Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  “Help!”

  Ugarit’s powered-armour suit swayed and began to pivot with increasing rapidity about its trapped right foot. Mechanisms sheared. Sparks flew. Two explosions sent sickly thick black smoke into the air.

  “Aaaiieee!”

  “Incoming!” Barashkukor threw himself flat. Fast as he was, the Warrior of Fortune reporter hit the dirt before he did. A solid loud crack! sounded. Panels of powered armour whipped across the compound, slamming into buildings. A choking, acrid smoke spread through the still, snowy air. Barashkukor buried his face in his arms while fragments hissed into the snow around him. Slush soaked through his combat trousers.

  BOOM!-taka-taka-taka…click…

  tkk!

  “Is it safe?” Perdita del Verro whispered.

  “Erm…Maybe. Yes. Of course!”

  Orc marines picked themselves up out of the slush, brushing down green and brown combats and scratching their heads. The powered armour had apparently snapped at the waist, the top now hanging over upsidedown. It smoked gently.

  “Uhhhnn…”

  The Research and Development Department (Nin-Edin Marine Base) crawled out from under a collapsed shed. His combats steamed, and green blood dripped from rents in the camouflage cloth. Ugarit wiped his singed crest away from his blackened face, staggered to his feet, and aimed a cross-eyed salute several yards to Barashkukor’s left.

  “Sorry about that, sir,” the tall orc corporal apologized, dazed. “I’ll take that one back to the planning stage.”

  Barashkukor coughed and forced a sickly grin. The back of his neck burned with embarrassment at having the elf witness the failure. “We have enough weaponry to be going on with, Corporal. Put the rest of the stuff into production immediately.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” Ugarit stared fixedly into the middle distance. “Permission to report sick, sir?”

  “Permission granted,” Barashkukor sighed.

  “Thank you, sir.” The tall, thin orc saluted, shut his eyes with his hand still raised, fell forward with his body unbending, and smacked face-first into the slush.

  Perdita’s hand rested on Barashkukor’s thin, muscular shoulder; warm in the winter air. “Major, I see what you’re doing! Every strange new weapon you can throw at the besiegers stops them—for a day, or half a day, or a few hours—by sheer surprise. It’s a war of the mind. Psychological warfare.”

  Barashkukor internally debated the wisdom of, in the first flush of his enthusiasm, having let the elf poke around in some of Dagurashibanipal’s miscellaneous crates.

  The elf added softly, “But each time it gains you less respite. Major, you can’t go on like this forever. That’s a lot of army out there. What are you waiting for?”

  5

  The dawn of the siege’s eighth day coloured the eastern heavens lemon-bright above the Demonfest peaks.

  A trebuchet thunked and whirred. A gelatinous sphere hurtled from its catapult-scoop on a rising trajectory and struck Nin-Edin’s walls just below the outer gate-house. The sticky substance clung and burst into sorcerous blue and gold flame, brilliant against the fresh snow.

  The dwarvish engineer Kazra, hip-deep in snow, rubbed her small calloused palms together.

  “Ah. I love the smell of Greek Fire in the morning…”

  Another scoop of sorcerous fire sparked trails over the white landscape. Just visible on the walls, orcs scurried with gravel buckets. The sparks of hammer on steel flew from the armourers’ firepits, and their welcome clangour made music in her ears. She drew in a breath of frozen air and the scent of magic.

  “My old friend and comrade.” Lord Commander Amarynth reached brown fingers down to touch the shoulder of her padded brigandine. “With magery’s help today we will winkle out these obstinate sinners—Lady of Light!”

  The gilded ball on the peak of the main command tent dipped and went down as the central pole collapsed. Acres of snow-wet canvas billowed. An unearthly shriek split the morning. Men and elves ran through trampled slush, hurriedly pulling on pieces of armour, shouting. Kazra unshipped her war-axe from her back. A serpent uncoiled against the sky.

  “War-elephant!” Kazra screamed. Orcs in black breast-plates and riding on wild mountain wolves reared up in front of her, out of the breached camp’s confusion, and she swung and missed, swung again and dented one breastplate.

  “Ho, the dwarves!” Kazra hacked her way down to where Amarynth, blue cloak falling back from his silver armour, fought in the first blaze of dawn to touch the mountain’s lower slopes.

