Grunts (9 page)

“And so we feared for you, Lady, and for all our sakes, and so came searching for you to tell this tale.”

The green eyes, the only beauty in that face, met his. Her gloved hand beckoned. He walked to the foot of the dais, Ned at his heels, and craned his neck to look her in the face still.

“You have done well to bring this tale to me. What reward would you have?”

Will opened his mouth, but before he could get a word out, Ned said, “We’d paid our two weeks’ lodging at the house—is there any chance we could have that refunded?”

The female Man’s head went back, and her wide, loose mouth opened in a bellow of laughter. Will instantly sized up the distance to the guarded exits. He put his heel down crushingly hard on Ned’s foot.

“We want no reward,” he said emphatically.

Her laughter stopped. “A strange quest you tell of, halfling. It seems by it, although you conceal it, that you are thieves. But even thieves may become the instruments of Light.”

Ned muttered. “‘Adventurers.’”

Will shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, prepared to grab poison needles and flee under the feet of the crowd around the dais. “Thieves it may be—but thieves who hate the Dark as much as you do, Lady.”

“Elinturanbar,” she called. She wiped her mouth again with her soft glove.

A robed elf, taller by a head than any there, walked out of the crowd. Men and dwarves and elven-kind moved aside from the sway of his white robes embroidered with the gold Sun of the Mages. Will stared up into the lean face.

“Elves!” Ned exclaimed. “I never thought I should see Elves, Will.”

Will caught the missed breath in his brother’s ingenuous remark and the imperceptible shift to a combat-stance. Something cold twisted in his gut.

The elf’s face showed the faint fine lines of age.

Not half-elven, having none of the signs, nor yet one of the Long-lived come to the finish of his ages and the readiness to take ship to the Eternal Lands. Elinturanbar’s lean face, webbed with crow’s-feet at the eyes and mouth, shone with a fanatical light—that of those of the elven-kind who, out of the curiosity of the immortal, voluntarily embrace the pain and death that Men and other mortal creatures know.

“Elinturanbar will question you,” The Named said. “He is my inquisitor. The deceptions of evil are many and legendary—forgive me that I choose to test you, as metal is tested in the forge, before I decide if you are tempered to become a sword of the Light.”

Nimble, Will’s hand darted for the needles sewn into his doublet’s tabs. Fast as he moved, the aging elf inquisitor stooped faster and caught his arms, twisting them bonecrackingly hard up behind his back.

Ned Brandiman took his hands out of the loose puffed-and-slashed sleeves of his doublet. Weighed down by the sheer bulk of metal, he nonetheless managed to brace both arms and hold out, muzzle wavering, the 1911 U.S. Army issue Colt .45 autoloading pistol.

The midday sun burned down from a cloudless sky. The orc marines, beetle-browed eyes staring to the front, pounded down the track away from Nin-Edin under four- and five-ton loads of rifles, grenade-launchers, machineguns, machine-pistols, antitank weapons, and innumerable belts of ammunition.

“
Hut
-two,
hut
-two!” Lieutenant Barashkukor stood with his hands on his hips, on the seat of his jeep. “Fucking
elves
could move that load faster. You want the major to see you?”

Three hundred pairs of orc boots pounded down the road away from Nin-Edin in unison, the column raising plumes of
dust. Barashkukor drew a deep breath and bellowed at the passing rank and file of orc grunts. “Are you marines?
Move
!”

“Sir, yes sir!” Corporal Duranki shouted. His jaw set, he pounded on down the track. Like the others, the albino orc staggered under a backpack of weaponry three times his own height.

“Then move your fucking asses!” Barashkukor bellowed happily. “At the double, orcs!”

A metallic clash sounded.

Harsh, rhythmic; the noise of bells, horns, trumpets, drums, and a saxophone split the air. Nine of the smaller orc marines, stepping smartly, bashed out an impromptu military march. They were singing, Barashkukor noted, something to the effect of
“From the halls of Japh-kanduma to the shores of Zithan-dri…”

Captain Zarkingu (Magic-Disposal, Administration, and Band Duties) marched past at the head of the band and the second column, skipping from side to side and tossing her skull-standard up in the air, macelike, in time to the music.

