|
|
| you want gold? |
|
|
| Total Votes : 32 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:17 am
 |
|
|
 |
Badass Boast / Real Life
Go To
Main
Awesome
Characters
FanWorks
Funny
Heartwarming
Laconic
Quotes
ShoutOut
WMG
YMMV
More
- More -
Create New
- Create New -
A two for one: this duel of words between King Philip II of France and Richard I of England, outside the walls of Château Gaillard:
Philip: If its walls were iron, yet would I take it!
Richard: If these walls were butter, yet would I hold them!
For the record, Philip took the castle.
The Soviet song В Путь ("To the road!" or "Onwards!") written after World War II contains one of these. It's even more badass when it rhymes in the original Russian:
Let our enemies remember this:
We are not threatening, but merely saying:
We crossed half the world
And if necessary we will do it again.
The Argentine national anthem's last verse:
''May our laurels be eternal
Well, we knew how to fetch them:
Let us all live crowned with Glory
Or with Glory, let's swear to die
Advertisement:
The national anthem of Romania has some pretty damn badass lyrics, from beginning to end. But perhaps the best part has to be the second verse:
Look down, great shades of Mihai, Stefan, and Corvinus
Upon the Romanian nation, your great-grandchildren.
With swords in their hands and your heroism in their veins,
"Live free or die", shout all.
Vietnam's national anthem would like to have a word with their comrades.
The flag printed in victorious blood carries the soul of the nation,
Guns from afar crowd together in an army's marching song.
The road towards glory is built with enemy corpses.
Vietnam's first Declaration of Independence, contained in four lines of poetry. It was recited before and during battles when Lý forces were fighting off Song forces to boost morale.note
Southern emperors dwell in these Southern lands, mountains, and rivers,
It was clearly allotted thus in heavens' books.
How dare enemies trespass?
You will be completely routed!
Advertisement:
Douglas MacArthur was chased out of the Philippines and down to Australia by the Japanese invaders, he greeted the press in Terowie with the furious promise: "I came out of Bataan, and I shall return!" On the 20th of October 1944, he led 200,000 US soldiers in the first phase of the islands' liberation. That night, he broadcast again from Leyte:
People of the Philippines, I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil. Soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples. We have come, dedicated, and committed to the task of destroying every vestige of enemy control over your people. The hour of your redemption is here!
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy had this to say during the 1930s, when he argued against joining the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy because it was against Japan's interests and against war with the United States because it was a stupid idea, and as a result was sent death threats and hate mail, some of it from the Imperial Japanese Army, who actually sent men to spy on him for his own "protection":
One man's life or death is a matter of no importance. All that matters is the Empire. As Confucius said, "They may crush cinnabar, yet they do not take away its color; one may burn a fragrant herb, yet it will not destroy the scent." They may destroy my body, yet they will not take away my will.
Admiral Yi Sun-Sin of Korea, after being ordered to disband the Navy due to his successor/predecessor's miserable loss to the Japanese Navy, replied to King Seonjo with a letter.
Yi: ...your servant still doth have twelve warships under his command and he is still alive, that the enemy shall never be safe in the West Sea.
Advertisement:
He then proceeded to win a 13 vs. 133 (plus 200+ transports) naval battle, losing only two soldiers — not ships, soldiers — to combat action.
This supremely badass and righteous quotation from Itzhak Katzenelson, one of the participants in the futile Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when the last 1200 Polish Jews stood against the SS forces occupying Warsaw rather than be deported to Auschwitz and held out for almost a month.
Though it be to die, we will fight.
We fight not for ourselves, but for future generations.
Although we will not live to see it.
Our murderers will pay for their crimes after we are gone.
And our deeds will live forever.
A comic example is the WWII British marching song, "We're Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line", which mocks Germany's grandiose name for its defenses:
"We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line,
Have you any dirty washing, mother dear?
We're gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line,
‘Cause the washing day is here."
"Whether the weather may be wet or fine,
We just rub along without a care!
We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line,
If that Siegfried Line's still there!"
"Am Yisrael Chai!" - "The children of Israel still liveth!" Generally a way of saying, coldly, "We're still here, despite everything." Fittingly, the Jewish chaplain to the British Second Army, Leslie Hardman, used it to conclude his service to the liberated inmates of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 20, 1945.
John F. Kennedy's speech at Rice University was one on behalf of NASA and, by extension, the human spirit:
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Nelson Mandela:
At the Rivonia Trial, when just about everyone — including himself — thought he was facing the hangman for his part in organizing uMkhonto we Sizwe's terrorist campaign (which killed 50 civilians) in South Africa, had this to say:
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for. But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Later, after his release:
Our march to freedom is irreversible.
At his inauguration:
Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world.
Let freedom reign!
The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!
God bless Africa!
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris had a decent line in these:
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
Also during the Battle of Britain, seen on an advertisement for a local Spitfire fund inviting residents to come and view a downed Messerschmitt for a fee:
"Made in Germany. Finished in England."
Even Denmark delivered one during the Second World War, courtesy of their King Christian X. The occupying Nazi force insisted on hoisting the swastika flag over the royal palace in Copenhagen. The king, who actually was a war prisoner, protested and said he would send a soldier up to lower that flag and hoist the Danish standard. When the German officer threatened to shoot the soldier who dared the attempt, the king allegedly said:
Then you have to aim well, because that soldier will be me!
Josip Broz "Tito" once sent Stalin a telegram which read:
"Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle ... If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send a very fast working one to Moscow and I certainly won't have to send another."
Tito died in 1980; Stalin died in 1953 — and Stalin was only 12 years older. Think about that.
Fourteenth-century French noblewoman turned pirate admiral Jeanne de Clisson, whose husband was betrayed and executed for treason by the French crown, to the sole survivor she always made sure to leave after taking a French ship:
"Tell the King of France that the Lioness of Brittany is coming for him."
"The more numerous your enemies, the greater your honor." — Charles X Gustavus of Sweden. Under his lifetime he was nearly constantly at war, fighting Denmark, Russia, and Poland at the same time (gaining nearly half of Denmark's territory and inflicting enough damage on Poland so that the Poles could only win a Pyrrhic Victory) while also mopping up in Germany, so he should know.
Christopher Hitchens: "I am not fighting cancer. Cancer is fighting me."
Yuri Gagarin made one on his return to Earth when he was first discovered and mistaken for an alien.
Stunned farmer: Can it be that you have come from outer space?
Gagarin: As a matter of fact, yes.
The SAS, the first modern special forces regiment and archetypal badasses, have one as their motto: "Who dares, wins." This is set underneath a flaming Excalibur set on a crusader shield. When the Brits with Battleships do badass, they don't mess around.
Most heroes of American folklore, Davy Crockett (legendary version and the real man), Mike Fink, John Henry, Pecos Bill, etc., had a version of this, often called brags.
These are based, at least part, in the brags of Ohio and Mississippi River boatmen, who were well-known for colorful and elaborate boasts, before fights (a major source of entertainment and betting). Examples: "My daddy can whip any man in (your area), and I can whip my pa!", "I can wrassle a buffalo and chaw the ear off a grizzly!", etc.
During a parley with Andrew Jackson, one Crow chieftain with mixed ancestry said something to the effect of, "I got Scots in me, I got Iroquois in me, I got French in me...", and so on through a list of both White nations and Indian tribes. Then he closes with, "...but I ain't got no damn Yankee in me!"
For Davy Crockett:
"I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without scratch down a honey locust; can whip my weight in wild cats, — and if any gentleman pleases, for a ten-dollar bill, he may throw in a panther,— hug a bear too close for comfort, and eat any man opposed to Jackson."
In his time in the House, Crockett came to oppose Jackson.note
And for Mike Fink:
"I'm a Salt River roarer! I'm a ring-tailed squealer! I'm a reg'lar screamer from the ol' Massassip'! WHOOP! I'm the very infant that refused his milk before its eyes were open, and called out for a bottle of old Rye! I love the women an' I'm chockful o' fight! I'm half wild horse and half c**k-eyed alligator and the rest o' me is crooked snags an' red-hot snappin' turkle. I can hit like fourth-proof lightnin' an' every lick I make in the woods lets in an acre o' sunshine. I can out-run, out-jump, out-shoot, out-brag, out-drink, an' out-fight, rough-an'-tumble, no holts barred, ary man on both sides the river from Pittsburgh to New Orleans an' back ag'in to St. Louiee. Come on, you flatters, you bargers, you milk-white mechanics, an' see how tough I am to chaw! I ain't had a fight for two days an' I'm spilein' for exercise. c**k-a-doodle-do!"
The Duke of Marlborough before the Battle of Blenheim: "Here I conquer or here I die."
Patrick Henry in a speech given at St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775:
"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
During his political battle against the Second Bank of the United States, Andrew Jackson proclaimed to his vice president, Martin Van Buren: "The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me but I will kill it!"
He returned to this in his last words: "I killed the bank."
These words could only have been spoken by a man whose only language was ham.
"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, bringing his fist down on the table I will rout you out!"
Written about Jackson in the song "The Hunters of Kentucky" referring to his impressive victory in the Battle of New Orleans:
I s'pose you've read it in the prints
How Pakenham attempted
To make Old Hickory Jackson wince
But his scheme soon repented
For he with rifle ready cocked
Thought such occasion lucky
And soon around Old Jackson flocked
The hunters of Kentucky!
Then there's his (sadly, quite possibly apocryphal) comment to John Calhoun during the Nullification Crisis: "John Calhoun, if you secede from my nation I will secede your head from the rest of your body."
Admiral David G. Farragut, upon being warned about mines (called "torpedoes" back then) in the water at the Battle of Mobile Bay, responded (roughly): "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"
Warned nothing, one of his ships (the monitor USS Tecumseh) had just struck one and sunk. This caused the ship in front of his flagship to stop, right under the guns of a Rebel fort. The historical quote is properly two separate quotes: "Damn the Torpedoes!" to the captain of the USS Brooklyn (the guy who had stopped), and "Four bells" (which was the naval order for maximum power) to the captain of his flagship, the USS Hartford. Captain Percival Drayton then took the Hartford right past the Brooklyn and into the minefield. No other Union ships were sunk, and after several days of fierce fighting, Admiral Farragut won the battle.
General Pedro María Anaya to the general demanding he turn over the fort's ammo after the Battle of Churubusco ended: "Si yo hubiera tenido parque, usted no estaría aquí (If I had any ammunition left, you would not be here)".
The Brag was a tradition of the Scandinavian warriors. When going into battle, a warrior would "brag" about what feats he'd do in the upcoming battle, and his fellow warriors would hold him to this boast. If the warrior did not deliver in his brag, he'd be killed by his fellows, unless he died trying, in which case he'd be honored as one of the noble slain and burned in a funeral pyre so his spirit would go to Valhalla - a literal case of "Put up, or shut up."
Invoked and Subverted by a (supposed) real-life example. A student is taking a test but goes over the acceptable time. The professor refuses to accept it. Three times the student asks the professor if he knows who he is, in stronger language each time; each time the professor replies 'no'. Finally, the student says "Good!" shoves the test into the middle of the stack, and walks away.
Invoked and possibly parodied by the Church of the Subgenius. It's highly entertaining either way.
"From youth my heart has been inclined toward the Way of strategy. My first duel was when I was thirteen, I struck down a strategist of the Shinto school, one Arima Kihei. When I was sixteen I struck down an able strategist, Tadashima Akiyama. When I was twenty-one I went up to the capital and met all manner of strategists, never once failing to win in many contests. After that I went from province to province dueling with strategists of various schools, and not once failed to win even though I had as many as sixty encounters. This was between the ages of thirteen and twenty-eight or twenty-nine." From The Book Of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi.
