Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  He thumbed his helmet RT.

  “Okay, listen up! Ashnak to all section leaders. Form up on the standard, repeat, form up on my standard. We can’t retreat from this position, we’ll never make it. We’re going to fight straight through the enemy lines, and we’re not stopping for anything, got that? Once we’re past them, keep going. We’ll regroup at our emergency rendezvous point. Assholes and elbows, you motherfuckers, and remember that you’re the orc marines!”

  There was a momentary silence. Then, amid yells of “Fix bayonets!”, the company seized their secondary weapons and plunged into the advancing line of armoured Men, wielding their spears, halberds, morningstars, and flails.

  The smoke of battle hid them from sight.

  All across the Fields of Destruction, the evil Horde of Darkness broke, ran, and routed in utter confusion.

  “Ho, Amarynth!”

  The squat figure of a dwarf made a black silhouette against the sunset. She plodded across the field, stout-booted feet trampling over the fallen bodies of tribal orcs wearing black plate-armour. Her red hair, tightly braided on the crown of her head, shone in the level golden light.

  “Amarynth, you elven rogue!”

  The elven fighter-mage leaned wearily against a boulder. Trolls and cacodaemons lay at his feet, his white-fletched arrows jutting from their eye-sockets and mouths. A great many more of the corpses surrounding the rock showed the burns of magic. “Kazra—is that you?”

  “Of course it’s me,” the dwarf grumbled, wiping the back of her broad hand across her forehead. It came away green with orc blood, black with the ichor of daemons. Similar blood spattered her small, broad breastplate and arm defences. She held out the hand.

  Amarynth gripped it with slender brown fingers. He then examined his hand in distaste, wiping it down his silken tunic. “I never thought I should be glad to see a dwarf! Kazra, well met. Well met, on this day of all great days!”

  “It is a great day,” the dwarf said, “and a great victory, although I suppose I must give some of the credit to elves and Men. But we dwarves! How we fought!”

  “Yes. There will be many a sad burning tonight at the funeral pyres. But we have won the great Victory of our Age. Evil is vanquished!”

  The elven fighter-mage clapped the dwarf on the back, reaching down low to do it. Picking their way among the dead bodies of orcs, enchantresses, and ogres, the two warriors of Light made their way across the Fields of Destruction to a low ridge.

  There, beyond the crows flocking down to settle on the field of battle, the countryside of the Northern Kingdoms stretched away in the sunset light. Gold touched the cornfields, the spires of distant villages, and the quiet, winding rivers.

  “We shall go to Herethlion,” Amarynth said softly. “There will be much singing. The heroes shall be honoured. And the greatest of them all shall be rewarded by the High King Kelyos Magorian.”

  Kazra snorted, resting on the haft of her axe. “And the High King Magorian had better appoint some of us to his Council, since who but we who fought for the Northern Kingdoms best know how to govern them? There is much that needs putting right, friend Amarynth. Traitors and Dark-lovers yet remain in hiding. We must search them out—with an inquisition, if need be.”

  An unexpected and unaccustomed smile spread over Amarynth’s aquiline brown features. His black hair shone in the sun. The last vestiges of magic fractured in gold light in his eyes.

  “Fear not, Kazra. We have vermin to root out, I doubt not, but we this day have created a world to last a thousand years! A world for the Light, in which no shadow of Darkness shall trouble us again.”

  “And what of the scattered remnants of the defeated Evil Horde?”

  “Oh,” Amarynth said, “they have nowhere to run to. We shall exterminate them over the next few weeks. After all, their Dark Master is dead and their Dark Land invaded. Where can they go, and what help can they hope for? Every good man’s hand is against them.”

  The elven fighter-mage and the dwarf began to walk west, into the light of the setting sun. Kazra’s boot squelched. She swore an ancient dwarvish oath and bent down to tug her foot free of tangled white intestines spilling from the gutted body of a great orc. She cracked an orc-rib and freed her boot, muttering at the stench of decomposing flesh. Two fat cows waddled across the earth towards the corpse.

  “To Herethlion!” Amarynth cried.

  Kazra echoed him. “To Herethlion!”

  Side by side they strode west, into a world of golden light.

