Discworld - Ankh-Morpork's Five Unluckiest Assassins
[Originally written for the prompt "Five of the more amusing things that happened to Assassins sent for Sam Vimes."]
1. Usually they came when he was at home. More straightforward, more 'honorable', less chance of hurting outsiders. And, well, even Assassins didn't have enough overblown pride to try to attack someone in Psudopolis Yard. But Vimes knew that someday, some snobby newcomer, someone from the top of the pile, recently graduated from the top of the class, would give it a try. And when they finally did, he was ready.
It was amazing how far a loose board in the privy ceiling and a plank of nails in the attic could still get you. Some people never learn.
2. He was an old Assassin, but a good one (there was no such thing as a old, bad Assassin, for obvious reasons), and he had seen the job that had been handed down to him as a retirement present. A way to go out of the business with a bang.
He hadn’t meant it literally at the time, but neither had he possessed Vimes’ creativity when it came to uses for firecrackers. He had been lucky that he had gotten away with only his clothes singed and his hair burnt off, really.
3. They had started calling him Posh Willy, the scummy band of Ankh-Morpork’s worst beggars who lived under the city’s bridges, and then Posh Hat Willy when he had reacted so strongly to Foul Ole Ron chewing a hole in his fancy black top hat on a particularly unsuccessful day. They couldn’t figure out who he was, or where he’d come from, and whenever they had asked he had babbled some nonsense-sounding story about assassins, and a bet, and the Commander of the City Watch, that not even the Duck Man could make out what that was all about. But as sanity was hardly a perquisite for the little band, they took a fondness to the funny little man in the black suit, who hid from shadows and yelped at the sound of bells, and was always very careful to check under all the rocks at the river’s edge in search of hidden traps.
4. There was a small bit of irony, the Assassin thought, to doing away with the Commander with the very weapon that he so hated. He was comfortably up in a tree, the contraption resting at the perfect angle to sail through the window that was innocently propped open to let the warm summer air in, and into the heart of the Duke of Ankh. He was talking to a lady-watchman, but her back would be turning in a moment, and then the business would be done, straightforward and clean, and what was this business everyone talked about at the guild with this being such a difficult task?
He must have blinked, though, because suddenly the lady-watchman had disappeared, and then there was a growl from directly below him. A dog – no, a wolf - glared up at him from the base of the tree, eyes gleaming and teeth bared, and he was startled enough to allow the spring-gonne to fall to the ground.
The next morning the Duke strolled out into his yard to find an assassin in a tree and a familiar wolf still sleeping contentedly under it. “All right, sergeant, I think that’s enough,” he said wryly, though who he could be talking to the assassin did not know. “Thanks for the help. You’ve earned yourself a day off.” And then, remarkably, the wolf had trotted off.
He was about to let out the breath he had been holding half the night when the Commander had looked up and grinned. “Good morning, sir. Hope you slept well? Willikins? Get this man some breakfast, will you?”
“And a ladder, your grace?” came a call from inside the house.
“Nah, he got up there. He can get down himself.”
And he had tried, oh he had, but every time he had made a move to climb down, he could have sworn he saw those yellow eyes still staring out at him from the shadows.
5. The explosion was loud enough to shake his coffee cup where Vimes sat eating breakfast, but he merely sighed, not even bothering to lift his head from the food. “Willikins?”
The butler appeared immediately, as he always did. “Yes, sir?”
“Oh, damn it all, when will they learn not to come the dragon pens? It makes such a bloody mess. Go see what’s left of them, will you?”