After the American Civil War, the Union had one of these as a song:
So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main,
Treason fled before us for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia.
In his second campaign for reelection, Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech immediately following an assassination attempt. His opening statement was "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
And of course, what Vice President Marshall said upon hearing about Roosevelt's passing. "Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight."
This was a common pre-battle ritual for samurai, which bit them in the bum when they came up against Kublai Khan's Mongol host, who of course had no concept of the formal traditions of battle the Japanese had practised during centuries of fighting themselves. When the Japanese drew up their battle lines and sent forth their herald to read the formal Badass Boast and ritual insult of the enemy, the Mongols simply shot the guy and charged. Fortunately for Japan, a freak typhoon later sunk the colossal navy Khan had sent to conquer them, thwarting his attempt and forever entering the Japanese psyche as "Kamikaze", the Divine Wind.
This actually happened twice, a second time after the Mongols had already crushed the first line of defence on the actual islands of Japan. After the second invasion was obliterated by storm, the Mongols apparently decided that while the enemy troops were easy, their gods were a pain in the neck.
"If the Army and the Navy / ever look on Heaven's scenes / They shall find the streets are guarded by / The United States Marines."
"We stole the Eagle from the Air Force, the Anchor from the Navy, and the Rope from the Army. On the seventh day while God rested, we overran his perimeter, stole the Globe, and we've been running the whole show ever since. We live like soldiers, talk like sailors, and slap the hell out of both of them. Warriors by day, lovers by night, professionals by choice, and Marines by the grace of God."
A (probably apocryphal, but still badass) tactical assessment of the US Marine situation at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir:
(Unnamed) Marine Colonel: "The Chinese are ahead of us, behind us, and on both flanks. They outnumber us 20 to 1. And they can't get away from us now!"
Such boasts are usually attributed to Chesty Puller, who likely deserves the credits.
"Good. Now we can fire in any direction!"
"We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things."
General Puller was an outstanding combat officer and leader who commanded the respect and loyalty of his men, and to this very day is seen as something akin to a saint within the Marine Corps. If just half of the quotes attributed to him are accurate, however, you would be forgiven for thinking he was bat-s**t insane:
Upon being shown a flamethrower for the first time, he is reported to have asked where the bayonet was meant to be attached.
Once, on an inspection tour, he demanded to be taken to the Brig so he could meet the "real Marines".
Military running cadences are traditionally filled with badass boasts. This is especially true of those used within the Marines:
"Hey there Army! / Get in your tanks and follow me! / I am Marine Corps infantry!
They'll even boast about family members:
"My grandmamma was 92! / She could PT better than you!
"Μολὼν λαβέ" ("Come and take them") — Leonidas at Thermopylae, when asked to give up his weapons. That's "Molon labe" for those who can't understand Greek writing.
Μολὼν λαβέ is currently the Badass Creed of the Greek First Army Corps, and is also the motto of United States Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT).
Also said at Thermopylae by Dienekes, a Spartan warrior, when informed that the Persians' arrows would block out the sun: "So much the better... then we shall fight our battle in the shade."
The Spartans have a long history of this sort of thing. When Philip II of Macedon sent a message to Sparta saying "If I enter Laconia, I will level Sparta to the ground," The Spartans' response was one word: "If." Later, Philip II sent another message to Sparta, asking if they would rather have him come as friend or foe; the Spartan reply was, "Neither." note
The Spartans invented short but sweet Badass boasts. Notice the name of their county, Laconia. Seem ...familiar?
Themistocles, another hero from the Greco-Persian Wars, also had some good ones:
During a council taking place at Salamis, he talked before Euribiades, which angered general Adeimantos and told him that those who start the race before the signal are getting beaten. Themistocles replied that those who start the race late don't win the medal.
Later, when Adeimantos insulted him by calling him and the Athenians stateless, because Athens was burned down by King Xerxes, Themistocles, frustrated, told him that they had a country. Their ships! And if they wanted, they could sail to Italy and leave the greek army without a naval.
The men of the small Texas town of Gonzalez used a variant of this when the Mexican army tried to repossess their cannon: "Come And Take It". They later carried that banner — and attitude — to the Alamo. American frontiersmen were like that. Gonzalez still has the cannon, and the flag, which still says 'Come And Take It'. They have a parade every year. (A very small one, it's a pretty small town.)
Suleiman the Lawgiver, the tenth sultan of the Ottoman Empire, signed his letters by titling himself
The lord of the realms of the Romans, and the Persians and the Arabs, hero of all that is, pride of the arena of earth and time!
Of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea;
Of the glorified Kaaba and the illuminated Medina, the noble Jerusalem and the throne of Egypt, that rarity of the age;
Of the province of Yemen, and Aden and Sana, and of Baghdad the abode of rectitude, and Basra and al-Hasa and the Cities of Nushirivan;
Of the lands of Algiers and Azerbaijan, the steppes of the Kipchak and the lands of Tartars;
Of Kurdistan and Luristan, and of the countries of Rumelia and Anatolia and Karaman and Wallachia and Moldavia and Hungary all together, and of many more worthy kingdoms of countries.
Sultan and Padishah.
That was actually his short title. The full one is this:
His Sacred and Imperial Majesty Sultan Suleiman Khan,
Padishah,
Sovereign of the House of Osman,
Sultan of Sultans,
Khan of Khans,
Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe,
Custodian of the Holy Sanctuaries of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem,
Caesar of Rome,
Emperor of The Three Cities of Constantinople, Adrianople, and Bursa, and of the Cities of Damascus and Cairo,
Of all Azerbaijan, of the Magreb, of Barka, of Kairouan, of Aleppo,
Of the Arabic and the Persian Iraq, of Basra, of Al-Hasa strip, of Ar Raqqah, of Mosul,
Of Diyarbakır, of Cilicia, of the provinces of Erzurum, of Sivas, of Adana, of Karaman, of Van,
Of Barbary, of Abyssinia, of Tunisia, of Algiers, of Tripoli, of Damascus, of Cyprus, of Rhodes, of Crete,
Of the province of the Morea,
Of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea and also their coasts,
Of Anatolia, Rumelia, Baghdad, Kurdistan, Greece, Turkistan, Tartary, Circassia,
Of the two regions of Kabarda, of Georgia, of the Steppe of Kypchaks, of the whole country of the Tatars,
Of Kefe and of all the neighboring regions,
Of Bosnia,
Of the City and Fort of Belgrade, of the province of Serbia, with all the castles and cities,
Of all Albania
Of all Eflak and Bogdania, as well as all the dependencies and borders, and many other countries and cities.
Speaking of Ottoman sultans, the letter of Sultan Mahmud IV to the Zaporogian Cossacks. And, topping that, the Cossacks' reply.
That reply is probably a fake, though.
Atahualpa, the final sovereign emperor of the Inca empire, had such a (possibly ahistorical) boast to the Spanish when they told him his land had been granted to them by the Pope:
"Your emperor may be a great prince; I do not doubt it, seeing that he has sent his subjects so far across the waters; and I am willing to treat him as a brother. As for your pope of whom you speak, he must be mad to speak of giving away countries that do not belong to him. As for my faith, I will not change it. Your own God, as you tell me, was put to death by the very men He created. But my God still looks down on His children."
Things... didn't go so well for him after that. But it was still an awesome Badass Boast.
During his conquest of the Aztec Empire, Hernán Cortés had to defeat the army of the Governor of Cuba, which was sent after him. He bested them, even outnumbered and outgunned, AND convinced the survivors to join him. Accounts say that the army's general spoke to him like this:
General: Mister Cortez, it is a great victory for you to capture me.
Cortez: Capturing you is the least of everything I've done in this land.
Muhammad Ali. That man only spoke in Badass Boast.
"He's a tramp, a bum and a cripple, not worth training for. I'll take him in five." Said before his 1963 fight with Henry Cooper. He did just that, although Cooper did become the first man to knock Ali down in a professional boxing match, with his "'Enry's 'Ammer" left hook. Afterward, Ali came up with one for his opponent despite winning the match; remarking that "Cooper's not a bum any more. I underestimated him. He's the toughest fighter I ever met and the first to really drop me, he's a real fighter. (...) The punch Cooper hit me with, he didn't just shake me. He shook my relations back in Africa".
Most famously, before his first heavyweight title match against Sonny Liston, the relatively little-known Cassius Clay (as he still was) claimed he would "Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee." He won that one too.
Ali actually lost against Joe Frazier in 1970, but nevertheless had a poetic Badass Boast beforehand: "Now this may shock and amaze ya/But I'm gonna retire Joe Frazier."
Awesomely, when he was interviewed after he was fully afflicted with Parkinson's disease, unable to talk above a whisper and uncontrollably shaking, he continued to speak in Badass Boast.
Ali: I am... still... the greatest... I am... still... the champ...
Julius Caesar: "Veni, vidi, vici." ("I came. I saw. I conquered.") . Caesar's report on the Pontus war sent to the Senate. Also posthumous Take That! against Pompey the Great, who got a bit tangled in the previous war in that zone.
Many great people have made their own quotes basing on this. For example, king of Poland, John III, after massacring the Turks at Vienna and breaking their power forever, send all their banners to the Pope along with the letter:
Veni, vidi, Deus vicit (I came, I saw, God conquered).
Robert A. Heinlein quipped, "I came, I saw, She conquered. (Something seems to have been lost in the original translation...)"
After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, one slogan used by the Royal Navy was Venit, vidit, fugit. "They came, they saw, they fled."
People born and bred in Falkirk, UK, are known as "The Bairns of Falkirk". The town motto is "Touch ane, touch a'" and the Bairns are keen on the saying, "Better meddle with the Devil than the Bairns of Falkirk".
The McPherson clan motto, "Touch not the cat but a glove", refers to McPherson as a wildcat. When its claws are unsheathed, (without the glove), well... tomfoolery will not be met with kindness.
Most Scottish Clan mottoes pretty much boil down to, "Oi! You think you're hard enough?" in Latin or Scots Gaelic. My own family's motto, "Gang Warily", roughly translates as, "Watch your step", and only partly refers to us introducing the caltrop to Scottish warfare.
My family's motto is "Audentes Fortuna Juvat." The translation is "Fortune favors the bold."
"...we are Sherpas and we have never willingly let anyone die on a mountain. It is not our way..." (Tenzing Norgay's grandson rallying disgruntled porters.)
"The wolves will eat well this year" (Finnish officer surveying his army's handiwork during the Winter War)
When Stalin made his demands known the Finns cried out "They are so many and our country is so small. Where will we bury them all?" Finns don't really boast.
Seems that that's one of the better boasts. When you recall that they had a single guy with over 700 kills, it's not an idle one, either.
German General: "If there were 50 million Finns we would share the world together with you."
Finnish General Paavo Talvela: "If there were 50 million Finns... what makes you think we would share anything with you?"
All subverted somewhat in that the Soviets won both the Winter War and the Second World War. Mother Russia Makes You Strong after all. But even they admitted they had worked so hard for it the ground they won would barely be enough to bury their own dead.
There is an old Finnish joke which doubles as a Badass Boast. Finnish President Urho Kekkonen and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were sitting in a Sauna together when Khrushchev suddenly said:
Khrushchev: "Dear Brother what do you say about finally removing the border between out nations as proof of our friendship?"
