Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  “No one’s taking over here except me!”

  The junior officers who had stood up sat down, attempting to achieve invisibility. Ashnak strode down from the platform, backhanding the two nearest and catapulting them across the hall. Chairs went flying. He reached Marukka’s body and booted the orange-haired orc over onto her back. The wound pumped green blood less strongly now, pooling on the floor. Her eyes were open, unseeing. Tissue from the exit wound spattered the orc marines behind her.

  “What do you shit-for-brains dumb motherfuckers expect me to do?” Ashnak snarled. “Stand there and ask her questions while she shoots me? Siege or no siege, this coup is over before it’s started. I’m general of the orc marines and it’s going to stay that way. Is that clear?”

  “SIR, YES SIR!”

  Ashnak stomped back to the dais, lighting his cigar.

  “Now. As I was saying. We find ourselves in a hostile situation, siege-wise…”

  Ignoring the wall map behind him, he pointed his swagger stick at the table set up below the dais. Orc majors and captains abandoned their folding wooden chairs, kicking and biting to be in the front row around the war-table. Ashnak glared down at the tops of helmets and forage caps and coughed meaningfully. Orc heads lifted, tusks gleaming in heavy lower jaws, piggy eyes glinting. Reluctantly they shuffled back a few inches.

  On the table, a scale map of the Demonfest Mountains and surrounding area sported a liberal array of different-coloured map pins.

  “Recon units report hostile troops on the roads from Sarderis, Herethlion, and some of the minor western towns—which have taken up positions here, here, and here, surrounding the Nin-Edin hill. As you know, we have our own well. However, our supply lines to the east have been cut, we can’t get out to raid the lowlands, and our stores are low.”

  A second lieutenant stopped picking her broad, hairy nostril long enough to raise her taloned hand. “Sir, what strength are they, sir?”

  “Good question, that orc. Strong enough to keep us bottled up here—they have Light Mages with them.”

  Orc officers growled, boots pounding the flagstones. The wintery sun gleamed from the fortress hall’s whitewashed walls. It shone on the wooden podium with its bullet holes, orc marine insignia—an odd arrangement of stars and bars, with the Horde’s raven superimposed over them—and inscription: Operation Librarian.

  Ashnak looked down across the tusked faces and assembled weaponry. “Now, you orcs. I shall be depending on you to hold the fort—I shall not be here with you.”

  Orcs looked at one another.

  The second lieutenant whispered, “Did he say…?”

  “Did I ask any of you dumbfuck marines for an opinion? An orc general always leads from the front!”

  Several orc marines cheered. Ashnak eyed Barashkukor for support. The small orc captain, seated on a chair, had his elbows on his knees and his pointed chin on his hands and was gazing dreamily in the direction of Marine Razitshakra.

  “We orcs have been the servants of others for too long!” Ashnak proclaimed. “Dark Mages have run the orc marines, because they have control of the thaumaturgic firepower. I’m going to put a stop to that! The technical specialist marine (thaumaturgy) will now give us a briefing on my solution to this problem. Marine Razitshakra.”

  “I’ve done intensive research for the general.” Razitshakra took off her spectacles and began to polish them with her desert camo bandanna. “We need what are technically known as nullity talismans. These are new. They’re small devices which any marine could carry. They produce a field which nullifies the operation of magical forces in a varyingly wide vicinity. Actually, they create sinkholes of space-time in which thaumatological forces cannot exist. The physics are fascinating…”

  Ashnak’s muscled arms folded across the bullet bandoliers that crossed his barrel chest. The winter sun gleamed on his marine tattoos and Agaku tribal scars. He licked a fang and growled something that might have been “Never trust an intellectual orc…”

  “Nullity talismans.” Razitshakra hastily replaced her spectacles. “They’re new, and they’re rare. I can come up with only one place where they’re likely to exist in sufficient quantity for the marines—that’s at the Thaumatological University’s research and development laboratories in Fourgate. The Visible College.”

  Ashnak stepped forward. “Thank you, Marine. Return to your seat. Now listen up! I myself will be taking a commando group and penetrating the installation in Fourgate. For a mission this hazardous, I shall be asking for volunteers.”

  “Let my unit do it, sir.”

