‘It looks as though everyone’s feeling sorry for us,’ said Polly.
‘Yeah, well, so am I, and I am uth,’ said Igor. ‘Thome of thothe men—’
‘All right, all right, stop lollygagging, you lot!’ shouted Strappi, marching up.
‘Corporal?’ said the sergeant quietly, hauling himself back on to the cart. Strappi paused, and then in a voice dripping with syrup and sarcasm went on: ‘Excuse me. The sergeant and myself would be obleejed if you brave heroes to be would join us in a little light marching? Jolly good! And there will be embroidery later on. Best foot forward, ladies!’
Polly heard Tonker gasp. Strappi turned, eyes glinting with sinister anticipation. ‘Oh, someone doesn’t like being called a lady, eh?’ he said. ‘Dear me, Private Halter, you’ve got a lot to learn, haven’t you? You’re a sissy little lady until we make a man of you, right? And I dread to think how long that’s going to take. Move!’
I know, thought Polly, as they set off. It takes about ten seconds, and a pair of socks. One sock, and you could make Strappi.
Plotz turned out to be like Plün, but it was worse because it was bigger. The rain started again as they marched into the cobbled square. It looked as though it always rained here. The buildings were grey, and mud-spattered near the ground. Roof gutters overflowed, pouring rain on to the cobbles and sending a spray over the recruits. There was no one about. Polly saw open doors banging in the wind, and bits of debris in the streets, and remembered the lines of hurrying people on the road. There was no one here.
Sergeant Jackrum climbed down from the cart as Strappi bawled them into line. Then the sergeant took over, leaving the corporal to glower from the sidelines.
‘This is wonderful Plotz!’ he said. ‘Have a look round, so that if you is killed and goes to hell, it won’t come as a shock! You’ll be bivvying in that barracks over there, what is milit’ry property!’ He waved a hand towards a crumbling stone building that looked about as military as a barn. ‘You will be issued with your equipment. And tomorrow it’s a nice long march to Crotz, where you will arrive as boys and leave as men did I just say something funny, Perks? No, I thought so, too! Attention! That means stand up straight!’
‘That’s straight!’ yelled Strappi.
A young man was riding across the square on a tired, skinny brown horse, which was quite suitable because he was a tired, skinny man. The skinniness was helped by the fact that he wore a tunic which had clearly been made for someone a couple of sizes larger. The same applied to his helmet. He must have padded it, Polly thought. One cough and it’ll be over his eyes.
Sergeant Jackrum snapped off a salute as the officer approached. ‘Jackrum, sir. You’ll be Lieutenant Blouse, sir?’
‘Well done, sergeant.’
‘These are the recruits from upriver, sir. Fine body of men, sir.’
The rider peered at the squad. He actually leaned forward over the horse’s neck, causing rain to pour off his helmet.
‘This is all, sergeant?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Most of them look very young,’ said the lieutenant, who didn’t look very old.
‘Yessir.’
‘And isn’t that one a troll?’
‘Yessir. Well spotted, sir.’
‘And the one with stitches all round his head?’
‘He’s an Igor, sir. Sort of like a special clan up in the mountains, sir.’
‘Do they fight?’
‘Can take a man apart very quickly, sir, as I understand it,’ said Jackrum, his expression not changing.
The young lieutenant sighed. ‘Well, I’m sure they’re all good fellows,’ he said. ‘Now then, er . . . men, I—’
‘Pay attention and listen to what the lieutenant has to say!’ bawled Strappi.
The lieutenant shuddered. ‘—thank you, corporal,’ he said. ‘Men, I have good news,’ he added, but in the voice of one who hasn’t. ‘You were probably expecting a week or two in the training camp in Crotz, yes? But I’m glad to be able to tell you that the . . . the war is progressing so . . . so . . . so well that you are to go directly to the front.’
Polly heard one or two gasps, and a snigger from Corporal Strappi.
‘All of you are to go to the lines,’ said the lieutenant. ‘That includes you too, corporal. Your time for action has come at last!’
The snigger stopped. ‘Sorry, sir?’ said Strappi. ‘The front? But you know that I’m— well, you know about the special duties—’
‘My orders said all able-bodied men, corporal,’ said Blouse. ‘I expect that you’ll be itching for the fray after all these years, eh, a young man like you?’
