Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment (22 page)

 
 
  
‘He is amazing!’ said de Worde, as the cart rocked back down through the trees. ‘I know
the clacks is against your religion, but he seems to understand all about it.’
‘Like I said, sir, he assesses stuff,’ said Jackrum, beaming. ‘Mind like a razor.’
‘He was talking about clacks algorithms that the companies are only just now
investigating,’ said de Worde. ‘That department he was talking about—’
‘Ah, I can see nothing gets past you, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Very hush-hush. Can’t talk about
it.’
‘To be frank, sergeant, I’d always assumed that Borogravia was, well . . . backward.’
Jackrum’s smile was waxy and bright. ‘If we seem to be a long way back, sir, it’s only so’s
we can get a good run-up.’
‘You know, sergeant, it’s a great shame to see a mind like that wasted,’ said de Worde, as
the cart lurched in a rut. ‘This is not an age of heroes and famous last stands and death-or-
glory charges. Do your men a favour and try to tell him that, will you?’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘Here is your road, sir. Where will you be
heading now?’
‘To the Kneck valley, sergeant. This is a good story, sergeant. Thank you. Allow me to
shake you by the hand.’
‘Glad to hear you think that, sir,’ said Jackrum, extending his hand. Polly heard the faint
clink of coins in their passage from palm to palm. De Worde took the reins.
‘But I must tell you, sergeant, that we’ll probably send off our stuff by pigeon within the
hour,’ he said. ‘We will have to say you have prisoners.’
‘Don’t worry about that, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘By the time their mates come out here to
rescue those gallopers, we’ll be halfway back to the mountains. Our mountains.’
They parted. Jackrum watched them out of sight, and turned to Polly.
‘Him with his airs and graces,’ he said. ‘Did you see that? He insulted me by giving me a
tip!’ He glanced at his palm. ‘Hmm, five Morpork dollars? Well, at least he’s a man who
knows how to insult you handsomely,’ he added, and the coins disappeared into his jacket
with remarkable speed.
‘I think he wants to help us, sarge,’ said Polly.
Jackrum ignored that. ‘I hate bloody Ankh-Morpork,’ he said. ‘Who’re they to tell us what
to do? Who cares what they think?’
‘Do you think we can really join up with deserters, sarge?’
‘Nope. They deserted once, what’s to stop ‘em a second time? They spat on the Duchess
when they deserted, they can’t kiss and make up now. You get one kiss, that’s all.’
‘But Lieutenant Blouse—’
‘The rupert should stick to sums. He thinks he’s a soldier. Never walked on a battlefield in
his life. All that rubbish he gave your man was death-or-glory stuff. And I’ll tell you, Perks,
I’ve seen Death more often than I care to remember, but I’ve never clapped eyes on Glory.
I’m all for sending the fools to look for us where we ain’t, though.’
‘He’s not my man, sarge,’ said Polly.

 
 
