Slipping Between Worlds 26
Brassed off... another short-term contract comes to an end and I'm looking for work again. I took it out on the story and this emerged.
The 23/35th Llamedosian Regiment. Church Parade.
Sergeant Williams was beginning to feel quite at home in the familiar and reassuring bustle of an Army regiment in peacetime barracks. This was, with a small "w", his world, although not exactly on his World. He walked with RSM Dickens through the usual Sunday throng of men going about light duties, receiving what he knew to be the guardedly curious stares of private soldiers to an unfamiliar sergeant who had most probably just been posted in. He knew the score: they were idly wondering what sort of a bastard the new three-striper would be, and where he'd be posted to. Finding familiarity all around him despite the strange and chafing uniforms, Williams grinned.
Dickens received salutes with equanimity, stopping once to talk to a group of soldiers who were performing maintenance work on a supply wagon, advising them to wrap it up in the next ten minutes or so as Church Parade was about to begin, you would not want to be late now, would you?
And then there was a rumbling in the distance.
"Better stand back now, sergeant." the RSM advised him. "These boys stop for no-one once they've worked up a pace. Not even me!"
They stood back off he service road. Williams goggled. The…men? coming towards them must have stood a good eight feet tall and were almost as broad. Something odd about their uniforms… something odd about them, in fact. He risked a sideways glance towards Dickens, who was watching him, a smile playing underneath the military moustache.
Ah. I'm being tested. Show no reaction. To the men around you, this is normal and workaday. Nothing to react to, except they're all getting off the road at double-time.
Each of the four giants was carrying a large irregular block of stone, about ten feet tall by three or four square, one at each corner. They were handling it one at each corner by one hand… paw?... as if loads like this were commonplace. Looking closely, Williams observed that their uniforms were actually painted on: red above the waist, dark blue beneath. They wore some sort of shorts in hard-wearing canvas, to a military cut, and, absurdly, had human-sized shakos tied to their heads. Williams was not a man given to science-fiction, but they looked like a better-tempered Incredible Hulk who had sought a makeover from plain green. Four parties of four Hulks were each lugging a large stone in the direction of the parade square. A seventeenth marched behind, this one with yellow-gold sergeants' stripes carved? into his arms.
"Pick dat pace up, boys, or we is late for the Padre!" the Hulk-sergeant boomed. His accent was a deep gravelly Llamedosian. He recognised and saluted Dickens.
"Step over by yere a second, would you, Sergeant Craig-y-don?" he requested.
The Hulk-sergeant grinned and marched over.
"Got somebody here I'd like you to meet. This is Sergeant Williams, just arrived from Home. Sergeant, this is Sergeant Craig-Y-Don, from our Heavy Support Company. Sergeant of trolls, he yis!"
Ah. So these are trolls.
Williams gingerly took the offered paw, which felt like a sack of warm walnuts. He felt the troll regarding him gravely.
"Pleased to meet you, sergeant"
"Likewise!" the troll boomed. "We can buy yeach other a beer later, Sergeant? I yave these trolls to supervise. Setting up the Padre's portable field altar, see."
He nodded to the tons of stone that was passing.
"And you are the portability." Williams said, weakly. The troll sergeant grinned.
"Got it in one, sergeant!"
"See you in the mess later, Craggy-boy" said Dickens.
The troll nodded, and stomped back to his detail.
By der not-right! One, two, many, lots! One, two, many, lots!"
"Our trolls." Dickens said. "Lovely boys, just lovely. They is our field pioneers, our bridge-builders, our road-makers if we has to. By treaty we may only use them in action against other trolls, but they has so many uses calling for brute force and strength. The reliable ones is also our regimental police. If a fight begins in a civvies pub, see. Craggy there has his understanding with Sergeant Detritius of the city police, if any of the boys misbehave and let the old molten sulphur go to their heads in the troll bars in town. And all of them good Llamedosian trolls from the high mountains."
"Is their officer a troll?" Williams asked, trying to subdue the mental picture of a huge troll officer making small-talk with Mrs Otway-Williams in the Officers' Mess over a gin and tonic in the bar.
"Standing orders say troll soldiers must be officered by a human gentleman" Dickens said, shaking his head. "That's Captain Ridgeway-Jones. Speaks good Trollish and bright enough to let Craggy do most of the work."
