“Well, that’s all right, then—” Polly began, in that cloud of deep embarrassment that Wazzer called up within her.
“Yeah, right,” said Tonker. “But I’m not praying to anyone, okay? Ever again. I don’t like this, Wazz. You’re a decent kid, but I don’t like the way you smile—” She stopped. “Oh, no…”
Polly stared at Wazzer. Her face was thin and all angles, and the Duchess in the painting had looked, well, like an overfed turbot, but now the smile, the actual smile…
“I’m not putting up with that!” Tonker snarled. “You stop that right now! I mean it! You’re giving me the creeps! Ozz, you stop her—him smiling like that!”
“Just calm down, all of you—” Polly began.
“Bleedin’ well shut up!” said Jackrum. “A man can’t hear himself chew. Look, you’re all edgy. That happens. And Wazzer here’s just got a bit of religion before the fight. That happens, too. And what you do is, you save it all up for the enemy. Quieten down. That is what we in the milit’ry call an order, okay?”
“Perks?” It was Blouse.
“You’d better hurry,” said Maladict. “His corset probably wants lacing…”
In fact Blouse was sitting on what remained of a chair.
“Ah, Perks. A shave, please,” he said.
“Oh, I thought your hand was better, sir…”
“Er… yes.” Blouse looked awkward. “The problem, Perks, is… I have never actually shaved myself at all, to be honest. I had a man to do it for me at school, and then of course in the army I shared a batman with Blitherskite and, er, those attempts I made on my own behalf have been somewhat bloody. I never really thought about it until I got to Plotz and, er… suddenly it was embarrassing…”
“Sorry about that, sir,” said Polly. It was a strange old world.
“Later on perhaps you could give me a few tips,” Blouse went on. “You keep yourself beautifully shaven, I can’t help noticing. General Froc would be pleased. He’s very anti-whiskers, they say.”
“If you like, sir,” said Polly. There was no getting out of it. She made a show of sharpening the razor. Perhaps she could manage it with only a few small cuts…
“Do you think I should have a reddened nose?” said Blouse.
“Probably, sir,” said Polly. Sarge knows about me, I’m sure, she thought. I know he does. Why’s he keeping quiet?
“Probably, Perks?”
“What? Oh. No… why a red nose, sir?” said Polly, applying the lather with vigour.
“It would look more pff amusing, perhaps.”
“Not sure that’s the purpose of the exercise, sir. Now, if you’d just, er, lie back, sir—”
“There’s something you should know about young Perks, sir.”
Polly actually yelped. Walking as silently as only a sergeant can, Jackrum had stolen into the room.
“pff Sergeant?” said Blouse.
“Perks doesn’t know how to shave a man, sir,” said Jackrum. “Give me the razor, Perks.”
“Doesn’t know how to shave?” said Blouse.
“Nosir. Perks lied to us, right, Perks?”
“All right, sarge, no need to drag it out,” sighed Polly. “Lieutenant, I’m—”
“—under age,” said Jackrum. “Right, Perks? Only fourteen, aren’t you?” He looked at Polly over the top of the lieutenant’s head, and winked.
“Er… I told a lie to get enlisted, sir, yes,” said Polly.
“I don’t think a lad like that ought to be dragged into the Keep, however game he is,” said Jackrum. “And I don’t think he’s the only one. Right, Perks?”
Oh, so that’s the game. Blackmail, Polly thought.
“Yes, sarge,” she said wearily.
“Can’t have a massacre of little lads, sir, now can we?” said Jackrum.
“I see your pff point, sergeant,” said the lieutenant, as Jackrum gently drove the blade down his cheek. “That is a tricky one.”
“Best to call it a day, then?” said Jackrum.
“On the other hand, sergeant, I do know that you pff yourself joined up as a child,” said Blouse. The blade stopped moving.
“Well, it was all different in those—” Jackrum began.