Strappi said nothing.
‘However,’ said the lieutenant, fumbling under his soaking cloak, ‘I do have a package here for you, Sergeant Jackrum. A very welcome one, I’ve no doubt.’
Jackrum took the packet gingerly. ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll look at this later on—’ he began.
‘On the contrary, Sergeant Jackrum!’ said Blouse. ‘Your last recruits should see this, since you are both a soldier and, as it were, a “father of soldiers”! And so it’s only right that they see a fine soldier get his reward: an honourable discharge, sergeant!’ Blouse spoke the words as if they had cream and a little cherry on top.
Apart from the rain, the only sound now was Jackrum’s pudgy finger slowly ripping open the package.
‘Oh,’ he said, like a man in shock. ‘Good. A picture of the Duchess. That’s eighteen I have now. Oh, and, oo, a piece of paper saying it’s a medal, so it looks like we’ve even run out of pot metal now. Oh, and my discharge with a printing of the Duchess’s very own signature itself!’ He turned the packet over and shook it. ‘Not my three months’ back pay, though.’
‘Three loud hurrahs for Sergeant Jackrum!’ said the lieutenant to the rain and wind. ‘Hip-hip—’
‘But I thought we needed every man, sir!’ said Jackrum.
‘Judging by all the notes pinned on that packet, it has been following you around for years, sergeant,’ said Blouse. ‘You know the military. That is your official discharge, I am afraid. I cannot rescind it. I am sorry.’
‘But—’ Jackrum began.
‘It bears the Duchess’s signature, sergeant. Will you argue with that? I said I am sorry. In any case, what would you do? We will not be sending out any more recruiting parties.’
‘What? But we always need men, sir!’ Jackrum protested. ‘And I’m fit and well again, got the stamina of a horse—’
‘You were the only man to return with recruits, sergeant. That is how the matter is.’
The sergeant hesitated for a moment, and then saluted. ‘Yessir! Very good, sir! Will see the new lads settled in, sir! Pleasure to have served, sir!’
‘Can I ask something?’ said Maladict.
‘You do not address an officer directly, private,’ snapped Jackrum.
‘No, let the man speak, sergeant,’ said the lieutenant. ‘These are . . . unusual times, after all. Yes, my man?’
‘Did I hear you say we’re going into battle without training, sir?’
‘Oh, well, most of you will almost certainly be pikemen, haha,’ said the lieutenant nervously. ‘Not a lot of training there, eh? You just need to know which end is which, haha.’ He looked as though he wanted to die.
‘Pikemen?’ said Maladict, looking puzzled.
‘You heard the lieutenant, Private Maladict,’ snapped the sergeant.
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,’ said Maladict, stepping back into the ranks.
‘Are there any more questions?’ said Blouse, looking along the line. ‘Jolly good, then. We leave by the last boat, at midnight. Carry on, sergeant . . . for now. What was the other thing . . . oh, yes. And I shall need a batman.’
‘Volunteers to be the lieutenant’s batman step forward! Not you, Private Maladict!’ snapped the sergeant.
No one moved.
‘Oh, come now,’ said the lieutenant.
Polly slowly raised a hand. ‘What’s a batma
n, sir?’
The sergeant grinned mirthlessly. ‘Fair question,’ he said. ‘A batman is, like, a personal servant who takes care of the officer. Fetches his meals to him, sees he’s smartly turned out, that style of thing. So’s he is free to perform his duties more adequatelier.’
Igor stepped forward. ‘Igorth are uthed to thervice, thargeant,’ he said.
Using the amazing powers of deafness and restricted vision sometimes available even to the most nervous officers, the lieutenant appeared not to notice him. He looked fixedly at Polly.
‘What about you, private?’ he said.
‘Private Perks used to work in a bar, sir,’ the sergeant volunteered.
‘Capital. Report to my quarters in the inn at six, Private Perks. Carry on, sergeant.’
As the skinny horse staggered away, Sergeant Jackrum directed his glare at the squad, but there was no real fire to it. He appeared to be operating on automatic, with his mind elsewhere. ‘Don’t just stand there trying to look pretty! There’s uniforms and weapons inside! Get kitted up! If you want grub, cook it yerself! At the double! Disssssssmiss!’