Kekkonen: "Unfortunately i must say no dear Brother. I cannot possibly govern a country that big."
From The Napoleonic Wars:
Napoleon himself had this one when France had to face invasion in 1814: "The cannonball that will kill me has not been molded yet!".
Previously, in 1798, at the start the Battle of the Pyramids during France's invasion of Egypt:
"Forward! Remember that from those monuments yonder forty centuries look down upon you."
The Viscount Pierre Cambronne, Napoleon's Old Guard commander at the battle of Waterloo, is usually quoted as saying after the battle, "The Guard dies, but does not surrender!". That's badass enough, yet what he actually said in the heroic Last Stand of the Old Guard was even more so:
Merde!
Somewhat subverted in that he survived the carnage and surrendered anyway.
To this day, "merde" is sometimes known as "le mot de Cambronne" ("Cambronne's word").
Marshal Lefebvre, one of Napoleon's senior generals. One of his dinner guests supposedly expressed envy of his wealth. Lefebvre's response was to offer to take him outside and take twenty shots at him from thirty paces; if the guest survived it would all be his. Unsurprisingly, he declined. "I had a thousand bullets fired at me from much closer range before I got this," said Lefebre. Most other French generals could have said the same.
King Shulgi of Urim is known today only for the magnificent Badass Boast he left behind him.
One very obvious joke (but no less badass) apparently did the rounds of the Israelis with Infrared Missiles after the Six-Day War:
"And on the seventh day, we rested."
One time, Genghis Khan had his horse shot under him during a clan war. After the fighting, he assembled the prisoners and asked who had done that. One of the prisoners said, "It was I." After that Ghenghis Khan rewarded him. He may have been ruthless sometimes but he did have style at other times.
''I am the flail of god. Had you not created great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.''
General Allenby made a Badass Antiboast. By tradition only a conqueror gets to ride into Jerusalem on a horse, at least until Kaiser Wilhelm II insisted to ride just as a dignified visitor in 1898. Allenby of course was a conqueror . But what he did was dismount and walk in saying, "I will not ride where Christ has walked."
The next conqueror of course was Moshe Dayan. He didn't ride in, but he didn't stop to remind people that he was not riding in the way Allenby did, which is really too bad. Perhaps he hadn't heard of the custom or wished the credit to go to the IDF.
In the second case he should have had a man chosen by lottery as representative. It would have been too cool a Badass Boast not to remember.
Gajah Mada, before his campaign to unify the archipelago, made this oath to his queen: "If the external territories of Majapahit are lost, I will not taste any spices. And until I have conquered Malaka, Seram, Tanjungpura, Haru, Pahang, Dompo, Bali, Sunda and Palembang... I will never taste any spices." And, he actually succeeded and even expands the territory of Majapahit into the whole archipelago that will be known as Indonesia.
In 1990, 18-year-old Hugh Gallagher wrote his college application essay, which is one long, massive (and slightly surreal) Badass Boast. It reads in part:
Occasionally I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
It worked. He got into college, the essay won a contest, and Gallagher is now a successful novelist.
During World War II, Bob Hope performed for an audience of combat engineers:
Hope: Are you the Corps of Engineers, the guys who build the runways the planes land on?
Audience Member: Hell no! We're the Seabees! We build the roads the Japs retreat on!
During the fateful hours leading up to the Weserübung (the German invasion of Norway in April 1940), German ambassador Breuer had talks with the Norwegian foreign minister Koht - while the German fleet was only hours away. Breuer had warned the Norwegian government that if the government didn`t give in, war would be certain for Norway. Koht calmly answered:
The war has already begun!
Many armed forces have a battle cry they use to psych themselves up (and scare the enemy) in case they have to end up stabbing some poor b*****d to death with their bayonet. For example, the 506th P.I.R of the 101st Airborne's battle cry was "Currahee!" a Cherokee word which literally means "stand alone". Even today, it is still used by the 101st as a morale booster.
The Celts would often do this before battle while challenging their enemies to duels.
During the Siege of Jerusalem in 1948, Shaltiel, the Hagannah's military governor, claimed that his side would make Jerusalem their "Bloody little Stalingrad". Which they did.
John Paul Jones informing the British Navy "I have not yet begun to fight!" during his fighting on the Bonhomme Richard.
Historical evidence actually indicates that he said "I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike!" (strike being a common term for naval surrender, referring to taking down your flag). Still badass.
Jones won the above-mentioned battle after refusing to surrender. Upon learning that the captain he defeated, Richard Pearson, had been knighted for giving a convoy of British merchant ships time to escape. Jones responded that his foe had deserved it, but went on to boast that "I'd like to meet him on the high seas again; I'll make him a lord!"
He had another one too: "I wish to have no connection with any ship which does not sail fast, for I intend to go In Harm's Way."
BRIAN BLESSED reportedly kept Oliver Reed from making trouble during the filming of Prisoner Of Honor with one of these to the point that Reed was sober the whole time for fear of starting a fight that Brian had said he would end.
General McAuliffe, at the Battle of the Bulge, was presented with a surrender ultimatum by the Germans.
Here's the story: the German Commander sent him a long letter detailing his position in a haughty manner and demanding surrender. The letter was "To the American Commander," and signed, "The German Commander." McAuliffe read it and blurted out "Nuts!" When he and his men tried to compose a reply, they came to the conclusion nothing was better than that, so the full text of the reply was, "To the German Commander: Nuts! The American Commander."
The German officers who were sent with the surrender request weren't familiar with the American slang and asked if it was an affirmative or a negative. The American officers' response? "The reply is decidedly not affirmative", then added, "If you continue this foolish attack, your losses will be tremendous."
Then they asked what "Nuts" meant. One of the more hot-tempered officers suggested "Go take a flying S—-!". The translator considered this for a moment, then decided on the more tactful "You can go to Hell."
Oh, we forgot to mention that reaction came after McAuliffe initially believed the Germans were wanting to surrender to him!
One anonymous soldier during the same battle is recorded as having commented "Haven't you heard? They've got us surrounded. The poor bastards." When one of his fellow soldiers asked him to clarify, he said, "They can only shoot in one direction to hit us. We can shoot any direction we want to hit them!"
US Army Corporal Alvin York had this to say about the battle in which he, alone, took fire from thirty-two German machine guns and over 100 riflemen without receiving a scratch and returned rifle fire to kill 28 Germans without missing even one shot:
York: I jes couldn't miss a German's head or body at that distance. And I didn't. Besides, it weren't no time to miss nohow.
When the German major who surrendered to York realized York had no other troops but a handful of terrified privates to corral his 132 prisoners:
Major: How many men have you got?
York: I have got a'plenty. *pointing pistol at major all the while*
Micheal Wittmann, famed Tiger Tank ace: "At this point, enemy tanks have ceased to be a strain on my nerves."
Doctor Peter Rhee, one of the men taking care of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after she's been shot through the head, seems to be prone to this, with two quotes coming to mind: "She will not die. She does not have that permission from me." and "If she comes to me alive, I can keep her alive." - Considering that, so far, he seems to have delivered very well, quality of life and speed of recovery included, he earned it.
For informational purposes: Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head on January 8th, 2011. She had recovered enough to travel to Washington D.C. from Arizona to vote on an important bill on August 1st, 2011. That's seven months recovery time for being shot in the head. Doctor Rhee has more than earned his status as a badass doctor. (It goes without saying that Gabby Giffords is also an incontrovertible badass.)
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a (probably unintentional) one in 2008 when he claimed in the House of Commons that by bailing out the banks his government had "saved the world". It didn't stop him from losing the next election, of course.
Following a recent crash during a race, Kiwi cyclist Edward Dawkins was asked where he hurt. "I'm from New Zealand", he responded. "We don't feel pain."
"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender" Winston Churchill's response to the threat of Nazi invasion - bearing in mind that Britain was one of the only European countries that was not yet part of Nazi Germany or Nazi-affiliated. So badass that Iron Maiden made sure to use the speech as an intro to their song about World War II dogfights. (not only in that music video but every live performance of "Aces High" as well)
This T-shirt:
"Detroit. Where the weak are killed and eaten."
And a similar one from Detroit's neighbor to the north, under a picture of a smoking gun:
"Come back to Saginaw, we missed you last time."
It should be pointed out that this is more a real-life warning/a bit of Black Comedy than a boast, however.
Evel Knievel gave a memorable interview with radio host Jim Rome, which included this interchange discussing Knievel's attempted Snake Canyon jump:
Rome: "If you knew that the chances of making it were only 50/50, why did you do it? Why did you jump?"
Knievel: (Beat) "Know who the hell I am?"
The USA, during the invasion of Afghanistan, flooded the airwaves with the following message to demoralize and intimidate the Taliban: "Attention. You are condemned. Did you know that? The instant the terrorists you support took over our planes, you sentenced yourselves to death. You will be attacked by land, sea and air. Resistance is futile."
During a siege of Quebec in 1690, the English Admiral Phips sent an ambassador into the city to offer terms for its surrender. Governor Frontenac said to him "my only reply to your general will be from the mouth of my cannons!"
When Ronald Reagan was asked about his plan for the Cold War with the Soviets, he said, "We win. They lose."
The way Soviet soldiers spoke of one of their most formidable pieces of ordnance - MLRS BM-13, aka Katyusha (Katie): "Those foes who heard Katyusha are now deaf; those of them who saw Katyusha are now blind; those who tussled with Katyusha are naught but ash."
Allegedly when the U.S. military entered World War I a group of soldiers in France went to the tomb of Lafayette, the French noble who was responsible for much of the French assistance in the American Revolution and said "Lafayette, we have come" or "Lafayette, we are here."
French general Henri Gouraud, after marching into Damascus in July 1920 to put down an anti-colonial rising, stood upon Saladin's grave, kicked it and said: "The Crusades have ended now! Awake Saladin, we have returned! My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent."
While Jesus Christ (see also: The Bible) never personally gave a Badass Boast, the late S.M. Lockridge gave a pretty good one describing him, in accordance to the Christian doctrine of "boasting in Christ."
As recounted by Foxe's Book of Martyrs, William Tyndale engaged in a debate with clergyman who'd said "It would be better to be without God's laws than the pope's." replied "I defy the pope, and all his laws; if God spares my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that drives the plough to know more of the Scripture than you do!" — he then translated the entire New Testament and significant portions of the Old Testament into English.
The US Army has a Military Occupational Specialty known as "13F". Officially this is what is known as a Fire Support Specialist; colloquially as a Forward Observer. As do many specialties in the US Army, Forward Observers have an unofficial prayer: "Yea, tho I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil; for I command the biggest damn guns in the valley."
This may be more along the lines of Truth in Advertising, as Forward Observers in the US Army are trained to direct fire for 4.2" mortars, 105mm & 155mm Howitzers, 8" Howitzers, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, helicopter gunships, all forms of close air support including AC-130 Spectre Gunships, Naval gunfire up to 16" Battleship main guns, and if "released" by the President; Tactical Nuclear Weapons. This may be why during the Cold War the unofficial US Army estimate of a Forward Observer's life expectancy upon contact with Soviet forces was approximately 13 seconds.
Clearly cribbed from Green Beret prayer: "Yea, tho I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil; for I am the baddest mother*** in the valley."
The same prayer has been attributed to Army Air Force bomber crews in World War II.
An alternative and possibly even more badass version "Yea, tho I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil; for the Valley of the Shadow of Death is wherever I walk through."
