‘Sergeant Towering, lieutenant. And if you are a sensible man, you will release me and surrender.’
‘Surrender?’ said Blouse, as Igorina and Wazzer ran into the clearing, armed and bewildered.
‘Yep. I’ll put in a good word for you when the boys catch up with us. You don’t want to know how many men are looking for you. Could I have a drink, please?’
‘What? Oh, yes. Of course,’ said Blouse, as if caught out in a display of bad manners. ‘Perks, fetch some tea for the sergeant. Why are people looking for us, pray?’
Towering gave him a cockeyed grin. ‘You don’t know?’
‘No,’ said Blouse coldly.
‘You really don’t know?’ Now Towering was laughing. He was far too relaxed for a bound man, and Blouse sounded far too much like a nice but worried man trying to appear firm and determined. To Polly, it was like watching a child bluffing in poker against a man called Doc.
‘I don’t wish to play games, man. Out with it!’ said Blouse.
‘Everyone knows about you, lieutenant. You’re the Monstrous Regiment, you are!’ he said. ‘No offence meant, of course. They say you’ve got a troll and a vampire and an Igor and a werewolf. They say you . . .’ he began to chuckle ‘. . . they say you overpowered Prince Heinrich and his guard and stole his boots and made him hop away in the altogether!’
In a thicket some way off, a nightingale sang. For quite a while, uninterrupted. Then Blouse said, ‘Hah, no, you are in fact wrong. The man was Captain Horentz—’
‘Yeah, right, like he’d tell you who he was with you pointing swords at him!’ said Towering. ‘I heard from one of my mates that one of you kicked him in the meat-and-two-veg, but I haven’t seen the picture yet.’
‘Someone took a picture of him getting kicked?’ squeaked Polly, drenched in a sudden horror.
‘Not of that, no. But there’s copies all over the place of him in chains and I hear it’s been sent by the clacks to Ankh-Morpork.’
‘Is . . . is he annoyed?’ Polly quavered, cursing Otto Chriek and his picture-making.
‘Well, now, let me see,’ said Towering sarcastically. ‘Annoyed? No, I shouldn’t think he’s annoyed. “Livid” is the word, I think. Or “raging”? Yeah, I think “raging” ’s the word. There’s a lot of people looking for you lads now. Well done!’
Even Blouse could see Polly’s distress. ‘Er . . . Perks,’ he said, ‘it was you, wasn’t it, who—’
Over and over in Polly’s head the words ogodIkickedthePrinceinthefruitandveg were going round and round like a hamster in a runaway treadmill until, suddenly, it ran up against something solid.
‘Yessir,’ she snapped. ‘He was forcing himself upon a young woman, sir. If you recall?’
Blouse’s frown faded, and became a grin of childlike duplicity. ‘Ah, yes, indeed. He was “pressing his suit” in no small way, was he not?’
‘He didn’t have ironing in mind, sir!’ said Polly fervently.
Towering glanced at Wazzer, grimly clutching a crossbow that Polly knew for a fact she was scared of, and Igorina, who’d much rather be holding a surgeon’s knife than the sabre in her hand and looked worried sick. Polly saw his brief smile.
‘And there you have it, Sergeant Towering,’ said the lieutenant, turning to the prisoner. ‘Of course, we all know there is some atrocious behaviour in times of war, but it is not the sort of thing we would expect of a royal prince.* If we are to be pursued because a gallant young soldier prevented matters from becoming even more disgusting, then so be it.’
*Lieutenant Blouse read only the more technical history books.
‘Now I am impressed,’ said Towering. ‘A real knight errant, eh? He’s a credit to you, lieutenant. Any chance of that tea?’
Blouse’s skinny chest visibly swelled at the compliment. ‘Yes, Perks, the tea, if you would be so good.’
Leaving the three of you with this man who’s positively radiating an intention to escape, Polly thought. ‘Could perhaps Private Goom go and fetch—’ she began.
‘A word in private, Perks?’ snapped Blouse. He drew her closer, but Polly kept her eye on Sergeant Towering. He might be bound hand and foot, but she wouldn’t have trusted a man who grinned like that if he’d been nailed to the ceiling.
‘Perks, you are making a great contribution but I really will not have my orders continually questioned,’ said Blouse. ‘You are my batman, after all. I think I run a “happy ship” here, but I will be obeyed. Please?’
It was like being savaged by a goldfish, but she had to admit he had a point. ‘Er . . . sorry, sir,’ she said, backing away as long as possible so as not to miss the end of the tragedy. Then she turned and ran.
Jackrum was sitting by the fire, with the prisoner’s bow across his huge knees, slicing some sort of black sausage with a big clasp-knife. He was chewing.
‘Where’s the rest of us, sir?’ said Polly, scrabbling for a mug.
‘I sent ‘em to scout a wide perimeter, Perks. Can’t be too careful if matey-boy’s got pals out there.’
. . . which was perfectly sensible. It just happened to mean that half the squad had been sent away . . .
‘Sarge, you know that captain back at the barracks? That was—’
‘I’ve got good hearing, Perks. Kicked him in the Royal Prerogative, eh? Hah! Makes it all more interestin’, eh?’
‘It’s going to go wrong, sarge, I just know it,’ said Polly, dragging the kettle off the hob and spilling half the water as she topped up the teapot.
‘D’you chew at all, Perks?’ said Jackrum.
‘What, sarge?’ said Polly distractedly.
The sergeant held out a small piece of sticky, black . . . stuff. ‘Tobacco. Chewing tobacco,’ said Jackrum. ‘I favour Blackheart over Jolly Sailor, ‘cos it’s rum-dipped, but others say—’
‘Sarge, that man’s going to escape, sarge! I know he is! The lieutenant isn’t in charge, he is. He’s all friendly and everything, but I can tell by his eyes, sarge!’
‘I’m sure Lieutenant Blouse knows what he’s doing, Perks,’ said Jackrum primly. ‘You’re not telling me a bound man can overcome four of you, are you?’
‘Oh, sugar!’ said Polly.
‘Just down there, in the old black tin,’ said Jackrum. Polly tipped some into the worst cup of tea ever made by a serving soldier and ran back to the clearing.
Amazingly, the man was still in a sitting position, and still bound hand and foot. Her fellow Cheesemongers were watching him dejectedly. Polly relaxed, but only a little.
‘—nd there you have it, lieutenant,’ he was saying. ‘No disgrace in calling it quits, eh? He’ll hunt you down soon enough, ‘cos it’s personal now. But if you were to come along with me, I’d do my best to see it goes easy with you. You don’t want to get caught by the Heavy Dragoons right now. They ain’t got much of a sense of humour—’
‘Tea up,’ said Polly.
‘Oh, thank you, Perks,’ said Blouse. ‘I think we can at least cut Sergeant Towering’s hands free, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Polly, meaning ‘no, sir’. The man offered his bound wrists, and Polly reached out gingerly with her knife while holding the mug like a weapon.
‘Artful lad you’ve got here, lieutenant,’ said Towering. ‘He reckons I’m going to grab his knife off of him. Good lad.’
Polly sliced the rope, brought her knife hand back quickly, and then carefully proffered the mug.
‘And he’s made the tea lukewarm so’s it won’t hurt when I splashes it in his face,’ Towering went on. He gave Polly the steady, honest gaze of the born bastard.
Polly held it, lie for lie.
‘Oh, yeah. The Ankh-Morpork people’ve got a little printing press on a cart, over on the other side of the river,’ said Towering, still watching Polly. ‘For morale, they say. And they sent the picture back to the city, too, on the clacks. Don’t ask me how. Oh yeah, a good picture. “Plucky Rookies Trounce Zlobenia’s Finest”, they wrote. Funny thing, but it looks like the writer man didn’t spot it was the Prince. But we all did!’
His voice became even more friendly. ‘Now look, mates, as a foot soldier like yourselves I’m all for seeing the bloody donkey-boys made to look fools, so you come along with me and I’ll see to it that at least you don’t sleep in chains tomorrow. That’s my best offer.’ He took a sip of tea, and added, ‘It’s a better one than most of the Tenth got, I’ll tell you. I heard your regiment got wiped out.’
Polly’s expression didn’t change, but she felt herself curl up into a tiny ball behind it. Look at the eyes, look at the eyes. Liar. Liar.
‘Wiped out?’ said Blouse.
Towering dropped his mug of tea. He smacked the crossbow out of Wazzer’s hand with his left hand, grabbed the sabre from Igorina with his right hand, and brought the curved blade down on the rope between his legs. It happened fast, before any of them could quite focus on the change in the situation, and then the sergeant was on his feet, slapping Blouse across the face and grabbing him in an arm lock.