Jackrum’s tea sprayed across the clearing.

“I daresay our enemy feels impregnable just become he commands a heavily armed fort on a rocky crag with walls a hundred feet high and twenty feet thick,” Blouse continued, as if half the trees weren’t now dripping tea. “But he is in for a surprise!”

“You all right, Sarge?” whispered Polly. Jackrum was making strange little noises in his throat.

“Does anyone have any questions?” said Blouse.

Igorina raised a branch.

“How will we get in, thur?” she said.

“Ah. Good question,” said Blouse. “And all will become apparent in due time.”

“Aerial cavalry,” said Maladict.

“Pardon, Corporal?”

“Flying machines, sir!” said Maladict. “They won’t know where to expect us! We touch down in a handy LZ, take them out, and then dust off!”

Blouse’s clear brow wrinkled a little.

“Flying machine?” he said.

“I saw a picture of one by someone called Leonard of Quirm. A sort of…flying windmill! It’s just like a big screw up in the sky—”

“I don’t think we need one of those, although the advice is welcome,” said Blouse.

“Not when we’ve got a big screw-up down here, sir!” Jackrum managed. “Sir, this is just a bunch of recruits, sir! All that stuff about honor and freedom and that, that was just for the writer man, right? Good idea, sir! Yeah, let’s get to Kneck Valley, and let’s sneak in and join the rest of the lads. That’s where we ought to be, sir! You can’t be serious about taking the Keep, sir! I wouldn’t try that with a thousand men!”

“I might try it with half a dozen, Sergeant.”

Jackrum’s eyes bulged.

“Really, sir? What’ll Private Goom do? Tremble at them? Young Igor will stitch ’em up, will he? Private Halter will give ’em a nasty look? They’re promising lads, sir, but they’re not men.”

“General Tacticus said the fate of a battle may depend upon the actions of one man in the right place, Sergeant,” said Blouse calmly.

“And having a lot more soldiers than the other bugger, sir,” Jackrum insisted. “Sir, we should get to the rest of the army. Maybe it’s trapped, maybe it isn’t. All that stuff about them not wanting to slaughter us, sir, that makes no sense. The idea is to win, sir. If the rest of ’em have stopped attacking, it’s because they’re frightened of us. We should be down there. That’s the place for young recruits, sir, where they can learn. The enemy is looking for ’em, sir!”

“If General Froc is among those captured, the Keep will be where he is held,” said Blouse. “I believe he was the first officer you served under as sergeant, am I right?”

Jackrum hesitated. “That’s right, sir,” he said eventually. “And he was the dumbest lieutenant I’ve ever met, bar one.”

“I am positive there is a secret entrance into the Keep, Sergeant.”

Polly’s memory nudged her. If Paul was alive, he was in the Keep.

She caught Shufti’s eye. The girl nodded. She’d been thinking along the same lines. She didn’t talk much about her…fiancé, and Polly wondered how official the arrangement was.

“Permission to speak, Sarge?” she said.

“Okay, Perks.”

“I’d like to try to find a way into the Keep, Sarge.”

“Perks, are you volunteering to attack the biggest, strongest castle within five hundred miles? Single-handed?”

“I’ll go, too,” said Shufti.

“Oh, two of you?” said Jackrum. “Oh, well, that’s all right then!”

“I’ll go,” said Wazzer. “The Duchess has told me that I should.”

Jackrum looked down at Wazzer’s thin little face and watery eyes, and sighed. He turned back to Blouse.

“Let’s get a move on, sir, shall we? We can talk about this later. At least we’re headed to Kneck, first stop on the road to hell. Perks and Igor, you take point. Maladict?”

“Yo!”

“Er…you scout on ahead.”

“I hear ya!”

“Good.”

As the vampire walked past Polly, the world, just for a moment, changed; the forest became greener, the sky grayer, and she heard a noise overhead, like “whopwhopwhop.” And then it was gone.

Vampire hallucinations are contagious, she thought. What’s going on in his head?

She hurried forward with Igorina, and they set off again through the forest.

Birds sang. The effect was peaceful, if you didn’t know about birdsong, but Polly could recognize the alarm calls close by and the territorial threats far off and, everywhere, the preoccupation with sex. That took the edge off the pleasure.*

“Polly?” said Igorina.

“Hmm?”

“Could you kill someone if you had to?”

Polly came right back to the here and now. “What sort of question is that to ask anyone?”

“I think it’s the sort you’d ask a tholdier,” said Igorina.

“I don’t know. If they were attacking me, I suppose. Hurt them hard enough to keep them lying down, anyway. And you?”

“We have a great respect for life, Polly,” said Igorina solemnly. “It’s easy to kill thomeone, and almost impossible to bring them back again.”

“Almost?”

“Well, if you don’t have a really good lightning rod. And even if you have, they’re never quite the same. Cutlery tends to stick to them.”

“Igorina, why are you here?”

“The clan isn’t very…keen on girls getting too involved in the Great Work,” said Igorina, looking downcast. “‘Thtick to your needlework,’ my mother keeps saying. Well, that’s all very fine, but I know I’m good at the actual incisions as well. Especially the fiddly bits. And I think a woman on the slab would feel a lot better about things if she knew there was a female hand on the we-belong-dead switch. Tho, I thought some battlefield experience would convince my father. Soldiers aren’t choosy about who saves their lives.”

“I suppose men are the same the world over,” said Polly.

“On the inside, certainly.”

“And…er…you really can put your hair back?” Polly had seen it in its jar when they’d been breaking camp; it had spun gently in its bottle of green liquid, like some fine, rare seaweed.

“Oh, yes. Scalp transplants are easy. It stings a bit for a couple of minutes, that’s all—”

There was movement between the trees, and then the blur resolved itself into Maladict. He held a finger to his lips as he drew closer, and then whispered urgently: “Charlie’s tracking us!”

Polly and Igorina looked at one another.

“Who’s Charlie?”

Maladict stared at them, and then rubbed his face distractedly.

“I’m…sorry, er…sorry, it’s…look, we’re being followed! I know it!”

 

The sun was setting. Polly peered over the rocky ledge, back the way they had come. She could make out the track, golden and red in the late afternoon light. Nothing was moving.

The outcrop was near the top of another rounded hill; the rear of it became the floor of a little enclosed space, surrounded by bushes. It made a good lookout for people who wanted to see without being seen, and it had done so in the recent past, by the look of the old fires.

Maladict was sitting with his head in his hands, with Jackrum and Blouse on either side of him. They were trying to understand, and not making much progress.

“So you can’t hear anything?” said Blouse.

“No!”

“And you didn’t see anything and can’t smell anything?” said Jackrum.

“No! I told you! But there is something after us! Watching us!”

“But if you can’t—” Blouse began.

“Look, I’m a vampire,” panted Maladict. “Just trust me, okay?”

“I thould, Tharge,” said Igorina from behind Jackrum. “We Igorth often therve vampireth. In timeth of strethth their perthonal thpace can extend ath much ath ten mileth from their body.”

There was the usual pause that followed an extended lisp. People need time to think.

“Streth-th?” said Blouse.

“You know how you can feel that someone’s looking at you?” mumbled Maladict. “Well, it’s like that, times a thousand. And it’s not a…a feeling, it’s something I know.”

“Lots of people are looking for us, Corporal,” said Blouse, patting him kindly on the shoulder. “It doesn’t mean that they’ll find us.”

Polly, looking down on the gold-lit woodland, opened her mouth to speak. It was dry. Nothing came out

Maladict shook the lieutenant’s hand away. “This…person isn’t looking for us! They know where we are!”

Polly forced saliva into her mouth, and tried again.

“Movement!”

And then it wasn’t there anymore. She’d have sworn there had been something on the path, something that merged with the light, revealing itself only by the changing, wavering pattern of shadows as it moved.

“Er…perhaps not,” she muttered.

“Look, we’ve all lost sleep and we’re all a little ‘strung out,’” said Blouse. “Let’s just keep things down, shall we?”

“I need coffee!” moaned Maladict, rocking back and forth.

Polly squinted at the distant pathway. The breeze was shaking the trees, and red-gold leaves were drifting down. For a moment there was just a suggestion…

She got to her feet. Stare at shadows and waving branches for long enough and you could see anything. It was like looking at pictures in the fire.

“O-kay,” said Shufti, who’d been working over the fire. “This might do it. It smells like coffee, anyway. Well…quite like coffee. Well…quite like coffee if coffee was made from acorns, anyway.”

She’d roasted some acorns. As least the woods had plenty of them at this time of year, and everyone knew that roasted, ground acorns could be substituted for coffee, didn’t they? Polly had agreed that it was a worth a try, but, as far as she could recall, no one had ever, given the choice, said, “No, I will not touch horrible coffee anymore! It’s a Long Black ground-acorn substitute for me, with extra floating gritty bits!”

She took the mug from Shufti and carried it over to the vampire. As she bent down…the world changed.

…whopwhopwhop…

The sky was a haze of dust, turning the sun into a blood-red disc. For a moment, Polly saw them in the sky, giant fat screws spinning in the air, hovering in the air but drifting slowly toward her—

“He’s having flashsides,” whispered Igorina at her elbow.

“Flashsides?”

“Like…someone else’s flashbackth. We don’t know anything about them. They could come from anywhere. A vampire at this stage is open to all sorts of influences! Give him the coffee, please!”

Maladict grabbed the mug and tried to down the contents so quickly that they spilled down his chin. They watched him swallow.

“Tastes like mud!” he said, putting down the mug.

“Yes, but is it working?”

Maladict looked up and blinked.

“Ye gods, but this stuff is gruesome.”

“Are we in a forest or a jungle? Any flying screws?” Igorina demanded. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“You know, that’s something an Igor should never say,” said Maladict, grimacing. “But…the…feelings aren’t so strong. I can suck it down! I can gut it out.”

Polly looked at Igorina, who shrugged and said, “That’s nice,” and motioned to Polly to joined her a little way off.

“He, or possibly she, is right on the edge,” she said.

“Well, we all are!” said Polly. “We’re hardly getting any sleep!”

“You know what I mean. I’ve, er…taken the liberty of, er…being prepared.” Wordlessly, Igorina let her jacket fall open, just for a moment. Polly saw a knife, a wooden stake, and a hammer, in neatly stitched little pockets.

“It’s not going to come to that, is it?”

“I hope not,” said Igorina. “But if it doeth, I’m the only one who can reliably find the heart. People always think it’s more to the left than—”

“It’s not going to come to that,” said Polly firmly.

 

The sky was red. The war was a day away.

Polly crept along just below the ridge with the tea can. It was tea that kept the army on its feet.

Remember what’s real…well, that took some doing. Tonker and Lofty, for example. It didn’t matter which of them was on guard, the other one would be there as well. And they were, sitting side by side on a fallen tree, staring down the slope.

They were holding hands. They always held hands, when they thought they were alone. But it seemed to Polly that they didn’t hold hands like people who were, well, friends. They held hands tightly, like someone who has slipped over a cliff would hold hands with a rescuer, fearing that to let go would be to fall away.

“Tea up!” she quavered.

The girls turned, and she dipped a couple of mugs into the scalding tea.

“You know,” she said quietly, “No one would hate you if you ran away tonight…”

“What do you mean, Ozz?” said Lofty.

“Well, what’s there in Kneck for you? You got away from the School. You could go anywhere. I bet the two of you could sneak—”

“We’re staying,” said Tonker severely. “We talked about it. Where else would we go? Anyway, supposing something is following us?”

“Probably just an animal,” said Polly, who didn’t believe it herself.

“Animals don’t do that,” said Tonker. “And I don’t think Maladict would get so excited. It’s probably more spies. Well, we’ll get them.”

“Nobody is going to take us back,” said Lofty.

“Oh. Er…good,” said Polly, backing away. “Well, must get on, no one likes cold tea, eh?”

She hurried around the hill. Whenever Lofty and Tonker were together, she felt like a trespasser.

Wazzer was on guard in a small dell, watching the land below with her usual expression of slightly worrying intensity. She turned as Polly approached.

“Oh, Polly,” said Wazzer. “Good news!”

“Oh, good,” said Polly weakly. “I like good news.”

“She says it will be all right for us not to wear our dimity scarves,” said Wazzer.

“What? Oh. Good,” said Polly.

“But only because we are serving a Higher Purpose,” said Wazzer. And, just as Blouse could invert commas, Wazzer could drop capital letters into a spoken sentence.

“That’s good, then,” said Polly.

“You know, Polly,” said Wazzer, “I think the world would be a lot better if it was run by women. There wouldn’t be any wars. Of course, the Book would consider such an idea a Dire Abomination Unto Nuggan. It may be in error. I shall consult the Duchess. Bless this cup that I may drink of it,” she added.

