This was, after all, the area of small traders, porters, butchers and longshoremen. And so standing in raggedy lines in front of Vimes were men who, every day, peacefully and legally, handled things with blades and spikes that made a mere sword look like a girl's hatpin.
   There were classic weapons, too. Men had come back from wars with their sword or their halberd. Weapons? Gods bless you, sir, no! Them's mementoes. And the sword had probably been used to poke the fire, and the halberd had done duty as a support for one end of the washing line, and their original use had been forgotten…
   …until now.
   Vimes stared at the metalwork. All this lot would have to do to win a battle would be to stand still. If the enemy charged them hard enough, he'd come out the other side as mince.
   “Some of 'em are retired watchmen, sah,” Dickins whispered. “A lot of them have been in the regiments at one time or another, see. There's a few kids wanting to see some action, you know how it is. What d'you think?”
   “I'd certainly hate to fight them,” said Vimes. At least a quarter of the men had white hair, and more than a few were using their weapons as a means of support. “Come to that, I'd hate to be responsible for giving them an order. If I said ‘about turn!’ to this lot, it'd be raining limbs.”
   “They're resolute, sah.”
   “Fair enough. But I don't want a war.”
   “Oh, it won't come to that, sah,” said Dickins. “I've seen a few barricades in my time. It generally ends peaceful. The new man takes over, people get bored, everyone goes home, see.”
   “But Winder is a nutter,” said Vimes.
   “Tell me one that wasn't, sah,” said Dickins.
   Sir, thought Vimes. Or “sah”, at least. And he's older than me. Oh well, I might as well be good at it.
   “Sergeant,” he said, “I want you to pick twenty of the best, men that have seen action. Men you can trust. And I want them down at the Shambling Gate, and alert.”
   Dickins looked puzzled. “But that's barred, sah. And it's right down behind us, it is. I thought maybe—”
   “Down at the gate, sergeant,” Vimes insisted. “They're to watch for anyone sneaking up to unbar it. And I want the guard on the bridges to be strengthened. Put down caltrops on the bridge, string wires…I want anyone who tries to come at us over the bridge to have a really bad time, understand?”
   “Do you know something, sah?” said Dickins, with his head on one side.
   “Let's just say I'm thinking like the enemy, shall we?” said Vimes. He took a step closer and lowered his voice. “You know some history, Dai. No one with an ounce of sense goes up against a barricade. You find the weakness.”
   “There's other gates down there, sah,” said Dickins doubtfully.
   “Yes, but if they take Shambling they get into Elm Street and have a nice long gallop, right into where we're not expecting them,” said Vimes.
   “But…you are expecting them, sah.”
   Vimes just gave him a blank look, which sergeants are quite good at deciphering.
   “As good as done, sah!” said Dickins happily.
   “But I want a decent presence at all the barricades,” said Vimes. “And a couple of patrols that can go wherever there's trouble. Sergeant, you know how to do it.”
   “Right, sah.” Dickins saluted smartly, and grinned.
   He turned to the assembled citizenry. “All right, you shower!” he yelled. “Some of you has been in a regiment, I know it! How many of you knows ‘All The Little Angels’?”
   A few of the more serious class of mementoes rose in the air.
   “Very good! Already we has a choir! Now, this is a soldiers' song, see? You don't look like soldiers but by the gods I'll see you sounds like 'em! You'll pick it up as we goes along! Right turn! March! ‘All the little angels rise up, rise up, All the little angels rise up high!’ Sing it, you sons of mothers!”
   The marchers picked up the response from those who knew it.
   “How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high? They rise heads up, heads up, heads up—” sang out Dickins, as they turned the corner.
   Vimes listened as the refrain died away.
   “That's a nice song,” said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time.
   “It's an old soldiers' song,” he said.
   “Really, sarge? But it's about angels.”
   Yes, thought Vimes, and it's amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It's a real soldiers' song: sentimental, with dirty bits.
   “As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,” he said. “I've seen old men cry when they sing it,” he added.
   “Why? It sounds cheerful.”
   They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You'll learn. I know you will.
   After a while, the patrols came back. Major Mountjoy-Standfast was bright enough not to ask for written reports. They took too long and weren't very well spelled. One by one, the men told the story. Sometimes Captain Wrangle, who was plotting things on the map, would whistle under his breath.
   “It's huge, sir. It really is! Nearly a quarter of the city's behind barricades down there!”
   The major rubbed his forehead and turned to Trooper Gabitass, the last man in and the one who seemed to have taken pains to get the most information.
   “They're all on a sort of line, sir. So I rode up to the one in Heroes Street, with me helmet off and looking off-duty, sort of thing, and I asked what it was all about. A man shouted down that everything was all right, thank you very much, and they'd finished all the barricades for now. I said what about law and order, and they said we've got plenty, thank you.”
   “No one fired at you?”
   “No, sir. Wish I could say the same about round here. People were throwing stones at me and an old lady emptied a pissp—a utensil all over me from her window. Er…there's something else, sir. Er…”
   “Out with it, man.”
   “I, er, think I recognized a few people. Up on the barricades. Er…they were some of ours, sir…”
   Vimes shut his eyes, in the hope that the world would be a better place. But when he opened them, it was still full of the pink face of only-just Sergeant Colon.
   “Fred,” he said, “I wonder if you fully understand the basic idea here? The soldiers—that's the other people, Fred—they stay on the outside of the barricade. If they are on the inside, Fred, we don't, in any real sense, have a bloody barricade. Do you understand?”
   “Yes, sir. But—”
   “You want to do a spell in a regiment, Fred, and one of the things I think you'll find they're very hot on indeed is knowing who's on your side and who is not, Fred.”
   “But, sir, they are—”
   “I mean, how long have I known you, Fred?”
   “Two or three days, sir.”
   “Er…right. Yeah. Of course. Seems longer. So why, Fred, do I arrive here and find you've let in what seems like a platoon? You haven't been thinking metaphysically again, have you?”
   “It started with Billy Wiglet's brother, sir,” said Colon nervously. “A few of his mates came with him. All local lads. And there's a lad Nancyball grew up with and a bloke who's the son of Waddy's next-door neighbour who he used to go out drinking with, and then there's—”
   “How many, Fred?” said Vimes wearily.
   “Sixty, sir. Might be a few more by now.”
   “And it doesn't occur to you that they might be part of some clever plan?”
   “No, sarge, it never did. 'cos I can't see Wally Wiglet being part of a clever plan, sarge, on account of him not being much of a thinker, sir. They only allowed him to be in the regiment after he got someone to paint L and R on his boots. See, we know 'em all sarge. Most of the lads join up for a bit, just to get out of the city and maybe show Johnny Foreigner who's boss. They never expected to have old grannies spitting on them in their own city, sarge. That can get a lad down, that sort of thing. And getting cobblestones chucked at them too, of course.”
   Vimes gave in. It was all true. “All right,” he said. “But if this goes on, everyone is going to be inside the barricade, Fred.”
   And there could be worse ways of ending it, he thought.
   People had lit fires in the streets. Some cooking pots had been brought out. But most of the people were engaging in Ankh-Morpork's traditional pastime, which was hanging around to see what'd happen next.
   “What's going to happen next, sarge?” said Sam.
   “I think they'll attack in two places,” said Vimes. “The cavalry will go right outside the city and try to come in through the Shambling Gate because that'll look easy. And the soldiers and…the rest of the Watch who aren't on our side will probably creep across Misbegot Bridge under cover.”
   “Are you sure, sir?”
   “Positive,” said Vimes. After all, it had already happened…or something…
   He pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn't quite remember when he'd slept last. Slept, not dozed or been unconscious. He knew his thinking was a little fuzzy around the edges. But he did know how the Treacle Mine Road barricade had been broken. It had been only one sentence in the history book, but he remembered it. Sieges that weren't broken via treachery were breached via some small door around the back. It was a fact of history.
   “But it won't be for an hour or two,” he said aloud. “We're not important enough. It's all been quiet down here. It's when they start to wonder why that the midden will hit the windmill.”
   “Lots of people are getting through, sarge. Some of the men said they could hear screaming in the distance. People are just piling in. There's robberies and everything going on out there…”
   “Lance-constable?”
   “Yes, sarge?”
   “You know when you wanted to swing a club at that torturing bastard and I stopped you?”
   “Yes, sarge?”
   “That's why, lad. Once we break down, it all breaks down.”
   “Yes, sarge, but you do bop people over the head.”
   “Interesting point, lance-constable. Logical and well made, too, in a clear tone of voice bordering on the bloody cheeky. But there's a big difference.”
   “And what's that, sarge?”
   “You'll find out,” said Vimes. And privately thought: the answer is, It's Me Doing It. I'll grant that it is not a good answer, because people like Carcer use it too, but that's what it boils down to. Of course, it's also to stop me knifing them and, let's be frank, them knifing me. That's quite important, too.
   Their walk had brought them to a big fire in the centre of the street. A cauldron was bubbling on it, and people were queuing up, holding bowls.
   “Smells good,” he said, to the figure gently stirring the cauldron's contents with a ladle. “Oh, it's you, er, Mr Dibbler…”
   “It's called Victory Stew, sergeant,” said Dibbler. “Tuppence a bowl or I'll cut my throat, eh?”
   “Close enough,” said Vimes, and looked at the strange (and, what was worse, occasionally hauntingly familiar) lumps seething in the scum. “What's in it?”
   “It's stew,” explained Dibbler. “Strong enough to put hairs on your chest.”
   “Yes, I can see that some of those bits of meat have got bristles on them already,” said Vimes.
   “Right! That's how good it is!”
   “It looks…very nice,” said Sam weakly.
   “You'll have to excuse the lance-constable, Mr Dibbler,” said Vimes. “The poor lad was brought up not to eat stew that winks at him.”
   He sat down with his bowl and his back against the wall and looked up at the barricade. People had been busy. In truth, there wasn't much else to do. The one here, from side to side of Heroes Street, was fourteen feet high and even had a crude walkway. It looked businesslike.
   He leaned back and shut his eyes.
   There was a hesitant slurping sound beside him as young Sam tried the stew, and then: “Is it going to come down to fighting, sarge?”
   “Yes,” said Vimes, without opening his eyes.
   “Like, really fighting?”
   “Yep.”
   “But won't there be some talking first?”
   “Nope,” said Vimes, trying to make himself comfortable. “Maybe some talking afterwards.”
   “Seems the wrong way round!”
   “Yes, lad, but it's a tried and tested method.”
   There was no further comment. Slowly, with the sounds of the street in his ears, Vimes slid into sleep.
   Major Mountjoy-Standfast knew what would happen if he sent a message to the palace. “What do I do now, sir?” was not something his lordship wanted to hear. It was not the sort of question a major was supposed to ask, given that the original orders had been very clear. Barricades were to be torn down, rebels were to be repelled. Grasp the nettle firmly and all that. He had, as a child, grasped nettles firmly, and had sometimes had a hand the size of a small pig.
   There were deserters behind the barricade. Deserters! How did that happen?
   It was a huge barricade, it was lined with armed men, there were deserters on it, and he had his orders. It was all clear.
   If only they'd, well, rebel. He'd sent Trooper Gabitass down there again, and by his account it seemed very peaceful. Normal city life appeared to be going on behind the barricade, which was more than you could say for the chaos outside it. If they'd fired on Gabitass, or thrown things, that would have made it so much easier. Instead they were acting…well…decently. That was no way for enemies of the state to behave!
   An enemy of the state was in front of the major now. Gabitass had not come back empty-handed.
   “Caught it sneakin' after me,” he said. To the captive he said, “Been behind the barricade, haven't we, my lad!”
   “Can it speak?” said the major, staring at the thing.
   “There's no need to be like that,” said Nobby Nobbs.
   “It's a street urchin, sir,” said the trooper.
   The major stared at all he could see of the prisoner, which was an oversized helmet and a nose.
   “Get it something to stand on, will you, captain?” he said, and waited while a stool was found. It did not, all things considered, improve matters. It just gave rise to questions.
   “It's got a Watch badge, trooper. Is it some kind of mascot?”
   “Carved it meself out of soap,” said Nobby. “So I can be a copper.”
   “Why?” said the major. There was something about the apparition that, despite the urgency, called for a kind of horrified yet fascinated study.
   “But I'm thinking of going for a soldier if I grow up,” Nobby went on, giving the major a happy grin. “Much better pickin's, the way things are going.”
   “I'm afraid you're not tall enough,” said the major quickly.
   “Don't see why not, the enemy reaches all the way to the ground,” said Nobby. “Anyway, people're lyin' down when you get their boots off. Ol' Sconner, he says the money's in teeth and earrings but I say every man's bound to have a pair of boots, right? Whereas there's a lot of bad teeth around these days and the false-teeth makers always demand a decent set—”
   “Do you mean to tell me that you want to join the army just to loot the battlefields?” said the major, completely shocked. “A little…lad like you?”
   “Once when ol' Sconner was sober for two days together he made me a little set of soldiers,” said Nobby. “An' they had these little boots that you could—”
   “Shut up,” said the major.
   “—take off, and tiny tiny little wooden teeth that you could—”
   “Will you shut up!” said the major. “Have you no interest in honour? Glory? Love of city?”
   “Dunno. Can you get much for 'em?” said Nobby.
   “They are priceless!”
   “Oh, well, in that case I'll stick with the boots, if it's all the same to you,” said Nobby. “You can sell them for ten pence a pair if you know the right shop—”
   “Look at Trooper Gabitass there!” said the major, now quite upset. “Twenty years' service, a fine figure of a soldier! He wouldn't stoop to stealing the boots of a fallen enemy, would you, trooper?”
   “No, sir! Mug's game, sir!” said Trooper Gabitass.8
   “Er…yes. Right!” said the major. “You could learn a lot from men like Trooper Gabitass, young man. By the sound of it, your time with the rebels has filled your head with very wrong ideas indeed.”
   “I ain't a rebel!” Nobby shouted. “Don't you go calling me a rebel, I ain't a rebel, I'm an Ankh-Morpork lad, I am, and proud of it! Hah, you are wrong, I've never been a rebel and you're cruel to say so! I'm an honest lad, I am!”
   Big tears began to run down his cheeks, washing aside the grime to reveal the lower strata of grime beneath.
   The major had no experience of this sort of thing. Every available orifice on the little lad's face seemed to be gushing. He looked for help to Gabitass.
   “You're a married man, aren't you, trooper? What are we supposed to do now?”
   “I could give him a clout alongside the ear, sir,” said Trooper Gabitass.
   “That's very unfeeling, trooper! Look here, I had a handkerchief on me somewhere…”
   “Huh, I have my own wiper, thank you very much, I don't have to be condescended at,” sniffed Nobby, and pulled one out of his pocket. In fact, he pulled several dozen, including one with the initials C. M.-S. on it. They were tangled together like a conjuror's flags-of-all-nations, and dragged with them several purses and half a dozen spoons.
   Nobby wiped his face with the first one, and thrust the entire collection back into his pocket. At this point he realized that all the men were staring at him.
   “What? What?” he said defiantly.
   “Tell us about this man Keel,” said the major.
   “I don't know nuffin',” said Nobby automatically.
   “Aha, that means you do know something,” said the major, who was indeed the sort of person who liked this kind of little triumph.
   Nobby looked blank. The captain leaned forward to whisper to his superior officer.
   “Er, only under the rules of mathematics, sir,” he said. “Under the rules of common grammar, he is merely being emphat—”
   “Tell us about Keel!” the major shouted.
   “Tell you what, major, why not leave that sort of thing to the experts?” said a voice.
   The major looked up. Carcer and his men had entered the tent. The sergeant was grinning again.
   “Got yourself a little prisoner, have you?” he said, stepping forward to examine Nobby. “Reckon you've got a ringleader here, yeah. Told you anything, has he? I shouldn't think so. You need special training to get the best out of lads like this, haha.”
   He slipped his hand into his pocket. When it came out, the knuckles were ringed with brass.
   “Now then, lad,” he said, as the soldiers watched in horror, “you know who I am, do you? I'm in the Particulars, me. And I can see two of you. One of them's a lively lad who's going to help the proper authorities with their business and the other is a lippy little bugger who's going to try to be clever. One of these lads has a future, and all his teeth. Now the funny thing about me, it's a little habit of mine, is that I never ask a question twice. So…you're not a criminal, are you?”
   Nobby, his eyes huge and fixed on the brass knuckles, shook his head.
   “You just do what you have to to survive, right?”
   Nobby nodded.
   “In fact you were probably a decent lad before you fell in with the rebels, I expect. Sang hymns and that.”
   Nobby nodded.
   “This man who calls himself Sergeant Keel is the ringleader of the rebels, yes?”
   There was a moment of hesitation, and then Nobby raised a hand. “Um…everyone does what he tells them, is that the same thing?” he said.
   “Yep. Is he charismatic?”
   Nobby kept staring at the brass knuckles. “Um, um, um, I don't know. I haven't heard him cough much.”
   “And what do they talk about beyond the barricade, my little lad?”
   “Um…well, Justice an' Truth an' Freedom and stuff,” said Nobby.
   “Aha. Rebel talk!” said Carcer, straightening up.
   “Is it?” said the major.
   “Take it from me, major,” said Carcer. “When you get a bunch of people using words like that, they're up to no good.” He looked down at Nobby. “Now, I wonder what I've got in my pocket for a good boy, eh? Oh, yes…someone's ear. Still warm. Here you go, kid!”
   “Cor, thanks, mister!”
   “Now run a long way away or I'll gut yer.”
   Nobby fled.
   Carcer glanced at the map spread on the desk. “Oh, you're planning a little sortie. That's nice. Don't want to upset the rebels, do we? Why aren't you bloody well attacking, major?”
   “Well, they're not—”
   “You're losing your troops to 'em! They hold a quarter of the city! And you're gonna sneak round the back. Across the bridge, I see, and up Elm Street. Quiet, like. Like you are frightened!” Carcer's hand smashed down on to the table, making the major jump.
   “I'm frightened of no man!” he lied.
   “You're the city right now!” said Carcer, a little speck of white foam appearing at the corner of his mouth. “They sneak. You don't. You ride right up to them and damn them to hell, that's what you do. They're stealing the streets from you! You take 'em back! They've put 'emselves beyond the Law! You take the Law to 'em!”
   He stepped back, and the manic rage subsided as quickly as it had arrived.
   “That's my advice,” he said. “Of course, you know your own business best. Me and what's left of my poor lads, we're going to go out and fight. I'm sure their lordships will appreciate anything you feel you can do.”
   He strode out, the Particulars falling in behind him.
   “Er…you all right, Clive?” said the captain. Only the whites of the major's eyes were showing.
   “What a horrible man,” said the major quietly.
   “Er…yes, of course. On the other hand—”
   “Yes, yes, yes. I know. We have no choice. We have orders. That…weasel is right. If the damn thing is there in the morning, I've got no career and nor have you. Show of strength, bold front, take no prisoners…that's what our orders are. Stupid, stupid orders.” He sighed.
   “I suppose we could disobey…” said the captain.
   “Are you mad? And then what would we do? Don't be a fool, Tom. Muster the men, get the ox teams hitched up, let's make a bit of a show for the sake of it. Let's just get it over with!”
   Vimes was shaken awake. He looked up into his own face, younger, less lined, more terrified.
   “Wha'?”
   “They're bringing up siege weapons, sarge! They're coming down the street, sarge!”
   “What? That's stupid! The barricade is highest here! A couple of men could defend it!”
   Vimes leapt to his feet. It must be a feint. A stupid feint, too. Just here Waddy and his mates had wedged two big carts across the road, and they'd become the nucleus of a solid wall of wood and rubble. But there was a narrow, low entrance for people to come through, which let them into the Republic with their head at just the right height for a gentle tap if they turned out to be a soldier. People were scrambling through now like rats.
   Vimes climbed up the barricade and looked over the top. At the far end of the street a big metal wall was advancing, surrounded by flaming torches. That was all there was to see, in a city without lights. But he knew what it was.
   It was called Big Mary and it was mounted on a heavy cart. Vimes had seen it before. There would be a couple of oxen behind the cart, pushing it. The walls weren't solid metal, but merely a skin to stop defenders throwing fire at the wooden planks underneath. And the whole thing was simply to defend the men who, behind that cosy shelter, had the big, big hooks on the end of the long chains…
   They'd fix them in the barricade, and the oxen would be turned around in the traces, and maybe another four beasts would be added and then there was nothing you could build of wood that wouldn't be pulled apart.
   Between the cart and the barricade, struggling to escape from the crush, was a mass of frightened people.
   “You got any orders, sarge?” said Fred Colon, pulling himself up alongside Vimes. He looked up the street. “Oh dear,” he said.
   “Yeah, this is when you need a couple of trolls on the force,” said Vimes. “I reckon Detr—”
   “Trolls? Huh, wouldn't work with any trolls,” said Colon. “Too fick to take orders.”
   You'll find out one day, thought Vimes, and said aloud: “Okay. Anyone that can't or shouldn't have a weapon, they get back as far as possible, right? Get a message to Dickins, tell him we'll need anyone he can spare, but—blast it!”
   What'd happened before? There'd been a lot of activity against the barricades, but it had been a feint while the cavalry were sneaking around outside. He didn't remember this.
   He glanced at the oncoming wagon. At the top of the wobbling wall, on the other side, there was generally a narrow ledge for bowmen to stand and fire down at anyone trying to interfere with the demolition men.
   In the treacherous light of the torches, Vimes thought he saw the features of Carcer. Even at this distance, there was something horribly recognizable about that expression.
   Swing was dead. And when everyone's running around in confusion a man who is firm of purpose can push his way up by sheer nerve. After all, Vimes thought, I did.
   He clambered down the barricade and looked at the men.
   “I want a volunteer no, not you, Sam. Wiglet, you'll do. Your dad's a carpenter, right? Well, there's a carpenter's shop round the corner. Run and get me a couple of mallets and some wooden wedges, or long nails…something spiky. Go, go, go!”
   Wiglet nodded and ran off.
   “And…let's see, yeah, I need two-penny-worth of fresh ginger. Nancyball, nip around the corner to the apothecary, will you?”
   “What's that any good for, sarge?” said Sam.
   “Gingering things up.”
   Vimes removed his helmet and armour, and nodded to the gap through which people were streaming.
   “Fred, we'll be going out that way. Think you can push us a path?”
   “I'll give it a go, sarge.” Fred squared his shoulders.
   “We're going to stop that thing. They can't move it fast and with all this noise and confusion no one will notice a thing—that was quick, Billy—”
   “I just grabbed everything, sarge,” panted Wiglet, running up with a small sack. “I know what you want to do, sarge, I did it sometimes out of mischief when I was a kid—”
   “Me too,” said Vimes. “And here's my ginger. Ah, lovely. It brings tears to my eyes. Okay, Billy? Ready, Fred.”
   It took all of Colon's bulk, with Vimes pushing behind him, to thrust a way through the desperate mob into the world beyond the barricade. In the darkness Vimes forced his way between the bodies, up to the side of the siege engine. It was like a huge slow ram pushing its way down the street, but jerking forward more slowly than a walking pace because of the press of people. Vimes fancied that Carcer probably enjoyed this ride.
   He ducked under the cart, unseen in the mob, and grabbed a mallet and a wedge from Wiglet's bag.
   “You do the left rear wheel and then make a run for it, Billy,” he said.
   “But sarge—”
   “That was an order. Get out, get back, get people off the street as fast as possible. Do it!”
   Vimes crawled up to one of the front wheels and held the wedge ready between wheel and axle. The cart stopped for a moment, and he thrust the wedge into the gap and thumped it with the hammer. He had time for another blow before the cart gave a creak that suggested the oxen were pushing again. Then he crawled back quickly and took the sack from Billy before the little man, with a reluctant glance, scuttled out into the forest of legs.
   Vimes got a third wedge in before loud voices somewhere behind him indicated that the lack of progress had been noticed. The wheels rocked, and bound even further on the wedges. The wheels would have to come off before they could be got out.
   Even so, oxen were powerful beasts. Enough of them would have no problem at all in dragging the cart as well as the barricade. But the nice thing, the nice thing, was that people thought of a barricade as something people tried to get into, not out of…
   Vimes slipped out into the noisy, confusing night. There were soldiers, and watchmen, and refugees, all cursing at cross purposes. In the flickering shadows, Vimes was just another shape. He pushed his way confidently around to the straining oxen and their driver, who was prodding them with a stick. He was heartened by the fact that the man looked the kind of man who'd get six out of ten when answering the question: “What is your name?”
   Vimes didn't even stop. The important thing was not to let the other person have a chance to say “But—”, let alone “Who the hell do you think you are?” He pushed the man aside and glared at the sweating beasts.
   “Ah, right, I can see your problem right here,” he said, in the voice of one who knows everything there is to know about oxen. “They've got the glaggies. But we can fix that. Hold up that one's tail. Hurry up, man!”
   The ox poker responded to the voice of authority. Vimes palmed a lump of ginger. Here goes, he thought. At least it's somewhere warm on a cold night…
   “Okay. Now the other one…right. Okay. Now, I'll just go around and, er…just go round…” said Vimes, hurrying back into the shadows.
   He shouldered his way through the throng and dived through the tiny hole.
   “It's all right, sarge, I spied you coming through Mrs Rutherford's dining-room chairs,” said Fred Colon, hauling him upright. “Well, you stopped it, sarge, and no mistake. You really…urrrhg…”
   “Yes, don't shake hands with me until I've had a wash,” said Vimes, heading for the pump.
   He kept an ear cocked for any strange noises on the other side of the barricade. There were none for several seconds. And then he heard it…
   Nothing much had happened for some while after his visit to the oxen except that, very slowly, their eyes had begun to cross and then, also quite slowly, turn red. It takes a long time for anything to happen inside the head of an ox, but, when it does, it happens extensively.
   The moo started off low and rose slowly. It was a visceral sound that had rolled across the ancient tundra and told early man that here came dinner or death, and either way it was pissed off. It was the sound of a big beast that was still too small to restrain all the emotions that were welling up inside it. And it was a duet.
   Vimes, hauling himself up the barricade, saw people running. Then the whole of Big Mary shuddered. That didn't look too impressive unless you knew that a couple of tons of wood had just jumped sideways. Then there was the sound of splintering, two of Big Mary's locked wheels collapsed, and she toppled sideways in a mass of flame, splinters, smoke and dust.
   Vimes counted under his breath, and had only reached two when a cartwheel rolled out of the smoke and away down the road. This always happens.
   It wasn't over, though. The oxen, tangled in the remains of the shafts and harness, and now an enraged joint creature that could get only six legs out of eight on the ground, headed erratically but with surprising speed in the opposite direction.
   The other oxen, which had been waiting for the big pull, watched it approach. They were already spooked by the crash, and now they caught the stink of terror and fury and began a slow stampede away from it and towards, as it turned out, the waiting bowmen behind them who, in turn, tried to run into the cavalry. The horses were not inclined to be well behaved towards armed men in any case and were also in a state of some apprehension. They relieved this by kicking the hell out of anyone close.
   It was hard for the watchers along the barricade to see much of what happened after that, but the noises were very interesting for quite some time.
   Sergeant Colon's mouth shut. “Bloody hell, sarge,” he said, admiringly. In the distance, glass shattered.
   “They'll be back,” said Vimes.
   “Yeah, but not all of 'em,” said Wiglet. “Well done, sarge.”
   Vimes turned, and saw Sam staring at him in wide-eyed hero worship.
   “I was lucky, lad,” he said. “But it helps to remember little details and not mind getting your hands dirty.”
   “But we could win now, sarge,” said Sam.
   “No, we can't. But we can put off losing until it doesn't hurt too much.” Vimes turned to the others. “Right, lads, back to work. We've had some fun, but dawn's a long way off.”
   The news had got around even before he'd climbed down from the barricade. There was a cheer from the crowd, and a general struttiness about the armed men. We'd shown them, eh? They don't like the taste of cold steel, those…er…other people from Ankh-Morpork! We'll show 'em, eh?
   And it had taken a few wedges, some raw ginger and a lot of luck. That wouldn't happen twice.
   Maybe it wouldn't need to. He remembered hearing about the assassination. It was all very mysterious. Winder had been killed in a room full of people, and no one saw a thing. Magic had been suggested, and hotly denied by the wizards. Some historians had said that it happened because troops around the palace had been sent to attack the barricades, but that didn't answer the question. Anyone who could stab a man to death in a brightly lit room full of people surely wouldn't find some guards in the darkness any kind of obstacle…
   Of course, with Snapcase as new Patrician, no one had tried very hard to establish the facts in any case. People said things like “quite possibly we shall never know the truth” which meant, in Vimes's personal lexicon, “I know, or think I know what the truth is, and hope like hell it doesn't come out, because things are all smoothed over now.”
   Supposing we don't lose?
   Keel hadn't killed Big Mary. She hadn't been used in the other present. The soldiers hadn't been stupid enough to try it. That sort of thing was okay to deal with little local affairs manned by civilians, but it was a joke if you put it up against stout defences manned by professionals. Now she was a wreck, the attackers would have to think up a new plan in a hurry, and time was moving on…
   Supposing we don't lose?
   All they had to do was hold out. The people at the top had very short memories. Winder is mysteriously dead, long live Lord Snapcase! And suddenly all the rebels become glorious freedom fighters. And there's seven unfilled graves in the cemetery…
   Would he be able to go back, then? Supposing Madam was right and he got offered the post of Commander, not as a bribe, but because he'd earned it? That'd change history!
   He took out the cigar case and stared hard at the inscription.
   Let's see, he thought…if I never met Sybil, we wouldn't get married and she wouldn't buy me this, and so I couldn't be looking at it…
   He stared hard at the curly engraving, almost willing it to disappear. It didn't.
   On the other hand, that old monk had said that whatever happens, stays happened. And now Vimes had a mental picture of Sybil and Carrot and Detritus and all the rest of them, frozen in a moment that'd never have a next moment.
   He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high.
   It wasn't a decision that he was making, he knew. It was happening far below the areas of the brain that made decisions. It was something built in. There was no universe, anywhere, where a Sam Vimes would give in on this, because if he did then he wouldn't be Sam Vimes any more.
   The writing stayed on the silver but it was blurred now because of the tears welling up. They were tears of anger, mostly at himself. There was not a thing that he could do. He hadn't bought a ticket and he hadn't wanted to come, but now he was on the ride and couldn't get off until the end.
   What else had the old monk said? History finds a way? Well, it was going to have to come up with something good, because it was up against Sam Vimes now.
   He glanced up, and saw young Sam watching him.
   “You okay, sarge?”
   “Fine, fine.”
   “Only you've been sitting there for twenty minutes looking at your cigars.”
   Vimes coughed, and tucked the case away, and pulled himself together.
   “Half the pleasure's in the anticipation,” he said.
   The night wore on. News came through, from barricades at bridges and gates. There were forays, more to test the defenders' strength of will than make a serious dent in the defences. And there were even more deserters.
   One reason for the desertion rate was that those people of a practical turn of mind were working out the subtle economics. The Republic of Treacle Mine Road lacked all the big, important buildings in the city, the ones that traditional rebels were supposed to take. It had no government offices, no banks and very few temples. It was almost completely bereft of important civic architecture.
   All it had was the unimportant stuff. It had the entire slaughterhouse district, and the butter market, and the cheese market. It had the tobacco factors and the candlemakers and most of the fruit and vegetable warehouses and the grain and flour stores. This meant that while the Republicans were being starved of important things like government, banking services and salvation, they were self-sufficient in terms of humdrum, everyday things like food and drink.
   People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but prefer dinner to turn up inside an hour.
   “A present from the lads down at the Shambles, sarge,” said Dickins, arriving with a wagon. “They said it'd only spoil otherwise. Is it okay for me to dish 'em out to the field kitchens?”
   “What've you got?” said Vimes.
   “Steaks, mostly,” said the old sergeant, grinning. “But I liberated a sack of onions in the name of the revolution!” He saw Vimes's expression change. “No, sarge, the man gave them to me, see. They need eating, he said.”
   “What did I tell you? Every meal will be a feast in the People's Republic!” said Reg Shoe, striding up. He still hung on to his clipboard; people like Reg tend to. “If you could just take it along to the official warehouse, sergeant?”
   “What warehouse?”
   Reg sighed. “All food must go into the common warehouse and be distributed by my officials according to—”
   “Mr Shoe,” said Dickins, “there's a cart with five hundred chickens coming up behind me, and there's another full of eggs. There's nowhere to send 'em, see? The butchers have filled up the ice-houses and smoke-rooms and the only place we can store this grub is in our guts. I ain't particularly bothered about officials.”
   “On behalf of the Republic I order you—” Reg began, and Vimes put his hand on his shoulder.
   “Off you go, sergeant,” he said, nodding to Dickins. “A word in your ear, Reg?”
   “Is this a military coop?” said Reg uncertainly, holding his clipboard.
   “No, it's just that we're under siege here, Reg. This is not the time. Let Sergeant Dickins sort it out. He's a fair man, he just doesn't like clipboards.”
   “But supposing people get left out?” said Reg.
   “There's enough for everyone to eat themselves sick, Reg.”
   Reg Shoe looked uncertain and disappointed, as though this prospect was less pleasing than carefully rationed scarcity.
   “But I'll tell you what,” said Vimes. “If this goes on, the city will make sure the deliveries come in by other gates. We'll be hungry then. That's when we'll need your organizational skills.”
   “You mean we'll be in a famine situation?” said Reg, the light of hope in his eyes.
   “If we aren't, Reg, I'm sure you could organize one,” said Vimes, and realized he'd gone just a bit too far. Reg was only stupid in certain areas, and now he looked as though he was going to cry.
   “I just think it's important to be fair—” the man began.
   “Yeah, Reg. I understand. But there's a time and a place, you know? Maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one? Now, off you go. And you, Lance-Constable Vimes, you go and help him.”
   Vimes climbed back up the barricade. The city beyond was dark again, with only the occasional chink of light from a shuttered window. By comparison the streets of the Republic were ablaze.
   In a few hours the shops out there were expecting deliveries, and they weren't going to arrive. The government couldn't sit this one out. A city like Ankh-Morpork was only two meals away from chaos at the best of times.
   Every day, maybe a hundred cows died for Ankh-Morpork. So did a flock of sheep and a herd of pigs and the gods alone knew how many ducks, chickens and geese. Flour? He'd heard it was eighty tons, and about the same amount of potatoes and maybe twenty tons of herring. He didn't particularly want to know this kind of thing, but once you started having to sort out the everlasting traffic problem these were facts that got handed to you.
   Every day, forty thousand eggs were laid for the city. Every day, hundreds, thousands of carts and boats and barges converged on the city with fish and honey and oysters and olives and eels and lobsters. And then think of the horses dragging this stuff, and the windmills…and the wool coming in, too, every day, the cloth, the tobacco, the spices, the ore, the timber, the cheese, the coal, the fat, the tallow, the hay EVERY DAMN DAY…
   And that was now. Back home, the city was twice as big…
   Against the dark screen of night, Vimes had a vision of Ankh-Morpork. It wasn't a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who'd never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent their life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed…
   …and gave back the dung from its pens and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions and ideas and interesting vices, songs and knowledge and something which, if looked at in the right light, was called civilization. That's what civilization meant. It meant the city.
   Was anyone else out there thinking about this?
   A lot of the stuff came in through the Onion Gate and the Shambling Gate, both now Republican and solidly locked. There'd be a military picket on them, surely. Right now, there were carts on the way that'd find those gates closed to them. Yet no matter what the politics, eggs hatch and milk sours and herds of driven animals need penning and watering and where was that going to happen? Would the military sort it out? Well, would they? While the carts rumbled up, and then were hemmed in by the carts behind, and the pigs escaped and the cattle herds wandered off?
   Was anyone important thinking about this? Suddenly the machine was wobbling, but Winder and his cronies didn't think about the machine, they thought about money. Meat and drink came from servants. They happened.
   Vetinari, Vimes realized, thought about this sort of thing all the time. The Ankh-Morpork back home was twice as big and four times as vulnerable. He wouldn't have let something like this happen. Little wheels must spin so that the machine can turn, he'd say.
   But now, in the dark, it all spun on Vimes. If the man breaks down, it all breaks down, he thought. The whole machine breaks down. And it goes on breaking down. And it breaks down the people.
   Behind him, he heard a relief squad marching down Heroes Street.
   “—how do they rise? They rise knees up! knees up! knees up! They rise knees up, knees up high. All the little angels—”
   For a moment Vimes wondered, looking out through a gap in the furniture, if there wasn't something in Fred's idea about moving the barricades on and on, like a sort of sieve, street by street. You could let through the decent people, and push the bastards, the rich bullies, the wheelers and dealers in people's fates, the leeches, the hangers-on, the brown-nosers and courtiers and smarmy plump devils in expensive clothes, all those people who didn't know or care about the machine but stole its grease, push them into a smaller and smaller compass and then leave them in there. Maybe you could toss some food in every couple of days, or maybe you could leave 'em to do what they'd always done, which was live off other people…
   There wasn't much noise from the dark streets. Vimes wondered what was going on. He wondered if anyone out there was taking care of business.
   Major Mountjoy-Standfast stared empty-eyed at the damn, damn map.
   “How many, then?” he said.
   “Thirty-two men injured, sir. And another twenty probable desertions,” said Captain Wrangle. “And Big Mary is firewood, of course.”
   “Oh gods…”
   “Do you want to hear the rest, sir?”
   “There's more?”
   “I'm afraid there is, sir. Before the remains of Big Mary left Heroes Street, sir, she smashed twenty shop windows and various carts, doing damage estimated at—”
   “Fortunes of war, captain. We can't help that!”
   “No, sir.” The captain coughed. “Do you want to know what happened next, sir?”
   “Next? There was a next?” said the major, beginning to panic.
   “Um…yes, sir. Quite a lot of next, actually, sir. Um. The three gates through which most of the agricultural produce comes into the city are picketed, sir, on your orders, so the carters and drovers are trying to bring their stuff along Short Street, sir. Fortunately not too many animals at this time of night, sir, but there were six millers' wagons, one wagon of, er, dried fruits and spices, four dairymen's wagons and three hegglers' carts. All wrecked, sir. Those oxen really were very feisty, sir.”
   “Hegglers? What the hell are hegglers?” said the major, bewildered.
   “Egg marketers, sir. They travel around the farms, pick up the eggs—”
   “Yes, all right! And what are we supposed to do?”
   “We could make an enormous cake, sir.”
   “Tom!”
   “Sorry, sir. But the city doesn't stop, you see. It's not like a battlefield. The best place for urban fighting is right out in the countryside, sir, where there's nothing else in the way.”
   “It's a bloody big barricade, Tom. Too well defended. We can't even set fire to the damn thing, it'll take the city up with it!”
   “Yes, sir. And the point is, sir, that they're not actually doing anything, sir. Except being there.”
   “What do you mean?”
   “They're even putting old grannies up on the barricades, shouting down to the lads. Poor Sergeant Franklin, sir, his granny saw him and said that if he didn't turn it up she'd tell everyone what he did when he was eleven, sir.”
   “The men are armed, aren't they?” said the major, wiping his forehead.
   “Oh, yes. But we've kind of advised them not to shoot unarmed old ladies, sir. We don't want another Dolly Sisters, do we, sir?”
   The major stared at the map. There was a solution, he felt. “Well, what did Sergeant Franklin do when he was—” he said absent-mindedly.
   “She didn't say, sir.”
   A sudden feeling of relief stole over the major. “Captain, you know what this is now?”
   “I'm sure you'll tell me, sir.”
   “I will, Tom, I will. This is political, Tom. We're soldiers. Political goes higher up.”
   “You're right, sir. Well done, sir!”
   “Dig out a lieutenant who has been a bit slack lately and send him up to tell their lordships,” said the major.
   “Isn't that a bit cruel, sir?”
   “Of course it is. This is politics now.”
   Lord Albert Selachii didn't much like parties. There was too much politics. And he particularly didn't like this one because it meant he was in the same room as Lord Winder, a man who, deep down, he believed to be A Bad Sort. In his personal vocabulary, there was no greater condemnation. What made it worse was that, while seeking to avoid him, he also had to try at the same time to avoid Lord Venturi. Their families cordially detested one another. Lord Albert wasn't sure, now, what event in history had caused the rift, but it must have been important, obviously, otherwise it would be silly to go on like this. Had the Selachii and the Venturi been hill clans, they would have been a-feudin' and a-fightin'^; since they were two of the city's leading families they were chillingly, viciously, icily polite to each other whenever social fate forced them together. And right now his careful orbit of the less dangerously political areas of the damn party had brought him face to face with Lord Charles Venturi. It was bad enough having to campaign with the feller, he thought, without being forced to talk to him over some rather inferior wine, but currently the party's tides offered no way of escape without being impolite. And, curiously, upper-class etiquette in Ankh-Morpork held that, while you could snub your friends any time you felt like it, it was the height of bad form to be impolite to your worst enemy.
   “Venturi,” he said, raising his glass a carefully calculated fraction of an inch.
   “Selachii,” said Lord Venturi, doing the same thing.
   “This is a party,” said Albert.
   “Indeed. I see you are standing upright.”
   “Indeed. So are you, I see.”
   “Indeed. Indeed. On that subject, I notice many others are doing the same thing.”
   “Which is not to say that the horizontal position does not have its merits when it comes to, for example, sleeping,” said Albert.
   “Quite so. Obviously that would not be done here.”
   “Oh, indeed. Indeed.”9
   A brisk lady in a magnificent purple dress advanced across the ballroom floor, her smile travelling in front of her.
   “Lord Selachii?” she said, proffering a hand. “I hear you have been doing sterling work defending us from the mob!”
   His lordship, on social automatic pilot, bowed stiffly. He wasn't used to forward women, and this one was all forward. However, all safe topics of conversation with a Venturi had been exhausted.
   “I fear you have the advantage of me, madam…” he murmured.

