"I can't see any invis - " Strappi began, and stopped.
"Just let him, all right?" said Jackrum. "It's one of their funny little ways."
"Dun't seem right," muttered Strappi. "Practically treason..."
"Can't see why it'd be wrong just to give the old girl a wash," said the sergeant shortly. "Next. Oh..."
Igor, after carefully wiping the stained picture and giving it a perfunctory peck, came and stood next to Polly, giving her a sheepish grin. But she was watching the next recruit.
He was short and quite slim, which was fairly usual in a country where it was rare to get enough food to make you fat. But he was dressed in black and expensively, like an aristocrat; he even had a sword. The sergeant was, therefore, looking worried. Clearly a man could get into trouble talking wrong to a nob who might have important friends.
"You sure you've come to the right place, sir?" he said.
"Yes, sergeant. I wish to enlist."
Sergeant Jackrum shifted uneasily. "Yes, sir, but I'm not sure a gentleman like you - "
"Are you going to enlist me or not, sergeant?"
"Not usual for a gentleman to enlist as a common soldier, sir," mumbled the sergeant.
"What you mean, sergeant, is: is anyone after me? Is there a price on my head? And the answer is no."
"How about a mob with pitchforks?" said Corporal Strappi. "He's a bloody vampire, sarge! Anyone can see that! He's a Black Ribboner! Look, he's got the badge!"
"Which says 'Not One Drop'," said the young man calmly. "Not one drop of human blood, sergeant. A prohibition I have accepted for almost two years, thanks to the League of Temperance. Of course, if you have a personal objection, sergeant, you only need to give it to me in writing."
Which was quite a clever thing to say, Polly thought. Those clothes cost serious money. Most of the vampire families were highly nobby. You never knew who was connected to who... not just connected to who, in fact, but to whom. Whoms were likely to be far more trouble than your common everyday who. The sergeant was looking down a mile of rough road.
"Got to move with the times, corporal," he said, deciding not to go there. "And we certainly need the men."
"Yeah, but s'posin' he wants to suck all my blood out in the middle of the night?" said Strappi.
"Well, he'll just have to wait until Private Igor's finished looking for your brain, won't he?" snapped the sergeant. "Sign here, mister."
The pen scratched on the paper. After a minute or two the vampire turned the paper over and continued writing on the other side. Vampires had long names.
"But you can call me Maladict," he said, dropping the pen back in the inkwell.
"Thank you very much, I must say, si - private. Give him the shilling, corporal. Good job it's not a silver one, eh? Haha!"
"Yes," said Maladict. "It is."
"Next!" said the sergeant. Polly watched as a farm boy, breeches held up with string, shuffled in front of the table and looked at the quill pen with the resentful perplexity of those confronted with new technology.
She turned back to the bar. The landlord glared at her in the manner of bad landlords everywhere. As her father always said, if you kept an inn you either liked people or went mad. Oddly enough, some of the mad ones were the best at looking after their beer. But by the smell of the place, this wasn't one of those.
She leaned on the bar. "Pint, please," she said, and watched glumly as the man gave a scowl of acknowledgement and turned to the big barrels. It'll be sour, she knew, with the slop bucket under the tap tipped back in every night, and the spigot not put back, and... yes, it was going to be served in a leather tankard that had probably never been washed.
A couple of new recruits were already knocking back their pints, though, with every audible sign of enjoyment. But this was Pl¨¹n, after all. Anything that made you forget you were there was probably worth drinking.
One of them said, "Lovely pint, this, eh?" and the boy next to him belched and said, "Best I've tasted, yeah."
Polly sniffed at the tankard. The contents smelled like something she wouldn't feed to pigs. She took a sip, and completely changed her opinion. She would feed it to pigs. Those lads have never tasted beer before, she told herself. It's like dad said. Out in the country there's lads who'd join up for an uninhabited pair of breeches. And they'll drink this muck and pretend to enjoy it like men, hey up, we supped some stuff last night, eh, lads? And then next thing -
Oh, lor'... that reminded her. What'd the privy be like here? The men's one out in the yard back at home was bad enough. Polly sloshed two big pails of water into it every morning while trying not to breathe. There was weird green moss growing on the slate floor. And The Duchess was a good inn. It had customers who took their boots off before going to bed.
She narrowed her eyes. This stupid fool in front of her, a man making one long eyebrow do the work of two, was serving them slops and foul vinegar just before they marched off to war -