Monstrous Regiment

of paper. It was a pamphlet. It was headed “From the Mothers of Borogravia!!” The mothers of Borogravia were very definite about wanting to send their sons off to war Against the Zlobenian Aggressor!! and used a great many exclamation points to say so. And this was odd, because the mothers in the town had not seemed keen on the idea of their sons going off to war, and positively tried to drag them back. Several copies of the pamphlet seemed to have reached every home, even so. It was very patriotic. That is, it talked about killing foreigners.
    She’d learned to read and write after a fashion because the inn was big and it was a business and things had to be tallied and recorded. Her mother had taught her to read, which was acceptable to Nuggan, and her father made sure that she learned how to write, which was not. A woman who could write was an Abomination Unto Nuggan, according to Father Jupe; anything she wrote would by definition be a lie.
    But Polly had learned anyway, because Paul hadn’t, at least to the standard needed to run an inn as busy as The Duchess. He could read if he could run his finger slowly along the lines, and he wrote letters painfully, with a lot of care and heavy breathing, like a man assembling a piece of jewelry.
    He was big and kind and slow and could lift beer kegs as though they were toys, but he wasn’t a man at home with paperwork. Their father had hinted to Polly, very gently but very often, that Polly would need to be right behind him, when the time came for him to run The Duchess. Left to himself, with no one to tell him what to do next, her brother just stood and watched birds.
    At Paul’s insistence, she’d read the whole of “From the Mothers of Borogravia!!” to him, including the bits about heroes and there being no greater good than to die for your country.
    She wished, now, she hadn’t done that. Paul did what he was told. Unfortunately, he believed what he was told, too.
    She put the papers away and dozed again, until her bladder woke her up. Oh, well, at least at this time of the morning she’d have a clear run.
    She reached out for her pack and stepped as softly as she could out into the rain.
    It was mostly just coming off the trees now, which were roaring in the wind that blew up the valley. The moon was hidden in the clouds, but there was just enough light to make out the inn’s buildings. A certain grayness suggested that what passed for dawn in Plün was on the way.
    She located the men’s privy, which, indeed, stank of inaccuracy.
    A lot of planning and practice had gone into this moment. She was helped by the design of her breeches, which were the old-fashioned kind with generous, buttoned trapdoors, and also by the experiments she’d made very early in the mornings when she was doing the cleaning. In short, with care and attention to detail, she’d found that a woman could pee standing up. It certainly worked back home in the inn’s privy, which had been designed and built with the certain expectation of the aimlessness of the customers.
    The wind shook the dank building.
    In the dark, she thought of Aunty Hattie, who’d gone a bit strange around her sixtieth birthday and persistently accused passing young men of looking up her dress. She was even worse after a glass of wine, and she had one joke: “What does a man stand up to do, a woman sit down to do, and a dog lift its leg to do?” And then, when everyone was too embarrassed to answer, she’d triumphantly shriek “Shake hands!” and fall over. Aunty Hattie was an Abomination all by herself.
    Polly buttoned up the breeches with a sense of exhilaration. She felt she’d crossed a bridge, a sensation that was helped by the realization that she’d kept her feet dry.
    Someone said, “Psst!”
    It was just as well she’d already taken a leak. Panic instantly squeezed every muscle. Where were they hiding? This was just a rotten old shed! Oh, there were a few cubicles, but the smell alone suggested very strongly that the woods outside would be a much better proposition. Even on a wild night. Even with extra wolves.
    “Yes?” she quavered, and then cleared her throat and demanded, with a little more gruffness: “Yes?”
    “You’d need these,” whispered the voice. In the fetid gloom, she made out something rising over the top of the cubicle. She reached up nervously and touched softness. It was a bundle of wool. Her fingers explored it.
    “A pair of socks? ” she said.
    “Right. Wear