  
‘Yeah, well, you’re at home with the writin’ and readin’,’ grumbled Jackrum. ‘You can’t
trust the people who do that stuff. They mess around with the world, and it turns out
everything you know is wrong.’
They reached the gully again. The squad had come back from their various hiding places,
and most were clustered around one of the newspapers. For the first time, Polly saw the
Picture.
It was actually quite good, especially of Shufti and Wazzer. She was mostly hidden by the
bulk of Jackrum. But you could see the sullen cavalrymen behind them, and their expressions
were a picture in themselves.
‘It’s a good one of Tonker,’ said Igorina, who didn’t lisp so much when there were no
officers to hear.
‘Do you think having a picture like this is an Abomination in the Eyes of Nuggan?’ said
Shufti nervously.
‘Probably,’ said Polly absent-mindedly. ‘Most things are.’ She ran her eye down the text
next to the picture. It was full of phrases like ‘plucky farm boys’ and ‘humiliation of some of
Zlobenia’s best troops’ and ‘sting in the tail’. She could see why it had caused trouble.
She rustled through the other pages. They were crammed with strange stories about places
she’d never heard of, and pictures of people she didn’t recognize. But one page was a mass of
grey text, under a line of much bigger printing which read:
Why This Mad State Must Be Stopped
Bewildered, her eye picked up phrases from the sea of letters: ‘disgraceful invasions of
neighbouring states’, ‘deluded worshippers of a mad god’, ‘a strutting bully’, ‘outrage after
outrage’, ‘flying in the face of international opinion’ . . .
‘Don’t you lads read that rubbish, you don’t know where it’s been,’ said Sergeant Jackrum
jovially, arriving behind them. ‘It’ll all be lies. We are leaving right— Corporal Maladict!’
Maladict, emerging from the trees, gave a lazy salute. He was still wearing his blanket.
‘What are you doing out of uniform?’
‘I’m in uniform underneath, sarge. We don’t want to be seen, right? Like this, we become
part of the jungle.’
‘It’s a forest, corporal! And without bloody uniforms, how the hell will we know our
friends from our enemies?’
Maladict lit a cigarette before he replied. ‘The way I see it, sarge,’ he said, ‘the enemy is
everyone but us.’
‘Just one moment, sergeant,’ said Blouse, who had looked up from a newspaper and had
been watching the apparition with considerable interest. ‘There are precedents in antiquity,
you know. General Song Sung Lo moved his army disguised as a field of sunflowers, and
General Tacticus once commanded a battalion to dress as spruces.’
‘Sunflowers?’ said Jackrum, his voice oozing with disdain.
‘Both actions were successful, sergeant.’

 
 
  
‘No uniforms? No badges? No stripes, sir?’
‘Possibly you could be an extra large bloom?’ said Blouse, and his face betrayed no hint of
amusement. ‘And you have surely carried out actions at night, when all markings are
invisible ?’
‘Yessir, but night is night, sir, while sunflowers is . . . is sunflowers, sir! I’ve worn this
uniform for more’n fift— all my life, sir, and sneaking around without a uniform is
downright dishonourable! It’s for spies, sir!’ Jackrum’s face had gone beyond red into
crimson, and Polly was amazed to see tears in the corners of his eyes.
‘How can we be spies, sergeant, in our own country?’ said Blouse calmly.
‘The el-tee’s got a point, sarge,’ said Maladict.
Jackrum turned like a bull at bay, and then to Polly’s amazement he sagged. But she wasn’t
amazed for long. She knew the man. She didn’t know why, but there was something about
Jackrum that she could read. It was in the eyes. He could lie with eyes as honest and tranquil
as those of an angel. And if he appeared to be backing away, it was indeed only to get a run-
up later on.
‘All right, all right,’ the sergeant said. ‘Upon my oath, I am not a man to disobey orders.’
And the eyes twinkled.
‘Well done, sergeant,’ said Blouse.
Jackrum pulled himself together. ‘I don’t want to be a sunflower, though,’ he said.
‘Happily there are only fir trees in this area, sergeant.’
‘Point well made, sir.’ Jackrum turned to the awed squad. ‘All right, Last Detail,’ he
bellowed. ‘You heard the man! Spruce up!’
It was an hour later. As far as Polly could tell, they’d started out for the mountains but had
travelled in a wide semi-circle so that they ended up facing back the way they had come, but
a few miles away. Was Blouse leading, or had he left it to Jackrum?
Neither man was complaining.
The lieutenant called a halt in a thicket of birch, thus doubling the size of the thicket. You
could say that the camouflage effects were effective, because bright red and white shows up
against greens and greys. Beyond that, though, language tended to run out.
Jade had scraped off her paint, and was green and grey anyway. Igorina looked like a
walking brush. Wazzer quivered like an aspen all the time, so her leaves rustled permanently.
The others had made more or less reasonable attempts, and Polly was pretty proud of her own
efforts. Jackrum was about as tree-like as a big red rubber ball; Polly suspected that he’d
surreptitiously shined up his brasswork, too. Every tree held a mug of tea in limb or hand.
After all, they’d stopped for five minutes.
‘Men,’ said Blouse, as if he’d only just reached that conclusion. ‘You may have gathered
that we are heading back towards the mountains to raise a deserters’ army there. This story is,
in fact, a ruse for the benefit of Mr de Worde!’ He paused, as if expecting some reaction.
They stared at him. He went on: ‘We are, in fact, continuing our journey to the Kneck valley.
This is the last thing the enemy will be expecting.’
Polly glanced at the sergeant. He was grinning.