  The first beams of dawn shafted down through the branches of the Old Forest. Sunlight fell through ancient beech trees to the leaf-covered forest floor. Under spreading oaks, bracken turned autumnal red. Dew hung grey on spiderwebs.

  A bird began to sing.

  FOOM!

  Amid falling feathers, Company Sergeant Marukka blew a drift of smoke from her Desert Eagle pistol and reholstered it.

  “All right, you grunts—hands off cocks; on socks!”

  Company Sergeant Marukka strolled down the lines of recumbent orc bodies, bellowing, kicking out with her combat boots. Black unit insignia and sergeant’s chevrons tattooed her muscular green arms. Over her squat body she wore a camouflage jacket with the sleeves ripped off and a black undershirt that strained over her large breasts. Knives, grenades, and pistols hung from her webbing. Her orange hair was pulled up into a skull-ornamented plume on the crown of her head.

  “I can’t wait all da-ay…” Marukka sang sweetly. “On your feet, marines!”

  Marukka turned and stood with her back to the largest beech tree, bowed legs planted wide apart, her gnarled hands clasped behind her back. The many orc grunts who had slept concealed in bracken began to stir, sitting up and rubbing their heads. One green-skinned orc absently stood up to piss. A boot emerged from the bush he had chosen as his target and kicked him across the clearing. There was a clatter of weapons and armour as he landed.

  “You’re going to hate my guts,” Marukka announced, satisfied. “I’m here to see you get it right, not to wipe your scaly bums! I’ll leave that to your mothers—those of you assholes who had mothers. Even a mother couldn’t love a scurvy, filthy, undisciplined bunch of wankers like you. Am I right?”

  Half on their feet, partly armoured, each with a weapon to hand, the assembled orcs hastily chorused, “Yes, Sergeant!”

  “Then get your asses in gear, you ’orrible little orcs, or I’ll have your bollocks for breakfast! Corporals, get your ores on parade! At the double! Now!” Marukka paced forward, still with her hands behind her back. She kept a wary eye on the broken-down hovel that temporarily housed the company’s officers. hearing muttering voices inside. She surveyed the orcs in the slanting sunlight—some pissing up trees, some fastening combat jackets and trousers, some still slumped on the ground.

  “You think because you’ve just been through the Last Battle, that excuses you? You shower of shit! You’re marines. You there—your weapons are filthy. You—your kit is incomplete. Smarten it up, you ’orrible little lot!”

  “YES SERGEANT!”

  One orc marine sat down again, clutching his bleeding arm. In the daylight, a number of marine injuries were visible.

  “Fit marines to the right,” Marukka bawled, “and wounded marines to the left. Crawl if you have to.”

  The company split raggedly, some three hundred or more orc marines moving to the right side of the clearing and perhaps thirty (more slowly) to the left.

  Marukka’s lips curled back in a snarl. She walked up to the dozen marines who still stood in the centre of the clearing.

  “So. Can’t make up our minds, can we? Not fit or wounded marines? Just what do you think you lot are, then?”

  An albino orc drew himself more smartly to attention. “Please, Sergeant, dead marines.”

  “What?”

  Marukka goggled. The twelve orc marines fiddled with their tattered bloody combat fatigues, attempting to conceal gaping gut wounds and various fractures. A chill
came off them that was not the chill of dawn.

  “To be completely accurate, Undead marines, Sergeant. We was raised, Sergeant, by a necromancer of unknown provenance.”

  “Ah. Well. Lugashaldim, isn’t it? Very well, Corporal Lugashaldim.” Marukka nodded to the albino orc briskly. “Undead marine squad—carry on.”

  “Yes, Sergeant!” The Undead orc marine saluted. A finger detached itself from his hand and flew across the clearing, striking a female orc lance-corporal under the left ear. She growled.

  Marukka about-faced and marched across to the small hovel in time to salute Barashkukor as the captain came out. “Beg to report the company is ready for General Ashnak’s inspection.”

  “The general is ready to inspect!”

  While Ashnak walked around on inspection, Marukka ordered her lesser NCOs into assigning spare weapons, checking backpacks, correcting the use of camouflage-paint on scabby orc features, and checking the remaining rounds of ammunition. At the end of half an hour she saluted the orc general under the big beech tree.

  “Ready to move out, sir. We’re low on ammunition until we get back to base. Suggest the marines use only their polearms, sir, if we run into opposition.”

