Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment

Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment

Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment

 
  
Monstrous
Regiment
by
Terry Pratchett

 
 
  
Polly cut off her hair in front of the mirror, feeling slightly guilty about not feeling very
guilty about doing so. It was supposed to be her crowning glory, and everyone said it was
beautiful, but she generally wore it in a net when she was working. She’d always told herself
it was wasted on her. But she was careful to see that the long golden coils all landed on the
small sheet spread out for the purpose.
If she would admit to any strong emotion at all at this time, it was sheer annoyance that a
haircut was all she needed to pass for a young man. She didn’t even need to bind up her
bosom, which she’d heard was the normal practice. Nature had seen to it that she had barely
any problems in this area.
The effect that the scissors had was . . . erratic, but it was no worse than other male
haircuts here. It’d do. She did feel cold on the back of her neck, but that was only partly
because of the loss of her long hair. It was also because of the Stare.
The Duchess watched her from above the bed.
It was a poor woodcut, hand-coloured mostly in blue and red. It was of a plain, middle-
aged woman whose sagging chin and slightly bulging eyes gave the cynical the feeling that
someone had put a large fish in a dress, but the artist had managed to capture something extra
in that strange, blank expression. Some pictures had eyes that followed you around the room;
this one looked right through you. It was a face you found in every home. In Borogravia, you
grew up with the Duchess watching you.
Polly knew her parents had one of the pictures in their room, and knew also that when her
mother was alive she used to curtsy to it every night. She reached up and turned this picture
round so that it faced the wall. A thought in her head said No. It was overruled. She’d made
up her mind.
Then she dressed herself in her brother’s clothes, tipped the contents of the sheet into a
small bag which went into the bottom of her pack along with the spare clothes, put the note
on her bed, picked up the pack and climbed out of the window. At least, Polly climbed out of
the window, but it was Oliver’s feet that landed lightly on the ground.
Dawn was just turning the dark world into monochrome when she slipped across the inn’s
yard. The Duchess watched her from the inn sign, too. Her father had been a great loyalist, at
least up to the death of her mother. The sign hadn’t been repainted this year, and a random
bird-dropping had given the Duchess a squint.
Polly checked that the recruiting sergeant’s cart was still in front of the bar, its bright
banners now drab and heavy with last night’s rain. By the look of that big fat sergeant, it
would be hours before it was on the road again. She had plenty of time. He looked like a slow
breakfaster.
She let herself out of the door in the back wall and headed uphill. At the top, she turned
back and looked at the waking town. Smoke was rising from a few chimneys, but since Polly
was always the first to wake, and had to yell the maids out of their beds, the inn was still
sleeping. She knew that the Widow Clambers had stayed overnight (it had been ‘raining too
hard for her to go home’, according to Polly’s father) and, personally, she hoped for his sake
that she’d stay every night. The town had no shortage of widows, and Eva Clambers was a
warm-hearted lady who baked like a champion. His wife’s long illness and Paul’s long
absence had taken a lot out of her father. Polly was glad some of it was being put back. The
old ladies who spent their days glowering from their windows might spy and peeve and
mumble, but they had been doing that for too long. No one listened any more.

 
 
  
She raised her gaze. Smoke and steam was already rising from the laundry of the Girls’
Working School. It hung over one end of the town like a threat, big and grey with tall, thin
windows. It was always silent. When she was small, she’d been told that that was where the
Bad Girls went. The nature of ‘badness’ was not explained, and at the age of five Polly had
received the vague idea that it consisted of not going to bed when you were told. At the age
of eight she’d learned it was where you were lucky not to go for buying your brother a paint
box. She turned her back and set off between the trees, which were full of birdsong.
Forget you were ever Polly. Think young male, that was the thing. Fart loudly and with
self-satisfaction at a job well done, move like a puppet that’d had a couple of random strings
cut, never hug anyone and, if you meet a friend, punch them. A few years working in the bar
had provided plenty of observational material. No problem about not swinging her hips, at
least. Nature had been pretty sparing there, too.
And then there was the young male walk to master. At least women swung only their hips.
Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of
space, she thought. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail. She’d seen it a lot
in the inn. The boys tried to walk big in self-defence against all those other big boys out
there. I’m bad, I’m fierce, I’m cool, I’d like a pint of shandy and me mam wants me home by
nine . . .
Let’s see, now . . . arms out from the body as though holding a couple of bags of flour . . .
check. Shoulders swaying as though she was elbowing her way through a crowd . . . check.
Hands slightly bunched and making rhythmical circling motions as though turning two
independent handles attached to the waist . . . check. Legs moving forward loosely and ape-
like . . . check . . .
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular
confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang
around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the
trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection. There was no time to wait out the
weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but
Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to
travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to
the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would
do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to
Plün. The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere
villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces
on the map. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she
could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t
notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally
beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting
a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while
she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited
back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last
few years, and not enough had come back. And, of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not
enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz
was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.

