Discworld 30 - Monstrous Regiment (3 page)

 
 
  
‘Yeah? Well, I heard about people waking up and findin’ their friendly Igor had whipped
out their brains in the middle of the night and buggered off to flog ‘em,’ said the corporal,
glaring at Igor.
‘I promith you your brain ith entirely thafe from me, corporal,’ said Igor. Polly started to
laugh, and stopped when she realized absolutely no one else was doing so.
‘Yeah, well, I met a sergeant who said an Igor put a man’s legs on backwards,’ said
Corporal Strappi. ‘What good’s that to a soldier, eh?’
‘Could advance and retreat at the thame time?’ said Igor levelly. ‘Thargent, I know all the
thtorieth, and they are nothing but vile calumnieth. I theek only to therve my country. I do not
want trouble.’
‘Right,’ said the sergeant. ‘Nor do we. Make your mark, and you’ve got to promise not to
mess about with Corporal Strappi’s brain, right? Another signature? My word, I can see
we’ve got ourselves a bleedin’ college of recruits today. Give him his cardboard shilling,
corporal.’
‘Thank you,’ said Igor. ‘And I would like to give the picture a wipe, if it’th all the thame to
you.’ He produced a small cloth.
‘Wipe it?’ said Strappi. ‘Is that allowed, sergeant?’
‘What do you want to wipe it for, mister?’ said Jackrum.
‘To remove the invithible demonth,’ said Igor.
‘I can’t see any invis—’ Strappi began, and stopped.
‘Just let him, all right?’ said Jackrum. ‘It’s one of their funny little ways.’
‘Dun’t seem right,’ muttered Strappi. ‘Practically treason . . .’
‘Can’t see why it’d be wrong just to give the old girl a wash,’ said the sergeant shortly.
‘Next. Oh . . .’
Igor, after carefully wiping the stained picture and giving it a perfunctory peck, came and
stood next to Polly, giving her a sheepish grin. But she was watching the next recruit.
He was short and quite slim, which was fairly usual in a country where it was rare to get
enough food to make you fat. But he was dressed in black and expensively, like an aristocrat;
he even had a sword. The sergeant was, therefore, looking worried. Clearly a man could get
into trouble talking wrong to a nob who might have important friends.
‘You sure you’ve come to the right place, sir?’ he said.
‘Yes, sergeant. I wish to enlist.’
Sergeant Jackrum shifted uneasily. ‘Yes, sir, but I’m not sure a gentleman like you—’
‘Are you going to enlist me or not, sergeant?’
‘Not usual for a gentleman to enlist as a common soldier, sir,’ mumbled the sergeant.
‘What you mean, sergeant, is: is anyone after me? Is there a price on my head? And the
answer is no.’
‘How about a mob with pitchforks?’ said Corporal Strappi. ‘He’s a bloody vampire, sarge!
Anyone can see that! He’s a Black Ribboner! Look, he’s got the badge!’
‘Which says “Not One Drop”,’ said the young man calmly. ‘Not one drop of human blood,
sergeant. A prohibition I have accepted for almost two years, thanks to the League of

 
 
  
Temperance. Of course, if you have a personal objection, sergeant, you only need to give it to
me in writing.’
Which was quite a clever thing to say, Polly thought. Those clothes cost serious money.
Most of the vampire families were highly nobby. You never knew who was connected to who
. . . not just connected to who, in fact, but to whom. Whoms were likely to be far more
trouble than your common everyday who. The sergeant was looking down a mile of rough
road.
‘Got to move with the times, corporal,’ he said, deciding not to go there. ‘And we certainly
need the men.’
‘Yeah, but s’posin’ he wants to suck all my blood out in the middle of the night?’ said
Strappi.
‘Well, he’ll just have to wait until Private Igor’s finished looking for your brain, won’t
he?’ snapped the sergeant. ‘Sign here, mister.’
The pen scratched on the paper. After a minute or two the vampire turned the paper over
and continued writing on the other side. Vampires had long names.
‘But you can call me Maladict,’ he said, dropping the pen back in the inkwell.
‘Thank you very much, I must say, si— private. Give him the shilling, corporal. Good job
it’s not a silver one, eh? Haha!’
‘Yes,’ said Maladict. ‘It is.’
‘Next!’ said the sergeant. Polly watched as a farm boy, breeches held up with string,
shuffled in front of the table and looked at the quill pen with the resentful perplexity of those
confronted with new technology.
She turned back to the bar. The landlord glared at her in the manner of bad landlords
everywhere. As her father always said, if you kept an inn you either liked people or went
mad. Oddly enough, some of the mad ones were the best at looking after their beer. But by
the smell of the place, this wasn’t one of those.
She leaned on the bar. ‘Pint, please,’ she said, and watched glumly as the man gave a
scowl of acknowledgement and turned to the big barrels. It’d be sour, she knew, with the slop
bucket under the tap tipped back in every night, and the spigot not put back, and . . . yes, it
was going to be served in a leather tankard that had probably never been washed.
A couple of new recruits were already knocking back their pints, though, with every
audible sign of enjoyment. But this was Plün, after all. Anything that made you forget you
were there was probably worth drinking.
One of them said, ‘Lovely pint, this, eh?’ and the boy next to him belched and said, ‘Best
I’ve tasted, yeah.’
Polly sniffed at the tankard. The contents smelled like something she wouldn’t feed to pigs.
She took a sip, and completely changed her opinion. She would feed it to pigs. Those lads
have never tasted beer before, she told herself. It’s like dad said. Out in the country there’s
lads who’d join up for an uninhabited pair of breeches. And they’ll drink this muck and
pretend to enjoy it like men, hey up, we supped some stuff last night, eh, lads? And then next
thing—
Oh, lor’ . . . that reminded her. What’d the privy be like here? The men’s one out in the
yard back at home was bad enough. Polly sloshed two big pails of water into it every morning