Or the motto of the Kadena SR-71 base, "Yea, though I fly through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil; for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing."
A boast about the US Navy, if not actually by them: Enemy targets continue to exist within the strike radius of an American carrier task force at the discretion of the task force commander.
In the 1980s and 90s it was common for Royal Navy ships on patrol to pass US Navy ships on patrol. There would often be an exchange of greetings, as would be expected between friends. If the Americans went first, the usual message was, "Hello, from the biggest navy in the world." The British reply was customarily, "Hello, from the best."
From Abraham Lincoln; "Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years."
Almogavars were mercenary soldiers from the 13th and 14th century. "Awake iron!" was their battle cry. The badassery of it relies on the fact that, while shouting the battle cry, they used to strike their blades against rocks, so the steel would spark.
At the First Battle of the Marne, Ferdinand Foch's counterattack was preceded by the now-famous Badass Boast: "Hard pressed on my right. My centre is yielding. Impossible to manoeuvre. Situation excellent. I attack."
Origin of the line "The center cannot hold" (depending on translation).
While qualifying for the 2001 World's Strongest Man competition, American Phil Pfister roared "I AM GONNA BE THE WORLD'S STRONGEST MAN!" while holding up two massive concrete pillars. He came fourth in the final, didn't reach the final again until 2006... and then made good on his boast, bringing the title back to America after 24 years.
Back in the Eighties, Jón Páll Signarsson was the most iconic strongman of his time partly for his badass boasts, and partly because he was able to back them up - he was the first man to win four titles and is still considered one of the strongest men who ever lived. His most iconic boast, after winning the 1986 title, gets aired at least once every year:
"I AM THE STRONGEST! I AM THE VIKING!" [cue Skyward Scream]
Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix' epitaph. The exact wording is lost, and it may have been either Greek or Latin, but one version reads: "No better friend...no worse enemy."
The American Civil War had a few:
The Mayor of Atlanta sent a letter to General William T. Sherman, pleading for him to spare the city the fate of everything else Sherman's army had come across during their infamous March to the Sea. His response is in equal measures badass for him and Nightmare Fuel for the people of Atlanta.
Gen. William T. Sherman: You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out...you might as well appeal against the thunder-storm...
In other words, Sherman was a force of nature a century and a half before the Scout was.
However, General Sherman's most famous Badass Boast came up when his commanding officer, the also badass General Ulysses S. Grant, stated that he doubted Sherman could carry out his March to the Sea through the heavily fortified state of Georgia. Sherman's response:
Gen. William T. Sherman: I can make this march and I will make Georgia howl!
Sherman was an absolute fount of these, especially in hindsight, because he always tended to be right. In some ways its a shame he made his famous refusal of the White House, because he'd likely have been excellent:
On the South's decision to go to war:
If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago by a little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late.
Sherman's prediction of how the war would go wasn't a boast - it was a prediction:
You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else, you are totally unprepared - and with a bad cause to start with.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:21 am
|
|
|
|
Badass Boast / Real Life
Go To
Main
Awesome
Characters
FanWorks
Funny
Heartwarming
Laconic
Quotes
ShoutOut
WMG
YMMV
More
- More -
Create New
- Create New -
A two for one: this duel of words between King Philip II of France and Richard I of England, outside the walls of Château Gaillard:
Philip: If its walls were iron, yet would I take it!
Richard: If these walls were butter, yet would I hold them!
For the record, Philip took the castle.
The Soviet song В Путь ("To the road!" or "Onwards!") written after World War II contains one of these. It's even more badass when it rhymes in the original Russian:
Let our enemies remember this:
We are not threatening, but merely saying:
We crossed half the world
And if necessary we will do it again.
The Argentine national anthem's last verse:
''May our laurels be eternal
Well, we knew how to fetch them:
Let us all live crowned with Glory
Or with Glory, let's swear to die
Advertisement:
The national anthem of Romania has some pretty damn badass lyrics, from beginning to end. But perhaps the best part has to be the second verse:
Look down, great shades of Mihai, Stefan, and Corvinus
Upon the Romanian nation, your great-grandchildren.
With swords in their hands and your heroism in their veins,
"Live free or die", shout all.
Vietnam's national anthem would like to have a word with their comrades.
The flag printed in victorious blood carries the soul of the nation,
Guns from afar crowd together in an army's marching song.
The road towards glory is built with enemy corpses.
Vietnam's first Declaration of Independence, contained in four lines of poetry. It was recited before and during battles when Lý forces were fighting off Song forces to boost morale.note
Southern emperors dwell in these Southern lands, mountains, and rivers,
It was clearly allotted thus in heavens' books.
How dare enemies trespass?
You will be completely routed!
Advertisement:
Douglas MacArthur was chased out of the Philippines and down to Australia by the Japanese invaders, he greeted the press in Terowie with the furious promise: "I came out of Bataan, and I shall return!" On the 20th of October 1944, he led 200,000 US soldiers in the first phase of the islands' liberation. That night, he broadcast again from Leyte:
People of the Philippines, I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil. Soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples. We have come, dedicated, and committed to the task of destroying every vestige of enemy control over your people. The hour of your redemption is here!
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy had this to say during the 1930s, when he argued against joining the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy because it was against Japan's interests and against war with the United States because it was a stupid idea, and as a result was sent death threats and hate mail, some of it from the Imperial Japanese Army, who actually sent men to spy on him for his own "protection":
One man's life or death is a matter of no importance. All that matters is the Empire. As Confucius said, "They may crush cinnabar, yet they do not take away its color; one may burn a fragrant herb, yet it will not destroy the scent." They may destroy my body, yet they will not take away my will.
Admiral Yi Sun-Sin of Korea, after being ordered to disband the Navy due to his successor/predecessor's miserable loss to the Japanese Navy, replied to King Seonjo with a letter.
Yi: ...your servant still doth have twelve warships under his command and he is still alive, that the enemy shall never be safe in the West Sea.
Advertisement:
He then proceeded to win a 13 vs. 133 (plus 200+ transports) naval battle, losing only two soldiers — not ships, soldiers — to combat action.
This supremely badass and righteous quotation from Itzhak Katzenelson, one of the participants in the futile Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when the last 1200 Polish Jews stood against the SS forces occupying Warsaw rather than be deported to Auschwitz and held out for almost a month.
Though it be to die, we will fight.
We fight not for ourselves, but for future generations.
Although we will not live to see it.
Our murderers will pay for their crimes after we are gone.
And our deeds will live forever.
A comic example is the WWII British marching song, "We're Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line", which mocks Germany's grandiose name for its defenses:
"We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line,
Have you any dirty washing, mother dear?
We're gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line,
‘Cause the washing day is here."
"Whether the weather may be wet or fine,
We just rub along without a care!
We're going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line,
If that Siegfried Line's still there!"
"Am Yisrael Chai!" - "The children of Israel still liveth!" Generally a way of saying, coldly, "We're still here, despite everything." Fittingly, the Jewish chaplain to the British Second Army, Leslie Hardman, used it to conclude his service to the liberated inmates of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 20, 1945.
John F. Kennedy's speech at Rice University was one on behalf of NASA and, by extension, the human spirit:
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Nelson Mandela:
At the Rivonia Trial, when just about everyone — including himself — thought he was facing the hangman for his part in organizing uMkhonto we Sizwe's terrorist campaign (which killed 50 civilians) in South Africa, had this to say:
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for. But, my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Later, after his release:
Our march to freedom is irreversible.
At his inauguration:
Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world.
Let freedom reign!
The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!
God bless Africa!
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris had a decent line in these:
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
Also during the Battle of Britain, seen on an advertisement for a local Spitfire fund inviting residents to come and view a downed Messerschmitt for a fee:
"Made in Germany. Finished in England."
Even Denmark delivered one during the Second World War, courtesy of their King Christian X. The occupying Nazi force insisted on hoisting the swastika flag over the royal palace in Copenhagen. The king, who actually was a war prisoner, protested and said he would send a soldier up to lower that flag and hoist the Danish standard. When the German officer threatened to shoot the soldier who dared the attempt, the king allegedly said:
Then you have to aim well, because that soldier will be me!
Josip Broz "Tito" once sent Stalin a telegram which read:
"Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle ... If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send a very fast working one to Moscow and I certainly won't have to send another."
Tito died in 1980; Stalin died in 1953 — and Stalin was only 12 years older. Think about that.
Fourteenth-century French noblewoman turned pirate admiral Jeanne de Clisson, whose husband was betrayed and executed for treason by the French crown, to the sole survivor she always made sure to leave after taking a French ship:
"Tell the King of France that the Lioness of Brittany is coming for him."
"The more numerous your enemies, the greater your honor." — Charles X Gustavus of Sweden. Under his lifetime he was nearly constantly at war, fighting Denmark, Russia, and Poland at the same time (gaining nearly half of Denmark's territory and inflicting enough damage on Poland so that the Poles could only win a Pyrrhic Victory) while also mopping up in Germany, so he should know.
Christopher Hitchens: "I am not fighting cancer. Cancer is fighting me."
Yuri Gagarin made one on his return to Earth when he was first discovered and mistaken for an alien.
Stunned farmer: Can it be that you have come from outer space?
Gagarin: As a matter of fact, yes.
The SAS, the first modern special forces regiment and archetypal badasses, have one as their motto: "Who dares, wins." This is set underneath a flaming Excalibur set on a crusader shield. When the Brits with Battleships do badass, they don't mess around.
Most heroes of American folklore, Davy Crockett (legendary version and the real man), Mike Fink, John Henry, Pecos Bill, etc., had a version of this, often called brags.
These are based, at least part, in the brags of Ohio and Mississippi River boatmen, who were well-known for colorful and elaborate boasts, before fights (a major source of entertainment and betting). Examples: "My daddy can whip any man in (your area), and I can whip my pa!", "I can wrassle a buffalo and chaw the ear off a grizzly!", etc.
During a parley with Andrew Jackson, one Crow chieftain with mixed ancestry said something to the effect of, "I got Scots in me, I got Iroquois in me, I got French in me...", and so on through a list of both White nations and Indian tribes. Then he closes with, "...but I ain't got no damn Yankee in me!"
For Davy Crockett:
"I'm that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half-alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without scratch down a honey locust; can whip my weight in wild cats, — and if any gentleman pleases, for a ten-dollar bill, he may throw in a panther,— hug a bear too close for comfort, and eat any man opposed to Jackson."
In his time in the House, Crockett came to oppose Jackson.note
And for Mike Fink:
"I'm a Salt River roarer! I'm a ring-tailed squealer! I'm a reg'lar screamer from the ol' Massassip'! WHOOP! I'm the very infant that refused his milk before its eyes were open, and called out for a bottle of old Rye! I love the women an' I'm chockful o' fight! I'm half wild horse and half c**k-eyed alligator and the rest o' me is crooked snags an' red-hot snappin' turkle. I can hit like fourth-proof lightnin' an' every lick I make in the woods lets in an acre o' sunshine. I can out-run, out-jump, out-shoot, out-brag, out-drink, an' out-fight, rough-an'-tumble, no holts barred, ary man on both sides the river from Pittsburgh to New Orleans an' back ag'in to St. Louiee. Come on, you flatters, you bargers, you milk-white mechanics, an' see how tough I am to chaw! I ain't had a fight for two days an' I'm spilein' for exercise. c**k-a-doodle-do!"
