Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment (41 page)

 
 
  
female, but he was also, as Blouse would have said, ‘a bit of an old woman’. Either that or
the heaviness of those epaulettes had weighed her down.
Kissing don’t last. Oh, the Duchess had come alive before them and turned the world
upside down for a space and maybe they had all decided to be better people, and out of
certain oblivion had come a space to breathe.
But then . . . had it really happened? Even Polly sometimes wondered, and she had been
there. Was it just a voice in their heads, some kind of hallucination? Weren’t soldiers in
desperate straits famous for seeing visions of gods and angels? And somewhere in the course
of the long winter the miracle had faded, and people had said ‘yes, but we’ve got to be
practical’.
All we were given was a chance, thought Polly. No miracle, no rescue, no magic. Just a
chance.
She walked back to the inn, her mind buzzing. When she got there, a package was waiting.
It was quite long, and heavy.
‘It came all the way from Scritz on the cart,’ said Shufti excitedly. She’d been working in
the kitchen. It had become, now, her kitchen. ‘I wonder what it can be?’ she said pointedly.
Polly levered the lid off the rough wooden crate, and found that it was full of straw with an
envelope lying on top of it. She opened it.
Inside was an iconograph. It looked expensively done, a stiff family group with curtains
and a potted palm in the background to give everything a bit of style. On the left was a
middle-aged man looking proud; on the right was a woman of about the same age, looking
rather puzzled but nevertheless pleased because her husband was happy; and here and there,
staring at the viewer with variations of smile and squint, and expressions extending from
interest to a sudden recollection that they should have gone to the toilet before posing, were
children ranging from tall and gangly to small and smugly sweet.
And sitting on a chair in the middle, the focus of it all, was Sergeant-major Jackrum,
shining like the sun.
Polly stared, and then turned the picture over. On the back was written, in big black letters:
‘SM Jackrum’s Last Stand!’ and, underneath, ‘Don’t need these.’
She smiled, and pulled aside the straw. In the middle of the box, wrapped in cloth, were a
couple of cutlasses.
‘Is that old Jackrum?’ said Shufti, picking up the picture.
‘Yes. He’s found his son,’ said Polly, unwinding a blade. Shufti shuddered when she saw
it.
‘Evil things,’ she said.
‘Things, anyway,’ said Polly. She laid both the cutlasses on the table, and was about to lift
the box out of the way when she saw something small in the straw at the bottom. It was
oblong, and wrapped in thin leather.
It was a notebook, with a cheap binding and musty yellowing pages.
‘What’s that?’ said Shufti.
‘I think . . . yes, it’s his address book,’ said Polly, flicking through the pages.

 
 
  
This is it, she thought. It’s all here. Generals and majors and captains, oh my. There must
be . . . hundreds. Maybe a thousand! Names, real names, promotions, dates . . . everything . . .
She pulled out a white pasteboard oblong that had been inserted like a bookmark. It
showed a rather florid coat of arms and bore the printed legend:
William De Worde
EDITOR, THE TIMES OF ANKH-MORPORK
‘The Truth Shall Make Ye Frep’
Gleam Street, Ankh-Morpork e-mail: [email protected]
Someone had crossed out the ‘p’ in ‘frep’ and pencilled in an ‘e’ above it.
It was a sudden strange fancy . . .
How many ways can you fight a war? Polly wondered. We have the clacks now. I know a
man who writes things down. The world turns. Plucky little countries seeking self-
determination . . . could be useful to big countries with plans of their own.
Time to grab the cheese.
Polly’s expression as she stared at the wall would have frightened a number of important
people. They would have been even more concerned at the fact that she spent the next several
hours writing things down, because it occurred to Polly that General Froc had not got where
she was today by being stupid and therefore she could profit from following her example. She
copied out the entire notebook, and sealed it in an old jam jar which she hid in the roof of the
stables. She wrote a few letters. And she got her uniform out of the wardrobe and inspected it
critically.
The uniforms that had been made for them had a special, additional quality that could only
be called . . . girlie. They had more braid, they were better tailored, and they had a long skirt
with a bum roll rather than trousers. The shakos had plumes, too. Her tunic had a sergeant’s
stripes. It had been a joke. A sergeant of women. The world had been turned upside down,
after all.
They’d been mascots, good-luck charms . . . And, perhaps, on the march to Prince-
MarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg a joke was what everyone
needed. But, maybe, when the world turns upside down, you can turn a joke upside down too.
Thank you, Gummy, even though you didn’t know what it was you were teaching me. When
they’re laughing at you, their guard is down. When their guard is down, you can kick them in
the fracas.
She examined herself in the mirror. Her hair, now, was just long enough to be a nuisance
without being long enough to be attractive, so she brushed it and left it at that. She put the
uniform on, but with the skirt over her trousers, and tried to put aside the nagging feeling that
she was dressing up as a woman.
There. She looked completely harmless. She looked slightly less harmless with both
cutlasses and one of the horsebows on her back, especially if you knew that the inn’s
dartboards now had deep holes in the bullseyes from all the practising.