 
 
  
‘It is an established fact that a small, light force can get into places that a battalion cannot
penetrate,’ Blouse went on. ‘Men, we will be that force! Is that not right, Sergeant Jackrum?’
‘Yessir!’
‘We will come down like a hammer on those forces smaller than us,’ said Blouse happily.
‘Yessir!’
‘And from those that outnumber us, we will merge silently into the forest—’
‘Yessir!’
‘We will slip past their sentries—’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Jackrum.
‘—and take Kneck Keep from under their noses!’
Jackrum’s tea sprayed across the clearing.
‘I dare say our enemy feels impregnable just because he commands a heavily armed fort on
a rocky crag with walls a hundred feet high and twenty feet thick,’ Blouse continued, as if
half the trees weren’t now dripping tea. ‘But he is in for a surprise!’
‘You all right, sarge?’ whispered Polly. Jackrum was making strange little noises in his
throat.
‘Does anyone have any questions?’ said Blouse.
Igorina raised a branch. ‘How will we get in, sir?’ she said.
‘Ah. Good question,’ said Blouse. ‘And all will become apparent in due time.’
‘Aerial cavalry,’ said Maladict.
‘Pardon, corporal?’
‘Flying machines, sir!’ said Maladict. ‘They won’t know where to expect us. We touch
down in a handy LZ, take them out, and then dust off.’
Blouse’s clear brow wrinkled a little. ‘Flying machines?’ he said.
‘I saw a picture of one by someone called Leonard of Quirm. A sort of . . . flying windmill.
It’s just like a big screw up in the sky—’
‘I don’t think we need one of those, although the advice is welcomed,’ said Blouse.
‘Not when we’ve got a big screw-up down here, sir!’ Jackrum managed. ‘Sir, this is just a
bunch of recruits, sir! All that stuff about honour and freedom and that, that was just for the
writer man, right? Good idea, sir! Yeah, let’s get to the Kneck valley, and let’s sneak in and
join the rest of the lads. That’s where we ought to be, sir. You can’t be serious about taking
the keep, sir! I wouldn’t try that with a thousand men.’
‘I might try it with half a dozen, sergeant.’
Jackrum’s eyes bulged. ‘Really, sir? What’ll Private Goom do? Tremble at them? Young
Igor will stitch ‘em up, will he? Private Halter will give ‘em a nasty look? They’re promising
lads, sir, but they’re not men.’
‘General Tacticus said the fate of a battle may depend upon the actions of one man in the
right place, sergeant,’ said Blouse calmly.

 
 
