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In The Fyres of Struggle (A Discworld Quest)

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[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
[X] It's time to try finding the monks of history. Enough waiting around, he knows vaguely where they are and he can see if he can find one.
 
[X] There's dancing, drinking, and music. He can stay way from the drinking and get drunk on the hilarity of people who think they can dance, but cannot.
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
 
[X] There's dancing, drinking, and music. He can stay way from the drinking and get drunk on the hilarity of people who think they can dance, but cannot.
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
 
[X] There's dancing, drinking, and music. He can stay way from the drinking and get drunk on the hilarity of people who think they can dance, but cannot.
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
 
[X] It's time to try finding the monks of history. Enough waiting around, he knows vaguely where they are and he can see if he can find one.
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
 
[X] It's time to try finding the monks of history. Enough waiting around, he knows vaguely where they are and he can see if he can find one.
[X] There's dancing, drinking, and music. He can stay way from the drinking and get drunk on the hilarity of people who think they can dance, but cannot.
 
[X] There's dancing, drinking, and music. He can stay way from the drinking and get drunk on the hilarity of people who think they can dance, but cannot.
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
 
[X] There's dancing, drinking, and music. He can stay way from the drinking and get drunk on the hilarity of people who think they can dance, but cannot.
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
 
[X] There's dancing, drinking, and music. He can stay way from the drinking and get drunk on the hilarity of people who think they can dance, but cannot.
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
 
[X] Going down to walk on the river and try not to lose a boot.
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
 
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
[X] It's time to try finding the monks of history. Enough waiting around, he knows vaguely where they are and he can see if he can find one.
 
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
[X] It's time to try finding the monks of history. Enough waiting around, he knows vaguely where they are and he can see if he can find one.
 
[X] He wants to go visit the graves that aren't there. It's… he's saved people, he actually has. Reg Shoe isn't even a zombie. The lilacs aren't even a symbol. He wants to see what isn't there.
[X] It's time to try finding the monks of history. Enough waiting around, he knows vaguely where they are and he can see if he can find one.
 
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Morris (May 30th, Part 1)
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    • Morris (May 30th)

    Vimes slept like a log, which is to say he felt like he was covered in moss and used as a scratching post by… bears or something. He was not the kind of man who appreciated the great outdoors, and so he just assumed that bears scratched logs, or peed on them. Something like that.

    He woke up again and again from nightmares, and he didn't last all the way through the night not even under the most optimistic possible definition. But he slept, and it was even for eight hours if you tried to add it all together. He was in the arsehole of a bad night, and it was unusually warm outside, which only made it worse.

    Sam Vimes was very good at sleeping under most circumstances. But that night, it was impossible because his brain was filled with nightmares of what could happen to the city if he went back and what could happen to Sybil if he didn't and his child and… all that he fought for. He wasn't stupid, he knew that he was supposed to be back days and days ago, and that if they couldn't survive without him then Ankh-Morpork was doomed and he was wrong.

    There weren't supposed to be any indispensable men.

    At the same time…

    It didn't take that much cynicism to realize that at this point it was all still up in the air. Nothing was decided and anyone's actions could tip the scale one way or another while it was all still being built.

    It was thrilling, it was exhausting. He wasn't going to be able to do anything about it, and imagining being away from his wife any longer was like the feeling of three mugs of coffee on an empty stomach, that acid feeling in his guts.

    But he knew he could survive that.

    Sam Vimes could survive anything, as long as he understood that at the other end of it was justice and the people he'd chosen to care about.

    But… he'd had to have signs, had to have indications and reminders that the other world existed. That it was still there for him.

    Without that, then what was all of this for?

    He was not a savior, and the people of Ankh Morpork were nasty, suspicious, clever-stupid people who were all individuals unless he told them that they were, at which point perhaps at the rate things were going they'd chant it right back at him in unison.
    He was not Keel.

    There was no such thing as "the people" but there were a lot of different people who idolized the John Keel they thought they knew.

    He'd known the real John Keel, and neither he nor Vimes wanted to be a King, or Tyrant, or Patrician… and Vimes knew he could no longer be a Lord Protector.

    His ancestor, had he known what he was getting into? He'd done what needed to be done, but that wasn't the same as what he should have done. Could he have survived if he'd acted differently? Could he and his allies have been harsher or kinder, cleverer or dumber and it somehow paid off. (And yes, Vimes' experience was that fools had a certain kind of luck on their side.)

    It was not worth thinking about. Keel had been a good copper, an honest man who knew his limits and had been in Vimes' life for less than a week.

    Yet he would have become a very bad cop if he had not met Keel. Known him. Almost certainly, Vimes would have been bought and sold sooner or later if it wasn't for Keel. (1)

    But now in this world, everyone would know him as Keel… except for Vetinari, and as far as it went for people he could trust, Vetinari was very far down on the list. In fact, he wasn't on the list at all.

