Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  A heap of masonry some yards from the Huey collapsed and disclosed the two orcs who had gone to cover. The larger, a female with her orange hair tied up in a horse-tail, shook herself. The smaller, who appeared to have been attempting to hide under his own GI helmet, sat up beside her.

  “So what does an orc call a halfling?” the small orc inquired.

  “Lunch.” The large female orc slapped her DPM-camouflaged thigh. “Lunch!”

  “Damn right,” Ashnak growled.

  The smaller orc sprang to his feet and saluted. “Sir, General Ashnak, sir!”

  “At ease, Lieutenant…Captain Barashkukor,” Ashnak corrected himself.

  Marukka saluted. “The firefight’s over.” The orange-haired orc hefted a shoulder-fired missile-launcher in one hand. “I guess we won’t be using these anymore, will we, sir? I want my poleaxe back.”

  Barashkukor folded his small arms over his flak jacket. “But I like the armour.”

  Ashnak bent down, recovering water bottles and knives from corpses, slinging them from his webbing. He left the guns. He grinned toothily and began to laugh, deep belly laughs that shook him until his tilted eyes watered.

  “It’s not important.” Ashnak put his horny arms around the two orcs’ shoulders. “Fuck, man, the weapons aren’t important!”

  In the Old Forest, now, or in the Man-countryside, there will be orc survivors heading back to Nin-Edin. They’ve been taught how to fall back and regroup. They’ll obey. They’re marines. They’re grunts.

  Ashnak of the fighting Agaku grinned an orc grin, and stared into the red light of the setting sun.

  “So the hostiles have magic. So what! Think about what happened down there, marines. We were disciplined. We fought as units. We were tactical. Orcs fought as a team.”

  “Yeah,” Marukka said slowly. “It wasn’t just warriors charging off into the fight on their own, or killing each other instead of the enemy. Different orc-tribes fought side by side! My squad kicked ass! If we hadn’t had to stop when we did…”

  Ashnak looked away from the sunset, black dots swimming in his vision. He rubbed the wet corners of his tilted eyes. Beside him, Barashkukor brought one small booted foot down hard, coming smartly to attention.

  “Sir, we are marines, sir!”

  “That’s right…”

  Ashnak tugged his forage cap down over his hairless skull, between his peaked ears. He shifted the unlit cigar to the corner of his tusked mouth and thumped Barashkukor between his skinny shoulder-blades. The small orc staggered and sat down hard on the turf.

  “That’s right.” Ashnak grinned ferociously. “There can be more of us. I promise you. There’s always the Last Battle. There’s always after the Last Battle…”

  “Sir, yes sir!”

  The crimson sun shines on the three of them, casting their shadows long across the carnage of the battlefield around Guthranc. The forces of Light, badly mauled, limp away from the scene of their victory. Below the Tower, the orc marines are already lighting fires and roasting the wounded.

  BOOK 2

  Fields of Destruction

  1

  It is Samhain. The Autumn Solstice, the Day of Dead Souls. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance.

  The Final Battle of the Army of Light against the Horde of Darkness seethes backwards across the vast plain that chroniclers call the Fields of Destruction.

  Squadrons of black-armoured orcs and wolverine-riding trolls, battalions of fire-demons and mutant ogres, companies of evil djinni, cacodaemons and dark elves, armies of witch-queens, and the thirteen necromancers of the Horde of Darkness, raven against the outnumbered Army of Light. Jagged swords, warhammers, and poleaxes bloodily rise and fall. Battalions of mutant monsters lumber into the carnage. Leather-winged beasts swoop down over the pitifully outnumbered forces of Good.

  Vast is the Horde. Its sorcery crackles like black lightning around the horizon; it eclipses the sun at noon.

  For the third time since midday, the right flank of the Evil Horde began piecemeal to retreat.

  A voice yelped, “Hold the line!”

  An evil ogre stood with his spiked helm firmly down over his brows, shield up, his warhammer poised over his head in fierce attack-posture.

  “I said hold the line, soldier!” A small and oddly dressed orc loped down the hill from the ridge. The ogre’s brows contracted in confusion.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the newcomer snarled. He stood hip-high to the evil ogre, who looked down in puzzlement at the mottled green patterns on the orc’s round, visorless helmet, and breeches and padded jerkins. The small orc wore boots.