   “I certainly expect so!” said Madam, giving him such a radiant smile that he didn't analyse her actual words. “And who is this imposing military gentleman? A comrade in arms?”
   Lord Selachii floundered. He'd been brought up knowing that you always introduced men to women, and this smiling lady hadn't told him her—
   “Lady Roberta Meserole,” she said. “Most people who know me call me Madam. But my friends call me Bobbi.”
   Lord Venturi clicked his heels. He was quicker on the uptake than his “comrade in arms” and his wife told him more of the current gossip.
   “Ah, you must be the lady from Genua,” he said, taking her hand. “I have heard so much about you.”
   “Anything good?” said Madam.
   His lordship glanced across the room. His wife appeared to be deep in conversation. He knew to his cost that her wifely radar could fry an egg half a mile away. But the champagne had been good.
   “Mostly expensive,” he said, which didn't sound quite as witty as he intended. She laughed anyway. Perhaps I was witty, he thought. I say, this champagne really is excellent…
   “A woman has to make her way in the world as best she can,” she said.
   “May I make so bold as to ask if there is a Lord Meserole?” he said.
   “So early in the evening?” said Madam, and laughed again. Lord Venturi found himself laughing with her. My word, he told himself, this wit is a lot easier than I thought!
   “No, of course I meant—” he began.
   “I'm sure you did,” said Madam, tapping him lightly with her fan. “Now, I mustn't monopolize you, but I really must drag both of you away to talk to some of my friends—”
   She took Lord Venturi by the unresisting arm and piloted him across the floor. Selachii followed morosely, being of the opinion that when respectable women called themselves Bobbi the world was about to end, and ought to.
   “Mr Carter has extensive interests in copper and Mr Jones is very interested in rubber,” she whispered.
   There were about six men in the group, talking in low voices. As their lordships approached they caught “—and at a time like this one really must ask oneself where one's true loyalties lie…oh, good evening, Madam.”
   On her apparently random walk to the buffet table Madam happened to meet several other gentlemen and, like a good hostess, piloted them in the direction of other small groups. Probably only someone lying on the huge beams that spanned the hall high above would spot any pattern, and even then they'd have to know the code. If they had been in a position to put a red spot on the heads of those people who were not friends of the Patrician, and a white spot on those who were his cronies, and a pink spot on those who were perennial waverers, then they would have seen something like a dance taking place.
   There were not many whites.
   They would have seen that there were several groups of reds, and white spots were being introduced into them in ones, or twos if the number of reds in the group was large enough. If a white left a group, he or she was effortlessly scooped up and shunted into another conversation which might contain one or two pinks but was largely red.
   Any conversation entirely between white spots was gently broken up with a smile and an “oh, but now you must meet—”, or was joined by several red spots. Pinks, meanwhile, were delicately passed from red group to red group until they were deeply pink, and then they were allowed to mix with other pinks of the same hue, under the supervision of a red.
   In short, the pinks met so many reds, and so few whites, that they probably forgot about whites at all, while the whites, constantly alone or hugely outnumbered by reds or deep pinks, appeared to be going red out of embarrassment or a desire to blend in.
   Lord Winder was entirely surrounded by reds, leaving the few remaining whites out in the cold. He looked like all the Patricians tended to look after a certain time in office—unpleasantly plump, with the pink jowliness of a man of normal build who had too much rich food. He was sweating slightly in this quite cool room, and his eyes swivelled this way and that, looking for the flaws, the clues, the angles.
   At last Madam reached the buffet, where Dr Follett was helping himself to the devilled eggs and Miss Rosemary Palm was debating with herself as to whether the future should contain strange pastry things with a green filling that hinted mysteriously of prawn.
   “And how are we doing, do we think?” said Dr Follett, apparently to a swan carved out of ice.
   “We are doing well,” Madam told a basket of fruit. “There's four, however, that are still proving awkward.”
   “I know them,” said the doctor. “They'll fall into place, trust me. What else can they do? We're used to this game here. We know that if you complain too loudly when you lose, you might not be asked to play again. But I shall station some stout friends near them, just in case their resolve needs a little…bolstering.”
   “He is suspicious,” said Miss Palm.
   “When isn't he?” said Dr Follett. “Go and talk to him.”
   “Where is our new best friend, doctor?” said Madam.
   “Mr Snapcase is dining quietly but visibly, in impeccable company, some way away.”
   They turned when the double doors opened. So did several of the other guests, who then turned back hastily. But it was only a servant, who hurried over to Madam and whispered something. She indicated the two military commanders, and the man went to hover anxiously beside them. There was a brief exchange and then, without even a bow towards Lord Winder, all three men went out.
   “I shall just go and see to the arrangements,” said Madam, and, without in any sense following the men, headed towards the doors.
   When she stepped into the hall the two servants waiting by the cake stopped lounging and snapped to attention, and a guard who was patrolling the corridor gave her a quick glance of interrogation.
   “Now, madam?” said one of the servants.
   “What? Oh. No! Just wait.” She glided over to where the commanders were in animated conversation with a couple of junior officers, and took Lord Venturi's arm.
   “Oh dear, Charles, are you leaving us so soon?”
   Lord Venturi didn't think of wondering how she knew his first name. The champagne had been plentiful, and he saw no reason at the moment why any attractive woman of a certain age shouldn't know his name.
   “Oh, there are one or two pockets of resistance left,” he said. “Nothing to concern you, Madam.”
   “Bloody big pocket,” murmured Lord Selachii, into his moustache.
   “They destroyed Big Mary, sir,” said the luckless messenger. “And they—”
   “Major Mountjoy-Standfast can't outthink a bunch of gormless watchmen and civilians and some veterans with garden forks?” said Lord Venturi, who had no idea of how much damage a garden fork could do if hurled straight down from an elevation of twenty feet.
   “That's just it, sir, they are veterans and they know all—”
   “And the civilians? Unarmed civilians?” said Venturi.
   The messenger, who was a sub-lieutenant and very nervous, couldn't find the right words to explain that “unarmed civilian” was stretching a point when it was a 200lb slaughterhouse man with a long hook in one hand and a flensing knife in the other. Young men who'd joined up for the uniform and a bed all to themselves did not expect that kind of treatment.
   “Permission to speak freely, sir?” he tried.
   “Very well!”
   “The men haven't got the heart for it, sir. They'd kill a Klatchian in a wink, sir, but…well, some of the old soldiers are from the regiment, sir, and they're shouting down all kinds of stuff. A lot of the men come from down there, and it's not good for them. And what some of the old ladies shout, sir, well, I've never heard such language. Dolly Sisters was bad enough, sir, but this is a bit too much. Sorry, sir.”
   Their lordships looked out of the window. There was half a regiment in the palace grounds, men who'd had nothing to do for several days but stand guard.
   “Some backbone and a quick thrust,” said Selachii. “That's what's needed, by lo! Lance the boil! This is not a cavalry action, Venturi. And I'll take those men. Fresh blood.”
   “Selachii, we do have orders—”
   “We have all kinds of orders,” said Selachii. “But we know where the enemy is, don't we? Aren't there enough guards here? How many guards does one fool need?”
   “We can't just—” Lord Venturi began, but Madam said, “I'm sure Charles will see that no harm comes to his lordship,” and took his arm. “He does have his sword, after all…”
   A few minutes later, Madam glanced out of the window and saw that the troops were quietly moving out.
   She also noticed, after watching for some time, that the guard patrolling in the hall seemed to have vanished.
   There were rules. When you had a Guild of Assassins, there had to be rules which everyone knew and which were never, ever broken.10
   An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one—black clothes, hood, boots and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day sitting in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door?
   And they couldn't kill a man incapable of defending himself (although a man worth more than AM$10,000 a year was considered automatically capable of defending himself or at least of employing people to do it for him).
   And they had to give the target a chance.
   But there was no helping some people. It was regrettable how many rulers of the city had been inhumed by the men in black because they didn't recognize a chance when they saw it, didn't know when they'd gone too far, didn't care that they'd made too many enemies, didn't read the signs, didn't know when to walk away after embezzling a moderate and acceptable amount of cash. They didn't realize it when the machine had stopped, when the world was ripe for change, when it was time, in fact, to spend more time with their family in case they ended up spending it with their ancestors.
   Of course, the Guild didn't inhume their rulers on their own behalf. There was a rule about that, too. They were simply there when needed.
   There was a tradition, once, far back in the past, called the King of the Bean. A special dish was served to all the men of the clan on a certain day of the year. It contained one small hard-baked bean, and whoever got the bean was, possibly after some dental attention, hailed as King. It was quite an inexpensive system and it worked well, probably because the clever little bald men who actually ran things and paid some attention to possible candidates were experts at palming a bean into the right bowl.
   And while the crops ripened and the tribe thrived and the land was fertile the King thrived too. But when, in the fullness of time, crops failed and the ice came back and animals were inexplicably barren, the clever little bald men sharpened their long knives, which were mostly used for cutting mistletoe.
   And on the due night, one of them went into his cave and carefully baked one small bean.
   Of course, that was before people were civilized. These days, no one had to eat beans.
   People were still working on the barricade. It had become a sort of general hobby, a kind of group home improvement. Fire buckets, some full of water, some of sand, had turned up. In places the barricade was more impregnable than the city walls, considering how often the latter had been pillaged for stone.
   There were occasional drumbeats down in the city, and the sound of troop movements.
   “Sergeant?”
   Vimes looked down. A face had appeared at the top of the ladder leading down to the street.
   “Ah, Miss Battye? I didn't know you were with us.”
   “I didn't intend to be, but suddenly there was this big wall…”
   She climbed all the way up. She was holding a small bucket.
   “Doctor Lawn presents his compliments and says how come you haven't beaten up anyone yet?” she said, putting it down. “He says he's got three tables scrubbed, two buckets of tar on the boil, six ladies rolling bandages and all he's had to deal with so far is a nose-bleed. You've let him down, he says.”
   “Tell him ha, ha, ha,” said Vimes.
   “I've brought you up some breakfast,” said Sandra, and Vimes realized that down below, doing their not-very-best to remain unseen, were some of the lads. They were sniggering.
   “Mushrooms?” he said.
   “No,” said the girl. “I was told to tell you that since it's tomorrow, you're going to get everything you wished for…”
   For a moment Vimes tensed, not certain where the world was taking him.
   “A hard-boiled egg,” said Sandra. “But Sam Vimes said you probably like the yolk runny and some toast cut up into soldiers.”
   “Just like he does,” said Vimes weakly. “Good guess, that man.”
   Vimes tossed the egg up into the air, expecting to catch it when it came down. Instead, there was a noise like scissors closing and the air rained runny yolk and bits of shell. And then it rained arrows.
   The noise level of the conversation had gone up. Madam moved in on the group around Lord Winder. Magically, within ten seconds they were left alone as all the other people in the group saw people across the room that they really had to talk to.
   “Who are yer?” said Winder, his eyes surveying her with that care a man takes when he fears that a woman is carrying concealed weaponry.
   “Madam Roberta Meserole, my lord.”
   “The one from Genua?” Winder snorted, which was his attempt at a snigger. “I've heard stories about Genua!”
   “I could probably tell you a few more, my lord,” said Madam. “But, right now, it's time for the cake.”
   “Yeah,” said Winder. “Did you know we got another assassin tonight? They keep trying, you know. Eleven years, and still they try. But I get 'em, every time, sneak about though they may.”
   “Well done, my lord,” said Madam. It did help that he was an unpleasant person, ugly clear to the bone. In some ways, it made things easier. She turned, and clapped her hands. Surprisingly, this small noise caused a sudden cessation in the chatter.
   The double doors at the end of the hall opened, and two trumpeters appeared. They took up positions on either side of the door—
   “Stop 'em!” Winder yelled, and ducked. His two guards ran down the hall and grabbed the trumpets from the frightened men. They handled them with extreme care, as if expecting them to explode or issue a strange gas.
   “Poison darts,” said Winder in a satisfied voice. “Can't be too careful, madam. In this job you learn to watch every shadow. All right, let 'em play. But no trumpets. I 'ate tubes pointed at me.”
   There was some bewildered conversation at the other end of the hall, and then the bereft trumpeters stood back and whistled as best they could.
   Lord Winder laughed as the cake was pushed in. It was in tiers, about man-height, and heavily iced.
   “Lovely,” he said, as the crowd clapped. “I do like some entertainment at a party. And I cut it, do I?”
   He took a few steps back and nodded at the bodyguards. “Off you go, boys,” he said.
   Swords stabbed into the top tier several times. The guards looked at Winder and shook their heads.
   “There's such a thing as dwarfs, you know,” he said.
   They stabbed at the second layer, again meeting no more resistance than can be offered by dried fruit and suet and a crust of marzipan with sugar frosting.
   “He could be kneeling down,” said Winder.
   The audience watched, their smiles frozen. When it became clear that the cake was solid and unoccupied, the food taster was sent for. Most of the guests recognized him. His name was Spymould. He was said to have eaten so much poison in his time that he was proof against anything, and that he ate a toad every day to keep in condition. It was also rumoured that he could turn silver black by breathing on it.
   He selected a piece of cake and chewed it thoughtfully, staring intently upwards while he did so.
   “Hmm,” he said, after a while.
   “Well?” said Winder.
   “Sorry, milord,” said Spymould. “Nuffin'. I thought there was a touch of cyanide there but, no luck, it's just the almonds.”
   “No poison at all?” said the Patrician. “You mean it's edible?”
   “Well, yes. It'd be all the better for some toad, o'course, but that's just one man's opinion.”
   “Perhaps the servants can serve it now, my lord?” said Madam.
   “Don't trust servants serving food,” said Winder. “Sneakin' about. Could slip somethin' in.”
   “Do you mind if I do it, then, my lord?”
   “Yeah, all right,” said Lord Winder, watching the cake carefully. “I'll have the ninth piece you cut.” But in fact he snatched the fifth piece, triumphantly, as if saving something precious from the wreckage.
   The cake was disassembled. Lord Winder's objection to servants handling food withered once the food was headed for other people, and so the party spread out a little as the guests pondered the ancient question of how to hold a plate and a glass and eat at the same time without using one of those little glass-holding things that clip on the side of the plate and make the user look as though they're four years old. This takes a lot of concentration, and that might have been why everyone was so curiously self-absorbed.
   The door opened. A figure walked into the room. Winder looked up, over the top of his plate.
   It was a slim figure, hooded and masked, all in black.
   Winder stared. Around him, the conversation rose, and a watcher above might have noticed that the drift of the party tides was such that they were leaving a wide empty path, stretching from the door all the way to Winder, whose legs didn't want to move.
   As it strolled towards him the figure reached both hands behind it and they came back each holding a small pistol bow. There were a couple of small tic noises and the bodyguards collapsed gently towards the floor. Then it tossed the bows behind it, and kept coming. Its footfalls made no sound.
   “Brw?” said Winder, staring. His mouth was open, and stuffed with cake. People chattered on. Somewhere, someone had told a joke. There was laughter, perhaps a shade shriller than might normally be the case. The noise level rose again.
   Winder blinked. Assassins didn't do this. They snuck around. They used the shadows. This didn't happen in real life. This was how it happened in dreams.
   And now the creature was in front of him. He dropped his spoon, and there was a sudden silence after it clanged on the ground.
   There was another rule. Wherever possible, the inhumed should be told who the Assassin was, and who had sent him. It was felt by the Guild that this was only fair. Winder did not know this, and it was not widely advertised, but nevertheless, in the midst of terror, eyes wide, he asked the right questions.
   “Who sent yer?”
   “I come from the city,” said the figure, drawing a thin, silvery sword.
   “Who are yer?”
   “Think of me as…your future.”
   The figure drew the sword back, but it was too late. Terror's own more subtle knife had done its work. Winder's face was crimson, his eyes were staring at nothing, and coming up from the throat, through the crumbs of cake, was a sound that merged a creak with a sigh.
   The dark figure lowered its sword, watched for a moment in the echoing silence, and then said: “Boo.”
   It reached out one gloved hand and gave the Patrician a push. Winder went over backwards, his plate dropping from his hand and shattering on the tiles.
   The Assassin held his bloodless sword at arm's length and let it drop on the floor beside the corpse. Then he turned and walked slowly back across the marble floor. He shut the double doors behind him, and the echoes died away.
   Madam counted slowly to ten before she screamed. That seemed long enough.
   Lord Winder got to his feet, and looked up at the black-clad figure.
   “Another one? Where did you creep in from?”
   I DO NOT CREEP.
   Winder's mind felt even fuzzier than it had done over the past few years, but he was certain about cake. He'd been eating cake, and now there wasn't any. Through the mists he saw it, apparently close but, when he tried to reach it, a long way away.
   A certain realization dawned on him.
   “Oh,” he said.
   YES, said Death.
   “Not even time to finish my cake?”
   NO. THERE IS NO MORE TIME, EVEN FOR CAKE. FOR YOU, THE CAKE IS OVER. YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE.
   A grapnel thudded into the wall beside Vimes. There were shouts along the barricade. More hooks snaked up and bit into the wood.
   Another rain of arrows clattered on the roofs of the houses. The attackers weren't ready to risk hitting their own side, but arrows were snapping and bouncing in the street below. Vimes heard shouts, and the clang of arrows on armour.
   A sound made him turn. A helmeted head rose level with his and the face beneath it blanched in terror when it saw Vimes.
   “That was my egg, you bastard!” he screamed, punching the nose. “With soldiers!”
   The man fell back, by the sound of it, on to other climbers. Men were yelling all along the parapet.
   Vimes pulled out his truncheon. “At 'em, lads,” he yelled. “Truncheons! Nothing fancy! Bop 'em on the fingers and let gravity do the work! They're goin' down!”
   He ducked, pressing close to the wood, and tried to find a spyhole—
   “They're using big catapults,” said Sandra, who'd found a gap a few feet away. “There's a—”
   Vimes pulled her away. “What are you doing still up here?” he roared.
   “It's safer than the street!” she yelled back, nose to nose with him.
   “Not if one of those grapnels hits you it isn't!” He grabbed his knife. “Here, take this…you see a rope anywhere, cut it!”
   He scurried along behind the shelter of the wobbling parapet, but the defenders were doing very well. It wasn't exactly rocket magic, in any case. The people at ground level were firing out through any crack they could find and, while aiming was not easy, it didn't need to be. There is nothing like the zip and zing of arrows around them to make people nervous at their work.
   And the climbers were too bunched up. They had to be. If they tried attacking on a broad front there'd be three defenders to greet each man. So they were in one another's way, and every falling man would take a couple more down with him, and the barricade was full of little gaps and holes where a defender with a spear could seriously prod those trying to climb up the outside.
   This is stupid, Vimes thought. It'd take a thousand men to break through, and that'd only be when the last fifty ran up the slope made of the bodies of all the rest of them. Someone out there is doing the old “hit them at their strongest point to show 'em we mean business” thinking. Ye gods, is this how we won our wars?
   So how would I have dealt with this? Well, I'd have said “Detritus, remove the barricade” and made sure that the defenders heard me, that's what I'd have done. End of problem.
   There was a scream from further along the parapet. A grapnel had caught one of the watchmen and pulled him hard against the wood. Vimes reached him in time to see a hook dragged into the man's body, through breastplate and mail, as an attacker hauled himself up—
   Vimes caught the man's sword arm in one hand and punched him with the other, letting him tumble into the melee below.
   The stricken watchman was Nancyball. His face was blue-white, his mouth opened and shut soundlessly, and blood pooled around his feet. It dripped through the planks.
   “Let's get the bloody thing out—” Wiglet said, grabbing the hook. Vimes pushed him away, as a couple of arrows hummed overhead.
   “That could do more damage. Call up some lads, take him down really carefully and get him to Lawn.” Vimes snatched up Nancyball's truncheon and brought it down on the helmet of another struggling climber.
   “He's still breathing, sarge!” said Wiglet.
   “Right, right,” said Vimes. It was amazing how willing people were to see life in the corpse of a friend. “So make yourself useful and get him down to the doctor.” And, speaking as one who'd seen some stricken men in his time, he mentally added: and if Lawn can sort him out, he can start his own religion.
   A lucky attacker, who'd achieved the top of the barricade and then found himself horribly alone, slashed desperately at Vimes with his sword. Vimes turned back to business.
   Ankh-Morpork was good at this, and had become good at it without anyone ever discussing it. Things flowed rather than happened; that is, you'd sometimes have to look quite hard to find the point of change between “hasn't been done yet” and “already taken care of, old boy”. And that was how it was done. Things were taken care of.
   It was twenty minutes before Mr Snapcase arrived and twenty-five minutes before he was duly sworn in as Patrician, had magically become Lord Snapcase and was sitting in the Oblong Office; this included the one minute's silence for the late Lord Winder, whose body had been taken care of.
   A number of servants were shown the door without any great unpleasantness, and even Spymould was allowed to remove his toad farm in peace. But those who filled the grates and dusted the furniture and swept the floors stayed on, as they had stayed on before, because they seldom paid any attention to, or possibly didn't even know, who their lord was, and in any case were too useful and knew where the brooms were kept. Lords come and go, but dust accumulates.
   And it was the morning of a new day which looked, seen from below, quite like the old ones.
   After a while, someone raised the question of the fighting, which clearly needed to be taken care of.
   There were scuffles all along the barricade now, but they were going only one way. Siege ladders had been brought up and at several places along the parapet men had managed to climb in. But they could never get enough in one place. There were far more defenders than attackers, and they weren't all men under arms. One thing Vimes was learning fast was the natural vindictiveness of old ladies, who had no sense of fair play when it came to fighting soldiers; give a granny a spear and a hole to jab it through, and young men on the other side were in big trouble.
   And then there was Reg Shoe's inspired idea of the use of steak dinners as a weapon. The attackers did not come from homes where steak was ever on the table. Meat tended to be the flavouring, not the meal. But here and there men who'd achieved the top of the ladders, in darkness, with the groans and yells of their unsuccessful comrades below them, had their weapons dragged from their hands by well-fed former colleagues who were not unkind and who directed them down the ladder inside for steak and eggs and roast chicken and a promise that every day would be like this, come the revolution.
   Vimes didn't want that news to get out, in case there was a rush to invade.
   But the grannies, oh, the grannies…The neighbourhoods of the Republic were a natural recruiting ground for the regiments. It was also an area of big families and matriarchs whose word was family law. It had almost been cheating, putting them on the parapet with a megaphone during the lulls.
   “I knows you're out there, our Ron! This is your Nan! You climb up one more time and you'll feel the back of my hand! Our Rita sends her love and wants you to hurry home. Grandpa is feeling a lot better with the new ointment! Now stop being a silly boy!”
   It was a dirty trick, and he was proud of it. Messages like that sapped a fighting spirit better than arrows.
   And then Vimes realized there were no more men on the ropes and ladders. He could hear yells and groans below, but those soldiers who could stand were withdrawing to a safe distance.
   Now me, thought Vimes, I'd have gone down to the cellars of the houses near the street. Ankh-Morpork is all cellars. And I'd have chipped my way through the rotten walls, and half the cellars on this side of the barricades would have men in them now, nice and snug.
   Admittedly last night I had the men nail up and bar every cellar door they could find but, after all, I wouldn't be fighting me, now, would I?
   He peered through a gap between planks, and was amazed to see a man walking gingerly forward among the wreckage and the groaning men. He was carrying a white flag, and stopped occasionally to wave it but not to shout “Hurrah!”
   When he was as close as possible to the barricade, he called up: “I say?”
   Behind his planking, Vimes shut his eyes. Oh gods, he thought.
   He called down: “Yes? Can we help you?”
   “Who are you?”
   “Sergeant Keel, Night Watch. And you?”
   “Sub-lieutenant Harrap. Er…we ask for a brief truce.”
   “Why?”
   “Er…so that we can recover our wounded.”
   The rules of war, Vimes thought. The field of honour. Good grief…
   “And then?” he said.
   “Sorry?”
   “What happens after that? We start fighting again?”
   “Um…hasn't anyone told you?” said the sub-lieutenant.
   “Told us what?”
   “We've just heard. Lord Winder is dead. Um. Lord Snapcase is Patrician.”
   A cheer began among the nearby defenders, and was taken up below. Vimes felt the relief rise. But he wouldn't be Vimes if he just let things lie.
   He called out: “So would you like to change ends?”
   “Er…sorry?”
   “I mean, would your chaps like to have a go at defending the barricade and we can try attacking it?”
   Vimes heard laughter from the defenders.
   There was a pause. Then the young man said: “Um…why?”
   “Because, correct me if I am wrong, we are now the loyal supporters of the official government and you are the rebellious rump of a discredited administration. Am I right?”
   “Um…I think we did have, um, legitimate orders—”
   “Heard of a man called Captain Swing?”
   “Um…yes…”
   “He thought he had legitimate orders, too,” said Vimes.
   “Um…yes?”
   “Boy, was he surprised. All right, all right. A truce. We agree. Would you like my lads to give you a hand? We've got a doctor here. Very good. I've yet to hear screaming.”
   “Um…thank you, sir.” The young man saluted. Vimes saluted back.
   Then he relaxed, and turned to the defenders. “Okay, lads,” he said. “Stand down. Steal 'em if you haven't got 'em.”
   He shinned down the ladder. Well, then, that was it. It was over. Ring out bells, dance in streets…
   “Sarge, did you mean that about helping them others with their wounded?” said Sam, who was standing at the bottom of the ladder.
   “Well, it makes as much sense as anything else that's been happening,” said Vimes. “They're city lads just like us, not their fault they were given the wrong orders.” And it messes with their heads, he thought, makes 'em wonder why all this is happening…
   “Only…Nancyball's dead, sarge.”
   Vimes took a deep breath. He'd known it anyway, up there on the wobbling ramparts, but hearing it said aloud was still a shock.
   “I daresay there's a few of theirs who won't make it through to morning,” he said.
   “Yes, but they were the enemy, sarge.”
   “It's always worth thinking about who your enemy really is,” said Vimes, tugging at the barricade.
   “How about the man who's trying to stick a sword into you?” said Sam.
   “That's a good start,” said Vimes. “But there are times when it pays to be a little less tightly focused.”
   In the Oblong Office, Snapcase put his hands together and tapped his front teeth with his forefingers. Quite a lot of paperwork was spread in front of him.
   “What to do, what to do,” he said thoughtfully.
   “A general amnesty is usual, my lord,” said Mr Slant. Mr Slant, as Head of the Guild of Lawyers, had advised many leaders of the city. He was also a zombie, although this had if anything benefited his career. He was precedent. He knew how things should go.
   “Yes, yes, of course,” said Snapcase. “A clean start. Of course. No doubt there is a traditional form of words?”
   “In fact, my lord, I happen to have a copy right here—”
   “Yes, yes. Tell me about this barricade, though, will you? The one that was still standing?” He looked up at the crowd assembled in the office.
   “You know about that, sir?” said Follett.
   “I do have my own informants, you know,” said Snapcase. “It has caused rather a stir, has it not? Some fellow put together a rather smart defence force, cut us off from the vital organs of the city, broke up Captain Swing's organization and has withstood the best attacks that could be made against him. And he is a sergeant, I hear.”
   “May I suggest that a promotion is in order?” said Madam.
   “I was thinking exactly the same thing,” said Snapcase, his little eyes gleaming. “And then there is the question of his men. Loyal, are they?”
   “Apparently, sir,” said Madam. She exchanged a puzzled glance with Dr Follett.
   Snapcase sighed. “On the other hand, a soldier can hardly be punished for loyalty to a senior officer, especially in these difficult times. There is no reason to take formal action against them.”
   Eyes met again. They all felt it, the sense of the world slipping.
   “But not Keel, however,” said Snapcase, standing up and removing a snuffbox from his waistcoat pocket. “Think about it, I pray you. What ruler could tolerate the existence of such a man? He did all that in just a few days? I dread to think what he might take it into his head to do tomorrow. These are delicate times. Are we to be hostage to every whim of a mere sergeant? We do not need someone like Keel doing things his way. Besides, you know, the Particulars could have been useful to us. Suitably reeducated, obviously.”
   “I thought you said you wanted to promote him?” said Dr Follett bluntly.
   Lord Snapcase took a pinch of snuff, and blinked once or twice. “Yes,” he said. “Promote him, as they say, to glory.”
   The crowd in the room were silent. One or two of its members were horrified. Some were impressed. You didn't stay at the top in Ankh-Morpork without developing a certain pragmatic approach to life, and Snapcase seemed to have got a grip on that with commendable speed.
   “The barricade is coming down?” said the Patrician, shutting the snuffbox with a click.
   “Yes, my lord,” said Dr Follett. “Because of the general amnesty,” he added, just to make sure the word was repeated. The Guild of Assassins had a code of honour as well as rules; it was an odd code, carefully constructed to fit their needs, but it was a code none the less. You didn't kill the unprotected, or servants, you did it up close, and you kept your word. This was appalling.
   “Capital,” said Snapcase. “Ideal time. Streets full. Much confusion. Unreconstructed elements, vital message not passed on, left hand not knowing what right hand doing, difficulties of the situation, regrettable. No, my dear doctor, I do not intend to make any demands of your guild. Fortunately, there are those whose loyalty to the city is a little less…conditional. Yes. And now, please, there is much to be done. I shall look forward to meeting you again later.”
   The crowd were ushered politely but firmly out of the room, and the doors shut behind them.
   “It seems we're back at school,” muttered Dr Follett, as they were swept along the corridor.
   “Ave! Duci novo, similis duci seneci,” murmured Mr Slant, drily as only a zombie can manage. “Or, as we used to say at school, ‘Ave! Bossa nova, similis bossa seneca!’” He gave a little schoolmasterly laugh. He felt at home with dead languages. “Of course, grammatically that is completely—”
   “And that means…?” said Madam.
   ‘'Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss,”’ muttered Dr Follett.
   “I counsel patience,” said Slant. “He's new in the job. He may settle into it. The city is good at working around problems. Give him time.”
   “And we want someone who is decisive,” said someone in the hurrying crowd.
   “We wanted someone who decides the right things,” said Madam. She elbowed her way to the front of the crowd, hurried down the main staircase and darted into an anteroom.
   Miss Palm stood up as she came in. “Have they—” she began.
   “Where's Havelock?” Madam demanded.
   “Here,” said Vetinari, detaching himself from a shadow by the curtains.
   “Take my coach. Find Keel. Warn him. Snapcase wants him dead!”
   “But where is—” Madam pointed a threatening, trembling finger.
   “Do it now or receive an aunt's curse!”
   When the doors were shut Lord Snapcase stared at them for some moments, and then pressed the bell for his chief secretary. The man insinuated himself into the room via the private door.
   “Everyone is settling in?” said Snapcase.
   “Yes, my lord. There are a number of matters for your attention.”
   “I am sure people would like to believe there are,” said Snapcase, leaning back in the chair. He shifted his weight from side to side. “Does this thing swivel?”
   “I believe not, sir, but I shall have a skilled swiveller here within the hour.”
   “Good. Now, what was the other thing…oh, yes. Tell me, are there any up-and-coming men in the Guild of Assassins?”
   “I am sure there are, my lord. Would you like me to prepare dossiers on, say, three of them?”
   “Do it.”
   “Yes, my lord. My lord, various people are urgently seeking an audience with—”
   “Let them wait. Now that we have the Patricianship, we mean to enjoy it.” Snapcase drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk for a moment, still staring at the doors. Then he said:
   “My inaugural speech is prepared? Very sorry hear unexpected death Winder, overwork, new direction, et cetera, keep best of old while embracing best of new, beware dangerous elements, sacrifices must be made, et cetera, pull together, good of city?”
   “Exactly, sir.”
   “Add that I was particularly sad to hear tragic death Sergeant Keel, hope that fitting memorial to him would be the uniting of citizens of all shades of opinion in an effort to, et cetera, et cetera.”
   The secretary made a few notes. “Quite, sir,” he said. Snapcase smiled at him.
   “I expect you're wondering why I've taken you on even though you worked for my predecessor, eh?” he said.
   “No, sir,” said the secretary, without looking up. He wasn't wondering firstly because he had a pretty good idea and secondly because there were in any case things he found it safest not to wonder about.
   “It is because I recognize talent whenever it presents itself,” said Snapcase.
   “It is good of you to say so, sir,” said the secretary smoothly.
   “Many a rough stone can be polished into a gem.”
   “Exactly, my lord,” said the secretary, and he was thinking Exactly, my lord, too, because he'd also found there were things he found it safest not to think, either, and these included phrases like What a little tit.
   “Where is my new Captain of the Guard?”
   “I believe Captain Carcer is in the rear courtyard, my lord, exhorting the men in no uncertain terms.”
   “Tell him I want to see him here now,” said Snapcase.
   “Certainly, sir.”
   The barricade was taking some while to dismantle. Chair legs and planks and bedsteads and doors and baulks of timber had settled into a tangled mass. Since every piece belonged to someone, and Ankh-Morpork people care about that sort of thing, it was being dismantled by collective argument. This was not least because people who had donated a three-legged stool to the common good were trying to take away a set of dining chairs, and similar problems.
   And then there was the traffic. Carts that had been held up outside the city were trying to make their way to their destinations before eggs hatched or milk got so rotten it could get out and walk the rest of the way. If Ankh-Morpork had a grid, there would have been gridlock. Since it did not it was, in the words of Sergeant Colon, “a case of no one being able to move because of everyone else”. Admittedly, this phrase, while accurate, did not have the same snap.
   Some of the watchmen had joined in the dismantling work, mostly to stop the fights that were breaking out among irate householders. But a group of them had congregated at the end of Heroes Street, where Snouty had set up a mess and a cocoa urn. There wasn't, in fact, much to do. A few hours ago they'd been fighting. Now the streets were so crowded that even patrols were impossible. Every good copper knows that there are times when the wise man keeps out of the way, and the conversation had turned to the kind of questions that follow victory, such as 1) is there going to be any extra money? and 2) are there going to be any medals? With an option on 3) which was never far from the watchmen's thoughts: are we going to get into trouble about this?
   “An amnesty means we ain't,” said Dickins. “It means everyone pretends nothing really happened.”
   “All right, then,” said Wiglet. “Are we going to get medals? What I mean is, if we've been…” he concentrated “…val-i-ant defenders of freedom, that sounds like medal time to me.”
   “I reckon we should simply have barricaded the whole city,” said Colon.
   “Yeah, Fred,” said Snouty, “but then that'd mean the bad people, hnah, would be in here with us.”
   “Right, but we'd be in charge,” said Fred.
   Sergeant Dickins puffed on his pipe, and said: “Lads, you're just flapping your mouths. There's been fighting, and here you are with all your arms and legs and walking around in the gods' good sunlight. That's winning, that is. You've won, see. The rest is just gravy.”
   No one spoke for a while until young Sam said: “But Nancyball didn't win.”
   “We lost five men in all,” said Dickins. “Two got hit by arrows, one fell off the barricade and one cut his own throat by accident. It happens.”
   They stared at him.
   “Oh, you thought it didn't?” said Dickins. “You get a lot of worried people and edged weapons and a lot of scurrying, all in one place. You'd be amazed at the casualties you can get even when you're fifty miles from an enemy. People die.”
   “Did Nancyball have a mum?” said Sam.
   “He was brought up by his gran, but she's dead,” said Wiglet.
   “No one else?”
   “Dunno. He never talked about them. He never talked about anything much,” said Wiglet.
   “What you do is, you have a whip-round,” said Dickins firmly. “Wreath, coffin, the lot. You don't let anyone else do it. And another thing…”
   Vimes sat a little way from the men, watching the street. There were groups of former defenders and veterans and watchmen everywhere. He watched a man buy a pie from Dibbler, and shook his head, and grinned. On a day when you couldn't give steak away, some people would still buy a pie from Dibbler. It was a triumph of salesmanship and the city's famously atrophied taste buds.
   The song began. Whether it was a requiem or a victory chant he didn't know, but Dickins started it and the rest joined in, each man singing as though he was all by himself and unaware of the rest.
   “—see the little angels rise up high…” Others were picking up the tune.
   Reg Shoe was also sitting all alone, on a piece of barricade currently not in dispute, still clutching the flag and looking so miserable that Vimes felt moved to go and speak to him.
   “—do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high?”
   “It could have been good, sergeant,” said Reg, looking up. “It really could. A city where a man can breathe free.”
   “—they rise ARSE up, arse up, arse up, see the little angels rise up high…”
   “Wheeze free, Reg,” said Vimes, sitting down next to him. “This is Ankh-Morpork.” And they all hit that line together, thought the part of him that was listening with the other ear. Strange that they should do that, or maybe not.
   “Yeah, make a joke of it. Everyone thinks it's funny,” said Reg, looking at his feet.
   “I don't know if this'll help, Reg, but I didn't even get my hard-boiled egg,” said Vimes.
   “And what's going to happen next?” said Reg, far too sunk in misery to sympathize or, for that matter, notice.
   “All the little angels rise up, rise up–”
   “I really don't know. Things'll get better for a while, I expect. But I don't know what I'm—”
   Vimes stopped. On the far side of the street, oblivious of the traffic, a little wizened old man was sweeping dust out of a doorway.
   Vimes stood up and stared. The little man saw him, and gave him a wave. And at that moment yet another cart rumbled down the road, piled high with former barricade.
   Vimes flung himself flat and stared between the legs and wheels. Yes, the slightly bandy legs and the battered sandals were still there, and still there too when the cart had passed, and still there when Vimes started to run across the street, and may have been there when the unregarded following cart almost knocked him over, and were completely not there when he straightened up.
   He stood where they had been, in the busy street, on the sunny morning, and felt the night sweep over him. He felt the hairs stand up on his neck. The conversations around him grew louder, became a clamour in his ears. And the light was too bright. There were no shadows, and he was looking for shadows now.
   He dodged and jinked across the street to the singing men, and waved them into silence.
   “Get ready,” he growled. “Something's going to happen…”
   “What, sarge?” said Sam.
   “Something not good, I think. An attack, maybe.” Vimes scanned the street for…what? Little old men with brooms? If anything, the scene was less menacing than before the troubles, because now the other shoe had dropped. People weren't standing around waiting for it any more. There was a general bustle.
   “No offence, sarge,” said Dickins, “but it all looks peaceful enough to me. There's an amnesty, sarge. No one's fighting anyone.”
   “Sarge! Sarge!”
   They all turned. Nobby Nobbs was sidling and skipping down the street. They saw his lips shape a message, completely drowned out by the squeals from a wagonload of pigs.
   Lance-Constable Sam Vimes looked at the face of his sergeant. “Something is wrong,” he said. “Look at sarge!”
   “Well, what?” said Fred Colon. “A giant bird's going to drop out of the sky or something?”
   There was a thud, and a gasp from Wiglet. An arrow had hit him in the chest and had gone right through.
   Another one smacked into the wall above Vimes's head, showering dust.
   “In here!” he yelled. The door to the shop behind them was open, and he plunged through. People piled in behind him. He heard the noise of arrows outside, and one or two screams.
   “Amnesty, sergeant?” he said. Outside, the rumbling carts had stopped, blocking out the light to the bullseye panes of the shop windows and temporarily shielding it.
   “Then it's got to be some idiots,” said Dickins. “Rebels, maybe.”
   “Why? There were never that many rebels, we know that! Anyway, they won!” Now there was shouting outside, beyond the carts. Nothing like a cart for blocking the road…
   “Counter-revolutionaries, then?” Dickins suggested.
   “What, people who want to put Winder back in charge?” said Vimes. “Well, I don't know about you, but I'd join.” He looked around the shop. It was packed wall to wall. “Who are all these people?”
   “You said ‘in here’, sergeant,” said a soldier.
   “Yeah, and we didn't need telling 'cos it was raining arrows,” said another soldier.
   “I didn't mean to come but I couldn't swim against the tide,” said Dibbler.
   “I want to show solidarity,” said Reg.
   “Sarge, sarge, it's me, sarge!” said Nobby, waving his hands.
   A firm, authoritative voice, thought Vimes. It's amazing the trouble it can get you into. There were about thirty people crowded into the shop, and he didn't recognize half of them.
   “Can I help any of you gentlemen?” said a thin, querulous little voice behind him. He turned and saw a very small, almost doll-like old lady, all in black, cowering behind her counter.
   He looked desperately at the shelves behind her. They were piled with skeins of wool.
   “Er, I don't think so,” he said.
   “Then do you mind if I finish serving Mrs Soupson? Four ounces of grey two-ply was it, Mrs Soupson?”
   “Yes please, Ethel!” quavered a tiny, frightened voice somewhere in the middle of the crowd of armed men.
   “We'd better get out of here,” muttered Vimes. He turned to the men and waved his hands frantically to suggest that, as far as possible, no one should upset any old ladies. “Do you have a back way, please?”
   The shopkeeper's innocent old eyes looked up at him. “It helps if people buy something, sergeant,” she said meaningfully.
   “Er, we, um…” Vimes looked around desperately, and inspiration struck. “Ah, right, yes…I'd like a mushroom,” he said. “You know, one of those wooden things for—”
   “Yes, sergeant, I know. That will be sixpence, thank you, sergeant. I always like to see a gentleman ready to do it for himself, I must say. Could I interest you in a—”
   “I'm in a big hurry, please!” said Vimes. “I've got to darn all my socks.” He nodded at the men, who responded heroically.

