Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31).pdf

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

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