    Havelock Vetinari…

    Another person Vimes would not be sad to say goodbye to, if only he could leave. Surely he had done enough? Surely he had done more than most men had.

    He'd changed a lot in the past few days, had been shaken up and poured out onto the concrete to feel through his boots what alley he'd been dumped in.

    Ankh Morpork had changed too. But he was pretty sure he'd see just how much today.

    *******

    Sam Vimes crawled out of the bed, washed his face, clumsily shaved, and then plunged headlong into a new day. He had to look over the duty roster and approve it, he had to try to stay just barely ahead of a little bit of paperwork, and then he needed to find a way to excuse himself.

    He also had one last unplanned stop.

    Snouty was half-asleep at the guard post, and startled awake as Vimes allowed his steps to be a little bit louder. "What…? Yes, sure."

    "How is Carcer doing?" Vimes asked.

    "He's… he's real quiet sir, doesn't cause anyone any trouble the last day," Snouty said with a congested sniff.

    "Right. Please step away, I need to go talk to him."

    Carcer was seated on the bed, staring at a wall. "How did you do it, Duke?" Carcer asked with a funny little laugh. "How did Sam Vimes, Duke and Law and Order type overthrow the nobility and break all the laws? Hehe, you know, Vetinari came down here and when I tried to talk to him, he just said 'Shut up, I'm trying to see the little man who started this big war.'"

    Carcer sounded somewhere between outraged and amused.

    "It does sound like Vetinari, doesn't it?" Vimes asked, looking at him. "Within a day or two you're going to be tried. We all know the sentence--"

    "Kangaroo--"

    "Are you really still trying this? You killed people because it was fun. I'm not a soldier, and I don't like killing, but people like you should be the reason hangmen still have a job, rather than poor sods who actually did just steal a loaf of bread." There were certain people who had done more than enough to get the hangman's knot, even if they were rather fewer than the number who received it, and didn't include the worst of the lot. That was Vimes opinion and nothing about the last week had really changed it.

    "Like you're one to talk, Mr. Sam Vimes. Duke. How many people did you kill. All of this. I would do it again, because it's fun, but regular people unlike you and me, they don't enjoy destroying things. Hehe, Duke, it turns out we're the real monsters."

    "Bullshit," Vimes said.

    "What, you can't see it Duke? Normal people, they just eat their gruel, but you dump it down someone's shirt…"

    "Bullshit," Vimes repeated, as Carcer eyed him with a wild sort of disgust.

    "How can you just say--"

    "Bullshit," Vimes said once more.

    "You can't just keep on saying--"

    "Bullshit."

    "--Vimes," Carcer insisted, his voice taking on the whine of a child denied a treat. "Say something else."

    "No." Sam Vimes looked at this man, this wheedling, pathetic monster that wanted his last act to be winning a verbal spar and 'proving' Sam no better than him.

    Let it never be said that Sam Vimes was not petty as well.

    He was enjoying the outrage on Carcer's face just as well as Carcer would have sprung upon Vimes' giving a spluttering, desperate bit of apologetics for the violence that had resulted. As if he had caused it, as if it was not already lurking there in the swords of the soldiers and the chaos of the last few weeks.

    The beast lurks in him, but then… perhaps it is in everyone.

    Carcer, though, he was all beast, all urges and desires and the primal, scheming mind that wasn't stupid. Prijmal wasn't primitive… but neither was it smart either.

    Vimes thoughts were interrupted by a mop in the corner tipping over.

    Vimes hadn't even looked, to be honest, and now that he looked… oh.

    A very, very wide-eyed and confused Nobby Nobbs was cowering behind it, listening in.

    "Ahaha, Duke!" Carcer said. "The look on your face."

    "Nobby, come here," Sam Vimes said.

    The boy scurried and sidled over.

    "Would you look to go with me and see the dances and parades?" Sam's voice made it very clear this was a bribe.

    "Gee, really? Wait, you mean like, if I heard nothing about you bein' some foreign Duke also named Vimes?" Nobby asked.

    "...foreign Duke," Carcer muttered.

    "Yes."

    "Then I ain't heard nothin'!"

    Carcer sagged, defeated in the face of the sheer and unrelenting greed in human (?) form that was Nobby Nobbes even as a child.

    *******

    There were so many celebrations in Ankh Morpork that day that it was impossible to see all of them. Every one-dollar little organization put on its own pageant. People wove baskets with revolutionary messages like "Gutters for Everyone" and "No More Nobles" and handed them out for a very small and quite nominal fee… because of course they hoped to sell them in greater numbers on later days and wanted to be sure that the customer knew the product they'd be buying in the future.

    But there was something to it, this outburst of enthusiasm. But Vimes did not know enough until he'd finally gone the one place he'd least wanted to visit. The one he knew he'd have to see, in the same way a small child knows that if they keep on eating candy they'll have to be a dentist.