“Er, yes,” said Polly, and wondered what she should dread more: Maladict suddenly turning into a ravening monster, or Wazzer reaching the end of whatever mental journey she was taking. She’d been a kitchen maid and now she was subjecting the Book to critical analysis and talking to a religious icon. That sort of thing led to friction. The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.

Besides, she thought as she watched Wazzer drink, you only thought the world would be better if it was run by women if you didn’t actually know many women. Or old women, at least. Take the whole thing about the dimity scarves. Women had to cover their hair on Fridays, but there was nothing about this in the Book, which was pretty dar—pretty damn rigorous about most things. It was just a custom. It was done because it had always been done. And if you forgot, or didn’t want to, the old women got you. They had eyes like hawks. They could practically see through walls. And the men took notice, because no man wanted to cross the crones in case they started watching him, so half-hearted punishment would be dealt out. Whenever there was an execution, and especially when there was a whipping, you always found the grannies in the front row, sucking on peppermints.

Polly had forgotten her dimity scarf. She did wear it at home on Fridays, for no other reason than that it was easier than not doing so. She vowed that, if ever she got back, she’d never do it again…

“Er…Wazz?” she said.

“Yes, Polly?”

“You’ve got a direct line to the Duchess, have you?”

“We talk about things,” said Wazzer dreamily.

“You, er, couldn’t raise the subject of coffee, could you?” said Polly wretchedly.

“The Duchess can only move very, very small things,” said Wazzer.

“A few beans, perhaps? Wazz, we really need some coffee! I don’t think the acorns are that much of a substitute!”

“I will pray,” said Wazzer.

“Good. You do that,” said Polly. And, strangely enough, she felt a little more hopeful. Maladict had hallucinations, but Wazzer had a certainty you could bend steel around. It was the opposite of a hallucination, somehow. It was as if she could see what was real and you couldn’t.

“Polly?” said Wazzer.

“Yes?”

“You don’t believe in the Duchess, do you? I mean the real Duchess, not your inn.”

Polly looked into the small, pinched, intense face.

“Well, I mean, they say she’s dead, and I prayed to her when I was small, but, since you ask, I don’t exactly, um, believe as—” she gabbled.

“She is standing just behind you. Just behind your right shoulder.”

In the silence of the woods, Polly turned.

“I can’t see her,” she said.

“I am happy for you,” said Wazzer, handing her the empty mug.

“But I didn’t see anything,” said Polly.

“No,” said Wazzer. “But you turned around…”

Polly had never asked too many questions about the Girls’ Working School. She was, by definition, a Good Girl. Her father was an influential man in the community, and she worked hard, she didn’t have much to do with men, and, most important, she was…well, smart. She was bright enough to do what a lot of other people did in the chronic, reason-free insanity that was everyday life in Munz. She knew what to see and what to ignore, when to obey and when to merely present the face of obedience, when to speak and when to keep her thoughts to herself. She learned the ways of the survivor. Most people did. But if you rebelled, or were merely dangerously honest, or had the wrong kind of illness, or were not wanted, or were a girl who liked the boys more than the old women thought you should and, worse, were not good at counting…then the School was your destination.

She didn’t know much about what went on in there, but imagination rushed to fill the gap. And she wondered what happened to you in that hellish pressure cooker. If you were tough, like Tonker, it boiled you hard and gave you a shell. Lofty…it was hard to know. She was quiet and shy until you saw firelight reflected in her eyes, and sometimes the flames were there in the absence of any fire to reflect. But if you were Wazzer, dealt a poor hand to start with, and locked up, and starved, and beaten, and mistreated Nuggan-knew-how (and yes, Polly thought, Nuggan probably did know how), and pushed deeper and deeper into yourself, what would you find down there? And then you’d look up from those depths into the only smile you ever saw.

 

The last man on guard duty was Jackrum, because Shufti was busy cooking. He was sitting on a mossy rock, crossbow in one hand, staring at something in his hand. He spun around as she approached, and Polly caught the gleam of gold as something was shoved back in his jacket.

The sergeant lowered the bow.

“You make enough noise for an elephant, Perks,” he said.

“Sorry, Sarge,” said Polly, who knew she hadn’t. He took the tea mug, and turned to point downhill.

“See that bush down there, Perks?” he said. “Just to the right of that fallen log?”

Polly squinted.

“Yes, Sarge,” she said.

“Notice anything about it?”

Polly stared again. There must be something wrong about it, she decided, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked her. She concentrated.

“The shadow’s wrong,” she decided at last.

“Good lad. The reason bein’, our chum is behind the bush. He’s been a-watching of me, and I’ve been a-watching of him. Nothing else for it. He’ll have it away on his toes as soon as he sees anyone move, and he’s too far away to drop an arrow on him.”

“An enemy?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A friend?”

“Cocky devil, at any rate. He doesn’t care that I know he’s there. You go on back up the hill, lad, and bring down that big bow we got off of the—there he goes!”

The shadow had vanished. Polly stared into the woods, but the long light was getting crimson, and dusk was unfolding between the trees.

“It’s a wolf,” said Jackrum.

“A werewolf?” said Polly.

“Now what makes you think that?”

“Because Sergeant Towering said we’d got a werewolf in the squad. I’m sure we haven’t. I mean, we’d have found out by now, wouldn’t we? But I wondered if they’d seen one.”

“Can’t do anything about it, anyway,” said Jackrum. “A silver arrow would do the job, but we’ve got none.”

“What about our shilling, Sarge?”

“Oh, you think you can kill a werewolf with an IOU?”

“Oh, yeah.” Then Polly added: “You’ve got a real shilling, Sarge. Around your neck, with that gold medallion.”

If you could have bent steel around Wazzer’s certainty, you could have heated it with Jackrum’s glare.

“What’s round my neck is no business of yours, Perks, and the only thing worse than a werewolf is me if anyone tries to take my shilling off me, understand?”

He softened as he saw Polly’s terrified expression.

“We’ll move on after we’ve eaten,” he said. “Find a better place for a rest. Somewhere easier to defend.”

“We’re all pretty tired, Sarge.”

“So I want us all to be upright and armed if our friend comes back with his chums,” said Jackrum.

He followed her gaze. The gold locket had slipped out of his jacket and dangled guiltily on its chain. He deftly tucked it away.

“She was just a…girl I knew,” said Jackrum. “That’s all, right? It was a long time ago.”

“I didn’t ask you, Sarge,” said Polly, backing away.

Jackrum’s shoulders settled. “That’s right, lad, you didn’t. And I ain’t asking you about anything, neither. But I reckon we’d better find the corporal some coffee, eh?”

“Amen to that, Sarge!”

“And our rupert’s dreaming of laurel wreaths all around his head, Perks. We’ve got ourselves a goddam hero here. Can’t think, can’t fight, no bloody use at all except for a famous last stand and a medal sent to his ol’ mum. And I’ve been in a few famous last stands, lad, and they’re butcher shops. That’s what Blouse’s leading you into, mark my words. What’ll you lot do then, eh? We’ve had a few scuffles, but that’s not war. Think you’ll be man enough to stand, when the metal meets the meat?”

“You did, Sarge,” said Polly. “You said you were in a few last stands!”

“Yeah, lad. But I was holding the metal.”

 

Polly walked back up the slope. All this, she thought, and we haven’t even got there. Sarge is thinking about the girl he left behind…well, that’s normal. And Tonker and Lofty only think about one another, but I suppose after you’ve been in that school…and as for Wazzer…

Polly wondered how she would have survived the School. Would she have grown hard, like Tonker? Would she have just folded up inside, like the maids who came and went and worked hard and never had a name? Or perhaps she would have become like Wazzer, and found some door in her own head…I may be lowly, but I talk to gods.

…Wazzer had said “not your inn.” Had she ever told Wazzer about The Duchess? Surely not. Surely she…but, no, she had told Tonker, hadn’t she?

That was it, then. All explained. Tonker must have mentioned it to Wazzer at some point. Nothing weird about it at all, even if practically no one ever had a conversation with Wazz. It was so hard. She was so intense, so coiled up. But that had to be the only explanation. Yes.

She wasn’t going to let there be any other.

Polly shivered, and was aware that someone was walking beside her. She looked up and groaned. It was a tall robed figure, with a scythe.

“You’re a hallucination, right?”

OH, YES. YOU ARE ALL IN A STATE OF HEIGHTENED SENSIBILITY CAUSED BY MENTAL CONTAGION AND LACK OF SLEEP.

“If you’re a hallucination, how do you know that?”

I KNOW IT BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT. I AM SIMPLY BETTER AT ARTICULATING IT, said Death.

“I’m not going to die, am I? I mean, right now?”

NO. BUT YOU WERE TOLD THAT YOU WOULD WALK WITH DEATH EVERY DAY.

“Oh…yes. Corporal Scallot said that.”

HE IS AN OLD FRIEND. YOU MIGHT SAY HE IS ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN.

“Do you mind walking a bit more…invisibly?”

OF COURSE. HOW’S THIS?

“And quietly, too?”

There was silence, which was presumably the answer.

“And polish yourself up a bit,” said Polly to the empty air. “And that robe needs a wash.”

There was no reply, but she felt better for saying it.

 

Shufti had cooked beef stew with dumplings and herbs. It was magnificent. It was also a mystery.

“I don’t recall us passing a cow, Private,” said Blouse as he handed his tin plate along for a second helping.

“Er…no, sir.”

“And yet you have acquired beef?”

“Er…yes, sir. Er…when that writer man came up in his cart, well, when you were talking, er, I crept around and took a look inside…”

“There’s a name for someone who does that sort of thing, Private,” said Blouse severely.

“Yeah, it’s quartermaster, Shufti. Well done,” said Jackrum. “If that writer man gets hungry, he can always eat his words, eh, Lieutenant?”

“Er…yes,” said Blouse carefully. “Yes. Of course. Good initiative, Private.”

“Oh, I didn’t think it up, sir,” said Shufti brightly. “Sarge told me to.”

Polly stopped, spoon halfway to her mouth, and swiveled her eyes from sergeant to lieutenant.

“You teach looting, Sergeant?” said Blouse. There was a joint gasp from the squad. If this was the bar back at The Duchess, the regulars would have been hurrying out of the doors and Polly would have been helping her father get the bottles off the shelf.

“Not looting, sir, not looting,” said Jackrum calmly, licking his spoon. “Under Duchess’s Regulations, Rule 611, Section 1[c], Paragraph i, sir, it would be plundering, said cart being the property of bloody Ankh-Morpork, sir, which is aiding and abetting the enemy. Plundering is allowed, sir.”

The two men held eye contact for a moment, and then Blouse reached behind him and into his pack. Polly saw him draw out a small yet thick book.

“Rule 611,” he murmured. Blouse glanced up at the sergeant and thumbed through the thin, shiny pages. “611. Pillaging, Plundering and Looting. Ah, yes. And…let me see…you are with us, Sergeant Jackrum, owing to Rule 796, I think you reminded me at the time…”

There was another silence broken only by the riffle of the pages.

“796, 796,” said Blouse softly. “Ah…” He stared at the page, and Jackrum stared at him. And Polly watched Jackrum and knew, knew that there was no Rule 796.

Blouse closed the book with a leathery flwap.

“Absolutely correct, Sergeant!” he said brightly. “I commend you on your encyclopedic knowledge of the regulations!”

Jackrum looked astounded. “What?”

“You were practically word-perfect, Sergeant!” said Blouse. And there was a gleam in his eye.

Polly remembered Blouse looking at the captured cavalry captain. This was that same look, the look which said: now I have the upper hand.

Jackrum’s chins wobbled.

“You had something to add, Sergeant?” said Blouse.

“Er, no…sir,” said Jackrum, his face an open declaration of war.

“We’ll leave at moonrise,” said Blouse. “I suggest we all get some rest until then. And then…may we prevail.”

He nodded to the group, and walked over to where Polly had spread his blanket in the lee of the bushes. After a few moments, there were some snores, which Polly refused to believe.

Jackrum certainly didn’t. He got up and strode out of the firelight. Polly hurried after him.

“Did you hear that?” snarled the sergeant, staring out at the darkening hills. “The little yoyo! What right has he got, checking up in the book o’ words?”

“Well, you did quote chapter and verse, Sarge,” said Polly.

“So? Officers are s’posed believe what they’re told! And then he smiled! Did you see? Caught me out and smiled at me! Thinks he’s got one over on me, just because he caught me out!”

“You did lie, Sarge.”

“I did not, Perks! It’s not lying when you do it to officers! It’s presentin’ them with the world the way they think it ought to be! You can’t let ’em start checkin’ up for themselves! They get the wrong ideas! I told you, he’ll be the death of all of us! Invading the bloody Keep? The man’s wrong in the head!”