“You were five years old, apparently,” the lieutenant went on. “You see, when I heard that I would be meeting you, a legend in the army, of course I had a look at our files so that I could, perhaps, make a few timely jokes in presenting you with your honourable discharge. You know, humorous little reminiscences about times gone by? Imagine how puzzled I was, therefore, to find that you appear to have been drawing actual wages for, well, it was a little hard to be certain, but possibly as much as sixty years.”
Polly had put a keen edge on the razor. It rested against the lieutenant’s cheek. Polly thought about the murder—oh, all right, the killing of an escaping prisoner—in the wood. It won’t be the first officer I’ve killed…
“Probably one of them clerical errors, sir,” said Jackrum coldly. In the gloomy room, with moss now colonizing the walls, the sergeant loomed large.
An owl, perched on the chimney, gave a screech. It echoed down into the room.
“In fact no, sergeant,” said Blouse, apparently oblivious of the razor. “Your package, sergeant, had been tampered with. On numerous occasions. Once, even by General Froc. He deducted ten years from your age and signed the change. And he wasn’t the only one. Frankly, sergeant, I’m forced to only one conclusion.”
“And what’s that, sir?” The razor halted again, still pressed against Blouse’s neck. The silence seemed to last for some time, sharp and drawn out.
“That there was some other man called Jackrum,” said Blouse slowly, “whose records have… got mixed up with yours and… every attempt to sort it out by officers who were, er, not entirely at home with figures only made it more confusing.”
The razor started to move again, with silky smoothness. “I think you’ve put your finger right on it, sir,” said Jackrum.
“I am going to write an explanatory note and add it to the packet,” Blouse went on. “It seems to me the sensible thing to do would be to ask you here and now how old you are. How old are you, sergeant?”
“Forty-three, sir,” said Jackrum instantly. Polly looked up, expecting the generic thunderclap that ought to accompany such a universe-sized untruth.
“Are you sure?” said Blouse.
“Forty-five, sir. The hardships of a soldier’s life show up onna face, sir.”
“Even so—”
“Ah, I recall a couple of extra birthdays what had slipped my memory, sir. I’m forty-seven, sir.” Still no rumble of celestial disapproval, Polly noticed.
“Er… yes. Very well. After all, you should know, eh, sergeant? I shall amend it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Just like General Froc did. And Major Galosh. And Colonel Legin, sergeant.”
“Yessir. Clerical error has followed me around all the days of my life, sir. I’ve been a martyr to it.” Jackrum stood back. “There we are, sir. Face as smooth as a baby’s bum. Smooth is how things should be, eh, sir? I’ve always liked things smooth.”
They watched Lieutenant Blouse walk down through the trees to the path. They watched him join the erratic, straggling line of women on their way to the door. They listened for screams, and heard none.
“D-does any woman sway that much?” said Wazzer, peering through the bushes.
“Not legally, I think,” said Polly, scanning the Keep with the lieutenant’s telescope. “Well, we’ll just have to wait for some sort of signal that he’s okay.”
Somewhere overhead, a buzzard screamed.
“No, they’ll have got him the moment he walked through the door,” said Maladict. “Bet on it.”
They left Jade on watch. With her paint scraped off, a troll could settle into rocky scenery so well that no one was likely to notice her before they walked into her, and by the time they’d walked into her it was too late.
They made
their way back through the woods, and had almost reached the ruined farmhouse when it happened.
“You are holding up well, Mal,” said Polly. “Maybe those acorns did the trick? You haven’t mentioned coffee at all—”
Maladict stopped, and turned slowly. To Polly’s horror, his face was suddenly shiny with sweat. “You had to bring it up, didn’t you?” he said hoarsely. “Oh, please, no! I was holding on so tight! I was doing so well!” He fell forward, but managed to get onto his hands and knees. Then he raised his head, and his eyes were glowing red. “Fetch… Igorina,” he muttered, gasping. “I know she’s ready for this…”
…whopwhopwhop…
Wazzer was praying furiously. Maladict tried to stand up again, fell back onto his knees, and raised his arms imploringly to the sky.
“Get out of here while you can,” he mumbled, as his teeth visibly lengthened. “I’ll—”
There was a shadow, a sense of movement, and the vampire slumped forward, stunned by an eight-ounce sack of coffee beans that had dropped out of a clear sky.