    In Vimes' experience nothing more made one an iconoclast dedicated to destroying the past then seeing traditional Ankh-Morporkean folk dances. See a Morris dance once, and you declare ourself not a Morporkian. Watch a clag dance and you wished that you could stomp in with boots to break it up.

    And yet. The Nobby he knew had loved them, had had a bizarre side of him where he re-enacted the past and did folk dances in between being Nobby Nobbs.

    The boy was fascinated too. Staring at everything with awe. "D'ya think I could be like that?"

    Silly, mired in old traditions, and not a very good dancer? "Yes, of course you could."

    He stopped paying attention for a little while, distracted as he was by Nobby's reactions. They moved into plays and storytelling with strange folk dances from the past. But he didn't even really notice it.

    "--Vimes!"

    Sam Vimes blinked, confused, and then looked out at the gathered group.

    He was at the side of the street, along with hundreds of others, and standing in front of the curtain laid out in this bit of street, this makeshift theater, was a handsome, dark-haired young man with a dashing sword and an upturned chin.

    "Suffer-Not-Justice "Stoneface" Vimes was the Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch," a loud, booming man who acted as the narrator said. "When a corrupt King taxed the people, when he did horrific things to women, children, and animals that cannot be spoken of in polite company, and when he ordered massacres of the innocent… This Commander of the Watch acted. He beheaded the monarch and ended the monarchy, and dreamed of the day that Ankh-Morpork would become a Republic. He died just months later, and yet now a new Commander of the Watch has taken up his mantle, has worked with the people to create a new and better--"

    It wasn't accurate. Not Stoneface, who made Sam look handsome, and not all of the story and certainly not the bizarre dance they gave him as crowds and crowds of "the people" dressed in mock-ups of working garb (aprons and gowns and props such as pitchforks and butcher's knives) to dance the "Dance of The Popular Republic" or whatever it was.

    It was all a bunch of lies, really. And yet.

    He tried to be cynical. If a King had won they would be doing just as much lying about the last King (who truly was a corruptor of children and a man given to abuse and massacre) as had been done about Stoneface (a hard but fair man that at different moments leaned hard or fair and died cursing his executioners for fools and ninnies). All of this would be different and the masses would cheer differently in a year if this all failed.

    They were not transformed, they were not suddenly New Men and Women, forged by the fires of revolution.

    This was the truth. But it didn't feel like the Truth.

    It felt as if something had begun to change, in the act of revolting. It might change back.

    In a hundred years they would all be dead, and perhaps this dream of a Republic would be dead with them. But here and now, they were alive, and they were trying something new.

    It was enough to make Vimes do something he didn't like to do: hope.

    ******

    A/N: The opinion of Vimes on Morris dances are not my own, because they honestly looked kinda charming to me. But it felt to me as if Sam Vimes was the kind of person who would absolutely hate it.

    To be concluded…
     
  • Threadmarks
    • The Laurent said:
    A/N: The opinion of Vimes on Morris dances are not my own, because they honestly looked kinda charming to me. But it felt to me as if Sam Vimes was the kind of person who would absolutely hate it.
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    It depends on what colour paint the Morrismen had available at the time. Mostly charming, sometimes very not so.
     
    Empty Graves
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    • Empty Graves


    The cemetery of Small Gods was the kind of place that even the most irreligious hero of this war, provided they were on the right side, would not be buried in. It was a place for the chronically uncertain, the kind of people who were neither rich nor particularly pious and devout. It was not a hero's grave.

    It was where policemen went, and more than a few soldiers. It was where the small and the forgotten congregated for a time, until they were dug up and interred in the catacombs, their bones to mix forever with the bones of hundreds and thousands of others.

    When he died, Sam Vimes expected he would try to get buried here despite everything. But he knew that as a Duke he never would have been. There were wishes that were respected, and there were wishes that never were.

    Sam Vimes did not meet large crowds of mourners. Death for the moment was happening as usual for a place like this. There was a proposal going around to take over the noble graveyards and make them "graveyards for revolutionary martyrs." Vimes didn't know what he thought about that. So he didn't think about them. As he walked through the small, musty graveyard he kept on expecting to smell lilacs. But he didn't smell them. The lilacs were not in bloom, and in this world nobody associated the lilacs with a fight that did not happen. Nobody would wear the lilac and think of the dead.

    It was an oddly sour thought, despite the fact that the reason why was not just positive but absolutely something that should have filled him with hope.

    Nobody was dead.

    No, that wasn't true. Some Watchmen had died anyways. Did he save more people than he'd killed? He wasn't even sure there. But the names on the list were no longer there. There was no dead Reg Shoe, Ned Coates… where was Coates, anyways? Damn, he'd have to look for the man.