“See you at the Tower, L.t.!” Zarkingu yelled.

Barashkukor saluted. He sat down in the jeep’s back seat, tilting the GI pot back on his head and letting his long, hairless ears spring out from under it.

“Lieutenant Barashkukor!”

Barashkukor jumped up and came smartly to attention, snapping a crisp salute. “Sir, Major Ashnak, sir! We removed stores of weapons from the mountains, sir. Everything is being transported with the company, sir, including ammunition. The orcs are moving out as requested,
sah
!”

“Thank you, Barashkukor.” Ashnak gave a casual salute. “Your unit’s got flying experience with Hueys, Lieutenant.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Barashkukor leapt out of the jeep. “That is…sir, no sir! Incapacitated by illness, sir. The Bell HU-1 Iroquois was disabled according to your orders, sir!”

Major Ashnak took the unlit roll of pipe-weed out of his tusked mouth and threw it down, grinding it under one polished combat boot. He tilted the urban camo forage cap back on his misshapen skull.

“There were at least two Hueys in Dagurashibanipal’s hoard, Lieutenant. Break out another one. Find a pilot and a marine with co-piloting experience and report back to me.”

Ashnak removed his forage cap and buckled on his GI-issue helmet, grinning toothily.

“I have my orders from Dark HQ, Lieutenant. I’ve got no choice.”

“I have no choice!”

The Named swings up into the saddle of the white warhorse, bright armour clashing. Her destrier lays its ears flat back against its skull. She effortlessly controls it.

“It is my fate to go to the Tower of Guthranc at the appointed time and use its power to summon the Army of Light to the Fields of Destruction. The time is
now
. The signal is mine alone to give!”

The sun colours her ugly grey-white face with the gold of dawn. Her breath curls in the summer’s-ending chill. Somewhere in Sarderis there is the scent of the sea.

“Follow my orders!” She wipes trailing saliva from the corner of her loose mouth. “This was prophecied for me when I was in my cradle, and I cannot avoid my destiny. I go now to Guthranc to sound the first war-summons to the Northern Kingdoms—I ride at dawn!”

A gold Harvest moon rose over the distant mountains. The wind felt cold on Ashnak’s face. He rested his back up against a trampled earth-bank smelling of cow-dung and machine-oil.

A scout orc slipped into the cover beside him. “Sir, nothing, sir.”

The orc’s commando knife dripped. Ashnak peered between the hedge’s thorn bushes towards the village by the river. It showed even to his eyes as blackness against blackness. No lights, no cock-crows, no hammers in the smithy. He smelled the scent of Man-blood on the air.

“Nothing left but the oldest and youngest of Men, and those were in hiding. All the smithies are empty, all the horseflesh gone.” She saluted. “No resistance, sir. We can take the columns through the river valley.”

Ashnak’s hide twitched in the night’s chill.

“This is a land waiting to be at war…Their warriors will be riding away to the great musters of the Light.” The wet earth soaked through his combats at knee and elbow. “Move ’em out, soldier.”

Ashnak rose and walked back from the advance post, radioing
for Shazgurim and Zarkingu to move their companies out, and the night became a morass of small noises—muffled boots, the clink of weapons, a snarl, the buzz of a radio transmission. It went on interminably as he walked back, squad after squad of orcs trampling the earth as they passed him. The big Agaku bared his fangs with exhilaration.

The full moon loomed, silver now, patterns of the Dark visibly smirching its face.

Shapes shambled across the fields and resolved themselves into three of the fighting Agaku. The second company of marines began to pass Ashnak, and he saluted the ranking officer at its head. The moonlight cast his shadow heavy and sloping on the wet earth.

Others shadows joined it: squat Imhullu, hulking Shazgurim, and Zarkingu’s shadow skipping from foot to foot.

“The artillery are in position!” Zarkingu unfurled a scroll of paper, spreading it out. Her eyes and fangs gleamed in the moonlight. Ashnak and his sub-commanders squatted to study the map.

“This is the Tower of Guthranc. That’s cultivated land. This is the edge of the forest, here, and this is the main road from Sarderis.” Ashnak pointed.