 
 
  
She crept along the hall to the window that overlooked the inn yard. Paul was up a ladder,
repainting the sign. Her father was steadying the ladder and calling out instructions in his
normal way, which was to call out the instruction just a second or two after you’d already
started doing it. And Shufti, although Polly was the only one in The Duchess who still called
her that and knew why, was watching them, holding Jack. It made a lovely picture. For a
moment, she wished she had a locket.
The Duchess was smaller than she’d thought. But if you had to protect it by standing in the
doorway with a sword, you were too late. Caring for small things had to start with caring for
big things, and maybe the world wasn’t big enough.
The note she left on her dressing table read: ‘Shufti, I hope you and Jack are happy here.
Paul, you look after her. Dad, I’ve never taken any wages, but I need a horse. I’ll try to have
it sent back. I love you all. If I don’t come back, burn this letter and look in the roof of the
stables.’
She dropped out of the window, saddled up a horse in the stables, and let herself out of the
back gate. She didn’t mount up until she was out of earshot, and then rode down to the river.
Spring was pouring through the country. Sap was rising. In the woods, a ton of timber was
growing every minute. Everywhere, birds were singing.
There was a guard on the ferry. He eyed her nervously as she led the horse aboard, and
then grinned. ‘ ‘Morning, miss!’ he said cheerfully.
Oh, well . . . time to start. Polly marched in front of the puzzled man.
‘Are you trying to be smart?’ she demanded, inches from his face.
‘No, miss—’
‘That’s sergeant, mister!’ said Polly. ‘Let’s try again, shall we? I said, are you trying to be
smart?’
‘No, sergeant!’
Polly leaned until her nose was an inch from his. ‘Why not?’
The grin faded. This was not a soldier on the fast track to promotion. ‘Huh?’ he managed.
‘If you are not trying to be smart, mister, you’re happy to be stupid!’ shouted Polly. ‘And
I’m up to here with stupid, understand?’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘But what, soldier?’
‘Yeah, but . . . well . . . but . . . nothing, sergeant,’ said the soldier.
‘That’s good.’ Polly nodded at the ferrymen. ‘Time to go?’ she suggested, but in the tones
of an order.
‘Couple of people just coming down the road, sergeant,’ said one of them, a faster man
with an uptake.
They waited. There were, in fact, three people. One of them was Maladicta, in full
uniform.
Polly said nothing until the ferry was out in mid-stream. The vampire gave her the kind of
smile only a vampire can give. It would have been sheepish, if sheep had different teeth.
‘Thought I’d try again,’ she said.

 
 
  
‘We’ll find Blouse,’ said Polly.
‘He’s a major now,’ said Maladicta. ‘And happy as a flea because they’ve named a kind of
fingerless glove after him, I heard. What do we want him for?’
‘He knows about the clacks. He knows about other ways war can be fought. And I know . .
. people,’ said Polly.
‘Ah. Do you mean the “Upon my oath, I am not a lying man, but I know people” kind of
people?’
‘Those were the kind of people I had in mind, yes.’ The river slapped against the side of
the ferry.
‘Good,’ said Maladicta.
‘I don’t know where it’s going to lead, though,’ said Polly.
‘Ah. Even better.’
At which point, Polly decided that she knew enough of the truth to be going on with. The
enemy wasn’t men, or women, or the old, or even the dead. It was just bleedin’ stupid people,
who came in all varieties. And no one had the right to be stupid.
She looked at the other two passengers who’d sidled aboard. They were country lads in
ragged, ill-fitting clothes, keeping away from her and staring intently at the deck. But one
glance was enough. The world turned upside down, and history repeated. For some reason,
that suddenly made her feel very happy.
‘Going to join up, lads?’ she said, cheerily.
There was some mumbling on the theme of ‘yes’.
‘Good. Then stand up straight,’ said Polly. ‘Let’s have a look at you. Chins up. Ah. Well
done. Shame you didn’t practise walking in trousers, and I notice you didn’t bring an extra
pair of socks.’
They stared, mouths open.
‘What are your names?’ said Polly. ‘Your real names, please?’
‘Er . . . Rosemary,’ one of them began.
‘I’m Mary,’ said the other. ‘I heard girls were joining, but everyone laughed, so I thought
I’d better pretend to—’
‘Oh, you can join as men if you want,’ said Polly. ‘We need a few good men.’
The girls looked at one another.
‘You get better swear words,’ said Polly. ‘And the trousers are useful. But it’s your
choice.’
‘A choice?’ said Rosemary.
‘Certainly,’ said Polly. She put a hand on a shoulder of each girl, winked at Maladicta and
added: ‘You are my little lads - or not, as the case may be - and I will look after . . . you.’
And the new day was a great big fish.

 
 
  
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