by Mary Gentle
The muzzle of the organic weapon swept down, turning, aiming towards Barashkukor.
The coldness flooding his back, soaking his marine uniform jacket, was petrol.
“Barashkukor are you receiving me? We have target-acquisition. ETA bombers twenty-five minutes. Vacate the area!” And then, lost in static, “Barashkukor, for fuck’s sake get your skinny little ass out of there!”
Heat shimmered up from the rock of the Endless Desert, evaporating the fuel. Silence hung over the fort. From that distance Barashkukor could hear the chewing of mandibles over the unanswered hissing of the radio. The bug stood with its centaur-legs straddling him. He could move nothing but his arms.
While he could still feel the chill of petrol soaking through to his skinny back, and before the state of shock wore off to let him feel the pain of amputation, Major Barashkukor of the orc marines took the Kalashnikov in a two-handed grip, pointed the muzzle up at the belly of the bug, flipped the fire-selector to fully automatic, and squeezed the trigger.
“Bugging out, General!”
The muzzle flash ignited the spilled fuel.
Graagryk’s military airfield sweated under midsummer sun.
Ashnak flattened his peaked ears against the blast of the cold-drake’s wings as the beast took off, heading back south at a considerable rate.
“Working for the Dark Lord again?” Behind her round wire-rimmed spectacles, the newly arrived Commissar Razitshakra narrowed her eyes. “But, sir—are you certain He’s ideologically sound? After all, He’s a civilian.”
The orc general made no reply to this impertinence. City living can make an orc soft. Marine Commissar Razitshakra began to eye the married Duke Ashnak with suspicion as he examined closely the fragment of black substance enclosed in a plastic envelope that she handed to him.
“I wonder, sir,” she ventured, “if that has anything to do with what the late Major Barashkukor reported?”
Without looking up, Ashnak absently drew back his fist and drove it forward.
The orc commissar picked herself up off the hard earth and wiped a trickle of green from her jaw. She spoke approvingly, if somewhat indistinctly. “Good to see you’re still a marine, General Ashnak!”
“That’s ‘Field Marshal Ashnak’ to you,” Ashnak snarled.
The heavy whup-whup of a Chinook sounded. The big orc looked up as the troop-carrier touched down. Beyond the airfield the candy-bright colours of Graagryk city gleamed, scoured clean by magery, with never a plume of smoke from the factories lining the Inland Sea coast. Three APCs also approached, crossing the field.
A Hind touched down fifty yards away, rotors whipping over its two stubby wings, and rocket and gun-pods.
Ashnak thumbed the RT stud in his kevlar helmet. “Chahkamnit, I’m gonna want a rapid dust-off. On my word: count of five: mark.”
The twin-rotored troop-carrier thundered, standing on the flattened grass. A platoon of orc marines left the APCs and doubled across the field towards it.
Two figures followed them, more slowly, and where those walked, shadow haunted the grass. Graagryk did not question their going. Could not notice it, save as the withdrawal of a nightmare not remembered on waking.
“Have your report complete by the time we land at Ferenzia, Commissar,” Ashnak ordered. “I’ll listen to it there.”
The orc, sweating in her heavy greatcoat, stared across the Graagryk landing field at the approaching figures.
“Sir, I can’t approve the presence of non-orcish civilians on military transport! It isn’t wise during the present crisis. Orc lips make slips—”
Ashnak swung his head around and displayed a grin so full of teeth that the marine commissar saluted twice and made for the Chinook on the double. Ashnak waited, the Hind’s rotor-blast whipping the material of his camouflage trousers, GI pot pulled down over his beetling brows, pipe-weed cigar in one corner of his mouth. The heavy flak jacket made him sweat.
“Field Marshal.” The nameless necromancer greeted Ashnak silkily. The slender, handsome Man wrinkled his ascetic features at the peculiarly pungent smell of hot orc and fanned himself with his Man-skin fan. “You are ready to transport the Dark Lord to Ferenzia, I trust?”
The sashed leather robes of the necromancer and his waist-length black hair fluttered in the rotor-blast from the helicopter gunship. The Dark Lord’s fine mesh robe did not stir. The winds did not disturb Her glossy yellow hair. The heat did not spring sweat from Her piebald skin.
