Free Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

Mail.”
    “The Post Office,” corrected Vimes. “My granddad said that once you could post a letter there and it’d be delivered within a month, without fail. You didn’t have to give it to a passing dwarf and hope the little bugger wouldn’t eat it before…”
    His voice trailed off.
    “Uh. Sorry. No offense meant.”
    “None taken,” said Carrot cheerfully.
    “It’s not that I’ve got anything against dwarfs. I’ve always said you’d have to look very hard before you’d find a, a better bunch of highly skilled, law-abiding, hard-working—”
    “—little buggers?”
    “Yes. No!”
    They proceeded.
    “That Mrs. Cake,” said Carrot, “definitely a strong-minded woman, eh?”
    “Too true,” said Vimes.
    Something crunched under Carrot’s enormous sandal.
    “More glass,” he said. “It went a long way, didn’t it.”
    “Exploding dragons! What an imagination the girl has.”
    “Woof woof,” said a voice behind them.
    “That damn dog’s been following us,” said Vimes.
    “It’s barking at something on the wall,” said Carrot.
    Gaspode eyed them coldly.
    “Woof woof, bloody whine whine,” he said. “Are you bloody blind or what?”
    It was true that normal people couldn’t hear Gaspode speak, because dogs don’t speak. It’s a well-known fact. It’s well known at the organic level, like a lot of other well-known facts which overrule the observations of the senses. This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no one would ever get anything done. * Besides, almost all dogs don’t talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored.
    However, Gaspode had found he did tend to get heard on a subconscious level. Only the previous day someone had absent-mindedly kicked him into the gutter and had gone a few steps before they suddenly thought: I’m a bastard, what am I?
    “There is something up there,” said Carrot. “Look…something blue, hanging off that gargoyle.”
    “Woof woof, woof! Would you credit it?”
    Vimes stood on Carrot’s shoulders and walked his hand up the wall, but the little blue strip was still out of reach.
    The gargoyle rolled a stony eye toward him.
    “Do you mind?” said Vimes. “It’s hanging on your ear…“
    With a grinding of stone on stone, the gargoyle reached up a hand and unhooked the intrusive material.
    “Thank you.”
    “’on’t ent-on it.”
    Vimes climbed down again.
    “You like gargoyles, don’t you, captain,” said Carrot, as they strolled away.
    “Yep. They may only be a kind of troll but they keep themselves to themselves and seldom go below the first floor and don’t commit crimes anyone ever finds out about. My type of people.”
    He unfolded the strip.
    It was a collar or, at least, what remained of a collar—it was burnt at both ends. The word “Chubby” was just readable through the soot.
    “The devils!” said Vimes. “They did blow up a dragon!”
     
    The most dangerous man in the world should be introduced.
    He has never, in his entire life, harmed a living creature. He has dissected a few, but only after they were dead, * and had marvelled at how well they’d been put together considering it had been done by unskilled labor. For several years he hadn’t moved outside a large, airy room, but this was OK, because he spent most of his time inside his own head in any case. There’s a certain type of person it’s very hard to imprison.
    He had, however, surmised that an hour’s exercise every day was essential for a healthy appetite and proper bowel movements, and was currently sitting on a machine of his own invention.
    It consisted of a saddle above a pair of treadles which turned, by means of a chain, a large wooden wheel currently held off the ground on a metal stand. Another, freewheeling, wooden wheel was positioned in front of the saddle and could be turned by means of a tiller arrangement. He’d fitted the extra wheel and tiller so