Polly arrived at the farmhouse carrying Maladict on her shoulder. She made him as comfortable as possible on some ancient straw, and the squad consulted.
“Do you think we ought to try to take the sack out of his mouth?” said Shufti nervously.
“I tried, but he fights,” said Polly.
“But he’s unconscious!”
“He still won’t let go of it! He’s sucking it. I’d swear he was out cold, but he just sort of reached out and grabbed it and bit! It dropped out of a clear sky!”
Tonker stared at Wazzer. “The Duchess does room service?” she said.
“No! She says she d-didn’t!”
“You get freak rainth of fish,” said Igorina, kneeling down by Maladict. “I suppose it’s possible that a whirlwind tore through a coffee plantation, and then possibly a lightning discharge in the upper ether—”
“At what point did it blow through a factory making small coffee sacks?” said Tonker. “Ones with a jolly turbaned man printed on them apparently saying ‘Klatchian Rare Roasted! When a Pickaxe is Not Enough!’”
“Well, if you’re going to put it like that, it does theem a little far-fetched…” Igorina stood up, adding, “I think he’ll be fine when he wakes up. Possibly a little talkative, though.”
“Okay, lads, get some rest,” said Jackrum, coming in. “Let’s give the rupert a couple of hours to muck things up, and then we can nip around the valley and slip down and join the rest of the army. Good grub and proper blankets to sleep on, hey? That’s the ticket!”
“We don’t know he’s going to mess up, sarge,” said Polly.
“Oh, yeah, right, maybe he’ll have married the commander of the garrison by now, eh? Stranger things have happened, although I can’t remember when. Perks and Manickle, you’re on watch. The rest of you, get some shut-eye.”
A Zlobenian patrol went past in the distance. Polly watched it out of sight. It was turning into a fine day, warm with a bit of wind. Good drying weather. A good day to be a washerwoman. And maybe Blouse would succeed. Maybe all the guards were blind.
“Pol?” Shufti whispered.
“Yes, Shuf… Look, what was your name back in the world?”
“Betty. It’s Betty. Er… most of the Ins-and-Outs are in the Keep, right?”
“Apparently.”
“So that’s where I’m most likely to find my fiancé, yes?”
We’ve talked about that, Polly thought. “Could be.”
“Might be quite hard if there’s a lot of men…” said Betty, a woman with something on her mind.
“Well, if we get as far as the prisoners and ask around they’ll be bound to know his name. What is it?”
“Johnny,” whispered Betty.
“Just Johnny?” said Polly.
“Er… yes…”
Ah, Polly thought. I think I know how this goes…
“He’s got fair hair and blue eyes, and I think he had one gold earring, and… and a funny-shaped… what d’you call it? Oh, yes… sort of carbuncle on his, his… bottom.”
“Right. Right.”
“Um… now I come to tell someone, it doesn’t sound very helpful, I suppose.”
Not unless we’re in a position to have a very unusual identity parade, Polly thought, and I can’t imagine what position that would be.
“Not as such,” she said.
“He said everyone in the regiment knows him,” Betty went on.
“Right? Oh, good,” said Polly. “All we need to do is ask.”
“And, er, we were going to break a sixpence in half, you know, like they do, so that if he had to be away for years we’d be sure we’d got the right person ’cos the two halves would match…”
“Oh, that would be a bit of a help, I expect.”
“Well, yes, except, well, I gave him the sixpence, and he said he’d get the blacksmith to break it in his vice, and he went off and, er, I think he got called away…” Betty’s voice trailed off.
Well, that was about what I expected, Polly thought.
“I expect you think I’m a silly girl,” mumbled Betty after a while.
“A foolish woman, perhaps,” said Polly, turning to watch the landscape intently.
“It was, you know a whirlwind romance…”
“Sounds more like a hurricane to me,” said Polly, and Betty grinned.
“Yes, it was a bit like that,” she said.
