This wasn't a story I had ever considered doing, though I suppose with
my propensity for seizing on little quotes to expand upon, it would
have done for me sooner or later. I blame this on StripeDog13, who
suggested it, beta-read it, and encouraged me shamelessly. Many
thanks, Stripe :)

It was an interesting story for me to write, truth be told, probably
because I know from experience that the quote is true: you never notice
how fascinating asphalt is until you're lying on it after being hit by
a car. Or how obsessed you are with your camera until you're more
worried about its post-collision functionality than your own. :grin:
After all, gentle readers, bones heal -- cameras and cigar-cases don't.

If people are interested, I may continue the story for a few more
'episodes', but this can also stand as a one-off. The only way to let
me know is, of course, by review :)

Patterns

He remembered once when he'd been stabbed and would have bled to death
if Sergeant Angua hadn't caught up with him and how, as he lay there,
he'd found himself taking a very intense interest in the pattern of
the carpet. The senses say: we've only got a few minutes, let's record
everything, in every detail...
--The Night Watch
Kruso Sledge wasn't like other murderers.

Most other murderers, anyway.

The vast majority of people who kill, if you exclude Assassins, fall
into one of two categories: People who kill family, and people who kill
by accident. Sad but true.

Vimes had dealt with the first kind. He knew that a person could only
take so many beatings before they lashed back, and when they did, it
was with the desperate anger of those who know that if they don't win
they will die. Usually, they've been afraid for so long that they don't
realize how strong they are. Usually it was a woman with a frying pan
or a son or daughter with a crossbow who'd said enough is enough.

He almost always had to struggle to feel anything but sympathy for
them. He still made an arrest and he still brought them up before the
Patrician for sentencing, but it was tough. It made you tough, too.
Every copper who'd walked a beat knew that.

He dealt more rarely with the second kind, because usually the person
surrendered quietly enough, or botched the cover-up badly. Those were
touchy, too, but neither one was as bad as Sledge's sort.

Kruso Sledge killed for fun and profit, but mostly for fun. Profit was
an added bonus that allowed him to kill for a living, instead of for a
hobby. Up until now, anyhow. Sledge only made one mistake, really. He
killed a copper.

That made his very existence a personal insult to Sam Vimes, and he
acted accordingly. Every resource the Watch could spare went into
finding Sledge, and the Watch, these days, had quite considerable
resources. They'd already been tracking him. Now they were tracking,
tagging, and harassing him.

Vimes lurked in an alleyway outside of the Blue Rat Tavern, one of
Ankh-Morpork's less prestigious drinking establishments. He'd never
favored it, himself; too far off the path between the old Treacle Mine
Road Watch House and his lodgings. But Sledge did, according to a
couple of narkers that Angua had tracked down. Angua took the case
personally; he wasn't sure why. Perhaps the same reason he did. At any
rate, she'd asked to lead the manhunt, which was why she was on the
other side of the street, also watching.

Both of them would have stood out like sore thumbs in the Blue Rat,
Vimes because he didn't drink and Angua because, well, she had the sort
of figure that stood out anywhere. So they were waiting for Sledge to
go in, or come out, or be flushed out by Andre, the head of the
undercover division, and two of his fellows.

Carrot was down at the corner, Ping was watching the back door, and
Swires was on the wing. If they got him at all, they'd get him tonight.
Chasing people was all very well, but it got tiresome after a while.
Over the years, the Watch had learned to wait, to set traps.

Vimes saw a light go on in one of the front rooms above the tavern,
that the owner sometimes rented out. Maybe -- better than maybe -- this
was where Sledge was living.

He saw the light.

He saw the curtains.

He saw the crossbow.

He saw Sledge lean out of the windowsill, and aim it at Angua, who
was looking up -- she smelled him, bigods -- but she couldn't see him
from that angle. She couldn't see him, but he could shoot her...

He ran.

