Discworld: "Marching Orders" by Beth Winter
Title: Marching Order
Author: Beth Winter, bwinter
Fandom: Discworld
Pairing/characters: Polly/Maladicta
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Everything is Terry Pratchett's, may he rule forever.
Prompt: Discworld: Polly Perks/Maladicta. Lofty was Tonker's girl, and Tonker acted like her young man; that made a certain kind of sense to Polly. With Polly and Maladicta, Polly's not sure who's supposed to be the girl and who's supposed to be the boy, or if there's another way for this to work.
Summary: Polly's next war, and Maladicta.
Author's Notes: With great apologies to the admins for missed deadlines, squeezing just under the wire. Polly and Mal had their own ideas about where the story should go, and in the end I bowed to their wishes.
Marching Order
Sometimes, Polly imagined she could hear Jackrum in her head, the gruff voice offering not advice so much as a plan she could build on.
When joining a new army, the first thing was to find the right rupert. Can't be a sergeant without a rupert. Jackrum would have told her to find a dumb one, but Polly wasn't Jackrum, and Jackrum didn't find the dumb ones either. He'd found Frock, once.
The dumb ones were easy to steer, but you had to keep an eye on them all the time. The smart ones could see you were steering them. Hard choice.
In the end, it wasn't hard to find the right rupert. Maladicta had a sheepish expression once Polly saw her in the new uniform, with the bundle of orders with headquarters stamps all over them.
"It's my grandfather," the vampire explained. "I thought he'd try to stake me, but he applauded. Then he said that no-one in the family had started at lower than a lieutenant, and the next morning I had my papers for the academy. And a horse."
One of the pages was upside down, and Polly could read it, or enough of the heading.
"And the name?" she asked.
"Mal. Just Mal." The vampire shrugged. "It makes people less confused."
Polly knew her smile was a little false, but she saluted instead. "Room for a sergeant?"
Mal's eyes went black for a moment, the narrow chin dipping down. "Why me?"
"I need a rupert I can trust. And I already know you’re a girl."
*
It was frightening, how easy it was to get used to the army again. Polly had started drinking beer in the Duchess, but it wasn't hard to ask for saloop instead, and the way the sleep came on you in a different way, warm and noisy with the gossip of soldiers.
There were songs, too, and Polly moved over to that fire to see who was imitating a sawn-through cat this time. She sat down next to Mal, close enough to see that the vampire's cheeks were suspiciously red.
"Oh, the beauties of the Regiment!" the corporal wailed, striking his guitar with a patriotic fervour. "The women brave enough to lead! There was a troll like a carving of diamond, her buttocks round and gleaming with the polish of river stones..."
"Jade?" Polly whispered.
Mal bared her fangs. "He was singing about Tonker's willowy figure before."
Polly felt like giggling, but she elbowed Mal hard instead, and got a slap in return, and for a moment they laughed like boys.
*
Mal's batman was a boy called Mossy who spent most of his time wrapping more and more scarves around his throat. The rest of his time, he was trying to convince the regiment farrier to make him a chastity belt.
Polly was used to being dragged out of bed by Mossy shouting things about crazy vampires. She stumbled out of her tent with one sock on and the other in her hand. By the time she got to Mal's tent, she had both socks, both shoes, and half her shako.
Fortunately, Mal also wasn't in uniform. Not the regulation kind.
"I like lace!" the vampire protested as Polly untangled her from the narrow ribbons. "I wanted to see what it would look like!"
"The whole undershirt?" Polly asked. "And you said you didn't like lace."
"It's fine when there are no underwires," Mal qualified. She crossed her arms as soon as they were free.
"It's fine when it's not see-through," Polly said.
Mal glowered. It must have been a vampire trait, because it made her skin glow, her dark eyes like the glass eyes of a doll. She had the hair for it, dark and curly, even though it was cut.
Polly wound the lace ribbon carefully into a ball. When she had a bit of free time, she showed Mossy how to sew it onto shirt cuffs.
