These fanfic ideas keep popping into my head! I'd really appreciate a review, particularly if you have suggestions for how I could improve my writing. (Sure, no one likes criticism, but I'd rather not be lied to with "Oh this is fantastic" stuff.) By the way, the title is from Michal Towber's lyrics.
And Monstrous Regiment, Discworld, all characters, and all stuff are copyright Terry Pratchett. NOT ME. sob Come to think of it, Michal's lyrics belong to her and NOT ME…please, I need a hug…grin
No Amount of Fire
Lieutenant Polly Perks lay in her uncomfortable milit'ry bed thinking uncomfortable milit'ry thoughts.
It had, actually, been something of a stroke of luck that as soon as that silly war with Prince Heinrich was resolved – and, oh yes, it had ended pretty quickly on account of him being a dunderhead – Polly had returned home as a newly-promoted lieutenant and had a quick break. A few months later, somebody started terrorizing Munz. Polly seriously hoped it wasn't Tonker and Lofty, considering the amount of burning the attacks involved; however, Polly absolutely did not think that they had returned. Not only that, but she was sure she'd know if one of them worked in a place nearby – a more sure sign of the pair being the perpetrators – and they had not. Especially not anywhere that had burned.
No, this definitely smelled like someone else's work. Of course, no one had a clue who the guilty party could be – for once, Borogravia wasn't at war, and the town was most certainly not at war alone. Polly, because she was here in the town already, had eagerly volunteered to help protect Munz with her own voluntary local regiment stationed on the outskirts. If any burning buildings or assassinated officials came to attention her regiment was to attempt to track down the enemy "pack" – there was, obviously, more than one of them. Five buildings could not be set on fire in five different parts of town at one time by one person.
Just then, an impatient person pounded on the door.
"Come in," Polly said without opening her eyes. She'd gotten fairly comfortable around her regiment – if they didn't disrespect their authority in any way, she was happy not to appear stiff and…well…authority-ish.
"Door's locked, Pol," came a familiar muffled voice from the other side. "Um…this is really important."
"Comingberightthere," Polly told Maladicta through the door. Mal had been promoted to sergeant and fortunately had not been made to separate from Polly's regiment, though that is a separate story. Not that Polly was thinking about it, because instead, Polly was being surprised by how foggy she felt after closing her eyes and not even sleeping.
"There's people around here," said Maladicta urgently as Polly opened the door.
Polly glanced past the vampire's shoulder into another room where the soldiers dozed in the dark and mumbled, "There's lots of people here, Mal."
The vampire grinned, this sarcasm being one of her own brands of humor, but said seriously, "No. There's someone – er, several someones, actually – sneaking around down below, and they've got fire."
"Oh. Ohhhhh." Polly jolted awake. It wouldn't be wise to ignore a vampire. They were so much more in-tune than the average Borogravian…
"Right. Well, then, better rustle everyone up…ATTENTION!" Polly hissed the last word loudly – a kind of stage whisper. Best not to alert the enemy of their defense abilities. All the recruits lifted their heads, accustomed to these awakenings and perfectly conscious of the kicking they'd get if further sleep were attempted.
"Prowlers downstairs," said Polly in a commanding but not unfriendly voice. "Grab your weapons and check out the windows first…"
Everyone plus the nurse-Igor crowded to the windows. The regiment was now about half male, half female. They weren't supposed to be together long, seeing as the only object was to guard against these terrorists until the terrorists were caught, but the whole regiment was gradually becoming more comfortable with its mixed genders.
What everyone saw, upon looking down – gradually and carefully, of course, not shoving their faces in the windows – was a man's posterior, with fire toward his anterior, right below the little building.
"Turkey guano," groaned Maladicta. "It's Strappi."
"But of course," said Polly, maliciously glad it was him rather than some anonymous face. "He's come to get revenge on us – he's been kicked out of the military. Good riddance to them."
"Yeah he did!" said a brown-haired girl from behind. "I don't remember the whole story…something made me think he's a total prat…"
"Well, you're right," said Mal. "Are we going to ruin his fun or what?"
"Of course," Polly grinned again. She and everyone else kept their voices low. "Take your weapons and your shields and your most important supplies and go downstairs. Do not stray from the building." Polly, followed by her coffee-toting vampire sergeant, filed out immediately behind the creeping recruits. None of the stairs creaked because the wooden shelter – open to the elements downstairs, protected upstairs with a lookout on the roof – was brand-new.
"There are more of them, you know," said Maladicta. "Lurking. In the woods."
"Thought so," growled Polly darkly. Polly saw her regiment nearly face-to-cheek with Strappi's rear; he was stooping to light something else on fire.
"Strappi," said Polly imperiously from behind the small crowd.
Strappi bounced – that's really what he looked like – he bounced up immediately and gave a startled look behind. Then he regained his composure. "Ah. Private Parts."
Polly sent an arrow at him, but too late; Strappi had seen her draw it and had plenty of time to move. Polly saw a bunch of angry-looking people – he's got minions, she realized – leave the woods.
"These are mutual friends of Prince Heinrich and me," said Strappi too smoothly. "They may have been prisoners of war, but now they're helping me. You see, Lieutenant, we all want revenge…you ruined my – " Strappi stopped short, having to duck a few more arrows. It was then that he caught sight of Maladicta lurking behind the crowd.
"Aha, you too," Strappi seemed to relish his words. He's not right in the head anymore, Polly observed. He's lost it because he lost all his prestige…
Just then, from the badly-organized pack on his back, Strappi took out a pointy wooden stake that would have looked dangerous even to someone who wasn't a vampire.