A normal bolt couldn't kill Angua and it wasn't likely that Sledge had
a silver-tipped quarrel; he wasn't the type to think that far ahead.
Sledge was an improviser. So, although every urge in his body was to
run to the aid of a fellow officer, instead he burst into the Blue Rat
and, before anyone could object or even throw a bottle, he darted
through the back room and up the stairs. Andre, halfway through buying
a pint at the bar, paused in mid-purchase.

Chairs scraped. Several large, burly men stood up.

"Wot the 'ell was that?" the barman asked.

"Was what?" Andre inquired politely. He gave the large men a charming
smile, and bolted after his Commander.

He arrived just in time to throw his weight against the door that Vimes
was charging towards. Alone, neither man was very large, and probably
couldn't have done it, but the combined weight pushed it inwards about
a foot.

"Chair under the doorknob," Vimes said. "Get up on the roof, he's got
no other way out except the window -- "

"There's another -- " Andre warned.

"Get on the roof, Andre! When you get there, yell down to Carrot and
Ping, he may have hit Angua. I'm going back down."

Andre scowled, but Vimes was his Commander, and he obeyed.

Vimes, who had not survived thirty years in the Watch by being
impulsive, listened carefully.

He /knew/ there was another floor, he wasn't an idiot. He was hoping
Sledge was taking advantage of it. And he wasn't about to announce in a
thin-walled hallway where he was going.

There was a quiet, almost a non-noise. Don't listen to the pulse in
your ears, don't breathe deeply.

There it was again.

He moved just as silently as the man above him, now attuned enough to
hear the little sounds even above Andre's shouts. The gutter rattled
outside. Yes, Andre, good boy, go down the pipe, let him think he's
safe.

Now what, o great and wise Duke?

He looked up. Sledge was in the hallway up above. You couldn't shoot a
crossbow through six-inch timbers or even through two-inch floorboards,
they just weren't powerful enough. Which meant that, while Sledge
couldn't fire down, Vimes couldn't fire up.

There were men coming up the stairs.

Bugger, bugger, /bugger/.

Well, the hell with it.

He climbed up the second set of stairs, grabbed hold of the last timber
before the roof opened into the next hallway, and swung upwards. At
least that way he'd get his knees broken before his skull.

A crossbow bolt whizzed past. Vimes, for whom the world was a dizzying
selection of hard surfaces to collide with, kicked straight out. All
right. This way is up.

He rolled to his feet and was running before he was fully upright;
another crossbow shot went wide. Sledge was standing at the end of the
hallway, in the doorway of what looked like an unlit store-room. Vimes
hit him full-on, and was rewarded with a sharp pain in his chest that
didn't go away when he rolled and untangled his own limbs from
Sledge's.

Oh bloody hell, he's stabbed me, he thought, with remarkable clarity.
He reached out for Sledge's ankle as the other man got to his feet,
clinging for dear life. Sledge kicked and ran.

Vimes pulled himself up, his breathing suddenly labored, the pain
spreading through his body like fire. His arms wouldn't hold him; he
fell over again, a few inches closer to the window that Sledge had just
gone out of. There was shouting in the distance. Very distant, now...

He slumped onto his side, his face inches from a dusty Auriental carpet
that covered the few square feet of space not filled with old broken
furniture. Might as well wait here as anywhere; didn't sound like they
were enjoying themselves too much out in that hallway.

His hands felt like lead. The pain was fading, remarkably fast, and
Vimes knew what that meant. He tried to look around for the cowl and
scythe, but all he could see was the carpet.

It wasn't like normal carpets; it was woven, rather than hooked. There
were little gold threads running through each strand of red yarn that
went over one, under the next...one little thread snaking through the
whole of the rug, making up barely a fraction of a part of a pattern.
But there were patterns in the thread, weren't there? And patterns in
those patterns.

His head spun. He should get up; he shouldn't panic. Who was panicked?
How could anyone panic when all they were doing was lying on a rug?

"Sir?"

The yarn was red, shot with gold, but the yarn going the other way was
a dirty blue color...except where those too were beginning to turn
red. Why was that?

