Monstrous Regiment

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. Maladict nodded with satisfaction. The barman’s fingers had gone white.
    “Incapacitating a soldier of Her Grace in wartime is a treasonable offense,” 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 could 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: “Tem’prance 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 offense 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 around 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.
    “Igor?” said the vampire, waving it away.
    “I’ll thtick with the horthe pith, if it’th all the thame to you,” said Igor.
    He looked around the sudden silence.
    “Look, I never thaid I didn’t like it,” said Igor. He pushed his mug across the sticky bar. “Thame again?”
    Polly took the new tankard and sniffed at it. Then she took a sip.
    “Not bad,” she said. “At least it tastes like it’s—”
    The door pushed open, letting in the sounds of the storm.
    About two-thirds of a troll eased its way inside, and then managed to get the rest of itself through.
    Polly was okay about trolls. She met them up in the woods sometimes, sitting among the trees or purposefully lumbering along the tracks on the way to whatever it was trolls did.