The Duke of Marlborough before the Battle of Blenheim: "Here I conquer or here I die."
Patrick Henry in a speech given at St. John's Church, Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775:
"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
During his political battle against the Second Bank of the United States, Andrew Jackson proclaimed to his vice president, Martin Van Buren: "The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me but I will kill it!"
He returned to this in his last words: "I killed the bank."
These words could only have been spoken by a man whose only language was ham.
"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, bringing his fist down on the table I will rout you out!"
Written about Jackson in the song "The Hunters of Kentucky" referring to his impressive victory in the Battle of New Orleans:
I s'pose you've read it in the prints
How Pakenham attempted
To make Old Hickory Jackson wince
But his scheme soon repented
For he with rifle ready cocked
Thought such occasion lucky
And soon around Old Jackson flocked
The hunters of Kentucky!
Then there's his (sadly, quite possibly apocryphal) comment to John Calhoun during the Nullification Crisis: "John Calhoun, if you secede from my nation I will secede your head from the rest of your body."
Admiral David G. Farragut, upon being warned about mines (called "torpedoes" back then) in the water at the Battle of Mobile Bay, responded (roughly): "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"
Warned nothing, one of his ships (the monitor USS Tecumseh) had just struck one and sunk. This caused the ship in front of his flagship to stop, right under the guns of a Rebel fort. The historical quote is properly two separate quotes: "Damn the Torpedoes!" to the captain of the USS Brooklyn (the guy who had stopped), and "Four bells" (which was the naval order for maximum power) to the captain of his flagship, the USS Hartford. Captain Percival Drayton then took the Hartford right past the Brooklyn and into the minefield. No other Union ships were sunk, and after several days of fierce fighting, Admiral Farragut won the battle.
General Pedro María Anaya to the general demanding he turn over the fort's ammo after the Battle of Churubusco ended: "Si yo hubiera tenido parque, usted no estaría aquí (If I had any ammunition left, you would not be here)".
The Brag was a tradition of the Scandinavian warriors. When going into battle, a warrior would "brag" about what feats he'd do in the upcoming battle, and his fellow warriors would hold him to this boast. If the warrior did not deliver in his brag, he'd be killed by his fellows, unless he died trying, in which case he'd be honored as one of the noble slain and burned in a funeral pyre so his spirit would go to Valhalla - a literal case of "Put up, or shut up."
Invoked and Subverted by a (supposed) real-life example. A student is taking a test but goes over the acceptable time. The professor refuses to accept it. Three times the student asks the professor if he knows who he is, in stronger language each time; each time the professor replies 'no'. Finally, the student says "Good!" shoves the test into the middle of the stack, and walks away.
Invoked and possibly parodied by the Church of the Subgenius. It's highly entertaining either way.
"From youth my heart has been inclined toward the Way of strategy. My first duel was when I was thirteen, I struck down a strategist of the Shinto school, one Arima Kihei. When I was sixteen I struck down an able strategist, Tadashima Akiyama. When I was twenty-one I went up to the capital and met all manner of strategists, never once failing to win in many contests. After that I went from province to province dueling with strategists of various schools, and not once failed to win even though I had as many as sixty encounters. This was between the ages of thirteen and twenty-eight or twenty-nine." From The Book Of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi.
After the American Civil War, the Union had one of these as a song:
So we made a thoroughfare for freedom and her train,
Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main,
Treason fled before us for resistance was in vain,
While we were marching through Georgia.
In his second campaign for reelection, Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech immediately following an assassination attempt. His opening statement was "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."
And of course, what Vice President Marshall said upon hearing about Roosevelt's passing. "Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight."
This was a common pre-battle ritual for samurai, which bit them in the bum when they came up against Kublai Khan's Mongol host, who of course had no concept of the formal traditions of battle the Japanese had practised during centuries of fighting themselves. When the Japanese drew up their battle lines and sent forth their herald to read the formal Badass Boast and ritual insult of the enemy, the Mongols simply shot the guy and charged. Fortunately for Japan, a freak typhoon later sunk the colossal navy Khan had sent to conquer them, thwarting his attempt and forever entering the Japanese psyche as "Kamikaze", the Divine Wind.
This actually happened twice, a second time after the Mongols had already crushed the first line of defence on the actual islands of Japan. After the second invasion was obliterated by storm, the Mongols apparently decided that while the enemy troops were easy, their gods were a pain in the neck.
"If the Army and the Navy / ever look on Heaven's scenes / They shall find the streets are guarded by / The United States Marines."
"We stole the Eagle from the Air Force, the Anchor from the Navy, and the Rope from the Army. On the seventh day while God rested, we overran his perimeter, stole the Globe, and we've been running the whole show ever since. We live like soldiers, talk like sailors, and slap the hell out of both of them. Warriors by day, lovers by night, professionals by choice, and Marines by the grace of God."
A (probably apocryphal, but still badass) tactical assessment of the US Marine situation at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir:
(Unnamed) Marine Colonel: "The Chinese are ahead of us, behind us, and on both flanks. They outnumber us 20 to 1. And they can't get away from us now!"
Such boasts are usually attributed to Chesty Puller, who likely deserves the credits.
"Good. Now we can fire in any direction!"
"We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things."
General Puller was an outstanding combat officer and leader who commanded the respect and loyalty of his men, and to this very day is seen as something akin to a saint within the Marine Corps. If just half of the quotes attributed to him are accurate, however, you would be forgiven for thinking he was bat-s**t insane:
Upon being shown a flamethrower for the first time, he is reported to have asked where the bayonet was meant to be attached.
Once, on an inspection tour, he demanded to be taken to the Brig so he could meet the "real Marines".
Military running cadences are traditionally filled with badass boasts. This is especially true of those used within the Marines:
"Hey there Army! / Get in your tanks and follow me! / I am Marine Corps infantry!
They'll even boast about family members:
"My grandmamma was 92! / She could PT better than you!
"Μολὼν λαβέ" ("Come and take them") — Leonidas at Thermopylae, when asked to give up his weapons. That's "Molon labe" for those who can't understand Greek writing.
Μολὼν λαβέ is currently the Badass Creed of the Greek First Army Corps, and is also the motto of United States Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT).
Also said at Thermopylae by Dienekes, a Spartan warrior, when informed that the Persians' arrows would block out the sun: "So much the better... then we shall fight our battle in the shade."
The Spartans have a long history of this sort of thing. When Philip II of Macedon sent a message to Sparta saying "If I enter Laconia, I will level Sparta to the ground," The Spartans' response was one word: "If." Later, Philip II sent another message to Sparta, asking if they would rather have him come as friend or foe; the Spartan reply was, "Neither." note
The Spartans invented short but sweet Badass boasts. Notice the name of their county, Laconia. Seem ...familiar?
Themistocles, another hero from the Greco-Persian Wars, also had some good ones:
During a council taking place at Salamis, he talked before Euribiades, which angered general Adeimantos and told him that those who start the race before the signal are getting beaten. Themistocles replied that those who start the race late don't win the medal.
Later, when Adeimantos insulted him by calling him and the Athenians stateless, because Athens was burned down by King Xerxes, Themistocles, frustrated, told him that they had a country. Their ships! And if they wanted, they could sail to Italy and leave the greek army without a naval.
The men of the small Texas town of Gonzalez used a variant of this when the Mexican army tried to repossess their cannon: "Come And Take It". They later carried that banner — and attitude — to the Alamo. American frontiersmen were like that. Gonzalez still has the cannon, and the flag, which still says 'Come And Take It'. They have a parade every year. (A very small one, it's a pretty small town.)
Suleiman the Lawgiver, the tenth sultan of the Ottoman Empire, signed his letters by titling himself
The lord of the realms of the Romans, and the Persians and the Arabs, hero of all that is, pride of the arena of earth and time!
Of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea;
Of the glorified Kaaba and the illuminated Medina, the noble Jerusalem and the throne of Egypt, that rarity of the age;
Of the province of Yemen, and Aden and Sana, and of Baghdad the abode of rectitude, and Basra and al-Hasa and the Cities of Nushirivan;
Of the lands of Algiers and Azerbaijan, the steppes of the Kipchak and the lands of Tartars;
Of Kurdistan and Luristan, and of the countries of Rumelia and Anatolia and Karaman and Wallachia and Moldavia and Hungary all together, and of many more worthy kingdoms of countries.
Sultan and Padishah.
That was actually his short title. The full one is this:
His Sacred and Imperial Majesty Sultan Suleiman Khan,
Padishah,
Sovereign of the House of Osman,
Sultan of Sultans,
Khan of Khans,
Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe,
Custodian of the Holy Sanctuaries of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem,
Caesar of Rome,
Emperor of The Three Cities of Constantinople, Adrianople, and Bursa, and of the Cities of Damascus and Cairo,
Of all Azerbaijan, of the Magreb, of Barka, of Kairouan, of Aleppo,
Of the Arabic and the Persian Iraq, of Basra, of Al-Hasa strip, of Ar Raqqah, of Mosul,
Of Diyarbakır, of Cilicia, of the provinces of Erzurum, of Sivas, of Adana, of Karaman, of Van,
Of Barbary, of Abyssinia, of Tunisia, of Algiers, of Tripoli, of Damascus, of Cyprus, of Rhodes, of Crete,
Of the province of the Morea,
Of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea and also their coasts,
Of Anatolia, Rumelia, Baghdad, Kurdistan, Greece, Turkistan, Tartary, Circassia,
Of the two regions of Kabarda, of Georgia, of the Steppe of Kypchaks, of the whole country of the Tatars,
Of Kefe and of all the neighboring regions,
Of Bosnia,
Of the City and Fort of Belgrade, of the province of Serbia, with all the castles and cities,
Of all Albania
Of all Eflak and Bogdania, as well as all the dependencies and borders, and many other countries and cities.
Speaking of Ottoman sultans, the letter of Sultan Mahmud IV to the Zaporogian Cossacks. And, topping that, the Cossacks' reply.
That reply is probably a fake, though.
Atahualpa, the final sovereign emperor of the Inca empire, had such a (possibly ahistorical) boast to the Spanish when they told him his land had been granted to them by the Pope:
"Your emperor may be a great prince; I do not doubt it, seeing that he has sent his subjects so far across the waters; and I am willing to treat him as a brother. As for your pope of whom you speak, he must be mad to speak of giving away countries that do not belong to him. As for my faith, I will not change it. Your own God, as you tell me, was put to death by the very men He created. But my God still looks down on His children."
Things... didn't go so well for him after that. But it was still an awesome Badass Boast.
During his conquest of the Aztec Empire, Hernán Cortés had to defeat the army of the Governor of Cuba, which was sent after him. He bested them, even outnumbered and outgunned, AND convinced the survivors to join him. Accounts say that the army's general spoke to him like this:
General: Mister Cortez, it is a great victory for you to capture me.
Cortez: Capturing you is the least of everything I've done in this land.
Muhammad Ali. That man only spoke in Badass Boast.
"He's a tramp, a bum and a cripple, not worth training for. I'll take him in five." Said before his 1963 fight with Henry Cooper. He did just that, although Cooper did become the first man to knock Ali down in a professional boxing match, with his "'Enry's 'Ammer" left hook. Afterward, Ali came up with one for his opponent despite winning the match; remarking that "Cooper's not a bum any more. I underestimated him. He's the toughest fighter I ever met and the first to really drop me, he's a real fighter. (...) The punch Cooper hit me with, he didn't just shake me. He shook my relations back in Africa".
