Men At Arms – Bonus Material
For those interested in some ‘deep cuts’, I’m adding a ‘Bonus Material’ post to complement each of the main articles in the Re-Reading Terry Pratchett series. This time, I’ve got a few reflections on Pratchett’s evolution as a writer; more Pratchett Philosophy; and I pick out some foreshadowings of what’s to come later on in the series.
Convenient Coincidences
Although Men At Arms has a clearer ‘detective story’ feeling than Guards! Guards!, Pratchett still seems a little uneasy with the genre. In Guards! Guards! I criticised the way he used the cliché of ‘million-to-one chances’ somehow always working out, because although he was parodying the way so many films and stories rely on wildly implausible strokes of luck and coincidence, he still does essentially the same thing in Guards! Guards!.
Something similar happens early on in Men At Arms: on page 25, Pratchett provides us with ‘sneak peaks’ of upcoming unlikely coincidences in the story. Once again he seems aware, and rather uncomfortable, that several points in the plot are just that little bit too convenient. Detritus and Cuddy suddenly fall down a hole in the street and promptly stumble on the body of Edward d’Eath. Vimes just happens to find a set of the gonne’s ‘pipes’ (the rifle’s magazine). As in Guards! Guards!, Pratchett makes a joke about it all, saying that ‘in a million universes’, these coincidences didn’t happen, and that without them this would be ‘a very short book’. In doing so, Pratchett invites us to laugh at the parts of the plot that are held together with glue and sellotape, but I’m not sure he wanted it to be this way.
Rather, I get the feeling that Pratchett was aware of, and felt self-conscious about, the fact that these plot points were simply too convenient. According to his assistant and biographer, Rob Wilkins, Pratchett was vehemently against ‘cheating’ in his novels – he had several expert ‘consultants’ to advise on science, folklore, mathematics, and more – because he believed that you have to work twice as hard to make fantasy stories feel real.1 That’s why he hated Doctor Who – because he thought having a Sonic Screwdriver to get you out of every tricky situation was simply cheating.2
In Men At Arms, it seems Pratchett was still getting used to the detective-fiction style of the City Watch novels. In time, he became more accomplished in plotting a whodunnit, but also more comfortable with the largely unavoidable role of convenient coincidence in this kind of story, unveiling them with a flourish rather than with a blush.
Future Echoes
Koom Valley
The Battle of Koom Valley is mentioned several times in this novel, referred to both as the Troll New Year, and as the only recorded battle in history where both sides (dwarfs and trolls) ambushed the other.3 What perhaps began as a throwaway idea clearly continued to gestate in Pratchett’s mind. Twelve years later, he would make the battle’s controversial legacy the central plot of Thud!, the eighth novel in the City Watch series.
Hidden Layers
One of the joys of re-reading these novels are the little moments where you pick up hints of what’s to come. In Men At Arms, Vimes and Carrot wander past the run-down central Post Office, its corroded and haphazardly-spelled sign proclaiming that
NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT CAN STAY THESE MEßENGERS ABOT THIER DUTY4
Here, this is just a throwaway bit of background, but the idea clearly stuck in Pratchett’s mind: a decade later, he would pen a whole novel – Going Postal – about Ankh-Morpork’s chaotic attempts to revitalise this once great institution.
Likewise, Detritus and Cuddy’s ramble through the forgotten underground tunnels and caverns of Ankh-Morpork evidently continued to tantalise Terry’s imagination. In Rob Wilkins’s biography we learn that Pratchett was considering a new novel called Running Water, in which Going Postal’s unwilling hero, Moist von Lipwig, would be charged by the Patrician with building an underground water and sewage system for the growing metropolis. As Wilkins writes, this ‘Grand Undertaking’ would
inevitably involve excavating the city, which would disclose another, older Ankh-Morpork beneath the current one, and another, even older Ankh-Morpork below that, and those excavated Ankh-Morporks would turn out to be not so dead and buried after all.5
I would have loved to read that story; like Pratchett, I’m fascinated by the ways we unconsciously build upon and are haunted by the past, even as we appear to forget it. Sadly, this was one of the many novels which never made it into print due to Pratchett’s early death.
Pratchett Philosophy
As the dust settles on the assassins’ plots to overthrow the Patrician, the private meeting between Carrot and Lord Vetinar gives us another dose of Pratchett Philosophy.
Rumours have long circulated that Carrot is the city’s true king, but with the dossier gone, there’s no longer any hard evidence. As Carrot enters the palace, Vetinari tenses for a power struggle – he knows the rumours as well as anyone – but instead of a fight, he makes an unexpected friend.