A thought dominated his mind.

"We get 'im?" he asked. He thought it was quite a clear question, but
there was no answer. Someone shoved him over onto his back, and he
moaned in protest.

"Oh, gods -- BUGGY! GET IGOR! NOW!"

Angua. Angua'd been shot too. That must be why there was all this
blood. "Don't move," she said, and the sound of her kneeling was like a
roar in his ears.

I'm not moving.

I can /feel/ the carpet pattern under my shoulders.

"Sir -- no, don't close your eyes, don't you close your eyes you old
bastard -- "

He groaned again. Rudeness to a superior officer. Angua, of all people.
For shame.

"We get 'im, Angua?" he tried again, thickly.

"Don't talk, sir. The Yard's not very far away, Igor can be here in no
time at all, just don't talk and /don't close your eyes/!" she snapped,
when his eyelids began to droop. He tried to lift a hand. His back
arched stiffly, and something warm ran down his chest. Angua's hands
held him down, firmly.

"You do that again, sir, and I'll bite you. Don't think I won't," she
said. "If it comes to it I will see you undead before I see you die,
so you'd better pray that it doesn't."

I'm not going to /die, nobody's /dying/ Angua, it doesn't even hurt.

There were thumps somewhere off in the world, but the world didn't seem
to matter much anymore.

He woke to pain. Quite a lot of it, really.

Also, an interesting pattern. White. As far as the eye could see. White
swirls. How did they do that? On the ceiling, of all places. That can't
be a comfortable job, putting the swirls in the plaster on the ceiling.
How do they keep them so even?

What's wrong with me?

He recognized the ceiling; it was his ceiling in his room at the Ya --

Except he didn't live at the Yard. He'd moved out. Years ago. Young
Visit had taken his room.

He closed his eyes and tried to think, but thought was tediously
elusive. What had he been doing? Staring in fascination at a carpet.
Then Angua had threatened to bite him. Then the world was a big black
blank.

He turned his head. On the table, the contents of his pockets. Keys, a
few dollars in change, a book he'd picked up from the Street of Cunning
Artificers for Carrot. His badge. His cigar case and the well-worn
presentation pocketwatch that they'd given him for his abortive
retirement, years ago. His eyes traveled over the last two carefully.
If either of them were damaged --

But the watch was chiming an hour; it was probably what had woken him.
The little tune was comforting.

"Good morning, Mithter Vimes."

Vimes lifted his right hand, hesitantly, and held up a finger in the
vague direction of the voice. "Is that Igor?" he asked. His throat
seemed lined with something sticky.

"Yes indeed, thur. Don't try to sit up, you'll pull your stitches. I'll
fetch Lady Thybil, if you'd like."

"Am I still alive?"

"Oh yes, sir."

"Am I going to stay that way?"

"It's a good bet."

"And Angua didn't bite me?"

"No, thur."

"Lots of stitches?"

"Not too many, sir."

"Oh," Vimes said faintly. "In that case, yes. Sybil. Please."

The silence was an almost tangible thing, when Igor left the room. It
was a wrong silence. This was the Yard; people should be shouting and
clanking keys and doing all the rest of the things that contributed to
the normal background buzz of a police station. He wondered if someone
had died.

Then there was a noise like an explosion downstairs, and he winced.
Unconsciousness might have been more attractive.

It was hard to tell when an Igor was smiling, usually, but this time
there was no mistaking it. Carrot gave him a relieved smile back, his
hand convulsively clutching Angua's; Sybil didn't move until Igor'd
actually said the words.

"He'th fine. Awake and talking."

The cheer was deafening.

There were about forty people the canteen, give or take; off-duty
Watchmen, a few on-duty who were blatantly disobeying orders, Carrot
and Angua, Fred and Nobby; Fred's wife and one of his children had come
by with food, and to sit up with Sybil, who refused to leave. Detritus
was in the corner with some trainees who'd been at the Yard when they
brought the Commander back, and who stayed through the night. On Igor's
orders, no-one had been allowed to talk, and all normal Watch business
was being routed through other stations, where they were watching the
clacks nervously for news.

