Monstrous Regiment Read Online Free PDF

clothes that didn’t fit well. Eyebrow reappeared with a small keg, which he laidreverentially on a stand and gently tapped. He pulled a genuine pewter tankard from under the bar, filled it, and timorously proffered it to Maladict.
    “Igor?” said the vampire, waving it away.
    “I’ll thtick with the horthe pith, if it’th all the thame to you,” said Igor.
    He looked around the sudden silence.
    “Look, I never thaid I didn’t like it,” said Igor. He pushed his mug across the sticky bar. “Thame again?”
    Polly took the new tankard and sniffed at it. Then she took a sip.
    “Not bad,” she said. “At least it tastes like it’s—”
    The door pushed open, letting in the sounds of the storm.
    About two-thirds of a troll eased its way inside, and then managed to get the rest of itself through.
    Polly was okay about trolls. She met them up in the woods sometimes, sitting among the trees or purposefully lumbering along the tracks on the way to whatever it was trolls did. They weren’t friendly, they were…resigned. The world’s got humans in it, live with it. They’re not worth the indigestion. You can’t kill ’em all. Step around ’em. Stepping on ’em doesn’t work in the long term.
    Occasionally a farmer would hire one to do some heavy work. Sometimes they turned up, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they’d turn up, lumber around a field pulling out tree stumps as if they were carrots, and then wander off without waiting to be paid. A lot of things humans did mystified trolls, and vice versa. Generally, they avoided one another.
    But she didn’t often see trolls as…trollish as this one. It looked like a boulder that had spent centuries in the damp pine forests. Lichen covered it. Stringy gray moss hung in curtains from its head and its chin. It had a bird’s nest in one ear. It had a genuine troll club, made from an uprootedsapling. It was almost a joke troll, except that no one would laugh.
    The root end of the sapling bumped across the floor as the troll, watched by the recruits and a horrified Corporal Strappi, trudged to the table.
    “Gonna En List,” it said. “Gonna do my bit. Gimme shillin’.”
    “You’re a troll!” Strappi burst out.
    “Now, now, none of that, Corporal,” said Sergeant Jackrum. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
    “Don’t ask? Don’t ask? It’s a troll, Sarge! It’s got crags! There’s grass growing under its fingernails! It’s a troll!”
    “Right,” said the sergeant. “Enlist him.”
    “You want to fight with us?” Strappi squeaked. Trolls had no sense of personal space, and a ton of what was, for practical purposes, a kind of rock was looming right over the table.
    The troll analyzed the question. The recruits stood in silence, mugs halfway to mouths.
    “No,” said the troll at last. “Gonna fight wi’ En Army. Gods save the…” The troll paused, and looked at the ceiling. Whatever it was seeking there didn’t appear to be visible. Then it looked at its feet, which had grass growing on them. Then it looked at its free hand and moved its fingers as if counting something.
    “…Duchess,” it said. It had been a long wait. The table creaked as the troll laid a hand on it, palm upwards. “Gimme shillin’.”
    “We’ve only got the bits of pape—” Corporal Strappi began. Sergeant Jackrum jabbed an elbow into his ribs.
    “Upon my oath, are you mad?” he hissed. “There’s a ten-man bounty for enlisting a troll!” With his other hand he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a real silver shilling, and placed it delicately in the huge hand. “Welcometo your new life, friend! I’ll just write your name down, shall I? What is it?”
    The troll looked at ceiling, feet, sergeant, wall, and table. Polly saw its lips move.
    “Carborundum?” it volunteered.
    “Yeah, probably,” said the sergeant. “Er, how’d you like to shav—to cut off some of that hai—moss? We’ve got a, a sort of a…regulation…”
    Wall, floor,