  At the back of the ranked orc officers, Corporal Lugashaldim stood up. His gaunt albino features had an increasingly livid tinge. Ashnak noted the marine corporal now wore black combat trousers and boots and a tight knitted woollen pullover with epaulets.

  “Your unit?”

  “The SUS, sir.” Lugashaldim saluted. “The Special Undead Services.”

  Ashnak returned the salute. “Very well, Corporal. Get your orcs geared up for a dangerous mission.”

  “Sir!” Lugashaldim resumed his seat at the back of the hall. The albino marine took out his commando knife, reached up, and trimmed his ears down to short points. He then fitted a black beret smartly on the side of his head, the unit insignia of orc-skull and crossbones to the fore with its SUS motto, Death, Then Glory.

  “The technical specialist marine will accompany us,” Ashnak continued. “Captain Barashkukor—Captain!”

  The small orc, his chin on his hands, continued to gaze fondly at Razitshakra, who ignored him.

  “Captain!”

  Barashkukor jumped three inches in his seat, stood up, saluted, and yelled, “Sir, yes sir!”

  Ashnak sighed. “You are promoted to major, Barashkukor. You will hold Nin-Edin with the orcs until our return. Send out snipers, raiding parties, sallies—harass the enemy, Major, keep them off-balance.”

  Barashkukor, his wistfully dreamy gaze returning to the spectacled female orc, murmured, “Yes, yes, of course. Whatever you think best, General.”

  Ashnak of the orc marines rested his elbows on the podium and put his head in his hands. Once only, and very quietly, he whimpered. Straightening up, he glared at Barashkukor.

  “You are Acting Commander, Major, until I get back. Dismiss!”

  The hall cleared with startling rapidity.

  Ashnak moved down from the podium and crouched beside the dead body of the orc who had been with the marines since the discovery of Dagurashibanipal’s hoard. He picked up Marukka’s limp, dead hand. For several moments he remained in that position.

  Ashnak bent his head forward, bit off three of her fingers at the roots, and left the hall, chewing with some relish.

  * * *

  The war-elephant, having grazed on the overripe and unharvested corn of the lowlands, paused to drink from a spring in the foothills of the mountains.

  Hurried scuffling could be heard among the concealing boulders and gorse bushes. A black-fletched arrow sprouted from the turf at the animal’s feet.

  “Hai!” The rider unhooked his two-handed axe from his back and brandished it single-handed. “Come out, vermin, and fight me man to man!”

  The beast abandoned the cold water, lifting its trunk and screaming rage to the overcast skies. Bushes rustled again, nearer to the beast’s rear leg. Steel flashed. The war-elephant reached down with its trunk, seized a concealed orc by the thigh, wrenched the limb loose as a man might break apart a chicken, and beat the screaming orc with the pulverized limb until—after a surprisingly long interval—all noise ceased.

  The wind blew shrill amongst the tumbled stones of the tors.

  “Come out and fight, you puling cowards!”

  An apologetic voice said, “Mighty mage! We don’t wish to fight the keeper of this great beast.”

  “Then step out where I can see you, boy!”

  A large orc in a black breastplate, with a ragged green-stained bandage covering his left eye, stepped
out of concealment. A rather larger orc in battered plate moved out from behind her boulder. Two orcs in mail appeared, one still bearing a halberd with a hacked edge to its blade. Three more; two archers; five; a dozen…

  Something on the order of forty orcs stepped out of concealment among the scattered boulders. The war-elephant lifted its trunk and trumpeted. One of the smaller orcs dived back behind a clump of gorse.

  The orc in the black breastplate gazed up. A northern barbarian sat high on the elephant’s neck; bare-armed, barelegged, impervious to the wind that ruffled his wolf-pelt tunic and wolf-fur leggings. The barbarian’s bright mail-shirt glinted, and the horns on his helmet appeared wickedly sharp. Thick blond braids fell either side of a weathered face, from which piercing blue eyes surveyed the orcs.

  Cautiously the orc demanded, “Your name, great lord of this magic beast?”

  “I hight Blond Wolf!”

  The elephant coiled its trunk around the rider and lowered him to the earth.

  The orc stared.

  “’Ere,” the orc said, “you’re not a Man.”

