Monstrous Regiment

“We are here, private, whoever we are,” snapped Polly. “Now let’s find the cells!”

“Um…” said Igorina, “we’re quite close, I think. I can see a sign. Um. It’s at the end of this passage. Um… just behind those three rather puzzled armed men with the, um… efficient–looking crossbows. Um. I think what you’ve just been saying was important and needed to be said. Only, um… not just now, perhaps? And not so loudly?”

Only two guards were watching them now, raising their bows cautiously. The other was ru

The squad, as one man, or woman, shared the thoughts.

They’ve got bows. We haven’t. They’ve got reinforcements behind them. We haven’t. All we’ve got is a darkness full of the restless dead. We haven’t even got a prayer any more.

Blouse made an effort, nevertheless. In the tones of Daphne he shrilled: “Oh, officers… we seem to have got lost on the way to the ladies’ room…”

They were not put into a dungeon, although they were marched past plenty. There were lots of bleak stone corridors, lots of heavy doors with bars and lots and lots of bolts, and lots of armed men whose job, presumably, only became interesting if all the bolts disappeared. They were put into a kitchen. It was huge, and clearly not the kind of place where people chopped herbs and stuffed mushrooms. In a gloomy, grimy, soot-encrusted hall like this, cooks had probably catered for hundreds of hungry men. Occasionally the door was opened and shadowy figures stared in at them. No one had said anything, at any time.

“They were expecting us,” muttered Shufti. The squad were sitting on the floor with their backs to a huge, ancient chopping block, except for Igorina, who was tending to the still-unconscious Wazzer.

“They couldn’t have got that elevator up by now,” said Polly. “I wedged that stone in good and hard.”

“Then maybe the washerwomen gave us away,” said Tonker. “I didn’t like the look of Mrs Enid.”

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” said Polly, “is that the only door?”

“There’s a storeroom at the other end,” said Tonker. “No exit, except a grille in the floor.”

“Could we get out that way?”

“Only diced.”

They stared glumly at the distant door. It had opened again, and there was some muffled conversation amongst the silhouettes beyond. Tonker had tried advancing on the open doorway, and found men with swords suddenly occupying it.

Polly turned to look at Blouse, who was slumped against the wall, staring blankly upwards.

“I’d better go and tell him,” she said. Tonker shrugged.

Blouse opened his eyes and smiled wanly when Polly approached. “Ah, Perks,” he said. “We almost made it, eh?”

“Sorry we let you down, sir,” said Polly. “Permission to sit, sir?”

“Treat the rather chilly flagstones as if they were your own,” said Blouse. “And it was I that let you down, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, no, sir—” Polly protested.

“You were my first command,” said Blouse. “Well, apart from Corporal Drebb and he was seventy and only had one arm, poor chap.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “All I had to do was get you to the valley. That was all. But, no, I foolishly dreamed of a world where everyone would one day wear a Blouse. Or eat one, possibly. I should have listened to Sergeant Jackrum! Oh, will I ever look my dear Emmeline in the face again?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Polly.

“That was meant to be more of a rhetorical cry of despair than an actual question, Perks,” said Blouse.

“Sorry, sir,” said Polly. She took a deep breath, ready for the plunge into the icy depths of the truth. “Sir, you ought to know that—”

“And I’m afraid once they realize we aren’t women we’ll be put in the big dungeons,” the lieutenant went on. “Very big, and very dirty, I’m told. And very crowded.”

“Sir, we are women, sir,” said Polly.

“Yes, well done, Perks, but we don’t have to pretend any more.”

“You don’t understand, sir. We really are women. All of us.”

Blouse gri

“Sir—”

“—although I have to say he was very good at choosing curtains—”

“No, sir. I was a—I am a girl, and I cut my hair and pretended I was a boy and took the Duchess’s shilling, sir. Take my word for it, sir, because I really don’t want to have to draw you a picture. We played a trick on you, sir. Well, not a trick, really, but we, all of us, had reasons for being somewhere else, sir, or at least not being where we were. We lied.”

Blouse stared at her. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, sir. I am of the female persuasion. I check every day, sir.”

“And Private Halter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Lofty?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Both of them, sir. Don’t go there, sir.”

“What about Shufti?”

“Expecting a baby, sir.”

Suddenly, Blouse looked terrified. “Oh, no. Here?”

“Not for several months, sir, I believe.”

“And poor little Private Goom?”

“A girl, sir. And Igor is really an Igorina. And wherever she is, Carborundum is really Jade. We’re not sure about Corporal Maladict. But the rest of us definitely have pink blankets, sir.”

“But you didn’t act like women!”

“No, sir. We acted like men, sir. Sorry, sir. We just wanted to find our men or get away or prove a point or something. Sorry it had to happen to you, sir.”

“You’re sure about all this, are you?”

What are you expecting me to say? Polly thought. “Whoops, now I come to think about it, yes, we’re really men after all?” She settled for saying: “Yes, sir.”

“So… you’re not called Oliver, then?” It seemed to Polly that the lieutenant was having a lot of difficulty with all this; he kept asking the same basic question in different ways, in the hope of getting something other than the answer he didn’t want to hear.

“No, sir. I’m Polly, sir—”

“Oh? Do you know there is a song about—”

“Yes, sir,” said Polly firmly. “Believe me, I’d rather you didn’t even hum it.”

Blouse stared at the far wall, eyes slightly unfocused. Oh dear, Polly thought. “You took a terrible risk,” he said distantly. “A battlefield is no place for women.”

“This war isn’t staying on battlefields. At a time like this, a pair of trousers is a girl’s best friend, sir.”

Blouse fell silent again. Suddenly, Polly felt very sorry for him. He was a bit of a fool, in that special way very clever people have of being foolish, but he wasn’t a bad man. He’d been decent to the squad and he’d cared about them. He didn’t deserve this.

“Sorry you had to be involved, sir,” she said.

Blouse looked up. “Sorry?” he said, and to her amazement he was looking more cheerful than he had all day. “Good heavens, you don’t have to be sorry. Do you know anything about history, Polly?”

“Can we stick with Perks, sir? I’m still a soldier. No, I don’t know much history, sir. At least, much that I trust.”

“Then you’ve never heard of the Amazon warriors of Samothrip? The most fearsome fighting force for hundreds of years. All women! Absolutely merciless in battle! They were deadly with the longbow, although in order to get maximum draw they had to cut off one of their, um… er… I say, you ladies haven’t been cutting off your, um, er…”

“No, we haven’t cut off any um ers, sir. Only hair.”

Blouse looked incredibly relieved. “Well, and then there’s the female bodyguards of King Samuel in Howandaland. All seven feet tall, I understand, and deadly with the spear. Throughout Klatch, of course, there are many stories of female warriors, often fighting alongside their men. Fearsome and fearless, I believe. Men would desert rather than face females, Perks. Couldn’t deal with ’em.”

Once again, Polly felt the slightly unbalanced feeling of having tried to jump a hurdle that turned out not to be there. She took refuge in: “What do you think’s going to happen now, sir?”