Grunts

by Mary Gentle

The Low is rais’d—then rais’d once more.

  The Bullys roar, their Cats do scratch,

  Good Tompkyns bawls, “Beware the Watch!”

  The roof rings with outrageous Noise,

  And louder sing all Roaring Boys,

  And there is drawn full many a Cork,

  In merriment, at the Dancing Orc.

  “Ode to a Coffee-House,” I proclaim this still,

  Tho’ what I ode was commonly—the bill!

  One periwigged Man clapped his hands and the rest began to applaud, more in relief than appreciation.

  “‘Tis well done!”

  “Ay, you cannot say it isn’t. We are indebted to you, my lady.”

  “If you are inclined to publish,” an elderly, prune-faced Man hung back and addressed Razitshakra as the rest departed, “I can offer you reasonable terms, and the anonymity due to a Lady of Quality…”

  “I—” Razitshakra brought her fan up to cover her masked face, wincing. Ashnak, who had clawed her under the table, nodded affably at the Man.

  “It is her pastime only, sir.”

  It was unnecessary to show the decorated hilt of his short-sword. At Ashnak’s bass-voiced comment, the Man bowed and hurriedly departed to his comrades on the far side of the coffee-house. Ashnak drew breath, about to speak, and the landlord returned and leaned over and planted a jug of arrack and five mugs on the table. His black-browed face had cleared.

  “Welcome, sirs and madam, welcome. I do apologise for my suspicions, but we have Justices come here in disguises searching out vice, and then it is myself and my wife who will be whipped at the cart-tail for keeping a bawdy-house, do you see, girl? Please drink this on the house.”

  Ashnak, still leaning back out of the lamplight, said confidentially, “we are not Justices, sir, I warrant you. The very opposite, in fact. I hear the Guild knows this tavern, landlord. To tell the truth, we need to hire a servant or two—servants who shall know how to thieve, but not from their employers…”

  Jan Tomkyns straightened, wiping his hands down his leather apron. Tall for a Man, he would have topped Ashnak only by half a head if they had both been standing; and Ashnak huddled into his cloak and coat so as not to have it noticed that he was himself four times as heavily built as the landlord.

  “Ah, sir, now I appreciate…yes. The custom is for the house to recommend, and a small fee—why, thank you, sir. Very kind. Now let me think…Do you see her, yonder?”

  Ashnak noticed one of his silk gloves had split, showing the granite-coloured skin and talon beneath. He tucked his large hands up into the cuffs of his frock coat. He peered through the smog. A female halfling sat alone in an opposite nook, her crimson cloak hood drawn up, shadowing her face.

  “She is a thief?”

  “What, Magda, sir? Lord, sir, no! But she’s the mother of two of the most ingenious thieves in the kingdom, and if you speak with her, I’m sure you can come to terms.”

  Ashnak nodded to Razitshakra. “Write a note for the halfling Magda. Landlord, I would as soon leave this note with you to give to her. Here is silver.”

  “Holloa! I’ve won!”

  Captain Mad Jack Montague, Earl of Ruxminster, leaving the back gaming room riding on the shoulders of a stout whore, whipped at her with his crop. His boot swung round and caught the table, knocking arrack and lukewarm coffee into the laps of Ashnak and the orc marines.

  “Faith, ye’re wet! Baptised ye, ye Lightless dogs!”

  Lugashaldim stood, furious, wiping himself down, bandy-legged in silk breeches. Ashnak inclined his wigged head. “No harm done, sir.”

  “Faith, a piss-britches coward!” The Earl Captain swung his sword above his head, knocking one of the lamps, and galloped his whore around the room, kicking at other tables and ducking the jugs and shoes flung piecemeal at his head.

  Razitshakra finished writing. Ashnak took the letter. He did not read it, it not being a common thing in a Wit to have to spell prose out letter by letter, lips moving. Besides, the marine had her orders. He folded the paper and handed it to the landlord.

  “You are to give this to the female halfling’s thieves. To the thieves themselves. Will you remember that?”

  “To the thieves?” Jan Tompkyns looked puzzled. “But you may speak with Magda herself now, sir, at your pleasure.”

