by Mary Gentle
The American raised his eyes from his glass.
“No harm, ma’am.” The quiet, accented voice did not alter.
Outside the lounge bar window, Darren—somewhere between the ages of seventeen and nineteen, wearing engineer boots, civilian copies of military-issue combat trousers, and a ripped Megadeth T-shirt—took out his black-bladed, serrated, guaranteed SAS Commando (style) knife and scored long lines on the bodywork of the parked U.S. Army military jeep. He pressed the knife’s point into the valves, deflating the tyres, and slashed at the rubber.
“You’re fucked!” The older youth, Mark, wiped his acne-ridden upper lip. His words slurred. He leaned too close over Darren and his breath was hot and beery. “You’re fuckin’ fucked! When he comes out.” He made the motions and noises of cocking a bolt-action rifle. “Kchaa!”
“I’m not bloody scared of him!” Darren wiped his streaming nose. He cast wary glances at the saloon bar door.
Two crowded, rusty vehicles swung into the car park in a skirl of gravel, shouts, and thrown beer cans. Mark elbowed him.
“Yes! Mike and Billy’re back!”
The American marine stepped out of the pub at that moment. Darren took him in from combat boots to the width of his shoulders. The man’s pale eyes flicked over him, registering his presence but not giving it any importance.
“Fucking squaddie!” Darren grunted.
Mark leaned on Darren and raised his voice belligerently. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Amy, collecting beer glasses from the pub garden’s tables, had paused to let her eyes travel across the countryside visible from the small village. There, under rolling English downs, a radio-farm marking the presence of a NATO bunker. There, across farmland and towards the much-patrolled North Sea, the white spheres of golfball-transmitters…
She spun around as brakes squealed in the car park, followed by the hollow bang! of crunched metal. She ran to the wall, aware of drinkers looking out of the open windows and coming to the pub door.
A large Ford Escort slewed caterwise across the car park, its crumpled hood buried against the U.S. Army jeep. Another car blocked the entrance. Ten or twelve youths that Amy recognised from the housing estate piled out of the cars and stood in a spread-out line between the crashed vehicle and the pub door, blocking the American’s path to the jeep.
“’Ere, you, you hit my fucking car!” Aggressive, daring a denial of the blatant lie, a tall and heavy-shouldered young man faced off against the American. “There I was an’ you ran right into me. S’right. What you going to do about it?”
The marine said levelly, with that slightly Germanic accent, “Drive away.”
“No, you bloody ain’t, my son. No fuckin’ way!”
Six of the young men began banging their fists and the flats of their hands on the jeep, laughing, rocking it on its wheelbase. Amy snapped her fingers at the assistant barman peering through the pub window and mouthed, Phone. Police. The barman nodded and vanished.
Caught without being able to cross the car park and get back into the pub, Amy stood and watched as the large American soldier came to a halt. He surveyed the shouting, raucous young men with a weary acceptance.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he stated.
The jeep failed to turn over. The dark-haired youth she vaguely recognised as Darren bawled, “Bleeding camel shaggers. Think you’re so bloody hot, don’t you? Well, come on, then. Do something. Unless you’re chicken!”
The marine’s eyes fixed on the middle distance, a stare that was not cold or angry or anything very much. Amy felt her stomach twist, abruptly afraid, not for this calm man, but for the half-drunk, violent children facing him. The American had moved with an economic grace, no energy wasted; and now he merely stood, nothing to prove, waiting until their voices died away.
“If I were you,” he said, “I’d get out of here before the cops arrive.”
“Chicken! Faggot!” The dark-haired youth jabbed his middle finger in the air. “Fuck you, asshole!”
Amy twisted the bar-cloth between her suddenly cold hands. She stepped towards them, whispering, “Stop,” just as the gang of youths shouldered forward together. The American’s feet moved. His eyes widened.
Without any warning, the earth turned suddenly sideways.
Behind the American the air curdled and opened.
Amy fell and barked her knuckles against the car park wall. Her fingernails broke as she dug her fingers into the brickwork, grinding her heels into the dirt to stop herself from skidding across the car park towards the sprawling youths and the American. The earth swivelled up and sideways, so that it seemed she hung against the gravel, pulled towards the vast dark hole in the air that opened near the main door of the Goat and Compasses.
