Characters: Polly, Jackrum, Towering.
Rating: B

Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with Terry Pratchett or Discworld.

Small Feet
by Amazon Syren

     Sergeant Towering had small feet. Jackrum had remarked on it and suggested that the squad check to see if the dead Zlobenian’s boots fit anyone.
     They’d fit Tonker, who had holes in her shoes anyway, so Towering had been buried in the third-hand boots of a work-house girl, in a shallow, unmarked grave. Wazzer had prayed over the body – just as she had for the charcoal burner and his wife – and then they’d pushed the grey dirt back into the hole and crept away in the dark.

     It wasn’t until after the burial – long afterwards, when the trial was done and she and rest of the squad were holed up in the women’s barracks – that Polly got to thinking about what those small feet might have meant.

     “Nah, lad,” Jackrum had said, palming a wad of awful tobacco into his mouth. “Towering was sergeant, just like me an’ you—” and here, he nodded at the only-slightly –worn new stripe on her unfortunately girly new uniform, “whatever else he was – or maybe she – he was a sergeant, and knew what he had coming.”

     Jackrum told her not to think about it too much. “Not good for a soldier to think too much,” he’d said. “Bein’ clever’s different, but thinkin’ too much rots the brain.” But Polly couldn’t shake the thought of it. The first person she’d ever seen killed – although there’d been plenty more within a few days of it – and maybe he’d been a woman, just like her. Polly thought about the new stripe on her jacket. Just like her.