  “I am holding the line. I’m facing the enemy,” the unwounded ogre explained. He blinked rapidly. “They won’t get past me! I’m holding the line all right.”

  The small orc pulled off his helmet and threw it furiously to the ground. It bounced. The orc’s spindly, peaked ears began to unkink.

  “You’re facing the enemy all right—from twenty yards behind our lines!” The orc used both hands to wave a snubbed metallic tube at the evil ogre. “Of course they won’t get past you, you snivelling excuse for a soldier. They’re way over there!”

  “For the Lady of Light!” a lone heroic voice trumpeted, and a knight in impractically ornamented golden armour charged into a band of Undead, two hundred strong, over there. Magic seared the earth. Two hundred Undead fell at the stroke of the enchanted blade. The golden knight charged an even larger band of trolls.

  The evil ogre pointed across the Fields of Destruction. “But, but, but—they got magic!”

  “I don’t want to hear it! Now get into the fucking fighting line. Move it asshole!”

  The small orc reached up, grabbed the ogre by the hem of his mail-shirt, and threw him bodily forward. The ogre, terminally startled, lumbered into battle. The small orc recovered his odd helmet, jammed it on his head, and doubled back along the rear of the line-fight towards the next reluctant warrior.

  The ogre heard him mutter as he went, “I don’t know what the Dark Horde is coming too…”

  An Undead barbarian warrior smashed desperately at a dwarf’s Virtue-enchanted helm before speaking to the ogre, now the next to him in the fighting line. “Who was that? What was that?”

  “I don’t know. I do know one thing.” The ogre hacked tentatively at the Army of Light, still outnumbered, but now indisputably advancing. “I do know that the day is not ours.”

  On the far side of the wooded ridge, Ashnak, general officer commanding the orc marines, shoved his urban-camouflaged GI helmet back on his misshapen skull and focussed his binoculars. The eddies and tides of the battle beat against the orc marine company, holding the right of the line.

  A halfling Paladin strode up the slope towards him at the head of a band of Men.

  “Fear not!” Her smiling confidence echoed across the field. “My virtue is such that I have never yet even had to draw my sword in anger—see, its peace-threads still bind it into the scabbard! Follow me!”

  Farther down the line, an orc marine grinned broadly. Ashnak saw her sight the M16 she carried on the halfling’s elf silver mail-shirt.

  SPLOOM!

  Ashnak blinked gold and vermillion sparkles of Light magic out of his vision. A crater smoked where the grunt had been. Overhead, an eagle-mage soared away.

  The halfling Paladin strode up the hill, oblivious. “Onward!”

  “Take her out.” Ashnak glared at the halfling’s ostentatiously empty hands. “Take her out!”

  An orc mortar team ran forward. The pair of grunts squatted, aimed, dropped in the missile—

  SPLOOOOM!

  Pieces of mortar rained down around Ashnak’s ears. He thoughtfully picked a green, sticky scrap of camouflage material off his boot and eyed the approaching band of Good warriors.

  The halfling took off her helm, brown curls ruffling in the breeze, and turned her head to gaze back at her followers as she strode on up the hill. “Follow me, Me
n! Into the atta—awk!”

  The armoured figure vanished. Ashnak raised his binos. Tracking along a fallen log, he came to where the Paladin sprawled over it, bright leg-harness at an unusual angle.

  “Assistance!” the halfling Paladin called. “My leg is broke! Succour me before the forces of Evil attack!”

  One orc marine beside Ashnak started to lift his antitank weapon, glanced suspiciously at the sky and the battlefield, and lowered it again. “Er…sir…”

  There was a sudden burning sensation on Ashnak’s chest. He glanced down. Fiery worms of blue light threaded through his combat jacket and kevlar armour. He slapped at them, wincing, and saw a company of the Light’s mages moving in towards the foot of the ridge.

  “Ashnak,” he radioed. “Marine standard-bearer to me now; out. Company Sergeant Marukka, get your platoon to pull back to me and regroup in the wood; over.”

  “Marruka to General Ashnak, orders received, sah! Out.”

  Booted orc feet pounded the earth. A tall, skinny orc in green DPM combat trousers and flak jacket loped along the foot of the wooded ridge towards Ashnak. Over one shoulder he carried a tall pole ornamented with Man-skulls, from which flew the tattered and magic-blackened marine flag.