*
High Command was trying out some new tactics. What it meant was that instead of everyone marching in one direction and attacking in a line, the platoons diverged and came together, executing complicated patterns that sometimes ended with patriotic Borogravians attacking other patriotic Borogravians because someone had thought a spill of ink on a map was an enemy formation.
What it meant was also that it was rare to get a group of officers together for a long time, unless it was the regiment headquarters. And when Lieutenant Maladict's platoon passed by the Cheesemongers' headquarters, they never stayed long.
The first two times, Polly wasn't sure why, but then she liked talking to the other sergeants. They were smart, in their own ways, and they were smart enough to see Jackrum's cutlasses on her belt. All of them had stories of Jackrum, and she shared her own too, except for the one that wasn't really her business.
She was talking to Sergeant Hausegerda outside the officers' mess when the shouting started.
"Unnatural beast!" someone roared.
Zlobenian accent, Polly thought. Lukas Zehrinovski, the lieutenant with a bad back and a Zlobenian mother, and lots to prove.
Then she was running, because the answer wasn't words, it was a snarl.
She wasn't stupid enough to try to hold Mal back by the arms. She grabbed the coffee-bean necklace instead, and two captains grabbed Zehrinovski, and that gave the major enough time to get there, too.
"No! Fighting!" he snapped. Between the two words, his mouth moved silently. Polly was good at lip-reading and wished she had a notebook to take things down. "What's. The. Matter?"
Mal shrugged Polly's grip off and adjusted her uniform jacket with a precise tug that untucked the neckerchief, opened two buttons and spilled the ends of her hair over the collar. Vampires, Polly thought with amusement.
Zehrinovski didn't have Mal's way with nonverbal comments, but he made do with shaking his head. That didn't save him from the major closing in on him, bushy eyebrows narrowing in suspicion.
Polly took the opportunity to haul Mal to the safety of their own camping ground. She could see the way the vampire's fingers were shuddering.
"You're a Black Ribboner," she reminded Mal just in case.
"That doesn't mean I can't tear his head off!" Mal growled, and thunder rolled obligingly.
Polly paused in rummaging through Mal's trunk. "What did he say?"
"That I should make up my mind," Mal said. She sat down in a camp chair, her boots touching the hearth. "You know, you've got it easy."
Polly wondered if Mal meant the Duchess, or not being an officer, or something else, but she knew better than to interrupt Mal on a roll.
"You're a girl," Mal said. "You want to be entirely a girl, and entirely a soldier, and you're so sure of what you want to be. I-" The vampire looked up at her, spreading long fingers helplessly. "I want to be me. And I'm not sure of what that is."
Polly filed that question for later consideration. For now, she made Mal coffee.
*
Polly was darning socks and feeling a little silly for doing it in uniform. But soldier socks needed darning just like any others, and there wasn't anyone who'd do it for her. She wouldn't trust any of the privates not to poke their eyes out with a needle.
A pebble bounced off her head, and she looked up, knowing who she'd see. Mal had habits.
"A moment, sergeant?" Mal asked, grinning. "There's a new batch of recruits."
Polly frowned. "I told Mary to take care of them."
The vampire shook her head. "They need scaring."
By the campfire, it was clear that the recruits had not been properly scared. There was only half a dozen of them, but three were lounging too well to have the right attitude for soldiers.
Polly drew a breath, then shot Mal a sharp look. Obediently, the vampire walked away to lounge under a tree, the lieutenant's stars looking like fanciful decoration on her shoulders.
Polly lay a hand on Mary's shoulder. The small corporal deflated gratefully.
"Atten-shun!" she roared. Four of the recruits snapped up immediately, the other two a little slower. Good. "I am Sergeant Perks. Who are you?"
"Um," a recruit said.
