Jingo

Already old Fred's face was creasing up in the soft expression of someone who has been mugged in Memory Lane.

“We even had a marching song,” he said. “Mind you, it was quite hard to sing right. Er… sorry, miss?”

“Oh, it's all right, sergeant,” said Angua. “I often start to laugh like that for no reason at all.”

Fred Colon once again stared dreamily at nothing. “And o'course before that I was in the Duke of Quirm's Middleweight Infantry. Saw a lot of action with them.”

“I'm sure you did,” said Carrot, while Angua entertained cynical thoughts about the actual distance of Fred's vantage point. “Your distinguished military career has obviously given you many pleasant memories.”

“The ladies liked the uniform,” said Fred Colon, with the unspoken rider that sometimes a growing lad needed all the help he could get. “An' it… weelll…”

“Yes, sarge?”

Colon looked awkward, as if the bunched underwear of the past was tangling itself in the crotch of recollection.

“It was… more easier, sir. Than being a copper, I mean. I mean, you're a soldier, right, and the other buggers is the enemy. You march into some big field somewhere and all form up into them oblongs, and then a bloke with the feathery helmet gives the order, and you all forms up into big arrows—”

“Good gods, do people really do that? I thought it was just how they drew the battle plans!”

“Well, the old duke, sir, he did it by the book… anyway, it's just a case of watching your back and walloping any bloke in the wrong uniform. But…” Fred Colon's face screwed up in agonized thought, “well, when you're a copper, well, you dunno the good guys from the bad guys without a map, miss, and that's a fact.”

“But… there's military law, isn't there?”

“Well, yes… but when it's pissing with rain and you're up to your tonk– your waist in dead horses and someone gives you an order, that ain't the time to look up the book of rules, miss. Anyway, most of it's about when you're allowed to get shot, sir.”

“Oh, Im sure there's more to it than that, sergeant.”

“Oh, prob'ly, sir,” Colon conceded diplomatically.

“I'm sure there's lots of stuff about not killing enemy soldiers who've surrendered, for instance.”

“Oh, yerss, there's that, captain. Doesn't say you can't duff 'em up a bit, of course. Give 'em a little something to remember you by.”

“Not torture?” said Angua.

“Oh, no, miss. But…” Memory Lane for Colon had turned into a bad road through a dark valley “…well, when your best mate's got an arrow in his eye an' there's blokes and horses screamin' all round you and you're scared shi– you're really scared, an' you come across one of the enemy… well, for some reason or other you've got this kinda urge to give him a bit of a… nudge, sort of thing. Just… you know… like, maybe in twenty years' time his leg'll twinge a bit on frosty days and he'll remember what he done, that's all.”

He rummaged in a pocket and produced a very small book, which he held up for inspection.

“This belonged to my great-grandad,” he said. “He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayers for soldiers, 'cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, 'cos he couldn't afford armour, and next day in battle whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look. You can see the hole.”

“Pretty miraculous,” Carrot agreed.

“Yeah, it was, I s'pose,” said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the battered volume. “Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really.”

The drumming died away. The remnant of the Watch tried to avoid one another's gaze.

Then an imperious voice said, “Why aren't you in uniform, young man?”

Nobby turned. He was being addressed by an elderly lady with a certain turkey-like cast of feature and a capital punishment expression.

“Me? Got one, missus,” said Nobby, pointing to his battered helmet.

“A proper uniform,” snapped the woman, handing him a white feather. “What will you be doing when the Klatchians are ravishing us in our beds?”

She glared at the rest of the guards and swept on. Angua saw several others like her passing along the crowds of spectators. Here and there was a flash of white.

“I'll be thinking: those Klatchians are jolly brave,” said Carrot. “I'm afraid, Nobby, that the white feather is to shame you into joining up.”

“Oh, that's all right, then,” said Nobby, a man for whom shame held no shame. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“That reminds me… did I tell you what I said to Lord Rust?” said Sergeant Colon, nervously.

“Seventeen times so far,” said Angua, watching the women with the feathers. She added, apparently to herself, “‘Come back with your shield or on it.’”

“I wonder if I can get the lady to give me any more?” said Nobby.

“What was that?” said Carrot.

“These feathers,” said Nobby. “They look like real goose. I've got a use for a lot more of these—”