“Sarge!” said Polly urgently,

“Yes, what?”

“We’re being signaled, Sarge!”

On a distant hilltop, twinkling like an early evening star, a white light was flashing.

 

Blouse lowered his telescope.

“They’re repeating ‘CQ,’” he said. “And I believe those longer pauses are when they’re aiming their tube in different directions. They’re looking for their spies. ‘Seek You,’ see? Private Igor?”

“Thur?”

“You know how that tube works, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeth, thur. You jutht light a flare in the box, and then it’th just point and click.”

“You’re not going to answer it, are you, sir?” said Jackrum, horrified.

“I am indeed, Sergeant,” said Blouse briskly. “Private Carborundum, please assemble the tube. Manickle, please bring the lantern. I shall need to read the code book.”

“But that’ll give away our position!” said Jackrum.

“No, Sergeant, because although this term may be unfamiliar to you, I intend to what we call ‘lie,’” said Blouse. “Igor, I’m sure you have some scissors, although I’d rather you didn’t attempt to repeat the word.”

“I have some of the applianthetheth you mention, thir,” said Igorina stiffly.

“Good.” Blouse looked around. “It’s almost pitch-dark now. Ideal. Take my blanket and cut, oh, a three-inch circle out of it, then tie the blanket over the front of the tube.”

“That will cut off motht of the light, thur!”

“Indeed it will. My plan depends upon it,” said Blouse proudly.

“Sir, they will see the light, they’ll know we’re here,” said Jackrum, as though repeating things to a child.

“I explained, Sergeant. I will lie,” said Blouse.

“You can’t lie when—”

“Thank you for your input, Sergeant, that will be all for now,” said Blouse. “Are we ready, Igor?”

“Jutht about, thur,” said Igorina, tying the blanket across the end of the tube. “Okay, thur. I’ll light the flare when you thay.”

Blouse unfolded the little book.

“Ready, Private?” he said.

“Yup,” said Jade.

“On the word ‘long’ you will hold the trigger for the count of two, and then let go. On the word ‘short’ you will hold it down for the count of one, and likewise let go. Got that?”

“Yup, El Tee. Could hold it down for lots, if you like,” said Jade. “One, two, many, lots. I’m good at countin’. High as you like. Jus’ say der word.”

“Two will suffice,” said Blouse. “And you, Private Goom, I want you to take my telescope and look for long and short flashes from that light over there, understand?”

Polly saw Wazzer’s face and said quickly: “I’ll do that, sir!”

A small white hand was laid on her arm. In the miserly glimmer of the dark lantern, Wazzer’s eyes glowed with the light of certainty.

“The Duchess guides our footsteps now,” she said and took the telescope from the lieutenant. “What we are doing is Her work, sir.”

“Is it? Oh. Well…that’s good,” said Blouse.

“She will bless this instrument of far seeing that I may use it,” said Wazzer.

“Indeed?” said Blouse, nervously. “Well done. Now…are we ready? Send as follows…long…long…short…”

The shutter in the tube clicked and rattled as the message flashed out across the sky. When the troll lowered the tube, there was half a minute of darkness. And then:

“Short…long…” Wazzer began.

Blouse held the code book up to his face, his lips moving as he read by the pinpoints of light escaping from the joints of the box.

“W…R…U,” he said. “And M…S…G…P…R…”

“That’s not a message!” said Jackrum.

“On the contrary, they want to know where we are, because they’re having trouble seeing our light,” said Blouse. “Send as follows…short…”

“I protest, sir!”

Blouse lowered the book. “Sergeant, I am about to tell our spy that we are seven miles further away than we really are, do you understand? And I am certain they will believe us, because I have artificially reduced the light output from our device, do you understand? And I will tell them that their spies have encountered a very large party of recruits and deserters heading for the mountains and are in pursuit, do you understand? I am making us invisible, do you understand? Do you understand, Sergeant Jackrum?”

The squad held their breath.

Jack drew himself stiffly to attention.

“Fully understood, sir!” he said.

“Very well!”

Jackrum stood to attention as the messages were exchanged, like a naughty pupil forced to stand by the teacher’s desk.

Messages flashed across the sky, from hilltop to hilltop. Lights flickered. The clacks tube rattled. Wazzer called out the longs and shorts. Blouse scribbled in the book.

“S…P…P…2,” he said aloud. “Hah. That’s an order to remain where we are.”

“More flashes, sir,” said Wazzer.

“T…Y…E…3…” said Blouse, still making notes. “That’s ‘be ready to give aid.’ N…V…A…S…N…That’s…”

“That’s not a code, sir!” said Polly.

“Private, send as follows right now!” Blouse croaked. “Long…long…”

The message went. They watched while the dew fell and, overhead, the stars came out and twinkled messages no one ever tried to read.

The clacks went silent.

“Now we leave as soon as possible,” said Blouse. He gave a little cough. “I believe the phrase is ‘let us get the heck out of here.’”

“Close, sir,” said Polly. “Quite…close.”

 

There was an old, very old Borogravian song with more Zs and Vs in it than any lowlander could pronounce. It was called “Plogviehze!” It meant “The Sun Has Risen! Let’s Make War!” You needed a special kind of history to get all that in one word.

Sam Vimes sighed. The little countries here fought because of the river, because of idiot treaties, because of royal rows, but mostly they fought because they had always fought. They made war, in fact, because the sun came up.

This war had tied itself in a knot.

Downriver, the valley narrowed to a canyon before the Kneck plunged over a waterfall a quarter of a mile high. Anyone trying to get up through the jagged mountains there would find themselves in a world of gorges, knife-edged ridges, permanent ice, and even more permanent death. Anyone trying to cross the Kneck into Zlobenia now would be butchered on the shore. The only way out of the valley was back along the Kneck, which would put an army under the shadow of the Keep. That had been fine when the Keep was in Borogravian hands. Now that it had been captured, they’d be passing in range of their own weapons.

…and such weapons! Vimes had seen catapults that would throw a stone ball three miles. When it landed, it would crack into needle-sharp shards. Or there was the other machine, which sent six-foot steel discs skimming through the air. Once they’d hit the ground and leaped up again, they were unreliable as hell, but that only made them more terrifying. Vimes had been told that the edged disc would probably keep going for several hundred yards, no matter how many men or horses it encountered on the way.

And they were only the latest ideas. There were plenty of conventional weapons, if by that you meant giant bows, catapults, and mangonels that hurled balls of Ephebian fire, which clung while it burned.

From up here, in his drafty tower, he could see the fires of the dug-in army all across the plain.

They couldn’t retreat, and the alliance, if that’s what you could call the petulant hubbub, didn’t dare head up the valley into the heart of the country with that army at their back, yet didn’t have enough men to hold the Keep and corral the enemy.

And in a few weeks it would start to snow. The passes would fill up. Nothing would be able to get though. And every day, thousands of men and horses would need feeding. Of course, the men could, eventually, eat the horses, thus settling two feeding problems at a stroke. After that, there would have to be the good ol’ leg rota, which, Vimes understood from one of the friendlier Zlobenians, was a common feature of winter warfare up here. Since he was Captain “Hopalong” Splatzer, Vimes believed him.

And then it would rain, and then the rain and the snowmelt together would turn the damn river into a flood. But, before that, the alliance would have bickered itself apart and gone home. All the Borogravians had to do, in fact, was hold their ground to score a draw.

He swore under his breath. Prince Heinrich had inherited the throne in a country where the chief export was a kind of hand-painted wooden clog, but in ten years, he vowed, his capital city of Rigour would be “the Ankh-Morpork of the mountains!”

For some reason, he thought Ankh-Morpork would be pleased about this.

He was anxious, he said, to learn the Ankh-Morpork way of doing things, the kind of innocent ambition that could well lead to an aspiring ruler…well, finding out the Ankh-Morpork way of doing things. Heinrich had a reputation locally for cunning, but Ankh-Morpork had overtaken cunning a thousand years ago, had sped past devious, had left artful far behind, and had now, by a roundabout route, arrived at straightforward.

Vimes leafed through the papers on his desk, and looked up, where he heard a shrill, harsh cry outside.

A buzzard came in a long, shallow swoop through the open window and alighted on a makeshift perch at the far end of the room.

Vimes strolled over as the little figure on the bird’s back raised his flying goggles.

“How’s it going, Buggy?” he said.

“They’re getting suspicious, Mister Vimes. And Sergeant Angua says it’s getting a bit risky now they’re so close.”

“Tell her to come on in, then.”

“Right, sir. And they still need coffee.”

“Oh, damn! Haven’t they found any?”

“No, sir, and it’s getting tricky with the vampire.”

“Well, if they’re suspicious now then they’ll be certain if we drop a flask of coffee on them!”

“Sergeant Angua says we’ll probably get away with it, sir. She didn’t say why.” The gnome looked expectantly at Vimes. So did his buzzard. “They’ve come a long way, sir. For a bunch of girls. Well…mostly girls.”

Vimes reached out absentmindedly to pet the bird.

“Don’t, sir! She’ll have your thumb off!” Buggy yelled.

There was a knock on the door, and Reg came in with a tray of raw meat.

“Saw Buggy overhead, so I thought I’d nip down to the kitchens, sir.”

“Well done, Reg. Don’t they ask why you want raw meat?”

“Yes, sir. I tell them you eat it, sir.”

Vimes paused before answering. Reg meant well, after all.

“Well, it probably can’t do my reputation any harm,” he said. “By the way, what was going down in the crypt?”

“Oh, they’re not what I’d call proper zombies, sir,” said Reg, selecting a piece of meat and dangling it in front of Morag. “More like dead men walking.”

“Er…yes?” said Vimes.

“I mean there’s no real thinking going on,” the zombie went on, picking up another lump of raw rabbit. “No embracing the opportunities of a life beyond the grave, sir. They’re just a lot of old memories on legs. That sort of thing gives zombies a bad name, Mister Vimes. It makes me so angry!” Morag tried to snap at another lump of bloody rabbit fur that Reg, oblivious for the moment, was waving aimlessly.

“Er…Reg?” said Buggy.

“How hard can it be, sir, to move with the times? Now take me, for example. One day I woke up dead. Did I—”

“Reg!” Vimes warned as Morag’s head bobbed back and forth.

“—take it lying down? No! And I didn’t—”

“Reg, be careful! She’s just had two of your fingers off!”

“What? Oh.” Reg held up a denuded hand and stared at it. “Oh, now, will you look at that?” He peered down at the floor, with a hope that was quickly dashed. “Blast. Any chance we can make her throw up?”

“Only by sticking your remaining fingers down her throat, Reg. Sorry. Buggy, do the best you can, please. And you, Reg, go back downstairs and see if they’ve got any coffee, will you?”

 

“Oh dear,” murmured Shufti.

“It’s big,” said Tonker.

Blouse said nothing.

“Not seen it before, sir?” said Jackrum cheerfully as they stared at the distant keep. If there is a fairy-tale scale for castles, where the top end is occupied by those white, spire-encrusted castles with the blue pointy roofs, then Kneck Keep was low, black, and clung to its outcrop like a storm cloud. A bed of the Kneck ran around it; along the peninsula on which it was built, the approach road was wide, and bereft of cover, and an ideal stroll for those who were tired of life. Blouse took all this in.

“Er, no, Sergeant,” said Blouse. “I’ve seen pictures, of course, but…they don’t do it justice.”

“Any of them books you read tell you what to do, sir?” said Jackrum. They were lying in some bushes half a mile away from the keep.

“Possibly, Sergeant. In The Craft of War, Song Sung Lo said: to win without fighting is the greatest victory. The enemy wishes us to attack where he is strongest. Therefore, we will disappoint him. A way will present itself, Sergeant.”

“Well, it’s never presented itself to me, and I’ve been here dozens of times,” said Jackrum, still grinning. “Hah, even the rats’d have to disguise themselves as washerwomen to get in that place! Even if you get up that road, you’ve got narrow entrances, holes in the ceiling to pour hot oil through, gates everywhere that a troll couldn’t smash through, coupla mazes, a hundred little ways you can be shot at, oh, it’s a wonderful place to attack.”

“I wonder how the alliance got in?” said Blouse.

“Treachery, probably, sir. The world’s full of traitors. Or perhaps they discovered the secret entrance, sir. You know, sir? The one you’re sure is there. Or p’raps you’ve forgotten? It’s the sort of thing that can slip your mind when you’re busy, I expect.”

“We shall reconnoiter, Sergeant,” said Blouse coldly as they crawled out of the bushes. He brushed leaves off his uniform. Thalacephalos or, as Blouse referred to her, “the faithful steed,” had been turned loose miles back. You couldn’t sneak around on horseback and, as Jackrum had pointed out, the creature was too skinny for anyone to want to eat and too vicious for anyone to want to ride.