“We go to Ferenzia in peace,” She said clearly. “I will have no fighting, Field Marshal Ashnak. Neither there nor here. My servant the nameless necromancer will remain here as My regent. Your marines are to obey him as they would obey Me.”
Ashnak saluted. “Of course, Dread Lord, Ma’am. Naturally.”
She turned her back on the nameless necromancer and walked towards the Hind, barefoot on grass that withered under Her feet. Ashnak followed, webbing clanking with grenades, magazines, and his shoulder-slung M16.
“Diplomacy, little Ashnak. Peace.” Her upward-tilting, rheumy eye-sockets glowed with a certain fiery amusement. Her small tusks lifted Her turned-back lip, and a trickle of saliva slid down Her chin. Without bothering to wipe it, She said, “There is one thing more before I leave.”
She did not raise Her voice, but it carried over the mechanised roar of the Chinook’s takeoff as they approached the Hind. The smell of hot metal and oil filled the air. Ashnak chewed his cigar and tightened his webbing. RT traffic whispered in his headset.
“I think your orc marines will trouble My creature the nameless.”
“No, great Sable Lord,” Ashnak protested.
“I will make him a more suitable commander for them.” Her eyes laughed, and momentarily flashed green: the Paladin of the Light looking out from Her face in panic. The glimpse of the trapped soul vanished. “When this body was otherwise, it once said, ‘He wears my virtue, unearned, on his face, as I wear the ugliness of his sin on my body.’”
The Lord of Night and Silence held out Her arms, gazing down at Her borrowed body as they came to the Hind. Looking up into the belly of the machine, She asked, “Am I ugly, as Men conceive it? Possibly. I will not be laughed at, Ashnak, in Ferenzia.”
“Think You’re a damned handsome woman, myself, Dread Lord,” Ashnak said gallantly. “We’re cleared for takeoff, so if—”
“Brother, take your shape again!”
She raised Her blank orange gaze. Piebald black and grey withdrew, tidally, leaving skin of a pinkish-cream. Soft blond lashes lay over down-softened cheeks. Her long eyes were now level and wide-set, under gull-wing brows, and Her lips curved lusciously bronze over small, even teeth.
“Very nice, Ma’am,” Ashnak said unenthusiastically.
A high, wavering, and prolonged shriek sounded from the far side of the airfield.
“Come!” The Dark Lord clapped Ashnak on the shoulder with that Virtue-augmented strength that had staggered the orc in a small church in a northern village. Ashnak glanced up at the bubble-glass cabin and Lieutenant Chahkamnit.
“Cleared to go!” Ashnak handed the Dark Lord a helmet and headset, helping Her into the armoured body of the machine.
She buckled the helmet down over Her blond hair. Lieutenant Chahkamnit, glancing across, took the full benefit of glowing orange eye-sockets, sat rigidly forward in his pilot’s seat, and began flight-checks with a concentration that nothing short of air-to-air missile fire could have disturbed.
“I’ll ride gunner.” Ashnak climbed in behind the lanky black orc lieutenant, who was wearing a bomber jacket and a close-fitting leather flying helmet and goggles. Chahkamnit pushed foot pedals and pulled levers, and the troop-carrier lifted with an earsplitting roar.
“My creature Ashnak.” The Sable Lord’s voice sounded over the headset.
“Yes, Dark Lord?” Ashnak watched Graagryk dwindle to toy houses; agricultural patterns, pastel shapes on the Inland Sea’s coast. The Hind drove nose-down, due south.
> “I will not have My peace negotiations disturbed. There must be no brushfire wars on the Southern Kingdoms’ borders. What has happened to your major who reported from Gyzrathrani?”
Chahkamnit glanced at his superior officer, who remained silent.
“The last we heard, Dread Lord, he’d got a little hot under the collar,” the second lieutenant transmitted. “Jolly rotten show, I say. But he was a marine—at least he went out with a bang.”
The solid vibration of ’copter flight reverberated through Ashnak. The big orc waited until the Dark Lord either slept or (more likely) achieved some interior trance of Her own; then he flicked to a separate wavelength.
“Lieutenant Chahkamnit, you heard the Dark Lord. No fighting around Ferenzia. There are no orc marine units giving unofficial fire support to the deserters, mercenaries, and bandits on the Ferenzi borders—are there? Especially not where Herself is going to land. See to it, Chahkamnit.”
