Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  Commissar Razitshakra removed the offending insect in passing, her eyes gleaming avidly.

  “We marines—” Ashnak slurped beer and wiped his tusked mouth with his sleeve. “We marines want to come to a business arrangement with Graagryk.”

  “At last we get to it!” Cornelius Scroop spread his hands, upon the pudgy fingers of which rings glinted. “There is a problem. With all due respect, General, look at you. You’re orcs.”

  Ashnak sat back in his chair. It creaked. His muscled bulk overspread it considerably, and the wooden legs bowed. He glanced across Nin-Edin’s hall at the orc marines standing by the bar. Two hunch-shouldered grunts were engaging each other in a belching contest.

  “You’re not meant to throw up when you do that!” Ashnak called. “Wipe the bar-orc down and order another drink. And you, orc. Stop picking your nose!”

  “Yessir!” The third grunt cheerfully turned to picking the nostril of the orc next to her.

  The Southern halfling groaned. “No one will trust you enough to deal with you, General. And if it were known we had dealings with orcs, then no one would trade with us.”

  The music screeched to a halt. Ashnak glanced up as Major Barashkukor rapped the microphone. It squealed. Barashkukor beamed out at the hall full of orcs, tapping his baton to call the band to order.

  “And now,” the small orc cried, “a song I’ve dedicated to Quartermaster Zaruk. He tells me he’s been getting a lot of requests from you orcs for those camouflage cloth squares you can roll up and tie around your head. Unfortunately there aren’t any left in the stores.”

  “That right?” a grunt drawled from the floor.

  “Oh, yes.” Major Barashkukor lifted his baton and launched into song. “Yes, we have no bandannas…”

  Ashnak, who had opened his mouth, shut it again and shook his head. A movement caught his eye at the hall door.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “allow me to introduce another of the delegates to this conference.”

  Magda Brandiman swept into the hall, her expression serene. She wore a full-length court gown which showed no signs of its having been cobbled together from reject parachute silk. She inclined her head to Ashnak and his guests.

  “General. Chancellor Scroop. Captain Vanderghast.”

  “Magda Brandiman, gentlemen.”

  Ashnak, with extreme satisfaction, watched the halflings’ jaws drop.

  “But—” Simone Vanderghast sprang to her feet, toppling off the chair and blankets in the process. She stared up from the floor, booted ankles tangled round her sword-scabbard, and shifted with difficulty onto her knees. “Your Grace!”

  Chancellor Scroop slid until his heeled court shoes touched the flagstones. He stood and stared.

  “Cornelius,” Magda Brandiman said gently, “is this manners?”

  Scroop sank to one knee. “Your Grace…is it really you?”

  She rubbed her hand ruefully across her fur-short hair as she seated herself at the conference table, leaving Scroop and Vanderghast kneeling on the floor.

  “Has it been so long? I flattered myself I was still recognisable.” She turned graciously to Ashnak. “I apologise, sir. Magda is not my name. At least, not all my name. I am Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau.”

  “Magdelene of Nassau!” Cornelius Scroop breathed. “The Duchess of Graagryk!”

  Ashnak guffawed in mock surprise. “Graagryk! All those scrubbed streets and polished doorsteps. No wonder you left.”

  Magda fixed the orc with a steely eye. “I left, sir orc, because I was thought unsuitable to be a duchess. Fortunately not all of my courtiers thought so. This is why I asked you to invite Master Scroop and Captain Vanderghast here for this conference. Ah, it has been so long since I saw any of my own people!”

  “Ten years or more.” Simone Vanderghast regained her seat, still gazing in a dazzled fashion at Magda. “Your Grace, what have you been doing all these years? How have you lived?”

  “There will be time for such discussions later,” Magda said smoothly. “After our business talks.”

  “Smile for the camera!” a voice chirruped.

  Light flashed.

  Perdita del Verro had exchanged her pigeons, Ashnak saw, for some of the more complex reconnaissance equipment out of Dagurashibanipal’s caverns and was busy pointing a zoom-lens at him. He preened himself, adjusting bullet-bandoleers, combat-stained trousers, and combat jacket with the sleeves rolled up over his tattooed muscles, to best advantage.

