The Glorious 25th of May (yes, it really is year 6 now)

[khloidanikos]

Willikins had prepared the official uniform for today. Sam Vimes stared at it blankly, and then remembered. Watch Committee. Right. The battered old breastplate wouldn't do, would it . . . Not for His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Commander of the City Watch, Sir Samuel Vimes. Lord Vetinari had been very definite about that, blast it.
Blast it all the more because, unfortunately, Sam Vimes could see the point. He hated the official uniform, but he represented a bit more than himself these days.
4

It was amazing how people adapted. The Watch had a werewolf. That news had gotten around, in an underground kind of way. And so the criminals had mutated, to survive in a society where the law had a very sensitive nose. Scent bombs were the solution. They didn't have to be that dramatic. You just poured pure peppermint or aniseed in the street where a lot of people would walk over it, and suddenly Sergeant Angua was facing a hundred, a thousand crisscrossing trails, and went to bed with a nasty headache.
8

Vimes pondered over a sheet of headed paper after the captain had gone. A file, he had to refer to a damn file. But there were so many coppers these days . . .
9

He'd joined up because, these days, joining the Watch was a good career choice. The pay was good, there was a decent pension, there was a wonderful medical plan if you had the nerve to submit to Igor's ministrations in the cellar, and, after a year or so, an Ankh-Morpork-trained copper could leave the city and get a job in the Watches of the other cities on the plain with instant promotion. That was happening all the time. Sammies, they were called, even in towns that had never heard of Sam Vimes. He was just a little proud of that. "They" meant watchmen who could think without moving their lips, who didn't take bribes—much, and then only at the level of beer and doughnuts, which even Vimes recognised as the grease that helps the wheels run smoothly—and were, on the whole, trustworthy. For a given value of "trust," at least.
…
It still irked Vimes that the little training school in the old lemonade factory was turning out so many coppers who quit the city the moment their probation was up. But it had its advantages. There were Sammies almost as far as Uberwald now, all speeding up the local promotion ladder. It helped, knowing names and knowing that those names had been taught to salute him. The ebb and flow of politics often meant that that local rulers weren't talking to one another, but, via the semaphore towers, the Sammies talked all the time.
10

Where did I go wrong? thought Vimes as the litany went on. I was a copper once. A real copper. I chased people. I was a hunter. It was what I did best. I knew where I was anywhere in the city by the feel of the street under my boots. And now look at me! A duke! Commander of the Watch! A political animal! I have to know about who's fighting who a thousand miles away, just in case that's going to mean riots here!
When did I last go on patrol? Last week? Last month? And it's never a proper point patrol, 'cos the sergeants make damn sure everyone knows I've left the building and every damn constable reeks of armor polish and has had a shave by the time I get there, even if I nip down the back streets (and that thought, at least, was freighted with a little pride, because it showed he didn't employ stupid sergeants). I never stand all night in the rain, or fight for my life rolling in the gutter with some thug, and I never move above a walk. That's all been taken away. And for what?
Comfort, power, money, and a wonderful wife . . .
. . . er . . .
. . . which was a good thing, of course, but . . . even so . . .
Damn. But I'm not a copper anymore. I'm a, a manager. I have to talk to the damn committee as if they're children. I go to receptions and wear damn stupid toy armour. It's all politics and paperwork. It's all got too big.
What had happened to the days when it was all so simple?
Faded like the lilac, he thought.
20-21

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I never offered you—"
"No, you offered me twenty dollars and now that I've seen the mess here I'm not taking it!" Vimes rejoiced. Tilden hadn't even learned how to control a conversation. "If you pay Knock twenty dollars, he owes you nineteen dollars change! The man couldn't talk and chew gum at the same time. And look at this, will you?"
Vimes dumped his handcuffs on the desk. The gaze of Snouty and Tilden swung to them as if magnetic.
Oh dear, thought Vimes and stood up and lifted the crossbow out of Snouty's hands. It was all in the movement. If you moved with authority, you got a second or two extra. Authority was everything.
He fired the bow at the floor, then handed it back.
"A kid could get out of those cuffs and while Snouty here keeps a very clean jail he's completely drawers at being a guard," said Vimes. "This place needs shaking up." He leaned forward, knuckles on the captain's desk, with his face a few inches from the trembling mustache and the milky eyes.
"Twenty-five dollars or I walk out that door," he said. It was probably a phrase never ever said before by any prisoner anywhere in the world.
75