  “We’ll run into opposition, Sergeant. The Light is going to be combing the Northern Kingdoms for survivors of that battle. And we just made ourselves the number one target.” The big orc general pulled an urban camouflage forage cap down to shade his eyes. He chewed on an unlit cigar. “Thank you, Sergeant. Captain Barashkukor, get the orcs ready to move out.”

  Barashkukor slammed a small booted foot into the leafmould and saluted. “Sir! Sir, what about the wounded who can’t walk?”

  The orc general shrugged. “We’ve got a long march in front of us. They’re history.”

  “Yessir!” Sergeant Marukka nodded sagely.

  A strained expression made its appearance on the small orc’s features. Captain Barashkukor protested, “Sir, we don’t leave our own, sir!”

  General Ashnak considered this new concept. After a few moments he nodded.

  “You’re right, Captain. Of course you’re right. See to it. They’re not history—they’re field rations.”

  The halfling Magda sat in her room in Herethlion.

  The distant rumble of magic that had sounded all day from the east became sporadic, and finally died down completely around twilight. Mopping up after yesterday’s battle. Magda waited. It did not resume.

  She got to her feet, continuing to brush her long auburn hair. A stamp of her tiny foot on the floor brought her halfling maid, Safire, running.

  “Yes, miss?”

  “Help me dress.”

  Magda tossed the hairbrush onto her cluttered dressing table. After a moment’s thought she recovered it and threw it up onto the Man-sized bed. She tugged the gauze scarf from her full-length mirror.

  A halfling, three feet three inches high, with auburn hair falling to her waist…Magda surveyed herself for a moment. She irritatedly pulled off the auburn hairpiece and began to fit a blonde wig over her own cropped brown hair.

  “Your clothes, miss. Shall I help you with the laces?”

  Magda hopped up to sit on the Man-bed and pull on the tight black leather trousers and laced leather bodice. While Safire adjusted the trouser lacings up the outside of her legs, Magda clipped spiked and studded leather bands around her wrists and neck and put on her chain-belt. She slid off the bed, wriggling her feet into stiletto-heeled black thighboots, and strode across to the mirror.

  Slender curves tightly encased, Magda posed for her own satisfaction. She ran her hands over her black-leather-clad breasts and hips. “I have a girl’s figure still, Safire. A girl’s figure.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  Magda peered closely into the mirror, touching the lines around her eyes. “I shall be wearing the mask. You must give me warning if one of the customers wants me bare-face. I’ll need cosmetics.”

  She reached up and took the whip from the dressing table, cracking it experimentally. There was a clatter of iron from the bedstead, where Safire checked the shackles. Female and male voices echoed excitedly down the House of Joy’s upper corridor, and in Herethlion’s streets hoofbeats sounded.

  “Go on then, girl! Tell them that Mistress Whip is ready for business.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  The leather-clad halfling wobbled a couple of steps on her high heels, caught her balance, and picked up and put on the leather head-mask that had only eye- and mouth-holes to break its severity.

  “Heroes coming back from the wars.” Magda heaved a happy sign that strained the laces over her diminutive breasts. “I’ll wager the Light is victorious…Either way, there’s custom enough out there for all of us for a week. No, a month! We’re going to be rich, Safire. Rich!”

  2

  Eight days orc-march away from the Fields of Destruction, the raw November fog rolled across General Ashnak as he stood in the compound of the Nin-Edin Marine Base.

  “Our ass is grass,” he announced, slapping the barrel of his M60. “And these are the reason why.”

  “‘Tisn’t fair on the grunts, sir,” Company Sergeant Marukku protested. “All the other defeated Dark war-bands are going to form themselves into Free Companies and ravage the countryside.”

  “‘Snot fair at all, sir.” Captain Barashkukor wiped his nose. “All we wanted to be was brigands.”

  “We’re marines,” Ashnak growled.

  “Okay, sir—disciplined brigands. Aaaaaaashu!” The small orc wiped his nose on his sleeve, trailing mucus over his camouflage combat jacket. He sniffed. “I bet they’re all doing it. Taking towns, refusing to be shifted by threats or bribes, being declared heir when the present ruler dies of completely natural causes…I was really looking forward to being a duke, sir. Aasshu!”