  “I’m Great Lord Blond Wolf of the Howlfang Mountains!” the rider snarled. “Mightiest barbarian warrior of the Dark; and you pig-swivers can call me ‘Great.’”

  “You’re not as big as a Man.” The orc peered down. “You’re not as big as a dwarf. You’re not as big as a halfling, even.”

  Narrowed blue eyes fixed on the orc from a point some two feet and seven inches above ground-level. The barbarian snarled, inflating his chest. His helmet, with its attached horns that jutted out a good armspan to either side, slipped down over his nose. He shoved it to the back of his head.

  “What did you say?”

  The orc guffawed. “You’re pretty short for a barbarian, ain’ tcha?”

  The northern barbarian clapped his hands. The war-elephant lowered its trunk from the makeshift howdah on its back and set a small pair of wooden steps in front of its master. Lord Blond Wolf spat on his hands, unfolded the ladder, and set it up in front of the large orc. He drew his axe, plodded up the steps, and swung his weapon.

  The blade clanged into the side of the orc’s helmet. The orc, catapulted backwards, knocked three of its nest-brothers into the heather.

  “I’m riding to succour Evil, damn it, after our defeat!” The northern barbarian climbed back down his ladder, waving his axe. “Will that teach you not to insult a warrior, you rat’s arseholes?”

  The orc looked up hesitantly, rubbing its skull. “Where are you riding to, master?”

  The northern barbarian threw back his head, tendons cording his throat, and laughed richly. With the orc on its hands and knees, he looked it squarely in the eye. “What damn business is it of yours anyway, wartface?”

  The orcs glanced at each other, rapid consultations going on in lowered voices. Scuffles broke out. The armoured and mailed orcs looked up at the war-elephant, and the trackless foothills of the mountains.

  “Noble Lord Blond Wolf.” The orc banged its forehead experimentally on the earth, watching the barbarian from one upturned eye. “We’ll form your Dark honour guard, if you let us ride with you.”

  4

  The besieging Army of Light set up just in time for the first snow.

  Immense and aloof, the monumental rockfaces of the mountains that loomed above the pass silted up with whiteness. Snow blurred the lines of tents on the slopes below Nin-Edin, outside firing range. Snow shrouded the earth siegeworks. Blue and silver banners shone through the falling flakes.

  Major Barashkukor, Commander (Part-Time, Acting, Unpaid) of Nin-Edin, stared down from the parapet of the outer walls.

  “I don’t like it, Sergeant. It’s too quiet.”

  FOOM!

  Barashkukor fingered his hairless peaked ear, a pained expression on his features. “Cease fire! Sergeant, what is that?”

  Sergeant Varimnak chewed gum noisily. A hulking, trim, and broad-shouldered brown orc, she wore her black combat fatigues ripped, with engineer boots, and a spiked black leather belt in place of her webbing. Her cropped crest had been spiked and bleached white.

  The Badgurlz sergeant narrowed her eyes, removed the gum, and stuck it under one of the crenellations. “Looks like they want to parley with us. Fuck knows why.”

  Barashkukor waited, vainly. He drew a deep breath, filling his thin chest to capacity. “That’s ‘fuck knows why, sir,’ Sergeant!”

  “Yes sir, Major, sir!” The stocky orc grinned.

  Varimnak’s squad, composed of the smaller female orcs, seemed almost lost in their large ripped marine-issue black combat fatigues. They leaned into the cover of the crenellations, two of them carrying shoulder-fired grenade-launchers; three, M60 machineguns; and one a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile. Barashkukor surveyed the Badgurlz’s spiked crests, scars, and tattoos, and his chest swelled with pride.

  He sprang up to stand in one of the icy stone gaps in the crenellations, ignoring the thirty-foot drop in front of his combat boots. “Yo, down there!”

  The approaching party halted.

  A knight in full plate harness bent his head and removed his helm. His destrier stamped. In his armoured right hand he carried a white standard of truce. “Orcs of the Horde! I am Amarynth, Commander of the Light, Mage and Warrior both. Listen to my words of wisdom!”

  Sergeant Varimnak looked up from where she squatted, bandy legs bent, cradling an AK47.

  “Exactly who is that asshole, sir?”

  “Some damn hero or other.”

  Barashkukor straightened the peak of his green forage cap and settled his web-belt more comfortably around his thin waist.

