The great dragon danced and spun and trod the air over the city. Its colour was moonlight, gleaming off its scales. Sometimes it would twist and glide with deceptive speed over the rooftops for the sheer joy of existing.

And it was all wrong, Vimes thought. Part of him was marvelling at the sheer beauty of the sight, but an insistent, weaselly little group of brain cells from the wrong side of the synapses was scrawling its graffiti on the walls of wonderment.

It's a bloody great lizard, they jeered. Must weigh tons. Nothing that big can fly, not even on beautiful wings. And what is a flying lizard doing with great big scales on its back?

Five hundred feet above him a lance of blue-white flame roared into the sky.

It can't do something like that! It'd burn its own lips off!

Beside him Lady Ramkin stood with her mouth open. Behind her, the little caged dragons yammered and howled.

The great beast turned in the air and swooped over the rooftops. The flame darted out again. Below it, yellow flames sprang up. It was done so quietly and stylishly that it took Vimes several seconds to realise that several buildings had in fact been set on fire.

"Golly!" said Lady Ramkin. "Look! It's using the thermals! That's what the fire is for!" She turned to Vimes, her eyes hopelessly aglow. "Do you realise we're very probably seeing something that no one has seen for centuries?''

"Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!" shouted Vimes.

She wasn't listening to him. "There must be a breeding colony somewhere," she said. "After all this time! Where do you think it lives?"

Vimes didn't know. But he swore to himself that he would find out, and ask it some very serious questions.

"One egg," breathed the breeder. "Just let me get my hands on one egg ..."

Vimes stared at her in genuine astonishment. It dawned on him that he was very probably a flawed character.

Below them, another building exploded into flame.

"How far exactly," he said, speaking very slowly and carefully, as to a child, "did these things fly?"

"They're very territorial animals," murmured her ladyship. "According to legend, they…"

Vimes realized he was in for another dose of dragon lore. "Just give me the facts, m'lady," he said impa­tiently.

"Not very far, really," she said, slightly taken aback.

"Thank you very much, ma'am, you've been very helpful," muttered Vimes, and broke into a run.

Somewhere in the city. There was nothing outside for miles except low fields and swamp. It had to be living somewhere in the city.

His sandals flapped on the cobbles as he hurtled down the streets. Somewhere in the city! Which was totally ridiculous, of course. Totally ridiculous and impossible.

He didn't deserve this. Of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into, he thought, it's flown into mine . . .

...

By the time he reached the river the dragon had van­ished. But a pall of smoke was hanging over the streets and several human bucket chains had been formed to pass lumps of the river to the stricken buildings.[13] The job was considerably hampered by the droves of peo­ple streaming out of the streets, carrying their posses­sions. Most of the city was wood and thatch, and they weren't taking any chances.

In fact the danger was surprisingly small. Mysteri­ously small, when you came to think about it.

Vimes had surreptitiously taken to carrying a note­book these days, and he had noted the damage as if the mere act of writing it down somehow made the world a more understandable place.

Itym: Ae Coache House (belonging to an inoffensive businessman, who'd seen his new carriage go up in flames).

Itym: Ae smalle vegettable shoppe (with pin-point accuracy).

Vimes wondered about that. He'd bought some ap­ples in there once, and there didn't appear to be any­thing about it that a dragon could possibly take offence at.

Still, very considerate of the dragon, he thought as he made his way to the Watch House. When you think of all the timber yards, hayricks, thatched roofs and oil stores it could have hit by chance, it's managed to really frighten everyone without actually harming the city.

Rays of early morning sunlight were piercing the drifts of smoke as he pushed open the door. This was home. Not the bare little room over the candlemaker's shop in Wixon's Alley, where he slept, but this nasty brown room that smelt of unswept chimneys, Sgt Co­lon's pipe, Nobby's mysterious personal problem and, latterly, Carrot's armour polish. It was almost like home.

No one else was there. He wasn't entirely surprised. He clumped up to his office and leaned back in his chair, whose cushion would have been thrown out of its basket in disgust by an incontinent dog, pulled his helmet over his eyes, and tried to think.

No good rushing about. The dragon had vanished in all the smoke and confusion, as suddenly as it had come. Time for rushing about soon enough. The im­portant thing was working out where to rush to ...

He'd been right. Wading bird! But where did you start looking for a bloody great dragon in a city of a million people?

He was aware that his right hand, entirely unbidden, had pulled open the bottom drawer, and three of his fingers, acting on sealed orders from his hindbrain, had lifted out a bottle. It was one of those bottles that emptied themselves. Reason told him that sometimes he must occasionally start one, break the seal, see am­ber liquid glistening all the way up to the neck. It was just that he couldn't remember the sensation. It was as if the bottles arrived two-thirds empty . . .

He stared at the label. It seemed to be Jimkin Bear-hugger's Old Selected Dragon's Blood Whiskey. Cheap and powerful, you could light fires with it, you could clean spoons. You didn't have to drink much of it to be drunk, which was just as well.

It was Nobby who shook him awake with the news that there was a dragon in the city, and also that Sgt Colon had had a nasty turn. Vinies sat and blinked owlishly while the words washed around him. Appar­ently having a fire-breathing lizard focusing interest­edly on one's nether regions from a distance of a few feet can upset the strongest constitution. An experi­ence like that could leave a lasting mark on a person.

Vimes was still digesting this when Carrot turned up with the Librarian swinging along behind him.

"Did you see it? Did you see it?" he said.

"We all saw it," said Vimes.

"I know all about it!" said Carrot triumphantly. "Someone's brought it here with magic. Someone's stolen a book out of the Library and guess what it's called?"

"Can't even begin to," said Vimes weakly.

"It's called The Summoning of Dragons!"

"Oook," confirmed the Librarian.

"Oh? What's it about?" said Vimes. The Librarian rolled his eyes.

"It's about how to summon dragons. By magic!"

"Oook."

"And that's illegal, that is!" said Carrot happily. "Releasing Feral Creatures upon the Streets, contrary to the Wild Animals (Public…"

13

The Guild of Fire Fighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the pre­vious year after many complaints. The point was that, if you bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire. Un­fortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients' houses in groups, making loud comments like "Very inflammable looking place, this" and "Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?"