The squad dashed for the barracks, propelled by sheer volume. But Polly hesitated. Corporal Strappi hadn’t moved since the snigger had been cut short. He was staring blankly at the ground.
‘You all right, corporal?’ she said.
‘You go away, Parts,’ said the corporal, in a low voice that was much worse than his normal petulant shout. ‘Just go away, all right?’
She shrugged, and followed the others. But she had noticed the steaming dampness round the corporal’s feet.
There was chaos inside. The barracks was really just one large room which did duty as mess, assembly room and kitchen, with big bunk rooms beyond it. It was empty, and well on the way to decay. The roof leaked, the high windows were broken, dead leaves had blown in and lay around on the floor, among the rat droppings. There were no pickets, no sentries, no people. There was a big pot boiling on the sooty hearth, though, and its hiss and seethe were the only liveliness in the place. At some point part of the room had been set up as a kind of quartermaster’s store, but most of the shelves were empty. Polly had expected some sort of queue, some kind of order, possibly someone handing out little piles of clothes.
What there was, instead, was a rummage stall. Very much like a rummage stall, in fact, because nothing on it appeared to be new and little on it appeared to be worth having. The rest of the squad were already pawing through what might have been called merchandise if there were any possibility that anyone could be persuaded to buy it.
‘What’s this? One Size, Doesn’t Fit Anyone?’
‘This tunic’s got blood on it! Blood!’
‘Well, it is one of the thtubborn thtainth, it’s alwayth very hard to get it out without—’
‘Where’s the proper armour?’
‘Oh, no! There’s an arrow hole in this one!’
‘What dis? Nuffin fits a troll!’
A small, leathery old man was at bay behind the table, cowering under the ferocity of Maladict’s glare. He wore a red uniform jacket, done up badly, with a corporal’s stripes, stained and faded, on the sleeve. The left breast was covered in medals.
One arm ended in a hook. One eye was covered by a patch.
‘We’re going to be pikemen, the lieutenant said!’ said the vampire. ‘That means a sword and pike per man, right? And a shield if there’s an arrow storm, right? And a heavy helmet, right?’
‘Wrong! You can’t yell at me like that!’ said the man. ‘See these medals? I’m a—’
A hand descended from above and lifted him over the table. Carborundum held the man close to his face and nodded.
‘Yah, can see ’em, mister,’ he rumbled. ‘And . . . ?’
The recruits had fallen silent.
‘Put him down, Carborundum,’ said Polly. ‘Gently.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s got no legs.’
The troll focused. Then, with exaggerated care, he lowered the old soldier to the ground. There were a couple of little tapping sounds as the two wooden peg-legs touched the planking.
‘Sorry about dat,’ he said.
The little man steadied himself against the table and shuffled his arms round a couple of crutches.
‘All right,’ he said gruffly. ‘No harm done. But watch it, another time!’
‘But this is ridiculous!’ said Maladict, turning to Polly and waving a hand at the heap of rags and bent metal. ‘You couldn’t equip three men out of this mess. There’s not even any decent boots!’
Polly looked along the length of the table. ‘We’re supposed to be well equipped,’ she said to the one-eyed man. ‘We’re supposed to be the finest army in the world. That’s what we’re told. And aren’t we winning?’
The man looked at her. Inside, she stared at herself. She hadn’t meant to speak out like that.
‘So they say,’ he said, in a blank kind of way.
‘And w-what do you say?’ said Wazzer. He’d picked up one of the few swords. It was stained and notched.
The corporal glanced up at Carborundum, and then at Maladict.
‘I’m not s-stupid, you know!’ Wazzer went on, red in the face and trembling. ‘All this stuff is off d-dead men!’
‘Well, it’s a shame to waste good boots—’the man began.
‘We’re the last o-ones, aren’t we?’ said Wazzer. ‘The last r-recruits!’
The peg-legged corporal eyed the distant doorway, and saw no relief heading in his direction.
‘We’ve got to stay here all night,’ said Maladict. ‘Night!’ he went on, causing the old corporal to wobble on his crutches. ‘When who knows what evil flits through the shadows, dealing death on silent wings, seeking a hapless victim who—’
‘Yeah, all right, all right, I did see your ribbon,’ said the corporal. ‘Look, I’m closing up after you’ve gone. I just run the stores, that’s all. That’s all I do, honest! I’m on one-tenth pay, me, on account of the leg situation, and I don’t want trouble!’