"You are In-and-Outs! Cheesemongers!" She smiled widely, dropping her voice again. "And you are my little lads. I will take care of you. I will feed you, and if you earn it, I will beat you. Upon my oath, I will make you soldiers."
She could see she had five of them now, watching her with awed fascination. The last one had narrow eyes and hair cropped too short to be anything but a lawn-mowing accident. The recruit bent to whisper to another.
"Private," Polly said. She didn't raise her voice. "Do you have anything to say?"
She could feel eyes on them, not just Mal and Mary. She was surprised how unembarrassed she was. She just had to imagine she was Jackrum for a moment.
The recruit propped thin hands somewhere around the place where the belt was supposed to rest on hips, technically. "I'm a girl," she snapped, the words clearly rehearsed. "My name's Barbara. Sir."
You could hear a pin drop as everyone's eyes moved from Polly's fading smile to the skirts of her uniform.
"Private Barbara!" Polly snapped. "You will shut up unless you have anything important to say!"
"But I'm-"
"A soldier." Polly let the smile emerge again. "I hope."
From then on, it was easy. Even Mal waited with applauding until they were alone, and Polly was no longer holding a sharp needle.
"It was like seeing Jackrum," she said with admiration.
"It wasn't!" Polly protested. "Jackrum wouldn't let - everything got out of hand - Jackrum was so sure of himself - I'm-"
She broke off, staring at the mug Mal had just pressed in her hand.
"Coffee," the vampire explained. "You look like you need it."
*
Sometimes, there were places you really didn't want to take recruits to. Polly had never appreciated it as a private, but now she knew that sometimes, it was best to let just two people go reconnaissance-ing, like her and Mal just now. Sometimes, you had to trust everyone not to do something stupid, and she had few people she trusted that much.
And when they did do something stupid, like hiding on a rocky outcrop that the Zlobenians chose to camp under, at least she had company she could talk to.
"No," Mal decided. "We really don't have any god. I think the blood gets in the way. Or the coffee, in my case." She flashed fangs, brilliant in the shadow of the small bush that kept the summer sun off them. "Or all the girls in nightgowns throwing themselves at us."
"How do you do that?" Polly asked. "You act and talk like a boy, only not. I could never tell - I mean, before you told me."
Mal shrugged, rolling to one side. "I'm myself. And I'm a vampire. I think we're allowed." She tapped a finger carefully on a fang. "We don't do well with limits. Especially me."
Polly considered this, looking at the tip of a fang inches away. Mal's other hand was resting on Polly's hip, cool and heavy, because there wasn't much room in the shadow.
"It's not the way people think it should be," she decided. "You're supposed to be a boy or a girl. It doesn't work otherwise."
"You're also supposed not to wear the Abominable colour blue," Mal muttered.
Polly thought that meant Mal's eyes were an Abomination unto Nuggan.
*
New plans came down from Headquarters, and Mal asked Polly to take a look, just to see if they were in danger of running within shooting distance of Zehrinovski or any of the other idiots. Making sure of it took them the entire evening, and in the end even Mossy drifted off, falling into a noisy heap somewhere outside the tent.
"No Zehrinovski," Polly concluded firmly.
Mal gave a relieved groan, stretching and laying aside the last of a succession of coffee cups. She was in shirtsleeves, and now she loosened her neckerchief completely. A flick of her fingers sent the fabric flying into the air, landing on Polly's head.
"It suits you," Mal decided. "It's like a veil. You'd make a good vampire."
Polly looked at her doubtfully. "How much coffee did you have?"
"I'm serious!" Mal grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. "You'd make a great vampire! I'd like that," she confided suddenly. "You understand me. No-one else does. Not exactly."
Polly wasn't sure she understood Mal at the best of times, but this wasn't the time to say that.
"Vampires are beautiful," she tried, searching for an innocuous objection. "So I can't be one."
"That," Mal sneered, "is half attitude and half skill. Come on, I'll show you!"