  “Revenge!” cried the wolf-riding orcs. “Revenge for Samhain! Kill their commanding officers!”

  Amarynth idly gestured a spell, inverting both wolves and riders.

  Abruptly, dwarves, Men, and elves were all Kazra could see. No orcs that were not writhing masses of intestines. The war-elephant trampled out from the ruins of the command tent. High above, the rider coolly gestured, and the beast ponderously reared to crush.

  Kazra cocked her arm, muttered an incantation, hurled her war-axe, and caught the elephant’s rider solidly on the helmet. The rider fell. The elephant, released, rampaged up the slope towards Nin-Edin, the Light’s warriors sprinting out of its path.

  “For the Dark!”

  Amarynth stepped past her at that cry, slender sword pointing towards the elephant’s rider. The rider scrambled to his feet, glaring out at the surrounding men-at-arms from under a dented horned helmet. His eyes, fiercely blue, glittered like the northern skies. Kazra forced her way into the front rank of the crowd and looked down at him.

  “Bit short for a Man, aren’t you?” the dwarf enquired.

  The diminutive barbarian, feet planted in the ruins of the command tent, stood with his two-handed axe braced over his head, flashing back the dawn’s light.

  “Who’s asking you, you fucking midget? I’m here for the sodding Dark, to relieve Nin-Edin! Single combat, warrior against warrior! Which one of you flea-bitten, whore-mongering, arse-licking goat-fuckers thinks you can take me?”

  Kazra looked up at the slender, dark-skinned elf. Amarynth looked down at her. Simultaneously, they remarked, “How barbaric.”

  Simultaneously they sheathed sword and put away axe, turned to the surrounding fifty men-at-arms, and directed, “Take him.”

  The northern barbarian vanished under a heap of armored bodies.

  “Prepare that Dark scum for questioning,” Amarynth ordered.

  Kazra turned to look back up the slope.

  A few fleeting orcs, screaming in their own guttural tongue, arrived before the gates of Nin-Edin. Kazra saw how, before her own people could reach the walls, the defenders opened the gates, and the refugee orcs streamed in to join them.

  The gates being open, and no orc being about to attempt to prevent it, the war-elephant also lumbered inside Nin-Edin.

  The gates slammed rapidly shut.

  Twelve hours later, at the far end of the Demonfest mountain range, four figures emerged from an alley in Fourgate.

  The four tottered on high-heeled red shoes. Piled and powdered white wigs uneasily surmounted their heads, and they swathed themselves in the folds of black silk cloaks to hide the rips in their coats. Ashnak abandoned hope of buttoning his frock coat up to his chin and adjusted the strings of his black domino-mask.

  “Marines?” he hissed.

  “Yessir!” Lugashaldim shrugged his cloak over his bulging, muscular shoulders and rested the ferrule of his amber cane on the cobbles. The two SUS orc marines with him mumbled, “Yo!” and went back to arranging their lace ruffles and pulling silk gloves on over their bulging, taloned hands.

  “Razitshakra!”

  The fifth orc emerged from the alleyway, shaking out the immense flounces of a silk brocade gown. Razitshakra tugged the bodice of the ballgown lower, covered her granite-coloured breasts with a lace fichu, and swept the aquamarine silk cloak about her shoulders. A black velvet mask covered most of her features, leaving visible only a somewhat protruding jaw. Her whi
te, feather-spangled wig sat slightly crooked on her head.

  “It’ll have to do,” Ashnak said firmly. “Forward, marines!”

  The five bewigged orcs minced out into the street. Lugashaldim flourished his cane with style. Ashnak reached across and grabbed it from him, cracking it down on the cobbles with an equal flourish, and set off down the road, cloak swinging.

  “Sir!” Ashnak accosted a passerby, holding a silk kerchief to his wide mouth and relying on that and the indistinct moonlight. “We are strangers come to Fourgate for the celebrations. I pray you, sir, where might one find a little—Guild thievery and pleasure?”

  The passerby lifted a minuscule velvet hat from a towering peruke and bowed. “You need the Abbey Park, brave sir. You will be well advised to take your swords, as I see you do, but there you will find all that you desire.”

  Ashnak bowed and twisted his ankle, not used to high-heeled court shoes. He muttered muffled thanks and marched off in the direction indicated. The houses leaned together over the streets here, darkening them still further, with only the linkboys’ torches to light the way for Men, elves, halflings, and dwarves. Ashnak’s night-vision served him perfectly adequately.