“Me, too—”
   “Full of holes, it's disgusting!”
   “Got to patch them up right now!”
   “It's me, sarge, Nobby, sarge!”
   “You could use mine for fishing nets!”
   The lady unhooked a big key ring. “I think it's this one, no, I tell a lie, I think it's, no…wait a moment…ah, yes, this is the one…”
   “Here, sarge, there's a bunch of men with crossbows in the street,” said Fred Colon, from the window. “About fifty of 'em!”
   “…no, that's the one, dear me, that's for the lock we used to have…does this one look right to you? Let's try this one…”
   Very carefully, and very slowly, she unlocked and unbolted the door.
   Vimes poked his head out. They were in an alley, filled with trash and old boxes and the horrible smell of alleys everywhere. No one seemed to be around.
   “Okay, everybody out,” he said. “We need a bit of space. Who's got a bow?”
   “Just me, sarge,” said Dickins. “It's not like we were expecting trouble, see.”
   “One bow against fifty men, that's bad odds,” said Vimes. “Let's get out of here!”
   “Are they after us, sarge?”
   “They shot Wiglet, didn't they? Let's move!”
   They scuttled along the alleyway. As they crossed a wider one, there was the distant sound of the shop door being kicked open again, and a gleeful shout.
   “I got you now, Duke!”
   Carcer…
   An arrow clattered off a wall and pinwheeled end over end along the alley.
   Vimes had run before. Every watchman knew about running. They called it the Backyard Handicap. Vimes had taken that route many times, ducking through alleys, leaping on wings of terror over the walls from one dog-infested yard to the next, falling into the chicken runs and slipping down privy roofs, looking for safety or his mates or, failing that, somewhere to stand with his back to the wall. Sometimes you had to run.
   And, like the herd, you stayed together by instinct. In a crowd of thirty or so, you were harder to hit.
   Fortunately, Dickins had taken the lead. The old coppers were best at running, having run so much during their lives. As on the battlefield, only the cunning and the fast survived.
   And so he didn't bother to stop as the cart appeared at the end of the alley. It was a heggler's wagon, probably trying to take a short cut and escape the “no one being able to move because of everyone else” chaos in the main streets. The man, the back of his wagon piled ten feet high with boxes, his vehicle scraping the walls, looked in horror at the stampede heading for him. No one had any brakes and absolutely no one was going to go backwards.
   Vimes, in the rear, watched the group flow over and under the wagon, to the splintering of boxes and the pop of exploding eggs. The horse danced in the shafts and men dived through its legs or clear over its back.
   When Vimes reached it he clambered on to the box just as an arrow hit the woodwork. He grinned desperately at the driver.
   “Jump,” he suggested, and smacked the horse on the flank with the flat of his sword. Both men were thrown back as it reared and sent the remains of the stricken load sliding off the wagon.
   Vimes hauled the driver upright as soon as the debris stopped falling. He was covered in egg.
   “Sorry about that, sir. Watch business. Ask for Sergeant Keel. Got to rush!”
   Behind them the wagon rattled up the alley, wheel rims knocking sparks off the walls. There were doorways and side alleys to escape into, but Carcer's crew would certainly be slowed down.
   The rest of his crew had stopped when they heard the noise, but Vimes piled into them and forced them on until they reached a road, blocked with carts and thronged with people.
   “Well, you got your soldiers covered in egg, sarge,” said Sam, with a worried grin. “What's all that about?”
   “It's some of the Unmentionables,” said Vimes. “Probably want to settle the score.” Well, that was close enough.
   “But I saw watchmen and soldiers with 'em,” said Fred Colon.
   “Sarge, it's me, sarge! Please, sarge!” Nobby elbowed his way through the men.
   “Is this a good time, Nobby?” said Vimes.
   “There's men after you, sarge!”
   “Well done, Nobby!”
   “Carcer, sarge! He's got a job with Snapcase! Captain of the Palace Guard, sarge! And they gonna get you! Snapcase told 'em to, sarge! My mate Scratch'n'Sniff is the under-bootboy at the palace and he was in the yard and heard 'em talking, sarge!”
   I should have known, Vimes thought. Snapcase was a devious devil. And now Carcer's got his feet under another bastard's table. Captain of the Guard…
   “I haven't been making a lot of friends lately,” said Vimes.
   “Okay, gentlemen, I'm going to run. If you lot melt away into the crowd you'll be fine, I expect.”
   “No fear, sarge,” said Sam, and there was a general murmur of agreement.
   “We had an amnesty,” said Dickins. “They can't do this!”
   “Anyway, they were shooting at everyone,” said one of the soldiers. “Bastards! They need a good going-over!”
   “They've got bows,” said Vimes.
   “So we ambush 'em, sarge,” said Dickins. “Choose your ground and fight up close and a crossbow's just a piece of wood.”
   “Did any of you hear me?” said Vimes. “They're after me. Not you. You do not want to mix it with Carcer. You, Snouty, you shouldn't be doing this at your time of life.”
   The old jailer glared at him through runny eyes. “That's a hell of a thing for you, hnah, to say to me, sarge,” he said.
   “How do we know he won't decide to come after us anyway?” said Dickins. “An amnesty's an amnesty, right? They can't do this!” There was a general chorus on the lines of “Yeah, that's right!”
   It's happening, Vimes thought. They are talking themselves right into it. But what can I do? We've got to face 'em. I've got to face 'em. I've got to face Carcer. The thought of leaving him here, with all he knows…
   “How about if we head down Cable Street?” said Dickins. “Lots of little alleyways off there. They'll go rushing along, thinking we've bolted for the Watch House, and we'll 'ave 'em! We ain't standing for this, sarge.”
   Vimes sighed. “Okay,' he said. Thank you. You're of one mind?”
   There was a cheer.
   “Then I won't make a speech,” said Vimes. “There isn't time. I'll just say this. If we don't win this, if we don't see them off…well, we've got to, that's all. Otherwise it'll be…very bad for this city. Very bad.”
   “That's right,” Dickins cut in, insistently. “There was an amnesty.”
   “But, look,” said one of the soldiers. “I don't know half the men here. If we're going to close in, we want to know who's on our side…”
   “That's right, hnah,” said Snouty. “I mean, some of them chasing us was watchmen!”
   Vimes raised his eyes. The wide alley in front of them, known as Lobsneaks, stretched all the way to Cable Street. It was lined with gardens, and there were purple flowers on the bushes.
   The morning air smelled of lilac.
   “I recall a battle once,” said Dickins, looking up at a tree. “In history, it was. And there was this company, see, and they was a ragtag of different squads and all covered in mud in any case, and they found themselves hiding in a field of carrots. So as a badge they all pulled up carrots and stuck them on their helmets, so's they'd know who their friends were and incidentally have a nourishing snack for later, which is never to be sneezed at on a battlefield.”
   “Well? So what?” said Dibbler.
   “So what's wrong with a lilac flower?” said Dickins, reaching up and pulling down a laden branch. “Makes a spanking plume, even if you can't eat it…”
   And now, Vimes thought, it ends.
   “I think they are very bad men!” said a high, rather elderly but nevertheless determined voice from somewhere in the crowd, and there was a glimpse of a skinny hand waving a knitting needle.
   “And I shall need a volunteer to escort Mrs Soupson home,” he said.
   Carcer surveyed the length of Lobsneaks.
   “Looks like we just follow the trail of egg,” he said. “Looks like Keel has a yellow streak.”
   It didn't get quite the laugh he'd expected. A lot of the men he'd been able to collect had a more physical sense of humour. But Carcer had, in his own way, some of Vimes's qualities, only they were inverted. A certain kind of man looks up to someone who's brave enough to be really bad.
   “Are we going to get into trouble for this, captain?”
   And of course, you got those who were just along for the ride. He turned to Sergeant Knock, with Corporal Quirke lurking behind him. He fully shared Vimes's view of them although he approached it, as it were, from the other direction. You couldn't trust either of them. But they hated Keel with that gnawing, nerve-sapping hatred that only the mediocre can really bring to bear, and that was useful.
   “How do you think we're going to get into trouble, sergeant?” he said. “We're working for the government.”
   “He's a devious devil, sir!” said Knock, as if this was a character flaw in a copper.
   “Now you lot listen to me, right?” said Carcer. “No mess-ups this time! I want Keel alive, okay? And that kid Vimes. You can do what the hell you like to the rest of them.”
   “Why d'you want him taken alive?” said a quiet voice behind Carcer. “I thought Snapcase wanted him dead. And what's the kid done that's so wrong?”
   Carcer turned. To his mild surprise, the watchman behind him didn't flinch.
   “What's your name, mister?” he said.
   “Coates.”
   “Ned's the one I told you about, sir,” said Knock urgently, leaning over Carcer's shoulder. “Keel gave him the push, sir, after—”
   “Shut up,” said Carcer, without taking his eyes off Coates. There wasn't a hint of fear there, not even a glimmer of bravado. Coates just stared back.
   “Did you just come along for the ride, Coates?” he said.
   “No, captain. I don't like Keel. But Vimesy is just a kid that got dragged along. What're you going to do to him?”
   Carcer leaned forward; Coates did not lean back.
   “You were a rebel, weren't you?” he said. “Don't like to do what you're told, eh?”
   “They're going to get a big bottle of ginger beer!” said a voice drunk with evil delight.
   Carcer turned and looked down at the skinny, black-clad Ferret. He was somewhat battered, partly because he'd put up a fight when the watchmen had tried to pry him out of his cell, and mostly because Todzy and Muffer had been waiting outside. But he'd been allowed to live; beating something like Ferret to death was, to the other two, an embarrassing and demeaning waste of fist.
   He certainly flinched under Carcer's gaze. His whole body was a flinch.
   “Did I ask you to speak, you little dog's tonker?” Carcer enquired.
   “Nosir!”
   “Right. Remember that. It could save your life one day.” Carcer turned his attention back to Ned. “Okay, sunshine, this is the bright new dawn you wanted. You asked for it, you got it. We've just got to sweep away a few of yesterday's leftovers. By order of Lord Snapcase, your mate. And it ain't your job to ask why and who, but young Vimesy? Why, I think he's a game lad who'll be a credit to the city if he's kept out of the way of bad company. Now, Knock says you're good at thinking. So now you tell me what you think Keel's gonna do.”
   Ned gave him a look that went on for slightly longer than Carcer felt comfortable with.
   “He's a defender,” he said, eventually. “He'll be back at the Watch House. He'll set a few traps, get the men tooled up and wait for you.”
   “Hah?” said Carcer.
   “He doesn't like to see his men hurt,” said Ned.
   “This is not going to be his day, then,” said Carcer.
   Halfway down Cable Street was a barricade. It wasn't much. A few doors, a table or two…by the standards of the big one that was even now being turned back into unbelligerent dining-room furniture, it barely existed at all.
   Carcer's informal crew walked slowly, staring up at buildings and into the mouths of alleys. People in the street fled at their approach. Some men walk in a way that projects bad news ahead of them.
   Vimes crouched behind the makeshift wall and peered through a crack. They'd snatched a few crossbows from aimless soldiers on the way here, but by the look of it Carcer's men had at least fifteen between them. And they outnumbered the lilac lads two to one.
   If push came to shove, he'd take Carcer out right now. It wasn't the way it ought to go. He wanted people to see the man hang, he wanted the city to execute him. Going back empty-handed would leave a loose end flapping.
   He heard the sound of sobbing from further along the barricade. It wasn't young Sam, he knew, and Nobby Nobbs had probably cried all the tears a body was capable of some time ago. It was Reg. He sat with his back to the makeshift defence, the threadbare flag across his knees, and tears dripping off his chin.
   “Reg, you ought to go,” Vimes hissed. “You don't even have a weapon.”
   “What's the good of it, eh?” said Reg. “You were bloody right, sarge! Things just go round and round! You got rid of the bloody Unmentionables and here they are again! What's the point, eh? This city could be such a great place but no, oh no, the bastards always end up on top! Nothing ever bloody changes! They just take their money and mess us around!”
   Carcer had stopped twenty yards from the barricade, and was watching it carefully.
   “Way of the world, Reg,” murmured Vimes, counting enemies under his breath.
   And a big covered cart came around the corner, rocking under its load. It rolled to a halt a little way from Carcer's crew, partly because the way was blocked but mostly, perhaps, because one of the men had walked up to the driver and aimed a crossbow at his head.
   “And now the bloody bastards have won,” moaned Reg.
   “Every day of the week, Reg,” said Vimes absently, trying to follow the movements of too many people at once.
   The other men were spreading out. After all, they had the firepower.
   The man holding up Mr Dibbler, the cart driver, wasn't paying too much attention. Now Vimes wished he'd put himself in the wagon. Oh, well, someone had to start the rumble—
   “Yeah? You want to shoot something? Bastards!”
   They all stared, Carcer too. Reg had stood up, was waving the flag back and forth, was clambering over the barricade…
   He held the flag like a banner of defiance. “You can take our lives but you'll never take our freedom!” he screamed.
   Carcer's men looked at one another, puzzled by what sounded like the most badly thought-out war cry in the history of the universe. Vimes could see their lips moving as they tried to work it out.
   Carcer raised his crossbow, gestured to his men, and said: “Wrong!”
   Reg was hit by five heavy bolts so that he did a little dance before falling to his knees. It happened in seconds.
   Vimes opened his mouth to give the order to charge, and shut it when he saw Reg raise his head. In silence, using the flag pole as an aid, Reg got back to his feet.
   Three more arrows hit him. He looked down at his skinny chest, bristling with feathers, and took a step forward. And another.
   One of the crossbowmen drew his sword and ran at the stricken man, and was knocked into the air by a blow from Reg that must have felt like it had come from a sledgehammer. And in the ranks of the crew there was a fight. Someone in a copper's uniform had drawn his own sword and taken out two bowmen. And the man at the cart was running back to the action…
   “Get them!” Vimes yelled, and leapt the barricade.
   There was no plan any more. Dickins and his men poured out of the cart. There were still loaded crossbows out there, but a bow is suddenly not the weapon you want to be holding when angry swords are approaching from both directions.
   It'll come when you call…
   All plans, all futures, all politics…were elsewhere. Vimes scooped up a fallen sword and with a weapon in either hand screamed wordless defiance and launched himself at the nearest enemy. The man went down headless.
   He saw Snouty go down in the melee, and sprang over him to catch his attacker in a windmill of blades. And then he spun around to confront Knock, who dropped his sword and fled. And Vimes ran on, not fighting but hacking, ducking strokes without seeing them, blocking attacks without turning his head, letting the ancient senses do their work. Someone was slicing towards young Sam; Vimes brought a sword down on the arm in true self-defence. He moved on, in the centre of a widening circle. He wasn't an enemy, he was a nemesis.
   And as suddenly as it had come the beast withdrew, leaving an angry man with two swords.
   Carcer had retreated to the side of the street, with his men—far fewer men now.
   Colon was on his knees, throwing up. Dickins was down, and Vimes knew he was dead. Nobby was down too, but that was just because someone had kicked him hard and he'd probably decided that staying down was best. There were a lot of Carcer's men down, more than half. Some more had fled a maniac with two swords. Some had even fled Reg Shoe, who was sitting on the barricade, staring at the sheer weight of arrows in him. As he watched, his brain seemingly decided that he must be dead on this evidence, and he fell backwards. But in a few hours, his brain would be in for a surprise.
   No one knew why some people became natural zombies, substituting sheer stubborn will power for blind life force. But attitude played a part. For Reg Shoe, life was only just beginning…
   Young Sam was upright. He looked as though he'd thrown up, but he'd done well to survive his first real melee. He gave Vimes a weak smile.
   “What's happening now, sarge?” he managed, taking off his helmet and wiping his forehead.
   Vimes sheathed a sword and quietly slipped one of Mrs Goodbody's little friends out of his pocket.
   “That depends on what happens over there,” he said, nodding towards the other end of the street. Sam obediently turned to look, and fell asleep.
   Vimes pocketed the cosh, and saw Coates looking at him.
   “Whose side are you on, Ned?” he said.
   “What did you hit the kid for?” said Ned.
   “So he's out of it. You got anything to say?”
   “Not much, sarge.” Ned grinned. “We're all learning a lot today, ain't we?”
   "True enough,' said Vimes.
   “There's even bigger bastards than you, for a start.”
   This time Vimes grinned. “But I try harder, Ned.”
   “You know Carcer?”
   “He's a murderer. And just about everything else, too. A stone-cold killer. With brains,” said Vimes.
   “This is going to go the distance?”
   “Yep. It's got to. We've got to stop this, Ned. This is the only chance. It stops here or not at all. Can you imagine him loose now he's pally with Snapcase?”
   “Yes. I can,” said Ned. “Just as well I wasn't planning anything this evening, eh? But you can tell me one thing, sarge. How do you know all this?”
   Vimes hesitated. But at a time like this, what difference did it make?
   “I'm from this city,” said Vimes. “But, oh, there was a hole in time, something like that. You want to know? I travelled here in time, Ned, and that's the truth.”
   Ned Coates looked him up and down. Blood covered Vimes's armour, and his hands, and half his face, and he was holding a bloody sword in his hand.
   “From how far back?” he said.
   Time stopped. Coates froze and faded in colour, into a world made up of shades of grey.
   “Nearly there, your grace,” said Sweeper, behind Vimes.
   “Ye gods!” yelled Vimes, flinging his sword to the ground. “You are not making any friends here, you know?”
   The sword hadn't hit the ground. It hung a few inches from his hands, and had faded to greyness.
   “There's just a few things we need to tell you,” said Sweeper, as if a sword in mid-air was a minor consideration.
   “What's happened to the bloody sword?” said Vimes, to whom it wasn't.
   “Time has stopped for everyone but you,” said Sweeper patiently. “Actually that sentence is wrong in every particular, but it's quite a useful lie. It'll just take us a moment to set things up…”
   Now Vimes had time, of some kind, to look around. The whole street was darker, as if the fight had been taking place in the half-light just before dawn. The only colour was in the robes and faces of Sweeper and Qu as they manoeuvred a handcart out of an alley. It held a couple of small stone columns, and the body of John Keel, wrapped in a shroud.
   “We have some good news,” said Sweeper.
   “You have?” said Vimes weakly. He walked over to the body.
   “Indeed,” said Qu, unshipping the stone cylinders. “We thought we might have to persuade you to remove all your armour but you will not, I think, need to do this.”
   “That's because it will stay here,” said Lu-Tze. “Belongs here, see?”
   “No,” said Vimes, “I don't know what the hell you're talking about.” He touched the body. “So cold,” he said. “That's what I remember. He was so cold.”
   “A morgue does that to people,” said Sweeper, in a matter-of-fact voice.
   “Now please pay attention, commander,” said Qu. “When we operate the—”
   Vimes looked up, violence in his eyes. Sweeper laid a hand on Qu's arm.
   “We've got things to do for a minute or two,” he said.
   “Yes, but it's vital that he knows how—”
   “We've got things to do for a minute or two,” Sweeper repeated, making a face.
   “Oh? What? Oh. Yes. Er…we've got, er…things. To do. Things to do…er…things.”
   They wandered away. Out of the corner of his eye Vimes saw them walking back and forth across the street, as if taking measurements.
   He looked back at John Keel. But what could you say? Sorry you're dead? Keel had originally died on the barricades, not in a street fight. But he was just as dead, all the same.
   Vimes was hazy on religion. He attended Watch funerals and went to such religious events as the proper fulfilling of the office of Commander entailed, but as for the rest…well, you saw things sometimes that made it impossible to believe not only in gods, but also in common humanity and your own eyes. From what he could remember, Keel had felt the same way. You got on with things. If there were any gods, you expected them to get on with things, too, and didn't interrupt them while they were working.
   What could you say to a dead copper? What would he want said?
   Ah…
   He leaned closer. “Carcer's going to bloody swing for this,” he said, and stood back.
   Behind him, Sweeper coughed theatrically. “Ready, your grace?” he said.
   “Ready enough,” said Vimes.
   “We were telling you about the armour,” said Sweeper. “It'll—”
   “The thing is, commander,” Qu interrupted, “that you and this fellow Carcer and all the clothes and possessions you arrived with form an elongated trans-time anomaly, which is under considerable tension.”
   Vimes turned and looked at Sweeper.
   “It's very, very hard to move things out of the time where they belong but it takes much less effort to move them back to where they were,” Sweeper translated.
   Vimes carried on staring.
   “Everything really, really wants to stay where it should be,” Sweeper tried.
   “You're right there,” said Vimes.
   “All we do is…grease the way,” said Sweeper. “We give a little push, and it'll all snap back. And away you go. Have you had anything to eat this morning?”
   “No!”
   “Shouldn't be too messy, then,” said Sweeper. When Vimes looked puzzled he went on: “Undigested food. It'll stay here, you see.”
   “You mean it'll come tearing out of—”
   “No, no, no,” said Qu, quickly. “You won't notice. But a nourishing meal when you get back would be a good idea.”
   “And the armour stays here?”
   Qu beamed. “Yes, your grace. Everything. Eyepatch, socks, everything.”
   “Boots, too?”
   “Yes. Everything.”
   “What about my drawers?”
   “Yes, those too. Everything.”
   “So I'll arrive in the nuddy?”
   “The one costume that's in fashion anywhere,” said Sweeper, grinning.
   “Then why did all my armour arrive with me when I came?” said Vimes. “And damn Carcer had his knives, that's for sure!”
   Qu opened his mouth, but Sweeper answered faster.
   “It takes a thousand steps to get to the top of a mountain but one little hop'll take you all the way back to the bottom,” he said. “Okay?”
   “Well, I suppose it makes sen—” Vimes began.
   “That isn't how it works at all, Lu-Tze!” wailed Qu.
   “No,” said Sweeper, “but it's another good lie. Look, commander, we don't have a damn great thunderstorm and we don't have enough stored time. This is a field operation. It's the best we can do. We'll get you back, and your prisoner, although you almost certainly won't arrive in the same place, 'cos of quantum. It's hard enough making sure you don't arrive two hundred feet in the air, believe me. Pushing all your clothes as well, when they belong here, that just takes too much power. Now, are you ready? You need to go back to where you were standing. Get to Carcer as soon as you can. You must grab him, otherwise he'll stay behind.”
   “Okay, but I've changed lots of things!” said Vimes.
   “Leave that to us,” said Sweeper.
   “What about Keel?” said Vimes, walking away with reluctance.
   “Don't worry. We told you at the temple. We'll put him in your armour. He'll have died in battle.”
   “Make sure nothing happens to young Sam!” said Vimes, as Qu carefully prodded him into position. The little stone columns began to spin.
   “We will!”
   “Make sure Reg Shoe gets a decent burial!”
   “We will!”
   “Not too deep, he'll be wanting to come out again in a few hours!”
   Qu gave him a last prod.
   “Goodbye, commander!”
   Time came back.
   Ned was looking at him.
   “What happened just then, sarge? You blurred.”
   “You only get one question, Ned,” said Vimes, fighting the moment of nausea. “Now, let's show Snapcase where the line's drawn, shall we? Let's finish it—”
   They charged, the men falling in behind them.
   Vimes remembered in slow motion. Some of Carcer's men ran at the sight of them, some raised their hastily reclaimed weapons, and Carcer stood there and grinned.
   Vimes headed for him, ducking and weaving through the fight.
   The man's expression changed as Vimes approached. Vimes was speeding up, shoulder-charging and thrusting other bodies away. Carcer raised his sword and took a stance, but there was no room for finesse in the melee and Vimes closed like a bull, knocking the sword up and grabbing Carcer by the throat.
   “You're nicked, my ol' chum,” he said. And then it all went black.
   He felt, later on, that there should have been more to it. There should have been rushing blue tunnels, or flashes, or the sun should have shot round and round the sky. Even pages tearing off a calendar and fluttering away would have been something.
   But it was just the blackness of the deepest sleep, followed by pain as he hit the floor.
   Vimes felt arms reach down and haul him to his feet. He shook them off as soon as he was upright, and focused, through the bleary mist, on the face of Captain Carrot.
   “Good to see you, sir. Oh, dear—”
   “I'm fine,” croaked Vimes, through a throat that felt stuffed with sand. “Where's Carcer?”
   “You've got a nasty cut on—”
   “Really? I'm amazed,” growled Vimes. “Now, where the hell is Carcer?”
   “We don't know, sir. You just appeared in mid-air and landed on the floor. In a lot of blue light, sir!”
   “Ah,” muttered Vimes. “Well, he's come back somewhere. Somewhere close, probably.”
   “Right, sir, I'll tell the men to—”
   “No, don't,” said Vimes. “He'll keep. After all, where's he going to go?”
   He wasn't too sure of his legs. They felt as though they belonged to someone with a very poor sense of balance.
   “How long was I…away?” he said. Ponder Stibbons stepped forward.
   “About half an hour, your grace. Er, we have, er, hypothesized that there was some temporal disturbance, which, coupled with the lightning stroke and a resonance in the standing wave of the Library, caused a space-time rupture—”
   “Yeah, it felt something like that,” said Vimes hurriedly. “Half an hour, did you say?”
   “Did it feel longer?” said Ponder, taking out a notebook.
   “A bit,” Vimes conceded. “Now, has anyone here got a pair of drawers I—”
   I can see your house from up here…
   That was Carcer. He liked you to stew, to use your imagination.
   And Vimes had said: where's he going to go?
   “Captain, I want you and every man you can spare, every damn man, to get up to my house right now, understand,” he said. “Just do it. Just do it now.” He turned to Ridcully. “Archchancellor, can you get me there faster?”
   “The Watch wants magical assistance?” said the Archchancellor, taken aback.
   “Please,” said Vimes.
   “Of course, but you realize that you have no clothes on—”
   Vimes gave up. People always wanted explanations. He set off, overruling the jelly in his legs, running out of the octangle and across the lawns until he reached the University's Bridge of Size, where he sped past Nobby and Colon who were drawn into the wake of watchmen running to keep up.
   On the other side of the bridge was the garden known as the Wizard's Pleasaunce. Vimes ploughed through it, twigs whipping at his bare legs, and then he was out and on to the old towpath, mud splashing up over the blood. Then right and a left, past amazed bystanders, and then there were the catshead cobbles of Scoone Avenue under his feet and he found the wind to accelerate a little. He didn't slow until he reached the gravel drive, and almost collapsed at the front door, hanging on to the bell pull.
   There were hurrying feet, and the door was wrenched open.
   “If you're not Willikins,” growled Vimes, focusing, “there's going to be trouble!”
   “Your grace! Whatever has happened to you?” said the butler, pulling him into the hall.
   “Nothing!” said Vimes. “Just get me a fresh uniform, nice and quietly, and don't let Sybil know—”
   He read everything in the way the butler's face changed.
   “What's happened to Sybil?”
   Willikins backed away. A bear would have backed away.
   “Don't go up there, sir! Mrs Content says it's…all rather difficult, sir. Things aren't, um, happening quite right…”
   “Is the child born?”
   “No sir, a-apparently not, sir. It's rather…Mrs Content says she's trying everything but maybe we…ought to send for the doctors, sir.”
   “For a childbirth?”
   Willikins looked down. After twenty unflappable years as butler, he was shaking now. No one deserved a confrontation with Sam Vimes at a time like this.
   “Sorry, sir…”
   “No!” snapped Vimes. “Don't send for a doctor. I know a doctor! And he knows all about…this sort of thing! He'd better!”
   He ran back outside in time to see a broomstick touch down on the lawn, piloted by the Archchancellor himself.
   “I thought I'd better come along anyway,” said Ridcully. “Is there anything—”
   Vimes swung himself on to it before the wizard could get off.
   “Take me to Twinkle Street. Can you do that?” he said. “It's…important!”
   “Hang on, your grace,” said Ridcully, and Vimes's stomach dropped into his legs as the stick climbed vertically. He made a small mental note to promote Buggy Swires and buy him the buzzard he'd always wanted. Anyone prepared to do this every day for the good of the city couldn't be paid too much.
   “Try my left pocket,” said Ridcully, when they were well aloft. “There's something that belongs to you, I believe.”
   Nervously, well aware of what a wizard's pocket might hold, Vimes pulled out a bunch of paper flowers, a string of flags of all nations…and a silver cigar case.
   “Landed on the Bursar's head,” said the Archchancellor, steering around a seagull. “I hope it's not damaged.”
   “It's…fine,” said Vimes. “Thank you. Er…I'll put it back for now, shall I? Don't seem to have any pockets on me at the moment.”
   It found its way back, Vimes thought. We're home.
   “And a suit of ornamental armour landed in the High Energy Magic building,” Ridcully went on, “and, I am happy to report, it is—”
   “Very badly bent out of shape?” said Vimes. Ridcully hesitated. He was aware of Vimes's feelings of gilt.
   “Excessively, your grace. Completely bent out of shape because of quantum thingummies, I suspect,” he said.
   Vimes shivered. He was still naked. Even the hated formal uniform would have helped up here. But it didn't matter either way, now. Gilt and feathers and badges and feeling chilly…there were other things that mattered more, and always would.
   He jumped off the stick before it had stopped, stumbled in a circle and fell against Dr Lawn's door, hammering on it with his fists.
   After a while it opened a crack and a familiar voice, changed only a little with age, said “Yes?”
   Vimes thrust the door fully open. “Look at me, Doctor Lawn,” he said.
   Lawn stared. “Keel?” he said. In his other hand he was holding the world's biggest syringe.
   “Can't be. They buried John Keel. You know they did,” said Vimes. He saw the huge instrument in the man's hand. “What the hell were you going to do with that?”
   “Baste a turkey, as a matter of fact. Look, who are you, then, because you look like—”
   “Grab all your midwifing stuff and come with me now,” said Vimes. “All those funny tools you said worked so well. Bring 'em all. Right now. And I'll make you the richest doctor that ever lived,” said Vimes, a man wearing nothing but mud and blood.
   Lawn gestured weakly towards the kitchen. “I'll just have to take the turkey out—”
   “Stuff the turkey!”
   “I already—”
   “Come on!”
   The broomstick did not fly well with three on board, but it was faster than walking and Vimes at this point knew he'd be incapable of anything else. He was out of breath and strength by the time he got home the first time. Now merely standing upright was a test of endurance. It was the broomstick or crawling.
   It lumbered down out of the sky and landed unsteadily on the lawn.
   “Lady upstairs, big bedroom on left,” said Vimes, pushing vaguely at the doctor. “Midwife there, not got a clue. All the money you want. Go on.”
   Lawn hurried off. Vimes, helped by Ridcully, followed rather more stiffly, but as they reached the door the doctor came out walking backwards very slowly. It became apparent, as he emerged, that this was because Detritus's huge crossbow was pressed against his nose.
   When Vimes spoke his voice was slightly muffled, because he was lying flat on the ground.
   “Put the bow down, sergeant,” he managed.
   “He come rushin' in, Mister Vimes,” rumbled Detritus.
   “That's because he's the doctor, sergeant. Let him go upstairs. That is an order, thank you.”
   “Right, Mister Vimes,” said Detritus, stepping aside with reluctance and shouldering the bow. At which point, the bow discharged.
   When the thunder had died away Vimes got up and looked around. He hadn't actually liked the shrubbery very much. That was just as well. Nothing remained but some tree trunks, and they were all stripped of bark down one side. There were a few small fires.
   “Er, sorry about that, Mister Vimes,” said the troll.
   “What did I tell you about Mister Safety Catch?” said Vimes weakly.
   “When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend,” recited Detritus, saluting. “Sorry, sir, but we all a bit tense at dis time.”
   “I certainly am,” said Ridcully, picking himself off the lawn and pulling twigs out of his beard. “I may not walk properly for the rest of the day. I suggest, sergeant, that we pick the doctor up, bring him round under the pump, and take him upstairs—”
   The things that happened next were a waking dream for Vimes. He moved like a ghost through his own house, which was full of watchmen. No one wanted to be anywhere else.
   He shaved himself very slowly, concentrating on every stroke. He was aware of noises off, which arrived via the pink clouds in his head.
   “—he says he wants them boiled, the nasty horrid things! What's that for, to make them softer?”
   “—trolls and dwarfs on tonight, every door and window covered and I mean covered–”
   “—stood over me and said damn well boil them for twenty minutes! Like they were cabbage–”
   “—now he's asked for a small brandy–”
   “—Mrs Content stormed out and he said not to let her in again–”
   “—Igor came and offered to help and Lawn took one look and said only if he's been boiled for twenty minutes–”
   “—pox doctor, when all's said and done–”
   “—old Stoneface'll cover him with gold if it all turns out right–”
   “—yeah, and if it turns out wrong?”
   Vimes got dressed in his street uniform, moving slowly and willing every limb into position. He brushed his hair. He went out into the hall. He sat down on an uncomfortable chair with his helmet on his knees, while ghosts both living and dead hurried around him.
   Usually—always—there was a part of Vimes that watched the other parts, because he was at heart a policeman. This time it wasn't there. It was in here with the rest of him, staring at nothing, and waiting
   “—someone take up more towels–”
   “—now he's asked for a large brandy!”
   “—he wants to see Mister Vimes!”
   Vimes's brain lit up from whatever little pilot light of thought had been operating at the most basic level. He walked up the stairs, helmet under his arm, like a man going to take a statement. He knocked at the door.
   Lawn opened it. He was holding a brandy glass in his other hand, and moved aside with a smile.
   Sybil was sitting up. He saw, through the mist of exhaustion, that she was holding something wrapped in a shawl.
   “He's called Sam, Sam,” she said. “And no argument.”
   The sun came out.
   “I'll teach him to walk!” beamed Vimes. “I'm good at teaching people to walk!” And he fell asleep before he hit the carpet.
   It was a pleasant stroll in the early evening air. Vimes trailed cigar smoke behind him as he walked down to Pseudopolis Yard, where he acknowledged the cheers and congratulations and thanked people for the lovely flowers.
   His next stop was at Dr Lawn's house where he sat and spoke for a while, about such things as memory and how tricky it can be, and forgetfulness, and how profitable it could prove.

