Monstrous Regiment

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 i

“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, gri

“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, ru