Snuff

  Right now, as he looked at the frightened child, he feared that moment was coming closer. Possibly only the presence of Feeney was holding the darkness at bay, the dreadful urge to do the hangman out of his entitlement of a dollar for the drop, thruppence for the rope and sixpence for his beer. How easy it is to kill, yes, but not when a smart young copper who thinks you are a good guy is looking to you. At home, the Watch and his family surrounded Vimes like a wall. Here the good guy was the good guy because he didn’t want anyone to see him being bad. He did not want to be ashamed. He did not want to be the darkness.

  The bow was pointed at the two hostages and its holder had surely been told to fire if a leg pull sounded the alarm. Would he do it? You needed to age a bit for the dark to start trickling in, although there were always one or two who were born as darkness on legs, who would kill for a pastime. Was he one? Even if he wasn’t, would he panic? How light was the trigger? Could a sudden jerk set it off?

  Outside, the storm raged. Whether the water was going down or not didn’t seem all that important, given there was so much of the damn stuff around already. The woman was watching him out of the corner of her eye. Oh well, every moment counted…

  Timing his steps carefully, as if a footstep would be heard in all the thunder and creaking, Vimes crept up to the unsuspecting guard, clamped both hands around his neck and jerked upward. The arrow thudded into the ceiling.

  “I don’t want anybody to get hurt.” Vimes tried to say it in a friendly way, but went on, “If you think you can pull strings, kid, then let me tell you that you’ll run out of gasp before I run out of squeeze. Chief Constable Upshot, grab that weapon and tie up this gentleman’s legs. You may keep his weapon. I know you like them.”

  He must have inadvertently decreased the pressure, for his captive said hoarsely, “I don’t want to kill anybody, sir, please! They gave me the bow and told me I was to fire if the boat stopped or I got a pull on the ropes! Do you think I’d do that, sir? Do you really think I’d do that? I was only sitting here in case one of them came in! Please, sir, I never came along for anything like this! It’s Stratford, sir, he’s a total nutjob, sir, a bloody killer, he is!”

  There was a crash and the whole boat shook. Maybe the pilot’s stopwatch had let him down. “What’s your name, mister?”

  “Eddie, sir, Eddie Brassbound. I’m just a water rat, sir!” The man was trembling. Vimes could see his hand shaking. He turned to the woman with the child, who was being supported now by Feeney, touched his forelock and flashed his carefully secreted badge. “Madam, I’m Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Has this man mishandled you or the little girl in any way?”

  The woman had barely moved. She reminded him of the younger Sybil, calm and collected and much more likely to fight than scream, but she wouldn’t fight until she was ready. “It was done pretty slick, commander, just when I was putting Grace to bed. The bastards came on as owners of some cargo and acted like decent boys until my husband said he reckoned the weather was going to get really bad. I was in the galley, I heard a lot of yelling and then we were put down here. Personally, sir, I would deem it a favor if you killed every man jack of them, but life can’t be all fun. As far as this one is concerned, well, he could have been less gentlemanly, so although I’d like you to throw him into the river I wouldn’t object if you refused to tie a heavy weight to his leg.”

  Feeney laughed. “Wouldn’t need weights, ma’am! The river is having a party and we’re all guests! I’m a pretty good swimmer, and I wouldn’t dare jump into what’s out there.”

  Vimes grabbed Brassbound and stared into his eyes. After a moment he said, “No, I know a killer’s eyes when I see them. That doesn’t mean you ain’t a pirate, though, so we’re going to keep an eye on you, okay, so don’t try anything. I’m trusting you. Heavens help you if I’m wrong.”

  Brassbound opened his mouth to speak, but Vimes added quickly, “You could make your life a little easier and possibly longer, Mr. Brassbound, if you were to tell me how many of your jolly parcel of rogues there are on the Fanny.”

  “Don’t know, sir. Don’t know who’s still alive, see?”