Without openly admitting it, both men recognise that Carrot is the city’s true heir, but as they edge carefully around the topic, they discover that they share the same view: that a ruler should serve the city, not the other way around.
In this moment, Vetinari recognises a kindred spirit. Although the Patrician is a truly Machiavellian manipulator for whom empathy is more a tool than an emotion, he and Carrot are both utterly dedicated to the good of city. As Vetinari hints, the word ‘politician’ may very well come from the same root as ‘policeman’ (‘man of the city’).
Carrot doesn’t want to be king, but he agrees to be promoted to Captain. Nevertheless, he refuses to command the Watch because, he says, ‘people should do things because an officer tells them. They shouldn’t do it just because Corporal Carrot says so. Just because Corporal Carrot is … good at being obeyed’.6
With his irresistible charisma, Carrot could command the city, but it’s a toxic long-term strategy. Whether it’s a religion, a dragon, an ideology or a hero, Terry Pratchett’s books always remind us that when we don’t take personal responsibility for our lives and our choices, we degrade ourselves and our humanity.
As Carrot rejects power yet again, he tells Vetinari that
You can’t treat people like puppet dolls. No, sir. Mr Vimes always said a man has got to know his limitations. If there was a king, then the best thing he could do would be to get on with a decent day’s work.7
Throughout the City Watch series, Vimes and his comrades might always ‘save the day’, but Pratchett knew that today’s happy ending is always followed by tomorrow’s prosaic realities. As Vetinari warns,
One day it’s the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no-one’s been taking out the trash.8
Vetinari’s genius, in Pratchett’s view, ‘lies in the realization that everyone craves stability even more than they hunger after justice or truth’.9 But stability doesn’t mean stasis – it means sufficient balance and flexibility to cope with a constantly changing world.
But if we can’t quite manage that level of Zen-like balance, I think Pratchett Philosophy would at least tell us follow Vimes’s advice: whatever else life throws at us, the best we can do is usually to get on with a decent day’s work.
Cover Versions
Once again, Josh Kirby’s cover for Men At Arms has been hacked about in Photoshop for the 2013 reissue. For reasons unknown, Detritus has been completely removed, leaving just Carrot, Angua and Cuddy pelting towards us. Despite their determined expressions, they might be a little lost: the scenery behind them has been cut-and-pasted from the original back cover.
The right-hand side of Kirby’s original painting has simply been lopped off, removing still more of the watchmen; Gaspode the dog has also got the snip, although the Photoshopper didn’t bother to remove the end of his tail, which you can still make out in the lower-right corner.
Once again, I’m at a loss to explain these changes. Another detail worth mentioning is that Carrot’s sword is unashamedly catching the light – ting! – which in Guards! Guards! is precisely what Pratchett said Carrot’s explicitly non-magical sword does not do.
Changing Characters
Death makes a few appearances in this novel (and contrary to what we were told in Guards! Guards!, he’s now definitely turning up in person for everyone). In these pages, he’s experimenting with being more of a ‘people person’ by cracking a few jokes to lighten the mood. He’s not very good at it:
‘KNOCK KNOCK’.
‘Who’s there?’
‘DEATH’.
His haphazard efforts also give us a groaningly perfect pun which he delivers to the lately-murdered spirit of Bjorn Hammerhock: ‘OF COURSE … SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION … YOU’LL BE BJORN AGAIN’. The literal-minded dwarf doesn’t get it.10
This book also introduces Vimes and Lady Sybil’s butler, Willikins. Here, he’s just a lightly-sketched, stuffy stereotype who could scarcely be more different from the immensely resourceful and savvy ex-street fighter he later becomes. Willikins takes a while to develop into the character I came to know and love; we’ll be keeping tabs on him as the series continues.
Rob Wilkins, Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes (London, 2022), pp.290-2.
I’m sure that Rob Wilkins mentioned this in his biography, but for now I’ve misplaced the reference!
MAA, pp.52, 54 fn.
MAA, pp.82-3.
Wilkins, Terry Pratchett, pp.407-8; quote on p.408.
MAA, pp.417-8.
MAA, p.420.
GG, p.406.
Terry Pratchett & Stephen Briggs, The Ultimate Discworld Companion (London, 2021), p.387. The Discworld Companions were compiled by Stephen Briggs, but Pratchett was closely involved in every aspect, so we can say with certainty that this was Terry’s view of the Patrician.
MAA, pp.37; 94.