  Ashnak glared up through the fog at the walls, and the travel-worn orc marine company hastily repossessing and rebuilding the Nin-Edin fort. “No. We’re prime targets. The marines were the best unit on the Fields of Destruction. The Light will put it down to these weapons. They’ll want us.”

  Watery daytime torchlight illuminated his ugly features and brass-capped tusks. He scratched at his flea-infested combat fatigues.

  “I want this place bristling with weapons! The Light can use magic to find us here. Even after the Last Battle, I’m willing to bet they’ll have mages to send against us.”

  “Aascchhhu!”

  CSM Marukku wiped disgustedly at the bowed leg of her combats and glared at Barashkukor with more than a sergeant’s distaste for junior officers. “Beg to report, General, I checked out our stores of Dagurashibanipal’s hoard in the bunkers here—we’re up to capacity on ammunition. I found some crates that ain’t matériel. One’s been taken up to your office for your inspection. I also took a tech squad up to the storage-depot caverns. The old wyrm must have had half the mountains hollowed out—there’s enough weapons, transport, and ammunition in there to equip an orc tribe for a decade!”

  Barashkukor wiped his dripping nose. “And none of it any use to us without mage-protection! They can wipe us out with the simplest fail-weapons spell.”

  Ashnak slapped his orc captain between the shoulder-blades. Barashkukor rolled head over heels several times, finishing up on his back with his combat boots up against the inner gate-tower’s iron portcullis.

  “Cheer up! Damn it, Captain, we’re marines. We don’t take defeat lying down!”

  “Sir, no sir—aaaaschuu!”

  Marukka said, “The general’s got a plan. Haven’t you, General? He’s never let us down yet. We’re marines. We look after our own.”

  Ashnak thought of the wounded and picked his teeth.

  The female orc, suspicion fighting with military discipline in her tone, said, “You have got a plan, General?”

  Ashnak thought, How long can Nin-Edin remain untouched by the Dark’s catastrophic defeat? The nameless necromancer—may he burn!—where is he?

  With no mage
-support, there’s a limit to how long Ashnak can play for time. “Don’t ask questions, Sergeant. Obey your orders! I want that standard-bearer, Ugarit, and Marine Rast—Razzis—”

  Captain Barashkukor’s mucus-rimmed eyes suddenly lit up. “Razitshakra, sir. Marine Razitshakra.”

  “Why does the general want them?” Marukka growled, puzzled. “They’re hardly fit to be called marines, either one of them.”

  “I want them in my office,” Ashnak ordered. “Now.”

  The rider of the refugee war-beast dug a makeshift thorn quirt behind its saillike ear. The great animal lifted a long proboscis, curling like a python, and swung ponderously to the left, padding up a steep hill slope.

  A fresh wind blew from the ship-deserted sea.

  The rider shifted blanket and leather strap, endeavouring to make the seat on the animal’s back more comfortable. Rough brown hide, thick with bristles, made uneasy riding. Rags of gold and red caparisons clung to its metal-armoured tusks. The animal’s tiny black eye swivelled in its socket, gazing up and back.

  “Go, thou bastard offspring of a goat and the World Serpent! Go!”

  The thorn quirt lashed down. The war-elephant turned away and inland, scaling the Downs, and trampling hedges, crops, and streamlets in the country beyond.

  Freezing fog hung in the general’s office in Nin-Edin’s inner keep. Mists pearled on the tower’s yard-thick masonry walls. Ashnak ambled across to a large crate, fully accustomed to the strength and influence of the geas that radiated from any item of the dragon’s hoard.

  “Is there anything useful in here, Barashkukor?”

  “Don’t—asshu!” Barashkukor wiped his snot on his sleeve. “Don’t know, sir.”

  “Then open it, you snivelling little rat!”

  Ashnak put his hands behind his back, watching Barashkukor lever at the wood with fangs and talons. The planks splintered. Barashkukor peered down into the crate, his spindly ears shifting from lateral to vertical.

  “Books, sir?”

  “Books?” Ashnak took a tome out of the smaller orc’s hand. With one taloned finger he traced the printed letters on the cover. His wide lips moved as he read, literacy not being a prime requirement for a Horde captain. “‘Von…Clauswitz. On…War…”