Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  “Agaku! I smell magic, small-magic, nothing-magic!”

  Capering, Zarkingu danced on a section of the parapet above him. Her crest, tied up with a camouflage sleeve, lashed in the hot air and smoke. Ashnak saw her eyes gleaming. Froth spilled out of her mouth. She cocked her Uzi submachine-gun and squeezed the trigger. The gun did not fire. “Colonel, it’s nothing but a simple ’fail weapons’ spell—”

  “Incoming! Take over!” Ashnak bawled. “Zarkingu!”

  A shimmering sphere sprung into existence around the orc, where she capered with skulls and M16 magazines swinging from her belt. In the space of a heartbeat the magical sphere convulsed closed, opened, and dropped a compressed ruin of orc-flesh and bone dripping onto the parapet.

  Ashnak’s bowels let go and he shat himself. He dug his elbows into the rough flagstones, pulling himself up. He detached the Kalashnikov’s bayonet and slid it into its sockets, locked it home, shoulder-slung the assault rifle, and pulled himself by the strength of his arms up to the top of the rubble. His broad nostrils flared at his own stink.

  He lay and looked down at the battlefield.

  Elven mages and human magic-users crowded the remaining battlements of Guthranc. Sixty or seventy strong. There wasn’t a warrior among them, only those who wielded the staff, or cast witch-fire from between bare hands, or conjured up arcane death with streams of words. Sporadic firing shook the air and died, drowned out now by the conjurations of magic.

  Ashnak watched an extended-line formation of marines go down, scythed like wheat. Orc bodies lay in arcs along the grassy slope that rose up to the tower. Their blood soaked the earth.

  Ashnak rolled, with an effort, the Kalashnikov held over his head, hitting every spike of rock on the slope down towards the moat. He came to rest against three dead bodies, stinking and corrupt in the noon sun and magic.

  Weakness, pain, and fear drained him. The air drummed in his ears.

  “Why?” His throat was raw. “How?”

  A foot stepped delicately over the marine bodies. Ashnak watched it approach, his teeth bared. He gripped the Kalashnikov in his burned hands, poising the bayonet to thrust up. An elven voice said, “It lives, Lady. Shall I end its miserable existence?”

  “You,” a slobbery voice said, marvelling.

  Ashnak’s burned leg had some strength, and he flexed it, gathering it beneath him to spring. His shattered leg trailed like a snake. He watched the approach of The Named.

  “Bind him. No, you are not strong enough. I will.” The female Man knelt, plate harness clashing. One of her hands darted out and gripped Ashnak’s throat, far too fast for him to avoid, and squeezed.

  Breath stopped. His vision went red, black, and then a plain white. He thrust blindly with the bayonet, a belly-cut, and felt her free hand grip the assault rifle’s barrel. She wrenched the Kalashnikov from his hands. His limbs were strengthless. Something hummed in his ears. He felt his gullet surge; and then he was released to vomit, and whimper in blindness, and wait for his sight to clear.

  Witch-bonds bit into his burnt wrists and ankles.

  Ashnak groaned a protest against the binding of his shattered leg. The female Man nodded to the elven mage at her side.

  “I am merciful. This one we will keep. He will know much.”

  She hefted the Kalashnikov thoughtfully, testing the weight and length of it in her armoured hand.

  The pain of third-degree burns over most of his body loosened his tongue. Ashnak yelled, “What use can magic be against us? Ours aren’t witch-weapons! Why are you using magic?”

  The firefight rattled and died to the east, in the Old Forest, where (too far for him to see) the remnants of the orc marine platoons were fighting to a standstill. The helmet RT whispered tinnily in Ashnak’s ear:

  “—fall back! Fix bayonets! Use your weapons as clubs! Fall back and regroup at—”

  Shazgurim’s voice shrieked and terminated. The distinctive hiss of witch-fire filled the channel, burning it out. Ashnak’s head bowed to his chest. He made no movement even when The Named removed his helmet.

  “Elinturanbar, this one was my brother’s plaything and must be questioned.”

  The lisping, wet voice ceased. Ashnak raised his head. The Named and the elven mage stared east, to forested cliffs and gorges, and the palls from burning trees.

  A Bell HU-1 Iroquois helicopter slanted down across the hill slope.