  “General, may I have full technical details of your new range of weapons? Warrior of Fortune would like to buy exclusive rights to details of weight, bore, stock length, magazine capacity, fire rate—”

  Ashnak eyed Ugarit. The tech-corporal shrugged in an embarrassed manner.

  “She was interested, Lord General. What could I do?”

  The words “elf stew” went through Ashnak’s mind every time he looked into the elf’s warm golden eyes, but it is never entirely wise to offend the press.

  “You can have an exclusive on any details cleared for general release,” he said pointedly. “We shall be issuing a conference statement later on.”

  The elf reluctantly left the table.

  “That,” Ashnak said, “brings me to the subject of these negotiations. We’ve won a victory here at Nin-Edin. That’s why my orcs are celebrating. But I think ahead, gentlemen. I think about the next few years. As you say, orcs are not well respected.”

  Cornelius Scroop, re-seating himself on the greasy blanket, snorted.

  Ashnak continued. “The marines want to come to a business arrangement with Graagryk. We have a problem, gentlemen. Namely—arms manufacture.”

  Vanderghast took her eyes off Magda and gaped. “What?”

  “We have a limited supply of the new weapons you’ve seen. At some point soon, we’re going to need to make more. However, gentlemen, you will have noticed that we have very little in the way of an industrial base up here in the Demonfest Mountains—which is why my Corporal Ugarit has done a great deal more experimental weapons development than manufacture. We need an ally who does have a substantial economic base.”

  Ashnak flexed his talons.

  “The economics of the problem are simple. It’s Dark-damned expensive to manufacture arms, because they’re complex—so we’ll have to make more than we ourselves need, purely to keep the price down to something economic. We will then have a surplus to sell.”

  Simone Vanderghast looked at Cornelius Scroop. Then both of them looked at Magda van Nassau. She, in the process of lighting a long and slender roll of pipe-weed, glanced up. “The general is not the sort of orc you’re used to dealing with, Chancellor. Do try to bear that in mind.”

  “A recent but classified development means that the orc marines are no longer seriously challenged by forces such as Amarynth’s. We would have very little trouble in coming south and taking over a kingdom or a duchy. But I find,” Ashnak said reflectively, “that warfare tends to wreck a country’s economy. We don’t have time to rebuild it if we’re going to get a decent arms trade up and running in the next few months.”

  The chancellor and the captain stared, the glazed shock on their faces giving way to something Ashnak had no trouble in identifying. Greed.

  “This needs thought,” Captain Vanderghast said.

  “Have some more food while you’re thinking.” Ashnak snapped his fingers, and Ugarit’s stewards replenished the plates. The halflings dug into the traditional mountain dishes of blackbirds, thrushes, and snails.

  Ashnak pondered the advisability of eating raw food and decided against it. Even if it were dead raw food, it would probably not be tactful.

  “I’ll leave you gentlemen to discuss matters.” He beamed at Magda. “And catch up on old times.”

  Ashnak headed between the orc marines foxtrotting across the dance floor, making for the bar. His grunts greeted him with shouts and cheers. The wooden boards echoed to the stomp of combat boots. Witch-ball lights fl
ashed. The Badgurlz ripped into keyboard, strings, and horn with vigour.

  Perdita del Verro passed him, swaying to some ancient unheard ancestral music of her elvish blood. Major Barashkukor wheeled around on the podium, baton still keeping the rhythm, fixed his eyes on her, and began to sing:

  “Yes, sir, that’s my baby

  No, sir, don’t mean maybe—”

  Ashnak fixed Barashkukor with a baleful glare. The band clattered and screeched into silence. The milling throng on the dance floor slowed to a halt, gazing apprehensively at their general.

  Barashkukor audibly swallowed. He tapped his baton on the edge of the podium.

  “Ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, TAH!” he murmured, and as the music restarted, launched into:

  “Sir, yes sir!, that’s my baby,

  Sir, no sir, don’t mean maybe,

  Sir, yes sir! That’s my baby now…”

  “Better,” Ashnak grunted, reaching the bar. “Ah. There you are.”

  Wearing their cut-down, borrowed DPM combat trousers and jackets over their bruises with some dignity, Will and Ned Brandiman slitted their eyes against light brilliant after Nin-Edin’s dungeons.