Noise of jangling metalwork and marching boots could be heard.
"And now these is our other soldiers. Proud to have them, too!"
And a platoon of…. very short…. soldiers came around the corner. None were taller than four feet, the average height being around three foot six or slightly taller. They wore chainmail shirts, which in deference to the Regiment had been either enamelled in red or somehow metal-plated. They were also bearded and carried axes at the port.
"Our skirmish companies." Dickens explained.
Williams tried hard to look nonchalant. In the old days, in time of great need, we used to raise Bantam Battalions, of men who were otherwise too small and short to make the peacetime height requirement. Stroppy little fighters, too. But surely this is overdoing it?
"We recruits dwarfs, see, by treaty with the Low King. It does help that he's a Llamedos boy himself, King Rhys. We gets the second and third sons who are not going to inherit the family mine, we gives them a sound military training and maybe a bit of active service, and they goes back as trained experienced men to King Rhys, who he can rely on for his army. It all works out, see."
"Er… excused shaving, are they?"
"You try to make them! We yad a young officer here who was not up to speed with dwarf culture, one of the Rusts, and he tried to enforce shaving."
Dickens made a sad tutting noise.
"We yad us a mutiny, see, and Captain Rust did not last long as a human officer in charge of dwarfs. There has to be respect, see, and the Rust family is loud at demanding it for themselves. They have just not got the knack of giving it to others where it is called for. Unfortunately, a lot of them becomes Army officers and we sergeants has to manage that."
Williams nodded and was just about to add that he'd seen one or two himself, when the first company of Dwarfs swept past them, their sergeant calling for "Eyes Right!" as he saluted.
Dickens nodded.
"A good lad, Sergeant ap Ifor" he said. "You will get to like those lovely boys, Sergeant. Just wait and see!"
"They're used as skirmishers?"
Williams had a vague memory that the Napoleonic infantry line was preceded by a line of light infantry, tasked with tripping any ambushes and scouting ahead for trouble.
"They go ahead and clears the way, aye. Not much wants to stick around a line of Dwarfs with those axes!"
"I can believe it!"
Dickens appeared to sniff the air.
"Well, we'd better take our places with HQ Company, mun. Service is about to start and the Regiment is marching into position on the square. I has to be there and watch, see it's done right."
It was the RSM's job, after all.
"Er… Mr Dickens, you talked about the padre's field altar just now.."
"The portable field altar what all those trolls was carrying to the square?"
The one that took sixteen enormous trolls to port, yes…
"What religion are you?"
Dickens clapped Williams on the back.
"Reformed Druidism, boy. You'll get the hang of it when you've seen the service!"
"Oh.." Williams said. It was a long way from the austere grey stone chapel that gave Capel Curig its name, and from the strict-rule Sabbatarian Christianity of home.
He was about to get further proof of exactly how far away he was from home.
Powell and Williams hit on a plan in the early Sunday morning. They had watched with some suppressed glee as the Parkie, full of self-importance and pomp, had stomped up to his personal hut, a short, broad man with a meticulously trimmed moustache under his peaked cap of office. A few minutes later, he was running out again, puce with rage, demanding of a luckless underkeeper to know who the bloody Hells had been in my bloody hut, the thieving bastards have had everything! It wasn't you, was it, Jenkins? I tell you, their thieving lives won't be worth living… don't just stand there, man, get the Watch! No, I'll go and get the Watch! And he stomped off again, down the road to the gate, full of affronted purpose.
"Who needs TV?" whispered Fusilier Williams, smiling contentedly.
"Well, we needs civvie clothes." said Powell. "We still got some local money, and we will need more scran soon. We cannot go to the shop in this, they'll be looking out for these uniforms."
So while Powell guarded the weapons cache, Williams, by common consent the betteer sneak-thief of the two, discreetly crawled off to look for unguarded washing lines. Soon he was back with an armful of clothing.
"Shirts and trousers, mun. Some is bound to fit!"