 
 
  
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to
bush. Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the
river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar
at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock
on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around
here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world. It cost one
penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.* Halfway across Polly
peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow
road just above the white water.
* Trolls might not be quick thinkers but they don’t forget in a hurry, either.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the
gorge. She didn’t hurry and, towards sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived,
but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There
was no drum-banging like there had been last night, no cries of ‘Roll up, my young shavers!
It’s a great life in the Ins-and-Outs!’
There was always a war. Usually it was a border dispute, the national equivalent of
complaining that the neighbour was letting his hedge grow too long. Sometimes it was
bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike
enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting
them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s
grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead
of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire. Sometimes old friends would turn
up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather round the fire and drink and sing.
The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had
stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of
her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she
knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had
gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of ‘The World Turned
Upside Down’ and ‘The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant’ and ‘Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier’
and ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’ and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d
memorized ‘Colonel Crapski’ and ‘I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her’.
And then, of course, there had been ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’. Her father used to sing it when
she was small and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name
in it. She was word perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant. And
now . . .
. . . Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from
the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips. She took a deep
breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
‘What do you want, kid?’ growled the corporal.
‘Want to join up, sir!’

 
 
  
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a
tremor to shake all his chins. The word ‘fat’ could not honestly be applied to him, not when
the word ‘gross’ was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people
who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction,
he would rock. Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the
redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-
fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
‘Just like that?’ he said.
‘Yessir!’
‘Really?’
‘Yessir!’
‘You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.’
‘Nosir!’
‘I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune,
have I?’
‘Nosir!’
‘Did I mention how the spanking red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off
with a stick?’
‘Don’t think so, sir!’
‘Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!’ The sergeant
smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. ‘I’m the living proof!’
‘Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honour of the
Duchess, sir!’
‘You do?’ said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He
looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as
drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
‘Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’
less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,’ he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. ‘Well,
you’ve come to the right place, my lad!’ He pulled a sheaf of papers towards him with an air
of bustle. ‘You know who we are?’
‘The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the “Ins-and-Outs”, sir,’ said Polly,
relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
‘Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the
world. Keen to join, then, are yer?’
‘Keen as mustard, sir!’ said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
‘Good lad!’
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand
hovered over the paperwork. ‘Name, lad?’ he said.
‘Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,’ said Polly.
‘Age?’
‘Seventeen come Sunday, sir.’

 
 
  
‘Yeah, right,’ said the sergeant. ‘You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia.
What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?’
‘ ‘e’d ‘ave ‘ad to ‘ave ‘elp,’ said the corporal, grinning. ‘He squeaks like a little lad.’
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t
he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
‘Don’t matter anyway,’ said the sergeant. ‘You make your mark on this here document and
kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I
will be your mother and your father and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big
brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you
away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding on to your collar. And you might
well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr Perks.’ A thick thumb jabbed at
the paper. ‘Just there, right?’
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
‘What’s that?’ said the corporal.
‘My signature,’ said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun round. Several young men—she corrected
herself, several other young men had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
‘You can read and write, too?’ said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her.
‘Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, as well. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling,
corporal. And the picture, of course.’
‘Right, sergeant,’ said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a
looking-glass.’ ‘Pucker up, Private Parts.’
‘It’s Perks, sir,’ said Polly.
‘Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.’
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded and
something, some kind of moss or something, was growing on the inside of the cracked glass
itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
‘Huh,’ said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
‘What’s this?’ said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
‘An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,’ said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. ‘But
the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of her grace.’
He turned and looked up at the newcomers. ‘Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys
here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal
Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?’
Polly looked at the next recruit with horror that she hoped she was concealing. She hadn’t
really noticed him in the gloom, because he was wearing black—not cool, styled black, but a
dusty black, the kind of suit people got buried in. By the look of it, that person had been him.
There were cobwebs all over it. The boy himself had stitches across his forehead.
‘Your name, lad?’ said Jackrum.
‘Igor, thur.’
Jackrum counted the stitches.