“Oh, I say, sir! How am I supposed to do that?”
“Contact our ground forces there and tell them to move the battle!”
“Move a battle, sir?” the orc lieutenant demanded. “How do you move a battle?”
“I don’t care. Just do it!”
Chahkamnit raised the ground forces north of Ferenzia. “Right, lads,” he directed lugubriously. “Shoot faster…”
Sun reflected from the curving glass canopy. Ashnak pulled the visor of his flight helmet down over his porcine eyes, polarising the light. When he woke, the country below stretched out widely, much wider than the Northern Kingdoms’ mountain-ridden patches of fertile land. Forested hills rolled out to a distant horizon, interspersed with strip-fields, grazing lands, castles built on high peaks, and wide, slow rivers. A blazing sun bleached the colour from the ripening corn.
Due south, the sprawling suburbs of Ferenzia stretched towards the great lakes.
“I say, sir, contact ahead—the Ferenzi must have spotted us coming. Pretty good for them, isn’t it, what?”
Ashnak cast a disillusioned eye at the sky. Circling dots, higher than the Hind, were vultures. Lower, on the helicopter’s flight level, twin giant eagles flew figure-eights over the spires and towers of the mighty city.
“Door gunners,” Ashnak checked.
“Yo, sir!”
The Dark Lord’s voice said, “I have been watching them for some time now. They are two of Ferenzia’s most potent Mages of the Light.”
Chahkamnit squinted into the sun. “Really, Ma’am? How can You tell?”
The Dark Lord said, “The vultures are—have always been—My eyes.”
Ashnak winced.
The soft voice in his helmet continued, “It is quite like the old days, watching orcs scurry about. I found that mountain siege quite gripping to watch. And I will not blame you for beginning wars when you did not know of My survival, and therefore could not know My wishes in the matter, and I have been most amused to watch you try to conceal your actions. However, the joke is over. Nothing must interfere with what I do now.”
It took the orc field marshal two fumbled attempts before he reached the commander of the ground forces on the Ferenzi border and convinced him of both his authority and his orders.
The Mages of the Light circled above the city.
“Speak with them, Ashnak,” the Dark Lord commanded. “I will ensure, by My power, that you are heard.”
The orc cleared his throat and spat between his feet. Phlegm spattered the foot pedals. Five hundred feet below his boots, Ferenzia’s blue-tiled roofs cast mid-afternoon shadows into the streets, clear and precise.
“This is Field Marshal Ashnak, Orc Marine Command, calling Mages of the Light.”
Thin, magical voices whispered in the hot cabin, vibrating through the talisman-protected metal. “Vile creature of Darkness! Your hideous engine does not hide our Great Enemy from our eyes. Surrender yourself. Give Him up to our justice, and we may spare you!”
The Hind ceased forward motion and hung, thrumming.
Ashnak leaned forward, taloned hands resting flat on his massive thighs, sweating odorously under the weight of flak jacket, webbing, and arms; but it was not the sweat of fear.
“Well, now,” he remarked cheerfully, “I’m carrying 57mm rockets, wire-guided antitank missiles, 23mm cannon, and an electrically powered gatling-gun in the chin-mounted gun turret. I suppose that might put a hole in your precious city. And I wouldn’t count on those motheaten eagles outflying an attack helicopter with a crack pilot, either.”
Chahkamnit blushed light brown. “Jolly decent of you, sir. Wouldn’t have said that myself, you know.”
The Mage-voices sharpened, echoing through the Hind’s metal frame. “We will perish gladly, knowing that we take with us the Blight of the Earth, the Evil Emperor, the Lord of Darkness Himself!”
The eagles broke their flight patterns, wings beating as they gained height to strike. Ashnak regretfully abandoned his taunts.
“The Lord of Darkness Himself is with us, but I formally advise you now that He’s not making any threat against your ground establishment or personnel. You’ll be making a completely unprovoked attack on us!”
There was a puzzled silence, after which one of the voices, somewhat petulantly, said, “We cannot let you pass unhindered! You have the Dark Lord with you!”
The second Mage-voice cut in. “It’s a trick! If the Dark Lord is here, with these few troops, then He must have an army hidden from our sight, about to descend on our city! Why else would He come here but to make hideous war on us?”
