchett then saying that like Ankh-Morpork, the real world is becoming dirtier or somehow worse?
@19 – I think Vetinari sometimes finds that persuasion isn’t effective and he needs to throw a spanner into the works. Vimes is the spanner.
@20 – Dirtier, definitely, as we shall see in the change in horsemen in Good Omens. Pratchett has a strong pro nature streak, which reminds me of Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series (which I recommend).
@0 – Could you please let us know what chapters we should read in Good Omens for next week?
@21: I love the Iron Druid series (and Kevin Hearne’s other books), and thank Tor for inspiring me to read it. I guess replacing definitely not retired Pestilence with Pollution would count as ‘the world getting dirtier.’ More diversely and durably dirty anyway. Pestilence has to keep up his momentum, but when Pollution gets something done, it often stays done forever. Strangely, Discworld’s Pestilence doesn’t seem able to get a major foothold in Ankh-Morpork, which has never been said to get disease outbreaks like those which were/are common to our world’s cities with waterways spectacularly polluted by organic waste substances. The narrator of I-forget-which Discworld book points out that we might wonder how people in Ankh-Morpork have usable water (for drinking, washing etc.) when the River Ankh isn’t even liquid anymore. IIRC, the answer is, as usual, Narrativium.
OK, I just encountered that line in Men at Arms.
“Since [Ankh-Morpork]’s got a river you can chew, where does the drinking water come from?”
According to the book narrator, it’s among the questions that visitors would ask if they weren’t busy looking for “the, you know, the young ladies.” So we don’t get an answer, but it’s probably Narrativium.
According to The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (written by Stephen Briggs and annotated by Pratchett) Water Street crossed a fresh water lake, Mort Lake, within Ankh-Morpork. However this does not show up in the Discworld books (other than Water Street) and is due to Narrativium.
Does it have to be Narrativium? Couldn’t it just be Pratchett carved away everything that didn’t look like a elephant plot? Ankh-Morpork has, in later books, opera, semaphore communications, and stamps; ignoring remarks that those books are in the century of the fruit-bat suggests a post-medieval city — while serious Roman aqueducts date back to the early CE in our world. An obvious guess is that the Ankh isn’t foul before it reaches the city, such that drinking water comes from not-that-far upstream.
One could argue against this that sewers are far older than aqueducts, and that Ankh-Morpork’s need for a Guild of Dunnikin Divers suggests a lack of sewers — but without sewers, what’s fouling the Ankh?
Ankh-Morpork had a major sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, built thousands of years before these books. But it got buried and forgotten, like the rest of this city that continually grew upward as it settled in the silt. (It is written: “What Ank-Morpork was built on top of was Ankh-Morpork.”) I had forgotten that it’s an important plot point in Men at Arms, a possible reason why the question about drinking water got narratively raised near the beginning of that book.
The L-Space Wiki’s page on the Guild of Plumbers and Dunnikindivers speculates: “Given the general primitive state of plumbing in Ankh-Morpork, where the river is viewed as convenient drain for all the city’s effluent, this cannot be one of the richest Guilds in the city, and only outside contracts such as the one in Djelibeybi must keep the membership in work….” But it apparently provided employment to Brother Dunnikin.
Feet of Clay will briefly feature a sewer in active use, but I don’t remember where that sewer ultimately went. At this point, Harry King might be the city’s main force of sanitation.
The River Ankh is already laden with silt from the Sto Plains when it arrives at the city, though at that point it’s probably less noxious than the runoff from our lands wracked by intensive agriculture.
Not to mention that “Water that has been through so many kidneys must be clean”, or something like that.
Slightly surprised at the detour to Good Omens, I had Moving Pictures out already (yes, and realised on opening it that it should have been Eric). Are Strata and Dark Side going to appear anywhere. Strata at least deserves a mention here for its jet-powered dragons.
@26 – Why do you have to throw in logic?
We know from various books that the source of the Ankh is in the plains surrounding AM and the thickness of the river is due to the silt from them. We also know that boats and barges are used on it. This, plus rain and snow, presumably provide the people of AM with enough water for daily use, albeit of questionable quality. Some seem to recognize this and midwives (and some doctors and Vetinari) boil it.
Like for many 18th century European cities it worked, for a given value of ‘worked’.
Vetinari and Vimes
I’ve been doing this reread of books in order at a faster pace than the group’s and in a later book, which you should not skip ahead to, Vetinari’s relationship to Vimes is explained and it is far deeper than we see here.
Rain?
Rain and cisterns appear to have been enough for some of the oldest cities — but collection systems are rather dense for the flimsy construction of Ankh-Morpork and contra-indicate gargoyles (designed to throw water away from walls into the street rather than collecting it).
If all that’s in the water when it reaches the city walls is silt, the inhabitants could be inured to using it as-is; cf Twain’s discussion of what someone who lives by the Mississippi is used to drinking, regardless of the astonishment of people from outside the flood plain.
I should have been more specific about rain. Like many 16th and 17th century European cities which were built around non-tidal rivers, rain served to clean the streets into the river. Paris is a good example (including the silt – the Latin name for the city comes from their word for mud).
The Seine was basically an open sewer and we would not consider the water drinkable but the people of the time did. They collected water from the Seine, directly or from public river water fountains, for their daily needs and the only sanitary treatment was to let it settle before using it.
The fact that drinking it could still make you sick is why beer and wine were so popular in Roundworld as well as Discworld.
The people of Ankh-Morpork clearly have awesome immune systems!
Or they just don’t expect to live lives as long and healthy as we do.
I don’t think we’re told anywhere what the infant mortality rate is; it’s possible that everyone is exposed to most of the local ~germs early, and they either survive (and live relatively long lives) or die early.
If we look at European and Native American diseases, we see this natural herd partial immunity with smallpox epidemics in the Americas and syphilis epidemics in Europe after first contact.
I do not remember if it is in this book that the city’s gargoyles are described preferring to stay in when it rains. They’re under trolls taxonomically, although usually overhead topographically.
“The thunderclap is a sonic boom — Errol flew off far enough that he could accelerate to Mach 2 or thereabouts.”
@9, yup. Plus there’s a description of the cabbage fields being torn up by the rooster tail he develops while accelerating.
In my mind’s ear, Errol in flight sounds like a smaller and squeakier Vulcan howl…