‘Sir? Maybe if you forget about the audience and just tell me?’
It was Polly again. Sweet, helpful Polly.
‘Yeah,’ said Threshy. ‘Awesome. Thanks Polly.’
Man, it’d be a real shame to have to eat her brains later.
‘Okay. Can you cut from my intro? Pick it up from “She of the Horde”?’
The two humans exchanged a wordless look which spoke loudly to the weirdness of whatever they’d got themselves into.
‘Sure,’ said Polly. ‘We’ll pick it up from the Horde. Mike? You good to roll?’
The cameraman adjusted himself on the makeshift seating of the milk crates and agreed that he was. He shouldered the camera, and Polly moved the boom mic back in, just out of shot. Threshy moved back to his mark, took a moment, and continued on as though he’d never interrupted himself. He heard the Grymm Guard snap to attention again.
‘Okay. So . . . Your great city lies prone before us. The least of our Horde makes play within its walls. We are not the dumbasses . . . Fuck! Can we do that again?’
Polly signalled for him to just go on.
‘We are not the idiot foe you met in Omaha and New Orleans. We are the Grymm ur Horde and we could end you this night. The war bands my master Guyuk ur Grymm has unleashed on this city, they are nothing. The least of our untried, untested ranks. Know this, just one of the warriors you see behind me . . .’
He turned aside to give the camera a better shot of the Grymm shield wall.
‘. . . just one of them could kick the ass . . . D’oh! . . . Fuck. Okay. All right. Let me go again . . . Just one of them is . . . would . . . Damn. Polly,’ he said, dropping out of character. ‘I’m trying to say my guys back there are like these awesome fucking death ninjas compared to these losers we got running around town tonight chewing on people and shit . . . but I’m like . . . what’s a good way of saying that, you think?’
Polly Farrell seemed to take a few seconds to process the question, or maybe just the fact of being asked it.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I guess you could say something like “Just one of my Lord’s Grim soldiers is the equal of”, what, a score of those other ones?’
‘Coolio,’ said Threshy. ‘That works. You could do this for a living. Ha! See what I did there? Again? Okay. Here we go. From the top . . . Just one Warrior Grymm is the equal of an entire, untrained war band. And the Grymm are legion.’
He really liked that bit. It reminded him of his cunning plan to totally fuck up the Dave.
‘You cannot hold out against them. There is nowhere safe. My lord commander . . .’ he indicated Guyuk who knew enough to play along by growling at the camera, ‘can place his forces wherever he chooses, whenever he wants. You are not safe in your strongholds, your homes, anywhere. You know . . .’
He almost said ‘You know I’m not bullshitting you’, but stilled Thresh-Trev’r’s tongue at the last moment.
‘You know this to be true. And we will prove it to you, night after night until you submit to the will and the protection of Her Majesty.’
He paused for a moment to let that sink in.
‘There is only one path . . . Let me do that again, Polly . . . There is but one path to redemption. Submit to She of the Horde. Pay Her the tribute She is due, and She will deliver you from evil.’
Threshy had to concentrate fiercely now as he channelled Compt’n over all the roiling minds he had consumed. His vision greyed out at the edges with the effort.
‘The Horde is not the worst of what is yet come upon you. The UnderRealms are limitless. The dangers infinite. You cannot stand alone. Submit to Her will and find deliverance. Resistance is futile.’
He almost lost it again at that, but managed to hold in the wild braying laughter that wanted to burst out between his fang tracks.
‘She will lay waste to another two of your cities. Then you will come to terms with Her.’
Threshy swivelled his eyestalks toward the Master of the Ways who opened a new portal at the signal. The camera swung in that direction at the gasps of astonishment coming from the prisoners. A protean cell of negative space hovered over the painted asphalt of the playground.
‘GRYMM UR HORDE!’
The roar of the lord commander’s guard sounded as loud as cannon shot. The shield wall turned as one and marched into the portal, disappearing through the rift between worlds, one by one.
Lord Commander Guyuk ur Grymm leaned forward as the camera swung back on to Threshy. This was his cameo.
‘I’ll be back,’ he snarled in heavily accented English.
‘And . . . we’re out!’