He went around the back and let himself in by the stable entrance. It wasn't even locked. Black mark right there, lads.
The iron bulk of the hurry-up wagon stood empty on the cobbles.
Behind it was what they called, now, the stables. In fact, the stables were only the bottom floor of what would have been part of Ankh-Morpork's industrial heritage, if anyone had ever thought of it like that. In fact they thought of it as junk that was too heavy to cart away. It was part of the winding gear from one of the original treacle mines, long since abandoned. One of the original lifting buckets was still up there, glued to the floor by its last load of the heavy, sticky, unrefined treacle, which, once set, was tougher than cement and more waterproof than tar. Vimes remembered, as a kid, begging chippings of pig treacle off the miners; one lump of that, oozing the sweetness of prehistoric sugar cane, could keep a boy's mouth happily shut for a week.
Inside the treacle-roofed stable level, chewing a bit of bad hay, was the horse. Vimes knew it was a horse because it checked out as one; four hooves, tail, head with mane, seedy brown coat. Considered from another angle, it was half a ton of bones held together with horsehair.
He patted it gingerly; as one of nature's pedestrians, he'd never been at home around horses. He unhooked a greasy clipboard from a nail nearby and flicked through its pages. Then he had another look around the yard. Tilden never did that. He looked at the pigsty in the corner where Knock kept his pig, and then at the chicken run, and the pigeon loft, and the badly made rabbit hutches, and he did a few calculations.
The old Watch House! It was all there, just like the day he first arrived. It had been two houses once, and one of them had been the treacle mine office. Everywhere in the city had been something once. And so the place was a maze of blocked-in doorways and ancient windows and poky rooms.
He wandered around like a man in a museum. See the old helmet on a stick for archery practice! See Sergeant Knock's broken-springed armchair, where he used to sit out on sunny afternoons!
And, inside, the smell: floor wax, stale sweat, armor polish, unwashed clothes, ink, a hint of fried fish, and always, here, a taint of treacle.
The Night Watch. He was back.
When the first members of the Night Watch came in, they found a man perfectly at ease, leaning back in a chair with his feet on a desk and leafing through paperwork. The man had sergeant's stripes and the air of an unsprung trap. He was also giving absolutely no attention to the newcomers. He particularly paid no heed to one gangly lance constable who was still new enough to have tried to put a shine on his breastplate...
They fanned out among the desks, with muttered conversations.
Vimes knew them in his soul. They were in the Night Watch because they were too scruffy, ugly, incompetent, awkwardly shaped, or bloody-minded for the Day Watch. They were honest, in that special policeman sense of the word. That is, they didn't steal things too heavy to carry. And they had the morale of damp gingerbread.
84-86

They got the wagon back to the yard ten minutes later, and by that time Vimes knew that a new rumor was fanning out across the city. Young Sam had already whispered things to the other officers as the curfew-breakers were dropped off, and nobody gossips like a copper. They didn't like the Unmentionables. Like petty criminals everywhere, the watchmen prided themselves on there being some depths to which they would not sink. There had to be some things below you, even if it was only the mudworms.
104

He also knew how to listen. New Captain. So . . . it was starting.
The men were watching him.
"They calling in more, hnah, soldiers, Sarge?" said Snouty.
"I expect so," said Vimes.
"They gave Captain Tilden the push, didn't they . . . "
"Yes."
"He was a good captain!"
"Yes," said Vimes. No, he thought. He wasn't. He was a decent man and he did his best, that's all. He's well out of it now.
"What're we gonna do now, Sarge?" said Lance Constable Vimes.
"We'll patrol," sad Vimes. "Close in. Just these few streets."
"What good'll that do?"
"More good than if we didn't, lad. Didn't you take the oath when you joined up?"
"What oath, Sarge?"
He didn't, Vimes remembered. A lot of them hadn't. You just got your uniform and you were a member of the Night Watch.
A few years ago Vimes wouldn't have bothered about the oath either. The words were out of date, and the shilling on the string was a joke. But you needed something more than the wages, even in the Night Watch. You needed something else to tell you that it wasn't just a job.
190

I, [recruit's name], do solemnly swear by [recruit's deity of choice] to uphold the Laws and Ordinances of the city of Ankh Morpork, serve the public truƒt, and defend the ƒubjects of His/Her [delete whichever is inappropriate] Majeƒty [name of reigning monarch] without fear, favour, or thought of perƒonal ƒafety; to purƒue evildoers and protect the innocent, laying down my life if necceƒsary in the cauƒe of said duty, so help me [aforeƒaid deity]. Gods save the King/Queen [delete whichever is inappropriate].



late is better than never. hopefully next year I will not get held up by getting stabbed in the foot with a rusty nail. yes, really. my life, idek.
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008