  “No.” Ashnak stood up and moved out of the partition, not bothering to conceal his bulk or his quickness. A number of the patrons glanced over, and he saw how they took in five square-built, hunch-shouldered, supposed Men in frock coats and silk gown, features hidden behind domino-masks. At his back he heard the four other orcs scuffling out from the benches. He thrust the letter into the landlord’s hand. “You will remember, sir, I promise you. The thieves must have this letter. Do it.”

  “Yes, sir. But sir—”

  Ashnak casually backhanded the Man across the face, breaking his jaw and rendering him unconscious. The landlord fell across chairs and hit the floor. Ashnak caught Lugashaldim’s and Razitshakra’s eyes. He nodded.

  “Now.”

  Wading in swatches of silk, bow-legged and broad-shouldered, Razitshakra kicked over tables and chairs and coffee-drinkers on her way across the room. Lugashaldim shook his head, peruke and domino-mask flying off. Someone gasped and swore. In no more than fifteen seconds the two orcs ploughed across the room, snatched up the female halfling, bundled her in a cloak, and bashed their way out, demolishing one of the doorposts as they went.

  A dozen or so of the less-drunk patrons drew sword. Ashnak clawed the cloak off his back and unholstered his concealed Uzi automatic submachine-gun. The two remaining orc marines dropped cloaks and masks and shifted M16s into firing position. Ashnak cocked the gun, moved the fire-selector to automatic, and let off a series of three-shot bursts.

  “Aaiiiiiieee!”

  The M16s opened up. Noise shattered the coffee-house. Ashnak scythed down Captain Mad Jack and his whore, the flaxen-haired dwarf, the table of Spectator journalists and then emptied the magazine through the back door. Bodies jerked, staggered, caught half-rising. The halfling bar-girl, picked up by the force of the shots, splattered across the back wall as it collapsed.

  The big orc hit the magazine-release catch, snicked a full magazine home, and—firing on semi-auto to conserve ammunition—slewed a burst of fire around the room and fell in behind the remaining two orc marines as they left the Dancing Orc by way of the demolished back wall. Human, dwarf, and halfling blood painted the walls, spattered the ceilings; Men clutched at guts spilling through burned and tattered frock coats and lace shirts; faces minced, limbs shattered, bone-fragments flying like shrapnel.

  In less than thirty seconds, and always firing above waist-level so as to avoid hitting the unconscious body of Tomkyns, the orc marines cleared the building and disappeared into the alleyways around Abbey Park.

  Jan Tompkyns, eventually conscious and in great pain, did not think to study the letter until he had had a surgeon to his jaw, fled two streets away before the Justices should investigate the room of bleeding, stinking corpses in the Dancing Orc, and wept hysterically for close onto four hours.

  It was some time after midnight when Magda’s sons found him.

  “Our mother—she’s not among the dead. Damn you,” the elder demanded, “what happened?”

  His jaw bound up, the landlord could not speak. He proffered the stained letter. The elder son took it. The younger read over his shoulder.

  It was unsigned.

  Thieves:

  We have taken the halfling Magda, who is our hostage for your obedience. Do as is written below and no harm will come to her. Fail to obey and she will be very slowly killed.

  Steal from the Visible College those talismans that prevent the operation of magic, in as great a number as you can. Bring them in secrecy to the besieged fort of Nin-Edin. There collect your mother. If you cannot enter a besieged fort, or the Visible College, then you are not the thieves we have been told that you are.

  We
will be inconvenienced by this, but it is always possible to obtain more thieves. We believe it is less easy to obtain another mother.

  Do this, at the very latest, before the moon passes out of its first quarter.

  6

  The war is over now.

  Vultures wheel at heights from whicn the Demonfest Mountains are only rumpled white rock patching the curved earth. The birds’ centre-magnified vision sees all:

  The Northern Kingdoms ravaged, fields unharvested rotting in early winter rain. Men and other races huddle in their villages against famine and death, while in Herethlion and Fourgate songs are sung of heroes’ victories. Vultures avoid the cities of Men. The dead tossed over the walls stink of plague.

  The war is over.

  The abandoned Dark strongholds, the magical dead of the east, are desolate now beyond even vultures’ picking.

