CAPTAIN QUAIL'S FIELD GUIDE TO THREATS THAT NEVER CAME

Being a Compleat Register of Every Enemy I Have Successfully Repelled by Being Ready for Them.

Kept on the battlements, in all weathers, by Captain Quail. Two hundred years on this wall and not one of them got past me. You're welcome.

Order of the Day

People say to me, Quail, you've never fought anyone. Wrong. I have fought everyone — in advance, in my head, at four in the morning, repeatedly. That none of them turned up is not the failure of my vigilance. It is its triumph. A threat repelled before it arrives is the only threat properly repelled. The rest of you call it an empty moor. I call it a battlefield I am winning.

Each entry: The Threat · The Watch · Standing Order.

1 · The Siege That Is Surely Coming

The Threat. A vast army, at the gates, any minute now. Has been any-minute-now since the reign before last. The Watch. Constant. I have not slept a full night in two centuries, in case tonight is the night. Standing Order. Remain ready. Lesson: a man can guard a thing so long that the guarding becomes the thing. I no longer defend the castle from the enemy. I defend the waiting from the silence.

2 · The Pigeon Menace

The Threat. The only force ever to breach this wall. Daily. In numbers. Without respect. The Watch. Total. I have studied their movements. They have no movements. That is their cunning. Standing Order. Challenge every one. Lesson: when no real enemy will come, the heart will promote a pigeon to the rank of general, because a soldier needs a war more than a war needs a soldier.

3 · The Enemy Within

The Threat. Everyone. You. The new turnip. That frog. The cheese, on one memorable occasion. The Watch. I challenge all comers to a Test of Valour at the gate. None have passed. None have attempted it. They mostly just want to get to the kitchen. Standing Order. Trust no one until they have answered three riddles and a question about their intentions. Lesson: suspect the whole world long enough and you will be lonely and correct — for the world is, in fact, mostly trying to get past you to the kitchen.

4 · The Trojan Cheese (the Incident of the Larder Door)

The Threat. A vast, reeking mass advancing on the kitchen entrance under cover of its own smell. The Watch. I sounded the alarm. I manned the wall. I prepared, as is correct, to die. Standing Order. (later, smaller hand) It was Old Mother Stilton. It was the cheese. It is always the cheese. Lesson: a man trained only to see attack will see an attack in everything, including the arrival of dinner.

5 · The Frog Insurgency

The Threat. An amphibian rising from the drains to reclaim the foundations. King Tiddles, at the head of his wet little court, ascending the U-bends with intent. The Watch. Drills held weekly. We have a plan for the drains. The plan is "do not go in the drains." Standing Order. Hold the high ground; concede the plumbing. Lesson: there are enemies you cannot defeat, only outlast — and some of them have a better claim to the castle than you do, which is not a thing a captain is permitted to write down. So I haven't.

6 · The Turnip Uprising

The Threat. The servants. The walled-off quarter. The free kingdom in the Woods, organised, patient, and coming back up the holes one day with the rest. The Watch. Filed under: Unlikely. Standing Order. (no later correction) — Lesson: the one threat that is genuinely on its way is always the one the watchman cannot bear to take seriously, because to take it seriously is to admit he has been guarding the wrong people from the wrong enemy his whole life.

7 · The Unmanned Hour

The Threat. Not an army. The morning when the watch changes and there is no one left to relieve me. When the last guard of House Quail lays down the last spear and the wall, for the first time in two hundred years, simply… stands there, guarded by no one, threatening no one, needed by no one. The Watch. I think about it more than the siege now. Standing Order. Carry on. Lesson: the soldier is never afraid of the enemy. He is afraid of the day the enemy was never the point, and the watch was only ever a way of being needed. Carry on anyway. Someone has to mind the wall. It may as well be the man who learned to love it.