As the vampire attacked her half-grown hair with a brush, Polly made a note to ration Mal's coffee the next time. Especially if it'd mean less fangs near her neck.
*
As summer passed, the tide of the war turned. Zlobenia was interesting, especially when they passed through towns that looked completely alien. There were theatres in Borogravia, but none so large as the one Mal's platoon found themselves quartered in for a night.
Polly heard the privates laugh as she finished arguing with the quartermaster. They were dazzled by the bright decorations. So was she - there weren't any like them even in PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg - but it was also important to make sure her little lads had bread and meat and saloop and coffee, just to make sure Mal didn't try snacking on a corporal...
"Sarge!"
Two young soldiers crashed into her, almost spilling the supplies she held.
"Sarge, you gotta see this!" Batsy, originally Barbara, was wearing non-regulation ostrich feathers in her hair. "They've even got Borogravian dress uniforms! Proper ones!"
"We can't come up with how to put them on," Mossy complained.
Polly knew, even if the one she'd worn before had included a skirt. The trousers fit her too, and the lads pleaded with her to demonstrate how all the straps and buckles were supposed to be worn. It helped that they had also found bottles of a sweet green liquor that Polly was sure was never served at the Duchess.
There was more laughter and music, then shouting, and Polly ran without even taking off the glossy shako. Instead of fighting, she found the rest of the platoon on the sand-lined stage, staring at a twirling figure in a cloud of white tulle. There were silk flowers in the girl's pinned-up hair, and her mouth was a candy-red, smiling. Laughing.
Then she stopped, and Polly tried to open her mouth.
"I promised I'd show them how to dance," Maladicta said. Her eyes were shining again.
"I can't dance," Polly said weakly.
"You can try." For a moment, fangs were visible. "I order you to try, sergeant Perks."
"Yessir," Polly said, and wrapped her arms around the vampire. Maladicta smelled of mothballs, and led very well for a girl.
Then Polly's foot tripped. It caught in the white tulle, and they went down, head over heels over shako over sand.
Polly sneezed silk petals.
"I told you I can't dance."
*
The war was over. Again.
On her way off the battlefield, Polly pulled out her mental knapsack. It was something she'd come up with herself, this time around. She could put the complicated things there, like Paul and the Duchess, and they wouldn't distract her in battle. Now she took them out, one by one, like putting on rings, the way Mal did after a battle.
Maladicta had a compartment to herself in Polly's knapsack now, mostly because she still confused Polly. Polly knew what it meant to be a girl, and how a pair of socks could change that in strange ways. She'd thought she knew all the strange things, like the way Lofty and Tonker were, because it had taken her two days to realise that Lofty was Tonker's girl, and that worked both ways. And then she'd always thought Maladict was a boy, fooling everyone. But then there was Maladicta, and her lace, and dancing, and the blue eyes and the cigarettes.
And standing right before her. She got used to that, with a vampire rupert.
"I guess this is it," Mal said. "How many did we lose?"
"Two." Polly looked down at the sad shakos in her hand. She'd found them both together. One cannon bullet. "I'll write the letters and you can sign them."
"I will," Mal promised.
For a while, they walked together quietly, until there were no more bloodstains on the grass. They always made Mal edgy, Polly remembered. That might be why she was smoking two cigarettes at once.
"What are you going to do now?" Mal asked.
"Go to the Duchess. See Paul and Shufti and Jack." Polly wondered why it sounded like a list of chores. "Wait for the spring."
"Ah." Mal put out one of the cigarettes. "Is there a lot to do in an inn in November?"
"No." Polly looked sideways at her, and met wide, plotting blue eyes.
"OnlyIthoughtyoucouldcomewithme," Mal said fast enough that she spat out the other cigarette, the ash falling over her jacket. "There's a hunting lodge. And I don't like hunting by myself. Wolves," she added.
Polly thought about it. Then she thought that she should cut her hair this time. Or tie it in a ponytail. Maybe Mal could show her how.
