Terry Pratchett: Monstrous Regiment

Polly looked at the next recruit with horror that she hoped she was concealing. She hadn’t really noticed him in the gloom, because he was wearing black—not cool, styled black, but a dusty black, the kind of suit people got buried in. By the look of it, that person had been him. There were cobwebs all over it. The boy himself had stitches across his forehead.

“Your name, lad?” said Jackrum.

“Igor, thur.”

Jackrum counted the stitches.

“You know, I had a feeling it was going to be,” he said. “And I see you’re eighteen.”

“Awake!”

“Oh, gods…” Commander Samuel Vimes put his hands over his eyes.

“I beg your pardon, your grace?” said the Ankh-Morpork consul to Zlobenia. “Are you ill, your grace?”

“What’s your name again, young man?” said Vimes. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been travelling for two weeks and not getting a lot of sleep and I’ve spent all day being introduced to people with difficult names. That’s bad for the brain.”

“It’s Clarence, your grace. Clarence Chinny.”

“Chinny?” said Vimes, and Clarence read everything in his expression.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” he said.

“Were you a good fighter at school?” said Vimes.

“No, your grace, but no one could beat me over the one-hundred-yard dash.”

Vimes laughed. “Well, Clarence, any national anthem that starts ‘Awake!’ is going to lead to trouble. They didn’t teach you this in the Patrician’s office?”

“Er… no, your grace,” said Chinny.

“Well, you’ll find out. Carry on, then.”

“Yes, sir.” Chinny cleared his throat. “The Borogravian National Anthem,” he announced, for the second time.

“ Awake sorry, your grace, ye sons of the Motherland

Taste no more the wine of the sour apples

Woodsmen, grasp your choppers!

Farmers, slaughter with the tool formerly used for lifting beets the foe!

Frustrate the endless wiles of our enemies

We into the darkness march singing

Against the whole world in arms coming

But see the golden light upon the mountain tops!

The new day is a great big fish! ”

“Er…” Vimes said. “That last bit…?”

“That is a literal translation, your grace,” said Clarence nervously. “It means something like ‘an amazing opportunity’ or ‘a glittering prize’, your grace.”

“When we’re not in public, Clarence, ‘sir’ will do. ‘Your grace’ is just to impress the natives.” Vimes slumped back in his uncomfortable chair, chin in his hand, and then winced.

“Two thousand three hundred miles,” he said, shifting his position. “And it’s freezing on a broomstick, however low they fly. And then the barge, and then the coach…” He winced again. “I read your report. Do you think it’s possible for an entire nation to be insane?”

Clarence swallowed. He’d been told that he was talking to the second most powerful man in Ankh-Morpork, even if the man himself acted as though he was ignorant of the fact. His desk in this chilly tower room was rickety; it had belonged to the head janitor of the Kneck garrison until yesterday. Paperwork cluttered its scarred surface and was stacked in piles behind Vimes’s chair.

Vimes himself did not look, to Clarence, like a duke. He looked like a watchman which, in fact, Clarence understood, he was. This offended Clarence Chinny. People at the top should look as though they belonged there.

“That’s a very… interesting question, sir,” he said. “You mean the people—”

“Not the people, the nation,” said Vimes. “Borogravia looks off its head, to me, from what I’ve read. I expect the people just do the best they can and get on with raising their kids which, I might say, I’d rather be doing right now, too. Look, you know what I mean. You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.”

“It’s a fascinating idea, sir,” said Clarence diplomatically.

Vimes looked round the room. The walls were bare stone. The windows were narrow. It was damn cold, even on a sunny day. All that bad food, and that bumping about and sleeping on bad beds… and all that travelling in the dark, too, on dwarf barges in their secret canals under the mountains—the gods alone knew what intricate diplomacy Lord Vetinari had pulled off to get that , although the Low King owed Vimes a few favours…

…all of that for this cold castle over this cold river between these stupid countries, with their stupid war. He knew what he wanted to do. If they’d been people, scuffling in the gutter, he’d have known what to do. He’d have banged their heads together and maybe shoved them in the cells overnight. You couldn’t bang countries together.

Vimes picked up some paperwork, fiddled with it, and threw it down again. “To hell with this,” he said. “What’s happening out there?”

“I understand there are a few pockets of resistance in some of the more inaccessible areas of the Keep, but they are being dealt with. For all practical purposes the Keep is in our hands. That was a clever ruse of yours, your gr– sir.”

Vimes sighed. “No, Clarence, it was a dull old ruse. It should not be possible to get men into a fortress dressed as washerwomen. Three of them had moustaches, for goodness’ sake!”

“The Borogravians are rather… old-fashioned about things like that, sir. On that subject, we appear to have zombies in the lower crypts. Dreadful things. A lot of high-ranking Borogravian military men were interred down there over the centuries, apparently.”

“Really? What are they doing now?”

Clarence raised his eyebrows. “Lurching, sir, I think. Groaning. Zombie things. Something seems to have stirred them up.”

“Us, probably,” said Vimes. He got up, strode across the room, and pulled open the big heavy door. “Reg!” he yelled.

After a moment another watchman appeared, and saluted. He was grey-faced, and Clarence couldn’t help noticing when the man saluted that the hand and fingers were held together with stitching.

“Have you met Constable Shoe, Clarence?” said Vimes cheerfully. “One of my staff. Been dead for more than thirty years, and loves every minute of it, eh, Reg?”

“Right, Mister Vimes,” said Reg, grinning and revealing a lot of brown teeth.

“Some fellow countrymen of yours down in the cellar, Reg.”

“Oh, dear. Lurching, are they?”

“’fraid so, Reg.”

“I shall go and have a word with them,” said Reg. He saluted again and marched out, with a hint of lurch.

“He’s, er, from here?” said Chinny, who had gone quite pale.

“Oh, no. The undiscovered country,” said Vimes. “He’s dead. However, credit where it’s due, he hasn’t let that stop him. You didn’t know we have a zombie in the Watch, Clarence?”

“Er… no, sir. I’ve haven’t been back to the city in five years.” He swallowed. “I gather things have changed.”

Horribly so, in Clarence Chinny’s opinion. Being consul to Zlobenia had been an easy job, which left him a lot of time to get on with his business. And then the big semaphore towers marched through, all along the valley, and suddenly Ankh-Morpork was an hour away. Before the clacks, a letter from Ankh-Morpork would take more than a two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expected a reply overnight. He’d been quite glad when Borogravia had destroyed several of those wretched towers. And then all hell had been let loose.

“We’ve got all sorts in the Watch,” said Vimes. “And we bloody well need ’em now, Clarence, with Zlobenians and Borogravians scrapping in the streets over some damn quarrel that began a thousand years ago. It’s worse than dwarfs and trolls! All because someone’s great-to-the-power-of-umpteen grandmother slapped the face of someone’s great-ditto uncle! Borogravia and Zlobenia can’t even agree a border. They chose the river, and that changes course every spring. Suddenly the clacks towers are now on Borogravian soil—or mud, anyway—so the idiots burn them down for religious reasons.”