‘And this is all you’ve got?’ said Maladict. ‘Don’t you have a little something . . . put by . . .’
‘Are you saying I’m dishonest?’ said the corporal hotly.
‘Let’s say I’m open to the idea that you might not be,’ said the vampire. ‘C’mon, corporal, you said we’re the last to go. What are you saving up? What’ve you got?’
The corporal sighed, and swung with surprising speed over to a door, which he unlocked. ‘You’d better come and look,’ he said. ‘But it’s not good . . .’
It was worse. They found a few more breastplates, but one was sliced in half and another was one big dent. A shield was in two pieces, too. There were bent swords and crushed helmets, battered hats and torn shirts.
‘I done what I can,’ sighed the corporal. ‘I hammered stuff out and washed out the clothes but it’s been weeks since I had any coal for the forge and you can’t do nothin’ about the swords without a forge. It’s been months since I got any new weapons and, let me tell you, since the dwarfs buggered off the steel we’ve been getting is crap anyway.’ He rubbed his nose. ‘I know you think quartermasters are a thieving bunch and I won’t say we might not skim a bit off the top when things are going well, but this stuff? A beetle couldn’t make a living off this.’ He sniffed again. ‘Ain’t been paid in three months, neither. I guess one-tenth of nothing is not as bad as nothing, but I was never that good at philosophy.’
Then he brightened up. ‘Got plenty to eat, at least,’ he said. ‘If you like horse, that is. Personally I prefer rat, but there’s no accounting for taste.’
‘I can’t eat horse!’ said Shufti.
‘Ah, you’d be a rat man?’ said the corporal, leading the way out into the big room.
‘No!’
‘You’ll learn to be one. You’ll all learn,’ said the little one-tenth corporal, with an evil grin. ‘Ever eaten scubbo? No? Nothing like a bowl of scubbo when you’re hungry. You can put
anything in scubbo. Pork, beef, mutton, rabbit, chicken, duck . . . anything. Even rats, if you’ve got ’em. It’s food for the marching man, scubbo. Got some on the boil out there right now. You can have some of that, if you like.’
The squad brightened up.
‘Thoundth good,’ said Igor. ‘What’th in it?’
‘Boiling water,’ said the corporal. ‘It’s what we call “blind scubbo”. But there’s going to be old horse in a minute unless you’ve got something better. Could do with some seasonings, at least. Who’s looking after the rupert?’
They looked at one another.
The corporal sighed. ‘The officer,’ he explained. ‘They’re all called Rupert or Rodney or Tristram or something. They get better grub than you do. You could try scrounging something at the inn.’
‘Scrounge?’ said Polly.
The old man rolled his one eye.
‘Yeah. Scrounge. Scrounge, nick, have a lend of, borrow, thieve, lift, acquire, purrrr-loin. That’s what you’ll learn, if you’re gonna survive this war. Which they say we’re winnin’, o’ course. Always remember that.’ He spat vaguely in the direction of the fire, possibly missing the cooking pot only by accident. ‘Yeah, an’ all the lads I see coming back down the road walking hand in hand with Death, they probably overdid the celebrating, eh? So easy to take your hand right off if you open a bottle of cham-pag-nee the wrong way, eh? I see you’ve got an Igor with you, you lucky devils. Wish we’d had one when I went off to battle. I wouldn’t be kept awake by woodworm if we had.’
‘We have to steal our food?’ said Maladict.
‘No, you can starve if that takes your fancy,’ said the corporal. ‘I’ve starved a few times. There’s no future in it. Ate a man’s leg when we were snowed up in the Ibblestarn campaign but, fair’s fair, he ate mine.’ He looked at their faces. ‘Well, it’s not on, is it, eating your own leg? You’d probably go blind.’
‘You swapped legs?’ said Polly, horrified.
‘Yeah, me an’ Sergeant Hausegerda. It was his idea. Sensible man, the sergeant. That kept us alive for the week and by then the relief had got through. We were certainly relieved about that. Oh, dear. Where’s my manners? How d’yer do, lads, my name’s Corporal Scallot. They call me Threeparts.’ He held out his hook.
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