  “Ugarit is here, sir, General, sir!”

  “Very good, marine.” Ashnak felt in his combat trouser pockets and extracted a roll of pipe-weed, which he jammed in the corner of his tusked mouth, unlit. “Stick with me, soldier. Right beside me. Or I’ll feed you your own fingers, one by one.”

  The skinny orc saluted three or four times in rapid, terrified succession. “Yessir! I will, sir! Count on me, sir!”

  “Company Sergeant Marukka to General Ashnak, we’re pulling back and letting the witch regiment take the brunt, sir. We are rejoining the main company on the ridge. Out.”

  Orcs pounded back up the hill in flawless, disciplined order, falling into cover in the wood. Ashnak glimpsed urban camouflage and a horse-tail plume of orange hair. “I see you, Sergeant. Hold you position. Out.”

  He hitched up his DPM combat trousers, sweating in the autumn chill, and pounded up the hill, Ugarit at his heels. Blood and flesh—none of it orcish—crusted his combat boots and reddened the black-and-grey fabric of his trousers to his bowed knees. Pistol and sheathed sword jolted, hanging heavy from his web-belt. He snatched air into his heaving lungs and narrowed his beetle-browed eyes.

  “Sir, General Ashnak, sir!” A small orc pushed through the undergrowth, tugged his flak jacket straight, and snapped a smart salute, panting. “I keep putting the Horde back in the line, sir, but they won’t stay there.”

  “Send another runner to Horde Command, Captain Barashkukor. We need Dark mages on this flank. We must have sorcerous support!”

  “Sir, yes sir!”

  “Dumb motherfuckers!” Ashnak snarled. “If we don’t get some magical firepower over here, this flank will never hold.”

  The lightning-strikes of Light’s magical discharges coloured the air aquamarine, vermillion, and gold. Sorcery went up in black plumes against the blue noonday sky. The shouting, spellcasting, and the clash of weapons must have echoed as far as the coast and Herethlion’s deserted streets. Ashnak spat, and thumbed his radio’s helmet-stud.

  “Marines are never defeated!” he snarled.

  A tinny, loud response echoed through from the four hundred orc grunts in the wood:

  “SIR, NO SIR!”

  “Barashkukor, did you pass my message on to the other Horde Commanders?”

  “Sir, I did. No one knows where the nameless necromancer is. Even the Dark Lord doesn’t know, and He isn’t too pleased about that, sir.”

  The big orc shook his tusked head cynically. “So our nameless commander’s gone missing. What a surprise, Captain. Where is the orc marines’ fearless patron? Where, indeed.”

  “His sister The Named hasn’t been seen fighting for the Light, though, sir.”

  “I suppose we should be thankful for that. Too much damn magic here as it is.”

  In the battle’s centre, to Ashnak’s left, the infantry line-fight swayed—heroic bright uniforms, white shining armour, the rise and fall of enchanted blades. Trolls crushed skulls, witches cackled and transmuted their enemies to bloody offal, before falling to the Light’s magery. Blue fire-worms faded from Ashnak’s flesh. He wondered briefly if that meant that the enemy wizard battalions were having problems with the other flank of the battle; he wondered too why there was never a magic-sniffer around when you needed one…

  At the foot of the ridge, a band of elven cavalry wheeled their horned mounts and charged up the slope towards the woods, firing short recurved bows as they came. Sunlight glinted from the unicorns’ spiral horns and from the elven mail.

  Ashnak bellowed: “Heavy weapon fifty yards general targets fire!”

  An orc squad on the far right opened up, raking the elves with Maxim guns.

  “Captain Barashkukor, tell the drummers to signal Fire at will!”

  A ragged cheer went down the line. Ashnak bared his fangs in a smile. He thumbed the RT. “All marine troops go over to primary weapons, repeat, all marine troops use primary weapons.”

  He unslung an M60 machinegun from his back. With his standard-bearer close behind, he pushed into a gap between squads at the woods’ edge, cocked the weapon, and the stuttering roar of a firefight broke out. Grenades exploded, throwing up showers of dirt and meat. Cordite smoke obscured the battle. The orc squads around him fired on automatic, M16 and AK47 muzzles jabbing flame. The boom! and crack! of fire hurt his ears until they bled.

  “Suck on that, motherfuckers!” Ashnak lifted his machinegun and fired again, emptying the magazine.