“Actually,” Ashnak rumbled, “He just wants to talk to you.”
There was a pause.
“Talk?” inquired the first voice.
“Talk!” spat the second.
“He wants to talk,” Ashnak said, “but I’ve got no objection to blowing you dumbass flyboys out of the sky if I have to. I’m putting this chopper down. You go talk to whoever commands in Ferenzia. If they ain’t outside the town in under fifteen minutes, I’m gonna take and strafe the fuck outta you. Do I make myself clear?”
In Ashnak’s headphones, the Dark Lord sighed.
“Diplomacy,” She reminded him. “Tact.”
“Highly overrated virtues, Ma’am. Ah. There they go. Chahkamnit, take us down.”
“Roger, sir. Going down.”
Making no overtly hostile moves, the Hind sank down with the beauty of machinery defying gravity, escorted by one of the vast-pinioned eagles. A preying yellow eye stared in through the Hind’s canopy with infinite amusement and weariness in it, tolerating the mage that rode its feathered back.
Lieutenant Chahkamnit brought the helicopter down in a textbook landing on the hard shore between the lake and the city wall. As the wheels touched, the orc marine squad disembarked to secure the perimeter.
Chahkamnit took off his flying helmet and peered out at the Chinook, two squads of orc marines belly-down behind cover and the third squad forming up as the Lord of Midnight’s bodyguard.
“I say, sir, does the Dark Lord consider this hostile territory? I didn’t think we were actually at war yet.”
Ashnak fastened the chinstrap of his marine-issue helmet. “We’re not, son. The question is, does Herself consider anywhere not hostile territory? And then there’s the Ferenzi.”
“Ah. Yes, sir, I take your point.”
Ashnak unbuckled the seat’s crotch straps. Built for a race that certainly was not orcish, they constricted rather more than his circulation. Rubbing his groin, the orc field marshal muttered, “Keep the rotors turning!” and disembarked from the helicopter.
In the deserts of Gyzrathrani, in the jungles of Thyrion, in the tundras of the Antarctic Icelands—there is movement of a kind which has not existed before.
And in other places, too, now.
The animals scent it as if it were a forest fire.
Those beasts that are most magical flee first.
The dwarvish band struck up a waltz. The barbarian swordswoman—persuad
ed for this official Ferenzi “Heroes of the Last Battle” reception to drape a selection of shawls, at least, over her curvacious form and chainmail groin-covering—ceased to sing. The warrior guests in their evening dress took their partners and moved out onto the dance floor, under the magic-fuelled crystalline chandeliers.
Oderic, High Wizard of Ferenzia, eased through the crowd, his long yellow teeth bared in an official smile of welcome.
“Gandoran!” Oderic shot his cuffs, and shook hands with the Hero of Spine Gap. The tall blond warrior nodded uncomfortably and muttered something appreciative. Oderic added, “Varella will take care of you. Won’t you, Madam Varella?”
The jungle swordswoman, sweaty from the bandstand, flashed her eyes at Gandoran and took his hand, beaming. The Hero of Spine Gap cheered up. Oderic bowed and retreated.
Summer’s late-evening light coloured the sky butterfly-wing blue. Multiple voices rose over the thumping dwarf-music and the clink of magically replenished wine glasses. Oderic proceeded through the ballroom crowd, under the light of spellcast gas-lamps, pausing for a word here, a smile there.
“The reception is a success so far,” a voice said below his elbow.
One veined hand went up to smooth back the white hair that flowed down over Oderic’s cravat and the shoulders of his tweed jacket. The elderly wizard beamed. “Corinna Halfelven!”
You would not know, to look at her, that she had been one of the greatest mages at the Fields of Destruction, second only to Oderic himself. Here in the great Assembly Rooms of the Ferenzi palace, the nobles of Ferenzia wore formal long-tailed black coats and stiff, high collars, with the sashes of knightly orders across their chests. The women (with the exception of a few, including one fighter who continued to wear full plate harness and stood red-faced and sweating alone by a potted palm) wore multi-petticoated silken ballgowns and precious stones in their braided hair.
Corinna Halfelven wore a lavender-and-lace gown that hugged her three-foot-tall form and swept the floor over her diminutively slippered feet. The ostrich plume in her tiara was tall enough to come level with Oderic’s shoulder.
