Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment (6 page)

 
 
  
By the end of the first day, Strappi could make him throw up just by shouting. And then he’d
laugh.
Only he never really laughed, Polly noted. What you got instead was a sort of harsh
gargling of spit at the back of the throat, a noise like ghnssssh.
The presence of the man cast a damper on everything. Jackrum seldom interfered. He often
watched Strappi, though, and once when Polly caught his eye, he winked.
On the first night a tent was shouted off the cart by Strappi and shouted up and, after a
supper of stale bread and sausage, they were shouted in front of a blackboard to be shouted
at. Across the top of the board Strappi had written WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR and
down the side he had written 1, 2, 3.
‘Right, pay attention!’ he said, slapping the board with a stick. There’s some who think
that you boys ought to know why we are fighting this war, okay? Well, here it comes. Point
One, remember the town of Lipz? It was viciously attacked by Zlobenian troops a year ago!
They—’
‘Sorry, but I thought we attacked Lipz, didn’t we, corporal? Last year they said—’ said
Shufti.
‘Are you trying to be smart, Private Manickle?’ Strappi demanded, naming the biggest sin
in his personal list.
‘Just want to know corporal,’ said Shufti. He was stocky, running to plump, and one of
those people who bustle about being helpful in a mildly annoying way, taking over small jobs
that you wouldn’t have minded doing for yourself. There was something odd about him,
although you had to bear in mind he was currently sitting next to Wazzer, who had enough
odd for everybody and was probably contagious . . .
. . . and had caught Strappi’s eye. There was no fun in having a go at Shufti, but Wazzer,
now, Wazzer was always worth a shout.
‘Are you listening, Private Goom?’ he screamed.
Wazzer, who had been sitting and looking up with his eyes closed, jerked awake.
‘Corporal?’ he quavered, as Strappi advanced.
‘I said, are you listening, Goom?’
‘Yes, corporal!’
‘Really? And what did you hear, may I ask?’ said Strappi, in a voice of treacle and acid.
‘Nothing, corporal. She’s not speaking.’
Strappi took a deep, delighted breath of evil air. ‘You are a useless, worthless pile of—’
There was a sound. It was a small, nondescript sound, one that you heard every day, a
noise that did its job but never expected to be, for example, whistled or part of an interesting
sonata. It was simply the sound of stone scraping on metal.
On the other side of the fire Jackrum lowered his cutlass. He had a sharpening stone in his
other hand. He returned their group gaze.
‘What? Oh. Just maintaining the edge,’ he said innocently. ‘Sorry if I interrupted your flow
there, corporal. Carry on.’
A basic animal survival instinct came to the corporal’s aid. He left the trembling Wazzer
alone, and turned back to Shufti.

 
 
  
‘Yes, yes, we attacked Lipz, too—’ said Strappi.
‘Was that before the Zlobenians did?’ said Maladict.
‘Will you listen?’ Strappi demanded. ‘We valiantly attacked Lipz to reclaim what is
Borogravian territory! And then the treacherous swede-eaters stole it back . . .’
Polly tuned out a little at this point, now that there was no immediate prospect of seeing
Strappi decapitated. She knew about Lipz. Half the old men who came and drank with her
father had attacked the place. But no one had expected them to want to do it. Someone had
just shouted, ‘Attack!’
The trouble was the Kneck River. It wandered across the wide, rich, silty plain like a piece
of dropped string, but sometimes a flash flood or even a big fallen tree would cause it to
crack like a whip, throwing coils of river round areas of land miles from its previous bed.
And the river was the international border . . .
She surfaced to hear: ‘. . . but this time everyone’s on their side, the bastards! And you
know why? It’s ‘cos of Ankh-Morpork! Because we stopped the mail coaches going over our
country and tore down their clacks towers, which are an Abomination unto Nuggan. Ankh-
Morpork is a godless city—’
‘I thought it had more than three hundred places of worship?’ said Maladict.
Strappi stared at him in a rage that was incoherent until he managed to touch bottom again.
‘Ankh-Morpork is a godawful city,’ he recovered. ‘Poisonous, just like its river. Barely fit for
humans now. They let everything in - zombies, werewolves, dwarfs, vampires, trolls . . .’ He
remembered his audience, faltered and recovered. ‘. . . which in some cases can be a good
thing, of course. But it is a foul, lewd, lawless, overcrowded mess of a place, which is why
Prince Heinrich loves it so much! He’s been taken over by it, bought by cheap toys, because
that’s the way Ankh-Morpork plays it, men. They buy you, they will you stop interrupting!
What’s the good of me trying to teach you stuff if you’re going to keep on asking questions?’
‘I was just wondering why it’s so crowded, corp,’ said Tonker. ‘If it’s so bad, I mean.’
‘That’s because they are a degraded people, private! And they’ve sent a regiment up here
to help Heinrich take over our beloved Motherland. He has turned aside from the ways of
Nuggan and embraced Ankh-Morpork’s godlessn— godawful-ness.’ Strappi looked pleased
at having spotted that one, and went on, ‘Point Two: in addition to its soldiers, Ankh-
Morpork has sent Vimes the Butcher, the most evil man in that evil city. They are bent on
nothing less than our destruction!’
‘I heard that Ankh-Morpork was just angry that we cut the clacks towers down,’ said Polly.
‘They were on our sovereign territory!’
‘Well, it was Zlobenian until—’ Polly began.
Strappi waved an angry finger at her. ‘You listen to me, Parts! You can’t get to be a great
country like Borogravia without making enemies! Which leads me on to Point Three, Parts,
who’s sitting there thinking he’s so smart. You all are. I can see it. Well, be smart about this:
you might not like everything about your country, eh? It might not be the perfect place, but
it’s ours. You might think we don’t have the best laws, but they’re ours. The mountains might
not be the prettiest ones or the tallest ones, but they’re ours. We’re fighting for what’s ours,
men!’ Strappi slammed his hand over his heart.