Then, with the doctor, he went to his bank. This institution was, not surprisingly, willing to open outside normal hours for a man who was a Duke, and the richest man in the city, and the Commander of the City Watch and, not least, quite prepared to kick the door down. There he signed over one hundred thousand dollars and the freehold of a large corner site in Goose Gate to one Dr J. Lawn.
   And then, alone, he went up to Small Gods. Legitimate First, whatever his private feelings, knew enough not to shut the gates on this night, and he'd filled the lamps.
   Vimes strolled over the moss-grown gravel. In the twilight, the lilac blooms seemed to shine. Their scent hung in the air like fog.
   He waded through the grass and reached the grave of John Keel, where he sat on the headstone, taking care not to disturb the wreaths; he had a feeling that the sergeant would understand that a copper sometimes needed to take the weight off his feet. And he finished his cigar, and stared into the sunset.
   After a while he was aware of a scraping noise to his left and could just make out the turf starting to sag on one of the graves. A grey hand was thrust out of the ground, clutching a shovel. A few pieces of turf were pushed aside and, with some effort, Reg Shoe rose from the grave. He was halfway out before he noticed Vimes, and nearly fell back.
   “Oh, you frightened the life out of me, Mister Vimes!”
   “Sorry, Reg,” said Vimes.
   “Of course, when I say you frightened the life out of me—” the zombie began, gloomily.
   “Yes, Reg, I understood you. Quiet down there, was it?”
   “Very peaceful, sir, very peaceful. I think I'll have to get myself a new coffin before next year, though. They don't last any time at all these days.”
   “I suppose not that many people look for durability, Reg,” said Vimes.
   Reg slowly shovelled the soil back into place. “I know everyone thinks it's a bit odd, but I think I owe it to them really,” he said. “It's only one day a year, but it's like…solidarity.”
   “With the downtrodden masses, eh?” said Vimes.
   “What, sir?”
   “No argument from me, Reg,” said Vimes happily. This was a perfect moment. Not even Reg, fussing around smoothing down earth and patting turf into place, could detract from it.
   There'll come a time when it'll all be clear, Sweeper had said. A perfect moment.
   The occupants of these graves had died for something. In the sunset glow, in the rising of the moon, in the taste of the cigar, in the warmth that comes from sheer exhaustion, Vimes saw it.
   History finds a way. The nature of events changed, but the nature of the dead had not. It had been a mean, shameful little fight that ended them, a flyspecked footnote of history, but they hadn't been mean or shameful men. They hadn't run, and they could have run with honour. They'd stayed, and he wondered if the path had seemed as clear to them then as it did to him now. They'd stayed not because they wanted to be heroes, but because they chose to think of it as their job, and it was in front of them—
   “I'll be off, then, sir,” said Reg, shouldering his shovel. He seemed a long way away. “Sir?”
   “Yeah, right. Right, Reg. Thank you,” mumbled Vimes, and in the pink glow of the moment watched the corporal march down the darkening path and out into the city.
   John Keel, Billy Wiglet, Horace Nancyball, Dai Dickins, Cecil “Snouty” Clapman, Ned Coates and, technically, Reg Shoe. Probably there were no more than twenty people in the city now who knew all the names, because there were no statues, no monuments, nothing written down anywhere. You had to have been there.
   He felt privileged to have been there twice.
   The night was welling up as the sun set. It unfolded from the shadows where it had hidden from the day, and flowed and joined together. He felt his senses flow with it, spreading out like the whiskers of a dark, giant cat.
   Beyond the gates of the cemetery the city noise died down a little, although Ankh-Morpork never truly slept. It probably didn't dare.
   Vimes felt now, in this strange calm mood, that he could hear everything, everything, just as he had done back in that terrible moment in Heroes Street when history came to claim its own. He heard the tiny sounds in the stone wall as it cooled, the slither of dirt underground as Reg's vacated plot settled, the faint movement of the long grass around the graves…a thousand subtle sounds added up to a richly textured, localized silence. It was the song of the dark and in it, on the edge of detection, was a discord.
   Let's see…he'd put a guard on his house and they were core people, ones he could trust not to stand around and get bored but to remain watchful, all night long. He hadn't had to explain how important that was. So the house was safe. And the Watch Houses had double guard, too—
   There was something wrong with Keel's grave. There was always the egg, every year, a little joke out of history. But now, it looked as though there was nothing down there but bits of eggshell—
   As he leaned forward to look, the blade went over his head.
   But the beast had been ready. The beast didn't think about guards and defences. The beast didn't think at all. But it forever sniffed the air and eyed the shadows and sampled the night and almost before the swish of the sword it had sent Vimes's hand thrusting into his pocket.
   Crouched, he swivelled and punched Carcer on the kneecap with one of Mrs Goodbody's finest items. He heard things crackle, he launched himself up and forward, he bore Carcer to the ground.
   There was no science to this. The beast was off the chain and looking to kill. It was not often that Vimes was sure that he could make the world a better place, but he was sure now. It was all very clear now.
   And also very hard. The sword had gone, tumbling into the grass as Carcer went down. But Carcer fought, and was as tough as teak. And it is very hard, with your hands, to kill a man who does not want to be killed.
   Vimes shook off the brass knuckles because what he needed to do now was throttle. There was no room, though. Carcer was trying to stick a thumb in his eye.
   They rolled across the graves, scrabbling and struggling for advantage. Blood filled Vimes's left eye. His rage needed just one second, and that second was being denied.
   He rolled again, and flung out a hand.
   And there was the sword. He rolled again, and again, and staggered up with the blade in his hand.
   Carcer had rolled too, and was pulling himself up with remarkable speed for a man with only one good knee. Vimes saw that he was dragging himself upright by one of the lilac trees; blossoms and scent floated down in the darkness.
   Metal slid. There was the momentary gleam of a knife. And a little chuckle, Carcer's little laugh that said, hey, this is all good fun, eh?
   “So who's gonna arrest me?” he said, as they both gulped air. “Sergeant Keel or Commander Vimes?”
   “Who said you were going to be arrested?” said Vimes, trying to fill his lungs. “I'm fighting an attacker, Carcer.”
   “Oh, you was, Mister Vimes,” said the shadow. “Only now I'm in front of you.” Metal clinked on the gravel path. “And I ain't armed no more, haha. Thrown down my last weapon. Can't kill an unarmed man, Mister Vimes. You got to arrest me now. Drag me in front of Vetinari. Let me have my little say, haha. You can't kill me, just standin' here.”
   “No one wants to hear anything you've got to say, Carcer.”
   “Then you'd better kill me, Mister Vimes. I got no weapon. I can't run.”
   “You've always got an extra knife, Carcer,” said Vimes, above the roar of the beast.
   “Not this time, Mister Vimes. Come on, Mister Vimes. Can't blame a man for tryin', eh? A man's got to give it his best shot, right? No hard feelings?”
   And that was Carcer. No hard feelings. His best shot. Can't blame a man for trying.
   Innocent words got dirty in his mouth.
   Vimes took a step closer.
   “You got a nice home to go to, Mister Vimes. I mean, what've I got?”
   And the man was convincing. He fooled everybody. You could almost forget the corpses.
   Vimes glanced down.
   “Whoops, sorry,” said Carcer, “I walked over your grave there. No offence meant, eh?”
   Vimes said nothing. The beast was howling. It wanted to shut that mouth up.
   “You're not going to kill me, Mister Vimes. Not you. Not you with a badge. That ain't your way, Mister Vimes.”
   Without looking, Vimes reached up and tore his badge off.
   “Ah, well, I know you want to give me a fright, Mister Vimes, and many would say you've got a right. Look, here's what I'll do, I'll throw away my other knife, haha, you knew I'd got another one, right?”
   It was the voice. It could make you think that what you knew was wrong.
   “Okay, okay, I can see you're upset, haha, fair enough, and you know I've always got a third knife, well, I'm dropping it now, see, there it goes.”
   Vimes was only a step or two away now.
   “That's it, Mister Vimes. No more knives. I can't run. I surrender. No messing about this time. I give in, okay? Just arrest me? For old times' sake?”
   The beast screamed inside Vimes. It screamed that no one would blame him for doing the hangman out of ten dollars and a free breakfast. Yeah, and you could say a swift stab now was the merciful solution, because every hangman knew you could go the easy way or the hard way and there wasn't one in the country that'd let something like Carcer go the easy way. The gods knew the man deserved it…
   …but young Sam was watching him, across thirty years.
   When we break down, it all breaks down. That's just how it works. You can bend it, and if you make it hot enough you can bend it in a circle, but you can't break it. When you break it, it all breaks down until there's nothing unbroken. It starts here and now.
   He lowered the sword.
   Carcer looked up, grinning, and said, “Never tastes right, does it, haha, an egg without salt…”
   Vimes felt his hand begin to move of its own accord—
   And stopped. Red rage froze.
   There was The Beast, all around him. And that's what it was. A beast. Useful, but still a beast. You could hold it on a chain, and make it dance, and juggle balls. It didn't think. It was dumb. What you were, what you were, was not The Beast.
   You didn't have to do what it wanted. If you did, Carcer won.
   He dropped the sword.
   Carcer stared at him, the gleam of Vimes's sudden smile more worrying than the rictus of his rage. Then metal gleamed in his hand. But Vimes was already on him, grabbing the hand, slamming it again and again on John Keel's headstone until the fourth knife dropped from bleeding fingers. He dragged the man upright with both hands forced up behind his back and rammed him hard against the stone.
   “See that up in the sky, Carcer?” he said, his mouth by the man's ear. “That's the sunset, that is. That's the stars. And they'll shine all the better on my lad Sam tomorrow night 'cos they won't be shining down on you, Carcer, by reason of the fact that before the dew's off the leaves in the morning I'll drag you in front of Vetinari, and we'll have the witnesses there, lots of 'em, and maybe even a lawyer for you if there's any of 'em who could plead for you with a straight face and then, Carcer, we'll take you to the Tanty, one gallows, no waiting, and you can dance the hemp fandango. And then I'll bleedin' well go home and maybe I'll even have a hard-boiled egg.”
   “You're hurting!”
   “You know, you're right there, Carcer!” Vimes managed to get both the man's wrists in a steel grip, and ripped the sleeve off his own shirt. “I'm hurting and I'm still doing it all by the book.” He wrapped the linen around the wrists a couple of times and knotted it firmly. “I'll make sure there's water in your cell, Carcer. I'll make sure you get breakfast, anything you like. I'll make sure the hangman doesn't get sloppy and let you choke to death. I'll even make sure the trapdoor is greased.” He released the pressure. Carcer stumbled, and Vimes kicked his legs from under him.
   “The machine ain't broken, Carcer. The machine is waiting for you,' he said, tearing a sleeve off the man's own shirt and fashioning it into a crude binding for his ankles. The city will kill you dead. The proper wheels'll turn. It'll be fair, I'll make sure of that. Afterwards you won't be able to say you didn't have a fair trial. Won't be able to say a thing, haha. I'll see to that, too…”
   He stood back.
   “Good evening, your grace,” said Lord Vetinari. Vimes spun around. There was a change of texture in the darkness, which could have been man-shaped.
   Vimes snatched up his sword and peered into the night. The shape came forward, became recognizable.
   “How long were you there?” he demanded.
   “Oh…some little while,” said the Patrician. “Like you, I prefer to come alone and…contemplate.”
   “You were very quiet!” said Vimes accusingly.
   “Is that a crime, your grace?”
   “And you heard—?”
   “A very neat arrest,” said Vetinari. “Congratulations, your grace.”
   Vimes looked at the unbloodied sword.
   “I suppose so,” he said, temporarily derailed.
   “On the birth of your son, I meant.”
   “Oh…yes. Oh. Of course. Yes. Well…thank you.”
   “A healthy lad, I am given to understand.”
   “We'd have been just as happy with a daughter,” said Vimes, quickly.
   “Quite so. These are modern times, after all. Oh, I see you have dropped your badge.”
   Vimes glanced at the long grass.
   “I'll come and find it in the morning,” he said. “But this,” he picked up the moaning Carcer and slung him over his shoulder with a grunt, “is going back to Pseudopolis Yard right now.”
   They walked slowly down the gravel path, leaving the scent of lilac behind. Ahead was the everyday stink of the world.
   “You know,” said Lord Vetinari, after a few moments, “it has often crossed my mind that those men deserve a proper memorial of some sort.”
   “Oh yes?” said Vimes, in a non-committal voice. His heart was still pounding. “In one of the main squares, perhaps?”
   “Yes, that would be a good idea.”
   “Perhaps a tableau in bronze?” said Vimes sarcastically. “All seven of them raising the flag, perhaps?”
   “Bronze, yes,” said Vetinari.
   “Really? And some sort of inspiring slogan?” said Vimes.
   “Yes, indeed. Something like, perhaps, ‘They Did The Job They Had To Do’?”
   “No,” said Vimes, coming to a halt under a lamp by the crypt entrance. “How dare you? How dare you! At this time! In this place! They did the job they didn't have to do, and they died doing it, and you can't give them anything. Do you understand? They fought for those who'd been abandoned, they fought for one another, and they were betrayed. Men like them always are. What good would a statue be? It'd just inspire new fools to believe they're going to be heroes. They wouldn't want that. Just let them be. Forever.”
   They walked in heavy silence, and then Vetinari said, as if there had been no outburst: “Happily, it appears that the new deacon at the temple here has suddenly heard the call.”
   “What call?” said Vimes, his heart still racing.
   “I'm never very good at religious matters, but apparently he was filled with a burning desire to spread the good word to the benighted heathen,” said Vetinari.
   “Where?”
   “I suggested Ting Ling.”
   “That's right on the other side of the world!”
   “Well, a good word can't be spread too far, sergeant.”
   “Well, at least it puts—”
   Vimes stopped at the entrance gates. Overhead, another lamp flickered. He dropped Carcer to the ground.
   “You knew? You bloody well knew, didn't you?”
   “Not until, oh, one second ago,” said Vetinari. “As one man to another, commander, I must ask you: did you ever wonder why I wore the lilac?”
   “Yeah. I wondered,” said Vimes.
   “But you never asked.”
   “No. I never asked,” said Vimes shortly. “It's a flower. Anyone can wear a flower.”
   “At this time? In this place?”
   “Tell me, then.”
   “Then I'll recall the day I was sent on an urgent errand,” said Vetinari. “I had to save the life of a man. Not a usual errand for an Assassin although, in fact, I had already saved it once before.” He gave Vimes a quizzical look.
   “You'd shot a man who was aiming a crossbow?” said Vimes.
   “An inspired guess, commander! Yes. I have an eye for the…unique. But now I was fighting time. The streets were blocked. Chaos and confusion were everywhere, and it wasn't as if I even knew where he could be found. In the end, I took to the rooftops. And thus I came at last to Cable Street, where there was a different sort of confusion.”
   “Tell me what you saw,” said Vimes.
   “I saw a man called Carcer…vanish. And I saw a man called John Keel die. At least, I saw him dead.”
   “Really,” said Vimes.
   “I joined the fight. I snatched up a lilac bloom from a fallen man and, I have to say, held it in my mouth. I'd like to think I made some difference; I certainly killed four men, although I take no particular pride in that. They were thugs, bullies. No real skill. Besides, their leader had apparently fled, and what morale they had had gone with him. The men with the lilac, I have to say, fought like tigers. Not skilfully, I'll admit, but when they saw that their leader was down they took the other side to pieces. Astonishing.
   “And then, afterwards, I took a look at John Keel. It was John Keel. How could there be any question about that? Blood on him of course. There was blood everywhere. His wounds looked somewhat old, I thought. And death, as we know, changes people. Yet I remember wondering: this much? So I put it down as half a mystery and today…sergeant…we find the other half of a mystery. It's wonderful, isn't it, how alike men can be? I can imagine that even your Sergeant Colon would not realise anything. After all, he saw Keel die and he watched you grow up—”
   “Where is this leading?” Vimes demanded.
   “Nowhere, commander. What could I prove? And to what end would I prove it?”
   “Then I'm saying nothing.”
   “I cannot imagine what you could say,” said Vetinari. “No. I agree. Let us leave the dead alone. But for you, commander, as a little gift on the occasion of the birth of—”
   “There's nothing I want,” said Vimes quickly. “You can't promote me any further. There's nothing left to bribe me with. I've got more than I deserve. The Watch is working well. We don't even need a new bloody dartboard—”
   “In memory of the late John Keel—” Vetinari began.
   “I warned you—”
   “—I can give you back Treacle Mine Road.”
   Only the high-pitched squeak of bats, hunting around the poplars, broke the silence that followed.
   Then Vimes muttered: “A dragon burned it years ago. Some dwarfs live in the cellars now…”
   “Yes, commander. But dwarfs…well, dwarfs are so refreshingly open about money. The more money the city offers, the less dwarf there is. The stable's still there, and the old mining tower. Stout stone walls all around. It could all be put back, commander. In memory of John Keel, a man who in a few short days changed the lives of many and, perhaps, saved some sanity in a mad world. Why, in a few months you could light the lamp over the door…”
   Again, all that could be heard was the bats.
   Perhaps they could even bring back the smell, Vimes thought. Perhaps there could be a window above the privy that'd spring open if you thumped it just right. Perhaps they could teach new coppers to learn old tricks—
   “We could do with the space, it's true,” he conceded, with some effort.
   “I can see you like the sound of it already,” said Vetinari. “And if you care to come along to my office tomorrow, we can settle the—”
   “There's a trial tomorrow,” said Vimes sharply.
   “Ah, yes. Of course. And it will be a fair one,” said the Patrician.
   “It'd better be,” said Vimes. “I want this bastard to hang, after all.”
   “Well, then,” said Vetinari, “afterwards we could—”
   “Afterwards I'm going home to my family for a while,” said Vimes.
   “Good! Well said,” said Vetinari, not missing a beat. “You have a gift, I have noticed, for impressive oratory.” And Vimes heard the gentle note of warning as he added, “At this time, commander, and in this place.”
   “That's sergeant-at-arms, thank you,” said Vimes. “For now.”
   He grabbed Carcer's shirt collar, and dragged him to justice.
   On the way back to Scoone Avenue, in the dark of night, Vimes walked along the alley behind Clay Lane and stopped when he reckoned he was at a point halfway between the backs of the pawn shop and the shonky shop, and therefore behind the temple.
   He threw his cigar stub over the fence. He heard it land on gravel, which moved a little.
   And then he went home. And the world turned towards morning.
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   1. The Igor employed by the Watch as forensic specialist and medical aide was quite young (in so far as you could tell with an Igor, since useful limbs and other organs were passed on among Igors as others might hand on a pocket watch) and very modern in his thinking. He had a DA haircut with extended quiff, wore crepe soles and sometimes forgot to lisp.
   2. The Uberwald League of Temperance, made up of former vampires who now wore black ribbons to show that they had completely sworn off the sticky stuff, my vord yes, and much preferred a good singsong and a healthy game of table-tennis.
   3. Old Tom, the University's venerable clock, tolled not sounds but silences. They were not simply ordinary silences, but intervals of noise-absorbing nonsound that filled the world with loud soundlessness.
   4. Who was an orangutan, changed from his former human shape as a result of a long-forgotten magical accident. It was so forgotten, in fact, that now people were forgetting he was an orangutan. This might seem quite hard to do, given that even a small orangutan is quite capable of filling all immediately available space, but to the wizards and most of the citizens he was now just the Librarian, and that was that. In fact, if someone ever reported that there was an orangutan in the Library, the wizards would probably go and ask the Librarian if he'd seen it.
   5. Named after Wallace Sonky, a man without whose experiments with thin rubber the pressure on housing in Ankh-Morpork would have been a good deal more pressing.
   6. In the same way that ancient forests become coal, ancient swaths of natural sugar cane can become, under the pressure of millennia, what in various parts of the Disc is known as hokey-pokey, pig treacle or rock molasses. But much boiling and purification was necessary to create the thick golden syrup that was the city dweller's honey, and these days Ankh-Morpork's supplies come from the more accessible toffee beds near Quirm.
   7. Like creamed, but it goes on for a lot longer.
   8. And this was true. Don't bother with the boots, would have been Trooper Gabitass's advice, had he been inclined to part with it. You need to bribe someone on the baggage carts to build up stock and when all's said and done you'll only make a few dollars. Stick to jewellery. It's portable. Trooper Gabitass had seen too many battlefields up close to use the word “glory” without wincing.
   9. The Selachii and the Venturi made a point, on occasions like this, to talk only about things on which there was no possibility of disagreement. Given the history of the two families, this had become a very small number of things.
   10. Sometimes, admittedly, for a given value of “never”.

Polly cut off her hair in front of the mirror, feeling slightly guilty about not feeling very guilty about doing so. It was supposed to be her crowning glory, and everyone said it was beautiful, but she generally wore it in a net when she was working. She’d always told herself it was wasted on her. But she was careful to see that the long golden coils all landed on the small sheet spread out for the purpose.
   If she would admit to any strong emotion at all at this time, it was sheer annoyance that a haircut was all she needed to pass for a young man. She didn’t even need to bind up her bosom, which she’d heard was the normal practice. Nature had seen to it that she had barely any problems in this area.
   The effect that the scissors had was… erratic, but it was no worse than other male haircuts here. It’d do.
   She did feel cold on the back of her neck, but that was only partly because of the loss of her long hair. It was also because of the Stare.
   The Duchess watched her from above the bed.
   It was a poor woodcut, hand-coloured mostly in blue and red. It was of a plain, middle-aged woman whose sagging chin and slightly bulging eyes gave the cynical the feeling that someone had put a large fish in a dress, but the artist had managed to capture something extra in that strange, blank expression. Some pictures had eyes that followed you around the room; this one looked right through you. It was a face you found in every home. In Borogravia, you grew up with the Duchess watching you.
   Polly knew her parents had one of the pictures in their room, and knew also that when her mother was alive she used to curtsy to it every night.
   She reached up and turned this picture round so that it faced the wall.
   A thought in her head said No. It was overruled. She’d made up her mind.
   Then she dressed herself in her brother’s clothes, tipped the contents of the sheet into a small bag which went into the bottom of her pack along with the spare clothes, put the note on her bed, picked up the pack and climbed out of the window. At least, Polly climbed out of the window, but it was Oliver’s feet that landed lightly on the ground.
   Dawn was just turning the dark world into monochrome when she slipped across the inn’s yard.
   The Duchess watched her from the inn sign, too. Her father had been a great loyalist, at least up to the death of her mother. The sign hadn’t been repainted this year, and a random bird-dropping had given the Duchess a squint.
   Polly checked that the recruiting sergeant’s cart was still in front of the bar, its bright banners now drab and heavy with last night’s rain. By the look of that big fat sergeant, it would be hours before it was on the road again. She had plenty of time. He looked like a slow breakfaster.
   She let herself out of the door in the back wall and headed uphill. At the top, she turned back and looked at the waking town. Smoke was rising from a few chimneys, but since Polly was always the first to wake, and had to yell the maids out of their beds, the inn was still sleeping. She knew that the Widow Clambers had stayed overnight (it had been “raining too hard for her to go home”, according to Polly’s father) and, personally, she hoped for his sake that she’d stay every night. The town had no shortage of widows, and Eva Clambers was a warm-hearted lady who baked like a champion. His wife’s long illness and Paul’s long absence had taken a lot out of her father. Polly was glad some of it was being put back. The old ladies who spent their days glowering from their windows might spy and peeve and mumble, but they had been doing that for too long. No one listened any more.
   She raised her gaze. Smoke and steam was already rising from the laundry of the Girls’ Working School. It hung over one end of the town like a threat, big and grey with tall, thin windows. It was always silent. When she was small, she’d been told that that was where the Bad Girls went. The nature of “badness” was not explained, and at the age of five Polly had received the vague idea that it consisted of not going to bed when you were told. At the age of eight she’d learned it was where you were lucky not to go for buying your brother a paint box. She turned her back and set off between the trees, which were full of birdsong.
   Forget you were ever Polly. Think young male, that was the thing. Fart loudly and with self-satisfaction at a job well done, move like a puppet that’d had a couple of random strings cut, never hug anyone and, if you meet a friend, punch them. A few years working in the bar had provided plenty of observational material. No problem about not swinging her hips, at least. Nature had been pretty sparing there, too.
   And then there was the young male walk to master. At least women swung only their hips. Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of space, she thought. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail. She’d seen it a lot in the inn. The boys tried to walk big in self-defence against all those other big boys out there. I’m bad, I’m fierce, I’m cool, I’d like a pint of shandy and me mam wants me home by nine…
   Let’s see, now… arms out from the body as though holding a couple of bags of flour… check. Shoulders swaying as though she was elbowing her way through a crowd… check. Hands slightly bunched and making rhythmical circling motions as though turning two independent handles attached to the waist… check. Legs moving forward loosely and ape-like… check…
   It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
   The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection. There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün. The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
   It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
   She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back. And, of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
   The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush. Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world. It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.1 Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
   The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, towards sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum-banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a great life in the Ins-and-Outs!”

   There was always a war. Usually it was a border dispute, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbour was letting his hedge grow too long. Sometimes it was bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
   Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire. Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather round the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
   The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her”.
   And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver”. Her father used to sing it when she was small and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant. And now…
   …Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips. She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
   “What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
   “Want to join up, sir!”
   The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock. Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
   “Just like that?” he said.
   “Yessir!”
   “Really?”
   “Yessir!”
   “You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
   “Nosir!”
   “I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
   “Nosir!”
   “Did I mention how the spanking red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
   “Don’t think so, sir!”
   “Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
   “Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honour of the Duchess, sir!”
   “You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
   “Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers towards him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
   “The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs’, sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
   “Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
   “Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
   “Good lad!”
   The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork. “Name, lad?” he said.
   “Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
   “Age?”
   “Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
   “Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
   “’e’d ’ave ’ad to ’ave ’elp,” said the corporal, grinning. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
   Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
   “Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
   Polly picked up the pen and signed.
   “What’s that?” said the corporal.
   “My signature,” said Polly.
   She heard the door open behind her, and spun round. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
   “You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, as well. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, corporal. And the picture, of course.”
   “Right, sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking-glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
   “It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
   “Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
   It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded and something, some kind of moss or something, was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
   “Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
   “What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
   “An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of her grace.”
   He turned and looked up at the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
   Polly looked at the next recruit with horror that she hoped she was concealing. She hadn’t really noticed him in the gloom, because he was wearing black—not cool, styled black, but a dusty black, the kind of suit people got buried in. By the look of it, that person had been him. There were cobwebs all over it. The boy himself had stitches across his forehead.
   “Your name, lad?” said Jackrum.
   “Igor, thur.”
   Jackrum counted the stitches.
   “You know, I had a feeling it was going to be,” he said. “And I see you’re eighteen.”

   “Awake!”
   “Oh, gods…” Commander Samuel Vimes put his hands over his eyes.
   “I beg your pardon, your grace?” said the Ankh-Morpork consul to Zlobenia. “Are you ill, your grace?”
   “What’s your name again, young man?” said Vimes. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been travelling for two weeks and not getting a lot of sleep and I’ve spent all day being introduced to people with difficult names. That’s bad for the brain.”
   “It’s Clarence, your grace. Clarence Chinny.”
   “Chinny?” said Vimes, and Clarence read everything in his expression.
   “I’m afraid so, sir,” he said.
   “Were you a good fighter at school?” said Vimes.
   “No, your grace, but no one could beat me over the one-hundred-yard dash.”
   Vimes laughed. “Well, Clarence, any national anthem that starts ‘Awake!’ is going to lead to trouble. They didn’t teach you this in the Patrician’s office?”
   “Er… no, your grace,” said Chinny.
   “Well, you’ll find out. Carry on, then.”
   “Yes, sir.” Chinny cleared his throat. “The Borogravian National Anthem,” he announced, for the second time.

   “Awake sorry, your grace, ye sons of the Motherland
   Taste no more the wine of the sour apples
   Woodsmen, grasp your choppers!
   Farmers, slaughter with the tool formerly used for lifting beets the foe!
   Frustrate the endless wiles of our enemies
   We into the darkness march singing
   Against the whole world in arms coming
   But see the golden light upon the mountain tops!
   The new day is a great big fish!”

   “Er…” Vimes said. “That last bit…?”
   “That is a literal translation, your grace,” said Clarence nervously. “It means something like ‘an amazing opportunity’ or ‘a glittering prize’, your grace.”
   “When we’re not in public, Clarence, ‘sir’ will do. ‘Your grace’ is just to impress the natives.” Vimes slumped back in his uncomfortable chair, chin in his hand, and then winced.
   “Two thousand three hundred miles,” he said, shifting his position. “And it’s freezing on a broomstick, however low they fly. And then the barge, and then the coach…” He winced again. “I read your report. Do you think it’s possible for an entire nation to be insane?”
   Clarence swallowed. He’d been told that he was talking to the second most powerful man in Ankh-Morpork, even if the man himself acted as though he was ignorant of the fact. His desk in this chilly tower room was rickety; it had belonged to the head janitor of the Kneck garrison until yesterday. Paperwork cluttered its scarred surface and was stacked in piles behind Vimes’s chair.
   Vimes himself did not look, to Clarence, like a duke. He looked like a watchman which, in fact, Clarence understood, he was. This offended Clarence Chinny. People at the top should look as though they belonged there.
   “That’s a very… interesting question, sir,” he said. “You mean the people—”
   “Not the people, the nation,” said Vimes. “Borogravia looks off its head, to me, from what I’ve read. I expect the people just do the best they can and get on with raising their kids which, I might say, I’d rather be doing right now, too. Look, you know what I mean. You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.”
   “It’s a fascinating idea, sir,” said Clarence diplomatically.
   Vimes looked round the room. The walls were bare stone. The windows were narrow. It was damn cold, even on a sunny day. All that bad food, and that bumping about and sleeping on bad beds… and all that travelling in the dark, too, on dwarf barges in their secret canals under the mountains—the gods alone knew what intricate diplomacy Lord Vetinari had pulled off to get that, although the Low King owed Vimes a few favours…
   …all of that for this cold castle over this cold river between these stupid countries, with their stupid war. He knew what he wanted to do. If they’d been people, scuffling in the gutter, he’d have known what to do. He’d have banged their heads together and maybe shoved them in the cells overnight. You couldn’t bang countries together.
   Vimes picked up some paperwork, fiddled with it, and threw it down again. “To hell with this,” he said. “What’s happening out there?”
   “I understand there are a few pockets of resistance in some of the more inaccessible areas of the Keep, but they are being dealt with. For all practical purposes the Keep is in our hands. That was a clever ruse of yours, your gr– sir.”
   Vimes sighed. “No, Clarence, it was a dull old ruse. It should not be possible to get men into a fortress dressed as washerwomen. Three of them had moustaches, for goodness’ sake!”
   “The Borogravians are rather… old-fashioned about things like that, sir. On that subject, we appear to have zombies in the lower crypts. Dreadful things. A lot of high-ranking Borogravian military men were interred down there over the centuries, apparently.”
   “Really? What are they doing now?”
   Clarence raised his eyebrows. “Lurching, sir, I think. Groaning. Zombie things. Something seems to have stirred them up.”
   “Us, probably,” said Vimes. He got up, strode across the room, and pulled open the big heavy door. “Reg!” he yelled.
   After a moment another watchman appeared, and saluted. He was grey-faced, and Clarence couldn’t help noticing when the man saluted that the hand and fingers were held together with stitching.
   “Have you met Constable Shoe, Clarence?” said Vimes cheerfully. “One of my staff. Been dead for more than thirty years, and loves every minute of it, eh, Reg?”
   “Right, Mister Vimes,” said Reg, grinning and revealing a lot of brown teeth.
   “Some fellow countrymen of yours down in the cellar, Reg.”
   “Oh, dear. Lurching, are they?”
   “’fraid so, Reg.”
   “I shall go and have a word with them,” said Reg. He saluted again and marched out, with a hint of lurch.
   “He’s, er, from here?” said Chinny, who had gone quite pale.
   “Oh, no. The undiscovered country,” said Vimes. “He’s dead. However, credit where it’s due, he hasn’t let that stop him. You didn’t know we have a zombie in the Watch, Clarence?”
   “Er… no, sir. I’ve haven’t been back to the city in five years.” He swallowed. “I gather things have changed.”
   Horribly so, in Clarence Chinny’s opinion. Being consul to Zlobenia had been an easy job, which left him a lot of time to get on with his business. And then the big semaphore towers marched through, all along the valley, and suddenly Ankh-Morpork was an hour away. Before the clacks, a letter from Ankh-Morpork would take more than a two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expected a reply overnight. He’d been quite glad when Borogravia had destroyed several of those wretched towers. And then all hell had been let loose.
   “We’ve got all sorts in the Watch,” said Vimes. “And we bloody well need ’em now, Clarence, with Zlobenians and Borogravians scrapping in the streets over some damn quarrel that began a thousand years ago. It’s worse than dwarfs and trolls! All because someone’s great-to-the-power-of-umpteen grandmother slapped the face of someone’s great-ditto uncle! Borogravia and Zlobenia can’t even agree a border. They chose the river, and that changes course every spring. Suddenly the clacks towers are now on Borogravian soil—or mud, anyway—so the idiots burn them down for religious reasons.”
   “Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
   “Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
   “National pride, sir.”
   “What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
   “I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
   “I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
   “That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
   “Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets… written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbour’s ox…”
   “Um… Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er… updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
   Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
   “It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer… get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” said Chinny helpfully.
   “This is a holy book with an appendix?”
   “Exactly, sir.”
   “In a ring binder?”
   “Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations… turn up.”
   “You mean magically?”
   “I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
   Vimes opened a page at random. “Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
   “Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
   “Garlic? Well, I don’t much like that, so fair enough… cats?”
   “Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
   “Dwarfs? It says here ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold is an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened there?”
   “Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, your grace.”
   “I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “your grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke. He leafed through the pages, and stopped. “The colour blue?”
   “Correct, sir.”
   “What’s abominable about the colour blue? It’s just a colour! The sky is blue!”
   “Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly. “Nuggan, sir… um… is rather… tetchy,” he managed.
   “Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine p.m.?”
   “Um… we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted of Ankh-Morpork’…”
   “Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
   “Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
   “What do the priests do about this?”
   “Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
   “You mean Nuggan objects to dwarfs, cats and the colour blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
   Chinny coughed politely.
   “All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
   “Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
   “I take it people still make them here?”
   “Oh, yes, your gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er… people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
   “Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
   “No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
   “So how do they manage?”
   “These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
   “Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
   “Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
   “Only probably?”
   “No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young Duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHan sJosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
   “No children?”
   “No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
   “And they pray to her? Like a god?”
   Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like… living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to someone in a picture than to a god you can’t see.”
   Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
   “Who’d inherit?” he said.
   “Sir?”
   “Just following the monarchy, Mr Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
   “Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which for example—”
   “Who’s the smart money on, Mr Chinny?”
   “Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
   To Chinny’s astonishment Vimes laughed. “And he’s wondering how auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
   “But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
   “Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
   “There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess was alive. The only thing that really works is the aimy.”
   “All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
   “I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
   “Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was night-time. Cooking-fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
   “Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
   “No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
   “Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov– oops, sorry, all freedom–loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice… where was that report… ah, yes… it will starve first.”
   “Regrettably so, sir.”

   Igor stood mutely in front of the recruiting table.
   “Don’t often see you people these days,” said Jackrum.
   “Yeah, run out of fresh brains, ’ave yer?” said the corporal nastily.
   “Now then, corporal, no call for that,” said the sergeant, leaning back in his creaking chair. “There’s plenty of lads out there walking around on legs they wouldn’t still have if there hadn’t been a friendly Igor around, eh, Igor?”
   “Yeah? Well, I heard about people waking up and findin’ their friendly Igor had whipped out their brains in the middle of the night and buggered off to flog ’em,” said the corporal, glaring at Igor.
   “I promith you your brain ith entirely thafe from me, corporal,” said Igor. Polly started to laugh, and stopped when she realized absolutely no one else was doing so.
   “Yeah, well, I met a sergeant who said an Igor put a man’s legs on backwards,” said Corporal Strappi. “What good’s that to a soldier, eh?”
   “Could advance and retreat at the thame time?” said Igor levelly. “Thargent, I know all the thtorieth, and they are nothing but vile calumnieth. I theek only to therve my country. I do not want trouble.”
   “Right,” said the sergeant. “Nor do we. Make your mark, and you’ve got to promise not to mess about with Corporal Strappi’s brain, right? Another signature? My word, I can see we’ve got ourselves a bleedin’ college of recruits today. Give him his cardboard shilling, corporal.”
   “Thank you,” said Igor. “And I would like to give the picture a wipe, if it’th all the thame to you.” He produced a small cloth.
   “Wipe it?” said Strappi. “Is that allowed, sergeant?”
   “What do you want to wipe it for, mister?” said Jackrum.
   “To remove the invithible demonth,” said Igor.
   “I can’t see any invis—” Strappi began, and stopped.
   “Just let him, all right?” said Jackrum. “It’s one of their funny little ways.”
   “Dun’t seem right,” muttered Strappi. “Practically treason…”
   “Can’t see why it’d be wrong just to give the old girl a wash,” said the sergeant shortly. “Next. Oh…”
   Igor, after carefully wiping the stained picture and giving it a perfunctory peck, came and stood next to Polly, giving her a sheepish grin. But she was watching the next recruit.
   He was short and quite slim, which was fairly usual in a country where it was rare to get enough food to make you fat. But he was dressed in black and expensively, like an aristocrat; he even had a sword. The sergeant was, therefore, looking worried. Clearly a man could get into trouble talking wrong to a nob who might have important friends.
   “You sure you’ve come to the right place, sir?” he said.
   “Yes, sergeant. I wish to enlist.”
   Sergeant Jackrum shifted uneasily. “Yes, sir, but I’m not sure a gentleman like you—”
   “Are you going to enlist me or not, sergeant?”
   “Not usual for a gentleman to enlist as a common soldier, sir,” mumbled the sergeant.
   “What you mean, sergeant, is: is anyone after me? Is there a price on my head? And the answer is no.”
   “How about a mob with pitchforks?” said Corporal Strappi. “He’s a bloody vampire, sarge! Anyone can see that! He’s a Black Ribboner! Look, he’s got the badge!”
   “Which says ‘Not One Drop’,” said the young man calmly. “Not one drop of human blood, sergeant. A prohibition I have accepted for almost two years, thanks to the League of Temperance. Of course, if you have a personal objection, sergeant, you only need to give it to me in writing.”
   Which was quite a clever thing to say, Polly thought. Those clothes cost serious money. Most of the vampire families were highly nobby. You never knew who was connected to who… not just connected to who, in fact, but to whom. Whoms were likely to be far more trouble than your common everyday who. The sergeant was looking down a mile of rough road.
   “Got to move with the times, corporal,” he said, deciding not to go there. “And we certainly need the men.”
   “Yeah, but s’posin’ he wants to suck all my blood out in the middle of the night?” said Strappi.
   “Well, he’ll just have to wait until Private Igor’s finished looking for your brain, won’t he?” snapped the sergeant. “Sign here, mister.”
   The pen scratched on the paper. After a minute or two the vampire turned the paper over and continued writing on the other side. Vampires had long names.
   “But you can call me Maladict,” he said, dropping the pen back in the inkwell.
   “Thank you very much, I must say, si—private. Give him the shilling, corporal. Good job it’s not a silver one, eh? Haha!”
   “Yes,” said Maladict. “It is.”
   “Next!” said the sergeant. Polly watched as a farm boy, breeches held up with string, shuffled in front of the table and looked at the quill pen with the resentful perplexity of those confronted with new technology.
   She turned back to the bar. The landlord glared at her in the manner of bad landlords everywhere. As her father always said, if you kept an inn you either liked people or went mad. Oddly enough, some of the mad ones were the best at looking after their beer. But by the smell of the place, this wasn’t one of those.
   She leaned on the bar. “Pint, please,” she said, and watched glumly as the man gave a scowl of acknowledgement and turned to the big barrels. It’ll be sour, she knew, with the slop bucket under the tap tipped back in every night, and the spigot not put back, and… yes, it was going to be served in a leather tankard that had probably never been washed.
   A couple of new recruits were already knocking back their pints, though, with every audible sign of enjoyment. But this was Plün, after all. Anything that made you forget you were there was probably worth drinking.
   One of them said, “Lovely pint, this, eh?” and the boy next to him belched and said, “Best I’ve tasted, yeah.”
   Polly sniffed at the tankard. The contents smelled like something she wouldn’t feed to pigs. She took a sip, and completely changed her opinion. She would feed it to pigs. Those lads have never tasted beer before, she told herself. It’s like dad said. Out in the country there’s lads who’d join up for an uninhabited pair of breeches. And they’ll drink this muck and pretend to enjoy it like men, hey up, we supped some stuff last night, eh, lads? And then next thing—
   Oh, lor’… that reminded her. What’d the privy be like here? The men’s one out in the yard back at home was bad enough. Polly sloshed two big pails of water into it every morning while trying not to breathe. There was weird green moss growing on the slate floor. And The Duchess was a good inn. It had customers who took their boots off before going to bed.
   She narrowed her eyes. This stupid fool in front of her, a man making one long eyebrow do the work of two, was serving them slops and foul vinegar just before they marched off to war—
   “Thith beer,” said Igor, on her right, “tathteth of horthe pith.”
   Polly stood back. Even in a bar like this, that was killing talk.
   “Oh, you’d know, would you?” said the barman, looming over the boy. “Drunk horse piss, have you?”
   “Yeth,” said Igor.
   The barman stuck a fist in front of Igor’s face. “Now you listen to me, you lisping little—”
   A slim black arm appeared with amazing speed and a pale hand caught the man’s wrist. The one eyebrow contorted in sudden agony.
   “Now, it’s like this,” said Maladict calmly. “We’re soldiers of the Duchess, agreed? Just say ‘aargh’.”
   He must have squeezed. The man groaned.
   “Thank you. And you’re serving up as beer a liquid best described as foul water,” Maladict went on in the same level, conversational tone. “I, of course, don’t drink… horse piss, but I have a highly developed sense of smell, and really would prefer not to list aloud the things I can smell in this murk, so we’ll just say ‘rat droppings’ and leave it at that, shall we? Just whimper. Good man.” At the end of the bar, one of the new recruits threw up. The barman’s fingers had gone white. Maladict nodded with satisfaction.
   “Incapacitating a soldier of her grace in wartime is a treasonable offence,” he said. He leaned forward. “Punishable, of course, by… death.” Maladict pronounced the word with a certain delight. “However, if there happened to be another barrel of beer around the place, you know, good stuff, the stuff you’d keep for your friends if you had any friends, then I’m sure we can forget this little incident. Now, I’m going to let go of your wrist. I can tell by your eyebrow that you are a thinker, and if you’re thinking of rushing back in here with a big stick, I’d like you to think about this instead: I’d like you to think about this black ribbon I’m wearing. Know what it means, do you?”
   The barman winced, and mumbled: “Temp’rance League…”
   “Right! Well done!” said Maladict. “And one more thought for you, if you’ve got room. I’ve only taken a pledge not to drink human blood. It doesn’t mean I can’t kick you in the fork so hard you suddenly go deaf.”
   He released his grip. The barman slowly straightened up. Under the bar he would have a short wooden club, Polly knew. Every bar had one. Even her father had one. It was a great help, he said, in times of worry and confusion. She saw the fingers of the usable hand twitch.
   “Don’t,” she said. “I think he means it.”
   The barman relaxed. “Bit of a misunderstanding there, gents,” he mumbled. “Got the wrong barrel in. No offence meant.” He shuffled off, his hand almost visibly throbbing.
   “I only thaid it wath horthe pith,” said Igor.
   “He won’t cause trouble,” said Polly to Maladict. “He’ll be your friend from now on. He’s worked out he can’t beat you so he’s going to be your best mate.”
   Maladict subjected her to a thoughtful stare. “I know that,” he said. “How do you?”
   “I used to work in an inn,” said Polly, feeling her heart begin to beat faster, as it always did when the lies lined up. “You learn to read people.”
   “What did you do in the inn?”
   “Barman.”
   “There’s another inn in this hole, is there?”
   “Oh no, I’m not from round here.”
   Polly groaned at the sound of her own voice, and waited for the question: “Then why come here to join up?” It didn’t come. Instead, Maladict just shrugged and said, “I shouldn’t think anyone is from round here.”
   A couple more new recruits arrived at the bar. They had the same look—sheepish, a bit defiant, in clothes that didn’t fit well. Eyebrow reappeared with a small keg, which he laid reverentially on a stand and gently tapped. He pulled a genuine pewter tankard from under the bar, filled it, and timorously proffered it to Maladict.
   “Igor?” said the vampire, waving it away.
   “I’ll thtick with the horthe pith, if it’th all the thame to you,” said Igor. He looked around in the sudden silence. “Look, I never thaid I didn’t like it,” said Igor. He pushed his mug across the sticky bar. “Thame again?”
   Polly took the new tankard and sniffed at it. Then she took a sip. “Not bad,” she said. “At least it tastes like it’s—”
   The door pushed open, letting in the sounds of the storm. About two-thirds of a troll eased its way inside, and then managed to get the rest of itself through.
   Polly was okay about trolls. She met them up in the woods sometimes, sitting amongst the trees or purposefully lumbering along the tracks on the way to whatever it was trolls did. They weren’t friendly, they were… resigned. The world’s got humans in it, live with it. They’re not worth the indigestion. You can’t kill ’em all. Step around ’em. Stepping on ’em doesn’t work in the long term.
   Occasionally a farmer would hire one to do some heavy work. Sometimes they turned up, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they’d turn up, lumber around a field pulling out tree stumps as if they were carrots, and then wander off without waiting to be paid. A lot of things humans did mystified trolls, and vice versa. Generally, they avoided one another.
   But she didn’t often see trolls as… trollish as this one. It looked like a boulder that had spent centuries in the damp pine forests. Lichen covered it. Stringy grey moss hung in curtains from its head and its chin. It had a bird’s nest in one ear. It had a genuine troll club, made from an uprooted sapling. It was almost a joke troll, except that no one would laugh.
   The root end of the sapling bumped across the floor as the troll, watched by the recruits and a horrified Corporal Strappi, trudged to the table.
   “Gonna En List,” it said. “Gonna do my bit. Gimme shillin’.”
   “You’re a troll!” Strappi burst out.
   “Now, now, none of that, corporal,” said Sergeant Jackrum. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
   “Don’t ask? Don’t ask? It’s a troll, sarge! It’s got crags! There’s grass growing under its fingernails! It’s a troll!”
   “Right,” said the sergeant. “Enlist him.”
   “You want to fight with us?” Strappi squeaked. Trolls had no sense of personal space, and a ton of what was, for practical purposes, a kind of rock was looming right over the table.
   The troll analysed the question. The recruits stood in silence, mugs halfway to mouths.
   “No,” said the troll at last. “Gonna fight wi’ En Army. Gods save the…” The troll paused, and looked at the ceiling. Whatever it was seeking there didn’t appear to be visible. Then it looked at its feet, which had grass growing on them. Then it looked at its free hand and moved its fingers as if counting something. “…Duchess,” it said. It had been a long wait. The table creaked as the troll laid a hand on it, palm upwards. “Gimme shillin’.”
   “We’ve only got the bits of pape—” Corporal Strappi began. Sergeant Jackrum jabbed an elbow into his ribs.
   “Upon my oath, are you mad?” he hissed. “There’s a ten-man bounty for enlisting a troll!” With his other hand he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a real silver shilling, and placed it delicately in the huge hand. “Welcome to your new life, friend! I’ll just write your name down, shall I? What is it?”
   The troll looked at ceiling, feet, sergeant, wall and table. Polly saw its lips move. “Carborundum?” it volunteered.
   “Yeah, probably,” said the sergeant. “Er, how’d you like to shav—to cut off some of that hai—moss? We’ve got a, a sort of a… regulation…”
   Wall, floor, ceiling, table, fingers, sergeant. “No,” said Carborundum.
   “Right. Right. Right,” said the sergeant quickly. “It’s not a regulation as per such, actually, it’s more of an advisory. Silly one, too, eh? I’ve always thought so. Glad to have you with us,” he added fervently.
   The troll licked the coin, which gleamed like a diamond in its hand. It actually did have grass growing under its fingernails too, Polly noticed. Then Carborundum trudged to the bar. The crowd parted instantly, because trolls never had to stand at the back of the press of bodies, waving money and trying to catch the barman’s eye.
   He broke the coin in two and dropped both halves on the bar top. Eyebrow swallowed. He looked as though he would have said “Are you sure?” except that this was not a question barmen addressed to people weighing over half a ton. Carborundum thought for a while, and then said: “Gimme drink.”
   Eyebrow nodded, disappeared briefly into the room behind the bar, and came back holding a double-handled mug. Maladict sneezed. Polly’s eyes watered. It was the kind of smell you sense with your teeth. The pub might make foul beer as a matter of course, but this was eye-stinging vinegar.
   Eyebrow dropped one half of the silver coin into it, and then took a copper penny out of the money drawer and held it over the fuming mug. The troll nodded. With just a hint of ceremony, like a cocktail waiter dropping the little umbrella into a Double Entendre, Eyebrow let the copper fall.
   More bubbles welled up. Igor watched with interest. Carborundum picked the mug up in two fingers of each shovel-like hand, and swallowed the contents in one gulp. He stood stock still for a moment, then carefully put the mug back on the bar.
   “You gentlemen might like to move back a bit,” murmured Eyebrow.
   “What’s going to happen?” said Polly.
   “It takes ’em all differently,” said Eyebrow. “Looks like this one’s—no, there he goes…”
   With considerable style, Carborundum went over backwards. There was no sagging at the knees, no girly attempt to soften the fall. He just went from standing up, one hand out, to lying down, one hand up. He even rocked gently for some time after hitting the floor.
   “Got no head for his drink,” said Eyebrow. “Typical of the young bucks. Wants to play the big troll, comes in here, orders an Electrick Floorbanger, doesn’t know how to handle it.”
   “Is he going to come round?” said Maladict.
   “No, that’s it until dawn, I reckon,” said Eyebrow. “Brain stops working.”
   “Shouldn’t affect him too much, then,” said Corporal Strappi, stepping up. “Right, you miserable lot. You’re sleeping in the shed out the back, understand? Practically waterproof, hardly any rats. We’re out of here at dawn! You’re in the army now!”