Polly matched smile for smile. “Betty, it’s daft to talk about silly and foolish at a time like this,” she said. “Where are we going to look for wisdom? To a god who hates jigsaws and the colour blue? A fossil government led by a picture? An army that thinks stubbornness is the same as courage? Compared to all that, all you’ve got wrong is timing!”
“I don’t want to end up in the School, though,” said Betty. “They took away a girl from our village and she was kicking and screaming—”
“Then fight them!” said Polly. “You’ve got a sword now, haven’t you? Fight back!” She saw the look of horror on Betty’s face, and remembered that this wasn’t Tonker she was talking to. “Look, if we get out of this alive we’ll talk to the colonel. He might be able to help.” After all, perhaps your boy really was called Johnny, she thought, perhaps he really was called away suddenly. Hope is a wonderful thing. She went on: “If we get out of this, there’s going to be no School and no beatings. Not for you or any of us. Not if we’ve got brains. Not if we’re smart.”
Betty was almost in tears, but she managed another smile. “And Wazzer’s talking to the Duchess, too. She’ll fix things!”
Polly stared out at the bright, unchanging landscape, empty except for a buzzard making wide circles in the forbidden blue.
“I’m not sure about that,” she said. “But someone up there likes us.”
Twilight was brief at this time of year. There had been no sign from Blouse.
“I watched until I couldn’t see,” said Jade, as they sat and watched Shufti make stew. “Some of der women dat came out was ones I saw goin’ in dis mornin’, too.”
“Are you sure?” said Jackrum.
“We might be fick, sarge,” said Jade, looking hurt, “but trolls have great… er… vis-you-all ack-you-it-tee. More women was going in dis evenin’, too.”
“Night shift,” said Tonker.
“Oh well, he tried,” said Jackrum. “With any luck he’s in a nice warm cell and they’ve found him a pair of long pants. Get your kit together, lads. We’ll creep around and into our lines and you’ll be snug in bed by midnight.”
Polly remembered what she’d said, hours ago, about fighting. You had to start somewhere.
“I want to try the Keep again,” she said.
“You do, Perks, do you?” said Jackrum, with mock interest.
“My brother’s in there.”
“Nice safe place for him, then.”
“He might be injured. I vote for the Keep.”
“Vote?” said Jackrum.
“My word, that’s a new one. Voting in the army? Who wants to get killed, lads, let’s have a show of hands? Knock it off, Perks.”
“I’m going to try it, sarge!”
“You are not!”
“Try and stop me!” The words came out before she could stop them. And that’s it, she thought, the shout heard round the world. No going back after this. I’ve run off the edge of the cliff and it’s all downhill from here.
Jackrum’s expression stayed blank for a second or two, and then he said, “Anyone else voting for the Keep?”
Polly looked at Shufti, who blushed.
But:
“We are,” said Tonker. Beside her, Lofty struck a match, and held it so that it flared. That was pretty much a speech from Lofty.
“Why, pray?” said Jackrum.
“We don’t want to sit around in a swamp,” said Tonker. “And we don’t like being ordered about.”
“Should have thought of that before you joined an army, lad!”
“We aren’t lads, sarge.”
“You are if I says you are!”
Well, it’s not as though I wasn’t expecting it, Polly thought. I’ve played this out enough times in my head. Here goes…
“All right, sarge,” she said. “It’s time to have it out, here and now.”
“Ooo, er,” said Jackrum theatrically, fishing his screwed-up paper of tobacco out of his pocket.
“What?”
Jackrum sat down on the remains of a wall. “Just injecting a little sauciness into the conversation,” he said. “Carry on, Perks. Have your say. I thought it’d come to this.”
“You know I’m a woman, sarge,” said Polly.
“Yup. I wouldn’t trust you to shave cheese.”
The squad stared. Jackrum opened his big knife and examined the chewing tobacco as though it was the most interesting thing present.
“So… er… what are you going to do about it?” said Polly, feeling derailed.
“Dunno. Can’t do anything, can I? You were born like it.”
“You didn’t tell Blouse!” said Polly.
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