*
The small green light on the strange device blinked out. The wounded calfling, the ‘camera-human’ lowered his equipage, and the warriors Grymm came stomping back through the portal into the Above. It all struck Lord Guyuk as a bizarre contrivance. To give the Threshrend his due, however, he seemed entirely comfortable orchestrating the foolishness.
‘It is done then, Superiorae?’
‘Done and dusted, my Lordiness.’
‘Excellent.’ Guyuk barked an order at his senior Lieutenant. ‘Gather the cattle. We shall withdraw to await the –’
‘Whoa . . . Back that up,’ said Threshy. ‘Ain’t no cattle being gathered up here tonight.’
Guyuk’s expression was cold.
‘Say you what, Superiorae?’
‘They gotta go, boss. We promised them freedom if they cooperated and shit, and they cooperated. And shit.’
Guyuk, who alone amongst the highest councils of the Horde had forced himself to think of the cattle as more than just livestock, still had trouble comprehending the Threshrend’s intent. These captives, after all, did not hail from one of the human war clans. They were no armed faction. With no power to demand honourable consideration, they were not entitled to such. Lord Guyuk needed no empathic link to a Threshrend daemon to know that human war clans fought fiercely across the metropolis this night. He could hear the crash and thunder of their weaponry within bolt shot. The night sky, normally a dark cover under which daemonum might pass unharmed by the foul heat and light of the sun, was no cover at all. The iron Drakon of humanity roared across the stars and spat terrible fire down on any war band foolish enough to be caught in the open.
As his thrall was right now.
Compt’n ur Threshrend had assured him the men would not fire on them whilst they were protected by proximity to so many calflings. But that was surely even more reason to hurry them through the portal back to the UnderRealms? A lesser commander would have damned the eyestalks of his impudent consul and backhanded the underling through the rift himself. But Guyuk knew they were engaged in the first moments of a long war, not merely a hard battle, and Compt’n knew more of this enemy than any of Her Majesty’s most venerated officers.
‘Why must we release these captives then, Superiorae?’ he asked, his voice tired but patient. ‘And be sharp with your answer. I would have us quit this field with all dispatch now that our mission be done.’
‘Well, you see, it’s not all done, boss. My intern still has to cut the package together, and then we gots to be sure it drops into the channel and . . .’
‘Threshrend,’ growled Guyuk.
‘I know, I know. Two things. The ritual of communication is only half done. I need to be sure it’s like, nailed, right. And . . . this is important . . . we didn’t come here to just frighten peeps, as much fucking fun as that always is. We came to confuse them. To, you know, sow confusion in their ranks and shit. And I promise you, dude, we let these guys go’ – Compt’n ur Threshrend gestured toward the captured cattle – ‘and they’ll go bleating and mooing and shit about how the Horde can’t be all bad and we can be trusted. And because we are bad and we totally cannot be trusted, we can totes use that against them later. You see? I’m not being merciful. I’m being a sneaky motherfucker.’
‘Sneaky is acceptable,’ Guyuk conceded. ‘But what now of these rituals? This packag
e that must be cut?’
He raised his war cleaver.
‘Whoa. No. Different kind of cutting. Just lemme check.’
The Threshrend scuttled over to the pair of human adepts who had assisted with the ritual. They conferred in the wet, garbled tongue of the cattle while the other calflings watched on in fear, aware somehow that their fate was being determined. The warriors Grymm encircled their lord commander, looking to the skies for iron Drakon, watching the ground approaches for any sign of human soldiers. Above them, Sliveen scouts flitted across the uppermost battlements of the large stone keep painted in the noxious colours of the sky ribbons one heard of in the Above. Guyuk wondered how the campaign progressed elsewhere in the vast city. It vexed him that he could not follow the small and relatively simple incursion on a sand table or even the Diwan’s altar, as he might a much greater battle. It was not a care for his own safety that pulled him back toward the portal; rather the promise of attending to the reports of his scouts. Unlike Compt’n ur Threshrend, he was no empath.
At that moment, the Superiorae turned away from the calfling adepts and fairly skipped back into the lord commander’s presence.
‘Oh man,’ he said. ‘This is gonna be awesome.’