  
‘And having a lot more soldiers than the other bugger, sir,’ Jackrum insisted. ‘Sir, we
should get to the rest of the army. Maybe it’s trapped, maybe it isn’t. All that stuff about them
not wanting to slaughter us, sir, that makes no sense. The idea is to win, sir. If the rest of ‘em
have stopped attacking, it’s because they’re frightened of us. We should be down there.
That’s the place for young recruits, sir, where they can learn. The enemy is looking for ‘em,
sir!’
‘If General Froc is among those captured, the keep will be where he is held,’ said Blouse.
‘I believe he was the first officer you served under as sergeant, am I right?’
Jackrum hesitated. ‘That’s right, sir,’ he said eventually. ‘And he was the dumbest
lieutenant I’ve ever met, bar one.’
‘I am positive there is a secret entrance into the keep, sergeant.’
Polly’s memory nudged her. If Paul was alive, he was in the keep. She caught Shufti’s eye.
The girl nodded. She’d been thinking along the same lines. She didn’t talk much about her . .
. fiance, and Polly wondered how official the arrangement was.
‘Permission to speak, sarge?’ she said.
‘Okay, Perks.’
‘I’d like to try to find a way into the keep, sarge.’
‘Perks, are you volunteering to attack the biggest, strongest castle within five hundred
miles? Single-handed?’
‘I’ll go, too,’ said Shufti.
‘Oh, two of you?’ said Jackrum. ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Wazzer. ‘The Duchess has told me that I should.’
Jackrum looked down at Wazzer’s thin little face and watery eyes, and sighed. He turned
back to Blouse. ‘Let’s get a move on, sir, shall we? We can talk about this later. At least
we’re headed to Kneck, first stop on the road to hell. Perks and Igor, you take point.
Maladict?’
‘Yo!’
‘Er . . . you scout on ahead.’
‘I hear you!’
‘Good.’
As the vampire walked past Polly the world, just for a moment, changed; the forest became
greener, the sky greyer, and she heard a noise overhead, like ‘whopwhopwhop’. And then it
was gone.
Vampire hallucinations are contagious, she thought. What’s going on in his head? She
hurried forward with Igorina, and they set off again through the forest.
Birds sang. The effect was peaceful, if you didn’t know about birdsong, but Polly could
recognize the alarm calls close by and the territorial threats far off and, everywhere, the
preoccupation with sex. That took the edge off the pleasure.*

 
 
  
* It’s hard to be an ornithologist and walk through a wood when all around you the
world is shouting: ‘Bugger off, this is my bush! Aargh, the nest thief! Have sex with me, I
can make my chest big and red!’
‘Polly?’ said Igorina.
‘Hmm?’
‘Could you kill someone if you had to?’
Polly came right back to the here and now. ‘What sort of question is that to ask anyone?’
‘I think it’s the sort you’d ask a tholdier,’ said Igorina.
‘I don’t know. If they were attacking me, I suppose. Hurt them hard enough to keep them
lying down, anyway. And you?’
‘We have a great respect for life, Polly,’ said Igorina solemnly. ‘It’s easy to kill thomeone,
and almost impossible to bring them back again.’
‘Almost?’
‘Well, if you don’t have a really good lightning rod. And even if you have, they’re never
quite the same. Cutlery tends to stick to them.’
‘Igorina, why are you here?’
‘The clan isn’t very . . . keen on girls getting too involved in the Great Work,’ said Igorina,
looking downcast. ‘ “Stick to your needlework”, my mother keeps saying. Well, that’s all
very fine, but I know I’m good at the actual incisions as well. Especially the fiddly bits. And I
think a woman on the slab would feel a lot better about things if she knew there was a female
hand on the we-belong-dead switch. Tho I thought some battlefield experience would
convince my father. Soldiers aren’t choosy about who saves their lives.’
‘I suppose men are the same the world over,’ said Polly.
‘On the inside, certainly.’
‘And . . . er . . . you really can put your hair back?’ Polly had seen it in its jar when they’d
been breaking camp; it had spun gently in its bottle of green liquid, like some fine, rare
seaweed.
‘Oh, yes. Scalp transplants are easy. It stings a bit for a couple of minutes, that’s all—’
There was movement between the trees, and then the blur resolved itself into Maladict. He
held a finger to his lips as he drew closer, and whispered urgently: ‘Charlie’s tracking us!’
Polly and Igorina looked at one another. ‘Who’s Charlie?’
Maladict stared at them, and then rubbed his face distractedly. ‘I’m . . . sorry, er . . . sorry,
it’s . . . look, we’re being followed! I know it!’
The sun was setting. Polly peered over the rocky ledge, back the way they had come. She
could make out the track, golden and red in the late afternoon light. Nothing was moving.
The outcrop was near the top of another rounded hill; the rear of it became the floor of a little
enclosed space, surrounded by bushes. It made a good lookout for people who wanted to see
without being seen, and it had done so in the recent past, by the look of the old fires.
Maladict was sitting with his head in his hands, with Jackrum and Blouse on either side of
him. They were trying to understand, and not making much progress.