Monstrous Regiment

and they’re running towards trouble in the camp! And they’re running straight towards lamplight, so there goes their night eyes! If I was their sergeant they’d be due a fizzer! C’mon.” He stood up, and pulled Shufti to her feet. “Feeling all right, lad?”
    “It w-was horrible, Sarge! One of them put her hand…on…on my socks!”
    “Something that doesn’t often happen, I’ll bet any man,” said Jackrum. “But you did a good job. Now, we’ll walk nice and quiet, and no more talking ’til I say, okay?”
    They plodded on for ten minutes, skirting the camp. They heard several patrols, and saw a couple of others on the hilltops as the moon rose, but it dawned on Polly that loud though the shouting had been, it was only part of the huge patchwork of sound that rose out of the camp. The patrols this far away probably hadn’t heard it, or at least were commanded by the kind of soldiers who didn’t want to get put on a fizzer.
    In the dark, she heard Jackrum take a deep breath.
    “Okay, that’s far enough. Not a bad job of work, lads. You’re real Ins-and-Outs now!”
    “That guard was out cold!” said Polly. “Did you hit him?”
    “Y’see, I’m fat,” said Jackrum. “People don’t think fat men can fight. They think fat men are funny. They think wrong. Gave ’im a chop to the windpipe.”
    “Sarge!” said Shufti, horrified.
    “What? What? He was coming at me with his club!” said Jackrum.
    “ Why was he doing that, Sarge?” said Polly.
    “Ooh, you cunning soldier, you,” said Jackrum. “All right, I grant you that I’d just given mad arm the ol’ quietus, but, to be fair, I know when someone’s just handed me a bleedin’ drink full o’ sleepy drops.”
    “You hit a woman , Sarge?” said Polly.
    “Yeah, and maybe when she wakes up in her corsets she’ll decide that next time a poor ol’ drunk fat man wanders in it mightn’t be such a good idea to try to roll him for his wad,” growled Jackrum. “I’d be in a ditch wi’out my drawers on and a damned great headache if she’d had her way, and if you two was daft enough to complain to an officer, she’d swear black was blue that I didn’t have a penny on me when I came in and was drunk and disorderly. And the colonel wouldn’t care a fig, ’cos he’d reckon a sergeant daft enough to get caught like that had it coming to him. I know, you see. I look after my lads.” There was a clink in the dark. “Plus a few extra dollars won’t go amiss.”
    “Sarge, you didn’t steal the cashbox, did you?” said Polly.
    “Yeah. Got a good armful of her wardrobe, too.”
    “Good!” said Shufti fervently. “It wasn’t a nice place!”
    “It was mostly my money in any case,” said Jackrum. “Business has been a bit slow today, by the feel of it.”
    “But it’s immoral earnings!” said Polly, and then felt a complete fool for saying it.
    “No,” said Jackrum. “It was immoral earnings, now it’s the proceeds of common theft. Life’s a lot easier when you learns to think straight.”

    Polly was glad there was no mirror. The best that could be said for the squad’s new clothing was that it covered them up. But this was a war. You seldom saw new clothes on anybody.
    Yet they felt awkward. And there was no sense in that at all. But they looked at one another in the chilly light of dawn and giggled in embarrassment. Wow, Polly thought, look at us: dressed as women!
    Oddly enough, it was Igorina who really looked the part. She’d disappeared into the other tumbledown room carrying her pack. For ten minutes the squad had heard the occasional grunt or “ouch,” and then she’d returned with a full head of fair, shoulder-length hair. Her face was the right shape, missing the lumps and bumps they’d come to know. And the stitches on her forehead shrank and disappeared as Polly watched in astonishment.
    “Doesn’t that hurt? ” she said.
    “It smarts a bit for a few minutes,” said Igorina. “You just have to have the knack. And the special ointment, of course.”
    “But why’s there a curved scar on your cheek now?” said Tonker. “And those stitches are staying.”
    Igorina looked down demurely. She’d even restyled one of the dresses into a dirndl, and looked like a fresh young maid from the beercellar. Just to look at her was to mentally order a large pretzel.
    “You’ve got to have something to show,” she said. “Otherwise you’re letting down the Clan. And actually I think the stitches