  “You down there! Unauthorized personnel! I give you statutory warning that you are adopting a hostile posture by surrounding Marine Base Nin-Edin, home of the 483rd Airborne, and by the rules of war I am therefore justified in—”

  Barashkukor stopped in bewilderment as the elvish knight dismounted from his steed and knelt in the snow outside Nin-Edin’s walls.

  “Lady of Light!” the elf prayed loudly. “Hear my vow! Be with me today, as I battle in the name of Good. Grant me the power to speedily end this battle, so that they shall sing of us throughout the generations, and our glory shall be the greater…”

  The dark-skinned elven warrior pushed his black hair back behind his pointed ears, frowning.

  “…ah, yes. And so that fewer of the Light’s warriors perish. Grant me the strength of steel and magic both, so that I may wipe these orcs, blood and bone, from the earth! Hack their foul heads from their deformed bodies, tear out their intestines! Gouge out their eyes! Rip the fangs from their jaws and the skin from their faces!”

  Panting, the elf smoothed down his blue and silver livery, which had two crescent moons woven into it. His fluted plate-armour shone cream-coloured under the snow-leaking sky.

  “Carve the blood eagle on their wretched carcasses,” he concluded, standing up, “and put to the fire their still-living remains! In the name of your Mercy, Lady, amen!”

  The orcs looked at each other.

  “Well, sir,” Varimnak said, “I guess he was the most diplomatic one they could find to talk to us.”

  “Orcs of Nin-Edin! Surrender now and we may spare your miserable lives.” The elvish knight remounted and reined in his rearing unicorn. Flakes of snow frosted his pointed ears and high cheekbones. “Throw down your weapons now! You filth will die, like your master the nameless necromancer, unless you make honest reparation for your crimes. There is much work to be done, rebuilding the world after the Dark Lord’s defeat, and it is meet that you should labour in it.”

  “Go into slavery, you mean!” Barashkukor turned to speak to Varimnak and found his sergeant missing. He showed small fangs in a scowl.

  “‘s pure ungratefulness, sir,” a Badgurlz MFC complained. “After we won the Fields of Destruction for them by fucking off…”

  The Badgurlz marine surreptitiously sighted her shoulder-fired missile-launcher.

  “No
!” the major snarled. “Not yet. Bad orc!”

  Ignoring the indignant Light party, Barashkukor climbed down from the crenellation and strode across the parapet. Sergeant Varimnak trotted back up the steps from the bailey.

  “Dumb Light fuckers won’t attack under a parley flag,” she grunted. “But, like I guessed, there was someone hanging around to take advantage. Major, I got something you got to see.”

  The Light’s increasingly impatient shouts faded as Barashkukor followed the bleach-haired orc sergeant up across the bailey and the hill, into the inner compound. A thin snow skittered and rolled in waves, powdery as sand, and stung his eyes. The rebuilt parapets and squat towers of Nin-Edin bristled with wires, spikes, and dishes.

  “Remind me to have a word with Corporal Ugarit, Sergeant, about that new equipment he keeps mounting—How the fuck did that get in here?”

  “This prisoner, sir? Sneaked in while you were at the main gate.” Varimnak showed orc-fangs smugly. “I’m gonna have those rear-guard squads drilling till they drop.”

  A squad of orc marines stood around something, brandishing AK47s and SA80s. Barashkukor marched up, shouldered through, and came to an abrupt halt.

  Seated cross-legged on the frost-hardened earth, with her bare hands resting palm-up on her knees, a female elf looked up at him and smiled.

  “Another elf!” Barashkukor anguished. “Have the marines responsible shot!”

  “Sure thing, Major, sir.”

  Barashkukor strolled closer and snapped, “On your feet!”

  He then gazed up at the six-foot-tall female elf with some misgivings.

  Her glossy brown hair was braided from jaw level down, woven with strips of red cloth and tied around her brow with a red headband. It showed both her pointed elvish ears and the deep scar that crossed her cheek from outer eye to jaw. She wore a laced brown leather bodice and thonged leather trousers, and high boots, sorcerously oblivious to the cold. Dark lashes shaded her golden eyes.

  There were the scabbards of daggers at her belt, boots, and back—but no weapons.