The American vanished into it.
“Nooooooo……!
Screams, cries, a young man weeping; air sucked as if from a depressurising cockpit; the crunch of metal as parked cars slid across the gravel and into each other; a sharp crack of snapping wood as the pub sign broke and fell across the air—
Her bloodied fingers lost their hold on the wall. Amy screamed and plummeted towards the void.
Pressure vanished. She fell to earth in a sliding curve that raked gravel across her arms and thighs, banging her head against the bumper of a car. The bodies of young men, breath sucked from their lungs, sprawled across the tarmac like the aftermath of a battle.
There were sirens, after that, and a fire engine, and crowds come out from the houses in the village street, and arrests for disorderly behaviour. A police sergeant came and put his coat around Amy while the ambulance men checked her for shock and bandaged her hands.
“It was like a hole!” She looked up, eyes red-rimmed. A coal of fear burned in them that would not go out, but would remain an ember in her for the future. “A hole. In the air. Like a door opening behind him. I saw it—he fell. Into no- where. There wasn’t anywhere to go, but he just vanished. I…I saw what it looked like, where he went. I saw the other side. And it didn’t look like here at all.”
This was before the TV or newspaper reporters or military police arrived. She told her story only once, then, and another quiet, dangerous man in marine uniform ordered her to be silent, to admit it all the product of concussion, a hallucination, female nonsense…and could she please give them any real information as to the whereabouts of the missing man, Sergeant John H. Stryker of the U.S. Marine Corps?
1
The summer sun blazes down on the final of Graagryk’s first annual Orcball League.
Stands full of halfling workers watch the game, cheering, in their shirtsleeves, with knotted hankies on their heads.
“Of course,” Chancellor Cornelius Scroop remarked distastefully, “this game is nothing but a crowd-pleaser.”
“URP!” The great orc Ashnak, granite-skinned, Man-tall, and wide, sprawled in his chair, towering over the halflings in the ducal box. He dug into the hamper next to his seat, snared half a boar, and chomped his steel-strong jaws into it.
“General!” Scroop reproachfully wiped boar-grease from his court dress.
“Master Cornelius, I’m particular about my food these days.” Ashnak belched and threw the stripped bone over his shoulder. “As befits a ducal consort, I refuse to eat anything that hasn’t stopped moving yet.”
Out in the exposed arena, sweating orc marines plunged their heads into water barrels and loped back into the game, shaking sprays of water from their pointed ears. Clouds of dust rose into the still air.
Ashnak lumbered to his combat-booted feet, his bulk shadowing the box, farting with a crack as resonant as a grenade launch. “COME ON, YOU ORCS!”
The stadium hummed. A breeze brought the rank scent of the Inland Sea. In the ducal box, Graagryk’s respectable halflings sweltered in their best finery: baggy silk breeches and bucket-top boots, steel gorgets and rapiers, long barbered curls, and occasional velvet face-masks. Down in the stands, halfling workers bought pies an
d wine and exchanged betting slips.
“GOAL!”
The dust began to clear. It disclosed a dozen grunts leaping up and down and cheering; and thirteen tall, slender bodies slumped motionless on the worn turf.
Halfling helpers rushed to remove the Dark Elf team’s bodies.
A halfling mother in the ducal box covered her child’s eyes with her hand and tutted furiously, with an expression on her small features as if she were smelling something even more distasteful than sweaty orc.
“That’s better.” The dew had long since burned off the field. Even under the thatched stands, the air seared. Ashnak reached into the hamper for a magnum of champagne and emptied half down his throat and the remainder over his head. Sticky courtiers glared at him.
The halfling cheerleaders on the far side of the arena chanted, “Yaaay, Graagryk! G-R-DOUBLE-A, G-R-Y-KAY: Graaaaaagryk!”
At the near edge of the arena, Sergeant Varimnak lounged on the grass and chewed gum, conducting the orcish cheerleaders. Each of her small, spike-haired orcs wore studded leather boots, and filigreed-steel basques, and juggled maces and morningstars as if they were pompoms. The stand seats behind them were curiously empty.
