Monstrous Regiment

loudly?”
    Only two guards were watching them now, raising their bows cautiously. The other was running way down the passage, shouting.
    The squad, as one man, or woman, shared the thoughts. They’ve got bows. We haven’t. They’ve got a lot more swords. They got reinforcement behind them. All we’ve got is a darkness full of the restless dead. We haven’t even got a prayer anymore.
    Nevertheless, Blouse made an effort.
    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 members of 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 grill 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 among 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. “Well, 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 who 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 were everyone would one day wear a Blouse. Or eat one, possibly. I should have listened to Sergeant Jackrum! Oh, will ever I 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 rather 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,” he said. “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 anymore.”
    “You don’t understand, sir. We really are women. All of us.”
    Blouse grinned nervously. “I think you’ve got a little…confused, Perks. I seem to recall that the same thing happened to Wrigglesworth—”
    “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,” Polly added.
    “And Private Halter?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “ And