Igor, after carefully wiping the stained picture and giving it a perfunctory peck, came and stood next to Polly, giving her a sheepish grin. But she was watching the next recruit.
He was short and quite slim, which was fairly usual in a country where it was rare to get enough food to make you fat. But he was dressed in black and expensively, like an aristocrat; he even had a sword. The sergeant was, therefore, looking worried. Clearly a man could get into trouble talking wrong to a nob who might have important friends.
‘You sure you’ve come to the right place, sir?’ he said.
‘Yes, sergeant. I wish to enlist.’
Sergeant Jackrum shifted uneasily. ‘Yes, sir, but I’m not sure a gentleman like you—’
‘Are you going to enlist me or not, sergeant?’
‘Not usual for a gentleman to enlist as a common soldier, sir,’ mumbled the sergeant.
‘What you mean, sergeant, is: is anyone after me? Is there a price on my head? And the answer is no.’
‘How about a mob with pitchforks?’ said Corporal Strappi. ‘He’s a bloody vampire, sarge! Anyone can see that! He’s a Black Ribboner! Look, he’s got the badge!’
‘Which says “Not One Drop”,’ said the young man calmly. ‘Not one drop of human blood, sergeant. A prohibition I have accepted for almost two years, thanks to the League of Temperance. Of course, if you have a personal objection, sergeant, you only need to give it to me in writing.’
Which was quite a clever thing to say, Polly thought. Those clothes cost serious money. Most of the vampire families were highly nobby. You never knew who was connected to who . . . not just connected to who, in fact, but to whom. Whoms were likely to be far more trouble than your common everyday who. The sergeant was looking down a mile of rough road.
‘Got to move with the times, corporal,’ he said, deciding not to go there. ‘And we certainly need the men.’
‘Yeah, but s’posin’ he wants to suck all my blood out in the middle of the night?’ said Strappi.
‘Well, he’ll just have to wait until Private Igor’s finished looking for your brain, won’t he?’ snapped the sergeant. ‘Sign here, mister.’
The pen scratched on the paper. After a minute or two the vampire turned the paper over and continued writing on the other side. Vampires had long names.
‘But you can call me Maladict,’ he said, dropping the pen back in the inkwell.
‘Thank you very much, I must say, si— private. Give him the shilling, corporal. Good job it’s not a silver one, eh? Haha!’
‘Yes,’ said Maladict. ‘It is.’
‘Next!’ said the sergeant. Polly watched as a farm boy, breeches held up with string, shuffled in front of the table and looked at the quill pen with the resentful perplexity of those confronted with new technology.
She turned back to the bar. The landlord glared at her in the manner of bad landlords everywhere. As her father always said, if you kept an inn you either liked people or went mad. Oddly enough, some of the mad ones were the best at looking after their beer. But by the smell of the place, this wasn’t one of those.
She leaned on the bar. ‘Pint, please,’ she said, and watched glumly as the man gave a scowl of acknowledgement and turned to the big barrels. It’d be sour, she knew, with the slop bucket under the tap tipped back in every night, and the spigot not put back, and . . . yes, it was going to be served in a leather tankard that had probably never been washed.
A couple of new recruits were already knocking back their pints, though, with every audible sign of enjoyment. But this was Pliin, after all. Anything that made you forget you were there was probably worth drinking.
One of them said, ‘Lovely pint, this, eh?’ and the boy next to him belched and said, ‘Best I’ve tasted, yeah.’
Polly sniffed at the tankard. The contents smelled like something she wouldn’t feed to pigs. She took a sip, and completely changed her opinion. She would feed it to pigs. Those lads have never tasted beer before, she told herself. It’s like dad said. Out in the country there’s lads who’d join up for an uninhabited pair of breeches. And they’ll drink this muck and pretend to enjoy it like men, hey up, we supped some stuff last night, eh, lads? And then next thing—
Oh, lor’ . . . that reminded her. What’d the privy be like here? The men’s one out in the yard back at home was bad enough. Polly sloshed two big pails of water into it every morning while trying not to breathe. There was weird green moss growing on the slate floor. And The Duchess was a good inn. It had customers who took their boots off before going to bed.
She narrowed her eyes. This stupid fool in front of her, a man making one long eyebrow do the work of two, was serving them slops and foul vinegar just before they marched off to war—
‘Thith beer,’ said Igor, on her right, ‘tathteth of horthe pith.’
Polly stood back. Even in a bar like this, that was killing talk.
‘Oh, you’d know, would you?’ said the barman, looming over the boy. ‘Drunk horse piss, have you?’
‘Yeth,’ said Igor.
The barman stuck a fist in front of Igor’s face. ‘Now you listen to me, you lisping little—’
A slim black arm appeared with amazing speed and a pale hand caught the man’s wrist. The one eyebrow contorted in sudden agony.
‘Now, it’s like this,’ said Maladict calmly. ‘We’re soldiers of the Duchess, agreed? Just say “aargh”.’
He must have squeezed. The man groaned.
‘Thank you. And you’re serving up as beer a liquid best described as foul water,’ Maladict went on in the same level, conversational tone. ‘I, of course, don’t drink . . . horse piss, but I have a highly developed sense of smell, and really would prefer not to list aloud the things I can smell in this murk, so we’ll just say “rat droppings” and leave it at that, shall we? Just whimper. Good man.’ At the end of the bar, one of the new recruits threw up. The barman’s fingers had gone white. Maladict nodded with satisfaction.
‘Incapacitating a soldier of her grace in wartime is a treasonable offence,’ he said. He leaned forward. ‘Punishable, of course, by . . . death.’ Maladict pronounced the word with a certain delight. ‘However, if there happened to be another barrel of beer around the place, you know, good stuff, the stuff you’d keep for your friends if you had any friends, then I’m sure we can forget this little incident. Now, I’m going to let go of your wrist. I can tell by your eyebrow that you are a thinker, and if you’re thinking of rushing back in here with a big stick, I’d like you to think about this instead: I’d like you to think about this black ribbon I’m wearing. Know what it means, do you?’
The barman winced, and mumbled: ‘Temp’rance League . . .’
‘Right! Well done!’ said Maladict. ‘And one more thought for you, if you’ve got room. I’ve only taken a pledge not to drink human blood. It doesn’t mean I can’t kick you in the fork so hard you suddenly go deaf.’
He released his grip. The barman slowly straightened up. Under the bar he would have a short wooden club, Polly knew. Every bar had one. Even her father had one. It was a great help, he said, in times of worry and confusion. She saw the fingers of the usable hand twitch.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I think he means it.’
The barman relaxed. ‘Bit of a misunderstanding there, gents,’ he mumbled. ‘Got the wrong barrel in. No offence meant.’ He shuffled off, his hand almost visibly throbbing.
‘I only thaid it wath horthe pith,’ said Igor.
‘He won’t cause trouble,’ said Polly to Maladict. ‘He’ll be your friend from now on. He’s worked out he can’t beat you so he’s going to be your best mate.’
Maladict subjected her to a thoughtful stare. ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘How do you?’
‘I used to work in an inn,’ said Polly, feeling her heart begin to beat faster, as it always did when the lies lined up. ‘You learn to read people.’
‘What did you do in the inn?’
‘Barman.’
‘There’s another inn in this hole, is there?’
‘Oh no, I’m not from round here.’
Polly groaned at the sound of her own voice, and waited for the question: ‘Then why come here to join up?’ It didn’t come. Instead, Maladict just shrugged and said, ‘I shouldn’t think anyone is from round here.’
A couple more new recruits arrived at the bar. They had the same look – sheepish, a bit defiant, in clothes that didn’t fit well. Eyebrow reappeared with a small keg, which he laid reverentially on a stand and gently tapped. He pulled a genuine pewter tankard from under the bar, filled it, and timorously proffered it to Maladict.