  Flying with unprecedented skill, the Huey feathered between the trees, using them as cover, close enough for the heavy rotors to chop branches. Leaves sprayed up. The shadows of its guns fell on the sunlit trees. Ashnak opened his mouth and hoarsely cheered.

  A fork of blue lightning lanced up from the hands of the elvish mage Elinturanbar. Treetops disintegrated. The Huey flared, darted down, and pulled around in a tight circle; shot up, and the blue spike intersected its flightpath again with neat economy. One landing-skid fractured and fell.

  The Huey lurched in the air, slanting downwards, made a right turn to gain power, and limped the hundred yards of open air between the Old Forest and the foot of the tower, barely above ground.

  The Named’s bare hand moved. She whispered, “Fail-flight…”

  Ashnak buried his face against the turf. The helicopter dropped, slammed down, bounced up, and hit the earth again no more than thirty feet away from him. He felt the impact through his burned and broken body. Shrapnel sprayed the ground and hummed through the air.

  The doors cracked open. Two ores bailed out, vomiting, and dived into cover amongst the rubble.

  A third figure got a slender hand to the hatchway, weaved slightly, and stepped down onto the earth.

  A shadow seemed to pass across the sun. Frost fractured the grass and coated the prone bodies with ice. The earth bit into Ashnak’s shattered leg and burned hide. It was so cold that his eyeballs hurt.

  The nameless necromancer reached back into the body of the Huey and recovered a spun-silicon bottle. Intact. He shook his midnight-leather robes loose from torn metal, dusted himself down with a flick of spell-fingers, and sauntered across towards the group at the foot of the Tower of Guthranc.

  Ashnak stared at the slim, approaching figure. He strained at his bonds. The spell-fraught wires burned into his raw skin and cold-tender wounds. The nameless necromancer raised his head and squinted painfully at the sky.

  The pale Man dimmed the sunlight with a gesture. “Ashnak. How pleasant.”

  The orc coughed, blood in his throat. “Sir, beg to report, sir…”

  The nameless necromancer stepped delicately over Ashnak’s body and walked on, the pale hand that was not holding a bottle outstretched.

  “Sister,” he said. “Hail. Well met!”

  Ashnak stared in disbelief.

  The nameless necromancer let his hand fall, unclasped. He smiled. Somewhere in the curve of his lips, and the shine of his green eyes over high cheekbones, were implied features not his own. “Sister, you have the victory here, I think.”

  The orc-faced woman stepped to one side as others of the company walked out of Guthranc’s ruins. Elves, Dwarves, Men—and halflings. “Yes, brother. And I have your thieves to thank for it.”

  Ashnak, unshockable now, recognised the two halflings.

  The younger had black curls, expensively cut and pomaded. He wore an etched and gold-inlaid breastplate over rich, three-piled velvet doublet and breeches; his ruff was of the finest cloth; and gold and silver rings decorated every one of his ten fingers. Neither his armour nor his expensive silk half-cloak had battle-dirt on them. He smiled.

  His brother, standing beside him, wore rich brown velvet; his hair was tied back in a tiny horse-tail, fixed with a golden ring. He wore no armour, and a heavy gold S-linked chain showed under his silver-embroidered cloak. He appeared rather more plump than when Ashnak had seen him in the wild.

  Both halflings wore new swords.

  The Named rested a gloved hand on the shoulder of each halfling. “You see I have rewarded them for
their sufferings incurred in coming to me. Though I cannot reward them as they truly deserve.”

  “No,” Ashnak growled under his breath.

  A kind of exaltation filled The Named’s misshapen features. Saliva trailed down unnoticed where a tusk distorted her mouth.

  “These two halflings it was who brought me a weapon from Dagurashibanipal’s hoard. You did not expect that, brother nameless, but even thieves may turn to the Light.”

  Her face shone.

  “Master Will Brandiman told me that you had weapons not sorcerous, but more powerful than sword or bow, against which magic was no protection. And Master Ned Brandiman it was who, demonstrating such a weapon, proved that, not being magical weapons, they have no protection against magic.”

  The Named smiled wetly.

  “No protection against magic at all. Not even against the simplest ’fail weapons’ spell.”

