Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment (4 page)

 
 
  
‘You gentlemen might like to move back a bit,’ murmured Eyebrow.
‘What’s going to happen?’ said Polly.
‘It takes ‘em all differently,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Looks like this one’s - no, there he goes . . .’
With considerable style, Carborundum went over backwards. There was no sagging at the
knees, no girly attempt to soften the fall. He just went from standing up, one hand out, to
lying down, one hand up. He even rocked gently for some time after hitting the floor.
‘Got no head for his drink,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Typical of the young bucks. Wants to play the
big troll, comes in here, orders an Electrick Floorbanger, doesn’t know how to handle it.’
‘Is he going to come round?’ said Maladict.
‘No, that’s it until dawn, I reckon,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Brain stops working.’
‘Shouldn’t affect him too much, then,’ said Corporal Strappi, stepping up. ‘Right, you
miserable lot. You’re sleeping in the shed out the back, understand? Practically waterproof,
hardly any rats. We’re out of here at dawn! You’re in the army now!’
Polly lay in the dark, on a bed of musty straw. There was no question of anyone’s getting
undressed. The rain hammered on the roof and the wind blew through a crack under the door,
despite Igor’s attempt to stuff it with straw. There was some desultory conversation, during
which Polly found that she was sharing the dank shed with ‘Tonker’ Halter, ‘Shufti’
Manickle, ‘Wazzer’ Goom and ‘Lofty’ Tewt. Maladict and Igor didn’t seem to have acquired
repeatable nicknames. She’d become Ozzer by general agreement.
Slightly to Polly’s surprise the boy now known as Wazzer had taken a small picture of the
Duchess out of his pack and had nervously hung it on an old nail. No one else said anything
as he prayed to it. It was what you were supposed to do.
They said the Duchess was dead . . .
Polly had been washing up when she’d heard the men talking late one night, and it’s a poor
woman who can’t eavesdrop while making a noise at the same time.
Dead, they said, but the people up at PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJosephBernhardt-
Wilhelmsberg weren’t admitting it. That was ‘cos what with there being no children, and with
royalty marrying one another’s cousins and grannies all the time, the ducal throne would go
to Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia! There! Can you believe that? That’s why we never see her,
right? And there hasn’t been a new picture all these years? Makes you think, eh? Oh, they say
she’s been in mourning ‘cos of the young Duke, but that was more’n seventy years ago! They
say she was buried in secret and—
At which point her father had stopped the speaker dead. There are some conversations
where you don’t even want people to remember you were in the same room.
Dead or alive, the Duchess watched over you.
The recruits tried to sleep.
Occasionally, someone belched or expelled wind noisily, and Polly responded with a few
fake eructations of her own. That seemed to inspire greater effort on the part of the other

Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment

Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment

 
 
  
sleepers, to the point where the roof rattled and dust fell down, before everyone subsided.
Once or twice she heard people stagger out into the windy darkness, in theory for the privy
but probably, given male impatience in these matters, to aim much closer to home. Once,
coasting in and out of a troubled dream, she thought she heard someone sobbing.
Taking care not to rustle too much, Polly pulled out the much-folded, much-read, much-
stained last letter from her brother, and read it by the light of the solitary, guttering candle. It
had been opened and heavily mangled by the censors, and bore the stamp of the Duchy. It
read:
Dear all,
We are in ••••• which is ••• with a ••big thing with knobs. On ••••we will ••••• which is just
as well because ••• out of. I am keeping well. The food is ••••. ••• we’ll •• at the ••• but my
mate ••er says not to worry, it’ll be all over by •••• and we shall all have medals.
Chins up! Paul
It was in a careful hand, the excessively clear and well-shaped writing of someone who has
to think about every letter. She slowly folded it up again. Paul had wanted medals, because
they were shiny. That’d been almost a year ago, when any recruiting party that came past
went away with the best part of a battalion, and there had been people waving them off with
flags and music. Sometimes, now, smaller parties of men came back. The lucky ones were
missing only one arm or one leg. There were no flags.
She unfolded another piece of paper. It was a pamphlet. It was headed ‘From the Mothers
of Borogravia!’ The mothers of Borogravia were very definite about wanting to send their
sons off to war against the Zlobenian Aggressor and used a great many exclamation marks to
say so. And this was odd, because the mothers in Munz had not seemed keen on the idea of
their sons going off to war, and positively tried to drag them back. Several copies of the
pamphlet seemed to have reached every home, even so. It was very patriotic. That is, it talked
about killing foreigners.
Polly had learned to read and write after a fashion because the inn was big and it was a
business and things had to be tallied and recorded. Her mother had taught her to read, which
was acceptable to Nuggan, and her father made sure that she learned how to write, which was
not. A woman who could write was an Abomination unto Nuggan, according to Father Jupe;
anything she wrote would by definition be a lie.
But Polly had learned anyway because Paul hadn’t, at least to the standard needed to run
an inn as busy as The Duchess. He could read if he could run his finger slowly along the
lines, and he wrote letters at a snail’s pace, with a lot of care and heavy breathing, like a man
assembling a piece of jewellery. He was big and kind and slow and could lift beer kegs as
though they were toys, but he wasn’t a man at home with paperwork. Their father had hinted
to Polly, very gently but very often, that Polly would need to be right behind him when the
time came for him to run The Duchess. Left to himself, with no one to tell him what to do
next, her brother just stood and watched birds.
At Paul’s insistence, she’d read the whole of ‘From the Mothers of Borogravia!’ to him,
including the bits about heroes and there being no greater good than to die for your country.
She wished, now, she hadn’t done that. Paul did what he was told. Unfortunately, he believed
what he was told, too.

