“All right, all right,” the sergeant said. “Upon my oath, I am not a man to disobey orders.” And the eyes twinkled.
“Well done, sergeant,” said Blouse.
Jackrum pulled himself together. “I don’t want to be a sunflower, though,” he said.
“Happily there are only fir trees in this area, sergeant.”
“Point well made, sir.” Jackrum turned to the awed squad. “All right, Last Detail,” he bellowed. “You heard the man! Spruce up!”
It was an hour later. As far as Polly could tell, they’d started out for the mountains but had travelled in a wide semi-circle so that they ended up facing back the way they had come, but a few miles away. Was Blouse leading, or had he left it to Jackrum?
Neither man was complaining.
The lieutenant called a halt in a thicket of birch, thus doubling the size of the thicket. You could say that the camouflage effects were effective, because bright red and white shows up against greens and greys. Beyond that, though, language tended to run out.
Jade had scraped off her paint, and was green and grey anyway. Igorina looked like a walking brush. Wazzer quivered like an aspen all the time, so her leaves rustled permanently. The others had made more or less reasonable attempts, and Polly was pretty proud of her own efforts. Jackrum was about as tree-like as a big red rubber ball; Polly suspected that he’d surreptitiously shined up his brasswork, too. Every tree held a mug of tea in limb or hand. After all, they’d stopped for five minutes.
“Men,” said Blouse, as if he’d only just reached that conclusion. “You may have gathered that we are heading back towards the mountains to raise a deserters’ army there. This story is, in fact, a ruse for the benefit of Mr de Worde!” He paused, as if expecting some reaction. They stared at him. He went on: “We are, in fact, continuing our journey to the Kneck valley. This is the last thing the enemy will be expecting.”
Polly glanced at the sergeant. He was grinning.
“It is an established fact that a small, light force can get into places that a battalion cannot penetrate,” Blouse went on. “Men, we will be that force! Is that not right, Sergeant Jackrum?”
“Yessir!”
“We will come down like a hammer on those forces smaller than us,” said Blouse happily.
“Yessir!”
“And from those that outnumber us, we will merge silently into the forest—”
“Yessir!”
“We will slip past their sentries—”
“That’s right, sir,” said Jackrum.
“—and take Kneck Keep from under their noses!”
Jackrum’s tea sprayed across the clearing.
“I dare say our enemy feels impregnable just because 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, sir?” 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 machines?” 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 welcomed,” 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 honour and freedom and that, that was just for the writer man, right? Good idea, sir! Yeah, let’s get to the 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 you!”
“Good.”
As the vampire walked past Polly the world, just for a moment, changed; the forest became greener, the sky greyer, 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.8
“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 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 follows 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 any more. 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 flames.
“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. At least the woods had plenty of them at this time of year, and everybody 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 any more! 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 towards 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 over 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 his eyes. “Ye gods, that 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 join 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 does, 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 there 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, as 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 Poll
y, 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 round 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 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 was always 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 peppermints.
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