Polly buttoned up the breeches with a sense of exhilaration. She felt she’d crossed a bridge, a sensation that was helped by the realization that she’d kept her feet dry.

Someone said, “Psst!”

It was just as well she’d already taken a leak. Panic instantly squeezed every muscle. Where were they hiding? This was just a rotten old shed! Oh, there were a few cubicles, but the smell alone suggested very strongly that the woods outside would be a much better proposition. Even on a wild night. Even with extra wolves.

“Yes?” she quavered, and then cleared her throat and demanded, with a little more gruffness: “Yes?”

“You’ll need these,” whispered the voice. In the fetid gloom she made out something rising over the top of a cubicle. She reached up nervously and touched softness. It was a bundle of wool. Her fingers explored it.

“A pair of socks?” she said.

“Right. Wear ’em,” said the mystery voice hoarsely.

“Thank you, but I’ve brought several pairs…” Polly began.

There was a faint sigh. “No. Not on your feet. Shove ’em down the front of your trousers.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look,” said the whisperer patiently, “you don’t bulge where you shouldn’t bulge. That’s good. But you don’t bulge where you should bulge, either. You know? Lower down?”

“Oh! Er… I… but… I didn’t think people noticed…” said Polly, glowing with embarrassment. She’d been spotted! But there was no hue and cry, no angry quotations from the Book of Nuggan. Someone was helping. Someone who had seen her…

“It’s a funny thing,” said the voice, “but they notice what’s missing more than they notice what’s there. Just one pair, mark you. Don’t get ambitious.”

Polly hesitated. “Um… is it obvious?” she said.

“No. That’s why I gave you the socks.”

“I meant that… that I’m not… that I’m…”

“Not really,” said the voice in the dark. “You’re pretty good. You come over as a frightened young lad trying to look big and brave. You might pick your nose a bit more often. Just a tip. Few things interest a young man more than the contents of his nostrils. Now I’ve got a favour to ask you in return.”

I didn’t ask you for one, Polly thought, quite annoyed at being taken for being a frightened young lad when she was sure she’d come over as quite a cool, non-ruffled young lad. But she said calmly: “What is it?”

“Got any paper?”

Wordlessly, Polly pulled “From the Mothers of Borogravia!!” out of her shirt and handed it up. She heard the sound of a match striking, and a sulphurous smell which only improved the general conditions.

“Why, is this the escutcheon of her grace the Duchess I see in front of me?” said the whisperer. “Well, it won’t be in front of me for long. Beat it… boy.”

Polly hurried out into the night, shocked, dazed, confused and almost asphyxiated, and made it to the shed door. But she’d barely shut it behind her and was still blinking in the blackness when it was thrust open again, to let in the wind, rain and Corporal Strappi.

“All right, all right! Hands off… well, you lot wouldn’t be able to find ’em… and on with socks! Hup hup hi ho hup hup…”

Bodies were suddenly springing up or falling over all round Polly. Their muscles must have been obeying the voice directly, because no brain could have got into gear that quickly. Corporal Strappi, in obedience to the law of non-commissioned officers, responded by making the confusion more confusing.

“Good grief, a lot of old women could shift better’n you!” he shouted with satisfaction as people flailed around looking for coats and boots. “Fall in! Get shaved! Every man in the regiment to be clean shaven, by order! Get dressed! Wazzer, I’ve got my eye on you! Move! Move! Breakfast in five minutes! Last one there doesn’t get a sausage! Oh deary me, what a bloody shower!”

The four lesser horsemen of Panic, Bewilderment, Ignorance and Shouting took control of the room, to Corporal Strappi’s obscene glee. Polly, though, ducked out of the door, pulled a small tin mug out of her pack, dipped it into a water butt, balanced it on an old barrel behind the inn, and started to shave.

She’d practised this, too. The secret was in the old cut-throat razor that she’d carefully blunted. After that, it was all in the shaving brush and soap. Get a lot of lather on, shave a lot of lather off, and you’d had a shave, hadn’t you? Must have done, sir, feel how smooth the skin is…

She was halfway through when a voice by her ear screamed: “What d’you think you’re doing, Private Parts?”

It was just as well the blade was blunt.

“Perks, sir!” she said, rubbing her nose. “I’m shaving, sir! It’s Perks, sir!”

“Sir? Sir? I’m not a sir, Parts, I’m a bloody corporal, Parts. That means you calls me ‘corporal’, Parts. And you are shaving in an official regimental mug, Parts, what you have not been issued with, right? You a deserter, Parts?”

“No, s– corporal!”

“A thief, then?”

“No, corporal!”

“Then how come you got a bloody mug, Parts?”

“Got it off a dead man, sir– corporal!”

Strappi’s voice, pitched to a scream in any case, became a screech of rage.

“You’re a looter?”

“No, corporal! The soldier…”

…had died almost in her arms, on the floor of the inn.

There had been half a dozen men in that party of returning heroes. They must have been trekking with grey-faced patience for days, making their way back to little villages in the mountains. Polly counted nine arms and ten legs between them, and ten eyes.

But it was the apparently whole who were worse, in a way. They kept their stinking coats buttoned tight, in lieu of bandages, over whatever unspeakable mess lay beneath, and they had the smell of death about them. The inn’s regulars made space for them, and talked quietly, like people in a sacred place. Her father, not usually a man given to sentiment, quietly put a generous tot of brandy into each mug of ale, and refused all payment. Then it turned out that they were carrying letters from soldiers still fighting, and one of them had brought the letter from Paul. He pushed it across the table to Polly as she served them stew and then, with very little fuss, he died.

The rest of the men moved unsteadily on later that day, taking with them, to give to his parents, the pot-metal medal that had been in the soldier’s coat pocket and the official commendation from the Duchy that went with it. Polly had taken a look at it. It was printed, including the Duchess’s signature, and the man’s name had been filled in, rather cramped, because it was longer than average. The last few letters were rammed up tight together.

It’s little details like that which get remembered, as undirected white-hot rage fills the mind. Apart from the letter and the medal, all the man left behind was a tin mug and, on the floor, a stain which wouldn’t scrub out.

Corporal Strappi listened impatiently to a slightly adjusted version. Polly could see his mind working. The mug had belonged to a soldier; now it belonged to another soldier. Those were the facts of the matter, and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He resorted, instead, to the safer ground of general abuse.

“So you think you’re smart, Parts?” he said.

“No, corporal.”

“Oh? So you’re stupid, are you?”

“Well, I did enlist, corporal,” said Polly meekly. Somewhere behind Strappi, someone sniggered.

“I’ve got my eye on you, Parts,” growled Strappi, temporarily defeated. “Just you put a foot wrong, that’s all.” He strode off.

“Um…” said a voice beside Polly. She turned to see another youth, wearing secondhand clothes and an air of nervousness that didn’t quite conceal some bubbling anger. He was big and red-haired, but it was cut so close that it was just head fuzz.