 
 
  
Polly put the papers away and dozed again, until her bladder woke her up. Oh, well, at
least at this time of the morning she’d have a clear run. She reached out for her pack and
stepped as softly as she could out into the rain.
It was mostly just coming off the trees now, which were roaring in the wind that blew up
the valley. The moon was hidden in the clouds, but there was just enough light to make out
the inn’s buildings. A certain greyness suggested that what passed for dawn in Plün was on
the way. She located the men’s privy which, indeed, stank of inaccuracy.
A lot of planning and practice had gone into this moment. She was helped by the design of
the breeches, which were the old-fashioned kind with generous buttoned trapdoors, and also
by the experiments she’d made very early in the mornings when she was doing the cleaning.
In short, with care and attention to detail, she’d found that a woman could pee standing up. It
certainly worked back home in the inn’s privy, which had been designed and built in the
certain expectation of the aimlessness of the customers.
The wind shook the dank building. In the dark she thought of Auntie Hattie, who’d gone a
bit strange round her sixtieth birthday and persistently accused passing young men of looking
up her dress. She was even worse after a glass of wine, and she had one joke: ‘What does a
man stand up to do, a woman sit down to do and a dog lift its leg to do?’ And then, when
everyone was too embarrassed to answer, she’d triumphantly shriek, ‘Shake hands!’ and fall
over. Auntie Hattie was an Abomination all by herself.
Polly buttoned up the breeches with a sense of exhilaration. She felt she’d crossed a bridge,
a sensation that was helped by the realization that she’d kept her feet dry.
Someone said, ‘Psst!’
It was just as well she’d already taken a leak. Panic instantly squeezed every muscle.
Where were they hiding? This was just a rotten old shed! Oh, there were a few cubicles, but
the smell alone suggested very strongly that the woods outside would be a much better
proposition. Even on a wild night. Even with extra wolves.
‘Yes?’ she quavered, and then cleared her throat and demanded, with a little more
gruffness: ‘Yes?’
‘You’ll need these,’ whispered the voice. In the fetid gloom she made out something rising
over the top of a cubicle. She reached up nervously and touched softness. It was a bundle of
wool. Her fingers explored it.
‘A pair of socks?’ she said.
‘Right. Wear ‘em,’ said the mystery voice hoarsely.
‘Thank you, but I’ve brought several pairs . . .’ Polly began.
There was a faint sigh. ‘No. Not on your feet. Shove ‘em down the front of your trousers.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look,’ said the whisperer patiently, ‘you don’t bulge where you shouldn’t bulge. That’s
good. But you don’t bulge where you should bulge, either. You know? Lower down?’
‘Oh! Er . . . I . . . but . . . I didn’t think people noticed . . .’ said Polly, glowing with
embarrassment. She’d been spotted! But there was no hue and cry, no angry quotations from
the Book of Nuggan. Someone was helping. Someone who had seen her . . .
‘It’s a funny thing,’ said the voice, ‘but they notice what’s missing more than they notice
what’s there. Just one pair, mark you. Don’t get ambitious.’