Two, four, six, eight,
Who do we annihiliate!
E-L, V-E-S: squeakies!
“Halftime!” the troll referee called from the field. “New players!”
A brawny orc, stripped to the waist and wearing combat trousers and brightly polished boots, marched up and saluted Ashnak in the duchess’s box.
“General Ashnak, sah. Further representatives of the ‘Orde’s orc marines reporting to play Orcball, sah! Permission to pound these ’ere hairy-footed bastards into the turf, sah?”
Ashnak lazily returned the salute. “Permission granted, Sergeant Major Guzrak. Carry on.”
“Sah yes sah!”
Walking away, Sergeant Major Guzrak put his arm around one of the large orc marine’s shoulders and spoke to him in a fatherly fashion. “Soldier, I has some good news and some bad news. The good news is, you’ve made the Orcball team. The bad news is—as the ball…”
Captain Simone Vanderghast slammed a purse of gold down. “That says your marines lose to us, General!”
Ashnak regarded the civilian militia captain’s money. “That’s right, it is the home team next. You’re on!”
He spat on his horny palm and held it out. The halfling looked at it, swallowed, shut her eyes, and shook his hand gingerly. She then wiped her palm repeatedly against the wooden walls of the box.
From the tunnel at the far end of the stadium, twenty halflings rode out into the arena on well-groomed ponies. Bridles and stirrups flashed in the sun.
Ashnak’s eyebrows raised. “They’re mounted!”
Simone Vanderghast, smugly, said, “Nothing in the rules, General, about how one gets around the field of play.”
A pony whinnied.
The halfling leader buckled a black peaked helmet over his curls, brandished his crop, and galloped up to the centre line. Like all his fellow stout, hair-footed riders, he wore white breeches, riding boots, and a bright scarlet doublet and carried over his shoulder a long-handled mallet.
“One is ready to play!” he called.
A rumble went through the stands.
One of Ashnak’s aides, a black orc second lieutenant, leaned back from his seat in front of the general.
“Little fellas really take to this game, sir, don’t they?”
“So it seems,” Ashnak growled.
“I suppose a Kalashnikov is a missile weapon,” the lanky orc lieutenant reflected wistfully. “It’s a pity we’re not allowed to use them, sir. But I suppose it makes it more sportin’. Poleaxes and warhammers, well, it really takes you back, sir, doesn’t it?”
His head with its widely jutting ears and woodland camouflage forage cap bobbed in Ashnak’s field of vision. The tiered seats were hardly orc-sized. Ashnak reached forward, grabbed the lieutenant’s ears, slammed the orc’s head forward onto the guard rail, and resumed watching the field over the orc’s prone body.
“That’s better, Chahkamnit.” Ashnak leaned back comfortably. “I can see the game now.”
“Oh, jolly good, sir…” a weak voice whispered.
Cornelius Scroop waved his printed broadsheet-programme in front of Chahkamnit’s lugubrious orcish features. It did not noticeably revive him.
The troll referee brushed the field’s dust from his knees without having to bend down. He adjusted his loincloth and bellowed, in a voice loud enough to penetrate to the highest back row of the stadium:
“Final half! These are the rules. The object of the game is to get the orc’s head in the bucket. That bucket for you orc marines, and this bucket for the halfling team. Those are all the rules. There will be a new ball in just a moment!”
Somewhere in back of the stands there was a scream, a swish of metal, and a sticky thud.
“And now—”
The grunts in the lower stands cheered as a linesman returned with the new ball. It dripped a green trail behind it, and the tusks shone in the sun.
“—play on!”
The troll referee hurled the severed orc head towards the middle of the arena, lumbered into a sprint towards the far stands, and dived over a plank barrier. A few seconds later an optical device of metal and lenses appeared over the edge of the bunker.
“I must say, General,” Cornelius Scroop remarked disapprovingly, “the referee doesn’t seem to exercise much control over the game.”
“Control?” Ashnak said blankly.