 
 
  
while trying not to breathe. There was weird green moss growing on the slate floor. And The
Duchess was a good inn. It had customers who took their boots off before going to bed.
She narrowed her eyes. This stupid fool in front of her, a man making one long eyebrow do
the work of two, was serving them slops and foul vinegar just before they marched off to
war—
‘Thith beer,’ said Igor, on her right, ‘tathteth of horthe pith.’
Polly stood back. Even in a bar like this, that was killing talk.
‘Oh, you’d know, would you?’ said the barman, looming over the boy. ‘Drunk horse piss,
have you?’
‘Yeth,’ said Igor.
The barman stuck a fist in front of Igor’s face. ‘Now you listen to me, you lisping little—’
A slim black arm appeared with amazing speed and a pale hand caught the man’s wrist.
The one eyebrow contorted in sudden agony.
‘Now, it’s like this,’ said Maladict calmly. ‘We’re soldiers of the Duchess, agreed? Just say
“aargh”.’
He must have squeezed. The man groaned.
‘Thank you. And you’re serving up as beer a liquid best described as foul water,’ Maladict
went on in the same level, conversational tone. ‘I, of course, don’t drink . . . horse piss, but I
have a highly developed sense of smell, and really would prefer not to list aloud the things I
can smell in this murk, so we’ll just say “rat droppings” and leave it at that, shall we? Just
whimper. Good man.’ At the end of the bar, one of the new recruits threw up. The barman’s
fingers had gone white. Maladict nodded with satisfaction.
‘Incapacitating a soldier of her grace in wartime is a treasonable offence,’ he said. He
leaned forward. ‘Punishable, of course, by . . . death.’ Maladict pronounced the word with a
certain delight. ‘However, if there happened to be another barrel of beer around the place, you
know, good stuff, the stuff you’d keep for your friends if you had any friends, then I’m sure
we can forget this little incident. Now, I’m going to let go of your wrist. I can tell by your
eyebrow that you are a thinker, and if you’re thinking of rushing back in here with a big stick,
I’d like you to think about this instead: I’d like you to think about this black ribbon I’m
wearing. Know what it means, do you?’
The barman winced, and mumbled: ‘Temp’rance League . . .’
‘Right! Well done!’ said Maladict. ‘And one more thought for you, if you’ve got room.
I’ve only taken a pledge not to drink human blood. It doesn’t mean I can’t kick you in the
fork so hard you suddenly go deaf.’
He released his grip. The barman slowly straightened up. Under the bar he would have a
short wooden club, Polly knew. Every bar had one. Even her father had one. It was a great
help, he said, in times of worry and confusion. She saw the fingers of the usable hand twitch.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I think he means it.’
The barman relaxed. ‘Bit of a misunderstanding there, gents,’ he mumbled. ‘Got the wrong
barrel in. No offence meant.’ He shuffled off, his hand almost visibly throbbing.
‘I only thaid it wath horthe pith,’ said Igor.

 
 
