Polly slithered back down the slope and found Blouse steadying himself against a tree, wheezing gently.
‘Ah . . . Perks,’ he panted. ‘My asthma seems to . . . be . . . coming back . . .’
‘I’ll help you up, sir,’ said Polly, grabbing his hand and tugging him forward. ‘Could you wheeze a little more quietly, sir?’
By degrees, dragging and pushing, she bundled the man up to Jackrum’s tree.
‘Glad you could join us, sir!’ hissed the sergeant, face contorted into an expression of maddened affability. ‘If you’d care to wait here, Perks and me will crawl up the—’
‘I’m coming too, sergeant,’ Blouse insisted.
Jackrum hesitated. ‘Yessir,’ he said. ‘But with respect, sir, I know about skirmishing—’
‘Let’s go, sergeant,’ said Blouse, dropping flat and beginning to drag himself forward.
‘Yessir,’ muttered Jackrum darkly.
Polly eased her way forward, too. The grass here was shorter, rabbit-nibbled, with small bushes here and there. She concentrated on keeping the noise down, and aimed for the clicking. The smell of chemical smoke grew stronger. It hung in the air around her. And, as she moved forward, she saw light, little specks of it. She raised her head.
There were three men a few feet away, silhouetted against the night. One of them was holding a large pipe, about five feet long, balanced on his shoulder at one end and on a tripod at the other. That end was aimed at the distant hill. On the other end, a foot or so behind the man’s head, was a big square box. Light was leaking from joints in this; from a little stovepipe chimney on the top of it, heavy smoke poured out.
‘Perks, on the count of three,’ said Jackrum, on Polly’s right. ‘One—’
‘As you were, sergeant,’ said Blouse quietly, on her left.
Polly saw Jackrum’s big florid face turn with an expression of astonishment. ‘Sir?’
‘Hold position,’ said Blouse. Above them, the clicking continued.
Milit’ry secrets, thought Polly. Spies! Enemies! And we’re just watching! It was like seeing blood drain from an artery.
‘Sir!’ hissed Jackrum, rage smoking off him.
‘Hold position, sergeant. That is an order,’ said Blouse calmly.
Jackrum subsided, but only into the deceptive calm of a volcano waiting to explode. The relentless chatter of the clacks went on. It seemed to go on for ever. Beside Polly, Sergeant Jackrum seethed and fretted like a dog on a leash.
The clicking stopped. Polly heard a distant murmur of conversation.
‘Sergeant Jackrum,’ whispered Blouse, ‘you may “get them” with all speed!’
Jackrum exploded out of the grass like a partridge. ‘All right, my lads! Up boys and at ‘em!’
Polly’s first thought, as she leapt up and ran, was that the distance was suddenly a lot wider than it had appeared.
All three men had turned at the sound of Jackrum’s cry. The one with the clacks tube was already dropping it and reaching for a sword, but Jackrum was bearing down on him like a landslide. The man made the mistake of standing his ground. There was a brief clash of swords and then a melee, and Sergeant Jackrum was a sufficiently deadly melee all by himself.
The second man flew past Polly but she was running for the third one. He backed away from her, still reaching up to his mouth, then turned to run and found himself face to face with Maladict.
‘Don’t let him swallow!’ Polly yelled.
Maladict’s arm shot up, and lifted the struggling man aloft by his throat.
It would have been a perfect operation had not the rest of the squad arrived, having put all their effort into running and left none to spare for slowing down. There were collisions.
Maladict went down as his captive kicked him in the chest and the man tried to scramble away, cannoning into Tonker. Polly leapt over Igorina, was almost tripped by a fallen Wazzer and threw herself desperately towards the quarry, now on his knees. He had a dagger out and waved it wildly in front of her while he grasped his throat with his other hand and made choking noises. She knocked the knife away, ran behind him and slapped him on the back as hard as she could. He fell forward. Before she could grab him a hand lifted him bodily and Jackrum’s voice roared: ‘Can’t have the poor man chokin’ to death, Perks!’ His other hand punched the man in the stomach with a noise like meat hitting a slab. The man’s eyes crossed and something large and white flew out of his mouth and shot over Jackrum’s shoulder.