  “You wanted another dam fur-jockstrap villain,” Ned Brandiman said, flicking back straggling brown hair that Ashnak only marginally resisted bellowing at him to get cut. “We’ve got you one.”

  A northern barbarian peered up at the bar, his wolf-pelts cleaned of campaign dirt and his wide-horned helmet balanced precariously on the back of his head. He glared up at Ashnak and bawled, “Warriors of the north cannot live within walls! Our honour lives with us under the sky, not in amongst the stink of elves and halflings and orcs. Could we at least have one frigging window open?”

  “See what I can do,” Ashnak promised as he steered the three of them back to the conference table.

  “Lord Blond Wolf,” he introduced, as the barbarian scrambled up a pair of steps onto his seat.

  “My sons,” Magda added. “Wilhelm and Edvard van Nassau, Princes of Graagryk.”

  “We prefer to think of ourselves as defence analysts,” Will said sourly, sitting down on his cushions with some care.

  Simone Vanderghast glanced up from her plate and said shrewdly, “General, why are you so eager to let marine weapons out of your own hands? Given how orcs are regarded, it’s foolhardly.”

  “The dragon’s geas on these weapons involves certain conditions. Training, gentlemen. Training.” Ashnak gestured expansively as he resumed his seat. “These weapons just don’t work for untrained personnel. What is going to have to happen, gentlemen, is that the orc marines get used as cadre troops, sent out to whoever buys the surplus weapons, to train that country’s troops in their use. Make them into marines. And—once a marine, always a marine. Loyal to other marines.”

  Grunts crowded past the conference table, queueing up for the buffet the stewards set out on the bar. One orc returned, balancing a glass and digging into a loaded paper plate. “Why do I always get the bit with the boot in it?” she complained.

  Chancellor Scroop put down his knife and fork. He swallowed greenly. “Your firepower demonstrations earlier today were…interesting. As was the tour of Corporal Ugarit’s workshops. But…How could this arrangement possibly work? We couldn’t sell these arms to just anyone.”

  Ashnak nodded to Magda.

  “It’s necessary to sell surplus arms legitimately to fund manufacture.” Magda leaned her small, muscular arms on the tabletop. “I say legitimately, because—as we all know—the High King and his council are clamping down on anything that looks remotely dodgy. What the marines can do for Graagryk in that respect is simple. They can provide end-user certificates, certificates to show that we’ve sold our arms to a good, Light-fearing land that needs them to defend itself against the leftover Horde.”

  Simone Vanderghast fingered her sword-hilt. “End-user certificates. I like it.”

  Ashnak drank his beer down in one swallow, belched, and wiped his wide, lipless mouth.

  “Lord Blond Wolf here, perhaps,” the orc rumbled, “comes from a small northern Light-loving kingdom which needs to defend itself against evil neighbours?”

  Magda’s eyes danced. “They do have a troublesome border, yes.”

  “Probably a poor kingdom,” Cornelius Scroop speculated. “Most of the northern ones are—a bit of mining, if the dwarves don’t get it; bit of forestry; nothing much for export.”

  He paused.

  “Be honoured to extend a loan, Lord Wolf.”

  The northern barbarian picked up a dish, stuck his finger in it, licked it, and remarked, “Fish eggs.” He then fixed his ice-pale eyes on Ashnak.

  “I’ll lend you frigging orcs my name, like the lady here explained to me, and that’s all you swiving sons of goats will get from me! I wouldn’t touch your arms with a shit-pole. Honest iron’s for me! Honour of the north!” He slurped a beer tankard dry. “Couldn’t afford ’em anyway. Ship ’em where the fuck you please, just not to us. Bugger our economy if you did. But for the right price you can use our name.”

  “Ah…yes.” Cornelius Scroop blinked at Vanderghast.

  The Badgurlz marines reached the end of a number and screeched into silence, dropping their instruments and ploughing through the startled dancers in a flying wedge aimed at the bar. Major Barashkukor left the podium and approached a corner table where Commissar Razitshakra sat, the peak of her cap pulled down, taking surreptitious notes.

  “Razzi…”

  The commissar turned her back. “Suspect little creep! Fraternising with civilians. Elvish civilians, at that.”

  The major moped back towards the bandstand and the returning Badgurlz.

