Monstrous Regiment Read online

  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 t
he 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.

  ‘You gentlemen might like to move back a bit,’ murmured Eyebrow.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ said Polly.

  ‘It takes ’em all differently,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Looks like this one’s – no, there he goes . . .’

  With considerable style, Carborundum went over backwards. There was no sagging at the knees, no girly attempt to soften the fall. He just went from standing up, one hand out, to lying down, one hand up. He even rocked gently for some time after hitting the floor.

  ‘Got no head for his drink,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Typical of the young bucks. Wants to play the big troll, comes in here, orders an Electrick Floorbanger, doesn’t know how to handle it.’

  ‘Is he going to come round?’ said Maladict.

  ‘No, that’s it until dawn, I reckon,’ said Eyebrow. ‘Brain stops working.’

  ‘Shouldn’t affect him too much, then,’ said Corporal Strappi, stepping up. ‘Right, you miserable lot. You’re sleeping in the shed out the back, understand? Practically waterproof, hardly any rats. We’re out of here at dawn! You’re in the army now!’

  Polly lay in the dark, on a bed of musty straw. There was no question of anyone’s getting undressed. The rain hammered on the roof and the wind blew through a crack under the door, despite Igor’s attempt to stuff it with straw. There was some desultory conversation, during which Polly found that she was sharing the dank shed with ‘Tonker’ Halter, ‘Shufti’ Manickle, ‘Wazzer’ Goom and ‘Lofty’ Tewt. Maladict and Igor didn’t seem to have acquired repeatable nicknames. She’d become Ozzer by general agreement.

  Slightly to Polly’s surprise the boy now known as Wazzer had taken a small picture of the Duchess out of his pack and had nervously hung it on an old nail. No one else said anything as he prayed to it. It was what you were supposed to do.

  They said the Duchess was dead . . .

  Polly had been washing up when she’d heard the men talking late one night, and it’s a poor woman who can’t eavesdrop while making a noise at the same time.

  Dead, they said, but the people up at PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJoseph-BernhardtWilhelmsberg weren’t admitting it. That was ’cos what with there being n
o children, and with royalty marrying one another’s cousins and grannies all the time, the ducal throne would go to Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia! There! Can you believe that? That’s why we never see her, right? And there hasn’t been a new picture all these years? Makes you think, eh? Oh, they say she’s been in mourning ’cos of the young Duke, but that was more’n seventy years ago! They say she was buried in secret and—

  At which point her father had stopped the speaker dead. There are some conversations where you don’t even want people to remember you were in the same room.

  Dead or alive, the Duchess watched over you.

  The recruits tried to sleep.

  Occasionally, someone belched or expelled wind noisily, and Polly responded with a few fake eructations of her own. That seemed to inspire greater effort on the part of the other sleepers, to the point where the roof rattled and dust fell down, before everyone subsided. Once or twice she heard people stagger out into the windy darkness, in theory for the privy but probably, given male impatience in these matters, to aim much closer to home. Once, coasting in and out of a troubled dream, she thought she heard someone sobbing.

  Taking care not to rustle too much, Polly pulled out the much-folded, much-read, much-stained last letter from her brother, and read it by the light of the solitary, guttering candle. It had been opened and heavily mangled by the censors, and bore the stamp of the Duchy. It read:

  Dear all,

  We are in which is with a big thing with knobs. On we will which is just as well because out of. I am keeping well. The food is we’ll at the but my mate er says not to worry, it’ll be all over by and we shall all have medals.

  Chins up!

  Paul

  It was in a careful hand, the excessively clear and well-shaped writing of someone who has to think about every letter. She slowly folded it up again. Paul had wanted medals, because they were shiny. That’d been almost a year ago, when any recruiting party that came past went away with the best part of a battalion, and there had been people waving them off with flags and music. Sometimes, now, smaller parties of men came back. The lucky ones were missing only one arm or one leg. There were no flags.