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

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

   They said the Duchess was dead…
   Polly had been washing up when she’d heard the men talking late one night, and it’s a poor woman who can’t eavesdrop while making a noise at the same time.
   Dead, they said, but the people up at PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHan sJosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg weren’t admitting it. That was ’cos what with there being no children, and with royalty marrying one another’s cousins and grannies all the time, the ducal throne would go to Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia! There! Can you believe that? That’s why we never see her, right? And there hasn’t been a new picture all these years? Makes you think, eh? Oh, they say she’s been in mourning ’cos of the young Duke, but that was more’n seventy years ago! They say she was buried in secret and…
   At which point her father had stopped the speaker dead. There are some conversations where you don’t even want people to remember you were in the same room.
   Dead or alive, the Duchess watched over you.

   The recruits tried to sleep.
   Occasionally, someone belched or expelled wind noisily, and Polly responded with a few fake eructations of her own. That seemed to inspire greater effort on the part of the other sleepers, to the point where the roof rattled and dust fell down, before everyone subsided. Once or twice she heard people stagger out into the windy darkness, in theory for the privy, but probably, given male impatience in these matters, to aim much closer to home. Once, coasting in and out of a troubled dream, she thought she heard someone sobbing.
   Taking care not to rustle too much, Polly pulled out the much-folded, much-read, much-stained last letter from her brother, and read it by the light of the solitary, guttering candle. It had been opened and heavily mangled by the censors, and bore the stamp of the Duchy. It read:

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

   It was in a careful hand, the excessively clear and well-shaped writing of someone who has to think about every letter. She slowly folded it up again. Paul had wanted medals, because they were shiny. That’d been almost a year ago, when any recruiting party that came past went away with the best part of a battalion, and there had been people waving them off with flags and music. Sometimes, now, smaller parties of men came back. The lucky ones were missing only one arm or one leg. There were no flags.
   She unfolded another piece of paper. It was a pamphlet. It was headed “From the Mothers of Borogravia!!” The mothers of Borogravia were very definite about wanting to send their sons off to war Against the Zlobenian Aggressor!! and used a great many exclamation marks to say so. And this was odd, because the mothers in Munz had not seemed keen on the idea of their sons going off to war, and positively tried to drag them back. Several copies of the pamphlet seemed to have reached every home, even so. It was very patriotic. That is, it talked about killing foreigners.
   Polly had learned to read and write after a fashion because the inn was big and it was a business and things had to be tallied and recorded. Her mother had taught her to read, which was acceptable to Nuggan, and her father made sure that she learned how to write, which was not. A woman who could write was an Abomination Unto Nuggan, according to Father Jupe; anything she wrote would by definition be a lie.
   But Polly had learned anyway, because Paul hadn’t, at least to the standard needed to run an inn as busy as The Duchess. He could read if he could run his finger slowly along the lines, and he wrote letters at a snail’s pace, with a lot of care and heavy breathing, like a man assembling a piece of jewellery. He was big and kind and slow and could lift beer kegs as though they were toys, but he wasn’t a man at home with paperwork. Their father had hinted to Polly, very gently but very often, that Polly would need to be right behind him when the time came for him to run The Duchess. Left to himself, with no one to tell him what to do next, her brother just stood and watched birds.
   At Paul’s insistence, she’d read the whole of “From the Mothers of Borogravia!!” to him, including the bits about heroes and there being no greater good than to die for your country. She wished, now, she hadn’t done that. Paul did what he was told. Unfortunately, he believed what he was told, too.
   Polly put the papers away and dozed again, until her bladder woke her up. Oh, well, at least at this time of the morning she’d have a clear run. She reached out for her pack and stepped as softly as she could out into the rain.
   It was mostly just coming off the trees now, which were roaring in the wind that blew up the valley. The moon was hidden in the clouds, but there was just enough light to make out the inn’s buildings. A certain greyness suggested that what passed for dawn in Plün was on the way. She located the men’s privy which, indeed, stank of inaccuracy.
   A lot of planning and practice had gone into this moment. She was helped by the design of the breeches, which were the old-fashioned kind with generous buttoned trapdoors, and also by the experiments she’d made very early in the mornings when she was doing the cleaning. In short, with care and attention to detail, she’d found that a woman could pee standing up. It certainly worked back home in the inn’s privy, which had been designed and built in the certain expectation of the aimlessness of the customers.
   The wind shook the dank building. In the dark she thought of Auntie Hattie, who’d gone a bit strange round her sixtieth birthday and persistently accused passing young men of looking up her dress. She was even worse after a glass of wine, and she had one joke: “What does a man stand up to do, a woman sit down to do and a dog lift its leg to do?” And then, when everyone was too embarrassed to answer, she’d triumphantly shriek, “Shake hands!” and fall over. Auntie Hattie was an Abomination all by herself.
   Polly buttoned up the breeches with a sense of exhilaration. She felt she’d crossed a bridge, a sensation that was helped by the realization that she’d kept her feet dry.
   Someone said, “Psst!”
   It was just as well she’d already taken a leak. Panic instantly squeezed every muscle. Where were they hiding? This was just a rotten old shed! Oh, there were a few cubicles, but the smell alone suggested very strongly that the woods outside would be a much better proposition. Even on a wild night. Even with extra wolves.
   “Yes?” she quavered, and then cleared her throat and demanded, with a little more gruffness: “Yes?”
   “You’ll need these,” whispered the voice. In the fetid gloom she made out something rising over the top of a cubicle. She reached up nervously and touched softness. It was a bundle of wool. Her fingers explored it.
   “A pair of socks?” she said.
   “Right. Wear ’em,” said the mystery voice hoarsely.
   “Thank you, but I’ve brought several pairs…” Polly began.
   There was a faint sigh. “No. Not on your feet. Shove ’em down the front of your trousers.”
   “What do you mean?”
   “Look,” said the whisperer patiently, “you don’t bulge where you shouldn’t bulge. That’s good. But you don’t bulge where you should bulge, either. You know? Lower down?”
   “Oh! Er… I… but… I didn’t think people noticed…” said Polly, glowing with embarrassment. She’d been spotted! But there was no hue and cry, no angry quotations from the Book of Nuggan. Someone was helping. Someone who had seen her…
   “It’s a funny thing,” said the voice, “but they notice what’s missing more than they notice what’s there. Just one pair, mark you. Don’t get ambitious.”
   Polly hesitated. “Um… is it obvious?” she said.
   “No. That’s why I gave you the socks.”
   “I meant that… that I’m not… that I’m…”
   “Not really,” said the voice in the dark. “You’re pretty good. You come over as a frightened young lad trying to look big and brave. You might pick your nose a bit more often. Just a tip. Few things interest a young man more than the contents of his nostrils. Now I’ve got a favour to ask you in return.”
   I didn’t ask you for one, Polly thought, quite annoyed at being taken for being a frightened young lad when she was sure she’d come over as quite a cool, non-ruffled young lad. But she said calmly: “What is it?”
   “Got any paper?”
   Wordlessly, Polly pulled “From the Mothers of Borogravia!!” out of her shirt and handed it up. She heard the sound of a match striking, and a sulphurous smell which only improved the general conditions.
   “Why, is this the escutcheon of her grace the Duchess I see in front of me?” said the whisperer. “Well, it won’t be in front of me for long. Beat it… boy.”
   Polly hurried out into the night, shocked, dazed, confused and almost asphyxiated, and made it to the shed door. But she’d barely shut it behind her and was still blinking in the blackness when it was thrust open again, to let in the wind, rain and Corporal Strappi.
   “All right, all right! Hands off… well, you lot wouldn’t be able to find ’em… and on with socks! Hup hup hi ho hup hup…”
   Bodies were suddenly springing up or falling over all round Polly. Their muscles must have been obeying the voice directly, because no brain could have got into gear that quickly. Corporal Strappi, in obedience to the law of non-commissioned officers, responded by making the confusion more confusing.
   “Good grief, a lot of old women could shift better’n you!” he shouted with satisfaction as people flailed around looking for coats and boots. “Fall in! Get shaved! Every man in the regiment to be clean shaven, by order! Get dressed! Wazzer, I’ve got my eye on you! Move! Move! Breakfast in five minutes! Last one there doesn’t get a sausage! Oh deary me, what a bloody shower!”
   The four lesser horsemen of Panic, Bewilderment, Ignorance and Shouting took control of the room, to Corporal Strappi’s obscene glee. Polly, though, ducked out of the door, pulled a small tin mug out of her pack, dipped it into a water butt, balanced it on an old barrel behind the inn, and started to shave.
   She’d practised this, too. The secret was in the old cut-throat razor that she’d carefully blunted. After that, it was all in the shaving brush and soap. Get a lot of lather on, shave a lot of lather off, and you’d had a shave, hadn’t you? Must have done, sir, feel how smooth the skin is…
   She was halfway through when a voice by her ear screamed: “What d’you think you’re doing, Private Parts?”
   It was just as well the blade was blunt.
   “Perks, sir!” she said, rubbing her nose. “I’m shaving, sir! It’s Perks, sir!”
   “Sir? Sir? I’m not a sir, Parts, I’m a bloody corporal, Parts. That means you calls me ‘corporal’, Parts. And you are shaving in an official regimental mug, Parts, what you have not been issued with, right? You a deserter, Parts?”
   “No, s– corporal!”
   “A thief, then?”
   “No, corporal!”
   “Then how come you got a bloody mug, Parts?”
   “Got it off a dead man, sir– corporal!”
   Strappi’s voice, pitched to a scream in any case, became a screech of rage.
   “You’re a looter?”
   “No, corporal! The soldier…”
   …had died almost in her arms, on the floor of the inn.
   There had been half a dozen men in that party of returning heroes. They must have been trekking with grey-faced patience for days, making their way back to little villages in the mountains. Polly counted nine arms and ten legs between them, and ten eyes.
   But it was the apparently whole who were worse, in a way. They kept their stinking coats buttoned tight, in lieu of bandages, over whatever unspeakable mess lay beneath, and they had the smell of death about them. The inn’s regulars made space for them, and talked quietly, like people in a sacred place. Her father, not usually a man given to sentiment, quietly put a generous tot of brandy into each mug of ale, and refused all payment. Then it turned out that they were carrying letters from soldiers still fighting, and one of them had brought the letter from Paul. He pushed it across the table to Polly as she served them stew and then, with very little fuss, he died.
   The rest of the men moved unsteadily on later that day, taking with them, to give to his parents, the pot-metal medal that had been in the soldier’s coat pocket and the official commendation from the Duchy that went with it. Polly had taken a look at it. It was printed, including the Duchess’s signature, and the man’s name had been filled in, rather cramped, because it was longer than average. The last few letters were rammed up tight together.
   It’s little details like that which get remembered, as undirected white-hot rage fills the mind. Apart from the letter and the medal, all the man left behind was a tin mug and, on the floor, a stain which wouldn’t scrub out.

   Corporal Strappi listened impatiently to a slightly adjusted version. Polly could see his mind working. The mug had belonged to a soldier; now it belonged to another soldier. Those were the facts of the matter, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He resorted, instead, to the safer ground of general abuse.
   “So you think you’re smart, Parts?” he said.
   “No, corporal.”
   “Oh? So you’re stupid, are you?”
   “Well, I did enlist, corporal,” said Polly meekly. Somewhere behind Strappi, someone sniggered.
   “I’ve got my eye on you, Parts,” growled Strappi, temporarily defeated. “Just you put a foot wrong, that’s all.” He strode off.
   “Um…” said a voice beside Polly. She turned to see another youth, wearing secondhand clothes and an air of nervousness that didn’t quite conceal some bubbling anger. He was big and red-haired, but it was cut so close that it was just head fuzz.
   “You’re Tonker, right?” she said.
   “Yeah, and, er… could I have a borrow of your shaving gear, right?”
   Polly looked at a chin as free of hair as a billiard ball. The boy blushed.
   “Got to start sometime, right?” he said defiantly.
   “The razor’ll need sharpening,” said Polly.
   “That’s all right, I know how to do that,” said Tonker.
   Polly wordlessly handed over the mug and razor, and took the opportunity to duck into the privy while everyone else was occupied. It was the work of a moment to put the socks in place. Anchoring them was a problem, which she solved by unwinding part of one sock and tucking it up under her belt. They felt odd, and strangely heavy for a little package of wool. Walking a little awkwardly, Polly went in to see what horrors breakfast would bring.
   It brought stale horse-bread and sausage and very weak beer. She grabbed a sausage and a slab of bread and sat down.
   You had to concentrate to eat horse-bread. There was a lot more about these days, a bread made from flour ground up with dried pease and beans and vegetable scrapings. It used to be made just for horses, to put them in fine condition. Now you hardly ever saw anything else on the table, and there tended to be less and less of it, too. You needed time and good teeth to work your way through a slice of horse-bread, just as you needed a complete lack of imagination to eat a modern sausage. Polly sat and concentrated on chewing.
   The only other area of calm was around Private Maladict, who was drinking coffee like a young man relaxing in a pavement cafe, with the air of someone who has life thoroughly worked out. He nodded at Polly.
   Was that him in the privy? she wondered. I got back in just as Strappi started yelling and everyone started running around and rushing in and out. It could have been anyone. Do vampires use the privy? Well, do they? Has anyone ever dared ask?
   “Sleep well?” he asked.
   “Yeah. Did you?” said Polly.
   “I couldn’t stand that shed, but Mr Eyebrow kindly allowed me to use his cellar,” said Maladict. “Old habits die hard, you know? At least,” he added, “old acceptable habits. I’ve never felt happy not hanging down.”
   “And you got coffee?”
   “I carry my own supply,” said Maladict, indicating an exquisite little silver and gilt coffee-making engine on the table by his cup, “and Mr Eyebrow kindly boiled some water for me.” He grinned, showing two long canine teeth. “It’s amazing what you can achieve with a smile, Oliver.”
   Polly nodded. “Er… is Igor a friend of yours?” she said. At the next table Igor had obtained a sausage, presumably raw, from the kitchen, and was watching it intently. A couple of wires ran from the sausage to a mug of the horrible vinegary beer, which was bubbling.
   “Never seen him before in my life,” said the vampire. “Of course, if you’ve met one you have in a sense met them all. We had an Igor at home. Wonderful workers. Very reliable. Very trustworthy. And, of course, so good at stitching things together, if you know what I mean.”
   “Those stitches round his head don’t look very professional,” said Polly, who was beginning to object to Maladict’s permanent expression of effortless superiority.
   “Oh, that? It’s an Igor thing,” said Maladict. “It’s a Look. Like… tribal markings, you know? They like them to show. Ha, we had a servant once who had stitches all the way round his neck, and he was extremely proud of them.”
   “Really?” said Polly weakly.
   “Yes, and the droll part of it all was that it wasn’t even his head!”
   Now Igor had a syringe in his hand, and was watching the sausage with an air of satisfaction. For a moment, Polly thought that the sausage moved…
   “All right, all right, time’s up, you horrible lot!” barked Corporal Strappi, strutting into the room. “Fall in! That means line up, you shower! That means you too, Parts! And you, Mr Vampire, sir, will you be joining us for a morning’s light soldiering? On your feet! And where’s that bloody Igor?”
   “Here, thur,” said Igor, from three inches behind Strappi’s backbone. The corporal spun round.
   “How did you get there?” he bellowed.
   “It’th a gift, thur,” said Igor.
   “Don’t you ever get behind me again! Fall in with the rest of them! Now… Attention!” Strappi sighed theatrically. “That means ‘stand up straight’. Got it? Once more with feeling! Attention! Ah, I see the problem! You’ve got trousers that are permanently at ease! I think I shall have to write to the Duchess and tell her she should ask for her money back! What are you smiling about, Mr Vampire sir?” Strappi positioned himself in front of Maladict, who stood faultlessly to attention.
   “Happy to be in the regiment, corporal!”
   “Yeah, right,” mumbled Strappi. “Well, you won’t be so—”
   “Everything all right, corporal?” asked Sergeant Jackrum, appearing in the doorway.
   “Best we could expect, sergeant,” sighed the corporal. “We ought to throw ’em back, oh dear me, yes. Useless, useless, useless…”
   “Okay, lads. Stand easy,” said Jackrum, glancing at Strappi in a less than friendly way. “Today we’re heading on down towards Plotz, where we’ll meet up with the other recruiting parties and you’ll be issued with your uniforms and weapons, you lucky lads. Any of you ever used a weapon? You have, Perks?”
   Polly lowered her hand. “A bit, sarge. My brother taught me a bit when he was home on leave, and some of the old men in the bar where I worked gave me some, er, tips.” They had, too. It was funny to watch a girl waving a sword around, and they’d been kind enough when they weren’t laughing. She was a quick learner, but she’d made a point of staying clumsy long after she’d got the feel for the blade, because using a sword was also “the work of an Man” and a woman doing it was an Abomination Unto Nuggan. Old soldiers, on the whole, were on the easygoing side when it came to Abominations. She’d be funny just as long as she was useless, and safe as long as she was funny.
   “Expert, are yer?” said Strappi, grinning nastily. “A real fencin’ genius, are yer?”
   “No, corporal,” said Polly meekly.
   “All right,” said Jackrum. “Anyone else—”
   “Hang on, sarge, I reckon we’d all like a bit of instruction from swordmeister Parts,” said Strappi. “Ain’t that right, lads?” There was a general murmuring and shrugging from the squad, who recognized a right little bullying bastard when they saw one but, treacherously, were glad he hadn’t picked on them.
   Strappi drew his own sword. “Lend him one of yours, sarge,” he said. “Go on. Just a little bit of fun, eh?”
   Jackrum hesitated, and glanced at Polly. “How about it, lad? You don’t have to,” he said.
   I’ll have to sooner or later, Polly thought. The world was full of Strappies. If you backed away from them, they only kept on coming. You had to stop them at the start. She sighed. “Okay, sarge.”
   Jackrum pulled one of his cutlasses out of his sash and handed it to Polly. It looked amazingly sharp.
   “He won’t hurt you, Perks,” he said, while looking at the smirking Strappi.
   “I’ll try not to hurt him either, sir,” said Polly, and then cursed herself for the idiot bravado. It must have been the socks talking.
   “Oh, good,” said Strappi, stepping back. “We’ll just see what you’re made of, Parts.”
   Flesh, thought Polly. Blood. Easily cut things. Oh, well…
   Strappi waved his sabre like the old boys had done, down low, in case she was one of those people who thought the whole idea was to hit the other man’s sword. She ignored it, and watched his eyes, which was no great treat. He wouldn’t stick her, not mortally, not with Jackrum watching. He’d try for something that’d hurt and make everyone laugh at her. That was the Strappi type through and through. Every inn counted one or two amongst its regulars.
   The corporal tested her more aggressively a couple of times, and twice, by luck, she managed to knock the blade out of the way. Luck would run out, though, and if she looked like putting up a decent show Strappi would sort her out good and proper. Then she remembered the cackled advice of old Gummy Abbens, a retired sergeant who’d lost his left arm to a broadsword and all his teeth to cider: “A good swordsman ’ates comin’ up against a newbie, gel! The reason bein’, he don’t know what the bugger’s gonna do!”
   She swung the cutlass wildly. Strappi had to block it, and for a moment the swords locked.
   That the best you can do, Parts?” the corporal jeered.
   Polly reached out and grabbed his shirt. “No, corporal,” she said, “but this is.” She pulled hard and lowered her head.
   The collision hurt more than she’d hoped, but she heard something crunch and it didn’t belong to her. She stepped back quickly, slightly dizzy, with the sabre at the ready.
   Strappi had sunk to his knees, blood gushing from his nose. When he got up, someone was going to die…
   Panting, Polly appealed wordlessly to Sergeant Jackrum, who had folded his arms and was looking innocently at the ceiling.
   “I bet you didn’t learn that from your brother, Perks,” he said.
   “No, sarge. Got that from Gummy Abbens, sarge.”
   Jackrum suddenly looked down at her, grinning. “What, old Sergeant Abbens?”
   “Yes, sarge!”
   “There’s a name from the past! He’s still alive? How is the evil old sot?”
   “Er… well preserved, sarge,” said Polly, still trying to get her breath.
   Jackrum laughed. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Did his best fighting in bars, he did. And I’ll bet that’s not the only trick he told you about, eh?”
   “No, sir.” And the other men had scolded the old boy for telling her, and Gummy had chuckled into his cider mug, and anyway it had taken Polly a long time to find out what “family jewels” meant.
   “Hear that, Strappi?” said the sergeant to the cursing man dribbling blood onto the floor. “Looks like you was lucky. But there’s no prizes for fighting fair in a melee, lads, as you will learn. All right, fun over. Go and put some cold water on that, corporal. It always looks worse than it is. And that’s an end of it, the pair of you. That is an order. A word to the wise. Understood?”
   “Yes, sarge,” said Polly meekly. Strappi grunted.
   Jackrum looked at the rest of the recruits. “Okay. Any of the rest of you boys ever held a stick? Right. I can see we’re going to have to start slow and work up…”
   There was another grunt from Strappi. You had to admire the man. On his knees, with blood bubbling through the hand cupping his injured nose, he could find time to make life difficult for someone in some small way.
   “Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant,” he said accusingly.
   “Any good with it?” said the sergeant to Maladict.
   “Not really, sir,” said Maladict. “Never had training. I carry it for protection, sir.”
   “How can you protect yourself by carrying a sword if you don’t know how to use it?”
   “Not me, sir. Other people. They see the sword and don’t attack me,” said Maladict patiently.
   “Yes, but if they did, lad, you wouldn’t be any good with it,” said the sergeant.
   “No, sir. I’d probably settle for just ripping their heads off, sir. That’s what I mean by protection, sir. Theirs, not mine. And I’d get hell from the League if I did that, sir.”
   The sergeant stared at him for a while. “Well thought out,” he mumbled.
   There was a thud behind them and a table overturned. Carborundum the troll sat up, groaned, and crashed back down again. At the second attempt, he managed to stay upright, both hands clutching his head.
   Corporal Strappi, now on his feet, must have been made fearless by fury. He headed for the troll in a high-speed strut and stood in front of him, vibrating with rage and still oozing blood in sticky strings.
   “You ’orrible little man!” he screamed. “You—”
   Carborundum reached down and, with care and no apparent effort, picked the corporal up by his head. He brought him to one crusted eye and turned him this way and that.
   “Did I join th’ army?” he rumbled. “Oh, coprolite…”
   “This is affnault on a fnuperior officer!” screamed the muffled voice of the corporal.
   “Put Corporal Strappi down, please,” said Sergeant Jackrum. The troll grunted, and lowered the man to the floor.
   “Sorry about dat,” he said. “Thought you was a dwarf.”
   “I dnemand this man is affrested for—” Strappi began.
   “No you don’t, corporal, no you don’t,” said the sergeant. “This is not the time. On your feet, Carborundum, and get in line. Upon my oath, you try that little trick one more time and there will be trouble, understand?”
   “Yes, sergeant,” growled the troll, and knuckled himself to his feet.
   “Right, then,” said the sergeant, stepping back. “Now today, my lucky lads, we’re goin’ to learn about something we call marching…”
   They left Plün to the wind and rain. About an hour after they’d vanished round a bend in the valley, the shed they’d slept in mysteriously burned down.

   There have been better attempts at marching, and they have been made by penguins. Sergeant Jackrum brought up the rear in the cart, shouting instructions, but the recruits moved as if they’d never before had to get from place to place. The sergeant yelled the swagger out of their steps, stopped the cart and for a few of them held an impromptu lesson in the concepts of “right” and “left” and, by degrees, they left the mountains.
   Polly remembered those first days with mixed feelings. All they did was march, but she was used to long walks and her boots were good. The trousers ceased to chafe. A watery sun took the trouble to shine. It wasn’t cold. It would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the corporal.
   She’d wondered how Strappi, whose nose was now about the same colour as a plum, was going to handle the situation between them. It turned out that he intended to deal with it by pretending it hadn’t happened, and also by having as little as possible to do with Polly.
   He didn’t spare the others, although he was selective. Maladict was left strictly alone, as was Carborundum; whatever else Strappi was, he wasn’t suicidal. And he was bewildered by Igor. The little man did whatever stupid chore Strappi found for him, and he did it quickly, competently, and giving every impression of someone happy in his work, and that left the corporal completely mystified.
   He’d pick on the others for no reason at all, harangue them until they made some trivial mistake, and then bawl them out. His target of choice was Private Goom, better known as Wazzer, who was stick-thin and round-eyed and nervous and said grace loudly before meals. By the end of the first day, Strappi could make him throw up just by shouting. And then he’d laugh.
   Only he never really laughed, Polly noted. What you got instead was a sort of harsh gargling of spit at the back of the throat, a noise like ghnssssh.
   The presence of the man cast a damper on everything. Jackrum seldom interfered. He often watched Strappi, though, and once when Polly caught his eye, he winked.
   On the first night a tent was shouted off the cart by Strappi and shouted up and, after a supper of stale bread and sausage, they were shouted in front of a blackboard to be shouted at. Across the top of the board Strappi had written WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR and down the side he had written 1, 2, 3.
   “Right, pay attention!” he said, slapping the board with a stick. “There’s some who think that you boys ought to know why we are fighting this war, okay? Well, here it comes. Point One, remember the town of Lipz? It was viciously attacked by Zlobenian troops a year ago! They—”
   “Sorry, but I thought we attacked Lipz, didn’t we, corporal? Last year they said—” said Shufti.
   “Are you trying to be smart, Private Manickle?” Strappi demanded, naming the biggest sin in his personal list.
   “Just want to know corporal,” said Shufti. He was stocky, running to plump, and one of those people who bustle about being helpful in a mildly annoying way, taking over small jobs that you wouldn’t have minded doing for yourself. There was something odd about him, although you had to bear in mind he was currently sitting next to Wazzer, who had enough odd for everybody and was probably contagious…
   …and had caught Strappi’s eye. There was no fun in having a go at Shufti, but Wazzer, now, Wazzer was always worth a shout.
   “Are you listening, Private Goom?” he screamed.
   Wazzer, who had been sitting and looking up with his eyes closed, jerked awake. “Corporal?” he quavered, as Strappi advanced.
   “I said, are you listening, Goom?”
   “Yes, corporal!”
   “Really? And what did you hear, may I ask?” said Strappi, in a voice of treacle and acid.
   “Nothing, corporal. She’s not speaking.”
   Strappi took a deep, delighted breath of evil air.
   “You are a useless, worthless pile of—”
   There was a sound. It was a small, nondescript sound, one that you heard every day, a noise that did its job but never expected to be, for example, whistled or part of an interesting sonata. It was simply the sound of stone scraping on metal.
   On the other side of the fire, Jackrum lowered his cutlass. He had a sharpening stone in his other hand. He returned their group stare.
   “What? Oh. Just maintaining the edge,” he said innocently. “Sorry if I interrupted your flow there, corporal. Carry on.”
   A basic animal survival instinct came to the corporal’s aid. He left the trembling Wazzer alone, and turned back to Shufti.
   “Yes, yes, we attacked Lipz, too—” said Strappi.
   “Was that before the Zlobenians did?” said Maladict.
   “Will you listen?” Strappi demanded. “We valiantly attacked Lipz to reclaim what is Borogravian territory! And then the treacherous swede-eaters stole it back—”
   Polly tuned out a little at this point, now that there was no immediate prospect of seeing Strappi decapitated. She knew about Lipz. Half the old men who came and drank with her father had attacked the place. But no one had expected them to want to do it. Someone had just shouted “attack!”
   The trouble was the Kneck River. It wandered across the wide, rich, silty plain like a piece of dropped string, but sometimes a flash flood or even a big fallen tree would cause it to crack like a whip, throwing coils of river round areas of land miles from its previous bed. And the river was the international border…
   She surfaced to hear: “—but this time everyone’s on their side, the bastards! And you know why? It’s ’cos of Ankh-Morpork! Because we stopped the mail coaches going over our country and tore down their clacks towers, which are an Abomination Unto Nuggan. Ankh-Morpork is a godless city—”
   “I thought it had more than three hundred places of worship?” said Maladict.
   Strappi stared at him in a rage that was incoherent until he managed to touch bottom again.
   “Ankh-Morpork is a godawful city,” he said. “Poisonous, just like its river. Barely fit for humans now. They let everything in—zombies, werewolves, dwarfs, vampires, trolls—” He remembered his audience, faltered and recovered: “—which in some cases can be a good thing, of course. But it is a foul, lewd, lawless, overcrowded mess of a place, which is why Prince Heinrich loves it so much! He’s been taken over by it, bought by cheap toys, because that’s the way Ankh-Morpork plays it, men. They buy you, they will you stop interrupting! What’s the good of me trying to teach you stuff if you’re going to keep on asking questions?”
   “I was just wondering why it’s so crowded, corp,” said Tonker. “If it’s so bad, I mean.”
   “That’s because they are a degraded people, private! And they’ve sent a regiment up here to help Heinrich take over our beloved Motherland. He has turned aside from the ways of Nuggan and embraced Ankh-Morpork’s godlessn—godawful-ness.” Strappi looked pleased at having spotted that one, and went on, “Point Two: in addition to its soldiers, Ankh-Morpork has sent Vimes the Butcher, the most evil man in that evil city. They are bent on nothing less than our destruction!”
   “I heard that Ankh-Morpork was just angry that we cut the clacks towers down,” said Polly.
   “They were on our sovereign territory!”
   “Well, it was Zlobenian until—” Polly began.
   Strappi waved an angry finger at her. “You listen to me, Parts! You can’t get to be a great country like Borogravia without making enemies! Which leads me on to Point Three, Parts, who’s sitting there thinking he’s so smart. You all are. I can see it. Well, be smart about this: you might not like everything about your country, eh? It might not be the perfect place, but it’s ours. You might think we don’t have the best laws, but they’re ours. The mountains might not be the prettiest ones or the tallest ones, but they’re ours. We’re fighting for what’s ours, men!” Strappi slammed his hand over his heart.

   “Awake, ye sons of the Motherland!
   Taste no more the wine of the sour apples…”

   They joined in, at various levels of drone. You had to. Even if you just opened and shut your mouth, you had to. Even if you just went “ner, ner, ner”, you had to. Polly, who was exactly the kind of person who looks around surreptitiously at times like these, saw that Shufti was singing it word-perfectly and Strappi actually did have tears in his eyes. Wazzer wasn’t singing at all. He was praying. That was a good wheeze, said one of the more treacherous areas at the back of Polly’s mind.
   To the bewilderment of all, Strappi continued—alone—all through the second verse, which nobody ever remembered, and then gave them a smug, I’m-more-patriotic-than-you smile.
   Afterwards, they tried to sleep on as much softness as two blankets could provide. They lay there in silence for some time. Jackrum and Strappi had tents of their own, but instinctively they knew that Strappi at least would be a sneaker and a listener at tent flaps.
   After about an hour, when rain was drumming on the canvas, Carborundum said: “Okay, den, I fink I’ve worked it out. If people are groophar stupid, then we’ll fight for groophar stupidity, ’cos it’s our stupidity. And dat’s good, yeah?”
   Several of the squad sat up in the darkness, amazed at this.
   “I realize I ought to know these things, but what does ‘groophar’ mean?” said the voice of Maladict in the damp darkness.
   “Ah, well… when, right, a daddy troll an’ a mummy troll—”
   “Good, right, yes, I think I’ve got it, thank you,” said Maladict. “And what you’ve got there, my friend, is patriotism. My country, right or wrong.”
   “You should love your country,” said Shufti.
   “Okay, what part?” the voice of Tonker demanded, from the far corner of the tent. “The morning sunlight on the mountains? The horrible food? The damn mad Abominations? All of my country except whatever bit Strappi is standing on?”
   “But we are at war!”
   “Yes, that’s where they’ve got you,” sighed Polly.
   “Well, I’m not buying into it. It’s all trickery. They keep you down and when they piss off some other country, you have to fight for them! It’s only your country when they want you to get killed!” said Tonker.
   “All the good bits in this country are in this tent,” said the voice of Wazzer.
   Embarrassed silence descended.
   The rain settled in. After a while, the tent began to leak. Eventually someone said, “What happens, um, if you join up but then you decide you don’t want to?”
   That was Shufti.
   “I think it’s called deserting and they cut your head off,” said the voice of Maladict. “In my case that would be a drawback but you, dear Shufti, would find it puts a crimp in your social life.”
   “I never kissed their damn picture,” said Tonker. “I swivelled it round when Strappi wasn’t looking and kissed it on the back!”
   “They’ll still say you kissed the Duchess, though,” said Maladict.
   “You k-kissed the D-Duchess on the b-bottom?” said Wazzer, horrified.
   “It was the back of the picture, okay?” said Tonker. “It wasn’t her real backside. Huh, wouldn’t have kissed it if it was!” There was some unidentified sniggering from various corners and just a hint of giggle.
   “That was w-wicked!” hissed Wazzer. “Nuggan in heaven saw you d-do that!”
   “It was just a picture, all right?” muttered Tonker. “Anyway, what’s the difference? Front or back, we’re all here together and I don’t see any steak and bacon!”
   Something rumbled overhead. “I joined t’ see exciting forrin places and meet erotic people,” said Carborundum.
   That caused a moment’s thought. “I think you mean exotic?” said Igor.
   “Yeah, that kind of stuff,” agreed the troll.
   “But they always lie,” said someone, and then Polly realized it was her. “They lie all the time. About everything.”
   “Amen to that,” said Tonker. “We fight for liars.”
   “Ah, they may be liars,” snapped Polly, in a passable imitation of Strappi’s yap, “but they’re our liars!”
   “Now, now, children,” said Maladict. “Let’s try to get some sleep, shall we? But here’s a happy little dream from your Uncle Maladict. Dream that when we go into battle, Corporal Strappi is leading us. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
   After a while, Tonker said: “In front of us, you mean?”
   “Oh, yes. I can see you’re with me, Tonk. Right in front of you. On the noisy, frantic, confusing battlefield, where oh so much can go wrong.”
   “And we’ll have weapons?” said Shufti wistfully.
   “Of course you’ll have weapons. You’re soldiers. And there’s the enemy, right in front of you…”
   “That’s a good dream, Mai.”
   “Sleep on it, kid.”
   Polly turned over, and tried to make herself comfortable. It’s all lies, she thought muzzily. Some of them are just prettier than others, that’s all. People see what they think is there. Even I’m a lie. But I’m getting away with it.

   A warm autumnal wind was blowing leaves off the rowan trees as the recruits marched among the foothills. It was the morning of the next day, and the mountains were behind them. Polly passed the time identifying the birds in the hedgerows. It was a habit. She knew most of them.
   She hadn’t set out to be an ornithologist. But birds brought Paul alive. All the… slowness in the rest of his thinking became a flash of lightning in the presence of birds. Suddenly he knew their names, habits and habitats, could whistle their songs and, after Polly had saved up for a box of paints off a traveller at the inn, had painted a picture of a wren so real you could hear it.
   Their mother had been alive then. The row had gone on for days. Pictures of living creatures were an Abomination in the Eyes of Nuggan. Polly had asked why there were pictures of the Duchess everywhere, and had been thrashed for it. The picture had been burned, the paints thrown away.
   It was a terrible thing. Her mother had been a kind woman, or as kind as a devout woman could be who tried to keep up with the whims of Nuggan, and she’d died slowly amidst pictures of the Duchess and amongst the echoes of unanswered prayers, but that was the memory that crawled treacherously into Polly’s mind every time: the fury and the scolding, while the little bird seemed to flutter in the flames.
   In the fields women and old men were getting in the spoilt wheat after last night’s rain, hoping to save what they could. There weren’t any young men visible. Polly saw some of the other recruits steal a glance at the scavenging parties, and wondered if they were thinking the same thing.
   They saw no one else on the road until midday, when the party was marching through a landscape of low hills; the sun had boiled away some of the clouds and, for a moment at least, summer was back—moist and sticky and mildly unpleasant, like a party guest who won’t go home.
   A red blob in the distance became a rather larger blob and resolved itself into a loose knot of men. Polly knew what to expect as soon as she saw it. By the reaction of some of the others, they did not. There was a moment of collision and confusion as people walked into one another, and then the party stopped, and stared.
   It took the wounded men some time to draw level, and some time to pass. Two able-bodied men, as far as Polly could tell, were trundling a handcart on which a third man lay. Others were limping on crutches, or had arms in slings, or wore red jackets with an empty sleeve. Perhaps worse were the ones like the man in the inn, grey-faced, staring straight ahead, jackets buttoned tight despite the heat.
   One or two of the injured glanced at the recruits as they lurched past, but there was no expression in their eyes beyond a terrible determination.
   Jackrum reined in the horse.
   “All right, twenty minutes’ breather,” he muttered.
   Igor turned, nodded to the party of wounded heading grimly onward, and said, “Permithion to thee if I can do anything for them, tharge?”
   “You’ll get your chance soon enough, lad,” said the sergeant.
   “Tharge?” said Igor, looking hurt.
   “Oh, all right. If you must. D’you want someone to give you a hand?”
   There was a nasty laugh from Corporal Strappi.
   “Some athithtance would be a help, yeth, thargeant,” said Igor, with dignity.
   The sergeant looked at the squad, and nodded. “Private Halter, step forward! Know anything about doctorin’?”
   The red-headed Tonker stepped forward smartly. “I’ve butchered pigs for me mam, sarge,” he said.
   “Capital! Better than an army surgeon, upon my oath. Off you go. Twenty minutes, remember!”
   “And don’t let Igor bring back any souvenirs!” said Strappi, and laughed his scraping laugh again.
   The rest of the boys sat down on the grass by the road, and one or two of them disappeared into the bushes. Polly went on the same errand, but pushed in a lot further, and took the opportunity to make a little sock adjustment. They had a tendency to creep if she wasn’t careful.
   She froze at a rustling behind her, and then relaxed. She’d been careful. No one would have seen anything. So what if someone else was taking a leak? She’d just push her way back to the road and take no notice—
   Lofty sprang up as Polly parted the bushes, breeches round one ankle, face red as a beetroot.
   Polly couldn’t help herself. Maybe it was the socks. Maybe it was the pleading expression on Lofty’s face. When someone’s broadcasting “Don’t look!” the eyes have a mind of their own, and go where they’re not wanted. Lofty jumped up, dragging at her clothes.
   “No, look, it’s all right—” Polly began, but it was too late. The girl had gone.
   Polly stared at the bushes, and thought: Blast! There’s two of us! But what would I have said next? “It’s okay, I’m a girl too. You can trust me. We could be friends. Oh, and here’s a good tip about socks”?

