Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment (5 page)

 
 
  
‘I’ve got my eye on you, Parts,’ growled Strappi, temporarily defeated. ‘Just you put a foot
wrong, that’s all.’ He strode off.
‘Um . . .’ said a voice beside Polly. She turned to see another youth, wearing secondhand
clothes and an air of nervousness that didn’t quite conceal some bubbling anger. He was big
and red-haired, but it was cut so close that it was just head fuzz.
‘You’re Tonker, right?’ she said.
‘Yeah, and, er . . . could I have a borrow of your shaving gear, right?’
Polly looked at a chin as free of hair as a billiard ball. The boy blushed.
‘Got to start sometime, right?’ he said defiantly.
‘The razor’ll need sharpening,’ said Polly.
‘That’s all right, I know how to do that,’ said Tonker.
Polly wordlessly handed over the mug and razor, and took the opportunity to duck into the
privy while everyone else was occupied. It was the work of a moment to put the socks in
place. Anchoring them was a problem, which she solved by unwinding part of one sock and
tucking it up under her belt. They felt odd, and strangely heavy for a little package of wool.
Walking a little awkwardly, Polly went in to see what horrors breakfast would bring.
It brought stale horse-bread and sausage and very weak beer. She grabbed a sausage and a
slab of bread and sat down.
You had to concentrate to eat horse-bread. There was a lot more about these days, a bread
made from flour ground up with dried pease and beans and vegetable scrapings. It used to be
made just for horses, to put them in fine condition. Now you hardly ever saw anything else on
the table, and there tended to be less and less of it, too. You needed time and good teeth to
work your way through a slice of horse-bread, just as you needed a complete lack of
imagination to eat a modern sausage. Polly sat and concentrated on chewing.
The only other area of calm was around Private Maladict, who was drinking coffee like a
young man relaxing in a pavement cafe, with the air of someone who has life thoroughly
worked out. He nodded at Polly.
Was that him in the privy? she wondered. I got back in just as Strappi started yelling and
everyone started running around and rushing in and out. It could have been anyone. Do
vampires use the privy? Well, do they? Has anyone ever dared ask?
‘Sleep well?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Did you?’ said Polly.
‘I couldn’t stand that shed, but Mr Eyebrow kindly allowed me to use his cellar,’ said
Maladict. ‘Old habits die hard, you know? At least,’ he added, ‘old acceptable habits. I’ve
never felt happy not hanging down.’
‘And you got coffee?’
‘I carry my own supply,’ said Maladict, indicating an exquisite little silver and gilt coffee-
making engine on the table by his cup, ‘and Mr Eyebrow kindly boiled some water for me.’
He grinned, showing two long canine teeth. ‘It’s amazing what you can achieve with a smile,
Oliver.’

 
 
  
Polly nodded. ‘Er . . . is Igor a friend of yours?’ she said. At the next table Igor had
obtained a sausage, presumably raw, from the kitchen, and was watching it intently. A couple
of wires ran from the sausage to a mug of the horrible vinegary beer, which was bubbling.
‘Never seen him before in my life,’ said the vampire. ‘Of course, if you’ve met one you
have in a sense met them all. We had an Igor at home. Wonderful workers. Very reliable.
Very trustworthy. And, of course, so good at stitching things together, if you know what I
mean.’
‘Those stitches round his head don’t look very professional,’ said Polly, who was
beginning to object to Maladict’s permanent expression of effortless superiority.
‘Oh, that? It’s an Igor thing,’ said Maladict. ‘It’s a Look. Like . . . tribal markings, you
know? They like them to show. Ha, we had a servant once who had stitches all the way round
his neck, and he was extremely proud of them.’
‘Really?’ said Polly weakly.
‘Yes, and the droll part of it all was that it wasn’t even his head!’
Now Igor had a syringe in his hand, and was watching the sausage with an air of
satisfaction. For a moment, Polly thought that the sausage moved . . .
‘All right, all right, time’s up, you horrible lot!’ barked Corporal Strappi, strutting into the
room. ‘Fall in! That means line up, you shower! That means you too, Parts! And you, Mr
Vampire, sir, will you be joining us for a morning’s light soldiering? On your feet! And
where’s that bloody Igor?’
‘Here, thur,’ said Igor, from three inches behind Strappi’s backbone. The corporal spun
round.
‘How did you get there?’ he bellowed.
‘It’th a gift, thur,’ said Igor.
‘Don’t you ever get behind me again! Fall in with the rest of them! Now . . . Attention!’
Strappi sighed theatrically. ‘That means “stand up straight”. Got it? Once more with feeling!
Attention! Ah, I see the problem! You’ve got trousers that are permanently at ease! I think I
shall have to write to the Duchess and tell her she should ask for her money back! What are
you smiling about, Mr Vampire sir?’ Strappi positioned himself in front of Maladict, who
stood faultlessly to attention.
‘Happy to be in the regiment, corporal!’
‘Yeah, right,’ mumbled Strappi. ‘Well, you won’t be so—’
‘Everything all right, corporal?’ asked Sergeant Jackrum, appearing in the doorway.
‘Best we could expect, sergeant,’ sighed the corporal. ‘We ought to throw ‘em back, oh
dear me, yes. Useless, useless, useless . . .’
‘Okay, lads. Stand easy,’ said Jackrum, glancing at Strappi in a less than friendly way.
‘Today we’re heading on down towards Plotz, where we’ll meet up with the other recruiting
parties and you’ll be issued with your uniforms and weapons, you lucky lads. Any of you
ever used a weapon? You have, Perks?’
Polly lowered her hand. ‘A bit, sarge. My brother taught me a bit when he was home on
leave, and some of the old men in the bar where I worked gave me some, er, tips.’ They had,
too. It was funny to watch a girl waving a sword around, and they’d been kind enough when
they weren’t laughing. She was a quick learner, but she’d made a point of staying clumsy