"Fire," he said casually to those behind him, and Polly realized that there were more than two or three. He had over twelve followers, and she had eight in her regiment – counting Sgt. Maladicta and herself. Behind her, the fire on the shelter was roaring and she wordlessly gestured her troops off to the side.
At the first sign of movement from Polly's regiment, Strappi's cronies attacked. The regiment defended itself easily without doing major damage to anyone; Polly could see that Strappi had thrown together a fairly shoddy army with cheap weapons. It would probably be unfair to hurt them much, and killing unnecessarily still made Polly's skin crawl. Across the battleground and in front of the burning building, Strappi seemed focused more on Maladicta than anyone else. Because the only enemy she really seemed to need to worry about was Strappi, Polly waded over to the dueling Strappi and vampire.
Fortunately Maladicta owned a cutlass and kept Strappi at a distance. He had one too, though – he was the only one in his regiment with a blade, in fact. Polly's lads and ladies were holding his men at bay fairly easily.
"Badly planned, Strap," she called to the insane man who was now attempting to disable the sergeant enough to attack her with the stake. Mal wouldn't back down, but she did keep shooting frightened glances at the stake. Polly raced forward, but Strappi forced Maladicta toward the fire with cutlass and stake and danced back, away from Polly's rage. Polly knocked the tip of her cutlass on his own and swept it away from him.
"You little – " Strappi began to rage, but Mal cut the wooden stake with her own cutlass. He turned his head to glare as she grinned toothily. Taking one surprising risk, he clenched his teeth, threw the remaining half of the stake at Polly's head, and pushed her legs toward the building. She fell backwards with him into the cellar; all around them, fire was burning, burning, burning, consuming the house. Polly's regiment – who seemed to have scared off the nearly weaponless intruders – and Maladicta poked their heads over the side. Strappi began to eagerly climb up the bricks of the side, but Mal had her boot on his face and he fell backwards right into a burning sack of cereal.
This was interesting, for although Mal did sort of want to kill him, she had not intended to do it, at least then.
Polly was still on the ground when Mal and the rest of the regiment got down there and poked her with their boots. She opened her eyes.
"What are you guys doing?" she asked blearily. "It's dangerous down here." The heat was nearly unbearable.
"Well duh," said Maladicta. "I didn't ask them to come, and as for me – " she smirked – "I'm harder to kill than you are."
Polly was helped by her friends up the basement wall. The building was now burning nearly to the ground.
"Where did everyone else go?" she asked after a while.
"I think they abandoned the crazy man when he started losing, sir. They thought they had no hope against us anyway, sir," said the brown-haired girl, looking very proud. "We didn't even have to hurt anyone in front of them. They couldn't get near us, sir."
Polly sat and caught her breath in the chill night air for a second, well removed from the fire, then said, "We'll have to go back to headquarters in town and sleep there…unless everyone wants to go home?" No one really did. Most of their houses were a mile or two farther at least than the headquarters were from the burning shelter.
Two hours later, around one in the morning, when everyone had finally arrived and settled into beds, Polly came into the main sitting room and sat on a bench next to Sergeant Maladict, who was greedily downing her third cup of coffee.
"I'm not sleepy," she said matter-of-factly.
Polly glanced at the coffee. "Of course you're not."
"Well, I was threatened by a psycho with a wooden stake! You think I'm going to sleep for a week after that? And let's not go into the fact that I'm a creature of the night." Then she turned to Polly, looking very smug. "But we beat him. Why didn't you give him a kick to the socks?"
Polly giggled before realizing how much she disliked sounding – well – prissy. "I didn't have a chance. I was either stunned on the ground or – or not close enough."
"Aha." They sat in silence for a moment. "Thanks for getting in his way, Pol. We're such a great team! I bet we'd be even better if our enemies didn't involve stakes. Or silver bullets, for that matter…"
"No. Thank you for getting him away from me. And coming into the burning building."
"I'm not so mean I'd leave someone in a burning building, you know. Except maybe Strappi."
"But still…he wasn't that fierce…"
"I'm aware of that, but stakes still freak me out. They're just…one of those fears. Don't you have one of those? Like bugs or high places or clowns. I know someone who used to worry about fish way too much – "
Polly glanced at the vampire and said "Ummmm…no, actually. Most of what I'm really afraid of isn't…objects or people. They can easily be beaten."
"Oh."
Honestly, Polly wasn't tired either. She had too much adrenaline for one night, and it would be embarrassing for the headquarters managers to come out and find the lieutenant dozing against the wall. Plus, she was in the middle of a conversation – a wordless conversation for the time being. No one had spoken for about a minute.
Before she could talk herself out of it any further, Polly whipped around to the side and gave Maladicta a really, really big hug (incidentally, vampires are cool but not cold, some are soft, and cloaks don't get in the way). Plus she planted a kiss on the shoulder just for good measure. Then she immediately withdrew to the other side of her bench, completely embarrassed. But hey, she'd done it…and after tonight's events, she thought, what if I had never gotten the chance?
"Whoa – it's about time," came a strong but soft – touched? – voice from Polly's side. There was coffee sloshed on the floor. Polly dared to look, and Maladicta was giving her a familiar penetrating toothy smirk. It may have been gentler than usual. The vampire slid closer to Polly on the bench and asked, "Where did that come from?"
Struggling for words, Polly finally answered, "Well, I am afraid of losing…friends, family, you know, people I care about."
"But you were the one who almost burned."
"Yes, but you were threatened with a wooden stake."
"Yes, but Strappi probably couldn't aim for coffee beans…"
"Stop it! Anyway, whichever of us died…"
And the next morning they woke up against each other's shoulders. None of the recruits dared to disturb them.