‘Vonderful!’ he said, lifting up the box and unfolding three legs to form a tripod for it. ‘But . . . could zer troll move a little to his left please?’
‘Huh?’ said Carborundum. The squad looked at one another.
‘Yes, and if the sergeant vould be so kind as to move into the centre more, and raise those swords a little bit higher?’ the vampire went on. ‘Great! And you, sir, if you could give me a grrrrh . . . ?’
‘Grrrrh?’ said Blouse.
‘Very good! Really fierce now . . .’
There was a blinding flash and a brief cry of ‘Oh, sh—’, followed by the tinkle of breaking glass.
Where the vampire had been standing was a little cone of dust. Blinking, Polly watched it fountain up into a human shape which coalesced once more into the vampire.
‘Oh dear, I really thought ze new filter vould do it,’ he said. ‘Oh veil, ve live und learn.’ He gave them a bright smile and added, ‘Now – vhich vun of you is Captain Horentz, please?’
Half an hour had passed. Polly was still bewildered. The trouble was not that she didn’t understand what was going on. The problem was that before she could understand that, she had to understand a lot of other things. One of them was the concept of a ‘newspaper’.
Blouse was looking proud and worried by turns, but nervous all the time. Polly watched him carefully, not least because he was talking to the man who had come in behind the iconographer. He was wearing a big leather coat and jodhpurs, and spent most of the time writing things down in a notebook, with occasional puzzled glances at the squad. Finally, Maladict, who had good hearing, sauntered over to the recruits from his lounging spot by the wall.
‘Okay,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘It’s all a bit complicated, but . . . do any of you know about newspapers?’
‘Yeth, my thecond couthin Igor in Ankh-Morpork told me about them,’ said Igor. ‘They’re like a kind of government announthement.’
‘Um . . . sort of. Except they’re not written by the government. They’re written by ordinary people who write things down,’ said Maladict.
‘Like a diary?’ said Tonker.
‘Um . . . no . . .’
Maladict tried to explain. The squad tried to understand. It still made no sense. It sounded to Polly like some kind of Punch and Judy show. Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn’t trust ‘Mothers of Borogravia!’ and that was from the government. And if you couldn’t trust the government, who could you trust?
Very nearly everyone, come to think of it . . .
‘Mr de Worde works for a newspaper in Ankh-Morpork,’ said Maladict. ‘He says we’re losing. He says casualties are mounting and troops are deserting and all the civilians are heading for the mountains.’
‘W-why should we believe him?’ Wazzer demanded.
‘Well, we’ve seen a lot of casualties and refugees and Corporal Strappi hasn’t been around since he heard he was going to the front,’ said Maladict. ‘Sorry, but it’s true. We’ve all seen it.’
‘Yeah, but he’s just some man from a foreign country. Why w-would the Duchess lie to us? I mean, why would she send us out just to die?’ said Wazzer. ‘She w-watches over us!’
‘Everyone says we’re winning,’ said Tonker, doubtfully, after that moment of embarrassment. Tears were running down Wazzer’s face.
‘No, they don’t,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t think we are, either.’
‘Does anyone think we are?’ said Maladict. Polly looked from face to face.
‘But saying so . . . it’s like treachery against the Duchess, isn’t it?’ said Wazzer. ‘It’s spreading Alarm and Despondency, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe we ought to be alarmed,’ said Maladict. ‘Do you know how he came to be here? He travels around writing down things about the war for his paper of news. He met these cavalry just up the road. In our country! And they told him they’d just heard that the very last recruits from Borogravia were here and they were nothing but, er, “a wet little bunch of squeaking boys”. They said they’d capture us for our own good and he could get a picture of us for his paper. He could show everybody how dreadful things were, they said, because we were scraping the bottom of the barrel.’
‘Yeah, but we beat ‘em so that’s foxed him!’ said Tonker, grinning nastily. ‘Nothing for him to write down now, eh?’
‘Um . . . not really. He says that this is even better!’
‘Better? Whose side is he on?’
‘Bit of a puzzler, really. He comes from Ankh-Morpork, but he’s not exactly on their side. Er . . . Otto Chriek, who makes the pictures for him—’
‘The vampire? He crumbled to dust when the light flashed!’ said Polly. ‘Then he . . . came back!’
‘Well, I was standing behind Carborundum at the time,’ said Maladict, ‘but I know the technique. He probably had a thin glass vial of b . . . bl. . . blur . . . no, wait, I can say this . . . blood.’ He sighed. ‘There! No problem. A thin vial of . . . what I said . . . which smashed on the ground and pulled the dust back together again. It’s a great idea.’ Maladict gave them a wan smile. ‘I think he really cares a lot about what he does, you know. Anyway, he told me de Worde just tries to find out the truth. And then he writes it down and sells it to anyone who wants it.’
‘And people let him do that?’ said Polly.
‘Apparently. Otto says he makes Commander Vimes livid with rage about once a week, but nothing ever happens.’
‘Vimes? The Butcher?’ said Polly.
‘He’s a duke, Otto says. But not like ours. Otto says he’s never seen him butcher anybody. Otto’s a Black Ribboner, like me. He wouldn’t lie to a fellow Ribboner. And he says that picture he took is going on the clacks from the nearest tower tonight. It will be in the paper of news tomorrow! And they print a copy here!’
‘How can you send a picture on the clacks?’ said Polly. ‘I know people who’ve seen them. It’s just a lot of boxes on a tower that go clack-clack!’
‘Ah, Otto explained that to me, too,’ said Maladict. ‘It’s very ingenious.’
‘How does it work, then?’
‘Oh, I didn’t understand what he said. It was all about . . . numbers. But it certainly sounded very clever. Anyway, de Worde just told the lieu— the rupert that news about a bunch of boys beating up experienced soldiers would certainly make people sit up and take notice!’
The squad looked at one another sheepishly.
‘It was a bit of a fluke, and anyway we had Carborundum,’ said Tonker.
‘And I used trickery,’ said Polly. ‘I mean, I couldn’t do it twice.’
‘So what?’ said Maladict. ‘We did it. The squad did it! Next time we’ll do it differently!’
‘Yeah!’ said Tonker. And there was a shared moment of exhilaration in which they were capable of anything. It lasted all of . . . a moment.
‘But it won’t work,’ said Shufti. ‘We’ve just been lucky. You know it won’t work, Maladict. You all know it won’t work, right?’
‘Well, I’m not saying we could, you know, take on a regiment all at once,’ said Maladict. ‘And the lieu— rupert might be a bit wet. But we could help make a difference. Old Jackrum knows what he’s doing—’
‘Upon my oath I am not a violent man . . . whack!’ sniggered Tonker, and there were a few . . . yes, giggles, they were giggles, Polly knew, from the squad.
‘No, you’re not,’ said Shufti flatly. ‘None of us are, right? Because we’re girls.’
There was a dead silence.
‘Well, not Carborundum and Ozzer, okay,’ Shufti went on, as if the silence was sucking unwilling words out of her. ‘And I’m not sure about Maladict and Igor. But I know the rest of us are, right? I’ve got eyes, I’ve got ears, I’ve got a brain. Right?’
In the silence there was the slow rumble that preceded a pronouncement from Carborundum.
‘If it any help,’ she said, in a voice suddenly more sandy than gravelly, ‘my real name’s Jade.’
Polly felt questing eyes boring into her. She was embarrassed, of course. But not for the obvious reason. It was for the other one, the little lesson that life sometimes rams home with a stick: you are not the only one watching the world. Other people are people; while you watch them they watch you, and they think about you while you think about them. The world isn’t just about you.
There was going to be no possibility of getting out of this. And, in a way, it was a relief.