He wagged his tail nervously. "Just passin" through!" he said in a strangulatedly cheerful voice. "No trouble to anyone!"
There was a definite feeling that the shadows beyond the snowflakes were getting more crowded.
"So, have you had your holidays yet?" he squeaked.
This also did not appear to be well received.
Well, this was it, then. Famous Last Stand. Plucky Dog Defends His Master. What a Good Dog. Shame there"d be no one left to tell anyone...
He barked, "Mine! Mine!" and leapt snarling towards the nearest shape.
A huge paw swatted him out of the air and then pinned him down, spreadeagled, in the snow.
He looked up past white fangs and a long muzzle into eyes that seemed familiar.
"Hmine," growled the wolf. It was Angua.
The coaches slowed to a walk on a road that was rough with potholes under the unbroken snow, every one a wheel-breaking trap in the dark.
Vimes nodded to himself when he saw lights flickering beside the road a few miles into the pass. On either side, old landslides had formed banks of scree, down which the forests had spilled.
He dropped quietly off the back of the coach and vanished into the shadows.
The leading coach stopped at a log which had been dropped across the road. There was some movement, and then the driver swung himself down into the mud and set off at a dead run back down the pass.
Figures moved out of the trees. One of them stopped at the door of the first coach and tried the handle.
For a moment the world held its breath. The figures must have sensed it, because the man was already leaping aside when there was a click and the whole door and its surrounding frame blew outwards in a cloud of splinters. The thing about fires, Vimes had once observed, was that only an idiot got between them and a troll holding a 2,000 lb crossbow. All Hell hadn"t been let loose. It was merely Detritus. But from a few feet away you couldn"t tell the difference.
Another figure reached for the door of the second coach just before Vimes fired out of the darkness and hit his shoulder with a butcher"s sound. Then Inigo dived out through the window, rolled with unclerk-like grace as he hit the ground, rose in front of one of the bandits and brought his hand around, edge first, on the man"s neck.
Vimes had seen this trick before. Usually it just made people angry. Occasionally it managed an incapacitating blow.
He"d never seen it remove a head.
"Everybody stop!"
Sybil was pushed out of the coach. Behind her a man stepped out. He was holding a crossbow.
"Your Grace Vimes!" he shouted. The word bounced back and forth between the cliffs.
"I know you"re here, Your Grace Vimes! And here is your lady! And there are many of us! Come out, Your Grace Vimes!"
Flakes of snow hissed over the fires.
There was a whisper in the air followed by a second smack of steel into muscle. One of the hooded figures collapsed into the mud, clutching at its leg.
Inigo got slowly to his feet. The man holding the crossbow appeared not to notice.
"It is like chess, Your Grace Vimes! We have disarmed the troll and the dwarf! And I have the queen! And if you shoot at me can you be sure I won"t have time to fire?"
Firelight glowed on the twisted trees bordering the road.
Several seconds passed.
Then the sound of Vimes"s crossbow landing in the circle of light was very loud.
"Well done, Your Grace Vimes! And now yourself, if you please!"