Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett [98]
“I’m not putting up with that!” Tonker snarled. “You stop that right now! I mean it! You’re giving me the creeps! Ozz, you stop her—him smiling like that!”
“Just calm down, all of you—” Polly began.
“Bleedin’ well shut up!” said Jackrum. “A man can’t hear himself chew. Look, you’re all edgy. That happens. And Wazzer here’s just got a bit of religion before the fight. That happens, too. And what you do is, you save it all up for the enemy. Quieten down. That is what we in the milit’ry call a order, okay?”
“Perks?” It was Blouse.
“You’d better hurry,” said Maladict. “His corset probably wants lacing…”
In fact, Blouse was sitting on what remained of a chair.
“Ah, Perks. A shave, please,” he said.
“Oh, I thought your hand was better, sir…”
“Er…yes.” Blouse looked awkward. “The problem, Perks, is…I have never actually shaved myself at all, to be honest. I had a man to do it for me at school, and then, of course, in the army I shared a batman with Blitherskite and, er, those attempts I made on my own behalf have been somewhat bloody. I never really thought about it until I got to Plotz and, er…suddenly it was embarrassing…”
“Sorry about that, sir,” said Polly. It was a strange old world.
“Later on, perhaps you could give me a few tips,” Blouse went on. “You keep yourself beautifully shaven, I can’t help noticing. General Froc would be pleased. He’s very anti-whiskers, they say.”
“If you like, sir,” said Polly. There was no getting out of it. She made a show of sharpening the razor. Perhaps she could manage it with only a few small cuts…
“Do you think I should have a reddened nose?” said Blouse.
“Probably, sir,” said Polly. Sarge knows about me, I’m sure, she thought. I know he does. Why’s he keeping quiet?
“Probably, Perks?”
“What? Oh. No…why a red nose, sir?” said Polly, applying the lather with vigor.
“It would look more pfh amusing, perhaps.”
“Not sure that’s the purpose of the exercise, sir. Now, if you’d just, er, lie back, sir—”
“There’s something you should know about young Perks, sir.”
Polly actually yelped.
Walking as silently as only a sergeant can, Jackrum had stolen into the room.
“Pfh, Sergeant?” said Blouse.
“Perks doesn’t know how to shave a man, sir,” said Jackrum. “Give me the razor, Perks.”
“Doesn’t know how to shave?” said Blouse.
“Nosir. Perks lied to us, right, Perks?”
“All right, Sarge, no need to drag it out,” sighed Polly. “Lieutenant, I’m—”
“—under age,” said Jackrum. “Right, Perks? Only fourteen, aren’t you?”
Jackrum looked at Polly over the top of the lieutenant’s head, and winked.
“Er…I told a lie to get enlisted, sir, yes,” said Polly.
“I don’t think a lad like that ought to be dragged into the Keep, however game he is,” said Jackrum. “And I don’t think he’s the only one. Right, Perks?”
Oh, so that’s the game. Blackmail, Polly thought.
“Yes, Sarge,” she said wearily.
“Can’t have a massacre of little lads, sir, now can we?” said Jackrum.
“I see your pfh point, Sergeant,” said the lieutenant, as Jackrum gently drove the blade down his cheek. “That is a tricky one.”
“Best to call it a day, then?” said Jackrum.
“On the other hand, Sergeant, I do know that you pfh yourself joined up as a child,” said Blouse. The blade stopped moving.
“Well, it was all different in those—” Jackrum began.
“You were five years old, apparently,” the lieutenant went on. “You see, when I heard that I would be meeting you, a legend in the army, of course I had a look at our files so that I could, perhaps, make a few timely jokes in presenting you with your honorable discharge. You know, humorous little reminiscences about times gone by? Imagine how puzzled I was, therefore, to find that you appear to have been drawing actual wages for, well, it was a little hard to be certain, but possibly as much as sixty years.”
Polly had put a keen edge on the razor. It rested against the lieutenant’s cheek. Polly thought about the murder—oh, all right, the killing of an escaping prisoner—in the woods.