Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett Page B

want to do it. Someone had just shouted “attack!”.
    The trouble was the Kneck River. It wandered across the wide, rich, silty plain like a piece of dropped string, but sometimes a flash flood or even a big fallen tree would cause it to crack like a whip, throwing coils of river around areas of land miles from its previous bed. And the river was the international border…
    She surfaced to hear: “—but this time, everyone ’s on their side, the bastards! And you know why? It’s ’cos of Ankh-Morpork! Because we stopped the mail coaches going over our country and tore down their clacks towers, which are an Abomination Unto Nuggan. Ankh-Morpork is a godless city—”
    “I thought it had more than three hundred places of worship?” said Maladict.
    Strappi stared at him in a rage that was incoherent until he managed to touch bottom again.
    “Ankh-Morpork is a godawful city,” he said. “Poisonous, just like its river. Barely fit for humans now, they let everything in—zombies, werewolves, dwarfs, vampires, trolls—”
    He remembered his audience, faltered and recovered: “—which in some cases can be a good thing, of course. But it is a foul, lewd, lawless, overcrowded mess of a place, which is why Prince Heinrich loves it so much! He’s been taken over by it, bought by cheap toys, because that’s the way Ankh-Morpork plays it, men. They buy you, they will you stop interrupting! What’s the good of me trying to teach you stuff if you’re going to keep on asking questions?”
    “I was just wondering why it’s so crowded, Corp,” said Tonker. “If it’s so bad, I mean.”
    “That’s because they are a degraded people, private! And they’ve sent a regiment up here to help Heinrich take over our beloved Motherland. He has turned aside from the ways of Nuggan and embraced Ankh-Morpork’s godlessn—godawfulness.” Strappi looked pleased at having spotted that one, and went on: “Point Two: in addition to its soldiers, Ankh-Morpork has sent Vimes the Butcher, the most evil man in that evil city. They are bent on nothing less than our destruction!”
    “I heard that Ankh-Morpork was just angry that we cut the clacks towers down,” said Polly.
    “They were on our sovereign territory!”
    “Well, it was Zlobenian until—” Polly began.
    Strappi waved an angry finger at her.
    “You listen to me, Parts! You can’t get to be a great country like Borogravia without making enemies! Which leads me on to Point Three, Parts, who’s sitting there thinking he’s so smart. You all are. I can see it. Well, be smart about this: you might not like everything about your country, eh? It might not be the perfect place, but it’s ours. You might think we don’t have the best laws, but they’re ours. The mountains might not be the prettiest ones or the tallest ones, but they’re ours. We’re fighting for what’s ours, men!”
    Strappi slammed his hand over his heart.
Awake, ye sons of the Motherland!
Taste no more the wine of the sour apples…
    They joined in, with various levels of drone. You had to. Even if you just opened and shut your mouth, you had to. Even if you just went “ner, ner, ner,” you had to. Polly, who was exactly the kind of person who looks around surreptitiously at times like these, saw that Shufti was singing it word-perfectly and Strappi actually did have tears in his eyes. Wazzer wasn’t singing at all. He was praying. That was a good wheeze, said one of the more treacherous areas at the back of Polly’s mind.
    To the bewilderment of all, Strappi continued—alone—all through the second verse, which nobody ever remembered, and then gave them a smug, I’m-more-patriotic-than-you smile.
    Afterwards, they tried to sleep on as much softness as two blankets could provide.
    They lay there in silence for some time. Jackrum and Strappi had tents of their own, but instinctively they knew that Strappi at least would be a sneaker and a listener at tent flaps.
    After about an hour, when