  Hooves cut the turf as elvish cavalry pounded up the ridge towards him. Ashnak dropped to one knee, thumbed the magazine-release, and slid a full magazine in. The arrow-storm fell around him. Eighty jewelled riders: bright swords raised, banners flying, spurring their unicorns’ flanks bloody. He saw their mouths open, could not hear the Light’s spells over the firefight.

  “Gotta admire them dumbass heroes. But…”

  Ashnak emptied his M60 into the front rank.

  Unicorns and elves slammed into the earth. The banners of the Light dropped and fell, trampled. Broken-legged mounts screamed, struggling to rise. One mail-shirted elf got to her hands and knees, blonde hair falling over her almond eyes, and Ashnak let off a burst that ripped her into bloody shrapnel.

  “Keep firing! We’re gonna take ’em!”

  As he spoke, an enemy fail-weapons spell glanced across the ridge and the wood. All the automatic weapons coughed and fell silent; all the grenades failed to explode. The sudden quiet filled with the screaming of wounded unicorns.

  “Where the fuck are our mages? Damn it, we could turn the battle here!”

  “They’ve run!” The standard-bearer, Ugarit, fell to his knees and began to giggle hysterically.

  Captain Barashkukor hit dirt beside Ashnak. “Dark magic-users were supposed to be protecting his flank, sir, but they pulled out.”

  A rare breath of wind parted the smoke and magical flames. Ashnak stared out from the ridge, across the battlefield. The fight on his left between the Undead and their dwarvish opponents swayed backwards and forwards and broke, the Dark Undead falling back in confusion.

  To Ashnak’s right, the Dark’s trolls turned their backs and ran from Men in full plate harness advancing across the Fields towards the orcs’ position, the shimmer of spellfire blazing from their armour.

  “If we don’t hold ’em now, we’ve lost it!” Ashnak slapped the butt of his M60. “Captain, pass the word down to the NCOs: if these weapons fail, the marines are to go over to axe and hammer. We’ve done it before. We’re the fighting Agaku! Drums: signal the advance. Let’s go, marines. Go, go, go!”

  Pounding the earth, boots slipping in blood and intestines, Ashnak loped down over the fallen bodies of the elvish cavalry. Exposed now, on open ground, the orc machines pounded forward.
<
br />   “Chaarrge!” Ashnak bellowed, deep voice lost in the foundry-racket of fire.

  A good part of the right flank of the Horde began suddenly to roll forward with the orcs.

  SPLOOOOM!!

  Momentum gone, Horde warriors dived for cover in the waving grass and found none.

  “How do you like that? The bastards are running out on us!” a voice marvelled in Ashnak’s ear. Company Sergeant Marukka swung her shoulder-fired rocket-launcher around and pulled the trigger. The whump! of high explosive failed to materialise. “This ain’t no Horde general advance, sah! We’re marooned way out in front of the battle! The enemy are going to take us on both flanks!”

  The armoured Men closed the distance, screaming into the fight. Ashnak wiped his brows, damp with the fine spray of blood that filled the air above the infantry line. The sky stood empty of all but the eclipsed sun. Black riders grouped on a distant ridge to the east. No sign of his runner; no word from Horde Command.

  “We can hold without firearms—but the rest of them candyass bastards won’t!”

  The smoke of magic hid the left flank now, and rolled across the centre of the battle, so that all he could hear were screams, battlecries. Longbow arrows began dropping from the sky, scattering the command group around him, and an orc NCO lifted his helmeted head to shout orders and dropped with a steel bolt through GI pot and skull. Another fail-weapons spell sparked from field to ridge. The reserve squads’ weapons stuttered and died.

  “Son of a bitch!” Ashnak howled. He pounded his useless M60 into the weapons-strewn, bloodstained, corpse-littered turf. “Somebody take out the White Mages!”

  “We’re going to die!” Corporal Ugarit crouched at the foot of the marine standard-pole, skinny shoulders shaking. His wide eyes fixed on the advancing Army of Light. “I’m going to die—they’re going to get me—I’m outta here—arrggh!”

  Ashnak wiped green orc blood from the butt of the M60 as he kicked Ugarit to his feet. Pragmatic and prosaic, he said, “If anyone’s going to die at the Last Battle, trust me, it won’t be the orc marines!”