  
‘He won’t cause trouble,’ said Polly to Maladict. ‘He’ll be your friend from now on. He’s
worked out he can’t beat you so he’s going to be your best mate.’
Maladict subjected her to a thoughtful stare. ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘How do you?’
‘I used to work in an inn,’ said Polly, feeling her heart begin to beat faster, as it always did
when the lies lined up. ‘You learn to read people.’
‘What did you do in the inn?’
‘Barman.’
‘There’s another inn in this hole, is there?’
‘Oh no, I’m not from round here.’
Polly groaned at the sound of her own voice, and waited for the question: ‘Then why come
here to join up?’ It didn’t come. Instead, Maladict just shrugged and said, ‘I shouldn’t think
anyone is from round here.’
A couple more new recruits arrived at the bar. They had the same look - sheepish, a bit
defiant, in clothes that didn’t fit well. Eyebrow reappeared with a small keg, which he laid
reverentially on a stand and gently tapped. He pulled a genuine pewter tankard from under
the bar, filled it, and timorously proffered it to Maladict.
‘Igor?’ said the vampire, waving it away.
‘I’ll thtick with the horthe pith, if it’th all the thame to you,’ said Igor. He looked around in
the sudden silence. ‘Look, I never thaid I didn’t like it,’ said Igor. He pushed his mug across
the sticky bar. ‘Thame again?’
Polly took the new tankard and sniffed at it. Then she took a sip. ‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘At
least it tastes like it’s—’
The door pushed open, letting in the sounds of the storm. About two-thirds of a troll eased
its way inside, and then managed to get the rest of itself through.
Polly was okay about trolls. She met them up in the woods sometimes, sitting amongst the
trees or purposefully lumbering along the tracks on the way to whatever it was trolls did.
They weren’t friendly, they were . . . resigned. The world’s got humans in it, live with it.
They’re not worth the indigestion. You can’t kill ‘em all. Step around ‘em. Stepping on ‘em
doesn’t work in the long term.
Occasionally a farmer would hire one to do some heavy work. Sometimes they turned up,
sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they’d turn up, lumber around a field pulling out tree
stumps as if they were carrots, and then wander off without waiting to be paid. A lot of things
humans did mystified trolls, and vice versa. Generally, they avoided one another.
But she didn’t often see trolls as . . . trollish as this one. It looked like a boulder that had
spent centuries in the damp pine forests. Lichen covered it. Stringy grey moss hung in
curtains from its head and its chin. It had a bird’s nest in one ear. It had a genuine troll club,
made from an uprooted sapling. It was almost a joke troll, except that no one would laugh.
The root end of the sapling bumped across the floor as the troll, watched by the recruits
and a horrified Corporal Strappi, trudged to the table.
‘Gonna En List,’ it said. ‘Gonna do my bit. Gimme shillin’.’
‘You’re a troll!’ Strappi burst out.
‘Now, now, none of that, corporal,’ said Sergeant Jackrum. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’

 
 
  
‘Don’t ask? Don’t ask? It’s a troll, sarge! It’s got crags! There’s grass growing under its
fingernails! It’s a troll!’
‘Right,’ said the sergeant. ‘Enlist him.’
‘You want to fight with us?’ Strappi squeaked. Trolls had no sense of personal space, and a
ton of what was, for practical purposes, a kind of rock was looming right over the table.
The troll analysed the question. The recruits stood in silence, mugs halfway to mouths.
‘No,’ said the troll at last. ‘Gonna fight wi’ En Army. Gods save the . . .’ The troll paused,
and looked at the ceiling. Whatever it was seeking there didn’t appear to be visible. Then it
looked at its feet, which had grass growing on them. Then it looked at its free hand and
moved its fingers as if counting something. ‘. . . Duchess,’ it said. It had been a long wait.
The table creaked as the troll laid a hand on it, palm upwards. ‘Gimme shillin’.’
‘We’ve only got the bits of pape—’ Corporal Strappi began. Sergeant Jackrum jabbed an
elbow into his ribs.
‘Upon my oath, are you mad?’ he hissed. ‘There’s a ten-man bounty for enlisting a troll!’
With his other hand he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a real silver shilling, and
placed it delicately in the huge hand. ‘Welcome to your new life, friend! I’ll just write your
name down, shall I? What is it?’
The troll looked at ceiling, feet, sergeant, wall and table. Polly saw its lips move.
‘Carborundum?’ it volunteered.
‘Yeah, probably,’ said the sergeant. ‘Er, how’d you like to shav— to cut off some of that
hai— moss? We’ve got a, a sort of a . . . regulation . . .’
Wall, floor, ceiling, table, fingers, sergeant. ‘No,’ said Carborundum.
‘Right. Right. Right,’ said the sergeant quickly. ‘It’s not a regulation as per such, actually,
it’s more of an advisory. Silly one, too, eh? I’ve always thought so. Glad to have you with
us,’ he added fervently.
The troll licked the coin, which gleamed like a diamond in its hand. It actually did have
grass growing under its fingernails too, Polly noticed. Then Carborundum trudged to the bar.
The crowd parted instantly, because trolls never had to stand at the back of the press of
bodies, waving money and trying to catch the barman’s eye.
He broke the coin in two and dropped both halves on the bar top. Eyebrow swallowed. He
looked as though he would have said ‘Are you sure?’ except that this was not a question
barmen addressed to people weighing over half a ton. Carborundum thought for a while, and
then said: ‘Gimme drink.’
Eyebrow nodded, disappeared briefly into the room behind the bar, and came back holding
a double-handled mug. Maladict sneezed. Polly’s eyes watered. It was the kind of smell you
sense with your teeth. The pub might make foul beer as a matter of course, but this was eye-
stinging vinegar.
Eyebrow dropped one half of the silver coin into it, and then took a copper penny out of
the money drawer and held it over the fuming mug. The troll nodded. With just a hint of
ceremony, like a cocktail waiter dropping the little umbrella into a Double Entendre,
Eyebrow let the copper fall.
More bubbles welled up. Igor watched with interest. Carborundum picked the mug up in
two fingers of each shovel-like hand, and swallowed the contents in one gulp. He stood stock
still for a moment, then carefully put the mug back on the bar.