Jackrum dropped him and turned on Blouse. ‘Sir, I protest, sir!’ he said, quiyering with anger. ‘We lay there and watched these devils sending who knows what messages, sir! Spies, sir! We could’ve got ‘em right there and then, sir!’
‘And then, sergeant?’ said Blouse.
‘What?’
‘Don’t you think the people they were talking to would wonder what had happened if the messages had stopped in mid-flow?’ said the lieutenant.
‘Even so, sir—’
‘Whereas now we have their device, sergeant, and their masters don’t know we have it,’ said Blouse.
‘Yeah, well, but you said they was sending messages in code, sir, and—’
‘Er, I think we have their cipher book as well, sarge,’ said Maladict, stepping forward with the white object in his hand. ‘That man tried to eat it, sarge. Rice paper. But he rushed his food, you might say.’
‘And you dislodged it, sergeant, and probably saved his life. Well done!’ said Blouse.
‘But one of ‘em got away, sir,’ said Jackrum. ‘He’ll soon get to—’
‘Sergeant?’
Jade was rising over the grass. As she plodded nearer they saw she was dragging a man by one foot. When she was closer it was obvious that the man was dead. Living people have more head.
‘I heard the shoutin’ and he come runnin’ and I jumped up and he come straight into me, head first!’ Jade complained. ‘I didn’t even get a chance to hit him!’
‘Well, private, at least we can definitely say he was stopped,’ said Blouse.
Thur, thith man is dying,’ said Igorina, who was kneeling by the man Sergeant Jackrum had so positively saved from choking. ‘He hath been poithened!’
‘Hath he? By whom?’ said Blouse. ‘Are you sure?’
‘The green foam coming out of hith mouth ith a definite clue, thur.’
‘What’s funny, Private Maladict?’ said Blous
The vampire chuckled. ‘Oh, sorry, sir. They say to spies “If you’re caught, eat the documents”, don’t they? A good way of making sure they don’t give away any secrets.’
‘But you’ve got the . . . soggy book in your hands, corporal!’
‘Vampires can’t be poisoned that easily, sir,’ said Maladict calmly.
‘It wath probably only fatal by mouth in any case, thur,’ said Igorina. ‘Terrible stuff. Thtuff. He’th dead, thur. Nothing I can do.’
‘Poor fellow. Well, we have the codes, anyway,’ said Blouse. ‘This is a great discovery, men.’
‘And a prisoner, sir, and a prisoner,’ said Jackrum.
The one surviving man, who had been operating the clacks, groaned and tried to move.
‘A bit bruised, I expect,’ Jackrum added, with some satisfaction. ‘When I land on someone, sir, they stay landed on.’
‘Two of you, bring him with us,’ said Blouse. ‘Sergeant, there’s a few hours to dawn, and I want to be well away from here. I want the other two buried somewhere down in the woods, and—’
‘You just have to say “carry on, sergeant”, sir,’ said Jackrum, and it was almost a wail. ‘That’s how it works, sir! You tell me what you want, I give ‘em the orders!’
‘Times are changing, sergeant,’ said Blouse.
Messages, flying across the sky. They were an Abomination unto Nuggan.
The logic sounded impeccable to Polly as she helped Wazzer to dig two graves. Prayers from the faithful ascended unto Nuggan, going upwards. A variety of unseen things, such as sanctity and grace and a list of this week’s Abominations, descended from Nuggan to the faithful, going downwards. What was forbidden was messages from one human to another going, as it were, from side to side. There could be collisions. If you believed in Nuggan, that is. If you believed in prayer.
Wazzer’s real name was Alice, she confided as she dug, but it was hard to apply the name to a small stick-thin lad with a bad haircut and not much skill with a shovel, who had a habit of standing just slightly too close to you and stared just slightly to the left of your face when she talked to you. Wazzer believed in prayer. She believed in everything. That made her kind of . . . awkward to talk to, if you didn’t. But Polly felt she should make the effort.
‘How old are you, Wazz?’ she said, shovelling dirt.
‘N-n-nineteen, Polly,’ said Wazzer.
‘Why’d you join?’
‘The Duchess told me to,’ said Wazzer.
That was why people didn’t talk to Wazzer much.