  And vultures follow the Last Battle’s soldiers in their company-sized refugee bands, waiting as they take forts and castles, hold them for a time, lose them to their lawful owners or (more often) to larger marauding bands, leaving enough behind to glut the vultures so that they can barely fly.

  The war is over. This is peace.

  Vultures circle at heights where, like the fields of destruction beneath, the only rules are those of hunger.

  The unseasonable November snow whitened the porticos of Fourgate’s mansions and turned to peach-coloured slush in the cobbled streets. Will Brandiman tipped the carriers of his sedan chair, got out, and trod cautiously across the slippery flagstones of the courtyard outside the Visible College.

  A small girl with brown pigtails hurled a snowball. It burst against Will’s tricorn hat. He growled, “Cut it out, Ned!”

  The girl, slightly taller than Will, stuffed one somewhat coarse hand inside a rabbit-fur muff and picked up the hem of her gown and cloak together as she skipped across the street. Close at hand, her hair was a little too short for braiding, and her brows too thick, and her mouth had lines about it that eight-year-olds do not commonly have…

  The brown-haired halfling shuffled his large, hirsute feet under the scarlet velvet of his dress. He lowered his head demurely. “Greetings, brother Will.”

  “Brother Ned.”

  They both looked at the Visible College.

  “Let’s set fire to the building,” Ned Brandiman said. “Then when everyone comes rushing out, we can rush in…”

  “Dark damn it, Ned, that’s your answer to everything!”

  “It works,” the elder halfling said, miffed. “Well? I’ve watched outside this place for two hours. We’re not going to get in. I’m not surprised orcs didn’t make it. There’s magic oozing out of the very stones.”

  Will Brandiman raised his head. Cold wind and flakes of snow brushed his eyes. The monumental walls of the Visible College here gave way to a terraced frontage, lined with Corinthian columns, and a vast set of double doors flanked by stone griffins. Uniformed Wilderness mercenaries patrolled the colonnade in front of the doors.

  Ned squatted and began constructing a snowman, singing a child’s game-rhyme in a high-pitched voice. The mercenaries’ gazes slid away. Will stopped pretending to be digging in his purse for coppers.

  They casually walked away from the courtyard to one of the hot-chestnut-sellers’ braziers in the street and stood picking the shells off finger-burning nuts and chewing them, then dropping the husks.

  Will swallowed thoughtfully. “It’s guarded. Magic and steel. The walls are insurmountable. I don’t fancy coming back tonight to pick the lock on that door. It’ll probably turn you into a hippogriff if you don’t have the right magical key.”

  “We could set fire—”

  “Ned!”

  “It was only a suggestion.”

  Will stamped his booted feet in the slush. There was no jingle from the mail-shirt under his cloak, nor from the bandoleer of throwing-knives he wore over his doublet, nor the daggers at his belt and in his boots. A thin coil of elven rope, wound about his waist, made him the image of a fat, possibly dwarfish, merchant (but not his feet). The wind blew through his curly black hair, silver at the temples. He narrowed his eyes.

  “But there’s Mother to be thought of…”

  “Yes.”

  The two halflings exchanged glances.

  “If they harm her…” Ned scowled.

  Will said viciously, “I’d like to take something else out of the Visible College. Enough experimental magic to make mincemeat out of her kidnappers!”

  “No point. Not if we’re stealing magic-null talismans for them. I don’t think we dare cheat.”

  “Damn it.”

  There was a pause, in the deadened silence that comes with snowfall. A coach crept by, cartwheels skidding, Percherons straining to pull it across the icy cobbles. Will nodded absently. He wiped wind-tears from the lined corners of his eyes.

  “The Nin-Edin fort,” he asserted, “we already know. Those are the orcs we bemused into giving us an armed escort out of the Wilderness three months ago. Chances are it’s the same orcs there now—”

  “No way!” Ned shook his head emphatically. One pink ribbon slipped from his braids. Nimbly, he picked it up and began plaiting his hair again as he watched the frontage of the Visible College. “After the Last Battle? There are stray orcs all over the place!”

  “You’d know about the Last Battle,” Will said sceptically.

  “And you’d know too, I suppose?” His brother gave him a look of absolute cynicism. “Having fought impressively on the side of the Light—as you insist on telling all the gamblers and ruffians and whores in Fourgate?”