Most famously, before his first heavyweight title match against Sonny Liston, the relatively little-known Cassius Clay (as he still was) claimed he would "Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee." He won that one too.
Ali actually lost against Joe Frazier in 1970, but nevertheless had a poetic Badass Boast beforehand: "Now this may shock and amaze ya/But I'm gonna retire Joe Frazier."
Awesomely, when he was interviewed after he was fully afflicted with Parkinson's disease, unable to talk above a whisper and uncontrollably shaking, he continued to speak in Badass Boast.
Ali: I am... still... the greatest... I am... still... the champ...
Julius Caesar: "Veni, vidi, vici." ("I came. I saw. I conquered.") . Caesar's report on the Pontus war sent to the Senate. Also posthumous Take That! against Pompey the Great, who got a bit tangled in the previous war in that zone.
Many great people have made their own quotes basing on this. For example, king of Poland, John III, after massacring the Turks at Vienna and breaking their power forever, send all their banners to the Pope along with the letter:
Veni, vidi, Deus vicit (I came, I saw, God conquered).
Robert A. Heinlein quipped, "I came, I saw, She conquered. (Something seems to have been lost in the original translation...)"
After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, one slogan used by the Royal Navy was Venit, vidit, fugit. "They came, they saw, they fled."
People born and bred in Falkirk, UK, are known as "The Bairns of Falkirk". The town motto is "Touch ane, touch a'" and the Bairns are keen on the saying, "Better meddle with the Devil than the Bairns of Falkirk".
The McPherson clan motto, "Touch not the cat but a glove", refers to McPherson as a wildcat. When its claws are unsheathed, (without the glove), well... tomfoolery will not be met with kindness.
Most Scottish Clan mottoes pretty much boil down to, "Oi! You think you're hard enough?" in Latin or Scots Gaelic. My own family's motto, "Gang Warily", roughly translates as, "Watch your step", and only partly refers to us introducing the caltrop to Scottish warfare.
My family's motto is "Audentes Fortuna Juvat." The translation is "Fortune favors the bold."
"...we are Sherpas and we have never willingly let anyone die on a mountain. It is not our way..." (Tenzing Norgay's grandson rallying disgruntled porters.)
"The wolves will eat well this year" (Finnish officer surveying his army's handiwork during the Winter War)
When Stalin made his demands known the Finns cried out "They are so many and our country is so small. Where will we bury them all?" Finns don't really boast.
Seems that that's one of the better boasts. When you recall that they had a single guy with over 700 kills, it's not an idle one, either.
German General: "If there were 50 million Finns we would share the world together with you."
Finnish General Paavo Talvela: "If there were 50 million Finns... what makes you think we would share anything with you?"
All subverted somewhat in that the Soviets won both the Winter War and the Second World War. Mother Russia Makes You Strong after all. But even they admitted they had worked so hard for it the ground they won would barely be enough to bury their own dead.
There is an old Finnish joke which doubles as a Badass Boast. Finnish President Urho Kekkonen and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were sitting in a Sauna together when Khrushchev suddenly said:
Khrushchev: "Dear Brother what do you say about finally removing the border between out nations as proof of our friendship?"
Kekkonen: "Unfortunately i must say no dear Brother. I cannot possibly govern a country that big."
From The Napoleonic Wars:
Napoleon himself had this one when France had to face invasion in 1814: "The cannonball that will kill me has not been molded yet!".
Previously, in 1798, at the start the Battle of the Pyramids during France's invasion of Egypt:
"Forward! Remember that from those monuments yonder forty centuries look down upon you."
The Viscount Pierre Cambronne, Napoleon's Old Guard commander at the battle of Waterloo, is usually quoted as saying after the battle, "The Guard dies, but does not surrender!". That's badass enough, yet what he actually said in the heroic Last Stand of the Old Guard was even more so:
Merde!
Somewhat subverted in that he survived the carnage and surrendered anyway.
To this day, "merde" is sometimes known as "le mot de Cambronne" ("Cambronne's word").
Marshal Lefebvre, one of Napoleon's senior generals. One of his dinner guests supposedly expressed envy of his wealth. Lefebvre's response was to offer to take him outside and take twenty shots at him from thirty paces; if the guest survived it would all be his. Unsurprisingly, he declined. "I had a thousand bullets fired at me from much closer range before I got this," said Lefebre. Most other French generals could have said the same.
King Shulgi of Urim is known today only for the magnificent Badass Boast he left behind him.
One very obvious joke (but no less badass) apparently did the rounds of the Israelis with Infrared Missiles after the Six-Day War:
"And on the seventh day, we rested."
One time, Genghis Khan had his horse shot under him during a clan war. After the fighting, he assembled the prisoners and asked who had done that. One of the prisoners said, "It was I." After that Ghenghis Khan rewarded him. He may have been ruthless sometimes but he did have style at other times.
''I am the flail of god. Had you not created great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.''
General Allenby made a Badass Antiboast. By tradition only a conqueror gets to ride into Jerusalem on a horse, at least until Kaiser Wilhelm II insisted to ride just as a dignified visitor in 1898. Allenby of course was a conqueror . But what he did was dismount and walk in saying, "I will not ride where Christ has walked."
The next conqueror of course was Moshe Dayan. He didn't ride in, but he didn't stop to remind people that he was not riding in the way Allenby did, which is really too bad. Perhaps he hadn't heard of the custom or wished the credit to go to the IDF.
In the second case he should have had a man chosen by lottery as representative. It would have been too cool a Badass Boast not to remember.
Gajah Mada, before his campaign to unify the archipelago, made this oath to his queen: "If the external territories of Majapahit are lost, I will not taste any spices. And until I have conquered Malaka, Seram, Tanjungpura, Haru, Pahang, Dompo, Bali, Sunda and Palembang... I will never taste any spices." And, he actually succeeded and even expands the territory of Majapahit into the whole archipelago that will be known as Indonesia.
In 1990, 18-year-old Hugh Gallagher wrote his college application essay, which is one long, massive (and slightly surreal) Badass Boast. It reads in part:
Occasionally I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
It worked. He got into college, the essay won a contest, and Gallagher is now a successful novelist.
During World War II, Bob Hope performed for an audience of combat engineers:
Hope: Are you the Corps of Engineers, the guys who build the runways the planes land on?
Audience Member: Hell no! We're the Seabees! We build the roads the Japs retreat on!
During the fateful hours leading up to the Weserübung (the German invasion of Norway in April 1940), German ambassador Breuer had talks with the Norwegian foreign minister Koht - while the German fleet was only hours away. Breuer had warned the Norwegian government that if the government didn`t give in, war would be certain for Norway. Koht calmly answered:
The war has already begun!
Many armed forces have a battle cry they use to psych themselves up (and scare the enemy) in case they have to end up stabbing some poor b*****d to death with their bayonet. For example, the 506th P.I.R of the 101st Airborne's battle cry was "Currahee!" a Cherokee word which literally means "stand alone". Even today, it is still used by the 101st as a morale booster.
The Celts would often do this before battle while challenging their enemies to duels.
During the Siege of Jerusalem in 1948, Shaltiel, the Hagannah's military governor, claimed that his side would make Jerusalem their "Bloody little Stalingrad". Which they did.
John Paul Jones informing the British Navy "I have not yet begun to fight!" during his fighting on the Bonhomme Richard.
Historical evidence actually indicates that he said "I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike!" (strike being a common term for naval surrender, referring to taking down your flag). Still badass.
Jones won the above-mentioned battle after refusing to surrender. Upon learning that the captain he defeated, Richard Pearson, had been knighted for giving a convoy of British merchant ships time to escape. Jones responded that his foe had deserved it, but went on to boast that "I'd like to meet him on the high seas again; I'll make him a lord!"
He had another one too: "I wish to have no connection with any ship which does not sail fast, for I intend to go In Harm's Way."
BRIAN BLESSED reportedly kept Oliver Reed from making trouble during the filming of Prisoner Of Honor with one of these to the point that Reed was sober the whole time for fear of starting a fight that Brian had said he would end.
General McAuliffe, at the Battle of the Bulge, was presented with a surrender ultimatum by the Germans.
Here's the story: the German Commander sent him a long letter detailing his position in a haughty manner and demanding surrender. The letter was "To the American Commander," and signed, "The German Commander." McAuliffe read it and blurted out "Nuts!" When he and his men tried to compose a reply, they came to the conclusion nothing was better than that, so the full text of the reply was, "To the German Commander: Nuts! The American Commander."
The German officers who were sent with the surrender request weren't familiar with the American slang and asked if it was an affirmative or a negative. The American officers' response? "The reply is decidedly not affirmative", then added, "If you continue this foolish attack, your losses will be tremendous."
Then they asked what "Nuts" meant. One of the more hot-tempered officers suggested "Go take a flying S—-!". The translator considered this for a moment, then decided on the more tactful "You can go to Hell."
Oh, we forgot to mention that reaction came after McAuliffe initially believed the Germans were wanting to surrender to him!
One anonymous soldier during the same battle is recorded as having commented "Haven't you heard? They've got us surrounded. The poor bastards." When one of his fellow soldiers asked him to clarify, he said, "They can only shoot in one direction to hit us. We can shoot any direction we want to hit them!"
US Army Corporal Alvin York had this to say about the battle in which he, alone, took fire from thirty-two German machine guns and over 100 riflemen without receiving a scratch and returned rifle fire to kill 28 Germans without missing even one shot:
York: I jes couldn't miss a German's head or body at that distance. And I didn't. Besides, it weren't no time to miss nohow.
When the German major who surrendered to York realized York had no other troops but a handful of terrified privates to corral his 132 prisoners:
Major: How many men have you got?
York: I have got a'plenty. *pointing pistol at major all the while*
Micheal Wittmann, famed Tiger Tank ace: "At this point, enemy tanks have ceased to be a strain on my nerves."
Doctor Peter Rhee, one of the men taking care of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after she's been shot through the head, seems to be prone to this, with two quotes coming to mind: "She will not die. She does not have that permission from me." and "If she comes to me alive, I can keep her alive." - Considering that, so far, he seems to have delivered very well, quality of life and speed of recovery included, he earned it.
For informational purposes: Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head on January 8th, 2011. She had recovered enough to travel to Washington D.C. from Arizona to vote on an important bill on August 1st, 2011. That's seven months recovery time for being shot in the head. Doctor Rhee has more than earned his status as a badass doctor. (It goes without saying that Gabby Giffords is also an incontrovertible badass.)
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a (probably unintentional) one in 2008 when he claimed in the House of Commons that by bailing out the banks his government had "saved the world". It didn't stop him from losing the next election, of course.
Following a recent crash during a race, Kiwi cyclist Edward Dawkins was asked where he hurt. "I'm from New Zealand", he responded. "We don't feel pain."
"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender" Winston Churchill's response to the threat of Nazi invasion - bearing in mind that Britain was one of the only European countries that was not yet part of Nazi Germany or Nazi-affiliated. So badass that Iron Maiden made sure to use the speech as an intro to their song about World War II dogfights. (not only in that music video but every live performance of "Aces High" as well)
This T-shirt:
"Detroit. Where the weak are killed and eaten."
And a similar one from Detroit's neighbor to the north, under a picture of a smoking gun:
"Come back to Saginaw, we missed you last time."
It should be pointed out that this is more a real-life warning/a bit of Black Comedy than a boast, however.