   Igor and Tonker arrived back late, without a word. Sergeant Jackrum said nothing. The squad moved off.
   Polly marched at the back, with Carborundum. This meant she could keep a wary eye on Lofty, whoever she was. For the first time, Polly really looked at her. She was easy to miss, because she was always, as it were, in Tonker’s shadow. She was short, although now Polly knew she was female the word “petite” could be decently used, dark and dark-haired and had a strange, self-absorbed look, and she was always marching with Tonker. Come to think of it, she always slept close to him, too.
   Ah, so that was it. She’s following her boy, Polly thought. It was kind of romantic, and very, very dumb. Now she knew to look beyond the clothes and haircut, she could see all the little clues that Lofty was a girl, and a girl who hadn’t planned enough. She saw Lofty whisper something to Tonker, who half turned and gave Polly a look of instant hatred and a hint of threat.
   I can’t tell her, she thought. She would tell him. I can’t afford to let them know. I’ve put too much into this. I didn’t just cut my hair and wear trousers. I planned…
   Ah, yes… the plans.
   It had begun as a sudden strange fancy, but it had continued as a plan. First, Polly had started to watch boys closely. This had been reciprocated hopefully by a few of them, to their subsequent disappointment. She observed how they moved, she listened to the rhythm of what passed, among boys, for conversation, she’d noted how they punched one another in greeting. It was a new world.
   She already had good muscles for a girl, because running a large inn was all about moving heavy things, and she took over a number of the grittier chores, which coarsened her hands nicely. She’d even worn a pair of her brother’s old breeches under her long skirt, to get the feel of them.
   A woman could be beaten for that sort of thing. Men dressed like men and women like women; doing it the other way round was “a blasphemous Abomination Unto Nuggan”, according to Father Jupe.
   And that was probably the secret of her success so far, she thought, as she trudged through a puddle. People didn’t look for a woman in trousers. To the casual observer, men’s clothes and short hair and a bit of swagger were what it took to be a man. Oh, and a second pair of socks.
   That had been gnawing at her, too. Someone knew about her, just as she knew about Lofty. And he hadn’t given her away. She’d suspected it was Eyebrow, but doubted it; he’d have told the sergeant about her, he was that sort. Right now she was guessing it was Maladict, but perhaps that was just because he seemed so knowing all the time.
   Carbor—no, he’d been out cold, and in any case… no, not the troll. And Igor lisped. Tonker? After all, he’d know about Lofty so maybe… No, because why would he want to help Polly? No, there was nothing but danger in owning up to Lofty. The best she could do was try to see to it that the girl didn’t give both of them away.
   She could hear Tonker whispering to his girl. “… had just died so he cut off one of his legs and an arm and sewed ’em on men who needed ’em, just like I’d darn a tear! You should’ve seen it! You couldn’t see his fingers move! And he has all these ointments that just…” Tonker’s voice died away. Strappi was haranguing Wazzer again.
   “Dat Strappi really gets on my crags,” muttered Carborundum. “You want I should pull the head off f him? I c’d make it look like a accident.”
   “Better not,” said Polly, but she did entertain the thought for a moment.
   They’d reached a junction, where the road down from the mountains joined what passed for a main highway. It was crowded. There were carts and wheelbarrows, people driving herds of cows, grandmothers carrying all the household possessions on their backs, a general excitement of pigs and children… and it was all heading one way.
   It was the opposite way to the way the squad was going. The people and animals flowed around it like a stream around an inconvenient rock. The recruits bunched up. It was that or be separated by cows.
   Sergeant Jackrum stood up in the cart. “Private Carborundum!”
   “Yes, sergeant?” rumbled the troll.
   “To the front!”
   That helped. The stream still flowed, but at least the crowds parted some distance further ahead and gave the squad a wide berth. No one wants to barge up against even a slow-moving troll.
   But faces stared as the people hurried by. An old lady darted out for a moment, pressed a loaf of stale bread into Tonker’s hands, and said, “You poor boys!” before being swept away in the throng.
   “What’s this all about, sarge?” said Maladict. “These look like refugees!”
   “Talk like that spreads Alarm and Despondency!” shouted Corporal Strappi.
   “Oh, you mean they’re just people getting away early for the holidays to avoid the rush?” said Maladict. “Sorry, I got confused. It must be that woman carrying a whole haystack we just passed.”
   “D’you know what can happen to you for cheeking a superior officer?” screamed Strappi.
   “No! Tell me, is it worse than whatever it is these people are running away from?”
   “You signed up, Mr Bloodsucker! You obey orders!”
   “Right! But I don’t remember anyone ordering me not to think!”
   “Enough of that!” snapped Jackrum. “Less shouting down there! Move on! Carborundum, you give people a push if they don’t make way, y’hear?”
   They moved on. After a while the press of people abated a little, so that what had been a torrent became a trickle. Occasionally there would be a family group, or just one hurrying woman, burdened with bags. One old man was struggling with a wheelbarrow full of turnips. They’re even taking the crops out of the fields, Polly noted. And everyone moved at a kind of half-run, as if things would be a little better when they’d caught up with the mass of people ahead. Or merely passed the squad, perhaps.

They made way for an old woman bent double under the weight of a black and white pig. And then there was just the road, rutted and muddy. An afternoon mist was rising from the fields on either side, quiet and clammy. After the noise of the refugees, the silence of the low countryside was suddenly oppressive. The only sound was the trudge and splash of the recruits’ boots.
   “Permission to speak, sarge?” said Polly.
   “Yes, private?” said Jackrum.
   “How far is it to Plotz?”
   “You don’t have to tell ’em, sarge!” said Strappi.
   “About five miles,” said Sergeant Jackrum. “You’ll get your uniforms and weapons at the depot there.”
   “That’s a milit’ry secret, sarge,” Strappi whined.
   “We could shut our eyes so’s we don’t see what we’re wearing, how about that?” said Maladict.
   “Stop that, Private Maladict,” said Jackrum. “Just keep moving, and guard that tongue.”
   They plodded on. The road grew muddier. A breeze sprang up, but instead of carrying the mist away it merely streamed it across the damp fields in twisty, clammy, unpleasant shapes. The sun became an orange ball.
   Polly saw something large and white flutter across the field, blown by the wind. At first she thought it was a migratory lesser egret that had left things a little late, but it was clearly being blown by the wind.
   It flopped down once or twice and then, as a gust caught it, blew across the road and wrapped itself across Corporal Strappi’s face.
   He screamed.
   Lofty grabbed at the fluttering thing, which was damp. It tore in his—her–hands, and most of it dropped away from the struggling corporal.
   “It’s just a bit of paper,” she said.
   Strappi flailed at it. “I knew that,” he said. “I never asked you!”
   Polly picked up one of the torn scraps. The paper was thin and muddy, although she recognized the words “Ankh-Morpork”. The godawful city. And the genius of Strappi was that anything he was against automatically sounded attractive.
   “Ankh-Morpork Times…” she read aloud, before the corporal snatched it out of her hand.
   “You can’t just read anything you see, Parts!” he shouted. “You don’t know who wrote it!”
   He dropped the damp scrap onto the mud and stamped on it.
   “Now let’s move on!” he said.
   They moved on. When the squad were more or less in rhythm, and staring at nothing more than their boots or the mist ahead of it, Polly raised her right hand to chest height and carefully turned it palm up so that she could see the fragment of paper that had soggily stayed behind when the rest had been pulled away.

   “No Surrender” to Alliance says Duchess (97)
   From William de Worde
   Valley of the Kneck, Sektober 7.

   Borogrovian troops assisted by Lord V
   Light Infantry took Kneck Keep this mo
   after fierce hand-to-hand fig
   I write its armaments which
   are being turned on the remn
   Borogravian forces acr

   His Grace Commander Sir S
   told the Times that
   surrender had been rej
   view the enemy commande
   load of stiff-necked fools, don’
   in the paper.”

   It is understoo
   desperate situ
   –spread fami
   across t
   No altern
   invas

   They were winning, weren’t they? So where did the word “surrender” come from? And what was the Alliance?
   And then there was the problem of Strappi, which had been growing on her. She could see he got on Jackrum’s nerves as well, and he had a struttiness about him, a certain– er… sockiness, as if he was really the one in charge. Perhaps it was just general unpleasantness, but…
   “Corporal?” she said.
   “Yes, Parts?” said Strappi. His nose was still very red.
   “We are winning this war, aren’t we?” said Polly. She’d given up correcting him.
   Suddenly, every ear in the squad was listening.
   “Don’t you bother yourself about that, Parts!” snapped the corporal. “Your job is to fight!”
   “Right, corp. So… I’ll be fighting on the winning side, will I?”
   “Oho, we’ve got someone who asks too many questions here, sarge!” said Strappi.
   “Yeah, don’t ask questions, Perks,” said Jackrum, absent-mindedly.
   “So we’re losing, then?” said Tonker. Strappi turned on him.
   “That’s spreading Alarm and Despondency again, that is!” he shrieked. “That’s aiding the enemy!”
   “Yeah, knock it off, Private Halter,” said Jackrum. “Okay? Now get a—”
   “Halter, I’m placing you under arrest for—”
   “Corporal Strappi, a word in your shell-like ear, please? You men, you stop here!” growled the sergeant, clambering down from the cart.
   Jackrum walked back down the road about fifty feet. Glaring round at the squad, the corporal strutted after him.
   “Are we in trouble?” said Tonker.
   “You guess,” said Maladict.
   “Bound to be,” said Shufti. “Strappi can always get you for something.”
   “They’re having an argument,” said Maladict. “Which is odd, don’t you think? A sergeant is supposed to give orders to a corporal.”
   “We are winning, aren’t we?” said Shufti. “I mean, I know there’s a war, but… I mean, we get weapons, don’t we, and we’ll… well, they’ve got to train us, right? It’ll probably be all over by then, right? Everyone says we’re winning.”
   “I will ask the Duchess in my prayers tonight,” said Wazzer.
   The rest of the squad looked at one another with a shared expression.
   “Yeah, right, Wazz,” said Tonker kindly. “You do that.”
   The sun was setting fast, half hidden in the mist. Here, on the muddy road between damp fields, it suddenly felt as cold as it could be.
   “No one says we’re winning, except maybe Strappi,” said Polly. “They just say that everyone says we’re winning.”
   “The men Igor… repaired didn’t even say that,” said Tonker. “They said ‘you poor bastards, you’ll leg it if you’ve any sense.’”
   “Thank you for sharing,” said Maladict.
   “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 onto 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 onto 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’s 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 batman, 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 ith 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.
   Tut him down, Carborundum,” said Poily. “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.
   “But that’s cannibalism!” said Tonker, backing away.
   “No it’s not, not officially, not unless you eat a whole person,” said Threeparts Scallot levelly. “Milit’ry rules.”
   All eyes turned to the big pot bubbling on the fire.
   “Horse,” said Scallot. “Ain’t got nothing but horse. I told you. I wouldn’t lie to you, boys. Now kit yerselves up with the best yer can find. What’s your name, stone man?”
   “Carborundum,” said the troll.
   “Got a wee bit o’ decent snacking anthracite saved up out the back, then, and some official red paint for you ’cos I never met a troll yet that wanted to wear a jacket. The rest of you, mark what I’m telling yer: fill up with grub. Fill yer pack with grub. Fill yer shako with grub. Fill yer boots with soup. If any of you run across a pot of mustard, you hang on to it– it’s amazin’ what mustard’ll help down. And look after your mates. And keep out of the way of officers, ’cos they ain’t healthy. That’s what you learn in the army. The enemy dun’t really want to fight you, ’cos the enemy is mostly blokes like you who want to go home with all their bits still on. But officers’ll get you killed.” Scallot looked round at them. “There. I’ve said it. And if there’s a political amongst you: mister, you can go an’ tell tales and to hell with you.”
   After a few moments of embarrassed silence Polly said: “What’s a political?”
   “Like a spy, only on your own side,” said Maladict.
   “That’s right,” said Scallot. “There’s one in every battalion these days, snitching on their mates. Get promotion that way, see? Don’t want dissent in the ranks, eh? Don’t want loose talk about losing battles, right? Which is a load of bloody cludgies, ’cos the infantry grumbles all the time. Moaning is part of bein’ a soldier.” He sighed. “Anyway, there’s a bunkhouse out the back. I beats the pallyarses regular so there’s probably not too many fleas.” Once again he looked at blank faces. “That’s straw mattresses to you. Go on, help yourselves. Take what you like. I’m closing up after you’ve gone, anyway. We must be winning now you rattling lads are joining, right?”

   The clouds had broken when Polly stepped out into the night, and a half-moon filled the world with cold silver and black. The inn opposite was another rubbishy alehouse for selling bad beer to soldiers. It stank of ancient slops, even before she opened the door. The sign was flaked and unrecognizable, but she could read the name: The World Turned Upside Down. She pushed open the door. The smell got worse. There were no customers and no sign of Strappi or Jackrum, but Polly did see a servant methodically spreading the inn’s dirt evenly across the floor with a mop.
   “Excuse m—” she began, and then remembered the socks, raised her voice and tried to sound angry. “Hey, where’s the lieutenant?”
   The servant looked at her and gestured up the stairs with a thumb. There was only one candle alight up there, and she knocked on the nearest door.
   “Enter.”
   She entered. Lieutenant Blouse was standing in the middle of the floor in his breeches and shirtsleeves, holding a sabre. Polly was no expert in these matters, but she thought she recognized the stylish, flamboyant pose as the one beginners tend to use just before they’re stabbed through the heart by a more experienced fighter.
   “Ah, Perks, isn’t it?” he said, lowering the blade. “Just, er, limbering up.”
   “Yes, sir.”
   “There’s some laundry in the bag over there. I expect someone in the inn will do it. What’s for supper?”
   “I’ll check, sir.”
   “What are the men having?”
   “Scubbo, sir,” said Polly. “Possibly with hor—”
   “Then bring me some, will you? We are at war, after all, and I must show an example to my men,” said Blouse, sheathing the sword at the third attempt. “That would be good for morale.”
   Polly glanced at the table. A book lay open on top of a pile of others. It looked like a manual of swordsmanship, and the page it was open at was page five. Beside it was a thick-lensed pair of spectacles.
   “Are you a reading man, Perks?” said Blouse, closing the book.
   Polly hesitated. But, then, what did Ozzer care? “A bit, sir,” she admitted.
   “I suspect I shall have to leave most of these behind,” he said. “Do take one if you want it.” He waved a hand at the books. Polly read the titles. The Craft of War. Principles of Engagement. Battle Studies. Tactical Defence.
   “All a bit heavy for me, sir,” she said. “Thanks all the same.”
   “Tell me, Perks,” said Blouse, “are the recruits in, er, good spirits?”
   He gave her a look of apparently genuine concern. He really did have no chin, she noticed. His face just eased its way into his neck without much to disturb it on the way, but his Adam’s apple, now, that was a champion. It went up and down his neck like a ball on a spring.
   Polly had been soldiering for only a couple of days, but already an instinct had developed. In summary, it was this: lie to officers. “Yes, sir,” she said.
   “Getting everything they need?”
   The aforesaid instinct weighed the chances of their getting anything more than they’d got already as a result of a complaint, and Polly said, “Yes, sir.”
   “Of course, it is not up to us to question our orders,” said Blouse.
   “Wasn’t doing so, sir,” said Polly, momentarily perplexed.
   “Even though at times we might feel—” the lieutenant began, and started again. “Obviously warfare is a very volatile thing, and the tide of battle can change in a moment.”
   “Yessir,” said Polly, still staring. The man had a small spot where his spectacles had rubbed on his nose.
   The lieutenant seemed to have something on his mind, too. “Why did you join up, Perks?” he said, groping on the table and finding his spectacles at the third attempt. He had woollen gloves on, with the fingers cut out.
   “Patriotic duty, sir!” said Polly promptly.
   “You lied about your age?”
   “Nosir!”
   “Just patriotic duty, Perks?”
   There were lies, and then there were lies. Polly shifted awkwardly. “Would quite like to find out what’s happened to my brother Paul, sir,” she said.
   “Ah, yes.” Lieutenant Blouse’s face, not a picture of happiness to begin with, suddenly bore a hunted look.
   “Paul Perks, sir,” Polly prompted.
   “I’m, er, not really in a position to know, Perks,” said Blouse. “I was working as a… I was, er, in charge of, er, I was engaged in special work back at headquarters, er… obviously I don’t know all the soldiers, Perks. Older brother, w—is he?”
   “Yessir. Joined the Ins-and-Outs last year, sir.”
   “And, er, have you any younger brothers?” said the lieutenant.
   “No, sir.”
   “Ah, well. That’s something to be thankful for, at any rate,” said Blouse. It was a strange thing to say. Polly’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.
   “Sir?” she said.
   And then she felt an unpleasant sensation of movement. Something was slipping slowly down the inside of her thigh.
   “Anything the matter, Perks?” said the lieutenant, catching her expression.
   “Nosir! Just a… a bit of cramp, sir! All the marching, sir!” She clamped both hands around one knee and edged backwards towards the door. “I’ll just go and… go and see to your supper, sir!”
   “Yes, yes,” said Blouse, staring at her leg. “Yes… please…”
   Polly paused outside the door to pull her socks up, retucked the end of one under her belt as an anchor, and hurried down to the inn’s kitchens. A look told her all she wanted to know. Food hygiene here consisted of making a half-hearted effort not to gob in the stew.
   “I want onions, salt, pepper—” she began.
   The maid who was stirring the soot-black pot on the soot-black stove glanced up, realized she had been addressed by a man, and hastily pushed her damp hair out of her eyes.
   “It’s stoo, sir,” she announced.
   “I don’t want any. I just want the stuff,” said Polly. “For the officer,” she added.
   The kitchen maid pointed a soot-blackened thumb to a nearby door and gave Polly what she probably thought was a saucy grin.
   “I’m sure you can have anything that takes your fancy, sir,” she said.
   Polly glanced at the two shelves that had been dignified by the name of pantry, and grabbed a couple of large onions, one in each hand.
   “May I?” she said.
   “Oh, sir!” giggled the maid. “I do hope you’re not one of them coarse soldiers who’d take advantage of a helpless maiden, sir!”
   “No, er… no. I’m not one of them,” said Polly.
   “Oh.” This didn’t seem to be the right answer. The maid put her head on one side. “Have you had much to do with young women, sir?” she asked.
   “Er… yes. Quite a lot,” said Polly. “Er… lots, really.”
   “Really?” The maid drew closer. She smelled mostly of sweat, tinged with soot. Polly raised the onions as a kind of barrier.
   “I’m sure there’s things you’d like to learn,” the maid purred.
   “I’m sure there’s something you wouldn’t!” said Polly, and turned and ran.
   As she made it out into the cold night air, a plaintive voice behind her called out, “I’m off at eight o’clock!”

   Ten minutes later, Corporal Scallot was impressed. Polly got the feeling this did not happen often. Shufti had wedged an old breastplate beside the fire, had hammered some slabs of horse-meat until they were tender, dipped them in some flour, and was frying them. The sliced onions sizzled next to them.
   “I always just boil ’em,” said Scallot, watching him with interest.
   “You just lose all the flavour if you do that,” said Shufti.
   “Hey, lad, the stuff I’ve ate, you wouldn’t want to taste it!”
   “Saute stuff first, especially the onions,” Shufti went on. “Improves the flavour. Anyway, when you boil you ought to boil slow. That’s what me mam always says. Roast fast, boil slow, okay? This isn’t bad meat, for horse. Shame to boil it.”
   “Amazin’,” said Scallot. “We could’ve done with you in Ibblestarn. The sarge was a good man but a bit, you know, tough in the leg?”
   “A marinade would probably have helped,” said Shufti absently, flipping over a slice of meat with a broken sword. He turned to Polly. “Was there any more stuff in the larder, Ozz? I can make up some stock for tomorrow if we can—”
   “I’m not going in that kitchen again!” said Polly.
   “Ah, that’d be Roundheels Molly?” said Corporal Scallot, looking up and grinning. “She’s sent many a lad on his way rejoicing.” He dipped a ladle in the boiling scubbo pot next to the pan. Disintegrated grey meat seethed in a few inches of water.
   “That’ll do for the rupert,” he said, and picked up a stained bowl.
   “Well, he did say he wanted to eat what the men eat,” said Polly.
   “Oh, that kind of officer,” said Scallot uncharitably. “Yeah, some young ones try that stuff, if’n they’ve been readin’ the wrong books. Some of ’em tries to be friends, the bastards.” He spat expertly between the two pans. “Wait ’til he tries what the men eat.”
   “But if we’re having steak and onions—”
   “No thanks to the likes o’ him,” said the corporal, ladling the slurry into the bowl. “The Zlobenian troops get one pound of beef and a pound of flour a day minimum, plus fat pork or butter and half a pound of pease. A pint o’ molasses sometimes, too. We get stale horse-bread and what we scrounge. He’ll have scubbo and like it.”
   “No fresh vegetables, no fruit,” said Shufti. “That’s a very binding diet, corp.”
   “Yeah, well, once battle commences I reckon you’ll find constipation’s the last thing on your mind,” said Scallot. He reached up, pushed some rags aside, and pulled down a dusty bottle from a shelf.
   “Rupert’s not having none o’ this, neither,” he said. “Got it off’f the baggage of the last officer that went through, but I’ll share it with you, ’cos you’s good lads.” He casually knocked the top of the bottle off against the edge of the chimney. “’s only sherry, but it’ll make you drunk.”
   “Thanks, corp,” said Shufti, and took the bottle. He sloshed a lot over the sizzling meat.
   “Hey, that’s good drink you’re wastin’!” said Scallot, making a grab for it.
   “No, it’ll spice up the meat a fair treat,” said Shufti, trying to hang on to the bottle. “It’ll—sugar!”
   Half the liquid had gone on the fire as the two hands fought for it, but that wasn’t what had felt like a small steel rod shooting through Polly’s head. She looked round at the rest of the squad, who didn’t appear to have—
   Maladict winked at her and made a tiny gesture with his head towards the other end of the room, and strolled in that direction. Polly followed.
   Maladict always found something to lounge against. He relaxed in the shadows, looked up at the rafters, and said: “Now, I say a man who knows how to cook is no less of a man for that. But a man who says ‘sugar’ when he swears? Have you ever heard a man say that? You haven’t. I can tell.”
   So it was you who gave me the socks, thought Polly. You know about me, I can tell you do, but do you know about Lofty? And maybe Shufti was very politely brought up… but one look at Maladict’s knowing smile made her decide not to try that road. Besides, the moment you looked at Shufti with the idea that maybe he was a girl, you saw that he was. No man would say “Sugar!” Three girls now…
   “And I’m pretty sure about Lofty, too,” said Maladict.
   “What’re you going to do about… them?” she said.
   “Do? Why should I do anything about anyone?” said Maladict. “I’m a vampire officially pretending not to be one, right? I’m the last person who’ll say anyone has to play the hand they were dealt. So good luck to… him, say I. But you might like to take him aside later on and have a word with him. You know… man to man.”
   Polly nodded. Was there a knowingness to that comment? “I’d better go and take the lieutenant his scubbo,” she said. “And… blast it, I forgot about his laundry.”
   “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, old chap,” said Maladict, and flashed a little smile. “The way things are going around here, Igor’s probably a washerwoman in disguise.”

   Polly did the laundry, in the end. She wasn’t sure that she’d be able to dodge Molly a second time, and there wasn’t that much of it. Afterwards she hung it in front of the fire, which was roaring.
   The horse had been surprisingly good, but not as surprising as Blouse’s reaction to the scubbo. He had sat there in his evening dress uniform—wearing special clothes just to sit down and eat all by yourself was a new one on Polly—and had yummed it up and sent her back with the bowl for more. The meat had been boiled white and there was scum on the top. The squad wondered what kind of life an officer could have led that inclined him to like scubbo.
   “Dun’t know much about him,” said Scallot, upon questioning. “He’s been here two weeks, frettin’ to get to the war. Brought a whole cartload of books with him, I heard. Looks like a typical rupert to me. They were all behind the door when the chins were handed out. A sergeant who went through said he’s not really a soldier at all, just some wonk from headquarters that’s good at sums.”
   “Oh, great,” said Maladict, who was brewing his coffee by the fire. The little engine gurgled and hissed.
   “I don’t think he can see very well without his glasses,” said Polly. “But he’s very, er, polite.”
   “Not been a rupert for long, then,” said Scallot. “They’re more ‘Hey there! You! Damn your eyes, fwah fwah fwah!’ I seen your sergeant before, though, old Jackrum. Been everywhere, he has. Everyone knows old Jackrum. He was with us in the snow up at Ibblestarn.”
   “How many people did he eat?” said Maladict, to general laughter. The dinner had been good, and there had still been enough sherry for a glass each.
   “Let’s just say I heard he didn’t come down much thinner than when he went up,” said Scallot.
   “And Corporal Strappi?” said Polly.
   “Never seen him before, either,” said Scallot. “Cross-grained little bugger. Political, I’d say. Why’s he gone and left you here? Got a nice cushy bed in the inn, has he?”
   “I hope he’s not g-going to be our sergeant,” said Wazzer.
   “Him? Why?” said Scallot.
   Polly volunteered the events of earlier in the evening. To her surprise, Scallot laughed.
   “They’re trying to get rid of the old bugger again, are they?” he said. “That’s a laugh! Bless you, it’ll take more’n a bunch of gawains and rodneys to lever Jackrum out of his own army. Why, he’s been court-martialled twice. He got off both times. And d’you know he once saved General Froc’s life? He’s been everywhere, got the goods on everyone, knows more strings than me and I know a good few, mark my words. If he wants to march with you tomorrow he will, and no skinny little rupert’ll get in his way.”
   “So what was a man like that doing as a recruiting officer?” said Maladict sharply.
   “’cos he got his leg cut open in Zlobenia and bit the sawbones who tried to look at it when the wound went bad, cleverdick,” retorted Scallot. “Cleaned it out himself with maggots and honey, then drank a pint of brandy and sewed himself up and lay on his bed with a fever for a week. But the general got him, I heard, came and visited him while he was too weak to protest and told him he was going on the drumming for a year and no argument. Not even Froc hisself would hand him his papers, not after Jackrum’d carried him on his back for fourteen miles through enemy lines—”
   The door swung open and Sergeant Jackrum walked in, tucking his hands into his belt.
   “Don’t bother to salute, lads,” he said, as they turned guiltily. “Evening, Threeparts. Nice to see nearly all of you again, you artful ol’ god-dodger. Where’s Corporal Strappi?”
   “Haven’t seen him all evening, sarge,” said Maladict.
   “Didn’t he come in here with you?”
   “No, sarge. We thought he was with you.”
   Not a muscle moved on Jackrum’s face. “I see,” he said. “Well, you heard the lieutenant. The boat leaves at midnight. We should be well down the Kneck by Wednesday’s dawn. Get a few hours’ sleep if you can. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day, if you’re lucky.”
   And with that, he turned and went out again. Wind howled outside, and was cut off when the door shut. We’ll be well down the Kneck, Polly noted. Well done, Threeparts.
   “Missing a corporal?” said Scallot. “Now there’s a thing. Usually it’s a recruit that goes ay-wole. Well, you heard the sergeant, boys. Time to wash up and turn in.”
   There was a washroom and latrine, in a rough and ready fashion. Polly found a moment when she and Shufti were in it alone. She’d racked her brains about how best to raise the subject, but as it turned out just a look was all it took.
   “It was when I volunteered to do the supper, wasn’t it?” Shufti mumbled, staring into the stone sink, which had moss growing in it.
   “That was a clue, yes,” said Polly.
   “A lot of men cook, you know!” said Shufti hotly.
   “Yes, but not soldiers, and not enthusiastically,” said Polly. “They don’t do marinades.”
   “Have you told anybody?” mumbled Shufti, red in the face.
   “No,” said Polly, which was, after all, strictly true. “Look, you were good, you had me fooled right up until ‘sugar’.”
   “Yes, yes, I know,” Shufti whispered. “I can do the belching and the walking stupidly and even the nose-picking, but I wasn’t brought up to swear like you men!”
   Us men, thought Polly. Oh, boy.
   “We’re the coarse and licentious soldiery. I’m afraid it’s shit or bust,” she said. “Er… why are you doing this?”
   Shufti stared into the dank stone sink as if strange green slime was really interesting, and mumbled something.
   “Sorry, what was that?” said Polly.
   “Going to find my husband,” said Shufti, only a little bit louder.
   “Oh, dear. How long had you been married?” said Polly, without thinking.
   “…not married yet…” said Shufti, in a voice as tall as an ant.
   Polly glanced down at the plumpness of Shufti. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. She tried to sound reasonable. “Don’t you think that you should—”
   “Don’t you tell me to go home!” said Shufti, rounding on her. “There’s nothing for me back home except disgrace! I’m not going home! I’m going to the war and I’m going to find him! No one’s going to tell me not to, Ozzer! No one! This has happened before, anyway! And it ended right! There’s a song about it and everything!”
   “Oh, that,” said Polly. “Yes. I know.” Folk singers should be shot. “What I was going to say was that you might find this helps the disguise…” She produced a soft cylinder of woolly socks from her pack and wordlessly handed it over. It was a dangerous thing to do, she knew, but now she was feeling a kind of responsibility to those whose sudden strange fancy hadn’t been followed by a plan.
   On the way back to her palliasse she caught sight of Wazzer hanging his little picture of the Duchess on a handy hook in the crumbling wall above his mattress. He looked around furtively, failed to spot Polly in the shadows of the doorway, and bobbed a very quick curtsy to the picture. A curtsy, not a bow.
   Polly frowned. Four. She was barely surprised, now. And she had one pair of clean socks left. This was soon going to be a barefoot army.

   Polly could tell the time by the fire. You got a feel for how long a fire burned, and the logs on this one were grey with ash over the glow beneath. It was gone eleven, she decided.
   By the sound of it, no one was getting any sleep. She’d got up after an hour or two of lying on the crackling straw mattress, staring at darkness and listening to things move about underneath her; she’d have stayed on it for longer, but something in the straw seemed to want to push her leg out of the way. Besides, she didn’t have any dry blankets. There were blankets in the barracks, but Threeparts had advised against them on account of their carrying, as he put it, “the Itch”.
   The corporal had left a candle alight. Polly had read Paul’s letter again, and taken another look at the piece of printed paper rescued from the muddy road. The words were fractured and she wasn’t sure about all of them, but she didn’t like the sound of any of them. “Invas” had a particularly unpleasant ring to it.
   And then there was the third piece of paper. She couldn’t help that. It had been a complete accident. She’d done Blouse’s laundry and of course you went through the pockets before you washed things, because anyone who’d ever tried to unroll a soggy, bleached sausage that’d once been a banknote didn’t want to do it twice. And there had been this folded piece of paper. Admittedly, she needn’t have unfolded it and, having unfolded it, needn’t have read it. But there are some things that you just do.
   It was a letter. Presumably Blouse had shoved it in a pocket and forgotten about it when he’d changed his shirt. She needn’t read it again but, by candlelight, she did.

   My Dearest Emmeline,
   Fame and Fortune await! After only eight years as a 2nd Lieutenant I have now been promoted and am to have a command! Of course this will mean that there will be no officer left in the Adjutant-General’s Blanket’s, Bedding and Horse Fodder Department, but I have explained my new filing system to Cpl Drebb and I believe he is Sound.
   You know I cannot go into matters of detail, but I believe this will be a very exciting prospect and I am anxious to be “at the Foe”. I am bold enough to hope that the name of Blouse will go down in military history. In the meantime, I am brushing up my sword drill and it is definitely all “coming back” to me. Of course, the promotion brings with it no less than One Shilling extra “per Diem”, plus Three Pence fodder allowance. To this end I have purchased a “charger” from Mr “Honest” Jack Slacker, a most entertaining gentleman, although I fear that his description of my steed’s “prowess” may have been prone to some exaggeration. Nevertheless, I am “moving up” at last and if Fate smiles on me this will hurry forward the day when I can

   And that was it, fortunately. After some thought, Polly went and carefully damped the letter, then dried it quickly over the remains of the fire and slipped it into the pocket of the washed shirt. Blouse might scold her for not removing it before washing, but she doubted it.—
   A blanket-counter with a new filing system. An ensign for eight years, in a war where promotion could be rather fast. A man who put inverted commas round any word or phrase he thought of as even slightly “racy”. Brushing up on his “sword drill”. And so short-sighted he’d bought a horse from Jack Slacker, who went around all the horse fairs’ bargain bins and sold winded old screws that dropped a leg before you’d got home.
   Our leader.
   They were losing the war. Everyone knew that, but nobody would say it. It was as if they felt that if the words weren’t said out loud then it wasn’t really happening. They were losing the war and this squad, untrained and untried, fighting in dead men’s boots, could only help them lose it faster. Half of them were girls! Because of some bloody stupid song, Shufti was wandering off into a war to look for the father of her child, and that was a desperate errand for a girl even in peacetime. And Lofty was trailing after her boy, which would probably be romantic right up until five minutes into a battle. And she…