-FIN-
Author: Beth Winter, bwinter
Fandom: Discworld
Pairing/characters: Polly/Maladicta
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Everything is Terry Pratchett's, may he rule forever.
Prompt: Discworld: Polly Perks/Maladicta. Lofty was Tonker's girl, and Tonker acted like her young man; that made a certain kind of sense to Polly. With Polly and Maladicta, Polly's not sure who's supposed to be the girl and who's supposed to be the boy, or if there's another way for this to work.
Summary: Polly's next war, and Maladicta.
Author's Notes: With great apologies to the admins for missed deadlines, squeezing just under the wire. Polly and Mal had their own ideas about where the story should go, and in the end I bowed to their wishes.
Marching Order
Sometimes, Polly imagined she could hear Jackrum in her head, the gruff voice offering not advice so much as a plan she could build on.
When joining a new army, the first thing was to find the right rupert. Can't be a sergeant without a rupert. Jackrum would have told her to find a dumb one, but Polly wasn't Jackrum, and Jackrum didn't find the dumb ones either. He'd found Frock, once.
The dumb ones were easy to steer, but you had to keep an eye on them all the time. The smart ones could see you were steering them. Hard choice.
In the end, it wasn't hard to find the right rupert. Maladicta had a sheepish expression once Polly saw her in the new uniform, with the bundle of orders with headquarters stamps all over them.
"It's my grandfather," the vampire explained. "I thought he'd try to stake me, but he applauded. Then he said that no-one in the family had started at lower than a lieutenant, and the next morning I had my papers for the academy. And a horse."
One of the pages was upside down, and Polly could read it, or enough of the heading.
"And the name?" she asked.
"Mal. Just Mal." The vampire shrugged. "It makes people less confused."
Polly knew her smile was a little false, but she saluted instead. "Room for a sergeant?"
Mal's eyes went black for a moment, the narrow chin dipping down. "Why me?"
"I need a rupert I can trust. And I already know you’re a girl."
*
It was frightening, how easy it was to get used to the army again. Polly had started drinking beer in the Duchess, but it wasn't hard to ask for saloop instead, and the way the sleep came on you in a different way, warm and noisy with the gossip of soldiers.
There were songs, too, and Polly moved over to that fire to see who was imitating a sawn-through cat this time. She sat down next to Mal, close enough to see that the vampire's cheeks were suspiciously red.
"Oh, the beauties of the Regiment!" the corporal wailed, striking his guitar with a patriotic fervour. "The women brave enough to lead! There was a troll like a carving of diamond, her buttocks round and gleaming with the polish of river stones..."
"Jade?" Polly whispered.
Mal bared her fangs. "He was singing about Tonker's willowy figure before."
Polly felt like giggling, but she elbowed Mal hard instead, and got a slap in return, and for a moment they laughed like boys.
*
Mal's batman was a boy called Mossy who spent most of his time wrapping more and more scarves around his throat. The rest of his time, he was trying to convince the regiment farrier to make him a chastity belt.
Polly was used to being dragged out of bed by Mossy shouting things about crazy vampires. She stumbled out of her tent with one sock on and the other in her hand. By the time she got to Mal's tent, she had both socks, both shoes, and half her shako.
Fortunately, Mal also wasn't in uniform. Not the regulation kind.
"I like lace!" the vampire protested as Polly untangled her from the narrow ribbons. "I wanted to see what it would look like!"
"The whole undershirt?" Polly asked. "And you said you didn't like lace."
"It's fine when there are no underwires," Mal qualified. She crossed her arms as soon as they were free.
"It's fine when it's not see-through," Polly said.
Mal glowered. It must have been a vampire trait, because it made her skin glow, her dark eyes like the glass eyes of a doll. She had the hair for it, dark and curly, even though it was cut.
Polly wound the lace ribbon carefully into a ball. When she had a bit of free time, she showed Mossy how to sew it onto shirt cuffs.