  Vimes looked at the woman as the boat gave a lurch. It was a strange sensation—for a moment Vimes felt almost weightless—and there was a commotion behind them in the cowshed among the great spinning wheels. When he got his balance he managed to say, “I take it that you are Mrs. Sillitoe, madam?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I am, commander,” she said as the little girl clung more tightly to her. “I know my husband is still alive, because so are we…at the moment.” She stopped as another surge lifted the entire boat, then the Fanny came down with a splash and a spine-numbing thump, followed by the long-drawn-out bellow of a bullock who had had enough, and the start of a scream.

  Vimes, Feeney and Brassbound picked themselves up off the floor. Mrs. Sillitoe and her daughter were, amazingly, still vertical and Mrs. Sillitoe wore a grim smile. “That sound you heard was one of the pirates dying, I’m extremely pleased to say! That means everyone else in the cowshed is alive. Shall I tell you why? He almost certainly didn’t hop! Those lifts and drops are little slams to me: somewhere behind us a damn slam is getting so big that bits of it are calving off and coming down all the way to us at speed, you see, raising the water level and dropping it again like a stone as they go past—and that’s when you have to know enough to dance to the rhythm! Because if you don’t dance to the rhythm of the slam you’ll dance with the Devil soon enough! A man went down there with a crossbow when the fighting started. By the sound of it he wasn’t familiar with the dance. I expect it was Ten Gallon Charlie who got him when he was on the ground, poor lamb. Charlie is the Bullock Wrangler. If he hits a man once, no one will ever have to hit him again.” Mrs. Sillitoe said that in a matter-of-fact, satisfied voice. “If you want to try to steal from our riverboat you have to be prepared for some considerable inconvenience.”

  And I thought the city was on the tough side, Vimes thought. He noticed that a prudent Feeney had rearmed the confiscated crossbow and said, “I’m going below to make certain. Mrs. Sillitoe, how many other pirates do you think there are?”

  “There were four that came aboard as owners of the cargo.” She began to tick them off on her fingers. “Mr. Harrison the loadmaster got one of them, but another one stabbed him, the devil. I know only one of them went down to the cowshed, and another one helped this simpering little bastard rig up the ropes so that if anybody was left to try any funny business we were hostage, and then that other man went up to the wheelhouse. I was told that we would be all right, provided my husband gets the cargo to Quirm.” The little girl clung to her dress as the woman continued, her face wooden. “Personally, I don’t believe it, but he hasn’t harmed my husband yet. He’s counting, all the time he’s counting. My husband is listening to Old Treachery and remembering! Trying to out-think sixty miles of murderous water! And if he dies, it wins, wherever you are…”

  “Feeney, keep your crossbow pointing at this gentleman, will you?” said Vimes. “And if he makes any movement whatsoever, up to and including trying to blow his nose, you have my full authority to shoot him somewhere where it will be seriously inconvenient.”

  Vimes headed to the steps and nodded to Feeney and Mrs. Sillitoe, raised a finger and said, “Be with you in just one minute!” And hurried down into the hot and noisome heart of the Wonderful Fanny. Snooker, Vimes thought. Knocking the balls until you have the right one right on cue.

  He felt pressure on his feet surge as the vessel lifted, and instantly jumped into the air, landing neatly as the Fanny slapped back down into the water.

  He was confronted by a man who would surely make even Willikins think twice. “You’d be Ten Gallons? Mrs. Sillitoe sent me down here. I’m Commander Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch!”

  And the man with a face like a troll and a body to match said, “Heard about you. Thought you were dead!”

  “I generally look like this at the
end of boat trips, Mr. Gallons,” said Vimes. Then, pointing to an apparent corpse on the floor between them, “What happened to him?”

  “I fink he is dead,” Ten Gallons leered. “I’ve never seen a man suffocated by his own nose before.”

  It was hard to hear anything down in the cowshed given the complaining of the oxen and the ominous whirring of overstressed gears, but Vimes shouted, “Did he have a crossbow?”