‘I await the awe, Threshrend.’
‘Oh, I’m bringin’ it. Be cool on that, Super G. Threshy is bringin’ the awesome. And the intern. Here’s how it’s going down. My lady friend there, Polly . . .’
‘The female calfling?’
‘Yep. She don’t look like much. She’s no Kardashian. But man, she’s Lara fucking Croft when it counts. She’s willing to come back down with us, do the edit on her lappy, and come back in return for us letting the others go.’
‘She makes this demand of us? Of me?’ growled Guyuk.
‘Dude, no way. Not a demand. An offer. A trade. It’s like I said, mein Führer. We gots to put some money in the favour bank, build up our trust deposits, right? So we can take it out and spend the motherfucker when we need it. You follow?’
‘No.’
No, Lord Guyuk ur Grymm did not follow. Who was this unarmed calfling breeder to be making demands of him?
The Threshrend actually raked its claws down its face in frustration.
‘Look! We were always going to let the cattle go. It’s part of the plan. The sneaky fucking plan. And having this Polly chick pimp out my bit? Also part of the plan. And if we take her back down, give her a peek at just how much fucking pain we gots to lay on these motherfuckers, then that can totes be part of the plan too.’
The Threshrend crouched as he drew closer to Lord Guyuk, although he seemed less worried about being decapitated by the supreme commander of the Grymm – a genuine possibility – than he was by the prospect of being spotted by the human’s iron Drakon.
‘Just work with me here, jefe. Can we, like, put on a parade or something? Throw a couple of Hunn legions onto a training field, even though they don’t, you know, train or anything? But we kit them up, balls out, and my intern here – that’s like a slave, if it helps you come at the idea – my slave relays visions of the awesome fucking power of a fully operational Death Star back to the meat sacks.’
‘This Death Star . . .?’
‘Sorry, poetic license. What I’m asking, big guy, is for a simple May Day parade. Couple of Hunn regiments maybe. We can loop the footage if you want. Scare the shit out of the cows. We tell ’em that’s what coming next time. Into their fucking cities. Right inside their bedrooms. Whole legions, whole fucking regiments of the Grande Horde. Not just a couple of pissant war bands of unnamed pussy Hunn. They will lose their fucking shit. Not all of them. But enough. Enough to start begging for mercy, suing for terms and shit. It will fuck them up. Right now they’re united. You gimme this, and I’ll crack them like a rotten egg. Come on, do it for Threshy. Do it for the Horde. Get on board for the big win. You know Her Majestic Awesomeness likes results.’
There was no denying that, of course. She of the Horde did indeed preference victorious results. Guyuk considered the plan. As he understood it, through Compt’n ur Threshrend’s impenetrable babbling, the Superiorae intended to further his exploitation of this calfling breeder to undermine the cattle’s solidarity. It was not far removed from the traditional role of Threshrendum, he supposed. Unable to serve in honourable combat, they schemed and connived at disrupting the foe, thieving their resolve, diminishing their warrior spirit through empathic subversion. He could not claim to fully understand what Compt’n ur Threshrend was about, not in the minutiae of tactical details. But he did understand the strategic importance of sowing discord and spreading an exemplary terror amongst the cattle.
‘I concur,’ he said at last, turning to the senior Lieutenant Grymm. ‘Release the captives. Send them on their way with ransom for safe passage from all of our host who would assail them.’
‘Except for the intern,’ said Compt’n ur Threshrend. ‘She comes with us.’
15
It was almost like a date, except he was a razor-toothed Hell daemon intent on enslaving all mankind, and she was his captive. Actually, that wasn’t so far removed from some of the memories Compt’n ur Threshrend had consumed when he sucked Professor Raymond Compton’s brains right out of his melon. That had to be why he found himself . . . well . . . nervous as he escorted Polly Farrell to the reviewing platform which afforded such sweeping views across the training plains of the Regiments Select of Her Majesty’s Grymm.
The area was smaller than the training ranges used by the mainline formations of legions and Regiments Grymm, and indeed the forces wheeling and manoeuvring below them were not the three Select, but merely standard units of Grymm. Still, they looked hella impressive stomping about down there under a lowering sky the colour of bad blood and old bruises.