 
 
  
‘Awake, ye sons of the Motherland!
Taste no more the wine of the sour apples . . .’
They joined in, at various levels of drone. You had to. Even if you just opened and shut
your mouth, you had to. Even if you just went ‘ner, ner, ner’, you had to. Polly, who was
exactly the kind of person who looks around surreptitiously at times like these, saw that
Shufti was singing it word-perfectly and Strappi actually did have tears in his eyes. Wazzer
wasn’t singing at all. He was praying. That was a good wheeze, said one of the more
treacherous areas at the back of Polly’s mind.
To the bewilderment of all, Strappi continued - alone - all through the second verse, which
nobody ever remembered, and then gave them a smug, I’m-more-patriotic-than-you smile.
Afterwards, they tried to sleep on as much softness as two blankets could provide. They
lay there in silence for some time. Jackrum and Strappi had tents of their own, but
instinctively they knew that Strappi at least would be a sneaker and a listener at tent flaps.
After about an hour, when rain was drumming on the canvas, Carborundum said: ‘Okay,
den, I fink I’ve worked it out. If people are groophar stupid, then we’ll fight for groophar
stupidity, ‘cos it’s our stupidity. And dat’s good, yeah?’
Several of the squad sat up in the darkness, amazed at this.
‘I realize I ought to know these things, but what does “groophar” mean?’ said the voice of
Maladict in the damp darkness.
‘Ah, well . . . when, right, a daddy troll an’ a mummy troll—’
‘Good, right, yes, I think I’ve got it, thank you,’ said Maladict. ‘And what you’ve got there,
my friend, is patriotism. My country, right or wrong.’
‘You should love your country,’ said Shufti.
‘Okay, what part?’ the voice of Tonker demanded, from the far corner of the tent. ‘The
morning sunlight on the mountains? The horrible food? The damn mad Abominations? All of
my country except whatever bit Strappi is standing on?’
‘But we are at war!’
‘Yes, that’s where they’ve got you,’ sighed Polly.
‘Well, I’m not buying into it. It’s all trickery. They keep you down and when they piss off
some other country, you have to fight for them! It’s only your country when they want you to
get killed!’ said Tonker.
‘All the good bits in this country are in this tent,’ said the voice of Wazzer.
Embarrassed silence descended.
The rain settled in. After a while, the tent began to leak. Eventually someone said, ‘What
happens, um, if you join up but then you decide you don’t want to?’
That was Shufti.
‘I think it’s called deserting and they cut your head off,’ said the voice of Maladict. ‘In my
case that would be a drawback but you, dear Shufti, would find it puts a crimp in your social
life.’