*
High Command was trying out some new tactics. What it meant was that instead of everyone marching in one direction and attacking in a line, the platoons diverged and came together, executing complicated patterns that sometimes ended with patriotic Borogravians attacking other patriotic Borogravians because someone had thought a spill of ink on a map was an enemy formation.
What it meant was also that it was rare to get a group of officers together for a long time, unless it was the regiment headquarters. And when Lieutenant Maladict's platoon passed by the Cheesemongers' headquarters, they never stayed long.
The first two times, Polly wasn't sure why, but then she liked talking to the other sergeants. They were smart, in their own ways, and they were smart enough to see Jackrum's cutlasses on her belt. All of them had stories of Jackrum, and she shared her own too, except for the one that wasn't really her business.
She was talking to Sergeant Hausegerda outside the officers' mess when the shouting started.
"Unnatural beast!" someone roared.
Zlobenian accent, Polly thought. Lukas Zehrinovski, the lieutenant with a bad back and a Zlobenian mother, and lots to prove.
Then she was running, because the answer wasn't words, it was a snarl.
She wasn't stupid enough to try to hold Mal back by the arms. She grabbed the coffee-bean necklace instead, and two captains grabbed Zehrinovski, and that gave the major enough time to get there, too.
"No! Fighting!" he snapped. Between the two words, his mouth moved silently. Polly was good at lip-reading and wished she had a notebook to take things down. "What's. The. Matter?"
Mal shrugged Polly's grip off and adjusted her uniform jacket with a precise tug that untucked the neckerchief, opened two buttons and spilled the ends of her hair over the collar. Vampires, Polly thought with amusement.
Zehrinovski didn't have Mal's way with nonverbal comments, but he made do with shaking his head. That didn't save him from the major closing in on him, bushy eyebrows narrowing in suspicion.
Polly took the opportunity to haul Mal to the safety of their own camping ground. She could see the way the vampire's fingers were shuddering.
"You're a Black Ribboner," she reminded Mal just in case.
"That doesn't mean I can't tear his head off!" Mal growled, and thunder rolled obligingly.
Polly paused in rummaging through Mal's trunk. "What did he say?"
"That I should make up my mind," Mal said. She sat down in a camp chair, her boots touching the hearth. "You know, you've got it easy."
Polly wondered if Mal meant the Duchess, or not being an officer, or something else, but she knew better than to interrupt Mal on a roll.
"You're a girl," Mal said. "You want to be entirely a girl, and entirely a soldier, and you're so sure of what you want to be. I-" The vampire looked up at her, spreading long fingers helplessly. "I want to be me. And I'm not sure of what that is."
Polly filed that question for later consideration. For now, she made Mal coffee.
*
Polly was darning socks and feeling a little silly for doing it in uniform. But soldier socks needed darning just like any others, and there wasn't anyone who'd do it for her. She wouldn't trust any of the privates not to poke their eyes out with a needle.
A pebble bounced off her head, and she looked up, knowing who she'd see. Mal had habits.
"A moment, sergeant?" Mal asked, grinning. "There's a new batch of recruits."
Polly frowned. "I told Mary to take care of them."
The vampire shook her head. "They need scaring."
By the campfire, it was clear that the recruits had not been properly scared. There was only half a dozen of them, but three were lounging too well to have the right attitude for soldiers.
Polly drew a breath, then shot Mal a sharp look. Obediently, the vampire walked away to lounge under a tree, the lieutenant's stars looking like fanciful decoration on her shoulders.
Polly lay a hand on Mary's shoulder. The small corporal deflated gratefully.
"Atten-shun!" she roared. Four of the recruits snapped up immediately, the other two a little slower. Good. "I am Sergeant Perks. Who are you?"
"Um," a recruit said.
"You are In-and-Outs! Cheesemongers!" She smiled widely, dropping her voice again. "And you are my little lads. I will take care of you. I will feed you, and if you earn it, I will beat you. Upon my oath, I will make you soldiers."