  “That has nothing to do with anything!”

  Snow fell faster from a lowering sky, the flakes black against the clouds, white against the masonry of mansions and arcades. Will flexed his fingers inside embroidered gauntlets. It is never wise to let hands become too cold to act. He eyed the lantern light shining through the windowed dome of the Visible College—a dome accessible only by flight, if then.

  “It has to be the same orcs! They lost their leaders at Guthranc, but they weren’t all massacred, not by any means. The question is, Do they know it’s us?” Will shivered in the wind. “I do wish Mother wouldn’t pray to Fortuna. It brings about the most amazing coincidences.”

  Ned Brandiman hurled a snowball at the nut-seller. The elderly woman good-naturedly tossed a bag of hot chestnuts back. She turned back to her cash-tray, counted, and began to frown.

  Boots stamped and weapon-butts hit the flagstones as the mercenaries changed guard. Will eyed the oiled brilliance of their halberds and the much-worn grips of their swords. Under his breath he murmured, “No, thank you…”

  “Perhaps you should have told Mother that we still have all that money,” Ned observed.

  Will nodded morosely. “Perhaps I should. But you know what she’s like with gold…I didn’t want to put temptation in her way.”

  The snow fell faster, silting up in the creases of Will’s cloak. Ned put both hands inside his rabbit-fur muff.

  “So how are we going to get in there?”

  “You’re not,” Will said. He surveyed the crimson velvet gown and grinned. “You’re going to freeze your ass off in the snow, waiting to see if I make it, and if I don’t, you’re going to come in and rescue me. Right, brother Ned?”

  Ned Brandiman groaned. “Right, brother Will. All right. I’ll try that again. How are you going to get into the Visible College?”

  Will brushed down his cloak, taking advantage of the movement to unobtrusively check the position of throwing-knives, daggers, concealed poison needles, and blackjacks. There were bulges at his belt. He straightened his shoulders and stared through the falling snow at the steps and colonnade and guards outside the Visible College.

  “In cases like these,” he said, “I always find that the judicious application of enormous amounts of money works wonders. Excuse me.”

  Careful of the ice, he strode across the road and up the steps towards th
e mercenaries, taking out from under his fashionable cloak a bag of gold as large as a troll’s fist.

  “Here.” He clapped it into the mercenary captain’s hand. About to bellow, she first hefted the bag thoughtfully, opened it, and her eyebrows then attempted to climb through her hairline.

  “That’s for you,” Will said, “with another one when I come out. I wish to speak to the director of the Visible College, with a view to making some purchases—a large quantity, wholesale.”

  “I must no longer let myself be distracted by their devilish engines!”

  The Paladin-Mage stood silhouetted against the racing black clouds that hid the peaks of the Demonfest Mountains. A fierce cold wind flapped the white surcoat he wore over his armour to signify the purity of his intent, and seared into his dark, aquiline face. Amarynth did not so much as blink.

  “Lady,” he prayed, “now send me Grace!”

  He stared up the Nin-Edin pass at the squat, dark fortress, silhouetted with old snow, bristling with guns and flags on the keep and inner walls, and (on the outer, lower walls which Amarynth now faced) crowded with jeering orcs.

  A brown orc leaned between the crenellations, starting a chant:

  “You can’t beat no orc marines

  When we fire our M16s!”

  Amarynth lifted both his dark hands and spoke a word.

  “You c—”

  The orcs ceased to chant. In the sudden silence, a whispering noise sounded. It might have been the wind. It became louder, a rushing roaring and pouring.

  Mortar turned to powder and leaked out between the stones of Nin-Edin’s outer wall.

  Lichen and iron-rot darted up the dank walls. Nitre spidered across the cracking masonry. Within the space of three heartbeats, the stone aged.

  Aged, crumbled, and fell into ruin.

  The outermost of the main gate’s towers slid two yards down the hill, tilted, and the masonry blocks showered out into the air, falling down the slops, and fading, before they hit dirt, into the dust of aeons.

  The cold, snow-laden wind blew down the pass. Orcs, running, fell with the dissolving walls, tumbling into shale and earth and a rising cloud of putrefaction, as the entire outer wall of the ancient Nin-Edin fort collapsed within the space of thirty heartbeats.