  “Here,” Razitshakra objected, “I haven’t got a sword.”

  The fourth orc marine fiddled with the butterfly-hilted small-sword at his belt and growled, “Call this a sword?”

  Razitshakra replaced one of the dragon hoard’s thin books within her fur muff. “I don’t see why male orcs should have the monopoly of coercive force. It’s a politically unsound principle.”

  “What?”

  “Why haven’t I got one?”

  “Because you’re a Lady!” Ashnak snarled. “Quiet, marine. This must be it.”

  A tall temple stood deserted on their right. The road opened into a piazza crowded with all races. Ashnak’s wide nostrils flared at the scent of enemies. An elf in a gold-embroidered brocade coat strolling past, talking with a ragged orange-seller…Two dwarves in frieze coats and slouch hats muttering about interest rates and then diving into the low door of a dwarf tavern…Male and female Men eating at the food-shacks and drinking outside bagnios and public baths…

  “There.” Ashnak nodded. A bottleglass-windowed coffee-house stood on the corner across from the temple. In the last glare of the setting moon, and the new flaring of torches about the piazza, he could spell out its name: At the Sign of the Dancing Orc.

  The roughly drawn picture was of an orc, its feet waving as it dangled from a noose.

  Lugashaldim growled deep in his throat. Ashnak, suddenly scenting the SUS orc marines, waved his silk kerchief in front of his masked nostrils and walked to open the door of the coffee-house.

  “Stand aside!” A young flaxen-bearded dwarf with a torch straight-armed Ashnak away from the door. He hesitated, wrung his wrist, and stared up at the broad-shouldered, masked figure. “’Ere, you’re a strong cove, ain’tcha? No matter. Way for Mistress Betsy Careless! Way for Captain Mad Jack Montague! Make way, I say!”

  Ashnak trod back on Lugashaldim’s foot. He bowed, getting his balance better this time. The dwarf—a boy hardly more than forty, dressed in ragged blue velvet—cackled, and kicked open the coffee-house door. A sedan-chair creaked as its bearers let it thump to the ground, and Razitshakra and the two masked grunts were forced to step back from the figure seated astride the sedan-chair’s roof, wildly waving a broadsword.

  “Ho! Little Cazey!”

  The dwarf leered and bowed to Ashnak. “That’s me, sir. Laurence Casey, not at your service, but at his.”

  The Man leapt down and flung open the sedan’s door. “My lady! Accompany me, I pray!”

  The dwarf filled his lungs and bellowed through the open door: “My Lord Mad Jack Montague, Earl of Ruxminster! His paramour, the very gay and sprightly Betsy Careless! Make way!”

  Ashnak let the noble bully and his cyprian clear the door and then led his orc marines inside, under cover of their noise. The low-ceilinged room hung heavy with pipe-weed smoke and the fumes of coffee brewing. Ashnak slitted his tilted eyes and gazed around—mostly Men, dwarves, and halfings, in silk breeches and frock coats: some reading broadsheets, all with bottles of arrack or brandy at their elbows; the yellow lamplight gleaming on the exposed breasts of whores; the noise of raucous singing filling the air.

  Lugashaldim chuckled. It was not visible behind the domino-mask, but Ashnak guessed the albino orc to be grinning. “This is all right, General. A home away from home, you might say.”

  “Quiet, marine. Ashnak pointed to a table, hobbling over and taking a seat in one of the alcoves. The oak settle was hardly comfortable, but the partitions screened him from other patrons. The other four seated themselves along the table.

  “An’ what would you gentlemen—and lady—be wanting?”

  Ashnak glanced up, then lowered his vision. A tiny halfling child, no more than knee-height and dressed in ragged shawl and robe, licked her diminutive finger and poised a pencil over a scrap of paper.

  “Bring me the day’s broadsheets,” Ashnak ordered, “and your best Java coffee; a bottle of arrack; no companions, for the meanwhile; and speech with the landlord when it shall be convenient.”

  The halfling child bobbed its head and scuttled away. Lugashaldim, half-buried in the flounces of his lace cravat, said in an amazed tone, “You’ve done this before, General?”