She could see she had five of them now, watching her with awed fascination. The last one had narrow eyes and hair cropped too short to be anything but a lawn-mowing accident. The recruit bent to whisper to another.
"Private," Polly said. She didn't raise her voice. "Do you have anything to say?"
She could feel eyes on them, not just Mal and Mary. She was surprised how unembarrassed she was. She just had to imagine she was Jackrum for a moment.
The recruit propped thin hands somewhere around the place where the belt was supposed to rest on hips, technically. "I'm a girl," she snapped, the words clearly rehearsed. "My name's Barbara. Sir."
You could hear a pin drop as everyone's eyes moved from Polly's fading smile to the skirts of her uniform.
"Private Barbara!" Polly snapped. "You will shut up unless you have anything important to say!"
"But I'm-"
"A soldier." Polly let the smile emerge again. "I hope."
From then on, it was easy. Even Mal waited with applauding until they were alone, and Polly was no longer holding a sharp needle.
"It was like seeing Jackrum," she said with admiration.
"It wasn't!" Polly protested. "Jackrum wouldn't let - everything got out of hand - Jackrum was so sure of himself - I'm-"
She broke off, staring at the mug Mal had just pressed in her hand.
"Coffee," the vampire explained. "You look like you need it."
*
Sometimes, there were places you really didn't want to take recruits to. Polly had never appreciated it as a private, but now she knew that sometimes, it was best to let just two people go reconnaissance-ing, like her and Mal just now. Sometimes, you had to trust everyone not to do something stupid, and she had few people she trusted that much.
And when they did do something stupid, like hiding on a rocky outcrop that the Zlobenians chose to camp under, at least she had company she could talk to.
"No," Mal decided. "We really don't have any god. I think the blood gets in the way. Or the coffee, in my case." She flashed fangs, brilliant in the shadow of the small bush that kept the summer sun off them. "Or all the girls in nightgowns throwing themselves at us."
"How do you do that?" Polly asked. "You act and talk like a boy, only not. I could never tell - I mean, before you told me."
Mal shrugged, rolling to one side. "I'm myself. And I'm a vampire. I think we're allowed." She tapped a finger carefully on a fang. "We don't do well with limits. Especially me."
Polly considered this, looking at the tip of a fang inches away. Mal's other hand was resting on Polly's hip, cool and heavy, because there wasn't much room in the shadow.
"It's not the way people think it should be," she decided. "You're supposed to be a boy or a girl. It doesn't work otherwise."
"You're also supposed not to wear the Abominable colour blue," Mal muttered.
Polly thought that meant Mal's eyes were an Abomination unto Nuggan.
*
New plans came down from Headquarters, and Mal asked Polly to take a look, just to see if they were in danger of running within shooting distance of Zehrinovski or any of the other idiots. Making sure of it took them the entire evening, and in the end even Mossy drifted off, falling into a noisy heap somewhere outside the tent.
"No Zehrinovski," Polly concluded firmly.
Mal gave a relieved groan, stretching and laying aside the last of a succession of coffee cups. She was in shirtsleeves, and now she loosened her neckerchief completely. A flick of her fingers sent the fabric flying into the air, landing on Polly's head.
"It suits you," Mal decided. "It's like a veil. You'd make a good vampire."
Polly looked at her doubtfully. "How much coffee did you have?"
"I'm serious!" Mal grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around. "You'd make a great vampire! I'd like that," she confided suddenly. "You understand me. No-one else does. Not exactly."
Polly wasn't sure she understood Mal at the best of times, but this wasn't the time to say that.
"Vampires are beautiful," she tried, searching for an innocuous objection. "So I can't be one."
"That," Mal sneered, "is half attitude and half skill. Come on, I'll show you!"
As the vampire attacked her half-grown hair with a brush, Polly made a note to ration Mal's coffee the next time. Especially if it'd mean less fangs near her neck.
