“You took an oath to uphold the law and defend the citizens without fear or favor, and to protect the innocent. That’s all they put in. Maybe they thought those were the important things. Nothing in there about orders, even from me. You’re an officer of the law, not a soldier of the government.”

“You do the job that is in front of you.”

“The messenger, who was a sub-lieutenant and very nervous, couldn’t find the right words to explain that “unarmed civilian” was stretching a point when it was a two-hundred-pound slaughterhouse man with a long hook in one hand and a flensing knife in the other.”

“‘We live and learn, just like you said.’
‘Some of us even do it the other way around.’”

*Sometimes, admittedly, for a given value of ‘never’.

“They didn’t recognize that the machine had stopped, that the world was ripe for change, that it was time, in fact, to spend more time with their family in case they ended up spending it with their ancestors.”

“- didn’t know when they’d gone too far, didn’t care that they’d made too many enemies, didn’t read the signs, didn’t know when to walk away after embezzling a moderate and acceptable amount of cash.

“It was regrettable how many rulers of the city had been inhumed by the men in black because they didn’t recognize a chance when they saw it,

“But there was no helping some people.

“And they couldn’t kill a man incapable of defending himself (although a man worth more that AM$10,000 a year was considered automatically capable of defending himself or at least of employing people who were).

And they had to give the target a chance.

“An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one—black clothes, hood, boots, and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day sitting in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door?

“There were rules. When you had a Guild of Assassins, there had to be rules that everyone knew and that were never, ever broken.*

“‘Stop the kid ringing the damn bell, will you?’
‘Knock it off, Lance Constable,’ Vimes muttered. The noise had worked, anyway. This little tableau had a silent audience now.“

“‘And, of course, any citizen has the right to bear arms. Bear that in mind, please.’
‘Arms is one thing. Holding weapons in ’em and playing soldiers is another.’l

“Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo.”

“People’d live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work every day, and then some trivial thing would happen and someone would be having a garden fork removed from their ear.”

“To all the fighters for peace”

Sigh.

“If the Creator had said, ‘Let there be light’ in Ankh-Morpork, he’d have got no further because of all the people saying ‘What color?’’’

“‘The Patrician’s a supreme ruler.’
‘But he doesn’t wear a crown or sit on a throne and he doesn’t tell you it’s right that he should rule.’”

“You took an oath to uphold the law and defend the citizens without fear or favor, and to protect the innocent. That’s all they put in. Maybe they thought those were the important things. Nothing in there about orders, even from me. You’re an officer of the law, not a soldier of the government.”

“Being a copper only worked when people let it work. If they refocused and realized you were just another standard idiot with a pennyworth of metal for a badge, you could end up as a smear on the pavement.”

“Who really knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men?
ME.
Who knew what sane men were capable of?
STILL ME, I’M AFRAID.”

“The city doesn’t stop, you see. It’s not like a battlefield. The best place for urban fighting is right out in the countryside, sir, where there’s nothing else in the way.”

“Vimes wondered what was going on. He wondered if anyone out there was taking care of business.”

“‘Who sent yer?’
‘I come from the city,’ said the figure, drawing a thin, silvery sword.
‘Who are yer?’
‘Think of me as…your future.’”

“That was what civilization meant. It meant the city.”

“‘Are we taking the law into our own hands again, Sarge?’
Vimes stared at the entrance to Cable Street, and was aware of the weight of the cigar case in his pocket.
‘Yes, Fred,’ he said. ‘Only this time we’re going to squeeze’.”

Fin.

“Two types of people laugh at the law; those that break it and those that make it.”