  “Won’t speak to me since she came back from that commando mission,” he muttered. “Isn’t my fault I didn’t go on a commando mission. I’d like to go on a commando mission. Mistress del Verro knows how to appreciate a soldier, even if she is a civilian…”

  A light came into the small orc’s eyes, and he marched out onto the dance floor and tapped Perdita del Verro’s orc partner on the back.

  Sergeant Varimnak glanced over her shoulder. She freed one hand and pushed her talons through her cropped white crest in a soldierly manner. “Just doing my bit to cement interspecies relations, sir.”

  Perdita, standing head and shoulders taller than her partner’s muscular bulk, rested in the orc’s arms, dancing with her golden eyes half shut.

  “May I have the—erm—the pleasure of this dance?” Barashkukor asked the elf.

  She ignored him.

  Varimnak looked down lazily. “Sir—fuck off, sir.”

  Left standing, the major plodded dispiritedly towards the bar. The Badgurlz band, with a certain amount of schadenfreude, began to play “He Was Her Orc, but She Done Him Wrong.”

  “General.” Cornelius Scroop recalled Ashnak’s attention. “This has a promise of being profitable, true—you orcs will be developing and making arms, ostensibly for your own defence and for the defence of certain minor kingdoms, while being funded by us and using our industries.”

  Ashnak nodded. “We’ll make arms for any mercenary band, enemy country, or overseas force who’ll pay. They’ll have to hire marine instructors or the weapons will remain deactivated. The price of Dagurashibanipal, gentlemen, the moral of which is: never unnecessarily kill a dragon; they have graveyard tempers.”

  “But,” Scroop went on doggedly, “you’re an orc.”

  Commissar Razitshakra shouldered past the long table. Ashnak overheard her spit, “Fraternising with civilians!” as Sergeant Varimnak left the dance floor, the elf journalist on her arm.

  The Badgurlz sergeant stopped, grinned, polished the studs on her black leathers, and remarked, “Hey, man! I hear some of us have done more than fraternise…”

  Varimnak’s gaze deliberately shifted to the band podium.

  Commissar Razitshakra stomped off.

  Magda Brandiman slid to the floor in a flurry of silk. “You’ll have to excuse me, sirs.
Powder my nose.”

  Ashnak grunted an absentminded acknowledgement. He prodded his disappointingly immobile meal and glared at Cornelius Scroop and Simone Vanderghast. “Of course I’m an orc!”

  Tech-Corporal Ugarit stared across the dance floor. “The tuba’s a musical instrument, isn’t it, General?”

  “What? Yes, corporal. It is. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s just that Major Barashkukor appears to be wearing one.” Ugarit pointed. “You can see his boots sticking out of the bell end.”

  Ashnak’s eyebrow lifted as he watched Commissar Razitshakra stalk back across the dance floor with a highly satisfied expression.

  “Orcish high spirits. Victory celebrations,” he said confidently to the two influential halflings. “Now, as we were saying…”

  Some minutes later, Magda Brandiman emerged back into the main hall. She tapped an orc’s shoulder as he leaned morosely on the bar.

  Barashkukor leaped six inches into the air and regarded the female halfling with wild eyes. “I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me!”

  “Woman-trouble, soldier?”

  The battered orc major sighed. His shoulders relaxed. “Sure thing, ma’am—I mean, Your Grace.”

  “News gets around.” Magda gathered her silk petticoats and turned, regarding the dance floor and the oblivious great orc at the conference table. The corner of her mouth twitched up.

  The female halfling proffered her arm.

  Barashkukor glanced to either side, then over his shoulder, and finally back at Magdelene van Nassau. He pressed one spindly finger to his chest. “Me, ma’am?”

  “A little jealousy,” Magda Brandiman said, “never hurt anyone.”

  Barashkukor tugged his tunic straight, stuck his small snout in the air, gripped Magda’s hand and waist, and waltzed off past a startled orc commissar and elf journalist. The Badgurlz band played “It Takes Three to Tango.”

  When Magda returned, the great orc was tapping his talons on the tablecloth.

  “But you’re an orc!” Chancellor Scroop wailed, in the tones of a halfling seeing an opportunity for profit vanishing. “No one will ever trust an orc!”