“Right, sir, yes, we might as well do that, sir,” said Jackrum now, all gloating helpfulness. “Where would you like us to reconnoiter, sir?”

“There must be a secret entrance, Sergeant. No one would build a place like that with only one entrance. Agreed?”

“Yessir. Only perhaps they kept it a secret, sir. Only trying to help, sir.”

They turned at the sound of urgent praying. Wazzer had fallen to her knees, hands clasped together. The rest of the squad edged away slowly. Piety is a wonderful thing.

“What is he doing, Sergeant?” said Blouse.

“Praying, sir,” said Jackrum.

“I’ve noticed he does it a lot. Is that, er, within regulations, Sergeant?” the lieutenant whispered.

“Always a difficult one, sir, that one,” said Jackrum. “I have, myself, prayed many times on the field of battle. Many times have I said The Soldier’s Prayer, sir, and I don’t mind admitting it.”

“Er…I don’t think I know that one,” said Blouse.

“Oh, I reckon the words’ll come to you soon enough, sir, once you’re up against the foe. Gen’rally, though, they’re on the lines of ‘oh god, let me kill this bastard before he kills me.’” Jackrum grinned at Blouse’s expression. “That’s what I call the Authorized Version, sir.”

“Yes, Sergeant, but where would we be if we all prayed all the time?” said the lieutenant.

“In heaven, sir, sitting at Nuggan’s right hand,” said Jackrum promptly. “That’s what I was taught as a little nipper, sir. Of course, it’d be a bit crowded, so it’s just as well we don’t.”

At which point, Wazzer stopped praying and stood up, brushing dust off her knees. She gave the squad her bright, worrying smile.

“The Duchess will guide our steps,” she said.

“Oh. Good,” said Blouse weakly.

“She will show us the way.”

“Wonderful. Er…did She mention a map reference at all?” said the lieutenant.

“She will give us eyes that we might see.”

“Ah? Good. Well, jolly good,” said Blouse. “I definitely feel a lot better for knowing that. Don’t you, Sergeant?”

“Yessir,” said Jackrum. “’Cos before this, sir, we didn’t have a prayer.”

 

They scouted in threes, while the rest of the squad lay up in a deep hollow among the bushes. There were enemy patrols, but it’s not hard to avoid half a dozen men who stick to the tracks and aren’t being careful not to make noise. The troops were Zlobenian, and acted as though they owned the place.

For some reason, Polly ended up patrolling with Maladict and Wazzer, or, to put it another way, a vampire on the edge and a girl who was possibly so far over it that she’d found a new edge out beyond the horizon. She was changing every day, that was a fact. On the day they’d all joined up, a lifetime ago, she’d been this shivering little waif who flinched at shadows. Now, sometimes, she seemed taller, full of some ethereal certainty, and shadows fled before her. Well, not in actual fact, Polly would admit. But she walked as if they should.

And then there had been the Miracle of the Turkey. That was hard to explain.

The three of them had been moving along the cliffs. They’d circled a couple of Zlobenian lookout posts, forewarned by the smell of cooking fires but, alas, not by the smell of any coffee. Maladict seemed to be mostly in control, except for a tendency to mutter to himself in letters and numbers, but Polly had stopped that by threatening to hit him with a stick the very next time he did it.

They’d reached a cliff edge that gave yet another view of the Keep, and once again Polly raised the telescope and scanned the sheer walls and jumbled rocks for any sign of another entrance.

“Look down at the river,” said Wazzer.

The circle of view blurred upwards as Polly shifted the scope; when it stopped moving she saw whiteness. She had to lower the instrument to see what she’d been looking at.

“Oh my,” she said. “There’s Blouse’s secret entrance, right where anyone can see it.”

“Makes sense, though,” said Maladict. “And there’s a path all along the river, see? There’s a couple more women on it.”

“Tiny gateway, though,” said Polly. “And it’d be so easy to search people for weapons.”

“Soldiers couldn’t get through though,” said the vampire.

“We could,” said Polly. “And we’re soldiers. Aren’t we?”

There was a pause before Maladict said: “Soldiers need weapons. Swords and crossbows get noticed.”

“There will be weapons inside,” said Wazzer. “The Duchess has told me. The castle is full of weapons.”

“Did She tell you how to make the enemy let go of them?” said Maladict.

“All right, all right,” said Polly quickly. “We ought to tell the rupert as soon as possible, okay? Let’s get back!”

“Hold on, I’m the corporal,” said Maladict.

“Well?” said Polly. “And?”

“Let’s get back?” said Maladict.

“Good idea.”

She should have listened to the birdsong, she realized later. The shrill calls in the distance would have told her the news, if only she’d been calm enough to listen.

They hadn’t gone more than thirty yards before they saw the soldiers. Someone in the Zlobenian army was dangerously clever. He’d realized that the way to spot interlopers was not to march noisily along the beaten paths, but to sneak quietly between the trees.

The soldier had a crossbow; it was sheer luck…probably sheer luck that he was looking the other way when Polly came around a holly bush.

She flung herself behind a tree and gestured madly at Maladict further down the path, who had the sense to take cover.

Polly drew her sword and held it clutched to her chest in both hands. She could hear the man. He was some way away, but he was moving toward her. Probably the little lookout they had just found was a regular point on the patrol route. After all, she thought bitterly, it was just the sort of thing some untrained idiots might come across, maybe a quiet patrol could even surprise them there…

She shut her eyes and tried to breathe normally. This was it this was it this was it! This was where she found out.

What to remember what to remember what to remember…when the metal meets the meat…be holding the metal.

She could taste metal in her mouth.

The man would walk right past her. He’d be alert, but not that alert. A slash would be better than a stab. Yes, a good swipe at head height would kill…

…some mother’s son, some sister’s brother, some lad who’d followed the drum for a shilling and his first new suit. If only she’d been trained, if only she’d had a few weeks stabbing straw men until she could believe that all men were made of straw…

She froze. Down the angle of the path, still as a tree, head bowed, stood Wazzer. As soon as the scout reached Polly’s tree, she’d be seen.

She’d have to do it now. Perhaps that’s why men did it. You didn’t do it to save duchesses, or countries. You killed the enemy to stop him killing your mates, that they in turn might save you…

She could hear the cautious tread close to the tree. She raised the saber, saw the light flash along its edge—

A wild turkey rose from the scrub on the other side of the path in one rocketing tower of wings and feathers and echoing noise. Half flying, half running, it bounded off into the woods.

There was the thud of a bow and a last squawk.

“Oh, good shot, Woody,” said a voice nearby. “Looks like a big’n!”

“Did you see that?” said another voice. “Another step and I’d have tripped over it!”

Behind her tree, Polly breathed out.

A third voice, some way off, called out: “Let’s head back, eh, Corp? The way that went off, the Tiger’s probably run a mile!”

“Yeah, and I’m so scared,” said the closest voice. “The Tiger’s behind every tree, right?”

“Okay, let’s call it a day. My wife’ll cook him a treat—”

Gradually, the voices of the soldiers got lost among the trees.

Polly lowered the sword. She saw Maladict peer out of his bush and stare at her. She raised a finger to her lips. He nodded.

She waited until the birdsong had settled down a little before stepping out. Wazzer seemed to be lost in thought; Polly took her very carefully by the hand. Quietly, dodging from tree to tree, they headed back to the hollow. Most particularly, Polly and Maladict didn’t talk. But they looked one another in the eye once or twice.

Of course a turkey would lie low until a hunter almost trod on it. Of course that one must’ve been there all the time, and only lost its bird nerve when the scout crept up. It had been an unusually large bird, one that no hungry soldier could resist, but…well?

Since the brain treacherously does not stop thinking just because you want it to, Polly’s added: she said the Duchess could move small things. How small is a thought in the mind of a bird?

Only Jade and Igorina were waiting for them in the hollow. The others had found a better base a mile away, they said.

“We found the secret entrance,” said Polly quietly, as they headed away.

“Can we get in?” said Igorina.

“It’s the washerwomen’s entrance,” said Maladict. “It’s right down by the river. But there’s a path.”

“Washerwomen?” said Igor. “But this is a war!”

“Clothes still get dirty, I suppose,” said Polly.

“Dirtier, I should think,” said Maladict.

“But…our countrywomen? Washing clothes for the enemy?” said Igorina, looking shocked.

“If it’s that or starve, yes,” said Polly. “I saw a woman come out carrying a basket of loaves. They say the Keep is full of granaries. Anyway, you sewed up an enemy officer, didn’t you?”

“That’s different,” said Igorina. “We are duty bound to thave our fellow ma—person. Nothing has ever been said about his—their underwear.”

“We could get in,” said Polly, “if we disguised ourselves as women.”

Silence greeted this. Then:

“Disguised?” said Igorina.

“You know what I mean!” said Polly.

“As washerwomen?” said Igorina. “These are thurgeon’s hands!”

“Really? Where did you get them?” said Maladict. Igorina stuck out her tongue at him.

“Anyway, I don’t intend that we should do any washing,” said Polly.

“Then what do you intend?” said Igorina.

Polly hesitated.

“You know I want to get my brother out if he’s in there,” she said. “And if we could stop the invasion, that would be a good idea.”

“That might take extra starch,” said Maladict. “I don’t want to, you know, spoil the spirit of the moment, but that is a really awful idea. The El-Tee won’t agree to something as wild as that.”

“No, he won’t,” said Polly. “But he’ll suggest it.”

 

“Hmm,” said Blouse a little later. “Washerwomen? Is that usual, Sergeant Jackrum?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I expect the women in the villages round here do it, just like they did when we held the Keep,” said Jackrum.

“You mean they provide aid and comfort to the enemy? Why?”

“Better than starving, sir. Fact of life. It doesn’t always stop at washing, neither.”

“Sergeant, there are young men here!” snapped Blouse, blushing.

“They’ll have to find out about ironing and darning sooner or later, sir,” said Jackrum innocently.

Blouse opened his mouth. Blouse shut his mouth.

“Tea’s up, sir,” said Polly. Tea was an amazingly useful thing. It gave you an excuse to talk to anyone.

They settled in what remained of a half-ruined farmhouse. By the look of it, not even patrols bothered to come here—there were no signs of lit fires or even the most temporary occupation. It stank of decay, and half the roof was gone.

“Do the women just come and go, Perks?” said the lieutenant.

“Yes, sir,” said Polly. “And I had an idea, sir. Permission to tell you my idea, sir?” She saw Jackrum raise an eyebrow. She was laying it on thick, she had to admit, but time was pressing.

“Please do, Perks,” said Blouse. “Else I fear you may explode!”

“They could be spies for us, sir! We could even get them to open the gates for us!”

“Well done, Private!” said Blouse. “I do like a soldier to think.”

“Yeah, right,” growled Jackrum. “Any sharper’n he’ll cut hisself. Sir, they’re washerwomen, sir, basically. No offense to young Perks, keen lad that he is, but your average guard pays attention when Old Mother Riley tries to open the gates. There’s not just a pair of gates, neither. There’s six pairs, and nice little courtyards between ’em for the guards to have a squint at you to see if you’s a wrong ’un, and drawbridges, and spiky ceilings that drop down if someone doesn’t like the look of you. Try opening that lot with soapy hands!”

“I’m afraid the sergeant has a point, Perks,” said Blouse sadly.

“Well, supposing a couple of women managed to knock out a few guards, sir, they could let us in through their little door!” said Polly. “We might even be able to capture the commander of the fort, sir! I bet there’s plenty of women in the Keep, sir. In the kitchens and so on. They could…open doors for us!”

“Oh, come on, Perks—” Jackrum began.

“No, sergeant. Wait!” said Blouse. “Astonishingly enough, Perks, in your boyish enthusiasm you have, although you haven’t realized it, given me a very interesting idea…”

“Have I, sir?” said Polly, who in her boyish enthusiasm had considered trying to tattoo the idea on Blouse’s head. For someone so clever, he really was slow.

“Indeed you have, Perks,” said Blouse. “Because, of course, we only need one ‘washerwoman’ to get us inside, do we not?”

The quotes sounded promising. “Well, yes, sir,” said Polly.

“And, if one as it were thinks ‘outside of the box,’ the ‘woman’ does not in fact need to be a woman!”

Blouse beamed. Polly allowed her brow to wrinkle in honest puzzlement.

“Doesn’t she, sir?” she said. “I don’t think I quite understand, sir. I am perplexed, sir.”

“‘She’ could be a man, Perks!” said Blouse, almost exploding with delight. “One of us! In disguise!”

Polly breathed a sigh of relief. Sergeant Jackrum laughed.