  Ashnak nuzzled his protruding jaw and beetle-browed eyes against the freezing earth. Then he lifted his head, looking down the length of his body—charred webbing and combat trousers fused into open wounds, bloodstained boots—to where his helmet lay on the grass, the RT unreachable. Orc berserker instincts contending with marine training, he muttered under his breath: “Bug out! Fall back. Fall back.”

  Ashnak strained the muscles of his hunched shoulders until he thought they would crack. Pain hissed into his skin. The magical bonds bit deep. Green blood trickled down over his webbing, staining combat boots, slow in the cold air. He raised his head, staring at the nameless necromancer.

  “Master…” the orc whispered.

  “See the recalcitrance of evil,” the brown-haired halfling announced. “Lady Named, you see what comes of serving the Dark Lord. His creatures are unable to hear your words of virtue.”

  Ashnak with difficulty turned his head. “And I suppose taking payment for the Dark Lord’s most loyal servant, the nameless, enables you to be virtuous?”

  Ned and Will Brandiman looked at each other with extremely pained expressions.

  “Such calumny.” The Named shook her head, tutting. “Never fear, my halflings. Evil cannot trick me. I know your hearts, and they are pure.”

  The black-haired halfling squatted, just out of reach of Ashnak’s fangs, his round, apple-cheeked face smiling.

  “The dragon’s curse was powerful indeed, Master Ashnak. The Order of White Mages have detected the curse that Dagurashibanipal laid—it is ‘You will become what you steal.’ As the dragon collected the terrible weapons of evil, so you have become their user, and one of them. It’s tragic, truly tragic. For I am not one to believe even an orc beyond salvation.”

  Ashnak spat. The halfling avoided his acidic saliva. Ashnak wrestled himself around, freezing pain searing through his wrecked body. “Shazgurim was right. Dark Lord, yes! Tricksy halflings. She said you’d do for us in the end. And I do regret stopping her killing you! Master!”

  The nameless necromancer ignored him.

  A breath of warm wind blew, smelling of dead leaves, summer’s end, cornstalks, and the sea. Frost melted.

  “Sister…”

  On thawing, blood-wet grass, in late-afternoon sunlight grown suddenly strong, the nameless necromancer fell to his knees. His dark head bowed, and his back bent. He touched his pale forehead to the turf.

  His voice came plainly audible:

  “Sister, even the darkest may turn towards the Light.”

  Disgust and anguish brought a roar from Ashnak. “Master!”

  “These orcish scum are nothing.” The nameless necromancer spread his pale hands, still kneeling. One hand grasped the neck of the silicon bottle. He drank, waving the bottle in the general direction of the last fighting. “A few less to battle on the Dark Lord’s side when Samhain comes. But if you will have me, sister, the Army of Light shall be increased by one, and my power is not small.”

  Silence breathed over the field. Ashnak heard it, despite the screams and shouts of the massacre, the hoarse sound of his own protest, the crack of thawing ice. The silence of destiny.

  “I have waited long for this, brother.”

  The female Man stripped off her remaining plate gauntlet, dropping it on the turf. She stood in the hot sun, among bodies of fallen orcs and Men, with the miasma of corruption rising from corpses in the moat. Her golden hair blazed.

  “Duel me,” she challenged. “Single combat, brother. Your Dark power against my power of light. Come—combat, hand against bare hand. Fight me!”

  “She’s stronger—” Ashnak’s fierce warning cut off as an elven hand clamped across his mouth. Witch-fires singed the horn hide of his face. He opened his mouth to bite.

  “I will not.” The nameless necromancer rose gracefully to his feet. There were patches of orc blood on his silver-thread-and-skin robe where he had knelt on it. He flicked a spell-finger and was again spotless. “I have surrendered to you. To your mercy and honour.”

  “I don’t trust—”

  “And if you will it,” the pale Man said, “I shall wear my own shape again, sister, and you shall wear yours.”

  The Named stared for a moment as if into bright light.

  “Yes.” Her blotched fingers fumbled at her wet lips. She dragged the back of her grey-and-white-skinned hand across her mouth.

  The elven mage demanded, “Lady, how can you trust him!”

  “Has he not humbled himself before us? Knelt, in the humiliation of his defeat? And come defenceless amongst us? You do not know me,” the female Man said, and her surcoat shot back the crimson of the setting sun. “I am always merciful to those who serve the Light. Brother, be welcome.”

