Monstrous Regiment

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 girlie 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, come in here, order an Electrick Floorbanger, doesn’t know how to handle it.”
    “Is he going to come around?” 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 getting undressed. The rain hammered on the roof and the wind blew through a crack under the door, despite Igor’s effort 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 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 Prince Marmaduke-Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg 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? Make 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:

    It was in a careful hand, the excessively clear and well-shaped writing of someone who had to think about every letter.
    She 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 the other piece