A little later in the morning, Powell, by joint consent the man who could best rough-house it in a fight, went to get a newspaper and some more food. To his mild surprise, the park was filling up more that you might expect for a Sunday. And something he hadn't seen in life, only in cartoons – soap-boxes with makeshift lecterns were springing up, and assorted self-important people were hanging around assessing how the crowd was building up. They looked like the sort of long-lean, slightly eccentric people who were so bursting with something to say, or perhaps lectures to deliver or a point of view to impose, that they were driven to go out and say it in public. A man in a long frock-coat with unkempt hair and wildly staring eyes was refreshing himself from notes. It looked to Powell as if the crowd was gathering here in search of both entertainment, and, in some obscure way, reassurance.
The crowd looked like an audience for The Good Old Days(1), he reflected. Only not so impeccably turned out. Not usually an introspective or reflective man, Powell wondered. Had they slipped back a century or so when the bomb blew? Been travelled in time, like in Doctor Who? And if so, where was the flaming Tardis?
Powell passed a group of even more deranged-looking individuals clustered round a banner that said A.M.U.F.O.R.A. in big letters. Anoraks had not been a part of normal Edwardian costume(2) , but these people seemed to exude the essence of anorak-ness. Snatches of conversation about But he descriptions suggest Nordics and not Greys and When do you think the alien mothership will reveal itself? Drifted over to him. They completely ignored the heavily-built thuggish looking man in clean but ill-fitting clothes who passed their stall.
Powell noticed, here and there, silent figures in black who were watching the crowd. They had an air of secret policemen about them – coppers never could get the hang of inobtrusively mingling. Powell decided not to give them a chance to look twice at him, but they seemed disinterested.
A ratty little man in a battered brown overcoat was trying to sell things from a tray slung round his neck.
Getcha alien ray guns here! Fun toys for the kids! Getchor alien dolls! Evil little grey men from space! Dollar each, and that's cutting me own throat! Also sausage-inna-bun!
Powell grinned. He'd tried the sausage-inna-bun and dubious burgers vendors like that sold from trays outside Stradey and the Arms Park. They tasted like nothing in Wales, but mum, the big match atmosphere made you want one and then to go back for more even knowing the first was a turdburger. Men like this had a sales knack…
"Sir! You look like a man who appreciates the value of a good comestible!"
The ratty little trader had noticed Powell. Who now had to interact with him. Powell sniffed the air. Ach y fey, those smells of frying onions and nameless meats were both nauseating and hunger-inducing. Worst, it was bringing back nostalgic memories of Barry Island, where he'd lost his virginity underneath a fairground ride and celebrated afterwards by buying the girl a dinner, well, a hot-dog, but with everything on, mind, no stinting, from a trader not unlike this… Dibbler?
"No thanks, mun." he said, remembering the lecture about native food in foreign postings. You never knew what was in it nor how well it was cooked. The M.O. had been clear that if you got delhi belly from the local scran, it was as good as a self-inflicted, in his opinion.
"You can help, though. We..I'm.. just in from Llamedos (he felt proud of himself for remembering the local name for Wales) and there seems to be some sort of big thing on. Festival, is it?"
The trader looked both ways. Then he said, in a low voice
"Apparently, we bin invaded by aliens from space overnight. Everyone you ask tells you a different story, apparently there's some fearsome thing at the Lady Sybil Hospital what is made out of needle-sharp teeth and it's got acid for blood, and it eats people and it's on the loose. Laid its egg inside an Igor, according to this orderly I know up the hospital!"
Powell nodded, sagely. He'd seen Alien. The video was a great hit at the Shirt Factory.
"And some intrepid ballsy lady who takes no shit from any man is hunting it down, right?" he asked.
"You mean Miss Smith-Rhodes from the Assassins' Guild?" Dibbler inquired. "Nah, she'd try to capture it alive and put it in her Zoo. People'd pay big dollar to see it, too! My betting is they'll put Miss Band on the case."
"Miss Band?" SHE can't be here too, surely?
"Miss Alice Band. From the Guild. Now THERE'S a killer if ever you met one! She'll rip its head off and spit stronger acid down the hole, in my opinion."
Bloody hell. She is here too.
"Anyway, other people swear the aliens is little grey men what have travelled infinite oceans of space to come here and stick ice-cold metal probes up our bums."
Dibbler looked puzzled for a second.
"Beats me why they should want to do that, although I concede it might be a hit down the Blue Cat Club. Don't ask."