“Bless you, sir, dressing up as washerwomen is for gettin’ out of places! Milit’ry rules!”

“If a man gets inside, he could disable any guards near the door, spy out the situation from a military perspective, and let the rest of the troops in!” said Blouse. “If this was done at night, men, we could be holding key positions by the morning!”

“But these aren’t men, sir,” said Jackrum. Polly turned. The sergeant was looking right at her, right through her. Oh darn, I mean damn…he knows…

“I beg your pardon?”

“They are…my little lads, sir,” Jackrum went on, winking at Polly. “Keen lads, full of mustard, but they ain’t ones for cuttin’ throats and stabbin’ hearts. They signed up to be pikemen in the press, sir, in a proper army. You are my little lads, I says to ’em when I signed ’em up, and I will look after you. I can’t stand by and let you take ’em to certain death!”

“It’s my decision to make, Sergeant,” said Blouse. “We are at ‘the hinge of destiny.’ Who, in the pinch, is not ready to lay down his life for his country?”

“In a proper stand-up fight, sir; not getting beaten over the head by a bunch of nasty men for creeping around their fort! You know I’ve never been one for spies an’ hidin’ your colors, sir, never.”

“Sergeant, we have no choice! We must take advantage of the ‘tide of fortune’!”

“I know about tides, sir! They leave little fish gaspin’!” The sergeant stood up, fists clenching.

“Your concern for your men does you credit, Sergeant, but it falls to us—”

“A famous last stand, sir?” said Jackrum. He spat expertly into the fire in the tumbledown hearth. “To hell with them, sir. That’s just a way of dyin’ famous!”

“Sergeant, your insubordination is getting—”

“I’ll go,” said Polly quietly.

Both men stopped, turned, and stared.

“I’ll go,” Polly repeated louder. “Someone ought to.”

“Don’t be daft, Perks!” snapped Jackrum. “You don’t know what’s in there, you don’t know what guards are waitin’ just inside the door, you don’t know—”

“I’ll find out, then, Sarge, won’t I,” said Polly, smiling desperately. “Maybe I can get to somewhere where you can see and send signals, or—”

“On this issue, at least, the sergeant and I are of one mind, Perks,” said Blouse. “Really, Private, it would simply not work. Oh, you’re brave, certainly, but what makes you think you stand a chance of passing yourself off as a woman?”

“Well, sir…what?”

“Your keenness will not go unrecorded, Perks!” said Blouse, smiling. “But, y’know, a good officer keeps an eye on his men and I have to say that I’ve noticed in you, in all of you, little…habits, perfectly normal, nothing to worry about, like the occasional deep exploration of a nostril maybe, and a tendency to grin after passing wind, a natural boyish inclination to, ahem, scratch your…your selves in public…that sort of thing. These are the kind of little details that’d give you away in a trice and tell any observer that you were a man in women’s clothing, believe me.”

“I’m sure I could pull it off, sir,” said Polly weakly. She could sense Jackrum’s eyes on her. You bloomi—you bloody well know, don’t you! How long have you known?

Blouse shook his head. “No, they would see through you in a flash. You are a fine bunch of lads, but there is only one man here who’d stand a change of getting away with it. Manickle?”

“Yessir?” said Shufti, rigid with instant panic.

“Can you find me a dress, do you think?”

Maladict was the first to break the silence.

“Sir, are you telling us…you’re going to try to get in dressed as a woman?”

“Well, I’m clearly the only one who’s had any practice,” said Blouse, rubbing his hands together. “At my old school, we were in and out of skirts all the time.”

He looked around at the circle of absolutely expressionless faces.

“Theatricals, you see?” he said brightly. “No gels at our boarding school, of course. But we didn’t let that stop us. Why, my Lady Spritely in A Comedy of Cuckolds is still talked about, I understand, and as for my Yumyum is—is Sergeant Jackrum all right?”

The sergeant had folded up, but, with his face still level with his knees, he managed to croak: “Old war wound, sir. Come upon me sudden, like.”

“Please help him, Private Igor. Where was I…I can see you all look puzzled, but there’s nothing strange about this. Fine old tradition, men dressing up as gels. In the Sixth Form, the chaps used to do it for a jape all the time.” He paused for a moment, and added thoughtfully, “Especially Wrigglesworth, for some reason…” He shook his head as if dislodging a thought and went on: “Anyway, I have some experience in this field, d’ye see?”

“And…what would you do if—I mean when you got in, sir?” said Polly. “You won’t just have to fool the guards. There’d be other women in there.”

“That will not present a problem, Perks,” said Blouse. “I shall act in a feminine way and I have this stage trick, d’ye see, where I make my voice sound quite high-pitched, like this.” The falsetto could have scratched glass. “See?” he said. “No, if we need a woman, I’m your man.”

“Amazing, sir,” said Maladict. “For a moment I could have sworn there was a woman in the room.”

“And I could certainly find out if there are any other badly guarded entrances,” Blouse went on. “Who knows, I might even be able to procure a key off one of the guards by means of feminine wiles! In any case, if things are all clear I shall send a signal. A towel hanging from a window, perhaps. Something clearly unusual, anyway.”

There was some more silence. Several of the squad were staring at the ceiling.

“Ye-es,” said Polly. “I can see you’ve thought this out carefully, sir.”

Blouse sighed. “If only Wrigglesworth were here,” he said.

“Why, sir?”

“Amazingly clever chap at layin’ his hands on a dress, young Wrigglesworth,” said the lieutenant.

Polly caught Maladict’s eye. The vampire made a face and shrugged.

“Um…” said Shufti.

“Yes, Manickle?”

“I do have a petticoat in my pack, sir.”

“Good heavens! Why?”

Shufti went red. She hadn’t worked out an answer.

“Bandageth, thur,” Igorina cut in smoothly.

“Yes! Yes! That’s right!” said Shufti. “I…found it in the inn, back in Plün…”

“I athked the lads to acquire any thuitable linen they might find, thur. Jutht in cathe.”

“Very sound thinking, that man!” said Blouse. “Anyone else got anything?”

“I wouldn’t be at all thurprithed, thur,” said Igor, staring around the room.

Glances were exchanged. Packs were unslung. Everyone except Polly and Maladict had something, produced with downcast eyes. A shift, a petticoat, and, in most cases, a dimity scarf, carried out of some sort of residual, unexplainable need.

“You obviously must’ve thought we’d take serious damage,” said Blouse.

“Can’t be too careful, thur,” said Igorina. She grinned at Polly.

“Of course, I have rather short hair at present…” Blouse mused.

Polly thought of her ringlets, now lost and probably stroked by Strappi. But desperation spooled through her memory.

“They looked like older women, mostly,” she said quickly. “They wore headscarves and wimples. I’m sure Igori…sure Igor can make up something, sir.”

“We Igorth are very rethorthful, thur,” Igorina agreed. She pulled a black leather wallet out of her jacket. “Ten minuteth with a needle, thur, tha’th all I need.”

“Oh, I can do old women wonderfully well,” said Blouse. With a speed that made Lofty jump, he suddenly thrust out both hands twisted like claws, contorted his face into an expression of mad imbecility and screeched, “Oh deary me! My poor old feet! Things today aren’t like they used to be! Lawks!”

Behind him, Sergeant Jackrum put his head in his hands.

“Amazing, sir,” said Maladict. “I’ve never seen a transformation like it!”

“Perhaps just a wee bit less old, sir?” Polly suggested, although in truth Blouse had reminded her of her Aunt Hattie two-thirds of the way through a glass of sherry.

“You think so?” said Blouse. “Oh, well, if you’re really sure.”

“And, er, if you do meet a guard, er, old women don’t usually try to, try to—”

“—canoodle—” cut in Maladict, whose mind had clearly being hurtling down the same horrible slope.

“—canoodle with them,” Polly added, blushing, and then, after a second’s thought, added, “Unless she’s had a glass of sherry, anyway.”

“And I do thuggetht you go and have a thhave, thur…”

“Thhave?” said Blouse.

“Shave, sir,” said Polly. “I’ll lay out the kit, sir.”

“Ooh, yes. Of course. Don’t see many old women with beards, eh? Except my Auntie Parthenope, as I recall. And…er…no one’s got a couple of balloons, have they?” asked the lieutenant.

“Er, why, sir?” said Tonker.

“A big bosom always gets a laugh,” said Blouse. He looked around the row of faces. “Not a good idea, perhaps? I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in ’Tis Pity She’s a Tree. No?”

“I think Igor could sew something a bit more, er, realistic, sir,” said Polly.

“Really? Oh, well, if you really think so,” said Blouse dejectedly. “I’ll just go and get myself into character.”

He disappeared into the building’s only other room. After a few seconds, the rest of them heard him reciting “lawks, my poor feet!” in varying tones of fingernail screech.

The squad went into a huddle.

“What was all that about?” said Tonker.

“He was talking about the theater,” said Maladict.

“What’s that?”

“An Abomination Unto Nuggan, of course,” said the vampire. “It’d take too long to explain, dear child. People pretending to be other people to tell a story in a huge room where the world is a different place. Other people sitting and watching them and eating chocolate. Very, very Abominable.”

“I would like to eat chocolates in a great big room where the world is a different place,” mumbled Lofty sadly.

“I saw a Punch and Judy show in the town once,” said Shufti. “Then they dragged the man away and it became an Abomination.”

“I remember that,” said Polly. Crocodiles should not be seen to eat figures of authority, apparently, although until the puppet show no one in the town knew what a crocodile was. The bit where the clown had beaten his wife had also contravened Abomination, because he’d used a stick thicker than the regulation one inch.

“The lieutenant won’t last a minute, you know,” she said.

“Yes, but he won’t listen, will he,” said Igorina. “I’ll do the best with my scissorth and needle to make a woman of him but—”

“Igorina, when it’s you talking about this sort of thing, some very strange pictures turn up in my head,” said Maladict.

“Sorry,” said Igorina.

“Can you pray for him, Wazzer?” said Polly. “I think we’re going to need a miracle here.”

Wazzer obediently closed her eyes and folded her hands for a moment and then said shyly: “I’m afraid She says it will take more than a turkey.”

“Wazz?” said Polly, “do you really—” Then she stopped, with the bright little face watching her.

“Yes, I do,” said Wazzer. “I really talk to the Duchess.”

“Yeah, well, I used to, too,” snapped Tonker. “I used to beg her, once upon a time. That stupid face just stared and did nothing. She never stopped anything. All that stuff, all that stupid—” The girl stopped, too many words blocking her brain. “Anyway, why should she talk to you?”

“Because I listen,” said Wazzer quietly.

“And what does she say?”

“Sometimes she just cries.”

“She cries?”

“Because there are so many things that people want, and she can’t give them anything.”

Wazzer gave them all one of her smiles that lit up the room.

“But everything will be fine when I am in the right place,” she said.

“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 a 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 vigor.

“It would look more pfh 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.

“Pfh, 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?”

Jackrum 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 pfh 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 pfh 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 honorable 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 woods. 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 to 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 shows 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…”

…wopwopwop…

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 Pickax Is Not Enough!’”

“Well, if you’re going to put it like that, it does seem a little far-fetched…” Igorina admitted.

She 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, stamping 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 through 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,” Betty went on.

“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 identification 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,” said Polly.

“Well, yes, except, well, I gave him the sixpence, and he said he’d get the blacksmith to break it in his vise, 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 color 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 aka Shufti. “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.

“Nope.”

Polly wanted to knock the wretched tobacco out of the sergeant’s hand. Now that she had got over the surprise, there was something offensive about this lack of reaction. It was like someone opening a door just before your battering ram hit it; suddenly you were running through the building and not certain how to stop.

“Well, we’re all women, Sarge,” said Tonker. “How about that?”

Jackrum sawed at the tobacco.

“So?” he said, still paying attention to the job in hand.

“What?” said Polly.

“Think no one else ever tried it? Think you’re the only ones? Think your ol’ Sarge is deaf, blind, and stupid? You could fool one another and anyone can fool a rupert, but you can’t fool Jackrum. Weren’t sure about Maladict and still ain’t, because with a vampire, who knows? And not sure about you, Carborundum, because with a troll, who cares? No offense.”

“None taken,” rumbled Jade. She caught Polly’s eye and shrugged.

“Not so good at reading the signs, not knowing many trolls,” said the sergeant. “I had you down pat in the first minute, Ozz. Something in the eyes, I reckon. Like…you were watching to see how good you were.”

Oh hell, Polly thought. “Er…do I have a pair of socks belonging to you?”

“Yep. Well-washed, I might add.”

“You’ll have them back right now!” said Polly, grabbing for her belt.

“In your own time, Perks, in your own time, no rush,” said Jackrum raising a hand. “Well-washed, please.”