*
As summer passed, the tide of the war turned. Zlobenia was interesting, especially when they passed through towns that looked completely alien. There were theatres in Borogravia, but none so large as the one Mal's platoon found themselves quartered in for a night.
Polly heard the privates laugh as she finished arguing with the quartermaster. They were dazzled by the bright decorations. So was she - there weren't any like them even in PrinceMarmadukePiotreAlbertHansJosephBernhardtWilhelmsberg - but it was also important to make sure her little lads had bread and meat and saloop and coffee, just to make sure Mal didn't try snacking on a corporal...
"Sarge!"
Two young soldiers crashed into her, almost spilling the supplies she held.
"Sarge, you gotta see this!" Batsy, originally Barbara, was wearing non-regulation ostrich feathers in her hair. "They've even got Borogravian dress uniforms! Proper ones!"
"We can't come up with how to put them on," Mossy complained.
Polly knew, even if the one she'd worn before had included a skirt. The trousers fit her too, and the lads pleaded with her to demonstrate how all the straps and buckles were supposed to be worn. It helped that they had also found bottles of a sweet green liquor that Polly was sure was never served at the Duchess.
There was more laughter and music, then shouting, and Polly ran without even taking off the glossy shako. Instead of fighting, she found the rest of the platoon on the sand-lined stage, staring at a twirling figure in a cloud of white tulle. There were silk flowers in the girl's pinned-up hair, and her mouth was a candy-red, smiling. Laughing.
Then she stopped, and Polly tried to open her mouth.
"I promised I'd show them how to dance," Maladicta said. Her eyes were shining again.
"I can't dance," Polly said weakly.
"You can try." For a moment, fangs were visible. "I order you to try, sergeant Perks."
"Yessir," Polly said, and wrapped her arms around the vampire. Maladicta smelled of mothballs, and led very well for a girl.
Then Polly's foot tripped. It caught in the white tulle, and they went down, head over heels over shako over sand.
Polly sneezed silk petals.
"I told you I can't dance."
*
The war was over. Again.
On her way off the battlefield, Polly pulled out her mental knapsack. It was something she'd come up with herself, this time around. She could put the complicated things there, like Paul and the Duchess, and they wouldn't distract her in battle. Now she took them out, one by one, like putting on rings, the way Mal did after a battle.
Maladicta had a compartment to herself in Polly's knapsack now, mostly because she still confused Polly. Polly knew what it meant to be a girl, and how a pair of socks could change that in strange ways. She'd thought she knew all the strange things, like the way Lofty and Tonker were, because it had taken her two days to realise that Lofty was Tonker's girl, and that worked both ways. And then she'd always thought Maladict was a boy, fooling everyone. But then there was Maladicta, and her lace, and dancing, and the blue eyes and the cigarettes.
And standing right before her. She got used to that, with a vampire rupert.
"I guess this is it," Mal said. "How many did we lose?"
"Two." Polly looked down at the sad shakos in her hand. She'd found them both together. One cannon bullet. "I'll write the letters and you can sign them."
"I will," Mal promised.
For a while, they walked together quietly, until there were no more bloodstains on the grass. They always made Mal edgy, Polly remembered. That might be why she was smoking two cigarettes at once.
"What are you going to do now?" Mal asked.
"Go to the Duchess. See Paul and Shufti and Jack." Polly wondered why it sounded like a list of chores. "Wait for the spring."
"Ah." Mal put out one of the cigarettes. "Is there a lot to do in an inn in November?"
"No." Polly looked sideways at her, and met wide, plotting blue eyes.
"OnlyIthoughtyoucouldcomewithme," Mal said fast enough that she spat out the other cigarette, the ash falling over her jacket. "There's a hunting lodge. And I don't like hunting by myself. Wolves," she added.
Polly thought about it. Then she thought that she should cut her hair this time. Or tie it in a ponytail. Maybe Mal could show her how.
-FIN-