"And other people?"
"Well, the newspapers was full of it this morning. Caused a panic, see. Some people is trying to get OUT of the city and evacuate to somewhere safer, but they're the exciteable ones".
Dibbler snorted, derisively, at the weaknesses of foreigners.
You knows, immigrants. Klatchians, Ephebians, Howondalandians, and so on. And a lot of other people is coming out on the streets to watch and see what happens next. Big crowd here, but they say an even bigger one's out in Sator Square and the Broadways, outside the Patrician's Palace. People are thinking if the aliens are going to materialise their spaceship above the Palace and blast it into oblivion with a superpowered death beam, right, they want to be there and cheer. Especially if His Lordship's inside, though I've never said a word agin Lord Vetinari, ever."
Dibbler lowered his voice again.
"They say three of the Aliens were captured alive, guv. Some sort of futuristic soldiers with weapons that can blast anything into dust. They say the captured aliens are at the Palace now. But what I think is, right, how can futuristic killing machines let themselves be taken alive by us? I bet they're reading their demands to Vetinari right now!"
Powell considered this.
"Just in time for the mothership to materialise above the Palace and blast it into dust, then, with their own people inside forcing a surrender."
Something about Powell must have made Dibbler uneasy.
"Is that all, guv? Things to sell…"
"You've been a great help, butty bach. One last thing – is there anywhere open to buy the papers on a Sunday morning?"
"If you don't see a street seller, guv, you can try the Laughing Falafel, Klatchistan Take-Away and All Nite Grocery, just round the corner on the Soake. Out the gate and sharp right, corner of Dimwell!"
"Thanks!"
"Don't mention it… Sausage inna bun! Alien dolls! Model blaster ray-gun pistols!"
And as news from Ankh-Morpork sank in, panic hit the streets of Quirm and Pseudopolis.
Some people armed themselves for a last stand against the marauding aliens. Many, many, others fled the cities, on foot, in coaches, in wagons, some even streaming towards Ankh-Morpork. Soon they would meet those Ankh-Morporkians who had elected to flee themselves.
Stolid farmer Dan Archer, head of the Guild of Farmers, and his friend Walter Gabriel stood at the roadside watching the throng of refugees pass, and making a mental note to get some of the handier lads together as a local militia to patrol the fields, as those bloody townies were going to start to get hungry soon and we've got a cabbage harvest to defend.
"Big bulbous bodies mounting death-ray gonnes. On top of a fifty-foot tripod. You don't say, me old booty?" Walter repeated, slowly, as a panicked refugee gabbled it out. He pictured it in his head. Something like that iconographer fellow's tripod, with the picture box on top, only scaled up…
He shook his head.
"That sounds a bit top-heavy to me" he said, finally. The moment un starts going up or down a hill, that'un's going to fall over, you mark my words. And how does a tripod walk?"
A long-ago memory, Dan and Walter tied together for the village school's three-legged race, unable to coordinate and falling over every third step. Walter shook his head.
As the refugees streamed past, Dan looked Hubwards in the direction of Ankh-Morpork. There was a complete lack of massive explosions and ungovernable fires on the horizon.
Walter just looked downwards.
"Tripods." he repeated. "Only good on the flat. A lot of weight on three pointy legs so 'un sinks into soft ground under its own weight. They'll have to stick to the roads, Dan, me old darling. And I'd like to see how 'un copes with THIS!"
He pointed wordlessly down at the cattle grid under their feet. Dan and Walter grinned at each other and at the foibles of townies.
Powell came back from his shopping trip carrying the newspapers and provisions designed to keep for a few days. The crowd had thickened and he was hard put to get back to the hide without anyone noticing: but he detoured and mimed the action of taking a covet piss against the back wall, at which point he was accorded the usual dignity of heads turning away, and inquisitive youth having its ear clipped by affronted mothers.
"Cor bloody hellfire!" said Williams, who was scanning the Ankh-Morpork Octeday Inquirer. The red-top's headlines and coverage were even more lurid than the Times. From over in the Park, speakers were alternatively demanding something be done about the alien peril, or inviting our brothers and sisters in space to come down and teach us wisdom, to burn away the old ways and usher in a New Age. Ankh-Morpork people, ever in search of new and inventive street theatre, were cheering them on or booing as the fancy took them.