Evel Knievel gave a memorable interview with radio host Jim Rome, which included this interchange discussing Knievel's attempted Snake Canyon jump:
Rome: "If you knew that the chances of making it were only 50/50, why did you do it? Why did you jump?"
Knievel: (Beat) "Know who the hell I am?"
The USA, during the invasion of Afghanistan, flooded the airwaves with the following message to demoralize and intimidate the Taliban: "Attention. You are condemned. Did you know that? The instant the terrorists you support took over our planes, you sentenced yourselves to death. You will be attacked by land, sea and air. Resistance is futile."
During a siege of Quebec in 1690, the English Admiral Phips sent an ambassador into the city to offer terms for its surrender. Governor Frontenac said to him "my only reply to your general will be from the mouth of my cannons!"
When Ronald Reagan was asked about his plan for the Cold War with the Soviets, he said, "We win. They lose."
The way Soviet soldiers spoke of one of their most formidable pieces of ordnance - MLRS BM-13, aka Katyusha (Katie): "Those foes who heard Katyusha are now deaf; those of them who saw Katyusha are now blind; those who tussled with Katyusha are naught but ash."
Allegedly when the U.S. military entered World War I a group of soldiers in France went to the tomb of Lafayette, the French noble who was responsible for much of the French assistance in the American Revolution and said "Lafayette, we have come" or "Lafayette, we are here."
French general Henri Gouraud, after marching into Damascus in July 1920 to put down an anti-colonial rising, stood upon Saladin's grave, kicked it and said: "The Crusades have ended now! Awake Saladin, we have returned! My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent."
While Jesus Christ (see also: The Bible) never personally gave a Badass Boast, the late S.M. Lockridge gave a pretty good one describing him, in accordance to the Christian doctrine of "boasting in Christ."
As recounted by Foxe's Book of Martyrs, William Tyndale engaged in a debate with clergyman who'd said "It would be better to be without God's laws than the pope's." replied "I defy the pope, and all his laws; if God spares my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that drives the plough to know more of the Scripture than you do!" — he then translated the entire New Testament and significant portions of the Old Testament into English.
The US Army has a Military Occupational Specialty known as "13F". Officially this is what is known as a Fire Support Specialist; colloquially as a Forward Observer. As do many specialties in the US Army, Forward Observers have an unofficial prayer: "Yea, tho I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil; for I command the biggest damn guns in the valley."
This may be more along the lines of Truth in Advertising, as Forward Observers in the US Army are trained to direct fire for 4.2" mortars, 105mm & 155mm Howitzers, 8" Howitzers, Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, helicopter gunships, all forms of close air support including AC-130 Spectre Gunships, Naval gunfire up to 16" Battleship main guns, and if "released" by the President; Tactical Nuclear Weapons. This may be why during the Cold War the unofficial US Army estimate of a Forward Observer's life expectancy upon contact with Soviet forces was approximately 13 seconds.
Clearly cribbed from Green Beret prayer: "Yea, tho I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil; for I am the baddest mother*** in the valley."
The same prayer has been attributed to Army Air Force bomber crews in World War II.
An alternative and possibly even more badass version "Yea, tho I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil; for the Valley of the Shadow of Death is wherever I walk through."
Or the motto of the Kadena SR-71 base, "Yea, though I fly through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will fear no evil; for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing."
A boast about the US Navy, if not actually by them: Enemy targets continue to exist within the strike radius of an American carrier task force at the discretion of the task force commander.
In the 1980s and 90s it was common for Royal Navy ships on patrol to pass US Navy ships on patrol. There would often be an exchange of greetings, as would be expected between friends. If the Americans went first, the usual message was, "Hello, from the biggest navy in the world." The British reply was customarily, "Hello, from the best."
From Abraham Lincoln; "Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years."
Almogavars were mercenary soldiers from the 13th and 14th century. "Awake iron!" was their battle cry. The badassery of it relies on the fact that, while shouting the battle cry, they used to strike their blades against rocks, so the steel would spark.
At the First Battle of the Marne, Ferdinand Foch's counterattack was preceded by the now-famous Badass Boast: "Hard pressed on my right. My centre is yielding. Impossible to manoeuvre. Situation excellent. I attack."
Origin of the line "The center cannot hold" (depending on translation).
While qualifying for the 2001 World's Strongest Man competition, American Phil Pfister roared "I AM GONNA BE THE WORLD'S STRONGEST MAN!" while holding up two massive concrete pillars. He came fourth in the final, didn't reach the final again until 2006... and then made good on his boast, bringing the title back to America after 24 years.
Back in the Eighties, Jón Páll Signarsson was the most iconic strongman of his time partly for his badass boasts, and partly because he was able to back them up - he was the first man to win four titles and is still considered one of the strongest men who ever lived. His most iconic boast, after winning the 1986 title, gets aired at least once every year:
"I AM THE STRONGEST! I AM THE VIKING!" [cue Skyward Scream]
Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix' epitaph. The exact wording is lost, and it may have been either Greek or Latin, but one version reads: "No better friend...no worse enemy."
The American Civil War had a few:
The Mayor of Atlanta sent a letter to General William T. Sherman, pleading for him to spare the city the fate of everything else Sherman's army had come across during their infamous March to the Sea. His response is in equal measures badass for him and Nightmare Fuel for the people of Atlanta.
Gen. William T. Sherman: You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out...you might as well appeal against the thunder-storm...
In other words, Sherman was a force of nature a century and a half before the Scout was.
However, General Sherman's most famous Badass Boast came up when his commanding officer, the also badass General Ulysses S. Grant, stated that he doubted Sherman could carry out his March to the Sea through the heavily fortified state of Georgia. Sherman's response:
Gen. William T. Sherman: I can make this march and I will make Georgia howl!
Sherman was an absolute fount of these, especially in hindsight, because he always tended to be right. In some ways its a shame he made his famous refusal of the White House, because he'd likely have been excellent:
On the South's decision to go to war:
If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago by a little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late.
Sherman's prediction of how the war would go wasn't a boast - it was a prediction:
You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else, you are totally unprepared - and with a bad cause to start with.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:24 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:24 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:24 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:24 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:24 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:24 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:24 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:24 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:24 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:57 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 2:00 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 2:01 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2022 2:01 pm
|
|
|
|
It worked fine for a few yards until she got something wrong and the resultant muscular confusion somersaulted her into a holly bush. After that, she gave up.
The thunderstorm came back as she hurried along the trail; sometimes one would hang around the mountains for days. But at least up here the path wasn’t a river of mud, and the trees still had enough leaves to give her some protection.
There was no time to wait out the weather, anyway. She had a long way to go. The recruiting party would cross at the ferry, but Polly was known to all the ferrymen by sight and the guard would want to see her permit to travel, which Oliver Perks certainly didn’t have. So that meant a long diversion all the way to the troll bridge at Tübz. To the trolls, all humans looked alike and any piece of paper would do as a permit, since they didn’t read. Then she could walk down through the pine forests to Plün.
The cart would have to stop there for the night, but the place was one of those nowhere villages that existed only in order to avoid the embarrassment of having large empty spaces on the map. It was just what she wanted. No one knew her in Plün. No one ever went there. It was a dump.
It was, in fact, just the place she needed. The recruiting party would stop there, and she could enlist. She was pretty certain the big fat sergeant and his greasy little corporal wouldn’t notice the girl who’d served them last night. She was not, as they said, conventionally beautiful. The corporal had tried to pinch her bottom, but probably out of habit, like swatting a fly, and there was not enough for a big pinch, at that.
She sat on the hill above the ferry and had a late breakfast of cold potato and sausage while she watched the cart cross over. No one was marching behind it. No lads had been recruited back in Munz this time. People had kept away. Too many young men had left over the last few years, and not enough had come back, and of the ones who’d come back, sometimes not enough of each man had come back. The corporal could bang his big drum all he liked. Munz was running out of sons almost as fast as it accumulated widows.
The afternoon hung heavy and humid, and a yellow pine warbler followed her from bush to bush.
Last night’s mud was steaming when Polly reached the troll bridge, which crossed the river in a narrow gorge. It was a thin, graceful affair, put together, it was said, with no mortar at all. And it was said that the weight of the bridge anchored it ever more deeply into the rock on either side. It was said to be a wonder of the world, except that very few people around here ever wondered much about anything and were barely aware of the world.
It cost one penny to cross, or one hundred gold pieces if you had a billygoat.*
Halfway across Polly peered over the parapet and saw the cart far, far below, working its way along the narrow road just above the white water.
The afternoon’s journey was downhill all the way, through dark pines on this side of the gorge. She didn’t hurry and, toward sunset, she spotted the inn. The cart had already arrived, but by the looks of it the recruiting sergeant had not even bothered to make an effort. There was no drum banging like there had been last night, no cries of “Roll up, my young shavers! It’s a Great Life in the Ins-and-Outs!”
There was always a war. Usually they were border disputes, the national equivalent of complaining that the neighbor was letting their hedge grow too long. Sometimes they were bigger. Borogravia was a peace-loving country in the midst of treacherous, devious, warlike enemies. They had to be treacherous, devious, and warlike, otherwise we wouldn’t be fighting them, eh? There was always a war.
Polly’s father had been in the army before he took over The Duchess from Polly’s grandfather. He didn’t talk about it much. He’d brought his sword back with him, but instead of hanging it over the fireplace he used it to poke the fire.
Sometimes old friends would turn up and, when the bars were shut for the night, they’d gather around the fire and drink and sing. The young Polly found excuses to stay up and listen to the songs they sang, but that had stopped when she’d got into trouble for using one of the more interesting words in front of her mother; now she was older, and served the beer, it was presumably assumed that she knew the words or would find out what they meant soon enough. Besides, her mother had gone where bad words would no longer offend and, in theory, never got said.
The songs had been part of her childhood. She knew all the words of “The World Turned Upside Down” and “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” and “Johnny Has Gone For a Soldier” and “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and, after the drink had been flowing for a while, she’d memorized “Colonel Crapski” and “I Wish I’d Never Kissed Her.”
And then, of course, there had been “Sweet Polly Oliver.” Her father used to sing it when she was small, and fretful or sad, and she’d laughed to hear it simply because it had her name in it. She was word-perfect on the words before she’d known what most of them meant.
And now……Polly pushed open the door. The recruiting sergeant and his corporal looked up from the stained table where they were sitting, beer mugs halfway to their lips.
She took a deep breath, marched over, and made an attempt at saluting.
“What do you want, kid?” growled the corporal.
“Want to join up, sir!”
The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word “fat” could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word “gross” was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn’t have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock.
Sun and drink had burned his face red. Small dark eyes twinkled in the redness like the sparkle on the edge of a knife. Beside him, on the table, were a couple of old-fashioned cutlasses, weapons that had more in common with a meat cleaver than a sword.
“Just like that?” he said.
“Yessir!”
“Really?”
“Yessir!”
“You don’t want us to get you stinking drunk first? It’s traditional, you know.”
“Nosir!”
“I haven’t told you about the wonderful opportunities for advancement and good fortune, have I?”
“Nosir!”
“Did I mention how the spanking-red uniform will mean you’ll have to beat the girls off with a stick?”
“Don’t think so, sir!”
“Or the grub? Every meal’s a banquet when you march along with us!” The sergeant smacked his belly, which caused tremors in outlying regions. “I’m the living proof!”
“Yes, sir. No, sir. I just want to join up to fight for my country and the honor of the Duchess, sir!”