  Ten Gallons nodded and fingers thicker than Vimes’s wrist unhooked said weapon off a nail on the wall. “Would come with you, mister, but it’s all the three of us can do to hold things together down here!” He spat. “Ain’t really any hope anyway, the damn slam is right behind us! See you on the other side, copper!”

  Vimes nodded at him, examined the crossbow for a moment, made a little adjustment and, satisfied, climbed up the steps.

  Vimes looked at the few people left on the Wonderful Fanny who weren’t pouring water on the backs of steaming oxen or trying to hold the boat in one piece and above water. The shocks were indeed getting closer together, he was sure of it, and surely, once there was a big enough hole, the whole damn dam would give way.

  All the occupants of the cabin except Brassbound, who fell over, jumped together as yet another surge raised the boat.

  There was a sharp intake of breath from Feeney as Vimes went over to the trembling Brassbound, who had clearly realized that he was likely to be the unlucky winner of the first-over-the-side contest. And Feeney actually groaned when Vimes handed the man the recovered crossbow saying, “I told you, Chief Constable, I know a killer when I see one and I need back-up and I’m sure that our Mr. Brassbound is very eager to get himself promptly on to the good side of the law right now, a decision that might well make him look better in court. Am I not right, Mr. Brassbound?”

  The young man nodded fervently.

  Vimes added, “I’d rather have you down here, Feeney. Until I know exactly who is still on this tub, I’d like you to look after the ladies. Right now I’m not sure I know who’s alive and who’s dead.”

  “The Fanny is not a tub, commander,” said Mrs. Sillitoe sharply, “but I’ll forgive you this one time.”

  Vimes gave her a little salute as all but Brassbound jumped and once again the idiot floundered.

  Vimes turned toward the stairs. “It’s going to be Stratford up there with the pilot, isn’t it, Mr. Brassbound?”

  Another, bigger surge this time, and Brassbound landed heavily. He managed to get out, “And he’s heard about you, you know how it is, and he’s determined to get down to the sea before you catch up with him. He’s a killer, sir, a stone killer! Don’t give him a chance, sir, I beg you for all our sakes, and do it quickly for yours!” The air was electric, truly electric. Everything metal shook and jangled. “They say the dam is going to break pretty soon,” said Brassbound.

  “Thank you for that, Mr. Brassbound. You sound like a sensible young man to me and I’ll say so to the authorities.”

  The worried young man’s face was wreathed in smiles as he said, “And you’re the famous Commander Vimes, sir! I’m glad to be at your back.”

  There were a lot of steps up to the wheelhouse. The pilot was king and rode high over the river, monarch of all he surveyed even if, as now, rain hammered at the expensive glass windows as if it found such solid slabs of sky offensive. Vimes stepped inside quickly. It was hardly worth shouting, given that the storm drowned out everything, but you had to be able to say that you’d said it: “Commander Vimes, Ankh-Morpork City Watch! Statute of necessary action!” Which didn’t exist, but he swore to himself that he would damn well get it enacted as soon as he got back, even if he had to call in favors from all over the world. A lawman faced with a dreadful emergency should at least have some kind of figleaf to shove down the throats of the lawyers!

  He could see the back of Mr. Sillitoe’s head with his pilot’s cap. The pilot paid Vimes no attention, but a young man was standing looking at Vimes in knock-kneed, pants-wetting horror. The sword he had been carrying landed heavily on the deck.

  Brassbound was hopping from one foot to the other. “You’d better take care of him right now, commander, he’ll have a trick or two up his sleeve and no mistake!”

  Vimes ignored this and carefully patted the young man down, freeing up one short knife, the sort a river rat might carry. He used it to cut a length of rope and tied the man’s hands together behind him. “Okay, Mr. Stratford, we’re going downstairs. Though if you’d like to dive into the water first I won’t stop you.”

  And then the man spoke for the first time. “I ain’t Stratford, sir,” he said, pleading. “I’m Squeezy McIntyre. That’s Stratford behind you with the crossbow pointing at you, sir.”