"All this for us" Powell mused, softly. "Makes you feel proud, dun't it, mun?"
"It does. It does. Here! It says that the officer in charge of the aliens is believed to have been taken prisoner and is at the Palace being held incommunicado. During his arrest this dangerous alien is believed to have been responsible for two deaths with his death-dealing ray-gun."
"Nah. Can't be Mr Holtack. Everyone knows he cannot shoot straight. " objected Powell.
"Unless he was aiming for some other two. You never know with him."
"Wonder how he's getting on there? Duw, this Lord Vetinari sounds like a real bastard!"
They settled down to discreetly watch the show, resisting the temptation to smoke cigarettes, as smoke is visible, but sucking boiled sweets to pass the time.
"And some of these alien space-troopers are still loose in our city!" A speaker thundered his disgrace.
"Dead right, mun!" said Powell. He grinned, and made himself more comfortable on the stolen blanket. This was turning out to be highly entertaining.
The three races that made up the Regiment stood at ease, ranged by companies, along three sides of a square. The work-detail of troll soldiers swung a three-ton trilithon atop the two uprights, then fell out to rejoin the Heavy Company.
Dressed in white clerical robes and the traditional bardic cap, Captain the Very Reverend Hugh apOwain tied the golden rope belt firmly about his waist, checked with his eye that the long low altar slab was perfectly aligned between and before the two uprights, and stepped forward to begin Holy Communion. The gold of the ritual sickle gleamed at his waist, opposed by the dull silver of the sacrificial knife.
Sergeant Williams stood with the NCO's and officers of Headquarters Company, wondering if he was going to enjoy this. He was vaguely aware none of the officers had even noticed an extra Sergeant was parading with them: that at least was a blessing, if not unexpected. A thread of his birth-Christianity flapped loose. Could he go to Hell for attending a pagan ritual? But that's at Home, right. Jesus never said his mission was to anywhere else but Planet Earth. I mean, He never said "when I've wrapped this one up, guys, I'm due on Alpha Centurai next week". And I have every reason to believe I'm on a different planet. Where the rules are different and I'm probably the only Christian. God will understand. I hope.
He recalled RSM Dickens saying "Things will not be as they seem at first glance. Just watch closely." and decided this was another test. Important not to react, then. Just do as the others do.
Dickens strode forwards, exchanged a nod with the white clad Druid, then stamped to attention.
REGIMENT! Regiment – SHUN!
Nine hundred feet stamped to attention, several large heavy troll ones slightly behind the rest.
Remove – HEADGEAR!
In the silence, a harp started to play. Its harmonics suggested that while it was a happy harp now, it could explore further down the register and really give your bowels something to worry about. Williams became aware of a procession starting in its way across the square. It was headed by an ornately dressed goat and its handler, a bearded pioneer-sergeant with a shouldered axe. Two other pioneer sergeants made up the escort. Between them… between them walked a girl. Petite and dark-haired, she was practically barefoot, wearing only thin ballerina pumps of some sort, and a long thin white shift. Her hair was garlanded with white flowers and mistletoe. Unusually for soldiers, the fact the dress left little to imagination was not provoking wolf-whistles and happy catcalls. Indeed, there was a palpable aura of reverence on the air..
Williams watched the procession wend its way towards and to one side of the altar. The girl stepped forwards and, without fear or trepidation, laid down on the altar, two of the pioneer sergeants making a play of tying her hands and feet.
Isn't that Sian Nash, our company clerk? Williams wondered, recognising a strong likeness. If it isn't, she's got a body double over here!
Williams remembered little of the service. The Padre made a sermon about the Four Forces, about charm and persuasion and bloody-mindedness and uncertainty, which between them keep the world spinning.
But what came next…
Wiliams remembered the knife raising in the Druid's hands. The look of almost bored indifference in the girl's eyes, and the moment where she seemed to remember she had to show a little fear.