   …well, yes. She’d heard the song, too. So what? Paul was her brother. She’d always kept an eye on him, even when she was small. Mother was always busy, everyone was always busy at The Duchess, so Polly had become a big sister to a brother fifteen months older than her. She’d taught him to blow his nose, taught him how to form letters, went and found him when crueller boys had got him lost in the woods. Running after Paul was a duty that had become a habit.
   And then… well, it wasn’t the only reason. When her father died The Duchess would be lost to her side of the family if there was no male to inherit. That was the law, plain and simple. Nugganatic law said that men could inherit “the Things of Men” such as land, buildings, money and all domestic animals except cats. Women could inherit “the Things of Women”, which were mostly small items of personal jewellery and spinning wheels passed from mothers to daughters. They certainly couldn’t inherit a large, famous tavern.
   So The Duchess would go to Paul if he was alive, or if he was dead it was allowable for it to go to Polly’s husband if she was married. And since Polly saw no prospect of that, she needed a brother. Paul could happily carry barrels around for the rest of his life; she would run The Duchess. But if she was left alone, a woman with no man, then at best all she’d get was maybe the chance to go on living there while the deeds went to cousin Vlopo, who was a drunkard.
   Of course, all that wasn’t the reason. Certainly not. But it was a reason, all the same. The reason was, simply, Paul. She’d always found him and brought him home.
   She looked at the shako in her hands. There had been helmets, but since they all had arrow holes or gaping rips in them the squad had wordlessly gone for the softer hats. You’d die anyway, and at least you wouldn’t have a headache. The shako’s badge showed the regimental symbol of a flaming cheese. Maybe one day she’d find out why. Polly put it on, picked up her pack and the small bag of laundry, and stepped out into the night. The moon was gone, the clouds had come back. She was drenched by the time she’d crossed the square; the rain was coming horizontally.
   She shoved open the inn door and saw, by the light of one guttering candle… chaos. Clothing was strewn across the flagstones, cupboards were hanging open. Jackrum was coming down the stairs, cutlass in one hand, lantern in the other.
   “Oh, it’s you, Perks,” he said. “They’ve cleaned the place out and buggered off. Even Molly. I heard ’em go. Pushing a cart, by the sound of it. What’re you doing here?”
   “Batman, sarge,” said Polly, shaking water off her hat.
   “Oh, yeah. Right. Go and wake him up, then. He’s snoring like a sawmill. I hope to hell the boat’s still there.”
   “Why’d they bug—scarper, sarge?” said Polly and thought: Sugar! If it comes to it, I don’t swear, either! But the sergeant didn’t appear to notice.
   He gave her what is known as an old-fashioned look; this one had dinosaurs in it. “Got wind of something, I don’t doubt,” he said. “Of course, we’re winning the war, you know.”
   “Ah. Oh. And we’re not going to be invaded at all, I expect,” said Polly, with equally exaggerated care.
   “Quite right. I detest those treacherous devils who’d have us believe that a vast army is about to sweep right across the country any day now,” said Jackrum.
   “Er… no sign of Corporal Strappi, sarge?”
   “No, but I haven’t turned over every stone yet—ssh!”
   Polly froze, and strained to listen. There were hoofbeats, getting louder as they approached, and changing from thuds into the ringing sound of horseshoes on cobbles.
   “Cavalry patrol,” Jackrum whispered, putting the lantern down on the bar. “Six or seven horses.”
   “Ours?”
   “I bleedin’ doubt it.”
   The clattering slowed, and came to a stop outside.
   “Keep ’em talking,” said Jackrum, reaching down and sliding the door’s bolt across. He turned and headed towards the rear of the inn.
   “What? What about?” whispered Polly. “Sarge?”
   Jackrum had vanished. Polly heard murmuring outside the door, followed by a couple of sharp knocks.
   She threw off her jacket. She wrenched the shako off her head and tossed it behind the bar. Now she wasn’t a soldier, at least. And, as the door was shaken against the bolt, she saw something white lying in the debris. It was a terrible temptation…
   The door burst open at the second blow, but the soldiers didn’t immediately enter. Lying under the bar, struggling to put the petticoat on over rolled-up trousers, Polly tried to make sense of the sounds. As far as she could tell from the rustles and thuds, anyone waiting inside the doorway with ambush in mind would have been briefly and terminally sorry. She tried to count the invaders; it sounded as though there were at least three. In the tense silence, the sound of a voice speaking in normal tones came as a shock.
   “We heard the bolt slide across. That means you’re in here somewhere. Make it easy on yourself. We don’t want to have to come and find you.”
   I don’t want you to either, Polly thought. I’m not a soldier! Go away! And then the next thought was: What do you mean, you’re not a soldier? You took the shilling and kissed the picture, didn’t you? And suddenly an arm had reached under the bar and grabbed her. At least she didn’t have to act.
   “No! Please, sir! Don’t hurt me! I just got frightened! Please!”
   But inside there was a certain… sock-ness that felt ashamed, and wanted to kick out.
   “Ye gods, what are you?” said the cavalryman, pulling her upright and looking at her as if she was some kind of exhibit.
   “Polly, sir! Barmaid, sir! Only they cleared out and left me!”
   “Keep the noise down, girl!”
   Polly nodded. The last thing she needed now was for Blouse to run down the stairs with his sabre and Fencing for Beginners.
   “Yes, sir,” she squeaked.
   “Barmaid, eh? Three pints of what you’d probably call your finest ale, then.”
   That at least could happen on automatic. She’d seen the mugs under the bar, and the barrels were behind her. The beer was thin and sharp but probably wouldn’t dissolve a penny.
   The cavalryman watched her closely as she filled the mugs. “What happened to your hair?” he said.
   Polly had been ready for this. “Oh, sir, they cut it off, sir! ’cos I smiled at a Zlobenian trooper, sir!”
   “Here?”
   “In Drok, sir.” It was a town much nearer the border. “And me mam said it was shaming to the family and I got sent here, sir!”
   Her hands shook as she put the mugs on the bar, and she was hardly exaggerating. Hardly… but a bit, nevertheless. You’re acting like a girl, she thought. Keep it up!
   Now she could take stock of the invaders. They wore dark-blue uniforms, and big boots, and heavy cavalry helmets. One of them was standing by the shuttered windows. The other two were watching her. One had a sergeant’s stripes and an expression of deep suspicion. The one who’d grabbed her was a captain.
   “This is terrible beer, girl,” he said, sniffing the mug.
   “Yes, sir, I know, sir,” Polly gabbled. “They wouldn’t listen to me, sir, and said you have to put a damp sheet over the barrels in this thundery weather, sir, and Molly never cleans the spigot and—”
   “This town’s empty, you know that?”
   “They all scarpered, sir,” said Polly earnestly. “Gonna be an invasion, sir. Everyone says. They’re frightened of you, sir.”
   “Except you, eh?” said the sergeant.
   “What’s your name, girl who smiles at Zlobenian troopers?” said the captain, smiling.
   “Polly, sir,” said Polly. Her questing hand found what it was seeking under the bar. It was the barman’s friend. There always was one.
   “And are you frightened of me, Polly?” said the captain. There was a snigger from the soldier by the window.
   The captain had a well-trimmed moustache which had been waxed to points, and was over six feet tall, Polly reckoned. He had a pretty smile, too, which was somehow improved by the scar on his face. A circle of glass covered one eye. Her hand gripped the hidden cudgel.
   “No, sir,” she said, looking back into one eye and one glass. “Er… what’s that glass for, sir?”
   “It’s a monocle,” said the captain. “It helps me see you, for which I am eternally grateful. I always say that if I had two I’d make a spectacle of myself.”
   That got a dutiful laugh from the sergeant. Polly looked blank.
   “And are you going to tell me where the recruits are?” said the captain.
   She forced her expression not to change. “No.”
   The captain smiled. He had good teeth, but there was, now, no warmth in his eyes.
   “You are in no position to be ignorant,” he said. “We won’t hurt them, I assure you.”
   There was a scream in the distance.
   “Much,” said the sergeant, with more satisfaction than was necessary. There was another yell. The captain nodded to the man by the door, who slipped out. Polly pulled the shako out from under the bar and put it on.
   “One of them gave you his cap, did he?” said the sergeant, and his teeth were nowhere near as good as the officer’s. “Well, I like a girl who’ll smile at a soldier—”
   The cudgel hit him along the head. It was old blackthorn, and he went down like a tree. The captain backed away as Polly came out from behind the bar with the club readied again. But he hadn’t drawn his sword, and he was laughing.
   “Now, girl, if you want—” He caught her arm as she swung, dragged her towards him in a tight grip, still laughing, and folded up almost silently as her knee connected with his sock drawer. Thank you, Gummy. As he sagged she stepped back and brought the cudgel down on his helmet, making it ring.
   She was shaking. She felt sick. Her stomach was a small, red-hot lump. What else could she have done? Was she supposed to think We have met the enemy and he is nice? Anyway, he wasn’t. He was smug.
   She tugged a sabre from a scabbard and crept out into the night. It was still raining, and waist-deep mist was drifting up from the river. Half a dozen or so horses were outside, but not tied up. A trooper was waiting with them. Faintly, against the rustle of the rain, she heard him making soothing noises to comfort one of them. She wished she hadn’t heard that. Well, she’d taken the shilling. Polly gripped the cudgel.
   She’d gone a step when the mist between her and the man fountained up slowly as something rose out of it. The horses shifted uneasily. The man turned, a shadow moved, the man fell…
   “Oil” whispered Polly.
   The shadow turned. “Ozzer? It’s me, Maladict,” it said. “Sarge sent me to see if you needed help.”
   “Bloody Jackrum left me surrounded by armed men!” Polly hissed.
   “And?”
   “Well, I… knocked two of them out,” she said, feeling as she said it that this rather spoilt her case as a victim. “One went over the road, though.”
   “I think we got that one,” said Maladict. “Well, I say ‘got’… Tonker nearly gutted him. There’s a girl with what I’d call unresolved issues.” He turned round. “Let’s see… seven horses, seven men. Yep.”
   “Tonker?” said Polly.
   “Oh, yes. Hadn’t you spotted her? She went mad when the man charged at Lofty. Now, let’s have a look at your gentlemen, shall we?” said Maladict, heading for the inn door.
   “But Lofty and Tonker…” Polly began, running to keep up. “I mean, the way they act, they… I thought she was his girl… but I thought Tonker… I mean, I know Lofty is a gi—”
   Even in the dark, Maladict’s teeth gleamed as he smiled. “The world’s certainly unfolding itself for you, eh? Ozzer? Every day, something new. Cross-dressing now, I see.”
   “What?”
   “You are wearing a petticoat, Ozzer,” said Maladict, stepping into the bar. Polly looked down guiltily and started to tug it off, and then thought: hang on a moment…
   The sergeant had managed to pull himself up against the bar, where he was being sick. The captain was groaning on the floor.
   “Good evening, gentlemen!” said the vampire. “Please pay attention. I am a reformed vampire, which is to say, I am a bundle of suppressed instincts held together with spit and coffee. It would be wrong to say that violent, tearing carnage does not come easily to me. It’s not tearing your throats out that doesn’t come easily to me. Please don’t make it any harder.”
   The sergeant pushed himself away from the bar top and took a muzzy swing at Maladict. Almost absent-mindedly, Maladict leaned away from it and then returned a roundhouse blow that knocked him over.
   “The captain looks bad,” he said. “What did he try to do to poor little you?”
   “Patronize me,” said Polly, glaring at Maladict.
   “Ah,” said the vampire.
   Maladict knocked softly on the barracks door. It opened a fraction, and then all the way. Carborundum lowered his club. Wordlessly, Polly and Maladict dragged the two cavalrymen inside. Sergeant Jackrum was sitting on a stool by the fire, drinking a mug of beer.
   “Well done, lads,” he said. “Put ’em with the others.” He waved the mug vaguely towards the far wall, where four of the soldiers were hunched sullenly under the gaze of Tonker. They had been manacled together. The last soldier was lying on a table, with Igor at work on him with a needle and thread.
   “How’s he coming along, private?” said Jackrum.
   “He’ll be fine, tharge,” said Igor. “It looked worthe than it wath, really. Jutht ath well, because until we get to the battlefield I won’t get any thpareth.”
   “Got a couple of legs for ol’ Threeparts?” said Jackrum.
   “Now then, sarge, none of that,” said Scallot evenly. He was sitting on the other side of the fireplace. “You just leave me their horses and saddles. Your lads could do with their sabres, I’ve no doubt.”
   “They were looking for us, sarge,” said Polly. “We’re just a bunch of untrained recruits and they were looking for us. I could’ve been killed, sarge!”
   “No, I know talent when I sees it,” said Jackrum. “Well done, lad. Had to piss off myself, on account of a big man in full enemy uniform isn’t easy to miss. Besides, you lads needed to be woke up. That’s milit’ry thinking, that is.”
   “But if I hadn’t…” Polly hesitated. “If I hadn’t tricked them, they might’ve killed the lieutenant!”
   “See? There’s always a positive side, any way you look at it,” said Scallot.
   The sergeant stood up, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and hitched up his belt. He ambled over to the captain, reached down, and lifted him up by his jacket.
   “Why were you looking for these boys, sir?” he enquired.
   The captain opened his eye and focused on the fat man.
   “I am an officer and a gentleman, sergeant,” he muttered. “There are rules.”
   “Not many gentlemen around here at this moment, sir,” said the sergeant.
   “Damn right,” whispered Maladict. Polly, feeling drunk with relief and released tension, had to put her hand over her mouth to stop giggling.
   “Oh, yeah. The rules. Prisoners of war and that,” Jackrum went on. “That means you even have to eat the same things as us, you poor devils. So you’re not going to talk to me?”
   “I am… Captain Horentz of the First Heavy Dragoons. I’ll say nothing more.” And something about the way he said it elbowed Polly in the brain. He’s lying.
   Jackrum stared at him blankly for a moment, and then said: “Well, now… it looks like what we have here is an embugger-ance which, my lads of the Cheesemongers, is defined as an obstruction in the way of progress. I propose to deal with it in this wise!” He let go of the man’s jacket and the captain fell back.
   Sergeant Jackrum removed his hat. Then he removed his jacket, too, revealing a stained shirt and bright red braces. He was still almost spherical; from his neck, folds of skin lapped their way down to the tropical regions. The belt must have been there just to conform to regulations, Polly thought.
   He reached up and undid a piece of string from around his neck. It was looped through a hole in a tarnished coin.
   “Corporal Scallot!” he said.
   “Yes, sarge!” said Scallot, saluting.
   “You will note I am divestering myself of my insignia and am handing you my official shilling, which means, since last time I signed up it was for twelve years and that was sixteen years ago, I am now fully and legally a damn civilian!”
   “Yes, Mister Jackrum,” said Scallot cheerfully. Among the prisoners, heads jerked up at the sound of the name.
   “And that being the case, and since you, captain, are invading our country by night under the cover of darkness, and I am a humble civilian, I think there’s no rule to stop me beating seven kinds of crap out of you until you tell me why you came here and when the rest of your mates are going to arrive. And that may take me some time, sir, because up until now I’ve only ever discovered five types of crap.” He rolled up his sleeves, hauled up the captain again and drew back a fist—
   “We just had to take the recruits into custody,” said a voice. “We weren’t going to hurt them! Now put him down, Jackrum, damn you! He’s still seeing stars!”
   It was the sergeant from the inn. Polly looked at the other prisoners. Even with Carborundum and Maladict watching them, and Tonker glowering at them, there was a definite sense that the first blow landed on the captain was going to start a riot. And Polly thought: they are very protective, aren’t they…
   Jackrum must have picked it up, too. “Ah, now we’re talking,” he said, lowering the captain gently but still holding his coat. “Your men speak up for you well, captain.”
   “That’s because we’re not slaves, you bloody beeteater,” growled one of the troopers.
   “Slaves? All my lads joined up of their own free will, turniphead.”
   “Maybe they thought they did,” said the sergeant. “You just lied to ’em. Lied to ’em for years. They’re all gonna die because of your stupid lies! Lies and your raddled, rotting, lying old whore of a duchess!”
   “Private Goom, as you were! That is an order! As you were, I said! Private Maladict, take that sword off’f Private Goom! That is another order! Sergeant, order your men to ease back slowly! Slowly! Do it now! Upon my oath I am not a violent man, but any man, any man who disobeys me, bigod, that man is lookin’ at a broken rib!”
   Jackrum screamed all that in one long explosion of sound without taking his eyes off the captain.
   Reaction, order and breathless stillness had taken just a few seconds. Polly stared at the sudden tableau as her muscles untensed.
   The Zlobenian troopers were settling back. Carborundum’s raised club began to lower itself gently. Little Wazzer was held off the ground by Maladict, who’d wrenched a sword from her hand; possibly only a vampire could have moved faster than Wazzer as she’d charged the prisoners.
   “Custody,” said Jackrum, in a quiet voice. “That’s a funny word. Look at my little lads, will you? Not a whisker between them yet, save for the troll, and lichen don’t count. Still wet behind the ears, they are. What’s dangerous about a harmless bunch of farm boys that’d concern a fine bunch of horse-wallopers like yourselves?”
   “Can thomeone pleathe come and put their finger on thith knot?” said Igor, from his makeshift operating table. “I’ve jutht about done.”
   “Harmless?” said the sergeant, staring at the struggling Wazzer. “They’re a bunch of bloody madmen!”
   “I want to speak to your officer, damn you,” said the captain, who looked a little less unfocused now. “You do have an officer, don’t you?”
   “Yeah, we’ve got one somewhere, as I recall,” said Jackrum. “Perks, go and fetch the rupert, will you? Best if you take that dress off first, too. You never know, with ruperts.” He carefully lowered the captain onto a bench, and straightened up.
   “Carborundum, Maladict, chop something off any prisoner who moves, and any man who tries to attack a prisoner!” he said. “Now then… oh, yes. Threeparts Scallot, I wish to enlist in your wonderful army, with its many opportunities for a young man willing to apply himself.”
   “Any previous soldierin’?” said Scallot, grinning.
   “Forty years fighting every bleeder within a hundred miles of Borogravia, corporal.”
   “Special skills?”
   “Stayin’ alive, corporal, come what may.”
   “Then allow me to present you with one shilling and immediate acceleration to the rank of sergeant,” said Scallot, handing back the coat and the shilling. “Want to Osculate the Doxie?”
   “Not at my time o’ life,” said Jackrum, putting on his jacket again. “There,” he said. “All smart, all neat, all legal. Go on, Perks, I gave you an order.”
   Blouse was snoring. His candle had burned down. A book was open on his blanket. Polly gently pulled it out from under his fingers. The title, almost invisible on the stained cover, was: Tacticus: The Campaigns.
   “Sir?” she whispered.
   Blouse opened his eyes, saw her, and then turned and frantically scrabbled by the bed.
   “Here they are, sir,” said Polly, handing him his spectacles.
   “Ah, Perks, thank you,” said the lieutenant, sitting up. “Midnight, is it?”
   “A bit after, sir.”
   “Oh, dear! Then we must hurry! Quick, pass me my breeches! Have the men had a good night?”
   “We were attacked by Zlobenian troops, sir. First Heavy Dragoons. We took them prisoner, sir. No casualties, sir.”
   …because they didn’t expect us to fight. They wanted to take us alive! And they walked in on Carborundum and Maladict and… me.
   It had been hard, very hard, to force herself to swing that cudgel. But once she had done it, it had been easy. And then she’d felt embarrassed about being caught in a petticoat, even though she had her breeches on underneath. She’d gone from boy to girl just by thinking it, and it had been so… easy.
   She needed some time to consider this. She needed time to think about a lot of things. She suspected that time was going to be in short supply.
   Blouse was still sitting there with his breeches half on, staring at her.
   “Run that past me again one more time, will you, Perks?” he said. “You have captured some of the enemy?”
   “Not just me, sir, I only got two of ’em,” said Polly. “We all, er, piled in, sir.”
   “Heavy Dragoons?”
   “Yessir.”
   “That’s the Prince’s personal regiment! They’ve invaded?”
   “I think it was more of a patrol, sir. Seven men.”
   “And none of you are hurt?”
   “Nosir.”
   “Pass me my shirt! Oh, blast!”
   It was then that Polly noticed the bandage around his right hand. It was red with blood. He saw her expression.
   “Bit of a self-inflicted wound, Perks,” he said nervously. “‘Brushing up’ on my sword drill after supper. Nothing serious. Just a bit ‘rusty’, you know. Can’t quite manage buttons. If you would be so good…”
   Polly helped the lieutenant struggle into the rest of his clothes, and threw his few other possessions in a bag. It took a special kind of man, she reflected, to cut his sword hand with his own sword.
   “I should pay my bill…” the lieutenant muttered, as they hurried down the darkened stairs.
   “Can’t, sir. Everyone’s fled, sir.”
   “Perhaps I should leave them a note, do you think? I wouldn’t like them to think that I had ‘done a runner’ without—”
   “They’ve all gone, sir!” said Polly, pushing him towards the front door. She stopped outside the barracks, straightened his coat and stared at his face. “Did you wash last night, sir?”
   “There was no—” Blouse began.
   The response was automatic. Even though she was fifteen months younger, she’d been mothering Paul for too long.
   “Handkerchief!” she demanded. And, since some things get programmed into the brain at an early age, one was obediently produced.
   “Spit!” Polly commanded. Then she used the damp hanky to wipe a mark off Blouse’s face and realized, as she was doing it, that she was doing it. There was no going back. The only way out was ahead.
   “All right,” she said brusquely. “Have you got everything?”
   “Yes, Perks.”
   “Have you been to the privy this morning?” her mouth went on, while her brain cowered in fear of a court martial. I’m in shock, she thought, and so’s he. So you cling to what you know. And you can’t stop…
   “No, Perks,” said the lieutenant.
   “Then you must go properly before we get on the boat, all right?”
   “Yes, Perks.”
   “In you go, then, there’s a good lieutenant.”
   She leaned against the wall and got her breath back in a few hurried gulps as Blouse stepped into the barracks, then slipped in after him.
   “Officer present!” Jackrum barked. The squad, already lined up, stood to varying degrees of attention. The sergeant jerked a salute in front of Blouse, causing the young man to sway backwards.
   “Apprehended enemy scouting party, sir! Dangerous business all round, sir! In view of the emergency nature of the emergency sir, and seeing as how you have no NCO what with Corporal Strappi having scarpered, and seeing as how I’m an old soldier in good standing, you are allowed to conscript me as an auxiliary under Duchess’s Regulations, Rule 796, Section 3 [a], Paragraph ii, sir, thank you, sir!”
   “What?” said Blouse, staring around blearily and becoming aware that in a world of sudden turmoil there was a big red coat that seemed to know what it was doing. “Oh. Yes. Fine. Rule 796, you say? Absolutely. Well done. Carry on, sergeant.”
   “Are you in command here?” barked Horentz, standing.
   “Indeed I am, captain,” said Blouse.
   Horentz looked him up and down. “You?” he said, disdain oozing from the word.
   “Indeed, sir,” said Blouse, his eyes narrowing.
   “Oh well, we shall have to do what we can. That fat bastard,” said Horentz, pointing a threatening finger at Jackrum, “that bastard offered me violence! As a prisoner! In chains! And that… boy,” the captain added, spitting the word towards Polly, “kicked me in the privates and almost clubbed me to death! I demand that you let us go!”
   Blouse turned to Polly. “Did you kick Captain Horentz in the ‘privates’, Parts?”
   “Er… yessir. Kneed, actually. And it’s Perks actually, sir, although I can see why you made the mistake.”
   “What was he doing at the time?”
   “Er… embracing me, sir.” Polly saw Blouse’s eyebrows rise, and plunged on. “I was temporarily disguised as a girl, sir, in order to allay suspicion.”
   “And then you… clubbed him?”
   “Yessir. Once, sir.”
   “What in the world possessed you to stop at once?” said Blouse.
   “Sir?” said Polly, as Horentz gasped. Blouse turned with an almost seraphic look of pleasure on his face.
   “And you, sergeant,” he went on, “did you in fact lay a hand on the captain?”
   Jackrum took a step forward and saluted smartly. “Not as in fact per se and such, sir, no,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on a point some twelve feet high on the far wall. “I just considered, since he had invaded our country to capture our lads, sir, that it wouldn’t hurt if he experienced temporary feelings of shock and awe, sir. On my oath, sir, I am not a violent man.”
   “Of course not, sergeant,” said Blouse. And now, while he still smiled, it was edged with a kind of malevolent glee.
   “For heaven’s sake, you fool, you can’t believe these ignorant yokels, they’re the dregs of—” Horentz began.
   “I do believe them, indeed I do,” said Blouse, shaking with nervous defiance. “I would believe their testimony against yours, sir, if they told me the sky was green. And it would appear that untrained as they are, they have bested some of Zlobenia’s finest soldiers by wit and daring. I have every confidence that they have further surprises in store for us—”
   “Dropping your drawers would do it,” whispered Maladict.
   “Shutup!” hissed Polly, and then had to cram a fist into her mouth again.
   “I know you, Captain Horentz,” said Blouse, and just for a moment the captain looked worried. “I mean I know your sort. I’ve had to put up with them all my life. Big jovial bullies, with their brains in their breeches. You dare to come riding into our country and think we’re going to be frightened of you? You think you can appeal to me over the heads of my men? You demand? On the soil of my country?”
   “Captain?” murmured the cavalry sergeant, as Horentz stared open-mouthed at the lieutenant, “they’ll be here soon…”
   “Ah,” said Horentz uncertainly. Then he seemed, with some effort, to regain his composure. “Reinforcements are coming,” he snapped. “Free us now, you idiot, and I might just put this down to native stupidity. Otherwise I shall see to it that things go very, very badly for you and your… ha… men.”
   “Seven cavalrymen were considered not enough to deal with farm boys?” said Blouse. “You’re sweating, captain. You are worried. And yet you have reinforcements coming?”
   “Permission to speak, sir!” barked Jackrum, and went straight on to: “Cheesemongers! Get bleedin’ armed again right now! Maladict, you give Private Goom his sword back an’ wish him luck! Carborundum, you grab a handful of them twelve-foot pikes! The rest of—”
   “There’s these as well, sarge,” said Maladict. “Lots of them. I got them off our friends’ saddles.” He held up what looked to Polly like a couple of large pistol crossbows, steely and sleek.
   “Horsebows?” said Jackrum, like a child opening a wonderful Hogswatch present. “That’s what you gets for leading an honest and sober life, my lads. Dreadful little engines they are. Let’s have two each!”
   “I don’t want unnecessary violence, sergeant,” said Blouse.
   “Right you are, sir!” said the sergeant. “Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin’, I want him nailed to the wall!” He caught the lieutenant’s eye, and added: “But not too hard!”
   …and someone did knock at the door.
   Maladict levelled two bows at it. Carborundum lifted a couple of pikes in either hand. Polly raised her cudgel, a weapon she at least knew how to use. The other boys, and girls, raised whatever weapon Threeparts Scallot had been able to procure. There was silence. Polly looked around.
   “Come in?” she suggested.
   “Yeah, right, that should do it,” said Jackrum, rolling his eyes.
   The door was pushed open and a small, dapper man stepped through carefully. In build, colouring and hairstyle he looked rather like Mala—
   “A vampire?” said Polly softly.
   “Oh, damn,” said Maladict.
   The newcomer’s clothing, however, was unusual. It was an old-fashioned evening dress coat with the sleeves removed and many, many pockets sewn all over it. In front of him, slung around his neck, was a large black box. Against all common sense, he beamed at the sight of a dozen weapons poised to deliver perforated death.
   “Vonderful!” he said, lifting up the box and unfolding three legs to form a tripod for it. “But… could zer troll move a little to his left please?”
   “Huh?” said Carborundum. The squad looked at one another.
   “Yes, and if the sergeant vould be so kind as to move into the centre more, and raise those swords a little bit higher?” the vampire went on. “Great! And you, sir, if you could give me a grrrrh…?”
   “Grrrrh?” said Blouse.
   “Very good! Really fierce now…”
   There was a blinding flash and a brief cry of “Oh, sh—”, followed by the tinkle of breaking glass.
   Where the vampire had been standing was a little cone of dust. Blinking, Polly watched it fountain up into a human shape which coalesced once more into the vampire.
   “Oh dear, I really thought ze new filter vould do it,” he said. “Oh vell, ve live und learn.” He gave them a bright smile and added, “Now—vhich vun of you is Captain Horentz, please?”
 
   Half an hour had passed. Polly was still bewildered. The trouble was not that she didn’t understand what was going on. The problem was that before she could understand that, she had to understand a lot of other things. One of them was the concept of a “newspaper”.
   Blouse was looking proud and worried by turns, but nervous all the time. Polly watched him carefully, not least because he was talking to the man who had come in behind the iconographer. He was wearing a big leather coat and jodhpurs, and spent most of the time writing things down in a notebook, with occasional puzzled glances at the squad. Finally, Maladict, who had good hearing, sauntered over to the recruits from his lounging spot by the wall.
   “Okay,” he said, lowering his voice. “It’s all a bit complicated, but… do any of you know about newspapers?”
   “Yeth, my thecond couthin Igor in Ankh-Morpork told me about them,” said Igor. “They’re like a kind of government announthement.”
   “Um… sort of. Except they’re not written by the government. They’re written by ordinary people who write things down,” said Maladict.
   “Like a diary?” said Tonker.
   “Um… no…”
   Maladict tried to explain. The squad tried to understand. It still made no sense. It sounded to Polly like some kind of Punch and Judy show. Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn’t trust “Mothers of Borogravia!” and that was from the government. And if you couldn’t trust the government, who could you trust?
   Very nearly everyone, come to think of it…
   “Mr de Worde works for a newspaper in Ankh-Morpork,” said Maladict. “He says we’re losing. He says casualties are mounting and troops are deserting and all the civilians are heading for the mountains.”
   “W-why should we believe him?” Wazzer demanded.
   “Well, we’ve seen a lot of casualties and refugees and Corporal Strappi hasn’t been around since he heard he was going to the front,” said Maladict. “Sorry, but it’s true. We’ve all seen it.”
   “Yeah, but he’s just some man from a foreign country. Why w-would the Duchess lie to us? I mean, why would she send us out just to die?” said Wazzer. “She w-watches over us!”
   “Everyone says we’re winning,” said Tonker, doubtfully, after that moment of embarrassment. Tears were running down Wazzer’s face.
   “No, they don’t,” said Polly. “I don’t think we are, either.”
   “Does anyone think we are?” said Maladict. Polly looked from face to face.
   “But saying so… it’s like treachery against the Duchess, isn’t it?” said Wazzer. “It’s spreading Alarm and Despondency, isn’t it?”
   “Maybe we ought to be alarmed,” said Maladict. “Do you know how he came to be here? He travels around writing down things about the war for his paper of news. He met these cavalry just up the road. In our country! And they told him they’d just heard that the very last recruits from Borogravia were here and they were nothing but, er, ‘a wet little bunch of squeaking boys’. They said they’d capture us for our own good and he could get a picture of us for his paper. He could show everybody how dreadful things were, they said, because we were scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
   “Yeah, but we beat ’em so that’s foxed him!” said Tonker, grinning nastily. “Nothing for him to write down now, eh?”
   “Um… not really. He says that this is even better!”
   “Better? Whose side is he on?”
   “Bit of a puzzler, really. He comes from Ankh-Morpork, but he’s not exactly on their side. Er… Otto Chriek, who makes the pictures for him—”
   “The vampire? He crumbled to dust when the light flashed!” said Polly. “Then he… came back!”
   “Well, I was standing behind Carborundum at the time,” said Maladict, “but I know the technique. He probably had a thin glass vial of b… bl… blur… no, wait, I can say this… blood.” He sighed. “There! No problem. A thin vial of… what I said… which smashed on the ground and pulled the dust back together again. It’s a great idea.” Maladict gave them a wan smile. “I think he really cares a lot about what he does, you know. Anyway, he told me de Worde just tries to find out the truth. And then he writes it down and sells it to anyone who wants it.”
   “And people let him do that?” said Polly.
   “Apparently. Otto says he makes Commander Vimes livid with rage about once a week, but nothing ever happens.”
   “Vimes? The Butcher?” said Polly.
   “He’s a duke, Otto says. But not like ours. Otto says he’s never seen him butcher anybody. Otto’s a Black Ribboner, like me. He wouldn’t lie to a fellow Ribboner. And he says that picture he took is going on the clacks from the nearest tower tonight. It will be in the paper of news tomorrow! And they print a copy here!”
   “How can you send a picture on the clacks?” said Polly. “I know people who’ve seen them. It’s just a lot of boxes on a tower that go clack-clack!”
   “Ah, Otto explained that to me, too,” said Maladict. “It’s very ingenious.”
   “How does it work, then?”
   “Oh, I didn’t understand what he said. It was all about… numbers. But it certainly sounded very clever. Anyway, de Worde just told the lieu—the rupert that news about a bunch of boys beating up experienced soldiers would certainly make people sit up and take notice!”
   The squad looked at one another sheepishly.
   “It was a bit of a fluke, and anyway we had Carborundum,” said Tonker.
   “And I used trickery,” said Polly. “I mean, I couldn’t do it twice.”
   “So what?” said Maladict. “We did it. The squad did it! Next time we’ll do it differently!”
   “Yeah!” said Tonker. And there was a shared moment of exhilaration in which they were capable of anything. It lasted all of… a moment.
   “But it won’t work,” said Shufti. “We’ve just been lucky. You know it won’t work, Maladict. You all know it won’t work, right?”
   “Well, I’m not saying we could, you know, take on a regiment all at once,” said Maladict. “And the lieu—rupert might be a bit wet. But we could help make a difference. Old Jackrum knows what he’s doing—”
   “Upon my oath I am not a violent man… whack!” sniggered Tonker, and there were a few… yes, giggles, they were giggles, Polly knew, from the squad.
   “No, you’re not,” said Shufti flatly. “None of us are, right? Because we’re girls.”
   There was a dead silence.
   “Well, not Carborundum and Ozzer, okay,” Shufti went on, as if the silence was sucking unwilling words out of her. “And I’m not sure about Maladict and Igor. But I know the rest of us are, right? I’ve got eyes, I’ve got ears, I’ve got a brain. Right?”
   In the silence there was the slow rumble that preceded a pronouncement from Carborundum.
   “If it any help,” she said, in a voice suddenly more sandy than gravelly, “my real name’s Jade.”
   Polly felt questing eyes boring into her. She was embarrassed, of course. But not for the obvious reason. It was for the other one, the little lesson that life sometimes rams home with a stick: you are not the only one watching the world. Other people are people; while you watch them they watch you, and they think about you while you think about them. The world isn’t just about you.
   There was going to be no possibility of getting out of this. And, in a way, it was a relief.
   “Polly,” she said, almost in a whisper.
   She looked questioningly at Maladict, who smiled in a distinctly non-committal way. “Is this the time?” he said.
   “All right, you lot, what’re you standing about for?” bawled Jackrum, six inches from the back of Maladict’s head. No one saw him arrive there; he moved with an NCO’s stealth, which sometimes mystifies even Igors.
   Maladict’s smile didn’t change. “Why, we’re awaiting your orders, sergeant,” he said, turning round.
   “D’you think you’re clever, Maladict?”
   “Um… yes, sarge. Quite clever,” the vampire conceded.
   There wasn’t a lot of humour in Jackrum’s smile. “Good. Glad to hear it. Don’t want another stupid corporal. Yeah, I know you ain’t even a proper private yet, but glory be, you’re a corporal now ’cos I need one and you’re the snappiest dresser. Get some stripes from Threeparts. The rest of you… this isn’t a bleedin’ mothers’ meeting, we’re leaving in five minutes. Move!”
   “But the prisoners, sarge—” Polly began, still trying to digest the revelation.
   “We’re goin’ to drag ’em over to the inn an’ leave ’em tied up in the nood, and shackled together,” said Jackrum. “Vicious little devil when he’s roused, our rupert, eh? And Threeparts is having their boots and horses. They won’t be going too far for a while, not in the nood.”
   “Won’t the writing man let them out?” said Tonker.
   “Don’t care,” said Jackrum. “He could probably cut the ropes, but I’m dropping the shackle key in the privy, and that’ll take a bit of fishing out.”
   “Whose side is he on, sarge?” said Polly.
   “Dunno. I don’t trust ’em. Ignore ’em. Don’t talk to ’em. Never talk to people who writes things down. Milit’ry rule. Now, I know I just gave you lot an order ’cos I heard the bleedin’ echo! Get on with it! We are leaving!”
   “Road to perdition, lad, promotion,” said Scallot to Maladict, swinging up with two stripes hanging from his hook. He grinned. “That’s three pence extra a day you’re due now, only you won’t get it ’cos they ain’t payin’ us, but to look on the bright side, you won’t get stoppages, and they’re a devil for stoppages. The way I see it, march backwards and yer pockets’ll overflow!”
 
   The rain had stopped. Most of the squad were parading outside the barracks where there was, now, a small covered wagon belonging to the writer of the paper of news. A large flag hung from a pole attached to it, but Polly couldn’t make out the design by moonlight. Beside the wagon, Maladict was deep in conversation with Otto.
   The centre of attention, though, was the line of cavalry horses. One had been offered to Blouse, but he’d waved it away with a look of alarm, muttering something about “being loyal to his steed”, which to Polly’s eye looked like a self-propelled toast-rack with a bad attitude. But he’d probably made the right decision, at that, because they were big beasts, broad, battle-hardened and bright-eyed; sitting astride one of them would have strained the crotch in Blouse’s trousers and an attempt at reining one of them in would have pulled his arms off at the shoulder. Now each horse had a pair of boots hanging from its saddle, except for the leading horse, a truly magnificent beast upon which Corporal Scallot sat like an afterthought.
   “I’m no donkey-walloper as you know, Threeparts,” said Jackrum, as he finished lashing the crutches behind the saddle, “but this is a hell of a good horse you’ve got here.”
   “Damn right, sarge. You could feed a platoon for a week off’f it!” said the corporal.
   “Sure you won’t come with us?” Jackrum added, standing back. “I reckon you still must’ve one or two things left for the bastards to cut off, eh?”
   “Thank you, sarge, it’s a kind offer,” said Threeparts. “But fast horses are going to be at a real premium soon, and I’ll be in on the ground floor, as you might say. This lot’ll be worth three years’ pay.” He turned in the saddle and nodded at the squad. “Best of luck, lads,” he added cheerfully. “You’ll walk with Death every day, but I’ve seen ’im and he’s been known to wink. And remember: fill your boots with soup!” He urged the horses into a walk, and disappeared with his trophies into the gloom.
   Jackrum watched him go, shook his head, and turned to the recruits. “All right, ladies—What’s funny, Private Halter?”
   “Er, nothing, sarge, I just… thought of something…” said Tonker, almost choking.
   “You ain’t paid to think of things, you’re paid to march. Do it!”
   The squad marched away. The rain slackened to nothing but the wind rose a little, rattling windows, blowing through the deserted houses, opening and shutting doors like someone looking for something they could have sworn they put down here only a moment ago. That was all that moved in Plotz, except for one candle flame, down near the floor in the back room of the deserted barracks.
   The candle had been tilted so that it leaned against a cotton thread fastened between the legs of a stool. This meant that when the candle burned low enough, it would burn through the thread and fall all the way to the floor and into a ragged trail of straw that led to a pile of palliasses on which had been stood two ancient cans of lamp oil.
   It took about an hour in the wet, dejected night, for this to happen, and then all the windows blew out.
 
   Tomorrow dawned on Borogravia like a great big fish. A pigeon rose over the forests, banked slightly, and headed straight for the valley of the Kneck. Even from here, the black stone bulk of the Keep was visible, rising above the sea of trees. The pigeon sped on, one spark of purpose in the fresh new morning—
   –and squawked as darkness dropped from the sky, gripping it in talons of steel. Buzzard and pigeon tumbled for a moment, and then the buzzard gained a little height and flapped onwards.
   The pigeon thought: 000000000! But had it been more capable of coherent thought, and known something about how birds of prey catch pigeons2, it might have wondered why it was being gripped so… kindly. It was being held, not squeezed. As it was, all it could think was: 000000000!
   The buzzard reached the valley and began to circle low over the Keep. As it gyred, a tiny figure detached itself from the leather harness on its back and, with great care, inched itself around the body and down to the talons. It reached the imprisoned pigeon, knelt on it and put its arms round the bird’s neck. The buzzard skimmed low over a stone balcony, reared in the air, and let the pigeon go. Bird and tiny man rolled and bounced across the flagstones in a trail of feathers, and lay still.
   Eventually a voice from somewhere under the pigeon said: “Bugger…”
   Urgent footsteps ran across the stones and the pigeon was lifted off Corporal Buggy Swires. He was a gnome, and barely six inches tall. On the other hand, as the head and only member of Ankh-Morpork City Watch’s Airborne Section, he spent most of his time so high that everyone looked small.
   “Are you all right, Buggy?” said Commander Vimes.
   “Not too bad, sir,” said Buggy, spitting out a feather. “But it wasn’t elegant, was it? I’ll do better next time. Trouble is, pigeons are too stupid to be steered—”
   “What’ve you got me?”
   “The Times sent this up from their cart, sir! I tracked it all the way!”
   “Well done, Buggy!”
   There was a flurry of wings and the buzzard landed on the battlements.
   “And, er—what is his name?” Vimes added. The buzzard gave him the mad, distant look of all birds.
   “She’s Morag, sir. Trained by the pictsies. Wonderful bird.”
   “Was she the one we paid a crate of whisky for?”
   “Yes, sir, and worth every dram.”
   The pigeon struggled in Vimes’s hand.
   “You wait there, then, Buggy, and I’ll get Reg to come out with some raw rabbit,” he said, and walked into his tower.
   Sergeant Angua was waiting by his desk, reading the Living Testament of Nuggan. “Is that a carrier pigeon, sir?” she said, as Vimes sat down.
   “No,” said Vimes. “Hold it a minute, will you? I want to have a look inside the message capsule.”
   “It does look like a carrier pigeon,” said Angua, putting down the book.
   “Ah, but messages flying through the air are an Abomination Unto Nuggan,” said Vimes. “The prayers of the faithful bounce off them, apparently. No, I think I’ve found someone’s lost pet and I’m looking in this little tube here to see if I can find the owner’s name and address, because I am a kind man.”
   “So you’re not actually waylaying field reports from the Times, then, sir?” said Angua, grinning.
   “Not as such, no. I’m just such a keen reader that I want to see tomorrow’s news today. And Mr de Worde seems to have a knack of finding things out. Angua, I want to stop these stupid people fighting so that we can all go home, and if that means allowing the occasional pigeon to have a crap on my desk, so be it.”
   “Oh, sorry, sir, I didn’t notice. I expect it’ll wipe off.”
   “Go and get Reg to find some rabbit for the buzzard, will you?”
   When she’d gone Vimes carefully unscrewed the end of the tube and pulled out a roll of very thin paper. He unfolded it, smoothed it out, and read the tiny writing, smiling as he did so. Then he turned the paper over and looked at the picture.
   He was still staring at it when Angua returned with Reg and half a bucket of crunchy rabbit bits.
   “Anything interesting, sir?” said Angua ingenuously.
   “Well, yes. You could say that. All plans are changed, all bets are off. Ha! Oh, Mr de Worde, you poor fool…”
   He handed her the paper. She read the story carefully.
   “Good for them, sir,” she said. “Most of them look fifteen years old, and when you see the size of those dragoons, well, you’ve got to be impressed.”
   “Yes, yes, you could say that, you could say that,” said Vimes, his face gleaming like a man with a joke to share. “Tell me, did de Worde interview any Zlobenian high-ups when he arrived?”
   “No, sir. I understand he was turned away. They don’t really know what a reporter is, so I gather the adjutant threw him out and said he was a nuisance.”
   “Dear me, the poor man,” said Vimes, still grinning. “You met Prince Heinrich the other day. Describe him to me…”
   Angua cleared her throat. “Well, sir, he was… largely green, shading to blue, with overtones of grllss and trail of—”
   “I meant describe him to me on the assumption that I’m not a werewolf who sees with his nose,” said Vimes.
   “Oh, yes,” said Angua. “Sorry, sir. Six foot two, a hundred and eighty pounds, fair hair, green-blue eyes, sabre scar on his left cheek, wears a monocle in his right eye, waxed moustache—”
   “Good, well observed. And now look at ‘Captain Horentz’ in the picture, will you?”
   She looked again, and said, very quietly: “Oh dear. They didn’t know?”
   “He wasn’t going to tell them, was he? Would they have seen a picture?”
   Angua shrugged. “I doubt it, sir. I mean, where would they see it? There’s never been a newspaper here until the Times carts turned up last week.”
   “Some woodcut, maybe?”
   “No, they’re an Abomination, unless they’re of the Duchess.”
   “So they really didn’t know. And de Worde has never seen him,” said Vimes. “But you saw him when we arrived the other day. What did you think of him? Just between ourselves.”
   “An arrogant son-of-a-bitch, sir, and I know what I’m talking about. The kind of man who thinks he knows what a woman likes and it’s himself. All very friendly right up until they say no.”

“Stupid?”
   “I don’t think so. But not as clever as he thinks he is.”
   “Right, ’cos he didn’t tell our writer friend his real name. Did you read the bit at the end?”
   Angua read, at the end of the text: “Perry, the captain threatened and harangued me after the recruits had gone. Alas, I had no time to fish for the manacle key in the privy. Please let the Prince know where they are soonest. WDW.”
   “Looks like William didn’t take to him, either,” she said. “I wonder why the Prince was out with a scouting party?”
   “You said he was an arrogant son-of-a-bitch,” said Vimes. “Maybe he just wanted to pop across and see if his auntie was still breathing…”
   His voice trailed off. Angua looked at Vimes’s face, which was staring through her. She knew her boss. He thought war was simply another crime, like murder. He didn’t much like people with titles, and regarded being a duke as a job description rather than a lever to greatness. He had an odd sense of humour. And he had a sense for what she thought of as harbingers, those little straws in the wind that said there was a storm coming.
   “In the nuddy,” he chuckled. “Could have slit their throats. Didn’t. They took their boots away and left them to hop home in the nood.” The squad, it seemed, had found a friend.
   She waited.
   “I feel sorry for the Borogravians,” he said.
   “Me too, sir,” said Angua.
   “Oh? Why?”
   “Their religion’s gone bad on them. Have you seen the latest Abominations? They Abominate the smell of beets and people with red hair. In rather shaky writing, sir. And root vegetables are a staple here. Three years ago it was Abominable to grow root crops on ground which had grown grain or peas.”
   Vimes looked blank, and she remembered that he was a city boy.
   “It means no real crop rotation, sir,” she explained. “The ground sours. Diseases build up. You were right when you said they were going mad. These… commandments are dumb, and any farmer can see that. I imagine people go along with them as best they can, but sooner or later you either have to break them and feel guilty, or keep them and suffer. For no reason, sir. I’ve had a look around. They’re very religious here, but their god’s let them down. No wonder they mostly pray to their royal family.”
   She watched him stare at the piece of pigeon post for a while. Then he said: “How far is it to Plotz?”
   “About fifty miles,” said Angua, adding, “As the wolf runs, maybe six hours.”
   “Good. Buggy’ll keep an eye on you. Little Henry is going to hop home, or meet one of his patrols, or an enemy patrol… whatever. But the midden is going to hit the windmill when everyone sees that picture. I bet de Worde would have let him out if he’d been nice and polite. That’ll teach him to meddle with the awesome power of a fair and free press, haha.” He sat upright and rubbed his hands together like a man who meant business. “Now, let’s get that pigeon on its way again before it gets missed, eh? Get Reg to lurch along to where the Times people are staying and tell them their pigeon flew in the wrong window. Again.”

