Monstrous Regiment

wondering what the truth really was, or whether there was the truth, and then again, if there was also the truth and, of course, T HE T RUTH. Anyway, it was the stuff of legends, where accuracy is not required as a major ingredient.
    Anyway, it had worked. And then……they went home. A lot of soldiers did, under the fragile truce. The first snows were already falling and, if people had wanted a war, then the winter had given them one. It came with lances of ice and arrows of hunger, it filled the passes with snow, it made the world as distant as the moon…
    That was when the old dwarf mines had opened up, and pony after pony emerged. It had always been said there were dwarf tunnels everywhere, and not just tunnels; there were secret canals under the mountains, docks, flights of locks that could lift a barge a mile high in busy darkness, far below the gales on the mountain tops.
    They brought, indeed, cabbage and potatoes and roots and apples and barrels of fat, things that kept .
    And winter was defeated, and the snowmelt roared down the valleys, and the Kneck scrawled its random wiggles across the flat silt of the valley.
    They’d gone home and Polly wondered if they’ve ever really been away. Were we soldiers? she wondered. They’d been cheered on the road to Prince Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg, and had been much better treated than their rank deserved, and even had a special uniform designed for them. But the vision of Gummy Abbens kept arising in her mind…
    We weren’t soldiers, she decided. We were girls in uniform. We were like a lucky charm. We were mascots. We weren’t real, we were always a symbol of something. We’d done very well, for women. And we were temporary.
    Tonker and Lofty were never going to be dragged back to the School now, and they’d gone their own way. Wazzer had joined the general’s household, and had a room of her own and quietness, and made herself useful, and was never beaten. She’d written Polly a letter, in tiny spiky handwriting. She seemed happy; a world without beatings was heaven. Jade and her beau had wandered off to do something more interesting, as trolls very sensibly did. Shufti…had been on a timetable of her own. Maladicta had disappeared. And Igorina, at least, had set up by herself in the capital, dealing with women’s problems, or at least those women’s problems that weren’t men.
    And senior officers had given them medals, and watched them go with fixed, faint smiles. Kisses don’t last.
    And now it wasn’t that good things were happening, it was just that bad things had stopped. The old women still grumbled, but they were left to grumble. No one had any directions, no one had a map, no one was quite certain who was in charge. There were arguments and debates on every street corner. It was frightening and exhilarating. Every day was an exploration. Polly had worn a pair of Paul’s old trousers to clean the floor of the big bar, and had got barely a “hurrumph” from anyone.
    Oh, and the Girls’ Working School had burned down, and on the same day two slim masked figures had robbed a bank. Polly had grinned when she heard that, and hoped that Tonker and Lofty would one day find a way to eat chocolates in a great big room where the world was a different place.
    Shufti, who’d somehow always be Shufti to Polly even if the rest of the world now called her Betty again, had moved into The Duchess. Her baby was called Jack. Paul doted on it.
    And now…
    Someone had been drawing in the gents’ privy again. Polly couldn’t wash it off, so she contented herself with correcting the anatomy. Then she swooshed the place clean—at least, clean by pub urinal standards—with a couple of buckets, and ticked off the chore, just as she did every morning.
    When she arrived back in the bar, there were a group of worried men there, talking to her father. They looked mildly frightened when she strode in.
    “What’s happening?” she said.
    Her father nodded to Gummy Abbens, and everyone stepped back a little. What with the spittle and the bad breath, you never wanted a conversation with Gummy to be particularly intimate.
    “The swede-eatersh is at it again!” he said. “They’re gonna invade ’cos of the prince saysh we belong to him now!”
    “It’s all down to him being the Duchess’s distant cousin,” said Polly’s father.
    “But I heard it still wasn’t settled!” said Polly. “Anyway, there’s still a