 
 
  
long after she’d got the feel for the blade, because using a sword was also ‘the work of an
Man’ and a woman doing it was an Abomination unto Nuggan. Old soldiers, on the whole,
were on the easygoing side when it came to Abominations. She’d be funny just as long as she
was useless, and safe as long as she was funny.
‘Expert, are yer?’ said Strappi, grinning nastily. ‘A real fencin’ genius, are yer?’
‘No, corporal,’ said Polly meekly.
‘All right,’ said Jackrum. ‘Anyone else—’
‘Hang on, sarge, I reckon we’d all like a bit of instruction from swordmeister Parts,’ said
Strappi. ‘Ain’t that right, lads?’ There was a general murmuring and shrugging from the
squad, who recognized a right little bullying bastard when they saw one but, treacherously,
were glad he hadn’t picked on them.
Strappi drew his own sword. ‘Lend him one of yours, sarge,’ he said. ‘Go on. Just a little
bit of fun, eh?’
Jackrum hesitated, and glanced at Polly. ‘How about it, lad? You don’t have to,’ he said.
I’ll have to sooner or later, Polly thought. The world was full of Strappies. If you backed
away from them, they only kept on coming. You had to stop them at the start. She sighed.
‘Okay, sarge.’
Jackrum pulled one of his cutlasses out of his sash and handed it to Polly. It looked
amazingly sharp.
‘He won’t hurt you, Perks,’ he said, while looking at the smirking Strappi.
‘I’ll try not to hurt him either, sir,’ said Polly, and then cursed herself for the idiot bravado.
It must have been the socks talking.
‘Oh, good,’ said Strappi, stepping back. ‘We’ll just see what you’re made of, Parts.’
Flesh, thought Polly. Blood. Easily cut things. Oh, well . . .
Strappi waved his sabre like the old boys had done, down low, in case she was one of those
people who thought the whole idea was to hit the other man’s sword. She ignored it, and
watched his eyes, which was no great treat. He wouldn’t stick her, not mortally, not with
Jackrum watching. He’d try for something that’d hurt and make everyone laugh at her. That
was the Strappi type through and through. Every inn counted one or two amongst its regulars.
The corporal tested her more aggressively a couple of times, and twice, by luck, she
managed to knock the blade out of the way. Luck would run out, though, and if she looked
like putting up a decent show Strappi would sort her out good and proper. Then she
remembered the cackled advice of old Gummy Abbens, a retired sergeant who’d lost his left
arm to a broadsword and all his teeth to cider: ‘A good swordsman ‘ates comin’ up against a
newbie, gel! The reason bein’, he don’t know what the bugger’s gonna do!’
She swung the cutlass wildly. Strappi had to block it, and for a moment the swords locked.
‘That the best you can do, Parts?’ the corporal jeered.
Polly reached out and grabbed his shirt. ‘No, corporal,’ she said, ‘but this is.’ She pulled
hard and lowered her head.
The collision hurt more than she’d hoped, but she heard something crunch and it didn’t
belong to her. She stepped back quickly, slightly dizzy, with the cutlass at the ready.

