“Mother, everyone knew which was going to be the winning side.”
Magda inhaled another lungful of pipe-weed. She studied her son as he sat in the chair by the window, watching for first light. His curly black hair was thickly streaked with white.
“Besides, I thought that the Army of Light had a better chance of collecting its pay arrears.”
He lounged back, fully clad; black mail-shirt glinting in the candlelight below the white of his small ruff. The favour of the Army of Light—a yellow sash—he wore tied about his left arm. His doublet and trunk-hose showed signs of wear, and the wood of his short-sword scabbard had split and been badly repaired with wire.
“You wrote that you had become wealthy.”
The halfling’s dark eyes flicked in her direction. There were lines bitten into his found face that had not been there eighteen months ago.
“Wealth doesn’t last. Gamblers had most of mine.”
“Mmm…” A little suspicious still, Magda walked to the window and stood on tiptoe to peer out. “And your brother, where is he?”
For the first time in an hour, her son smiled.
“Out there in the frost, wondering if he should come in and rescue me; and whether it’s danger that delays me, or over-indulgence in pleasure. Tonight was
his
turn to watch
my
back.”
Magda chuckled. “I’ll call Safire. We shall have hot mulled wine while we wait. I wonder how long it will take him?”
She inhaled pipe-weed smoke, becoming serious.
“I’ve been thinking. Life in Herethlion won’t be Easy Street for much longer. I give it a month before the celebrations and coronations are over—then the purge will begin. Anything with so much as a scent of corruption will be called
the Dark!
and banned. And that’ll take this Thieves’ Quarter with it. Believe me. I’ve seen it before.”
She breathed out a long plume of smoke.
“Fortuna is a tricky Goddess. I made an offering in her church last month for help. Behold, she sends my two sons back to me.”
Magda stubbed the pipe-weed out against the window-frame. She reached down as she crossed the room to call Safire, and squeezed her son’s small, hard bicep.
“I thought I might travel north. I shall need muscle—if I’m to set up business in a new city.”
The door of Nin-Edin’s main hall closed behind the last senior officer to enter. Ashnak leaned his bulging forearms on the podium and grinned, showing all his fangs and brass-capped tusks.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here…”
The whistle of an incoming fireball-spell drowned out his next words. The assembled orc officers hit the floorboards. The fireball air-burst, shrapnelling the glassless windows. Sparks of green flame flicked in the high-roofed hall and went out.
“Now—”
“Fuck, man, you got us into some
deep
shit here!”
A marine corporal with “FRAG THE OFFICERS!” stencilled on her helmet-cover sprang up and screamed, “What kind of dumb motherfucker gets us shut up in a death-trap like this?”
Another orc yelled up at the podium, “You ain’t got the
balls
to break out of this fort!”
The orc officers snarled, pounding the butts of their assault rifles on the flagstones. Ashnak’s lip curled. “And does anyone
else
hold that opinion?”
Waiting for the focus of trouble to manifest itself, he was at first irritated when Company Sergeant Marukka lumbered to her feet. He started to say, “Later: let me deal with this first,” and then realised that a silence had fallen on the sixty officers present. Four of the junior lieutenants also got to their feet. The senior captains eyed Ashnak with expressions between speculation and outrage.
“You?”
Ashnak demanded.
“Me.” Marukka rested a ham-sized fist on her hip. She wore green tiger-stripe camouflage, a strip of which tied up her plume of orange hair, and a black tank-top with “BORN TO FIGHT!” stencilled on the front. Deliberately, she cocked her M16. “You failed in your duty,
sir.
You better let someone more competent take over the marines. I’ve decided. You’re not in command here anymore.”
“This is mutiny!”
Marukka grinned broadly at his bluster. “Too fuckin’ right, sah!”
Ashnak straightened his shoulders slightly. He looked down from the podium at the crowded hall and tense faces, chewing on his unlit cigar. Two marines behind Marukka got to their feet and flanked her in support, starting to unsling M16s from their shoulders.
FOOM! FOOM!
Wood splintered.
Ashnak shot through the podium that concealed the drawn and cocked .44 Magnum pistol in his hand, shredding the black sweatshirt over Marukka’s heart and putting a greenish-brown-rimmed hole between the eyes of the orc marine with “FRAG THE OFFICERS!” on her helmet. The third marine hit the floor, M16 raised, and a loyal grunt corporal put five rounds into her from behind with an AK47.
“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.’”