“You do?” said the corporal incredulously, but the sergeant appeared not to hear this. He looked Polly up and down, and Polly got the definite impression that the man was neither as drunk nor as stupid as he looked.
“Upon my oath, Corporal Strappi, it seems that what we’ve got ourselves here is nothin’ less than a good, old-fashioned patriot,” he said, his eyes searching Polly’s face. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, my lad!” He pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with an air of bustle. “You know who we are?”
“The Tenth Foot, sir. Light infantry, sir. Known as the ‘Ins-and-Outs,’ sir,” said Polly, relief bubbling through her. She’d clearly passed some sort of test.
“Right, lad. The jolly old Cheesemongers. Finest regiment there is, in the finest army in the world. Keen to join, then, are yer?”
“Keen as mustard, sir!” said Polly, aware of the corporal’s suspicious eyes on her.
“Good lad!”
The sergeant unscrewed the top from a bottle of ink and dipped a nib pen in it. His hand hovered over the paperwork.
“Name, lad?” he said.
“Oliver, sir. Oliver Perks,” said Polly.
“Age?”
“Seventeen come Sunday, sir.”
“Yeah, right,” said the sergeant. “You’re seventeen and I’m the Grand Duchess Annagovia. What’re you running away from, eh? Got a young lady in the family way?”
“He’d have ’ad to have ’ad help,” said the corporal, grinning unpleasantly. “He squeaks like a little lad.”
Polly realized she was starting to blush. But then, young Oliver would blush too, wouldn’t he? It was very easy to make a boy blush. Polly could do it just by staring.
“Don’t matter anyway,” said the sergeant. “You make your mark on this here document and kiss the Duchess and you’re my little lad, you understand? My name is Sergeant Jackrum. I will be your mother and your father, and Corporal Strappi here will be just like your big brother. And life will be steak and bacon every day, and anyone who wants to drag you away’ll have to drag me away too, because I’ll be holding onto your collar. And you might well be thinking there’s no one that can drag that much, Mr. Perks.” A thick thumb jabbed at the paper. “Just there, right?”
Polly picked up the pen and signed.
“What’s that?” said the corporal.
“My signature,” said Polly.
She heard the door open behind her, and spun around. Several young men—she corrected herself, several other young men—had clattered into the bar, and were looking around warily.
“You can read and write, too?” said the sergeant, glancing up at them and then back to her. “Yeah, I see. A nice round hand, too. Officer material, you are. Give him the shilling, Corporal. And the picture, of course.”
“Right, Sergeant,” said Corporal Strappi, holding up a picture frame on a handle, like a looking glass. “Pucker up, Private Parts.”
“It’s Perks, sir,” said Polly.
“Yeah, right. Now kiss the Duchess.”
It was not a good copy of the famous picture. The painting behind the glass was faded, and something—some kind of moss or something—was growing on the inside of the cracked glass itself. Polly let her lips brush it while holding her breath.
“Huh,” said Strappi, and pressed something into her hand.
“What’s this?” said Polly, looking at the small square of paper.
“An IOU. Bit short of shillings right now,” said the sergeant, while Strappi smirked. “But the innkeeper’ll stand you a pint of ale, courtesy of Her Grace.”
He turned and looked up the newcomers. “Well, it never rains but it pours. You boys here to join up too? My word, and we didn’t even have to bang the drum. It must be Corporal Strappi’s amazin’ charisma. Step up, don’t be shy. Who’s the next likely lad?”
Polly looked at the next recruit with a 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 a person 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 traveling 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 with ‘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
Woodsman, 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 around 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 traveling 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 favors…
—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. But 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 gray-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,” said Vimes.
“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 a lurch.
“Fellow countrymen? 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 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 two weeks to get to him, and so no one worried if he took a day or two to answer it. Now people expect 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 on 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!”
“Er, there is more to it than that, sir,” said Chinny.
“Yes, I know. I read the history. The annual scrap with Zlobenia is just the local derby. Borogravia fights everybody. Why?”
“National pride, sir.”
“What in? There’s nothing there! There’s some tallow mines, and they’re not bad farmers, but there’s no great architecture, no big libraries, no famous composers, no very high mountains, no wonderful views. All you can say about the place is that it isn’t anywhere else. What’s so special about Borogravia?”
“I suppose it’s special because it’s theirs. And of course there’s Nuggan, sir. Their god. I’ve brought you a copy of the Book of Nuggan.”
“I looked through one back in the city, Chinny,” said Vimes. “Seemed pretty stu—”
“That wouldn’t have been a recent edition, sir. And I suspect it wouldn’t be, er, very current that far from here. This one is more up to date,” said Chinny, putting a small but thick book on the desk.
“Up to date? What do you mean, up to date?” said Vimes, looking puzzled. “Holy writ gets…written. Do this, don’t do that, no coveting your neighbor’s ox…”
“Um…Nuggan doesn’t just leave it at that, sir. He, er…updates things. Mostly the Abominations, to be frank.”
Vimes took the new copy. It was noticeably thicker than the one he’d brought with him.
“It’s what they call a Living Testament,” Chinny explained. “They—well, I suppose you could say they ‘die’ if they’re taken out of Borogravia. They no longer…get added to. The latest Abominations are at the end, sir,” he said helpfully.
“This is a holy book with an appendix?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“In a ring binder?”
“Quite so, sir. People put blank pages in and the Abominations…turn up.”
“You mean magically?”
“I suppose I mean religiously, sir.”
Vimes opened a page at random.
“Chocolate?” he said. “He doesn’t like chocolate?”
“Yes, sir. That’s an Abomination.”
“Garlic? Well, I don’t much like it either, so fair enough…cats?”
“Oh, yes. He really doesn’t like cats, sir.”
“Dwarfs? It says here, ‘The dwarfish race which worships Gold are an Abomination Unto Nuggan’! He must be mad. What happened?”
“Oh, the dwarfs that were here sealed their mines and vanished, Your Grace.”
“I bet they did. They know trouble when they see it,” said Vimes. He let “Your Grace” pass this time; Chinny clearly derived some satisfaction from talking to a duke.
He leafed through the pages and stopped.
“The color blue?”
“Correct, sir.”
“What’s abominable about the color blue? It’s just a color! The sky is blue!”
“Yes, sir. Devout Nugganites try not to look at it these days. Um…” Chinny had been trained as a diplomat. Some things he didn’t like to say directly.
“Nuggan, sir…um…is rather…tetchy,” he managed.
“Tetchy?” said Vimes. “A tetchy god? What, he complains about the noise their kids make? Objects to loud music after nine P.M.?”
“Um…we get the Ankh-Morpork Times here, sir, eventually, and, er, I’d say, er, that Nuggan is very much like, er, the kind of people who write to its letter column. You know, sir. The kind who sign their letters ‘Disgusted with Ankh-Morpork’…”
“Oh, you mean he really is mad,” said Vimes.
“Oh, I’d never mean anything like that, sir,” said Chinny hurriedly.
“What do the priests do about this?”
“Not a lot, sir. I think they quietly ignore some of the more, er, extreme Abominations.”
“You mean Nuggan objects to the dwarfs, cats, and color blue and there’re more insane commandments?”
Chinny coughed politely.
“All right, then,” growled Vimes. “More extreme commandments?”
“Oysters, sir. He doesn’t like them. But that’s not a problem because no one there has ever seen an oyster. Oh, and babies. He Abominated them, too.”
“I take it people still make them here?”
“Oh, yes, Your Gr—I’m sorry. Yes, sir. But they feel guilty about it. Barking dogs, that was another one. Shirts with six buttons, too. And cheese. Er…people just sort of, er, avoid the trickier ones. Even the priests seem to have given up trying to explain them.”
“Yes, I think I can see why. So what we have here is a country that tries to run itself on the commandments of a god who, the people feel, may be wearing his underpants on his head. Has he Abominated underpants?”
“No, sir,” Chinny sighed. “But it’s probably only a matter of time.”
“So how do they manage?”
“These days, people mostly pray to the Duchess Annagovia. You see icons of her in every house. They call her the Little Mother.”
“Ah, yes, the Duchess. Can I get to see her?”
“Oh, no one sees her, sir. No one except her servants has seen her for more than thirty years. To be honest, sir, she’s probably dead.”
“Only probably?”
“No one really knows. The official story is that she’s in mourning. It’s rather sad, sir. The young duke died a week after they got married. Gored by a wild pig during a hunt, I believe. She went into mourning at the old castle at Prince-Marmaduke Piotre Albert Hans Joseph Bernhardt Wilhelmsberg and hasn’t appeared in public since. The official portrait was painted when she was about forty, I believe.”
“No children?”
“No, sir. On her death, the line is extinct.”
“And they pray to her? Like a god?”
Chinny sighed. “I did put this in my briefing notes, sir. The royal family in Borogravia have always had a quasi-religious status, you see. They’re the head of the church, and the peasants, at least, pray to them in the hope that they’ll put in a good word with Nuggan. They’re like…living saints. Celestial intermediaries. To be honest, that’s how these countries work in any case. If you want something done, you have to know the right people. And I suppose it’s easier to pray to some picture than to a god you can’t see.”
Vimes sat looking at the consul for some time. When he next spoke, he frightened the man to his boots.
“Who’d inherit?” he said.
“Sir?”
“Just following the monarchy, Mr. Chinny. If the Duchess isn’t on the throne, who should be?”
“Um, it’s incredibly complex, sir, because of the intermarriages and the various legal systems, which, for example—”
“Who’s the smart money on, Mr. Chinny?” said Vines wearily.
“Um, Prince Heinrich of Zlobenia.”
To Chinny’s astonishment, Vimes laughed.
“And he’s wondering how Auntie’s gettin’ on, I expect. I met him this morning, didn’t I? Can’t say I took to him.”
“But he is a friend of Ankh-Morpork,” said Chinny reproachfully. “That was in my report. Educated. Very interested in the clacks. Got great plans for his country. They used to be Nugganatic in Zlobenia, but he’s banned the religion and, frankly, hardly anyone objected. He wants Zlobenia to move forward. He admires Ankh-Morpork very much.”
“Yes, I know. He sounds almost as insane as Nuggan,” said Vimes. “Okay, so what we’ve probably got is an elaborate charade to keep Heinrich out. How’s this place governed?”
“There isn’t much. A bit of tax collecting, and that’s about all. We think some of the senior court officials just drift on as if the Duchess is alive. The only thing that really works is the army.”
“All right, how about coppers? Everyone needs coppers. At least they have their feet on the ground.”
“I believe informal citizens’ committees enforce Nugganatic law,” said Chinny.
“Oh, gods. Prodnoses, curtain-twitchers, and vigilantes,” said Vimes. He stood up, and peered out through the narrow window at the plain below. It was nighttime. Cooking fires in the enemy camp made demonic constellations in the darkness.
“Did they tell you why I’ve been sent here, Clarence?” he said.
“No, sir. My instructions were that you would, um, oversee things. Prince Heinrich is not very happy about it.”
“Oh, well, the interests of Ankh-Morpork are the interests of all money-lov…oops, sorry, all freedom-loving people everywhere,” said Vimes. “We can’t have a country that turns back our mail coaches and keeps cutting down the clacks towers. That’s expensive. They’re cutting the continent in half, they’re the pinch in the hourglass. I’m to bring things to a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion. And frankly, Clarence, I’m wondering if it’s even worth attacking Borogravia. It’ll be cheaper to sit here and wait for it to explode. Although I notice…where was that report…ah, yes…it will starve first.”
“Regrettably so, sir.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