 
 
  
Strappi had sunk to his knees, blood gushing from his nose. When he got up, someone was
going to die . . .
Panting, Polly appealed wordlessly to Sergeant Jackrum, who had folded his arms and was
looking innocently at the ceiling.
‘I bet you didn’t learn that from your brother, Perks,’ he said.
‘No, sarge. Got that from Gummy Abbens, sarge.’
Jackrum suddenly looked down at her, grinning. ‘What, old Sergeant Abbens?’
‘Yes, sarge!’
‘There’s a name from the past! He’s still alive? How is the evil old sot?’
‘Er . . . well preserved, sarge,’ said Polly, still trying to get her breath.
Jackrum laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet. Did his best fighting in bars, he did. And I’ll bet that’s
not the only trick he told you about, eh?’
‘No, sir.’ And the other men had scolded the old boy for telling her, and Gummy had
chuckled into his cider mug, and anyway it had taken Polly a long time to find out what
‘family jewels’ meant.
‘Hear that, Strappi?’ said the sergeant to the cursing man dribbling blood on to the floor.
‘Looks like you was lucky. But there’s no prizes for fighting fair in a melee, lads, as you will
learn. All right, fun over. Go and put some cold water on that, corporal. It always looks worse
than it is. And that’s an end of it, the pair of you. That is an order. A word to the wise.
Understood?’
‘Yes, sarge,’ said Polly meekly. Strappi grunted.
Jackrum looked at the rest of the recruits. ‘Okay. Any of the rest of you boys ever held a
stick? Right. I can see we’re going to have to start slow and work up . . .’
There was another grunt from Strappi. You had to admire the man. On his knees, with
blood bubbling through the hand cupping his injured nose, he could find time to make life
difficult for someone in some small way.
‘Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant,’ he said accusingly.
‘Any good with it?’ said the sergeant to Maladict.
‘Not really, sir,’ said Maladict. ‘Never had training. I carry it for protection, sir.’
‘How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if you don’t know how to use it?’
‘Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and don’t attack me,’ said Maladict
patiently.
‘Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn’t be any good with it,’ said the sergeant.
‘No, sir. I’d probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir. That’s what I mean by
protection, sir. Theirs, not mine. And I’d get hell from the League if I did that, sir.’
The sergeant stared at him for a while. ‘Well thought out,’ he mumbled.
There was a thud behind them and a table overturned. Carborundum the troll sat up,
groaned, and crashed back down again. At the second attempt, he managed to stay upright,
both hands clutching his head.

 
 
  
Corporal Strappi, now on his feet, must have been made fearless by fury. He headed for the
troll in a high-speed strut and stood in front of him, vibrating with rage and still oozing blood
in sticky strings.
‘You ‘orrible little man!’ he screamed. ‘You—’
Carborundum reached down and, with care and no apparent effort, picked the corporal up
by his head. He brought him to one crusted eye and turned him this way and that.
‘Did I join th’ army?’ he rumbled. ‘Oh, coprolite . . .’
‘This is affnault on a fnuperior officer!’ screamed the muffled voice of the corporal.
‘Put Corporal Strappi down, please,’ said Sergeant Jackrum. The troll grunted, and lowered
the man to the floor.
‘Sorry about dat,’ he said. ‘Thought you was a dwarf.’
‘I dnemand this man is affrested for—’ Strappi began.
‘No you don’t, corporal, no you don’t,’ said the sergeant. ‘This is not the time. On your
feet, Carborundum, and get in line. Upon my oath, you try that little trick one more time and
there will be trouble, understand?’
‘Yes, sergeant,’ growled the troll, and knuckled himself to his feet.
‘Right, then,’ said the sergeant, stepping back. ‘Now today, my lucky lads, we’re goin’ to
learn about something we call marching . . .’
They left Plün to the wind and rain. About an hour after they’d vanished round a bend in
the valley, the shed they’d slept in mysteriously burned down.
There have been better attempts at marching, and they have been made by penguins.
Sergeant Jackrum brought up the rear in the cart, shouting instructions, but the recruits moved
as if they’d never before had to get from place to place. The sergeant yelled the swagger out
of their steps, stopped the cart and for a few of them held an impromptu lesson in the
concepts of ‘right’ and ‘left’ and, by degrees, they left the mountains.
Polly remembered those first days with mixed feelings. All they did was march, but she
was used to long walks and her boots were good. The trousers ceased to chafe. A watery sun
took the trouble to shine. It wasn’t cold. It would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the
corporal.
She’d wondered how Strappi, whose nose was now about the same colour as a plum, was
going to handle the situation between them. It turned out that he intended to deal with it by
pretending it hadn’t happened, and also by having as little as possible to do with Polly.
He didn’t spare the others, although he was selective. Maladict was left strictly alone, as
was Carborundum; whatever else Strappi was, he wasn’t suicidal. And he was bewildered by
Igor. The little man did whatever stupid chore Strappi found for him, and he did it quickly,
competently, and giving every impression of someone happy in his work, and that left the
corporal completely mystified.
He’d pick on the others for no reason at all, harangue them until they made some trivial
mistake, and then bawl them out. His target of choice was Private Goom, better known as
Wazzer, who was stick-thin and round-eyed and nervous and said grace loudly before meals.