Read Online Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online Page B

along the street. Nobby’s normal method of locomotion was a kind of sidle, and the combination of stalking and sidling at the same time created a strange effect, like a crab limping.
    “But, but,” said Carrot, “in this book it says—”
    “I don’t want to know from no book,” growled Nobby.
    Carrot looked utterly crestfallen.
    “But it’s the Law—” he began.
    He was nearly terminally interrupted by an axe that whirred out of a low doorway beside him and bounced off the opposite wall. It was followed by sounds of splintering timber and breaking glass.
    “Hey, Nobby!” said Carrot urgently. “There’s a fight going on!”
    Nobby glanced at the doorway. “O’ course there is,” he said. “It’s a dwarf bar. Worst kind. You keep out of there, kid. Them little buggers like to trip you up and then kick twelve kinds of shit out of you. You come along o’Nobby and he’ll—”
    He grabbed Carrot’s treetrunk arm. It was like trying to tow a building.
    Carrot had gone pale.
    “Dwarfs drinking ? And fighting ?” he said.
    “You bet,” said Nobby. “All the time. And they use the kind of language I wouldn’t even use to my own dear mother. You don’t want to mix it with them, they’re a poisonous bunch of— don’t go in there !”

    No one knows why dwarfs, who at home in the mountains lead quiet, orderly lives, forget it all when they move to the big city. Something comes over even the most blameless iron-ore miner and prompts him to wear chain-mail all the time, carry an ax, change his name to something like Grabthroat Shinkicker and drink himself into surly oblivion.
    It’s probably because they do live such quiet and orderly lives back home. After all, probably the first thing a young dwarf wants to do when he hits the big city after seventy years of working for his father at the bottom of a pit is have a big drink and then hit someone.
    The fight was one of those enjoyable dwarfish fights with about a hundred participants and one hundred and fifty alliances. The screams, oaths and the ringing of axes on iron helmets mingled with the sounds of a drunken group by the fireplace who—another dwarfish custom—were singing about gold.
    Nobby bumped into the back of Carrot, who was watching the scene with horror.
    “Look, it’s like this every night in here,” said Nobby. “Don’t interfere, that’s what the sergeant says. It’s their ethnic folkways, or somethin’. You don’t go messin’ with ethnic folkways.”
    “But, but,” Carrot stuttered, “these are my people . Sort of. It’s shameful, acting like this. What must everyone think?”
    “We think they’re mean little buggers,” said Nobby. “Now, come on !”
    But Carrot had waded into the scuffling mass. He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed something in a language Nobby didn’t understand. Practically any language including his native one would have fitted that description, but in this case it was Dwarfish.
    “Gr’duzk! Gr’duzk! aaK’zt ezem ke bur’k tze tzim?” 1
    The fighting stopped. A hundred bearded faces glared up at Carrot’s stooped figure, their annoyance mingled with surprise.
    A battered tankard bounced off his breastplate. Carrot reached down and picked up a struggling figure, without apparent effort.
    “J’uk, ydtruz-t’rud-eztuza, hudr’zd dezek drez’huk, huzu-kruk’t b’tduz g’ke’k me’ek b’tduz t’ be’tk kce’drutk ke’hkt’d. aaDb’thuk?” 1
    No dwarf had ever heard so many Old Tongue words from the mouth of anyone over four feet high. They were astonished.
    Carrot lowered the offending dwarf to the floor. There were tears in his eyes.
    “You’re dwarfs!” he said. “Dwarfs shouldn’t be acting like this! Look at you all. Aren’t you ashamed?”
    One hundred bone-hard jaws dropped.
    “I mean, look at you!” Carrot shook his head. “Can you imagine what your poor, white-bearded old mother, slaving away back in her little hole, wondering how her son is