   That was a good time, Polly remembered.
   They didn’t go down to the river docks. They could see there was no boat there. They hadn’t turned up and the boatman had left without them. Instead, they crossed the bridge and headed up into the forests, with Blouse leading the way on his ancient horse. Maladict went on ahead and… Jade brought up the rear. You didn’t need a light at night when a vampire led the way, and a troll at the rear would certainly discourage hangers-on.
   No one mentioned the boat. No one spoke at all. The thing was… the thing was, Polly realized, that they were no longer marching alone. They shared the Secret. That was a huge relief, and right now they didn’t need to talk about it. Nevertheless, it was probably a good idea to keep up a regular output of farts, belches, nose-pickings and groin-scratchings, just in case.
   Polly didn’t know whether to be proud that they’d taken her for a boy. I mean, she thought, I’d worked hard to get it right, I mastered the walk, except I suppose what I really did was mistress the walk, haha, I invented the fake shaving routine and the others didn’t even think of that, I haven’t cleaned my fingernails for days and I pride myself I can belch with the best of them. So, I mean, I was trying. It was just slightly annoying to find that she’d succeeded so well.
   After a few hours of this, when true dawn was breaking, they smelled smoke. There was a faint pall of it amongst the trees. Lieutenant Blouse raised a hand for them to halt, and Jackrum joined him in whispered conversation.
   Polly stepped forward. “Permission to whisper too, sarge? I think I know what this is.”
   Jackrum and Blouse stared at her. Then the sergeant said: “All right, Perks. Go and find out if you’re right, then.”
   That was an aspect that hadn’t occurred to Polly, but she’d left herself open. Jackrum relented when he saw her expression, nodded to Maladict, and said, “Go with him, corporal.”
   They left the squad behind and walked forward carefully, over the beds of new-fallen leaves. The smoke was heavy and fragrant and, above all, reminiscent. Polly headed to where thicker undergrowth was taking advantage of the extra light of a clearing, and pushed through into an airy thicket of hazel trees. The smoke was denser here, and barely moving.
   The thicket ended. A few yards away, in a wide patch of cleared ground, a mound like a small volcano was spewing flame and smoke into the air.
   “Charcoal oven,” whispered Polly. “Just clay plastered on a stack of hazel. Should sit there smouldering for days. The wind probably caught it last night and the fire’s broken out. Won’t make good charcoal now, it’s burning too fast.”
   They edged round it, keeping to the bushes. Other clay domes were dotted about the clearing, with faint wisps of steam and smoke coming from their tops. There were a couple of ovens in the process of being built, the fresh clay stacked alongside some bundles of hazel sticks. There was a hut, and the domes, and nothing else but silence, apart from the crackle of the runaway fire.
   “The charcoal-burner is dead, or nearly dead,” said Polly.
   “He’s dead,” said Maladict. “There’s a smell of death here.”
   “You can smell it above the smoke?”
   “Sure,” said Maladict. “Some things we’re good at smelling. But how did you know?”
   “They watch the burns like hawks,” said Polly, staring at the hut. “He wouldn’t let it go out of control like that if he was alive. Is he in the hut?”
   “They are in the hut,” said Maladict flatly. He set off across the smoky ground.
   Polly ran after him. “Man and woman?” she said. “Their wives often live out with—”
   “Can’t tell, not if they’re old.”
   The hut was only a temporary thing, made of woven hazel and roofed with tarpaulin; the charcoal-burners moved around a lot, from coppice to coppice. It didn’t have windows, but it did have a doorway, with a rag for a door. The rag had been pulled away; the doorway was dark.
   I’ve got to be a man about this, Polly thought.
   There was a woman on the bed, and a man lying on the floor. There were other details, which the eye saw but the brain did not focus on. There was a great deal of blood. The couple had been old. They would not grow older.
   Back outside, Polly took frantic mouthfuls of air. “Do you think those cavalrymen did it?” she said at last, and then realized that Maladict was shaking. “Oh… the blood…” she said.
   “I can deal with it! It’s okay! I just have to get my mind right, it’s okay!” He leaned against the hut, breathing heavily. “Okay, I’m fine,” he said. “And I can’t smell horses. Why don’t you use your eyes? Nice soft mud everywhere after the rain, but no hoof-prints. Plenty of footprints, though. We did it.”
   “Don’t be silly, we were—”
   The vampire had reached down and pulled something out of the fallen leaves. He rubbed the mud off it with a thumb. In thin pressed brass, it was the Flaming Cheese badge of the Ins-and-Outs.
   “But… I thought we were the good guys,” said Polly weakly. “If we were guys, I mean.”
   “I think I need a coffee,” said the vampire.

   “Deserters,” said Sergeant Jackrum, ten minutes later. “It happens.” He tossed the badge into the fire.
   “But they were on our side!” said Shufti.
   “So? Not everyone’s a nice gennelman like you, Private Manickle,” said Jackrum. “Not after a few years of gettin’ shot at and eatin’ rat scubbo. On the retreat from Khrusk I had no water for three days and then fell on my face in a puddle of horse piss, a circumstance which did nothing for my feelin’s of goodwill towards my fellow man or horse. Something the matter, corporal?”
   Maladict was on his knees, going through his pack with a distracted air. “My coffee’s gone, sarge.”
   “Can’t have packed it properly, then,” said Jackrum unsympathetically.
   “I did, sarge! I washed out the engine and packed it up with the bean bag after supper last night. I know I did. I don’t take coffee lightly!”
   “If someone else did, they’re going to wish I’d never been born,” growled Jackrum, looking round at the rest of the squad. “Anyone else lost anything?”
   “Er… I wasn’t going to say anything, ’cos I wasn’t sure,” Shufti volunteered, “but my stuff looked as if it had been pulled about when I opened my pack just now…”
   “Oh-ho!” said Jackrum. “Well, well, well. I’ll say this once, lads. Pinching from yer mates is a hanging offence, understood? Nothing breaks down morale faster’n some sneaky little sod dipping into people’s packs. And if I find out someone’s been at it, I’ll swing on their heels!” He glared at the squad. “I ain’t gonna demand that you all empty out your packs as if you’s criminals,” he said, “but you’d better check that nothing’s missing. O’ course, one of you might have packed something that wasn’t theirs by accident, okay. Packing in a rush, poor light, easy to do. In which case, you sort it out amongst yourselves, understand? Now, I’m off to have a shave. Lieutenant Blouse is having a throw-up behind the shelter after a-viewin’ of the corpses, poor chap.”
   Polly rummaged desperately in her pack. She’d thrown things in any old how last night, but what she was frantically searching for was—
   –not there. Despite the heat from the charcoal mounds, she shivered.
   The ringlets had gone. Feverishly, she tried to remember the events of yesterday evening. They’d just dumped their packs as soon as they were in the barracks, right? And Maladict had made himself some coffee at suppertime. He’d washed and dried the little machine–
   There was a thin little wail. Wazzer, the meagre contents of her pack spread around her, held up the coffee engine. It had been stamped almost flat.
   “B-b-b—” she began.
   Polly’s mind worked faster, like a millwheel in a flood. Then everyone took their packs into the back room with all the mattresses, didn’t they? So they’d still be there when the squad fought the troopers—
   “Oh, Wazz,” said Shufti. “Oh, dear…”
   So who might have sneaked in through the back door? There was no one around except the squad and the cavalrymen. Perhaps someone wanted to watch, and cause a little trouble on the way–
   “Strappi!” she said aloud. “It must have been him! The little weasel ran into the cavalry and then snuck back to watch! He was dar—damn well going through our packs out the back! Oh, come on,” she added, as they stared at her, “can you see Wazzer stealing from anyone? Anyway, when did she have the chance?”
   “Wouldn’t they have taken him prisoner?” said Tonker, staring at the crushed machine in Wazzer’s shaking hands.
   “If he’d whipped off his shako and jacket he’d just be another stupid civilian, wouldn’t he? Or he could just say he was a deserter. He could make up some story,” said Polly. “You know how he was with Wazzer. He went through my pack, too. Stole… something of mine.”
   “What was it?” said Shufti.
   “Just something, okay? He just wanted to… make trouble.” She watched them thinking.
   “Sounds convincing,” said Maladict, nodding abruptly. “Little weasel. Okay, Wazz, just fish out the beans and I’ll do the best I can—”
   “T-there’s no b-b-b—”
   Maladict put a hand over his eyes. “No beans?” he said. “Please, has anyone got the beans?”
   There was a general rummaging, and a general lack of a result.
   “No beans.” moaned Maladict. “He threw away the beans…”
   “Come on, lads, we’ve got to get sentries posted,” said Jackrum, approaching. “Sorted it all out, have you?”
   “Yes, sarge. Ozz thinks—” Shufti began.
   “It was all a bit of mis-packing, sarge!” said Polly quickly, anxious to keep away from anything connected with missing ringlets. “Nothing to worry about! All sorted, sarge. No problem. Nothing to worry anyone. Not… a… thing, sarge.”
   Jackrum looked from the startled squad to Polly, and back, and back again. She felt his gaze boring into her, daring her to change her expression of mad, tense honesty.
   “Ye-es,” he said slowly. “Right. Sorted out, eh? Well done, Perks. Attention! Officer present!”
   “Yes, yes, sergeant, thank you, but I don’t think we need to be too formal,” said Blouse, who looked rather pale. “A word with you when you have finished, if you please? And I think we should bury the, er, bodies.”
   Jackrum saluted. “Right you are, sir. Two volunteers to dig a grave for those poor souls! Goom and Tewt—what’s he doing?”
   Lofty was over by the blazing charcoal oven. She was holding a burning branch a foot or two from her face and turning it this way and that, watching the flames.
   “I’ll do it, sarge,” said Tonker, stepping beside Wazzer.
   “What are you, married?” said Jackrum. “You are on guard, Halter. I doubt whoever did it’ll come back, but if they do, you sing out, right? You and Igor come with me, and I’ll show you your stations.”
   “No coffee,” moaned Maladict.
   “Foul muck, anyway,” said Jackrum, walking away. “A cup of hot sweet tea is the soldier’s friend.”
   Polly grabbed the kettle for Blouse’s shaving water, and hurried away. That was another thing you learned in the milit’ry: look busy. Look busy and no one worried too much about what you were busy at.
   Bloody, bloody Strappi! He’d got her hair! He’d try to use it against her if he could, that was certain. That’d be his style. What would he do now? Well, he’d want to keep away from Jackrum, that’d be another certainty. He’d wait, somewhere. She’d have to, too.
   The squad had made camp upwind of the smoke. It was supposed to be a rest stop, since no one had got much sleep last night, but as Jackrum handed out tasks he reminded them: “There is an old milit’ry saying, which is: Hard Luck For You.”
   There was no question of using the woven hut, but there were a few tarpaulin-covered frames built to keep the coppiced wood dry. Those not given jobs to do lay down on the stacked piles of twigs, which were yielding and didn’t smell and were in any case better than the inhabited palliasses back at the barracks.
   Blouse, as an officer, had a shelter to himself. Polly had stacked bundles of twigs to make a chair that was at least springy. Now she laid out his shaving things and turned to go—
   “Could you shave me, Perks?” said the lieutenant.
   Fortunately, Polly’s back was turned and he didn’t see her expression.
   “This damn hand is quite swollen, I’m afraid,” Blouse went on. “I would not normally ask, but—”
   “Yes, of course, sir,” said Polly, because there was no alternative. Well now, let’s see… she’d got quite good at scraping a blunt razor across a face bare of hair, yes. Oh, and she’d shaved a few dead pigs in the kitchens at The Duchess, but that was only because nobody likes hairy bacon. They didn’t really count, did they? Panic rose, and rose faster at the sight of Jackrum approaching. She was going to cut an officer’s throat in the presence of a sergeant.
   Well, when in doubt, bustle. Milit’ry rule. Bustle, and hope there’s a surprise attack.
   “Are you not being a little strict with the men, sergeant?” said Blouse, as Polly flapped a towel round his neck.
   “No, sir. Keep ’em occupied, that’s the bunny. Otherwise they’ll mope,” said Jackrum confidently.
   “Yes, but they have just seen a couple of badly mutilated bodies,” said Blouse, and shuddered.
   “Good practice for ’em, sir. They’ll see plenty more.”
   Polly turned to the shaving gear she’d laid out on another towel. Let’s see… cut-throat razor, oh dear, the grey stone for coarse sharpening, the red stone for fine sharpening, the soap, the brush, the bowl… well, at least she knew how to make foam…
   “Deserters, sergeant. Bad business,” Blouse went on.
   “You always get ’em, sir. That’s why the pay is always late. Walking away from three months’ back pay makes a man think twice.”
   “Mr de Worde the newspaper man said there had been a great many desertions, sergeant. It is very strange that so many men would desert from a winning side.”
   Polly whirled the brush vigorously. Jackrum, for the first time since Maladict had joined, looked uncomfortable.
   “But whose side is he on, sir?” he said.
   “Sergeant, I am sure you are not a stupid man,” said Blouse, as, behind him, foam poured over the edge of the bowl and flopped onto the floor. “There are desperate deserters abroad. Our borders appear to be sufficiently unguarded to enable enemy cavalry to operate forty miles inside ‘our fair country’. And High Command appears to be so desperate, yes, desperate, sergeant, that even half a dozen untrained and, frankly, very young men must go to the front.”
   The foam had a life of its own now. Polly hesitated.
   “Hot towel first, please, Perks,” said Blouse.
   “Yessir. Sorry, sir. Forgot, sir,” said Polly, panic rising. She had a vague recollection of walking past the barber shop in Munz. Hot towel on face. Right. She grabbed a small towel, tipped boiling water onto it, wrung it out and dropped it on the lieutenant’s face. He did not actually scream, as such.
   “Aaaaagh something else worries me, sergeant.”
   “Yessir?”
   “The cavalry must have apprehended Corporal Strappi. I cannot see how else they found out about our men.”
   “Good thinking, sir,” said the sergeant, watching Polly apply the lather across mouth and nose.
   “I do hope they didn’t pff torture the poor man,” said the lieutenant. Jackrum was silent on that issue, but meaningfully so. Polly wished he wouldn’t keep glancing at her.
   “But why would a deserter pff head straight for the pff front?” said Blouse.
   “Makes sense, sir, for an old soldier. Especially a political.”
   “Really?”
   “Trust me on that, sir,” said Jackrum. Behind Blouse, Polly brushed the razor up and down the red stone. It was already as slick as ice.
   “But our boys, sergeant, are not old ‘soldiers’. It takes pff two weeks to turn a recruit into a ‘fighting man’,” said the lieutenant.
   “They’re promising material, sir. I could do it in a couple of days, sir,” said Jackrum. “Perks?”
   Polly nearly sliced her thumb off. “Yes, sarge,” she quavered.
   “Do you think you could kill a man today?”
   Polly glanced at the razor. The edge glowed.
   “I’m sorry to say I think I could, sir!”
   “There you have it, sir,” said Jackrum, with a lopsided grin. “There’s something about these lads, sir. They’re quick.” He walked behind Blouse, took the razor from Polly’s grateful hand without a word, and said: “There’s a few matters we ought to discuss, sir, private like. I think Perks here ought to get some rest.”
   “Of course, sergeant. ‘Pas devant les soldat jeune,’ eh?”
   “And them too, sir,” said Jackrum. “You’re dismissed, Perks.”
   Polly walked away, her right hand still trembling. Behind her, she heard Blouse sigh and say: “These are tricky times, sergeant. Command has never been so burdensome. The great General Tacticus says that in dangerous times the commander must be like the eagle and see the whole, and yet still be like the hawk and see every detail.”
   “Yessir,” said Jackrum, gliding the razor down a cheek. “And if he acts like a common tit, sir, he can hang upside down all day and eat fat bacon.”
   “Er… well said, sergeant.”

   The charcoal-burner and his wife were buried to the accompaniment of, to Polly’s lack of surprise, a small prayer from Wazzer. It asked the Duchess to intercede with the god Nuggan to give eternal rest and similar items to the departed. Polly had heard it many times before; she’d wondered how the process worked.
   She’d never prayed since the day the bird burned, not even when her mother was dying. A god that burned painted birds would not save a mother. A god like that was not worth a prayer.
   But Wazzer prayed for everyone. Wazzer prayed like a child, eyes screwed up and hands clenched until they were white. The reedy little voice trembled with such belief that Polly felt embarrassed, and then ashamed and, finally, after the ringing “amen”, amazed that the world appeared no different from before. For a minute or two, it had been a better place…
   There was a cat in the hut. It cowered under the crude bed and spat at anyone who came close.
   “All the food’s been taken but there’s carrots and parsnips in a little garden down the hill a bit,” Shufti said, as they walked away.
   “It’d be s-stealing from the dead,” said Wazzer.
   “Well, if they object they can hold on, can’t they?” said Shufti. “They’re underground already!”
   For some reason that was, at this time, funny. They’d have laughed at anything.
   Now there was Jade, Lofty, Shufti and Polly. Everyone else was on guard duty. They sat by the fire, on which a small pot seethed. Lofty tended the fire. She always seemed more animated near a fire, Polly noticed.
   “I’m doing horse scubbo for the rupert,” said Shufti, easily dropping into a slang learned all of twenty hours ago. “He specifically asked for it. Got lots of dry horse jerky from Threeparts, but Tonker says she can knock over some pheasants while she’s on duty.”
   “I hope she spends some time watching for enemies too,” said Polly.
   “She’ll be careful,” said Lofty, prodding the fire with a stick.
   “You know, if we’re found out, we’ll be beaten and sent back,” said Shufti.
   “Who by?” said Polly, so suddenly she surprised herself. “By whom? Who’s going to try, out here? Who cares out here?”
   “Well, er, wearing men’s clothes is an Abomination Unto Nuggan—”
   “Why?”
   “It just is,” said Shufti firmly. “But—”
   “—you’re wearing them,” said Polly.
   “Well, it was the only way,” said Shufti. “And I tried them on and they didn’t seem all that abominable to me.”
   “Have you noticed men talk to you differently?” said Lofty shyly.
   “Talk?” said Polly. “They listen to you differently, too.”
   “They don’t keep looking at you all the time,” said Shufti. “You know what I mean. You’re just a… another person. If a girl walked down the street wearing a sword a man would try to take it off her.”
   “Wi’ trolls, we ain’t allowed to carry clubs,” said Jade. “Only large rocks. An’ it ain’t right for a girl to wear lichen, ’cos der boys say bald is modest. Had to rub bird doin’s inna my head to grow this lot.”
   That was quite a long speech for a troll.
   “We didn’t know that,” said Polly. “Er… trolls all look the same to us, more or less.”
   “I’m nat’rally craggy,” said Jade. “I don’t see why I should polish.”
   “There is a difference,” said Shufti. “I think it’s the socks. It’s like they pull you forward all the time. It’s like the whole world spins around your socks.” She sighed and looked at the horsemeat, which had been boiled almost white. “It’s done,” she said. “You’d better go and give it to the rupert, Polly… I mean, Ozzer. I told the sarge I could do something better but he said the lieutenant said how good it was last night—”
   A small wild turkey, a brace of pheasants and a couple of rabbits, all tied together, landed in front of Shufti.
   “Good job we were guarding you, eh?” said Tonker, grinning and whirring an empty sling around in one hand. “One rock, one lunch. Maladict’s staying on guard. He said he’ll smell anyone before they see him and he’s too edgy to eat. What can you do with that lot?”
   “Casserole of game,” said Shufti firmly. “We’ve got the veg and I’ve still got half an onion.3 I’m sure I can make an oven out of one of those—”
   “On your feet! Attention!” snapped the silently moving Jackrum, behind them. He stood back with a faint smile on his face as they scrambled to their feet. “Private Halter, I must have bleedin’ amazin’ eyesight,” he said, when they were approximately upright.
   “Yes, sarge,” said Tonker, staring straight ahead.
   “Can you guess why, Private Halter?”
   “No, sarge.”
   “It’s because I knows you are on perimeter guard, Halter, but I can see you as clear as if you was standing right here in front of me, Halter! Can’t I, Halter?”
   “Yes, sarge!”
   “It’s just as well you are still on perimeter duty, Halter, because the penalty for absenting yourself from your post in time of war is death, Halter!”
   “I only—”
   “No onlys! I don’t want to hear no onlys! I don’t want you to think that I am a shouty man, Halter! Corporal Strappi was a shouty man, but he was a damn political! Upon my oath I am not a shouty man but if you ain’t back at your post inside of thirty seconds I’ll rip yer tongue out!”
   Tonker fled. Sergeant Jackrum cleared his throat and continued, in a level voice: “This, my lads, is what we call a real orientation lectchoor, not one of the fancy political ones like Strappi gave yer.” He cleared his throat. “The purpose of this lectchoor is to let you know where we are. We are in the deep cack. It couldn’t be worse if it was raining arseholes. Any questions?”
   Since there were none from the bemused recruits, he continued, while beginning a slow stroll around the squad, “We know enemy forces are in the area. Currently they have no boots. But there will be others with boots aplenty. Also, there may be deserters in the area. They will not be nice people! They will be impolite! Therefore Lieutenant Blouse has decreed that we will travel off the roads and by night. Yes, we have met the enemy, and we have prevailed. That was a fluke. They weren’t expecting you to be rough, tough soldiers. Nor were you, so I don’t want you to feel cocky about it.” He leaned forward until his face was inches from Polly’s. “Are you feeling cocky, Private Perks?”
   “No, sarge!”
   “Good. Good.” Jackrum stepped back. “We are heading for the front, lads. The war. And in a nasty war, where’s the best place to be? Apart from on the moon, o’ course? No one?”
   Slowly, Jade raised a hand.
   “Go on, then,” said the sergeant.
   “In the army, sarge,” said the troll. “’cos…” She began to count on her fingers. “One, you got weapons an’ armour an’ dat. Two, you are surrounded by other armed men. Er… Many, youse gettin’ paid and gettin’ better grub than the people in Civilian Street. Er… Lots, if’n you gives up, you getting taken pris’ner and dere’s rules about that like Not Kicking Pris’ners Inna Head and stuff, ’cos if you kick their pris’ners inna head they’ll kick your pris’ners inna head so dat’s, like, you’re kickin’ your own head, but dere’s no rule say you can’t kick enemy civilians inna head. There’s other stuff too, but I ran outa numbers.” She gave them a diamond grin. “We may be slow but we ain’t stoopid,” she added.
   “I am impressed, private,” said Jackrum. “And you are right. The only wasp in the jam is that you ain’t soldiers! But I can help you there. Bein’ a soldier is not hard. If it was, soldiers would not be able to do it. There is only three things you need to remember, which are, viz: one obey orders two give it to the enemy good and hard three don’t die. Got that? Right! You’re nearly there! Well done! I propose to assist you in the execution of all three! You are my little lads and I will look after you! In the meantime, you got duties! Shufti, get cooking! Private Perks, see to the rupert! And after that, practise your shaving! I will now visit those on guard and deliver unto them the holy word! Dismissed!”
   They remained at something like attention until he was probably out of earshot, and then sagged.
   “Why does he always shout?” said Shufti. “I mean, he only has to ask…”
   Polly upended the horrible scubbo into a tin bowl, and almost ran to the lieutenant’s shelter. He looked up from a map and smiled at her as if she was delivering a feast.
   “Ah, scubbo,” he said.
   “We are actually having other stuff, sir,” Polly volunteered. “I’m sure there’s enough to go round—”
   “Good heavens, no, it’s been years since I’ve had food like this,” said Blouse, picking up the spoon. “Of course, at school we didn’t appreciate it so much.”
   “You had food like this at school, sir?” said Polly.
   “Yes. Most days,” said Blouse happily.
   Polly couldn’t quite fit this in her head. Blouse was a nob. Nobs ate nobby food, didn’t they? “Had you done something bad, sir?”
   “I can’t imagine what you mean, Perks,” said Blouse, slurping at the horrible thin gruel. “Are the men rested?”
   “Yes, sir. The dead people were a bit of a shock—”
   “Yes. Bad business,” sighed the lieutenant. “Such is war, alas. I am only sorry you had to learn so fast. Such a terrible waste all the time. I am sure things can be sorted out when we reach Kneck, though. No general can expect young men like yourselves to be instant soldiers. I shall have something to say about that.” His rabbity features looked unusually determined, as if a hamster had spotted a gap in its treadmill.
   “Do you require me for anything else, sir?” said Polly.
   “Er… do the men talk about me, Perks?”
   “Not really, sir, no.”
   The lieutenant looked disappointed. “Oh. Oh, well. Thank you. Perks.”

   Polly wondered if Jackrum ever slept. She did a spell of guard duty, and he stepped out from behind her with “Guess who, Perks! You’re on lookout. You should see the dreadful enemy before they see you. What’re the four Ss?”
   “Shape, shadow, silhouette and shine, sarge!” said Polly, snapping to attention. She’d been expecting this.
   That caused a moment’s pause from the sergeant before he said: “Just knew that, did yer?”
   “Nosir! A little bird told me when we changed guard, sir! Said you’d asked him, sir!”
   “Oh, so Jackrum’s little lads are gangin’ up on their kindly ol’ sergeant, are they?” said Jackrum.
   “Nosir. Sharing information important to the squad in a vital survival situation, sarge!”
   “You’ve got a quick mouth on you, Perks, I’ll grant you that.”
   “Thank you, sarge!”
   “But I see you’re not standing in a bleedin’ shadow, Perks, nor have you done anything to change your bleedin’ shape, you’re silhouetted against the bleedin’ light and your sabre’s shining like a diamond in a chimney-sweep’s bleedin’ ear’ole! Explain!”
   “It’s because of the one C, sarge!” said Polly, still staring straight ahead.
   “And that is?”
   “Colour, sarge! I’m wearing bleedin’ red and white in a bleedin’ grey forest, sarge!”
   She risked a sideways glance. In Jackrum’s little piggy eyes there gleamed a gleam. It was the one you got when he was secretly pleased.
   “Ashamed of your lovely, lovely uniform, Perks?” he said.
   “Don’t want to be seen dead in it, sarge,” said Polly.
   “Hah. As you were, Perks.”
   Polly smiled, straight ahead.
   When she came off guard for a bowl of game casserole, Jackrum was teaching basic swordcraft to Lofty and Tonker, using hazel sticks as swords. By the time Polly had finished he was teaching Wazzer some of the finer points of using a high-performance pistol crossbow, especially the one about not turning round with it cocked and saying “W-what is this bit for, sarge?” Wazzer handled weapons like a houseproud woman disposing of a dead mouse—at arm’s length and trying not to look. But even she was better with them than Igor, who just didn’t seem at home with the idea of what was, to him, d surgery.
   Jade was dozing. Maladict was hanging by his knees under the roof of one of the sheds, with his arms folded across his chest; he must have been telling the truth when he said there were some aspects of being a vampire that were hard to give up.
   Igor and Maladict…
   She still wasn’t sure about Maladict, but Igor had to be a boy, with those stitches around the head, and that face that could only be called homely.4 He was quiet, and neat, but maybe that’s how Igors behaved…
   She woke up with Shufti shaking her.
   “We’re moving! Better go and see to the rupert!”
   “What? Huh? Oh… right!”
   There was a bustle all around her. Polly staggered to her feet and hurried over to Lieutenant Blouse’s shed, where he was standing in front of his wretched horse and holding the bridle with a lost expression.
   “Ah, Perks,” he said. “I’m not at all sure I’m doing this right…”
   “No, sir. You’ve got the waffles twisted and the snoffles are upside down,” said Polly, who’d often helped in the inn’s yard.
   “Ah, that would be why he was so difficult last night,” said Blouse. “I suppose I ought to know this sort of thing, but at home we had a man to do it…”
   “Let me, sir,” said Polly. She untwisted the bridle with a few careful movements. “What’s his name, sir?”
   “Thalacephalos,” said Blouse sheepishly. “That was the legendary stallion of General Tacticus, you know.”
   “I didn’t know that, sir,” said Polly. She leaned back and glanced between the horse’s rear legs. Wow, Blouse really was short-sighted, wasn’t he…
   The mare looked at her partly with its eyes, which were small and evil, but mostly with its yellowing teeth, of which it had an enormous amount. She had the impression that it was thinking about sniggering.
   “I’ll hold him for you while you mount, sir,” she said.
   “Thank you. He certainly moves about a bit when I try!”
   “I expect he does, sir,” said Polly. She knew about difficult horses; this one had all the hallmarks of a right bastard, one of those not cowed at all by the obvious superiority of the human race.
   The mare eyeballed and yellowtoothed her as Blouse mounted, but Polly had positioned herself carefully away from the uprights of the shelter. Thalacephalos wasn’t the sort to buck and kick. She was the sneaky kind, Polly could see, the sort that stepped on your foot—
   She moved her foot just as the hoof came down. But Thalacephalos, angry at being thwarted, turned, twisted, lowered her head, and bit Polly sharply on the rolled-up socks.
   “Bad horse!” said Blouse severely. “Sorry about that, Perks. I think he’s anxious to get to the fray! Oh, my word!” he added, looking down. “Are you all right, Perks?”
   “Well, he’s pulling a bit, sir—” said Polly, being dragged sideways. Blouse had gone white again.
   “But he’s bitten… he’s caught you by the… right on the…”
   The penny dropped. Polly looked down, and hastily remembered what she’d heard during numerous rule-free bar fights.
   “Oh… ooo.. argh… blimey! Right inna fruit! Aargh!” she lamented, and then, since it seemed a good idea at the time, brought both fists down heavily on the mare’s nose. The lieutenant fainted.

   It took some time to bring Blouse round, but at least it gave Polly time to think.
   He opened his eyes and focused on her.
   “Er, you fell off your horse, sir,” Polly volunteered.
   “Perks? Are you all right? Dear boy, he had you by the—”
   “Only needs a few stitches, sir!” said Polly cheerfully.
   “What? From Igor?”
   “Nosir. Just the cloth, sir,” said Polly. “The trousers are a bit big for me, sir.”
   “Ah, right. Too big, eh? Phew, eh? Near miss there, eh? Well, I mustn’t lie around here all day—”
   The squad helped him onto Thalacephalos, who was still sniggering unrepentantly. On the subject of “too big”, Polly made a mental note to do something about his jacket next time they stopped. She wasn’t much good with a needle, but if Igor couldn’t do something to make it look better then he wasn’t the man she thought he was. And that was a sentence that begged a question.
   Jackrum bellowed them into order. They were better at that now. Neater, too.
   “All right, Ins-and-Outs! Tonight we—”
   A set of huge yellow teeth removed his cap.
   “Oh, I do apologize, sergeant!” said Blouse behind him, trying to rein back the mare.
   “No bother, sir, these things happen!” said Jackrum, furiously tugging his hat back.
   “I should like to address my men, sergeant.”
   “Oh? Er… yes, sir,” said Jackrum, looking worried. “Of course, sir. Ins-and-Outs! Attenwaitforitshun!”
   Blouse coughed. “Er… men,” he said. “As you know, we must make all speed to the Kneck valley where, apparently, we are needed. Travelling by night will prevent… entanglements. Er… I…” He stared at them, his face contorted by some inner struggle. “Er… I have to say I don’t think we are… that is, all the evidence is… er… it doesn’t seem to me that… er… I think I should tell you… er…”
   “Permission to speak, sir?” said Polly. “Are you feeling all right?”
   “We just have to hope that those put in power over us are making the right decisions,” mumbled Blouse. “But I have every confidence in you and I am sure you will do your best. Long live the Duchess! Carry on, Sergeant Jackrum.”
   “Ins-and-Outs! Form up! March!”
   And they headed into the dusk and off to war.

   The order of march was as last night, with Maladict going on ahead. The clouds were holding in some heat, and were thin enough to hint at moonlight here and there. Forests by night held no problems for Polly, and this wasn’t true wild forest in any case. Nor was it, in truth, a march that they were doing. It was more like a high-speed creep, in ones and twos.
   She’d acquired two of the horsebows, now stuck awkwardly between the straps of her pack. They were horrible things, rather like a cross between a small crossbow and a clock. There were mechanisms in the thick shaft, and the bow itself was barely six inches across; somehow, if you leaned your weight on it, you could cock it with enough stored energy to fire a nasty little metal arrow through an inch-thick plank. They were blued metal, sleek and evil. But there is an old milit’ry saying: better me firing it at you than you firing it at me, you bastard.
   Polly eased her way along the line until she was walking alongside Igor. He nodded to her in the gloom, and then turned his attention to walking. He needed to, because his pack was twice the size of the rest of them. No one felt inclined to ask him what was in it; sometimes, you thought you could hear liquid sloshing.
   Igors sometimes passed through Munz, although technically they were an Abomination in the eyes of Nuggan. It had seemed to Polly that using bits of someone who was dead to help three or four other people stay alive was a sensible idea, but in the pulpit Father Jupe had argued that Nuggan didn’t want people to live, he wanted them to live properly. There had been general murmurs of agreement from the congregation, but Polly knew for a fact that there were a couple of people sitting there with a hand or arm or leg that was a little less tanned or a little more hairy than the other one. There were lumberjacks everywhere in the mountains. Accidents happened, fast, sudden accidents. And, since there were not many jobs for a one-armed lumberjack, men went off and found an Igor to do what no amount of prayer could manage.
   The Igors had a motto: What goes around, comes around. You didn’t have to pay them back. You had to pay them forward, and that, frankly, was the bit where people got worried. When you were dying, an Igor would mysteriously arrive on the doorstep and request that he be allowed to take away any bits urgently needed by others on his “little litht”. He’d be quite happy to wait until the priest had gone and, it was said, when the time came he’d do very neat work. However, it happened quite often that when an Igor turned up the prospective donor took fright and turned to Nuggan, who liked whole people. In which case the Igor would quietly and politely leave, and never come back. He’d never come back to the whole village, or the whole lumber camp. Nor would other Igors. What goes around comes around—or stops.
   As far as Polly could tell, Igors believed that the body was nothing more than a more complicated kind of clothing. Oddly enough, that’s what Nugganites thought, too.
   “Glad you joined, Igor?” said Polly, as they jogged along.
   “Yeth, Ozz.”
   “Could you take a look at the rupert’s hand next time we stop, please? He’s cut it badly.”
   “Yeth, Ozz.”
   “Can I ask you something, Igor?”
   “Yeth, Ozz.”
   “What’re female Igors called, Igor?”
   Igor stumbled and kept moving. He was silent for a while, and then said: “All right, what did I do wrong?”
   “Sometimes you forget to lisp,” said Polly. “But mostly… it’s just a feeling. Little things about the way you move, maybe.”
   “The word you’re looking for is ‘Igorina’,” said Igorina. “We don’t lisp as much as the boys.”
   They continued in more silence until Polly said, “I thought it was bad enough cutting my hair—”
   “The stitches?” said Igorina. “I can have them out in five minuteth. They’re just for show.”
   Polly hesitated. But, after all, Igors had to be trustworthy, didn’t they? “You didn’t cut your hair?”
   “Actually, I just removed it,” said Igorina.
   “I put mine in my pack,” Polly went on, trying not to look at the stitches around Igorina’s head.
   “So did I,” said Igorina. “In a jar. It’s thtill growing.”
   Polly swallowed. You needed a lack of graphic imagination to talk about personal issues with an Igor. “Mine was stolen back at the barracks. I’m sure it was Strappi,” she said.
   “Oh dear.”
   “I hate to think of him with it!”
   “Why did you bring it?”
   And that was the question. She’d planned, and she’d been good at planning. She’d fooled the rest of them, even. She’d been cool and sensible and she hadn’t felt more than a faint pang at cutting off her hair—
   –and she’d brought it with her. Why? She could have thrown it away. It wasn’t magic. It was just hair. She could have thrown it away, just like that. Easily. But… but… ah, right, the maids could have found it. That was it. She had to get it out of the house quickly. Right. And then she could bury it somewhere when she was a long way away. Right.
   But she hadn’t, had she…
   She’d been very busy. Right, said the little voice in inner treachery. She had been very busy fooling everyone but herself, right?
   “What could Strappi do?” said Igorina. “Jackrum’d knock him over the moment he thaw him. He’s a deserter, and a thief!”
   “Yes, but he could tell someone,” said Polly.
   “Okay, then say it’s a lock of hair from the sweetheart you left behind you. Lots of soldiers carry a locket or something like that. You know: ‘Her golden hair in ringletth fair’, like the song says.”
   “It was all my hair! A locket? You couldn’t hold it all in your hat!”
   “Ah,” said Igorina. “Then you could thay you loved her very much?”
   Despite everything, Polly started to laugh, and couldn’t stop herself. She bit her sleeve and tried to keep going, with her shoulders shaking.
   Something that felt like a small tree prodded her; in the back. “Youse two oughta keep der noise down,” rumbled Jade.
   “Sorry. Sorry,” hissed Polly.
   Igorina started to hum. Polly knew the song.

   I’m lonesome since I crossed the hill
   And o’er the moor and valley…

   And she vowed: not that one, too. One song is enough. And I want to leave the girl behind me, but it seems I brought her with me… At which point they emerged from the trees and saw the red glow.
   The rest of the squad were already gathered round, watching it. It covered quite a lot of the horizon, and brightened and faded in places as they watched.
   “Is that hell?” said Wazzer.
   “No, but men have made it so, I fear,” said the lieutenant. “That is the Kneck valley.”
   “It’s on fire, sir?” said Polly.
   “Bless you, that’s just the light of cooking-fires reflected off the clouds,” said Sergeant Jackrum. “Always looks bad by night, a battlefield. Not to worry, lads!”
   “What’re they cooking, elephants?” said Maladict.
   “And what’s that?” said Polly, pointing to a nearby hill, darker still against the night. On it, a little light was flickering on and off, very fast.
   There was a whoosh and a metallic “pop” as Blouse pulled out a small telescope and opened it up. “It’s a light clacks, the devils!” he said.
   “Dere’s another one over dere,” rumbled Jade, pointing to a hill a lot further away. “Twinkle, twinkle.”
   Polly stared at the redness in the sky, and then at the cold little light, winking on and off. Quiet, soft light. Harmless light. And behind it, a burning sky…
   “It’ll be in code,” said Blouse. “Spies, I’ll be bound.”
   “A light clacks?” said Tonker. “What’s that?”
   “An Abomination in the eyes of Nuggan,” said Blouse. “Unfortunately, because they’d be damn useful if we could have ’em too, eh, sergeant?”
   “Yessir,” said Jackrum automatically.
   “The only messages passing through the air should be the prayers of the faithful. Praise Nuggan, Praise the Duchess and so on and so forth,” said Blouse, squinting. He sighed. “Such a shame. How far to that hill, would you say, sergeant?”
   “Two miles, sir,” said Jackrum. “Worth trying to sneak up?”
   “They must know people will see them and come looking, so I expect they won’t ‘hang around’ for long,” mused Blouse. “In any case, ah, those things would be highly directional. You’d lose it once you got down in the valley.”
   “Permission to speak, sir?” said Polly.
   “Of course,” said Blouse.
   “How do they get the light so bright, sir? It’s pure white!”
   “Some kind of firework thingy, I believe. Why?”
   “And they send messages with light?”
   “Yes, Perks. And your point is…?”
   “And the people who get those messages send messages back the same way?” Polly persevered.
   “Yes, Perks, that is the whole idea.”
   “Then… maybe we don’t have to go all the way to that hill, sir? The light is being aimed towards us, sir.”
   They all turned. The hill they were skirting loomed above them.
   “Well done, Perks!” Blouse whispered. “Let’s go, sergeant!” He swung himself off the horse, which automatically stepped sideways to make sure that he fell over when he landed.
   “Right you are, sir!” said Jackrum, helping him up. “Maladict, you take Goom and Halter and circle round to the left, the rest go round to the right—not you, Carborundum, no offence, but this has got to be quiet, okay? You stay here. Perks, you come with me—”
   “I shall come too, sergeant,” said Blouse, and only Polly saw Jackrum grimace.
   “Good idea, sir!” said the sergeant. “I suggest you—I suggest Perks and I come with you. Everyone got that? Get to the top neat and quiet and no one, no one moves until you hear my signal—”
   “My signal,” said Blouse firmly.
   “That’s what I meant, sir. Quick and quiet! Hit ’em hard but I want at least one left alive! Go!”
   The two teams fanned out to right and left and disappeared. The sergeant gave them a minute or two’s start, and then set off with unusual speed for a man of his girth, so that for a moment Polly and the lieutenant were left standing. Behind them, a dejected Jade watched them go.
   The trees thinned out on the steep slope, but not enough for much underbrush to get a hold. Polly found it easier to go on all fours, grabbing at tufts and saplings to steady herself. After a while she caught a whiff of smoke, chemical and acrid.
   She was sure, too, that she could hear a faint clicking noise.
   A tree extended a hand and pulled her into its shadow. “Don’t you say a bleedin’ word,” hissed Jackrum. “Where’s the rupert?”
   “Don’t know, sarge!”
   “Damn! You can’t let a rupert run around loose, there’s no tellin’ what he might take it into his little head to do, now he’s got the idea he’s in charge! You’re ’is minder! Find ’im!”
   Polly slithered back down the slope and found Blouse steadying himself against a tree, wheezing gently.
   “Ah… Perks,” he panted. “My asthma seems to… be… coming back…”