Grunts (29 page)

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:

“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!”

Simone Vanderghast agreed. “The High King would have an army in Graagryk in days!”

Corporal Ugarit chuckled—a thin, high sound. “Let ’em send an army! We’re not afraid of magic now, not even southern magic, no we’re not. Let ’em come, I’ll have ’em, I’ll take ’em all—”

Ashnak lifted his fist and brought it down on the top of Ugarit’s head. The kevlar helmet cracked. Ugarit beamed daffily, fell off his chair, rolled over on the floorboards, and began to snore.

“There is some truth in what my corporal says,” Ashnak confirmed. “However, my strategy at the moment doesn’t involve fighting the High King and all his many, many allies. As I said, it involves peaceful trade.”

“But
how?”

Ashnak eyed the two halflings. They did not seem anything like as convinced as he had imagined they would be at this point. He scowled.

“As to how,” Magda Brandiman said, “firstly, I am an accredited Southern Kingdoms duchess. Magda Brandiman can vanish, and Magdelene van Nassau return with no stain on her reputation. She could make the orcs and their general welcome in Graagryk…”

Ashnak beamed and nodded.

“…but, of course, that would still give the High King and Council great excuse for suspicion. So that won’t work.”

Ashnak’s heavy jaw dropped.

“But that was our plan!” he spluttered.

“That won’t work
alone
,” Magda emphasised. “However, I have the perfect answer. It will turn the orc marines into Graagryk’s trusted allies; and by that move, make them the Light and the High King’s allies too.”

“What it is, Your Grace?” Cornelius Scroop queried.

Simone Vanderghast said, “Your Grace, the city would welcome your return. How we would welcome it! Only I don’t understand what you can do about this political problem of orcs’ being unacceptable in the Southern Kingdoms…”

“I can make the orc marines respectable,” Magda Brandiman said.

She rested her diminutive chin on her interlinked fingers and met Ashnak’s bemused gaze. She smiled.

“I can make the
general
of the orc marines respectable,” the Duchess Magdelene said. “Ashnak, will you marry me?”

“
No!
Listen up: I’m telling you for the last time! I won’t do it!”

“Yes, you will.”

“It isn’t what we planned! It’s nothing like it!”

“I know.”

“Dark damn it, halfling, I am
not
going to marry you!”

“Yes, you are.”

“
Fuck off and die!
”

“If that’s what you want. But let me hear you tell me twice.”

“I’m
not
getting
married!
No way!”

“No industry. No arms trade.”

“I don’t care!”

“No Magda Brandiman.”

“So what!”

“You’ll do it. When you get to my age, you know these things.”

“And how old
are
you, exactly?”

“Let’s just say I don’t look as though I have two sons in their late forties, do I?”

“I won’t do it! I’m a marine, and I’m an orc; and when an orc marine says something, he means it, and I’m saying it now: we are
not
getting married!”

Four hundred miles to the south of the Demonfest Mountains, the Duchy of Graagryk lies on the flat lands bordering the southern coast of the Inland Sea. Snow perches pristine white on roofs and leafless trees, as it properly should, and does not clog the boots of the Graagryk halflings as they hurry towards the city’s great cathedral.