  Ashnak made to draw off his gloves and thought better of it. “I know how to behave in polite society.”

  Squat and wide-shouldered, Lugashaldim leaned out of the partitioned alcove, peering through the fug to the back rooms. Greasy playing-cards were being slapped down on a stained tabletop; whores in cotton lace took frock-coated Men and dwarves up the back stairs; and Mad Jack Montague had his head buried in the bosoms of Betsy Careless.

  A voice said, “Mighty curious, ain’tcha—gents?”

  Ashnak leaned back against the oak partition, removing his masked face from the direct lamplight. His wig wobbled precariously. The big orc looked up through the velvet mask’s slits at a broad, black-haired man in leather apron and bag-breeches.

  “Mine host?”

  “I be Jan Tompkyns, ay. Who might you be?”

  White wig powder trickled down Ashnak’s forehead under the mask, irritating his wide nostrils. Under the table, he prized his cramped feet out of the court shoes, flexing taloned toes. Every muscle tense, about to spring—

  “I am the Lady Razit—Rasvinniah,” the orc marine Razitshakra said in a bored tone, taking the day’s broadsheet from the little halfling bar-girl, flicking it open, and peering over her spectacles. “Landlord, you will have heard of Rasvinniah, the famous blue-stocking, and her circle of Wits. We are come to view the Abbey Park and your fine establishment.”

  Ashnak recovered his dropped jaw in time to nod, firmly, when Jan Tompkyns looked at him.

  “Then your ladyship is perhaps composing a poem, dedicated to the Dancing Orc and its customers?” The Man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Which you will read, tonight, to yonder other Wits—I mean my journalist friends from the Spectator broadsheet.”

  “Of course.” Razitshakra inclined her head. The feathers decorating her wig brushed cobwebs from the ceiling.

  “Then I bid you good evening, and pray you enjoy my house.” The landlord stomped off.

  “Poem?” Ashnak demanded. “Poem?”

  Razitshakra flourished the bar-girl’s pencil and began to scribble on the back of one of the roughly printed broadsheets. “I’ve been reading some good books lately. A marine should be fully trained in all skills, General.”

  “Poetry! It should take three marines for a mission of that nature,” Ashnak grumbled. “One who can read, one who can write—and one to keep watch over those other two dangerous subversives.”

  “I’ll allay the landlord’s suspicions, sir. Trust me.” Razitshakra thrust the pencil-point up her nose and sniffed. “Now let me think…”

  “Dance wiv me, governor?” A
female Man, her ears pointed enough to make Ashnak suspect that she was half-elven, leaned over the table and thrust her breasts into the big orc’s masked face. “Come on! Blind Dick’s about to play ’is fiddle. Dance with Poor Meg or be called a coward forever!”

  The whore’s hand slipped beneath the table top and groped Ashnak’s groin. Her eyes widened.

  “’Ere! You are a big boy, ain’tcha? Come upstairs with me, mister. Only two silver shillings. We’ll dance the dance you do on yer back.”

  Ashnak placed her hand back up on the table. He pitched his voice high, with difficulty making his accent genteel. “Can’t you see I have drink and companions? I’ll call on you when I need you; for now, begone!”

  The piping of a whistle and the sawing of a fiddle filled the air of the Dancing Orc. A raucous lavatorial song broke out in one corner, soon drowned out by the competition of a dozen Men singing of the skills of one Bet “Little-Infamy” Davies. Ashnak took a mouthful of the arrack, scowled, and turned his attention to the steaming pot of coffee. There was a silence at the table broken only by Razitshakra’s furious scribbling and one of the other marines’ scratching through the thick cloth of his frock coat for fleas. Despite this attempt to blend in, there was, Ashnak felt, still something unmistakably military about the party.

  His tilted eyes narrowed, searching the room. Plenty of patrons with the signs of the Thieves’ Guild on them, but which to approach?

  “Are you done, my lady?” The black-haired landlord, Jan Tompkyns, loomed over the table. A gaggle of peruked Men in stained velvet coats hung at his elbows.

  Razitshakra rustled the broadsheet, peered at her scribble, cleared her throat, and announced modestly: “An Ode to Jan Tompkyn’s Hostelry”:

  Behold a House, both fair and Sweet,

  Where all from High to Low do meet.

  The High’s laid lowest, with a Whore;