  The man formerly known as Brassbound gave a chuckle as Vimes turned. “Oh my, oh my, the great Commander Vimes! I’ll be damned if you ain’t as dumb as a pile of horseshit! You know the eyes of a killer when you see them, do you? Well, I reckon I’ve killed maybe sixteen people, not including goblins, of course, they don’t count.”

  Stratford sighted on Vimes and grinned. “Maybe it’s my boyish features, would you say? What kind of bloody fool cares about the goblins, eh? Oh, they say they can talk, but you know how those little buggers can lie!” The tip of the crossbow drifted back and forward hypnotically in Stratford’s hands. “I’m curious, though. I mean, I don’t like you, and sure as salvation I’m going to shoot you, but do me a favor and tell me what you saw in my eyes, okay?”

  Squeezy took the opportunity to hop desperately down the steps just as Vimes said, with a shrug, “I saw a goblin girl being murdered. What lies did she tell you? I know the eyes of a murderer, Mr. Stratford, oh I surely do, because I’ve looked into eyes like that many times. And if I need reminding, I look into my shaving mirror. Oh, yes, I recognize your eyes and I’m interested to see what you’re going to do next, Mr. Stratford. Though now I come to think about it, maybe it wasn’t sensible of me to give you that crossbow. Maybe I really am stupid, because I’m offering you the opportunity to surrender to me here and now and I’m doing it only once.”

  Stratford stared with his mouth open and then said, “Hell, commander, I’ve got the drop on you, and you want me to surrender to you? Sorry, commander, but I’ll see you again in hell!”

  There was a space in the world for the crossbow to sing when the grinning Stratford pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, the sound that it made approximated to the word thunk. He stared at it.

  “I took the safety pin out and stamped it into the dung,” said Vimes. “You can’t fire it without the pin! Now, I expect you have a couple of knives about your person, and so if you fancy cutting your way out past me, then I’d be happy to accommodate you, although I’ll tell you that firstly you won’t succeed, and secondly, if you manage to get past a boy who grew up on the streets of Ankh-Morpork there’s a man down there with a punch that can fell an elephant, and if you knife him you’ll just make him more annoyed—”

  The surge this time was bigger than ever, and Vimes banged his head on the cabin’s roof before coming down again in front of Stratford and kicking him smartly in the official police officer method and also the groin.

  “Oh, come on, Mr. Stratford, don’t you have a reputation to keep up? Feared killer? You should spend some time in the city, my lad, and I’ll make certain you do.” Stratford fell backward and Vimes continued, “And then you’ll hang, as is right and proper, but don’t worry—Mr. Trooper does a nifty noose and they say it hardly hurts at all. Tell you what, just to get the adrenaline pumping, Mr. Stratford, imagine I’m the goblin girl. She begged for her life, Mr. Stratford, remember that? I do! And so do you. You fell down at the first surge, Mr. Stratford. River rats know what to do. You didn’t, although I must say you’ve covered it very well. Whoops!”

  This was because Stratford had indeed tried his hand with a knife. Vimes twisted his wrist and flung the blade down the stairs just as the glass in the wheelhouse smashed and a branch longer than V
imes plowed across the room, shedding leaves and dragging torrential rain and darkness behind it.

  Both the lamps had gone out and, as it turned out, so had Stratford, hopefully through a shattered window, possibly to his death, but Vimes wasn’t sure. He would have preferred definitely. But there was no time to fret about him, because now came another surge, and water poured in through the glassless windows.

  Vimes jerked open the little gate to the pilot’s deck and found Mr. Sillitoe struggling up out of the pile of storm-washed debris. He was moaning, “I’ve lost count, I’ve lost count!”

  Vimes pulled him upward and helped him into his big chair, where he banged on the arms in frustration. “And now I can’t see a damned thing in all this murk! Can’t count, can’t see, can’t steer! Won’t survive!”

  “I can see, Mr. Sillitoe,” said Vimes. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You can?”

  Vimes stared out at the homicidal river. “There’s a thundering great rock coming up on the left-hand side. Should it be doing that? Looks like there’s a busted landing stage there.”