Now, with Igor's words hanging in the air, forty frightened officers
let out all that sound at once.

Igor waved a quieting hand, and Detritus thumped a wall with his giant
fist, silencing everyone instantly. Sybil brushed past the doctor and
up the stairs, while Igor sputtered and lisped his way through an angry
reprimand to the officers below.

She let herself into the infirmary room, hastily vacated by corporal
Ping, who was doubled-up with Visit down the hall. Sam looked like
death warmed over, frozen again, and then kicked around for a while. He
turned his head to see her; up until he did that, she wasn't sure Igor
was actually telling the truth.

"Hi, Sybil," he said slowly. "Just a flesh wound. Be up and about in no
time."

She shook her head. "Flesh wound my foot, Samuel Vimes. You ought to
see a mirror."

"You didn't worry, did you?"

"Of course not," she said, and then, because she thought she might cry,
she sat down on a chair near the bed, and composed herself.

"Tell me what happened. Someone told you, I know, and if I know Igor he
won't tell me anything," said Sam. She waited until she thought she
could speak.

"That horrible man had a knife," she said. "Angua found you in the
store-room with..." she bit her lip. "Angua saved your life, you know.
If she hadn't gotten there in time -- she kept you awake and sent
someone for Igor, and he had them take you back to the Yard because
Scoone Avenue was too far, and then they couldn't move you...Igor had
to do all sorts of things. I don't know what-all. He says you'll be
fine."

"That's good."

"How do you feel?"

He turned back to look at the ceiling. "Angua's healing up, then? She
was shot too."

"Yes, but Sam -- "

"Did we catch him?"

Sybil looked down at her hands. More than anything, this was what Igor
didn't want her to tell him.

"Sort of," she murmured.

"Sort of? You mean we caught a bit of him?" Sam asked. "Or we got close
to catching him?"

"Well, Carrot brought him back, but he let one of the other lads do the
booking..."

"He got away," Sam said dully.

"No...but...Igor's almost certain he'll be all right, in a few days."

He turned his head to look at her, so sharply that he winced. "What?"

"You have to understand, nobody knew if you were even going to live
through the night, and they were scared, Sam. Scared people do stupid
things."

"Oh gods. What did they do to him?"

"Not enough," Sybil said fiercely. "I don't care if you think I'm a
terrible person for saying it. They ought to have killed him. Carrot
and Angua stopped them, or they probably would have."

She saw Sam's face, and stopped, ashamed.

"If it was me last night, and one of mine had been killed, or close
to as makes no difference...I don't blame them. Or you," he added,
touching her arm for emphasis. His hands were so pale. "But it would
have made us no better than him. Worse, because we had him captive."

"That's what Angua said."

"Angua's right."

"She learned it from you."

"I don't know about that. Perhaps. Maybe from Carrot." He rolled,
grunting with pain, to face her. "It's all down to patterns," he said
tiredly. "Little patterns inside patterns."

"Are you all right, Sam?"

"Just tired," he mumbled. "You set the pattern, see? Angua's a good
copper. She follows it. The others'll learn."

"Sam, I don't think..."

"You set the pattern and they follow, if the pattern is right. Good for
Carrot. Good for Angua."

His voice trailed off, sleepily, and his eyes closed. She touched his
cheek, hesitantly, and brushed hair away from his face. She'd have to
find some way to thank Angua. Not that you could, not for something
like this. But maybe that debt had already been paid.

Her Sam was a good teacher. One of the best. He'd taught Angua a lot
about coppering. Angua, in turn, had taught dozens of others, over
time -- like the ones downstairs, who'd stood vigil for their
Commander.

Like a gold thread, running through the fabric of the Watch. Sooner or
later, the thread becomes the pattern.

END

Well, walked out, really. It isn't actually 'moving' if all you've
got is a bundle of clothes and a razor.