Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  Squatting in the shade of a fronded tree, the other elves clustered around her, Aradmel Brightblade murmured, “We don’t even know what this ‘enemy’ is, Sergeant.”

  “Isn’t what they are that’s important,” Dakashnit drawled. The dappled sun and shadow hid her even when Gilmuriel knew where he was looking for the orc. “These Bugs butchered Moondream’s squad, so we know they’re hostile. All we need to know is—where they are…”

  Two youngsters—Dyraddin Treewaker and Bellurial Starharp, neither more than three centuries old, to Gilmuriel’s certain knowledge—abandoned interest in the mission and began discussing elven genealogies and the Lost Lands of the Oversea. Gilmuriel cuffed them.

  “There is a term in the marines for this formation,” he snapped. “Clusterfuck. If you cluster up like that—we’re fucked! The enemy will waste all of us with one burst. Now let us get sorted out for line of march.”

  The jungle fronds of Thyrion dripped a humid damp. Gilmuriel took a deep breath, smelling the decay of leaves, the spoor of beasts, and the age of the great spiring trees. His elven instincts shrieked at him of a wrongness in the rain-forest. A scent of evil beast, apart from orc; and metal, over and above the weapons of the elf marines.

  The last sun to sift through the canopy illuminated Gilmuriel’s blond hair and woodland cammo bandanna. Weighed down under kit, he crouched with the black-haired radio elf beside him.

  “Now listen up, you elves! This is our first real combat mission. We are to be in position on Hill 300 before dawn, dug in, with the rest of the company. Daylight will be the signal for the assault on the enemy. We’re going to hold back the Bug advance from the City of the Trees.”

  The damp vapours of Thyrion Forest wreathed. The slide and lock of M16 bolts sounded muffled under the heat haze, and the omnipresent buzzing of insects.

  “You may think the Forest King has sent us out to hold where no force could hold, to give up our lives in the hope it will buy time for the rest of the free peoples. If so, well and good. The long lives of the elven kind are not lightly given up, except in the cause of a great sacrifice.”

  Dakashnit gave a baritone chuckle. She sprawled back in a bush, massive bow-legs spread, scratching at her crotch through ragged combat trousers. Thyrion’s insect population swarmed over her black hide; the few that managed to bite through it falling off, poisoned.

  “Last stand be buggered!” Camouflage paint irregularly striped the sergeant’s craggy, grinning features. “L.t., if it gets too hot, we’re outta here. We’re professional soldiers—we get paid for running away.”

  Dakashnit slid silently to her feet, weighted down with ammunition belts, grenades, and with a belt-fed General Purpose Machinegun resting idly across one broad shoulder.

  “Recap. Basic marine technique for reporting the sighting of hostiles. If you see one enemy…” Dakashnit raised a sharp-taloned finger. “You hold up one finger. This is two enemy sighted. This is three.”

  The orc held up four taloned fingers.

  “This is many.”

  Silthanis Blackrose solemnly nodded. Sergeant Dakashnit nodded at him. “Corporal, how many enemy is this?”

  The tall, pudgy elf regarded the whole orc-hand held up.

  “Don’t know, Sarge,” he admitted.

  “That,” Dakashnit said, “is too many. Now. Them Bugs is steaming west, towards the centres of highest population density. So let’s go give ’em a hard time!”

  Festooned with packs, water-bottles, spare magazines, entrenching tools, and everything else they assumed useful, the eight tall and delicate-boned elves grinned back at their sergeant. “Yo!”

  “Now you listen up,” Dakashnit repeated, in a tone that for an orc was gentle. “Out here we’re gonna be depending on each other. You screw up, you gonna get somebody else killed. Do you hear me? You watch your buddy’s back. Your buddy watches yours. If anyone goes down, you tell me or the L.t. about it, and you don’t wait. Now I don’t wanna hear any more talk about nobly laying down our lives. We’re marines! What are we gonna do?”

  “Kick ass, Sergeant!” the tiny radio operator, Byrna Silkentress, squeaked.

  Dakashnit beamed. “That’s what I like to hear. Keep your heads down and your eyes open. And just remember—a sucking chest wound is Nature’s way of telling you to stay out of a firefight…”

  Several hours of tactical night movement through another part of the Forest of Thyrion, which resembled exactly every other part of the Forest of Thyrion, brought them to within striking distance of their startline objective. Gilmuriel paused on the edge of a clearing, letting his elvish vision read the map by starlight.

  Aradmel Brightblade began a hymn of praise to the stars, and abruptly clapped her hand over her mouth.

  The gunnery sergeant, night-vision equally good, peered over Gilmuriel’s shoulder. “I don’t reckon we’re headed right, L.t.”

  “We need no maps!” Gilmuriel folded his and returned it to his map-case. “We are elves in the ancient forest of our forefathers. This way.”

  After an hour and a half of increasingly slow movement, Gilmuriel was about to consult the map again and damn elvish instincts when starlight skylined a distinctive ridge and vast goldentrees.

  “Well, whaddya know?” Sergeant Dakashnit breathed. “Okay, you elves, let’s see you dug in quietly.”

  “We are elves,” Gilmuriel objected. “We shall take to the trees.”

  “Man, I don’t care if you take to drink!” the squat orc hissed. “But we is part of a company attack, which is part of a brigade attack, which means we do what we’re told, when we’re told, and we was told to dig in, not roost up in the trees like the fucking birds!”