    Sam Vimes walked up the hill, frowning, and stood in a blank space. A patch of earth that hadn't been dug up, that no doubt within the next few months, maybe a year at most, would become the site of different graves.

    The world would move on from something that didn't happen. They'd moved on from what had happened so easily, hadn't they?

    They'd had a new Patrician and everything was back to normal again. There was no cause for complaint, no reason to remember the dead for long.

    It would be a little different this time, but only for the right kinds of dead. He shook his head and fumbled for a cigar.

    Still, he kept on looking at that absence. John Keel was still dead, though. Dead and unmourned and his name taken. He hoped he'd done a good job with the name, but he'd never--

    He turned as he heard steps behind him, and there someone familiar was. Lu Tze was still the same small monk as before. It was as if nothing had changed.

    "Oh, there you are."

    "It's good to see you too, Vimes," Lu Tze said. "I was thinking you might be here."

    "Shouldn't you know?" Vimes demanded.

    "I should. But a lot of things should be done, eh? But things have changed, and I'm still not completely sure about how," Lut Tze said. "This timeline should be impossible, we can't just keep on spinning it out forever. But it's working on its own: against all the rules, hm?" Lu Tze shook his head, "That's the thing about the world. Doesn't really fit the rules."

    "What do you mean?"

    "It's continuing on its own. All we have to do is just tie it in the right sort of knot at the right end… and then it should work out. We're supposed to see that History happens correctly… but it seems there's no correct anymore. I've met five of myselves and eight yous before I finally found the right one."

    Sam Vimes did not care. He was pretty sure that whatever was happening truly was odd. He was pretty sure it was important. But he had a wife and kids. "Can you take me back to my family, then? Or forward, or?"

    "Almost certainly," Lu Tze said rather baldly. "But not yet… unless you want it to be tied off the wrong way and this whole timeline to collapse and everyone in it to just… never have existed." He gestured broadly. "Which--"

    "I can't do that," Sam said, looking down at where the lack of graves was.

    "I could tell you that if they never existed, there's no suffering and no triumph to go back to. But…"

    "So what do I have to do to leave, then?" Vimes asked.

    "Threats are coming for the Republic. They might destroy it, and in most timelines they do. Whether they do or not, your guess is right, they'll call it the Grune Republic. And once it's clear that it'll survive, and without you… then Keel can just disappear, or die, or even be replaced by some other Keel," Lu Tze said. "But I know that's not what you want. You want something concrete…"

    Sam Vimes missed Sybil more than he could know. Even though he didn't want to… want these people to all die, or never exist in this place. He wanted to be with her, and his child whoever it was.

    "I can send a message or two, if you want, to come when you disappeared up in that storm," Lu Tze said. "Something vague… but it shouldn't do as much as it normally would. The universe is coming undone, and we have only guesses why. But it seems in every universe, there's need for sweepers, and needs for History Monks… and needs for people like you, Sam Vimes."

    "Of course there is," Vimes said. "Someone has to step up. I guess… it might as well be me." His hand was shaking, though, but he knew that this was a sort of bet. Could he make this work, could he save this timeline and then return to his own?

    "So that's a yes?"

    "Yes, of course it is," Vimes said, then turned to point at the ground. "You see those graves?"

    "No, I don't," Lu Tze said.

    "Exactly. And, and if there's a way back at the end of all of this I can teach Vimes to proceed, and… figure all of that out." Sam wasn't sure at all, but he knew what he had to do.

    "A good attitude, Sam Vimes," Lu Tze said.

    Sam turned to say more, but when he did, the little old monk was gone.

    The Grune Republic, huh?

    Now to make sure it survived.

    He left, the light of the sun still bright in the sky, and the day still fresh. He needed to catch back up with Nobby before he stole anything, and search for Fred. Probably eating something somewhere. It was time, he thought, to figure out what came next. The fires had burned high, but stilll they needed stoking, and the world needed tempering, one way or another.

    TO BE CONTINUED

    SOMEDAY

    IN

    THE GRUNE REPUBLIC​
     
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    • The Laurent said:
    THE GRUNE REPUBLIC
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    Why Grune republic? I think I'm missing something.

    The Laurent said:
    "I can't say I do," Vimes said, as he continued to smoke his cigar. "At the moment I just want to see us get through to Grune. The way I see it, they'll say we're doomed to fail and so farmers shouldn't send their food. And then they'll say we're the Grune Republic and won't last the summer, and then who knows what they'll say next. But we have to actually get there. So no, I haven't given it one thought. And even if I did: I'm a city man. I don't know the first thing about the countryside. You'll have to ask someone else."
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    Ah, that's what I missed.
     
    Last edited:
    Ending a story of a Discworld revolution on the 25th of May. I suppose it was destined.

    Was this chapter delayed or finished more quickly so it would land on the 'right' day?
     
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