 
 
  
Polly hesitated. ‘Um . . . is it obvious?’ she said.
‘No. That’s why I gave you the socks.’
‘I meant that . . . that I’m not . . . that I’m . . .’
‘Not really,’ said the voice in the dark. ‘You’re pretty good. You come over as a frightened
young lad trying to look big and brave. You might pick your nose a bit more often. Just a tip.
Few things interest a young man more than the contents of his nostrils. Now I’ve got a favour
to ask you in return.’
I didn’t ask you for one, Polly thought, quite annoyed at being taken for being a frightened
young lad when she was sure she’d come over as quite a cool, non-ruffled young lad. But she
said calmly: ‘What is it?’
‘Got any paper?’
Wordlessly, Polly pulled ‘From the Mothers of Borogravia!’ out of her shirt and handed it
up. She heard the sound of a match striking, and a sulphurous smell which only improved the
general conditions.
‘Why, is this the escutcheon of her grace the Duchess I see in front of me?’ said the
whisperer. ‘Well, it won’t be in front of me for long. Beat it . . . boy.’
Polly hurried out into the night, shocked, dazed, confused and almost asphyxiated, and
made it to the shed door. But she’d barely shut it behind her and was still blinking in the
blackness when it was thrust open again, to let in the wind, rain and Corporal Strappi.
‘All right, all right! Hands off . . . well, you lot wouldn’t be able to find ‘em . . . and on
with socks! Hup hup hi ho hup hup . . .’
Bodies were suddenly springing up or falling over all round Polly. Their muscles must
have been obeying the voice directly, because no brain could have got into gear that quickly.
Corporal Strappi, in obedience to the law of non-commissioned officers, responded by
making the confusion more confusing.
‘Good grief, a lot of old women could shift better’n you!’ he shouted with satisfaction as
people flailed around looking for coats and boots. Fall in! Get shaved! Every man in the
regiment to be clean shaven, by order! Get dressed! Wazzer, I’ve got my eye on you! Move!
Move! Breakfast in five minutes! Last one there doesn’t get a sausage! Oh deary me, what a
bloody shower!’
The four lesser horsemen of Panic, Bewilderment, Ignorance and Shouting took control of
the room, to Corporal Strappi’s obscene glee. Polly, though, ducked out of the door, pulled a
small tin mug out of her pack, dipped it into a water butt, balanced it on an old barrel behind
the inn, and started to shave.
She’d practised this, too. The secret was in the old cut-throat razor that she’d carefully
blunted. After that, it was all in the shaving brush and soap. Get a lot of lather on, shave a lot
of lather off, and you’d had a shave, hadn’t you? Must have done, sir, feel how smooth the
skin is . . .
She was halfway through when a voice by her ear screamed: ‘What d’you think you’re
doing, Private Parts?’
It was just as well the blade was blunt.
‘Perks, sir!’ she said, rubbing her nose. ‘I’m shaving, sir! It’s Perks, sir!’

 
 
  
‘Sir? Sir? I’m not a sir, Parts, I’m a bloody corporal, Parts. That means you calls me
“corporal”, Parts. And you are shaving in an official regimental mug,” Parts, what you have
not been issued with, right? You a deserter, Parts?’
‘No, s— corporal!’
‘A thief, then?’
‘No, corporal!’
‘Then how come you got a bloody mug, Parts?’
‘Got it off a dead man, sir— corporal!’
Strappi’s voice, pitched to a scream in any case, became a screech of rage. ‘You’re a
looter?’
‘No, corporal! The soldier . . .’
. . . had died almost in her arms, on the floor of the inn.
There had been half a dozen men in that party of returning heroes. They must have been
trekking with grey-faced patience for days, making their way back to little villages in the
mountains. Polly counted nine arms and ten legs between them, and ten eyes.
But it was the apparently whole who were worse, in a way. They kept their stinking coats
buttoned tight, in lieu of bandages, over whatever unspeakable mess lay beneath, and they
had the smell of death about them. The inn’s regulars made space for them, and talked
quietly, like people in a sacred place. Her father, not usually a man given to sentiment,
quietly put a generous tot of brandy into each mug of ale, and refused all payment. Then it
turned out that they were carrying letters from soldiers still fighting, and one of them had
brought the letter from Paul. He pushed it across the table to Polly as she served them stew
and then, with very little fuss, he died.
The rest of the men moved unsteadily on later that day, taking with them, to give to his
parents, the pot-metal medal that had been in the soldier’s coat pocket and the official
commendation from the Duchy that went with it. Polly had taken a look at it. It was printed,
including the Duchess’s signature, and the man’s name had been filled in, rather cramped,
because it was longer than average. The last few letters were rammed up tight together.
It’s little details like that which get remembered, as undirected white-hot rage fills the
mind. Apart from the letter and the medal, all the man left behind was a tin mug and, on the
floor, a stain which wouldn’t scrub out.
Corporal Strappi listened impatiently to a slightly adjusted version. Polly could see his
mind working. The mug had belonged to a soldier; now it belonged to another soldier. Those
were the facts of the matter, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He resorted, instead,
to the safer ground of general abuse.
‘So you think you’re smart, Parts?’ he said.
‘No, corporal.’
‘Oh? So you’re stupid, are you?’
‘Well, I did enlist, corporal,’ said Polly meekly. Somewhere behind Strappi, someone
sniggered.