“Why, Sarge?” said Tonker. “Why didn’t you give us away? You could’ve given us away any time!”

Jackrum slewed his wad from cheek to cheek and sat chewing for a while, staring at nothing.

“No, you ain’t the first,” he said. “I’ve seen a few. Mostly by themselves, always frightened…and mostly they didn’t last long. But one or two of them were bonny soldiers, very bonny soldiers indeed. So I looked at you lot and I thought to myself, well now, I thought, I wonder how they’ll do when they find out they’re not alone? You know about lions?” They nodded. “Well, the lion is a big ol’ coward, mostly. If you want trouble, you want to tangle with the lioness. They’re killers, and they hunt together. It’s the same everywhere. If you want big grief, look to the ladies. Even with insects, right? There’s a kind of beetle where she bites his head off right while he’s exercisin’ his conjugals, and that’s what I call serious grief. On the other hand, from what I heard, he carries on regardless, so maybe it’s not the same for beetles.”

He looked around at their blank expressions.

“No?” he said. “Well, maybe I thought, a whole bunch of girls all at once, that’s…strange. Maybe there’s a reason.” Polly saw him glance briefly at Wazzer. “Anyway, I wasn’t goin’ to shame you all in front of a little toad like Strappi, and then there was all that business in Plotz, and then, well, we was gallopin’, as it were, caught up in things with no time to get off. You did well, lads. Very well. Shaped up like good ’uns.”

“I’m going into the Keep,” said Polly.

“Oh, don’t worry about the rupert,” said Jackrum. “Probably he’s enjoying a nice bowl of scubbo right now. He went to a school for young gentlemen, so prison will be just like old times.”

“We’re still going, Sarge. Sorry,” said Polly.

“Oh, don’t say sorry, Perks, you were doing well up ’til then,” said Jackrum bitterly.

Shufti stood up. “I’m going, too,” she said. “I think my…fiancé is in there.”

“I have to go,” said Wazzer. “The Duchess guides my steps.”

“I’ll go, then,” said Igorina. “I’m probably going to be needed.”

“I shouldn’t fink I could get by as a washerwoman,” rumbled Jade. “I’ll stay here and watch over Mal. Hah, if he’s still after blood when he wakes up he’s gonna have blunt teeth!”

They looked at one another in silence, embarrassed but defiant.

Then there was the sound of someone clapping slowly.

“Oh, very nice,” said Jackrum. “A band of brothers, eh? Sorry…sisters. Oh dear, oh dear. Look, Blouse was a fool. It was prob’ly all them books. He read all that stuff about it being a noble thing to die for your country, I expect. I was never that keen on readin’, but I know the job is making some other poor devil die for his.”

He slewed his black tobacco from side to side. “I wanted you to be safe, lads. Down in the press of men, I reckoned I could get you through this, no matter how many friends the prince has sent after you. I look at you, lads, and I think: you poor boys, you don’t know nothin’ about war. What you goin’ to do? Tonker, you are a crack shot, but after one shot, who’s backing you up while you reload? Perks, you know a trick or two, but the blokes in the castle will maybe know a trick or five. You’re a good cook, Shufti, too bad it’s going to be too hot in there. Will the Duchess turn aside arrows, Wazzer?”

“Yes. She will.”

“I hope you are right, my lad,” said Jackrum, giving the girl a long slow look. “Pers’nally, I’ve found religion in battle is as much use as a chocolate helmet. You’ll need more than a prayer if Prince Heinrich catches you, I might add.”

“We’re going to try it, Sarge,” said Polly. “There’s nothing for us in the army.”

“Will you come with us, Sarge?” said Shufti.

“No, lad. Me as a washerwoman? I doubt it. Don’t seem to have a skirt anywhere about me, for a start. Er…just one thing, lads. How are you going to get in?”

“In the morning. When we see the women going in again,” said Polly.

“Got it all planned, General? And you’ll be dressed as women?”

“Er…we are women, Sarge,” said Polly.

“Yes, lad. Technical detail. But you kitted out the rupert with all your little knickknacks, didn’t you? What’re you going to do, tell the guards you opened the wrong cupboard in the dark?”

Another embarrassed silence descended.

Jackrum sighed.

“This ain’t proper war,” he said. “Still, I said I’d look after you. You are my little lads, I said.” His eyes gleamed. “And you still are, even if the world’s turned upside down. I’ll just have to hope, Miss Perks, that you picked up a few tricks from ol’ Sarge, although I reckon you can think of a few of your own. And now I’d better get you kitted up, right?”

“Perhaps we could sneak in and steal something from the villages where the servants come from?” said Tonker.

“From a bunch of poor women?” said Polly, her heart sinking. “Anyway, there’d be soldiers everywhere.”

“Well, how do we get women’s clothes on a battlefield?” said Lofty.

Jackrum laughed, stood up, stuck his thumbs in his belt, and grinned.

“I told you, lads, you don’t know nothin’ about war!” he said.

 

…and one of the things they didn’t know was that it had edges.

Polly wasn’t certain what she’d expected. Men and horses, obviously. In her mind’s eye, they were engaged in mortal combat, but obviously you couldn’t go on doing that all day. So there would be tents. And that was about as far as the mind’s eye had seen.

It hadn’t seen that an army on campaign is a sort of large, portable city. It has only one employer, and it manufactures dead people, but, like all cities, it attracts…citizens.

What was unnerving was the sound of babies crying, off in the rows of tents. She hadn’t expected that. Or the mud. Or the crowds. Everywhere there were fires, and the smell of cooking. This was a siege, after all. People had settled in.

Getting down onto the plain in the dark had been easy. There was only Polly and Shufti trailing after the sergeant, who’d said that more would be too many and in any case would attract too much attention.

There were patrols, but their edge had been dulled by sheer repetitiveness. Besides, the allies weren’t expecting anyone to make much effort to get into the valley, at least in small groups. And men in the dark make noise, far more noise than a woman. They’d located a Borogravian sentry in the gloom by the noise of him trying to suck a morsel of dinner out of his teeth.

But another one had located them when they were a stone’s throw from the tents. He was young, so he was still keen.

“Halt! Who goes there? Friend or foe!”

The light from a cooking fire glinted off a crossbow.

“See?” whispered Jackrum. “This is where your uniform is your friend. Aren’t you glad you kept it?”

He swaggered forwards, and spat tobacco between the young sentry’s boots.

“My name’s Jackrum,” he said. “That’s Sergeant Jackrum. As for the other bit…you choose.”

“Sergeant Jackrum?” said the boy, his mouth staying open.

“Yes, lad.”

“What, the one who killed sixteen men at the Battle of Zop?”

“There was only ten of ’em, but good lad for knowin’ it.”

“The Jackrum who carried General Froc through fourteen miles of enemy territory?”

“That’s right.”

Polly saw teeth in the gloom as the sentry grinned.

“My dad told me he fought with you at Blunderberg!”

“Ah, that was a hot battle, that was!” said Jackrum.

“No, he meant in the pub afterwards! He pinched your drink and you smacked him in the gob and he kicked you in the nadgers and you hit him in the guts and he blacked your eye and then you hit him with a table and when he came round his mates stood him beer for the evening for managing to lay nearly three punches on Sergeant Jackrum. He tells the story every year, when it’s the anniversary and he’s pis—reminiscing.”

Jackrum thought for a moment, and then jabbed a finger at the young man.

“Joe Hubukurk, right?” he said.

The smile broadened to the point where the top of the young man’s head was in danger of falling off.

“He’ll be smirking all day when I tell him you remember him, Sarge!” said the sentry. “He says that where you piss grass don’t grow!”

“Well, what can a modest man say to that, eh?” said Jackrum. Then the young man frowned.

“Funny, though, he thought you were dead, Sarge,” he said.

“Tell him I bet him a shilling I’m not,” said Jackrum. “And your name, lad?”

“Lart, Sarge. Lart Hubukurk.”

“Glad you joined, are you?”

“Yes, Sarge,” said Lart loyally.

“We’re just having a stroll, lad. Tell your dad I asked after him.”

“I will, Sarge!” The boy stood to attention like a one-man guard of honor. “This is a proud moment for me, Sarge!”

“Does everyone know you, Sarge?” whispered Polly as they walked away.

“Aye, pretty much. On our side, anyway. I’ll make so bold as to declare that most of the enemy that meets me don’t know anything much afterwards.”

“I never thought it was going to be like this!” hissed Shufti.

“Like what?” said Jackrum.

“There’s women and children! Shops! I can smell bread baking! It’s like a…a city.”

“Yeah, but what we’re after isn’t going to be in the main streets. Follow me, lads.”

Sergeant Jackrum, suddenly furtive, ducked between two big heaps of boxes and emerged beside a smithy, its forge glowing in the dusk.

Here the tents were open-sided. Armorers and saddlers worked by lantern light, shadows flickering across the mud. Polly and Shufti had to step out of the way of a mule train, each animal carrying two casks on its back; the mules moved aside for Jackrum. Maybe he’s met them before, too, thought Polly, maybe he really does know everyone.

The sergeant walked like a man with the deeds to the world. He acknowledged other sergeants with a nod, lazily saluted the few officers there were around here, and ignored everybody else.

“You been here before, Sarge?” said Shufti.

“No, lad.”

“But you know where you’re going?”

“Correct. I ain’t been here, but I know battlefields, especially when everyone’s had a chance to dig in.” Jackrum sniffed the air. “Ah, right. That’s the stuff. Just you two wait here.”

He disappeared between two stacks of lumber. They heard a distant muttering and, after a moment or two, Jackrum reappeared holding a small bottle.

Polly grinned. “Is that rum, Sarge?”

“Well done, my little bar steward. And would be nice if it was rum, upon my word. Or whiskey or gin or brandy. But this don’t have none of those fancy names. This is the genuine stingo, this is. Pure hangman.”

“Hangman?” said Shufti.

“One drop and you’re dead,” said Polly. Jackrum beamed, as a master to a keen pupil.

“That’s right, Shufti. It’s rotgut. Wheresoever men are gathered together, someone will find something to ferment in a rubber boot, distill in an old kettle, and flog to his mates. Made from rats, by the smell of it. Ferments well, does your average rat. Fancy a taste?”

Shufti shied away from the proffered bottle. The sergeant laughed.

“Good lad. Stick to beer,” he said.

“Don’t the officers stop it?” said Polly.

“Officers? What do they know about anything?” said Jackrum. “An’ I bought this off of a sergeant, too. Anyone watching us?”

Polly peered into the gloom. “No, Sarge.”

Jackrum poured some of the liquid into one pudgy hand and splashed it onto his face.

“Ye-ouch,” he hissed. “Stings like the blazes. And now to kill the tooth worms. Got to do the job properly.” He took a quick sip from the bottle, spat it out, and shoved the cork back in.

“Muck,” he said. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Where are we going, Sarge?” said Shufti. “You can tell us now, can’t you?”

“A quiet little place where our needs will be met,” said Jackrum. “It’s around here somewhere.”

“You don’t half smell of drink, Sarge,” said Shufti. “Will they let you in if you smell drunk?”

“Yes, Shufti, lad, they will,” said Jackrum, setting off again. “The reason being, my pockets jingle and I smell of booze. Everyone likes a rich drunk. Ah…down this little valley here, that’ll be our…yeah, I was right. This is the place. Tucked away, delicate like. See any clothes hanging out to dry, boys?”

There were a few washing lines strung behind the half a dozen or so drab tents in this side valley, which was little more than a wash gouged out by winter rains. If there had been anything on them it had been taken in against the heavy dew.

“Shame,” said Jackrum. “Okay, so we’ll have to do it the hard way. Remember: just act natural and listen to what I say.”

“I’m s-shaking, Sarge,” Shufti muttered.

“Good, good, very natural,” said Jackrum. “This is our place, I think. Nice and quiet, no one watching us, nice little path up there to the top of the wash …”

He stopped outside a very large tent and tapped on the board outside with his swagger stick.

“The SoLid DoVes,” Polly read.

“Yeah, well, these ladies weren’t hired for their spelling,” said Jackrum, pushing open the flap of the tent of ill repute.

Inside was a stuffy little area, a sort of canvas antechamber. A lady, lumpy and crowlike in a black bombazine dress, rose from a chair and gave the trio the most calculating look Polly had ever met. It finished off by putting a price on her boots.

The sergeant doffed his cap and in a jovial, rotund voice that peed brandy and crapped plum pudding, said, “Good evening, madarm! Sergeant Smith’s the name, yes indeed! An’ me and my bold lads here have been so fortunate as to acquire the spoils of war, if you catch my drift, and nothing would do for it but they were clamoring, clamoring to go to the nearest house of good repute for to have a man made of ’em!”