Imhullu untied the camouflage-neckerchief from his brow, wiped his weeping empty eye-socket, and replaced the cloth. The squat orc punched Ashnak’s bandoleer-covered chest. “Nine platoons—we’re taking three whole
companies
in. Practically a small battalion. Against what, less than a hundred of the Man-filth? Armed with swords and bows…?”

“Seven to one,” Ashnak said. “Reasonable odds.”

“They’ll have a few spells. Some damned magic-user or other.” Shazgurim squatted, forearms resting on horny knees, her helmet off—watching the third column begin to pass them. “But, bullets baffle bullshit. We’ve got these hard bastards at our backs—no horse-buggering Man is going to kick
our
asses!”

“Brief your squad leaders. It’s essential we target the mages, if there are any. Take them out.” Ashnak took the map and rolled it up. “We can’t stop them starting to spellcast—but sorcery will be no defence against these
weapons. We’ll take a few casualties while we’re wasting the mages, but at acceptable casualty levels.”

Zarkingu rubbed her horny hands together. “No protection! No magic! They’ll be cut to pieces…”

She paused.

“Are we too good? Will the orc marines worry
him
?”

Above Ashnak the stars are drowned by moonlight. On the horizon, mountains glimmer with early snow.

“The nameless?” Ashnak hawked and spat a gob of phlegm. He felt a laugh building deep in his chest. “He’s like any of the lesser Lords of Evil—jockeying for position among the rest. Hoping that the Dark Lord’s going to notice him. He’ll do anything for that, rot him. As for
too good
—I tell you exactly what our reward will be for this. We’ll get to stand on the right of the line at the Fields of Destruction, and take the brunt of the battle.”

“Fighting Agaku!” Imhullu shook his crop-eared head. “
That’s
the war for which we were bred.”

“Poor bastards,” Shazgurim snorted. “I can even be sorry for the Man-filth in the Tower. They don’t know what’s going to hit them.”

Zarkingu giggled hysterically.

Ashnak tightened his web-belt, re-laced one boot, and straightened his shambling bulk. The RT whispered in his helmet. He bared fangs to the cold moonlight.

“Those Men in the Tower?” Ashnak said. “They’re soldiers, the same as we are—except that they’re not marines. Honour them, Agaku. They’re close kin to us, although they deny it. And we’re going to kill them. All warriors are brothers in arms, whether they fight for the Light or the Dark. We are fated always to make war on our own kind.”

The Named rides for Guthranc.

With her ride an ill-assorted company. There are Men in it, who seem uneasy in the brigandines and burgonets they wear. Some are slender enough to be of the elven-kind. They carry weapons as if they are not used to them. Some of the smaller breeds are there, too, bouncing along in the saddles behind the taller riders.

The Dark-touched moon sinks over fields left unharvested, among villages deserted, in a countryside breathing out the relief that comes with the promise of a final accounting with evil.

Under a blue sky, the countryside of the Northern Kingdom shone red and gold. Heavy-headed golden grain swayed and fell forward, flattened under the metal tracks of a speeding M113 armoured personnel carrier. Spreading poppies among the overripe, unharvested corn blotched the fields with the colour of Man-blood.

Ashnak leaned hairy elbows on the edge of the APC’s hatch, holding binos to his eyes. He smelled dusty earth, orc-sweat, and Man-fear. The machine bucked and dipped under him as it roared along the length of the first orc marine column. Three columns crossed the fields in echelon. He tasted dust in his tusked mouth.

Somewhere the Army of Light will be mustering for the Final Battle. But that is not here, and Samhain is weeks off yet.

The radio buzzed in Ashnak’s hairless ear. He thumbed the stud under the rim of his helmet. “Ashnak receiving, over.”

“This is Recon 1. Territory is clear, repeat territory is clear. Over.”

“Recon 1, I copy. Out.”

“Major Ashnak, this is Recon 2. No enemy seen or suspected. Over.”

“I copy, Recon 2. Out.”

“Recon 3, this is Recon 3. Targets have entered the Tower, sir. Estimate their garrison strength at seventy, repeat, seven-zero. They have closed the gates and are guarding the walls. Over.”