And they were a hell of a lot more impressive than any rabble of Hunn old Guyuk could have dialled up at short notice. Even base legions of Grymm practised and drilled manoeuvre warfare to a much higher standard than their more numerous Hunn allies. A Hunn’s idea of manoeuvre was a bellowing charge with jaws agape on the off chance something might fall into their cakehole and make a convenient meal of itself.
‘So these bad motherfuckers you see down here, that’s the Grymm,’ said Threshy, trying not to sound as though he was striving hard to impress her, even though that’s totally what he was doing.
Even though that’s totally what he was supposed to do, what he’d promised Guyuk he’d do, because that was part of the plan.
It wasn’t like he was trying to impress her because he had a little monster boner for this tweedy chick who put him in mind of Fred from Angel.
Professor Compton had had a thing for Fred from Angel. And when she’d turned into Illyria? Oh man . . .
Threshy could not help but wonder what Polly Farrell would look like in skin-tight blue leathers and big hair.
Gah! Focus, Threshy, focus!
What she looked like right now was a slightly nervous nerd, but Threshy was certain her nerves, such as they were, could be put down to being exiled, even if temporarily, to the UnderRealms, where everything wanted to eat her. He was pretty certain she didn’t have first-date nerves.
‘Where did you learn to speak English?’ she asked, her voice quavering just a little in spite of her best efforts to keep it steady.
‘Off TV. Comcast runs cable to Hell. I mean, you have to deal with Comcast, which is its own kind of Hell. But, anyway, those regiments down there, that’s like better than 30,000 daemon warriors, all of them trained like super samurai but with the strength of King Kong. Or maybe, I dunno, the Hulk. And that’s just a sneak peek at some of the Regiments Grymm. Man, the Hunn are bigger and meaner . . .’
And all of them as dumb as a sack of fucking war hammers.
‘And then you got your Gnarrl, who are like army engineers, and your Sliveen, your Threshrend of course, and your Fangr. You got 100,000 Hunn coming at you, it means you really got all of them and about 300,000 or 400,000 leashed
Fangr too. Can you see why you guys are like doomed, if you don’t make friends with the Horde?’
‘But you want to eat us!’ she protested.
‘No way,’ Threshy said. ‘Not even.’
‘But I saw you. I saw you, Threshrend. You ate that poor man before. Back in the city.’
‘Oh, let’s not bicker and argue about who ate who,’ Threshy said, trying to sketch a boyish grin. Trevor Candly had been convinced his boyish grin could get him out of any trouble.
Polly shrank back and Threshy remembered that his fang tracks might make Trevor Candly’s boyish grin look a little grotesque. She didn’t run screaming, but that was because he had a Threshrend Majorae nearby, suppressing her fear reflex, amplifying the unusual reserves of courage he had first detected in her back in Manhattan. That was why she was only a little anxious, instead of batshit cray-cray with fear. He could have done all that himself, of course. He wasn’t a complete noob at the empath game. But Compt’n ur Threshrend wanted to stay focused, and he didn’t need to be distracted by a lot of psychic busywork like keeping Polly Farrell from falling to pieces.
He was already distracted enough by imagining Polly Farrell wrapped in a tight, electric-blue leather jumpsuit.
Fuck. What was wrong with him? He shouldn’t be having these feelings.
‘So, have you, er, you know, got enough recorded?’
Polly seemed to remember the smart phone she was holding.
‘Oh. Yes. I have. Thank you. I should probably just do my editing now though.’
‘You sure you wouldn’t like to see the palace or anything? Or the Engineering Works? The Gnarrl got some kick-ass stuff over there, you know.’
He cursed himself inwardly as the words left him. He’d insisted the Gnarrl be kept well out of sight. A simple thresh, even a Hunn dominant, might be impressed by ironwood siege towers, or fleets of ballista, by the rolling fortresses armoured in Drakon-scale or the covered siege engines of the Horde’s engineering specialists. Polly would only see a lot of out-dated medieval bullshit; the sort of toys that boy scouts might lash together as a team-building exercise. None of it would put her in mind of the awesome power of a fully mobilised Grande Horde.
Ascendance Page 14