 
 
  
‘I never kissed their damn picture,’ said Tonker. ‘I swivelled it round when Strappi wasn’t
looking and kissed it on the back!’
‘They’ll still say you kissed the Duchess, though,’ said Maladict.
‘You k-kissed the D-Duchess on the b-bottom?’ said Wazzer, horrified.
‘It was the back of the picture, okay?’ said Tonker. ‘It wasn’t her real backside. Huh,
wouldn’t have kissed it if it was!’ There was some unidentified sniggering from various
corners and just a hint of giggle.
‘That was w-wicked!’ hissed Wazzer. ‘Nuggan in heaven saw you d-do that!’
‘It was just a picture, all right?’ muttered Tonker. ‘Anyway, what’s the difference? Front
or back, we’re all here together and I don’t see any steak and bacon!’
Something rumbled overhead. ‘I joined t’ see exciting forrin places and meet erotic
people,’ said Carborundum.
That caused a moment’s thought. ‘I think you mean exotic?’ said Igor.
‘Yeah, that kind of stuff,’ agreed the troll.
‘But they always lie,’ said someone, and then Polly realized it was her. ‘They lie all the
time. About everything.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Tonker. ‘We fight for liars.’
‘Ah, they may be liars,’ snapped Polly, in a passable imitation of Strappi’s yap, ‘but
they’re our liars!’
‘Now, now, children,’ said Maladict. ‘Let’s try to get some sleep, shall we? But here’s a
happy little dream from your Uncle Maladict. Dream that when we go into battle, Corporal
Strappi is leading us. Wouldn’t that be fun?’
After a while, Tonker said: ‘In front of us, you mean?’
‘Oh, yes. I can see you’re with me, Tonk. Right in front of you. On the noisy, frantic,
confusing battlefield, where oh so much can go wrong.’
‘And we’ll have weapons?’ said Shufti wistfully.
‘Of course you’ll have weapons. You’re soldiers. And there’s the enemy, right in front of
you . . .’
‘That’s a good dream, Mal.’
‘Sleep on it, kid.’
Polly turned over, and tried to make herself comfortable. It’s all lies, she thought muzzily.
Some of them are just prettier than others, that’s all. People see what they think is there. Even
I’m a lie. But I’m getting away with it.
A warm autumnal wind was blowing leaves off the rowan trees as the recruits marched
among the foothills. It was the morning of the next day, and the mountains were behind them.
Polly passed the time identifying the birds in the hedgerows. It was a habit. She knew most of
them.
She hadn’t set out to be an ornithologist. But birds brought Paul alive. All the . . . slowness
in the rest of his thinking became a flash of lightning in the presence of birds. Suddenly he

 
 
  
knew their names, habits and habitats, could whistle their songs and, after Polly had saved
up for a box of paints off a traveller at the inn, had painted a picture of a wren so real you
could hear it.
Their mother had been alive then. The row had gone on for days. Pictures of living
creatures were an Abomination in the Eyes of Nuggan. Polly had asked why there were
pictures of the Duchess everywhere, and had been thrashed for it. The picture had been
burned, the paints thrown away.
It was a terrible thing. Her mother had been a kind woman, or as kind as a devout woman
could be who tried to keep up with the whims of Nuggan, and she’d died slowly amidst
pictures of the Duchess and amongst the echoes of unanswered prayers, but that was the
memory that crawled treacherously into Polly’s mind every time: the fury and the scolding,
while the little bird seemed to flutter in the flames.
In the fields women and old men were getting in the spoilt wheat after last night’s rain,
hoping to save what they could. There weren’t any young men visible. Polly saw some of the
other recruits steal a glance at the scavenging parties, and wondered if they were thinking the
same thing.
They saw no one else on the road until midday, when the party was marching through a
landscape of low hills; the sun had boiled away some of the clouds and, for a moment at least,
summer was back - moist and sticky and mildly unpleasant, like a party guest who won’t go
home.
A red blob in the distance became a rather larger blob and resolved itself into a loose knot
of men. Polly knew what to expect as soon as she saw it. By the reaction of some of the
others, they did not. There was a moment of collision and confusion as people walked into
one another, and then the party stopped, and stared.
It took the wounded men some time to draw level, and some time to pass. Two able-bodied
men, as far as Polly could tell, were trundling a handcart on which a third man lay. Others
were limping on crutches, or had arms in slings, or wore red jackets with an empty sleeve.
Perhaps worse were the ones like the man in the inn, grey-faced, staring straight ahead,
jackets buttoned tight despite the heat.
One or two of the injured glanced at the recruits as they lurched past, but there was no
expression in their eyes beyond a terrible determination.
Jackrum reined in the horse.
‘All right, twenty minutes’ breather,’ he muttered.
Igor turned, nodded to the party of wounded heading grimly onward, and said, ‘Permithion
to thee if I can do anything for them, tharge?’
‘You’ll get your chance soon enough, lad,’ said the sergeant.
‘Tharge?’ said Igor, looking hurt.
‘Oh, all right. If you must. D’you want someone to give you a hand?’
There was a nasty laugh from Corporal Strappi.
‘Some athithtance would be a help, yeth, thargeant,’ said Igor, with dignity.
The sergeant looked at the squad, and nodded. ‘Private Halter, step forward! Know
anything about doctorin’?’