Simone Vanderghast chuckled, pointing at the halfling leader, who raised his mallet, swung it forward, and whacked the orc head towards the marine end of the arena. “Your team isn’t even on the field yet, General.”
HHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRMMMM!!!
Sergeant Major Guzrak, at the head of a squad of fifteen grunts, gunned the motor of his Harley Davidson and zoomed out onto the field. His orc squad fanned out, steering their motorbikes casually with one hand and brandishing polo sticks with the other. The sun glinted on swords and maces slung across their backs.
“But,” Cornelius Scroop protested, “but—but—”
Guzrak skidded his Harley in a half-circle and saluted.
“I say, sir,” Second Lieutenant Chahkamnit remarked dazedly. “The sergeant major’s got a mascot on his handlebars. “How nice.”
Ashnak’s brows drew down in a massive frown. He glared at the pink fluffy toy orc adorning Guzrak’s Harley Davidson. The marine sergeant sweated and shuffled.
“‘S lucky, sah. Honest, sah.”
“I think,” Ashnak purred, “we’d better win. Don’t you?”
Sweat trickled down Guzrak’s green face. “Yessah!”
The cloudless sky seared. Halfling linesmen sprayed water to damp down the dust. The crowd roared, chanting.
“One has the ball!” a pudgy halfling in a red coat called, leaning off her pony to whack the orc head. “One has the—urk!”
Sergeant Major Guzrak hooked his mallet under the halfling’s, expertly flicked her off her pony, and rode off down the field in pursuit of the bouncing orc head.
The halfling sat up dizzily. “One had the ball…”
Simone Vanderghast cricked her neck, glaring up at Ashnak. “General, have you ever considered playing this game fairly?”
“Yes.”
Halflings rose to their feet, cheering, as four of the red-coated riders charged back to the sidelines, dropped their mallets, picked up stout spears, and galloped across to form an escort for the halfling with the ball. A biker orc zoomed to a halt just too late.
“Body detail!” Sergeant Major Guzrak bawled. “Body bag! Prepare to recover marine corpse. Corpse…wait for it, wait for it…corpse: recovered! Prepare to make substitution.”
The halfling riders galloped down the field, one slinging her spear between the spokes of a bike’s wheel. The Harley flipped. The orc rider sat wide-legged on the ground, shaking her hea
d.
The pudgy halfling dismounted from her pony, mounted the bike, and opened the throttle wide, mallet swinging. “One has the ball! One has the b—”
The grunt whose Harley had been downed lowered her shoulder. She butted the halfling’s bike head-on. The halfling hurtled over the handlebars and thudded into the turf. The orc marine expertly swung the bike round, remounted it, and gunned it into action. Mace in one hand, mallet in the other, she charged the halfling team.
The halfling leader couched his mallet under his arm, pointed end forward. He dug his spurs into his pony’s barrel-sides, and galloped towards her from the opposite direction. “I say, tally-ho!”
Splat!
“Better than huntin’ peasants, what?” the scarlet-doubleted halfling called back gaily over his shoulder, trotting off.
Ashnak heard a low growl go around the stadium. Several of the rows began to boo.
“Well, really!” Cornelius Scroop said. “How can they boo their own side? Ungrateful plebs.”
“I’ve got the ball!” the pudgy halfling shrieked, still dismounted, emerging on foot from the scrum. The ball dripped green down her scarlet jacket. She waved it triumphantly. Ashnak glimpsed her startled expression as twenty halflings on ponies and fourteen orcs on Harley Davidsons converged on the spot where she stood.
The resulting dust cloud hit three-quarters of the field. Chancellor Scroop fanned his hand before his face, pale with exhaust fumes.
“We got the ball, sah!” Guzrak cried, emerging out of the ruck on his battered bike.
“We have the ball,” the halfling leader contradicted, galloping out of the enveloping cloud of dust. “We have the…er…”
The halfling held up an unmistakably curly-haired head.
“Oh, dear…”
“That’s more like it!” Ashnak enthused. “Come on, you ores! My money’s safe,” he added to the ashen-faced Simone Vanderghast, and turned back to the field, slitting his eyes against the white sunlight, cheering along with the stands full of halfling workers.
