Monstrous Regiment

“He wouldn’t let it go out of control like that if he was alive. Is he in the hut?”
    “ They are in the hut,” said Maladict flatly. He set off across the smoky ground.
    Polly ran after him.
    “Man and woman?” she said. “Their wives often live out with—”
    “Can’t tell, not if they’re old,” said Maladict shortly.
    The hut was only a temporary thing, made of woven hazel and roofed with tarpaulin; the charcoal-burners moved around a lot, from coppice to coppice. It didn’t have windows, but it did have a doorway, with a rag for a door. The rag had been pulled away; the doorway was dark.
    I’ve got to be a man about this, she thought.
    There was a woman on the bed, and a man lying on the floor. There were other details, which the eye saw but the brain did not focus on. There was a great deal of blood. The couple had been old. They would not grow older.
    Back outside, Polly took frantic mouthfuls of air.
    “Do you think those cavalrymen did it?” she said at last, and then realized that Maladict was shaking. “Oh…the blood…” she said.
    “I can deal with it! It’s okay! I just have to get my mind right, it’s okay!”
    He leaned against the hut, breathing heavily.
    “Okay, I’m fine,” he said. “And I can’t smell horses. Why don’t you use your eyes? Nice soft mud everywhere after the rain, but no hoofprints. Plenty of footprints, though. We did it.”
    “Don’t be silly, we were—”
    The vampire had reached down and pulled something out of the fallen leaves. He rubbed the mud off it with a thumb.
    In thin pressed brass, it was the Flaming Cheese badge of the Ins-and-Outs.
    “But…I thought we were the good guys,” said Polly weakly. “If we were guys, I mean.”
    “I think I need a coffee,” said the vampire.

    “Deserters,” said Sergeant Jackrum ten minutes later. “It happens.” He tossed the badge into the fire.
    “But they were on our side!” said Shufti.
    “So? Not everyone’s a nice gennelman like you, Private Manickle,” said Jackrum. “Not after a few years of gettin’ shot at and eatin’ rat scubbo. On the Retreat from Khrusk I had no water for three days and then fell on my face in a puddle of horse piss, a circumstance which did nothing for my feelin’s of goodwill toward my fellow man or horse. Something the matter, Corporal?”
    Maladict was on his knees, going through his pack with a distracted air.
    “My coffee’s gone, Sarge.”
    “Should’ve packed it properly, then,” said Jackrum unsympathetically.
    “I did , Sarge! I washed out the engine and packed it up with the bean bag after supper last night. I know I did. I don’t take coffee lightly!”
    “If someone else did, they’re going to wish I’d never been born,” growled Jackrum, looking around at the rest of the squad. “Anyone else lost anything?”
    “Er…I wasn’t going to say anything, ’cos I wasn’t sure,” Shufti volunteered, “but my stuff looked as if it had been pulled about when I opened my pack just now…”
    “Oh-ho!” said Jackrum. “Well, well, well! I’ll say this once, lads. Pinching from yer mates is a hanging offence, understood? Nothing breaks down morale faster’n some sneaky little sod dipping into people’s packs. And if I find out someone’s been at it, I’ll swing on their heels!” He glared at the squad. “I ain’t gonna demand that you all empty out your packs as if you’s criminals,” he said, “but you’d better check that nothing’s missing. O’course, one of you might have packed something that wasn’t theirs by accident , okay. Packing in a rush, poor light, easy to do. In which case, you sort it out amongst yourselves, understand? Now, I’m off to have a shave. Lieutenant Blouse is having a throw-up behind the shelter after a-viewin’ of the corpses, poor chap.”
    Polly rummaged desperately in her pack. She’d thrown things in any old how last night, but what she was frantically searching for was—
    —not there.
    Despite the heat from the charcoal mounds, she shivered.
    The ringlets had gone. Feverishly, she tried to remember the events of yesterday evening. They’d just dumped their packs as soon as they were in the barracks, right?
    And Maladict had made himself some coffee at suppertime. He’d washed and dried the little machine—
    There was a thin little wail. Wazzer, the meager contents of her pack spread around her, held up the coffee engine. It had been stamped almost flat.
    “B-b-b—” she