Little beady eyes skewered Polly again. Shufti, ears glowing like signal beacons, was staring fixedly at the ground.

“Looks like that’d be a job and a half,” said the woman shortly.

“You never spoke a truer word, madarm!” beamed Jackrum. “Two of your fair flowers apiece should do it, I reckon.” There was a clink as, staggering slightly, Jackrum put several gold coins on the rickety little table.

Something about the gleam of it thawed things no end. The woman’s face cracked into a smile as glutinous as slug gravy.

“Well, now, we are always honored to entertain the Ins-and-Outs, Sergeant,” she said. “If you…gentlemen would like to step through to the, er, inner sanctum?”

Polly heard a very faint sound behind her, and turned. She hadn’t noticed the man sitting on a chair just inside the door. He had to be a man, because trolls weren’t pink; he made Eyebrow back in Plün look like some kind of weed. He wore leather, which was what she’d heard creaking, and he had his eyes just slightly open. When he saw her looking at him, he winked. It wasn’t a friendly wink.

There are times when a plan suddenly isn’t going to work. When you’re in the middle of it, is not the time to find this out.

“Er, Sarge,” she said. The sergeant turned, saw her frantic grimace, and appeared to spot the guard for the first time.

“Oh dear, where’s my manners?” he said, lurching back and fumbling in his pocket. He came up with a gold coin, which he folded in the astonished man’s hand. Then he turned around, tapping the side of his nose with an expression of idiot knowingness.

“A word of advice, lads,” he said. “Always give the guard a tip. He keeps the riffraff out, very important. Very important man.”

He stumbled back to the lady in black and belched hugely.

“And now, madarm, if we can meet these visions of loveliness you are hiding under this here bushel?” he said.

It depended, Polly thought a few seconds later, on how and when and after drinking how much of what that you had those visions. She knew about these places. Serving behind a bar can really broaden your education. There were a number of ladies back home who were, as her mother put it, “no better than they should be,” and at twelve years old, Polly had got a smack for asking how good they should have been, then. They were an Abomination Unto Nuggan, but men have always found space in their religion for a little sinning here and there.

The word to describe the four ladies seated in the room beyond, if you wanted to be kind, was “tired.” If you didn’t want to be kind, a whole range of words were just hanging in the air.

They looked up without much interest.

“This is Faith, Prudence, Grace, and Comfort,” said the lady of the house. “The night shift has not yet come on, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sure these beauties will be a great education for my roaring boys,” said the sergeant. “But…may I be so bold as to inquire about your name, madarm?”

“I’m Mrs. Smother, Sergeant.”

“And you have a first name, may I ask?”

“Dolores,” said Mrs. Smother, “to my…special friends.”

“Well now, Dolores,” said Jackrum, and there was another jingle of coins in his pocket, “I will come right out with it and be frank, because I can see you are a woman of the world. These frail blossoms are all very well in their way, for I know the fashion these days is for ladies with less meat on ’em than a butcher’s pencil, but a gentleman such as me, who has been around the world and seen a thing or two, well, he learns the value of…maturity.” He sighed. “Not to mention Hope and Patience.” The coins jingled again. “Perhaps you and I might retire to some suitable boodwah, madarm, and discuss the matter over a cordial or two?”

Mrs. Smother looked from the sergeant to the “lads,” glanced back in the anteroom, and looked back at Jackrum with her head on one side and a thin, calculating smile on her lips.

“Ye-s,” she said. “You’re a fine figure of a man, Sergeant Smith. Let us take a load off your…pockets, shall we?”

She joined arm-in-arm with the sergeant, who winked roguishly at Polly and Shufti.

“We’re well set, then, lads!” he chuckled. “Now, just so’s you don’t get carried away, when it’s time to go I’ll blow my whistle and you’d better have finished what you’re doin’, haha, and meet me sharpish. Duty calls! Remember the fine tradition of the Ins-and-Outs!”

Giggling and almost tripping up, he left the room on the arm of the proprietress.

Shufti sidled hurriedly up to Polly and whispered: “Is Sarge all right, Ozzer?”

“He’s just had a bit too much to drink,” said Polly loudly, as all four of the girls stood up.

“But he—” Shufti got a nudge in the ribs before she could say anymore. One of the girls carefully laid down her knitting, took Polly’s arm, flashed her well-crafted expression of interest, and said, “You’re a well set-up young man, aren’t you…what’s your name, dear? I’m Gracie.”

“Oliver,” said Polly. And what the hell is the fine tradition of the Ins-and-Outs?

“Ever seen a woman with no clothes on before, Oliver?” The girls giggled.

Polly’s brow wrinkled as, just for a moment, she was caught unawares. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

“Ooo, it looks like we’ve got ourselves a regular Don Joo-ann, girls,” said Gracie, stepping back. “We may have to send out for reinforcements! Why don’t you an’ me and Prudence go off to a little nook I know, and your little friend will be the guest of Faith and Comfort. Comfort’s very good with young men, ain’t you, Comfort?”

Sergeant Jackrum had been wrong in his description of the girls. Three of them were indeed several meals short of a healthy weight, but when Comfort got up out of her large armchair you realized that it had, in fact, been quite a small armchair and had mostly been Comfort. For a large woman, she had a small face, locked in a piggy-eyed scowl. There was a death’s head tattoo on one arm.

“He’s young,” said Gracie. “He’ll heal. Come along, Don Joo-ann…”

In a way, Polly was relieved. She didn’t take to the girls. Oh, the profession could bring anyone down, but she’d got to know some of the town’s ladies of uneasy virtue and they had an edge she couldn’t find here.

“Why do you work here?” she said as they entered a smaller, canvas-walled room. There was a rickety bed taking up most of the space.

“You know, you look a bit too young to be that sort of customer,” said Gracie.

“What sort?” said Polly.

“Oh, a holy joe,” said Gracie. “‘What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’ and all that stuff. Feel sorry for us, do you? At least if someone cuts up rough we’ve got Garry outside and after he’s finished with the bloke the colonel gets told and the bastard gets bunged in clink.”

“Yeah,” said Prudence. “From what we hear, we’re the safest ladies within twenty-five miles. Old Smother’s not too bad. We get money to keep and we get fed and she don’t beat us, which is more than can be said for husbands, and you can’t wander around loose, now, can you?”

Jackrum put up with Blouse because you’ve got to have an officer, Polly thought. If you don’t have an officer, some other officer’ll take you over. And a woman by herself is missing a man, while a man by himself is his own master.

Trousers. That’s the secret. Trousers and a pair of socks. I never dreamed it was like this. Put on trousers and the world changes. We walk different. We act different. I see these girls and I think: Idiots! Get yourself some trousers!

“Can you please get your clothes off?” she said. “I think we’d better hurry.”

“One of the Ins-and-Outs, this one,” said Gracie, slipping her dress off her shoulders. “Keep an eye on your cheeses, Pru!”

“Er…why does that mean we’re in the Ins-and-Outs?” said Polly. She made a show of unbuttoning her jacket, wishing that she believed in anyone there to pray to so that she could pray for the whistle.

“That’s ’cos you lads always have your eye on business,” said Gracie.

And maybe there was someone listening, at that. The whistle blew.

Polly grabbed the dresses and ran out, oblivious to the yells behind her. She collided with Shufti outside, tripped over the groaning form of Garry, saw Sergeant Jackrum holding the tent flap open, and bulleted into the night.

“This way!” the sergeant hissed, grabbing her by the collar before she’d gone a few feet and swinging her around. “You too, Shufti! Move!”

He ran up the side of the wash like a child’s balloon being blown by the wind, leaving them to scramble after him. His arms were full of clothing, which snagged and danced behind him.

Up above was knee-deep scrub, treacherous in the gloom. They tripped and staggered across it until they reached heavier growth, whereupon the sergeant got hold of both of them and pushed them into the bushes. The shouts and screams were fainter now.

“Now we’ll just keep quiet, like,” he whispered. “There’s patrols about!”

“They’ll be bound to find us,” Polly hissed, while Shufti wheezed.

“No, they won’t,” said Jackrum. “First, they’ll all be running towards the shoutin’, because that’s natur—there they go…”

Polly heard more shouts in the distance.

“And bloody fools they are, too. They’re supposed to be guarding the perimeter, and they’re running towards trouble in the camp! And they’re running straight towards lamplight, so there goes their night eyes! If I was their sergeant they’d be due a fizzer! C’mon.” He stood up, and pulled Shufti to her feet. “Feeling all right, lad?”

“It w-was horrible, Sarge! One of them put her hand…on…on my socks!”

“Something that doesn’t often happen, I’ll bet any man,” said Jackrum. “But you did a good job. Now, we’ll walk nice and quiet, and no more talking ’til I say, okay?”

They plodded on for ten minutes, skirting the camp. They heard several patrols, and saw a couple of others on the hilltops as the moon rose, but it dawned on Polly that loud though the shouting had been, it was only part of the huge patchwork of sound that rose out of the camp. The patrols this far away probably hadn’t heard it, or at least were commanded by the kind of soldiers who didn’t want to get put on a fizzer.

In the dark, she heard Jackrum take a deep breath.

“Okay, that’s far enough. Not a bad job of work, lads. You’re real Ins-and-Outs now!”

“That guard was out cold!” said Polly. “Did you hit him?”

“Y’see, I’m fat,” said Jackrum. “People don’t think fat men can fight. They think fat men are funny. They think wrong. Gave ’im a chop to the windpipe.”

“Sarge!” said Shufti, horrified.

“What? What? He was coming at me with his club!” said Jackrum.

“Why was he doing that, Sarge?” said Polly.

“Ooh, you cunning soldier, you,” said Jackrum. “All right, I grant you that I’d just given madarm the ol’ quietus, but, to be fair, I know when someone’s just handed me a bleedin’ drink full o’ sleepy drops.”

“You hit a woman, Sarge?” said Polly.

“Yeah, and maybe when she wakes up in her corsets she’ll decide that next time a poor ol’ drunk fat man wanders in it mightn’t be such a good idea to try to roll him for his wad,” growled Jackrum. “I’d be in a ditch wi’out my drawers on and a damned great headache if she’d had her way, and if you two was daft enough to complain to an officer, she’d swear black was blue that I didn’t have a penny on me when I came in and was drunk and disorderly. And the colonel wouldn’t care a fig, ’cos he’d reckon a sergeant daft enough to get caught like that had it coming to him. I know, you see. I look after my lads.” There was a clink in the dark. “Plus a few extra dollars won’t go amiss.”

“Sarge, you didn’t steal the cashbox, did you?” said Polly.

“Yeah. Got a good armful of her wardrobe, too.”

“Good!” said Shufti fervently. “It wasn’t a nice place!”

“It was mostly my money in any case,” said Jackrum. “Business has been a bit slow today, by the feel of it.”

“But it’s immoral earnings!” said Polly, and then felt a complete fool for saying it.

“No,” said Jackrum. “It was immoral earnings, now it’s the proceeds of common theft. Life’s a lot easier when you learns to think straight.”

 

Polly was glad there was no mirror. The best that could be said for the squad’s new clothing was that it covered them up. But this was a war. You seldom saw new clothes on anybody.

Yet they felt awkward. And there was no sense in that at all. But they looked at one another in the chilly light of dawn and giggled in embarrassment. Wow, Polly thought, look at us: dressed as women!

Oddly enough, it was Igorina who really looked the part. She’d disappeared into the other tumbledown room carrying her pack. For ten minutes the squad had heard the occasional grunt or “ouch,” and then she’d returned with a full head of fair, shoulder-length hair. Her face was the right shape, missing the lumps and bumps they’d come to know. And the stitches on her forehead shrank and disappeared as Polly watched in astonishment.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” she said.

“It smarts a bit for a few minutes,” said Igorina. “You just have to have the knack. And the special ointment, of course.”

“But why’s there a curved scar on your cheek now?” said Tonker. “And those stitches are staying.”

Igorina looked down demurely. She’d even restyled one of the dresses into a dirndl, and looked like a fresh young maid from the beercellar. Just to look at her was to mentally order a large pretzel.

“You’ve got to have something to show,” she said. “Otherwise you’re letting down the Clan. And actually I think the stitches are rather fetching…”

“Well, okay,” Tonker conceded. “But lisp a bit, will you? I know this is completely wrong, but now you look, oh, I don’t know…weird, I suppose.”

“Okay, line up,” said Jackrum.

He stood back and gave them a look of theatrical disdain. “Well, I’ve never seen such a lot of scrubb…washerwomen in all my life,” he said. “I wish you all the luck you’re bleedin’ well gonna need. There’ll be someone watching the door for you to come out, and that’s all I can promise. Private Perks, you’re acting, unpaid corporal on this one. I hope you’ve picked up one or two little lessons on our stroll. In and out, that’s what you should do. No famous last stands, please. When in doubt, kick ’em in the nadgers and scarper. Mind you, if you frighten them like you frighten me, you should have no trouble.”