Then the knife descended. Red spurted everywhere, and her body jerked and convulsed and was still . He fought to keep a straight face. Ritual sacrifice? Eight hundred voices roared "Belenos!" at the moment of death, which unconcerted Williams. He made up his mind – he'd never been that devout a Christian in the first place – and recollected that the traditional fate for lone Christians trying to oppose paganism was generally the best seat in the house the next time they burnt a Wicker Man.(3) Or the warmest, at least…
And then the Padre was delivering a blessing, red dripping from his fingers, and the troops were falling out, back to their barracks…
"Bit of an eye-opener, was that?" said Sergeant Owen, sympathetically. "I remember it took me the wrong way too, at first, till I was in on the secret. "
Williams nodded, weakly.
"Let's enlighten our guest, shall we, Sergeant Owen?"
He led the way across the square to the altar.
"A fine sermon, Padre!" he said, conversationally. The Druid grinned through his beard.
"I tell you, Dai, it's a bugger on the white robes. Gives the laundry a hell of a job. But you have to make a spectacle of it."
Williams looked puzzled.
"You will be the new man?" asked the Druid, holding out a hand. "I heard about you people! The trouble you is causing in town!"
"Can I get up now, sir?" a bored and slightly disgruntled voice said from the altar. "This stone is bloody cold, you could think of warming it up first!"
Williams looked down. The sacrifice was very much alive and tapping one of her feet impatiently. But she was still soaked in red… he looked back to where the Druid chaplain was grinning and pushing the retractable blade back into the handle.
"Gets a bit expensive in young women , else." He said. And even in this town you can't exactly put an advert in the post office window, saying Young Female Sacrifices Needed, should not make plans for Monday."
"So you're not asking for virgins any more, Hugh?"
"In this town? So the way we look at it in Reform Druidism, see, we have no objections to a symbolic virgin on the altar. Symbolising young womanhood and the first person of the Moon Goddess in purely mimetic and representative terms. We just makes the sacrifice a purely symbolic and mimetic one as well. The Moon Goddess don't seem to mind, Sian here gets to go out on Saturday nights, everyone's happy!"(4)
"Yes, but can I get up now, sir?"
"Oh, right, OK, Sian, jolly good show as always!"
The girl got off the slab and waas given a coat to put over herself. Williams couldn't help himself.
"Sian Nash?" he asked.
"Indeed I am. Sergeant."
"Company clerk, boyo" said Dickens. "We're a forward-looking regiment in many ways, and we have a few ladies on the rolls. Shape up well, too!"
"I know a Sian Nash on my world, too" Williams said. "Like you, she is a company clerk to an Army unit."
"I bet she doesn't get ritually sacrificed three times every Lunar cycle." Said the Discworld Sian.
"Three?"
"One week I gets to rest." she said. "It's unlawful to sacrifice a menstruating woman." She put her coat on and asked if she was dismissed, sir.
Williams reddened slightly.
Then the messenger came for Dickens. He saluted and handed over a written order.
The RSM read the slip of paper, and nodded.
"We is on standby, gentlemen. Civil unrest inside and outside the City. Just in case the Watch cannot cope. Sergeant Williams, you have particular experience in dealing with rioting crowds? I may need that expertise. You came here at the right time, it seems!"
And outside, the crowds in the streets built up further. The Palace Guards ringed the Patrician's palace with men and a show of force, supplemented by what Watchmen and Dark Clerks were available. The Wizards kept a wary eye on the crowd building in Sator Square. But for every Guard, every Watchman, every Dark Clerk and Wizard, there were ten people in the crowd outside…
(1) A long-running BBC television show, from the period Variety Theatre in Leeds, which every week replicated an Edwardian music hall form the early 1900's with acts to match. Both entertainers – and crucially, the audience – were in period costume to reinforce the illusion of having stepped back to 1905.
(2) Apart from Captain Scott's Antarctic expedition, so they had an excuse…
(3) And that had been a police sergeant, who had previously renounced the temptation of Britt Ekland in the nude…. Ref. film The Wicker Man.
(4) The concept of the recyclable virgin was fast catching on in modern reform druidism. The Rev. ap Owain, like many Druid priests, got the kit from Boffo, on Tenth Egg Street:
Authentic Sacrificial Knife with retractable blade! Reservoir of fake blood in the handle*, up to one pint, flows like real, guaranteed washes out of white robes! For the cynical Druid who knows how hard it is to find a genuine young woman of unblemished character! Approved by 33% of all Moon Goddesses everywhere!
* Available separately.