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.”
HHHHHHHHHH
RRRRRRRMMMM!!!
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 head.
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.
The halfling leader galloped furiously back towards the entrance tunnel and reined in his pony.
“You there!” he shouted. “Bring me my reserve mount!”
A huge shape loomed out of the heat and dust.
“Oh,
what!
” Ashnak slammed his fist down on the side of his chair, cracking the wood. “Foul! The referee must be blind! At least,” the orc general added, “he
will
be. Chahkamnit, make a note of that.”
The lanky black orc, now sitting well to one side of Ashnak’s field of view, murmured, “Very lenient of you, sir. Very sportin’.”
Ashnak leaned his elbow on the seat in front and, as
Simone Vanderghast chuckled in his ear, watched the scarlet-coated halfling leader ride a huge, shaggy war-mammoth into the arena. It trumpeted and pounded towards the marine end of the field.
“Never fear, you orcs!” Sergeant Major Guzrak dismounted from his Harley, standing at a smart parade rest. “I has an infallible method of dealin’ with such a fiendish war device, what I learned on the eastern frontier. A chargin’ mammoth will never trample a fallen orc! Lay down, and stab upwards as it passes over you!”
The brawny orc sergeant flung himself to the turf, rolling onto his back and unsheathing his bayonet.
Splatt!
“So that’s why we had so much trouble on the eastern frontier,” a mounted orc corporal remarked. She stopped her Harley, leaned down, and released something tiny that appeared to be armoured in minute links of mail.
“What’s that?” Ashnak bellowed down.
“War-mouse, sir,” the orc corporal shouted over the terrified trumpeting of the fleeing mammoth.
Ashnak got to his feet.
“Right, marines! In the absence of Sergeant Major Guzrak—
I’m
coming down to take over the team!”
The orc marines cheered. The halflings in the stands cheered. Simone Vanderghast scowled.
“Husband and Consort,” a new voice said.
Ashnak hitched up the urban camouflage trousers that he wore tucked into laced high-ankle boots. He removed the peaked cap jammed between his ears, revealing the tribal scarring of the fighting Agaku and assorted marine tattoos.
“Magda!”
Ashnak whooped, slipped his hand between the female halfling’s legs, and lifted her up bodily in a whirl of black leather skirts. The city’s dignitaries tutted. He took her chin in his hand and planted a wet kiss squarely on her mouth. Her tongue probed his, darting.
“I’ve just arrived back from the arms factories.” Magdelene van Nassau, Duchess of Graagryk, seated herself, rearranged the flounces and layers of a skin-tight and full-length leather gown. Her hand dropped into the lap of Ashnak’s combat trousers, groping and squeezing. As the assembled councillors averted their gazes, her hand moved in thieves’ fingerspeech.
Ashnak, his mind at first on other things, deciphered:
—
Urgent news! I must not speak of it in public. Even this finger-talk may be over-read!
“With you in a moment, my love!” Ashnak vaulted over the front of the box and dropped down to the field, loping across towards the scrum of bikes, ponies, halflings, and marines.
Magda described orcish sexual failings under her breath in fifteen languages. She snapped her fingers for her maid Safire to fan her in the summer heat; clapped formally, applauding the game; and addressed Cornelius Scroop.
“Our sales force abroad are doing
extremely
well…I rode back with the treasurer. He reports many interesting tidbits—the price of saltpetre in Shazmanar; rumours from further up the coast that the Kraken is being a danger to commercial shipping; Queen Shula’s lovers…But there, I mustn’t bore you with gossip.
COME ON, YOU MOTHERFUCKER ORCS!
”
Down on the field, Ashnak bestrode a Harley Davidson with a line of stickers on the engine casing, the most recent being a Dark Elf’s head with a line diagonally through it. He gunned the motor. The stuttering concussion beat at his ears. In the stands, tiers of halfling workers rose to their feet, ten thousand mouths showing like wide
O
’s.
“That halfling,” Ashnak pointed at the fastest rider, a stout, curly-haired fellow almost four feet tall. “Termination with extreme prejudice!”
“Yessir!” The orc corporal gunned her Harley, unslung a mace off her back, skidded in a circle that brought her speeding up behind the pony and rider, and swung the weapon.
The riderless pony galloped off the field.
The corporal tripped a second rider off his mount and wielded her mace in one hand and a warhammer in the other, pounding the remains of both into the turf.
“Bit excessive, Corporal.” Ashnak, motor idling, glanced down at what was left.
“Yeah, well…” The grunt grinned. “You know how it is at this time of the moon, sir.”
The squad of orc bikers formed up into an extended line, Ashnak at the centre, and roared down the field. Five of the ponies reared and ran away with their riders. The baffling
leader, on foot, crimson coat stained with dust and blood, waved his polo mallet furiously.
“One is not going to be beaten by a miserable pack of greenies!”
An anonymous voice from the stands called, “‘Oo you kiddin’, guvner?”
The biker line hit.
“YO THE MARINES!”
Ashnak squelched the orc’s severed head down into the opposing team’s bucket. The halflings in the stands leaped to their feet, screaming applause. On Magda’s right, the halfling mother held her child up for a better view of the field, spittle flying from her mouth as she howled, “
Are they marines?
”
The halfling tot lisped, “They are mawines, Mama!”
Plumed hats soared up into the sunny air. Drums beat. The disposal teams wheeled their carts and shovels onto the field as the Badgurlz cheerleaders changed the scoreboards to the final 1-Nil result.
The surviving grunts drew themselves up and saluted in unison as Ashnak ambled back to the ducal box. Magda leaned down and gave him her hand to kiss.
“I need to speak with you!” she hissed.
The orc licked the sweat from her palm. He reached up and pocketed Vanderghast’s purse. “Sure thing…”
“
Ahem!
” A large marine trotted up to the duchess’s box, coughing discreetly for an orc. She wore green DPM camouflage fatigues, her crest was shaved down to the regulation quarter-inch, and her boots gleamed. Magda deduced garrison rather than field troops.
“Sir, excuse me, sir! Message from the barracks. They need you back there immediately, sir.”
Ashnak wiped sputum from the thigh of his urban combat trousers. “I’m busy! Tell Lugashaldim to handle it himself. Or I’ll rip your head off and you can carry
that
back to him for an answer!”
“
Sir, yes sir!
” Her leathery brow shone in the Southern Kingdoms’ heat, green skin pearled with sweat. “Sorry, sir,
no
, sir. Need
you
, sir.”
Ashnak kissed Magda’s hand. “You’ll have to excuse me, my little one. Present the Orcball League cup and make the relevant posthumous awards.”
“Hurry back, honey-cake!” Magda blew him a kiss. Her waving fingers moved in the signs for:
—
Damn it, marine, I need to talk to you now!
Outside Graagryk Stadium, Ashnak glowered at his marine corporal. The orc saluted several times in succession and looked ready to continue it indefinitely. Ashnak picked the large orc up by her webbing and threw her headfirst against the stadium wall. The masonry held.
“Pull yourself together!” he snarled.
The corporal staggered upright, weaving. She made as if to salute again and thought better of it. “Confidential message for the general from Lieutenant Lugashaldim, sir. Please to report, the general has a visitor waiting for him back at the barracks.”
At that same hour, four thousand miles to the southwest of Graagryk and the Inland Sea, on the far side of all the Southern Kingdoms’ vast civilisation, and beyond the Deserts of Endless Sand, an orc marine mounted a podium in the main square of Gyzrathrani.