“Are you sure you won’t join us, Sarge?” said Tonker, still trying not to laugh.

“No, lad. You won’t get me in skirts. Everyone has their place, right? The place where they draw the line? Well, that’s mine. I’m pretty steeped in sin, one way and another, but Jackrum always shows his colors. I’m an old soldier. I’ll fight like a soldier does, in the ranks, on the battlefield. Besides, if I went in there simpering in petticoats I’d never hear the end of it.”

“The Duchess says there is a d-different path for Sergeant Jackrum,” said Wazzer.

“And I don’t know if you don’t frighten me worst of all, Private Goom,” said Jackrum. He hitched up his equatorial belt. “You’re right, though. When you’re inside I shall nip down, nice and quiet, and slip into our lines. If I can’t raise a little diversionary attack, my name’s not Sergeant Jackrum. And since it is Sergeant Jackrum, that proves it. Hah, there’s plenty of men in this man’s army that owe me a favor,” he gave a little sniff and added, “or wouldn’t say no to my face. And plenty of likely lads who’ll want to tell their grandchildren they fought alongside Jackrum, too. Well, I’ll give ’em their chance at real soldierin’.”

“Sarge, it’ll be suicide to attack the main gates!” said Polly.

Jackrum slapped his belly.

“See this lot?” he said. “It’s like having yer own armor! Bloke once stuck a blade in this up to the hilt and was surprised as hell when I nutted him! Anyway, you lads’ll be making so much fuss the guards will be distracted, right? You’re relying on me, I’m relying on you. That’s milit’ry, that is. You give me a signal, any signal. That’s all I’ll need.”

“The Duchess says your path takes you further,” said Wazzer.

“Oh yeah?” said Jackrum jovially. “And where’s that, then? Somewhere with a good pub, I hope!”

“The Duchess says, um, it should lead to the town of Scritz,” said Wazzer. She said it quietly while the rest of the squad were laughing, not so much at Jackrum’s comment as a way of losing some of the tension. But Polly heard it.

Jackrum was really, really good, she thought. The fleeting expression of terror was gone in an instant.

“Scritz? Nothing there,” said Jackrum. “Dull town.”

“There was a sword,” said Wazzer.

Jackrum was ready this time. There was not a flicker of expression, just the blank face that he was so good at. And that was odd, Polly thought, because there should have been something, even if it was only puzzlement.

“Handled lots of swords in my time,” he said dismissively. “Yes, Private Halter?”

“There’s one thing you didn’t tell us, Sarge,” said Tonker, lowering her hand. “Why is the regiment called the Ins-and-Outs?”

“First into battle, last out of the fray,” said Jackrum automatically.

“So why are we nicknamed the Cheesemongers?”

“Yes,” said Shufti. “Why, Sarge? Because the way those girls were talking, it sounded like it’s something we ought to know!”

Jackrum made a clicking noise of exasperation. “Oh, Tonker, why the hell did you wait ’til you’d got your trousers off before asking me that? I’ll feel embarrassed telling yer now!” And Polly thought: that’s dangling bait, right? You want to tell us. You want to get any conversation away from Scritz…

“Ah,” said Tonker. “It’s about sex, then, is it?”

“Not as such, no…”

“Well, tell me, then,” said Tonker. “I’d like to know before I die. If it makes you feel any better I’ll nudge people and go gnher, gnher, gnher.”

Jackrum sighed. “There’s a song,” he said. “It starts ‘’Twas on a Monday morning, all in the month of May—’”

“Then it is about sex,” said Polly flatly. “It’s a folk song, it starts with ‘’twas,’ it takes place in May, QED, it’s about sex. Is a milkmaid involved? I bet she is.”

“There could be,” Jackrum conceded.

“Going for to market? For to sell her wares?” said Polly.

“Very likely.”

“O-kay. That gives us the cheese. And she meets, let’s see, a soldier, a sailor, a jolly ploughboy, or just possibly a man clothéd all in leather, I expect? No, since it’s about us, it’s a soldier, right? And since it’s one of the Ins-and-Outs…oh dear, I feel a humorous double-entendre coming on. Just one question: what item of her clothing fell down or came untied?”

“Her garter,” said Jackrum. “You’ve heard it before, Perks!”

“No, but I just know how folk songs go. We had folk singers in the lower bar for six months back hom—where I worked. In the end we had to get a man in with a ferret. But you remember stuff…oh, no…”

“Was there canoodling, Sarge?” said Tonker, grinning.

“Kayaking, I expect,” said Igorina, to general sniggering.

“No, he stole the cheese, didn’t he?” sighed Polly. “As the poor girl was lying there, waiting for her garter to be tied, hem hem, he damn well made off with her cheese, right?”

“Er…not damn. Not with the skirt on, Ozz,” Tonker warned.

“Then it’s not Ozz, either,” said Polly. “Fill yer hat with bread, fill yer boots with soup! And steal the cheese, eh, Sarge?”

“That’s right. We’ve always been a very practical regiment,” said Jackrum. “An army marches on its stomach, lads. On mine, o’course, it could hold a parade!”

“It was her own fault, she should have been able to tie up her own garters,” said Lofty.

“Yeah. Probably wanted her cheese stolen,” said Tonker.

“Wise words,” said Jackrum. “Off you go, then…cheesemongers!”

The mist was still thick as they made their way down through the woods to the path by the river.

Polly’s skirt kept catching in brambles. It must have done so before she’d joined up, but she’d never noticed it so much. Now it was seriously hindering her.

She reached up and absentmindedly adjusted the socks, which she’d separated to use as padding elsewhere. She was too skinny, that was the trouble. The ringlets would have been useful there. They would have said “girl.” In their absence, she had to rely on a scarf and a socks change.

“All right,” she whispered as the ground leveled out. “Remember, no swearing. Giggle, don’t snigger. No belching. No weapons, either. They can’t be that stupid in there. Anyone brought a weapon?”

There was a shaking of heads.

“Did you bring a weapon, Tonk—Magda?”

“No, Polly.”

“No item of any sort with a certain weaponlike quality?” Polly insisted.

“No, Polly,” said Tonker demurely.

“Anything, perhaps, with an edge?”

“Oh, you mean this?”

“Yes, Magda.”

“Well, a woman can carry a knife, can’t she?”

“It’s a saber, Magda. You’re trying to hide it, but it’s a saber.”

“But I’m only using it like a knife, Polly.”

“It’s three feet long, Magda.”

“Size isn’t important, Polly.”

“No one believes that. Leave it behind a tree, please. That is an order.”

“Oh, all right!”

After a while, Shufti, who had appeared to be thinking deeply, said: “I can’t understand why she didn’t just tie up her own garter …”

“Shuft, what the hell—” Tonker began.

“—heck,” Polly corrected her, “and you’re talking to Betty, remember.”

“What the heck are you talking about, Betty?” said Tonker, rolling her eyes.

“Well, the song, of course. And you don’t have to lie down to tie a garter in any case. It’d be more difficult,” said Shufti. “It’s all a bit silly.”

No one said anything for a while. It was, perhaps, easy to see why Shufti was on her quest.

“You’re right,” said Polly eventually. “It’s a silly song.”

“A very silly song,” Tonker agreed.

They all agreed. It was a silly song.

They stepped out onto the river path. Ahead of them, a small group of women were hurrying around the bend in the cliff.

Automatically, the squad looked up. The Keep grew out of the sheer cliff; it was hard to see where the unhewn rock ended and the ancient masonry began. They could see no windows. From here, it was just a wall extending to the sky. No way in, it said. No way out. In this wall are few doors, and they close with finality.

This close to the deep, slow river, the air was bone-chilling cold, and grew colder the higher they looked.

Around the curve they could see the little rock shelf where the back door was, and the women ahead of them talking to a guard.

“This is not going to work,” said Shufti under her breath. “They’re showing him some papers. Anyone brought theirs? No?”

The soldier had looked up and was watching the girls with that blank official expression of someone who was not looking for excitement or adventure in his life.

“Keep moving,” murmured Polly. “If it all gets really bad, burst into tears.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Tonker.

Their treacherous feet were taking them closer all the time. Polly kept her eyes downwards, as was proper in an unmarried woman. There would be others watching, she knew it. They’d probably be bored, they might not be expecting any trouble, but up on those walls there were eyes fixed on her.

They reached the guard. Just inside the narrow stone doorway, there was another one, lounging in the shadow.

“Papers,” said the guard.

“Oh, sir, I have none,” said Polly. She’d been working out the speech on the way down through the wood. War, fears of invasion, people fleeing, no food…you didn’t have to make things up, you just had to reassemble reality. “I had to leave—”

“Oh, right,” the guard interrupted. “No papers? No problem! If you’d just step in and see my colleague? Nice of you to join us!” He stood aside and waved a hand toward the dark entrance.

Mystified, Polly stepped inside, with the others following.

Behind them, the door swung shut.

Inside, she saw that they were in a long passage with many slits in the wall to rooms on either side. Lamplight shone from the slits. She could see shadows beyond them. Bowmen could turn anyone trapped in here into mince.

At the end of the corridor another door swung open. It led into a small room in which there sat, at a desk, a young man in a uniform Polly didn’t recognize, although it had a captain’s insignia. Standing to one side was a much, much larger man in the same uniform, or possibly two uniforms stitched together. He had a sword. There was that about him: when this man held a sword, it was clearly held, and held by him. The eye was drawn to it. Even Jade would have been impressed.

“Good morning, ladies,” said the captain. “No papers, eh? Take off your scarves, please.”

And that’s it, thought Polly as the bottom of her stomach dropped away. And we thought we were being clever. There was nothing for it but to obey.

“Ah. You’ll tell me your hair got shaved off as a punishment for fraternizing with the enemy, eh?” said man, barely looking up. “Except for you,” he added to Igorina. “Didn’t feel like fraternizing with any enemies? Something wrong with decent Zlobenian boys?”

“Er…no,” said Igorina.

Now the captain gave them a bright little smile.

“Gentlemen, let’s not mess about, shall we? You walk wrong. We do watch, you know. You walk wrong and you stand wrong. You,” he pointed to Tonker, “have got a bit of shaving soap under one ear. And you, lad, are either deformed or you’ve tried the old trick of sticking a pair of socks down your undershirt.”

Crimson with humiliation, Polly hung her head.

“Getting in or out disguised as washerwomen,” said the captain, shaking his head. “Everyone outside this stupid country knows that one, lads, and most of them make more effort than you boys. Well, for you war is over. This place has got big, big dungeons and I don’t mind telling you you’re probably going to be better off in here than outside—yeah, what do you want?”

Shufti had raised a hand.

“Can I show you something?” she said. Polly didn’t turn, but watched the captain’s face as, beside Polly, cloth rustled. She couldn’t believe it. Shufti was raising her skirt…

“Oh,” said the captain.

There was an explosion from Tonker, but it was an explosion of tears. They came out accompanied by a long, mournful wail, as she threw herself onto the floor.

“We walked so-oo far! We lay in ditches to hide from soldiers! There’s no food! We want to work. You called us boys! Why are you so-oo cruel?”

Polly knelt down and half-picked her up, patting her on the back as Tonker’s shoulders heaved with the force of her sobs.

“It’s been very hard for all of us,” she said to the red-faced captain. “Have you seen everything you wish to see?”

“If you can take him down I can garrote the other one with my apron string,” whispered Tonker in her ear, between howls.

“No, please!” said the captain, giving the guard the agonized glance of a man who knows that he’s going to be the laughingstock of the whole fort inside the hour. “Once was quite—I mean, I’ve seen…look, I’m completely satisfied. Private, go and fetch one of the women from the laundry. I am so sorry, ladies, I…I have a job to do…”

“Do you enjoy it?” said Polly, every syllable tinkling with ice.

“Yes!” said the captain hurriedly. “I mean, no! No, yes! We have to be careful…ah…”

The soldier had returned, trailing a woman. Polly stared.

“Ah, Daphne, some new, er, volunteers for Mrs. Enid,” said the captain, waving vaguely toward the squad. “I’m sure she will have some use for them…er…”

“Certainly, captain,” said the woman, curtsying demurely. Polly still stared.

“Off you go with Daphne…ladies,” said the captain. “And if you’re hard workers, Mrs. Enid will, I am sure, give you a pass so’s we don’t have this trouble again…er…”

Shufti put both hands on his desk, leaned toward him, and said “Boo.” His chair hit the wall.

“I may not be clever,” she said to Polly. “But I’m not stupid.”

But Polly was still staring at Lieutenant Blouse. He’d curtsied surprisingly well.