  In his last pain, blood soaking into the hot earth, Ashnak made the effort to cry out: “Master, no! You betray us!”

  The nameless necromancer did not even turn his head. “Be silent, scum!”

  The tall elven-mage with the much-lined face stepped out from where he stood behind Ashnak, and bowed, and smiled.

  “No,” The Named said. “Elinturanbar, the nameless shall not be subject to the inquisition. I say he shall not. He has proven himself our friend here today. Brother, come.”

  One of the tall Men said, “Lady, you must use Guthranc’s power first, to send out the war-summons to the Northern Kingdoms—”

  “Later.” Her green, luminous eyes on his beautiful face, The Named held out her hand. “Come, brother. I would speak with you of the changing of shapes.”

  “Let me first instruct this scum.”

  Ashnak, the edges of his vision foggy now, watched the pale bare feet of the nameless necromancer treading the grass towards him. He coughed thickly. Pale fingers touched his skull, between his peaked ears.

  A blackly warm and resurrecting touch.

  He coughed again, more strongly, and showed all his fangs. In the tongue of the Agaku, which is private between themselves and their masters, and in the idiom of Dagurashibanipal’s hoard, he said, “Fuck, man. Even when I’m dead I can’t get out of this chickenshit outfit.”

  “You,” the nameless necromancer said, “my creature Ashnak. Give orders for the fighting to cease. Now, do you hear me!”

  His bonds parted. Ashnak studiously failed to catch the eye of any of the company standing near him. He rose to his feet, healed, and looked at the nameless.

  “She is merciful,” the nameless explains.

  Recalling a village and a church, of which the nameless necromancer has been told, Ashnak searches his pale features. One of the nameless necromancer’s eyelids flickers. Ashnak glimpses, very briefly, a hidden laughter.

  The nameless necromancer says in that unknown tongue, “May not I submit myself as you did? Exactly as you did—and do—my Ashnak.”

  In rueful acknowledgement, and for the last time, Ashnak fell to his knees and prostrated himself, banging his forehead on the trampled grass. Frost-blighted poppies bloomed scarlet in the corners of his vision.

  “Yes, master! At once, master!”

  Cowering in a practised fashion, h
ead still bent, Ashnak swivelled his eyes up to watch the Men, Elves, and Dwarves depart. The nameless necromancer bowed gracefully, gesturing for his sister to precede him.

  In the nameless necromancer’s eyes Ashnak sees the look of one who is sizing up yellow hair, grey-white skin, and fresh bones for domestic utility.

  A last whistle of incoming fire brought him to his belly, rolling into concealment behind a section of broken wall and reaching for his helmet RT. “CEASE FIRE, MARINES! Fall back! Emergency rendezvous at Nin-Edin—bug out! NOW!”

  “Acknowledged—”

  “—I copy—”

  The few voices cease.

  Craters steamed in the westering sun. Smoke, cordite, and the sparkling fog of magic began to clear. Vapours drifted over slumped bodies, charred DPM combats, abandoned heavy weapons, and minced flesh. The dead lay in clumps and rows.

  Because it is our flesh, it seems it should be different. Ashnak shook his head at the thought. Knobs of bone, shining joints, slick muscle tissue; all no different from a shambles or abattoir.

  Even looking at the nearest area of the battlefield he can see recognisable corpses. Three companies: practically a battalion. The orc marines of Nin-Edin…Kusaritku and Azarluhi together, and several with them burned beyond identification. Duranki, Tukurash, Kazadhuron. And, ahead of the rest, as always leading the charge as a commander should, lies Captain Imhullu. The sun shines down on his blind face.

  But The Named will not ride at Samhain. Ashnak will bet on it. For whatever her absence is worth.

  Not much, as ever, to the dead.

  Ashnak stood, the black fire of the necromancer’s rough and ready healing coursing through him. He wiped pus and blood from his remaining burns and straightened, sniffing, pulling deep breaths down into his broad chest. The air stank of shit and blood.

  He took out his forage cap and put it on, pulling down the peak. The charred remnants of his uniform pocket yielded, amazingly, fresh pipe-weed. He stuck a cigar in his mouth and strolled across to the wreck of the helicopter.