  Lieutenant Gilmuriel’s eyes glowed golden in the forest dark. “I didn’t ask for an argument, Sergeant. I gave you an order!”

  Dawn brought first the screeching and warbling of ten thousand birds, before light showed in the sky. Night had chilled the earth below the ridge: now it began to smell again of rot and decaying meat. Thyrion’s trees are strong and wide. The eight elves, in buddy-buddy pairs among the branches, ate their waybread, a certain professionalism apparent. Four ate, four others attended to radio, weapons check, and sentry duty.

  A talon tapped a weapon. Gilmuriel automatically glanced towards the sound.

  Sergeant Dakashnit sprawled on an outer branch, belly down, peering through the thinning leaves on the tree’s east side. She tapped her shoulder and then her head. Gilmuriel moved lightly out to crouch beside her.

  Dawn shone into the valley below the ridge.

  “I smell something I don’t like, L.t.”

  Gilmuriel’s gaze swept the ridge on the far side of the valley, seeking smoke, or any sign that the enemy were encamped where orcish Military Intelligence had reported.

  The rising morning vapours drifted unchecked.

  The sun growing warm on his face, Gilmuriel spat. “That hill is as bare as a dwarf’s bottom. There aren’t any Bugs there.”

  Dakashnit wordlessly pointed downwards.

  The expected smoke plumes of the Elf Expeditionary Force lined the ridge they currently occupied. Gilmuriel smelled cooking fires, roasting meat. His keen sight distinguished dug-outs, trenches, camouflage netting—

  “Mother of Forests…” the elf lieutenant breathed. “Shit!”

  Morning sun glinted on the shining, sticky, dripping black carapaces of Bugs.

  In every dug-out, every position…

  “There’s Bugs encamped all right,” Sergeant Dakashnit whispered. “On this hill! We got a whole company round us, ’cept it isn’t ours. L.t., that’s the last time I trust elf instincts over a map.”

  “That’s the last time I trust Military Intelligence!”

  Gilmuriel, heart pounding, watched the scorpion-tailed insectoids moving in dug-outs not twenty feet from the hole of the goldentree. The fronds of the forest plants shrank back from touching the blue-black carapaces and shrivelled when a Bug brushed through them.


  “I want fire support!” Lieutenant Gilmuriel whispered. “I want tanks, mortars, artillery, and fighter-ground attack!”

  “It’s all miles behind us, L.t., at the original map reference. Leastways, I hope. Shit, lookit that!”

  A particularly large specimen of Bug, some eight feet tall, stood just below the tree the squad occupied. Morning sun striped its dripping jaws, powerful exoskeleton, and faceted eyes. At this close a range Gilmuriel could make out the straps of its body harness, and the pouches and packs hanging off it.

  “HHHRRRASSHHHHH!”

  Twenty Bugs poured from the nearest dug-out. Gilmuriel witnessed claws adjusting peculiar long-barreled weapons, fixing straps and clips, and grabbing for equipment. The seven-foot-tall insectoids shambled into the open space under the tree and formed a straggling line, facing the large Bug.

  “HRASSSH-SKKKRRRAGHH!”

  The line instantly straightened. Bugs shuffled on their clawed hind feet. Gilmuriel surveyed the row of carapaced heads below him. Each quartet of eyes faced forward. Each pair of dangling skeletal arms hung down by the slumping thorax.

  The large insectoid hissed, slime dripping from its jaws. Each Bug froze into immobility. It paced up and down the line, snarling sibilantly. It stopped at one Bug to straighten a strap, at another to jingle a loose neck-harness, and at a third—its hiss rising to a furious pitch—to wave skeletal arms and spit slime.

  The Bug dug its claws into its soft underbelly. They emerged holding a weapon. It slammed its exoskeletal heels together, scorpion tail jutting over its head at a strained angle.

  “SKAHHHH—SRISSH-KAAAH!”

  The line of Bugs faced east smartly and jogged off into the insectoid encampment. Gilmuriel and the orc gunnery sergeant gazed down from the fifty-foot drop either side of the branch they stood on.

  “Y’know, L.t.” Dakashnit scratched her head. “That looks familiar, somehow…”

  Gilmuriel shook himself and moved back to the main trunk of the goldentree, beckoning Starlight squad to join him.

  Aradmel Brightblade chuckled under her breath. “Hey, sir—tell the orc to go and crap in the Bugs’ dug-outs, sir—it’s called ‘area denial’!”

  Dakashnit uncharacteristically ignored her. “L.t., they got the ground sewn up down there. We ain’t going anywhere.”

  “Move with the shadowed silence of our ancient race,” Lieutenant Gilmuriel directed. He gestured at the surrounding goldentrees and at their broad branches that stretched away like paths above the forest floor. “We don’t need the earth. We’re elves, Sergeant, and we’re out of here!”

  A long hour later, the elf marines descended from the trees.

  “You’re on point, Sergeant,” Gilmuriel said.

  There was nothing from the orc but a soft “Yo!” and when Gilmuriel looked, she vanished, blending with the rain-forest’s shadows. He led the marine recruits off down a faint track, ears pricked, elf-instincts at full stretch.

  Dakka-dakka-dakka-FOOM!

  Bushes rustled. Gilmuriel heard a succession of thuds. He looked back from where he stood alone on the track. All twelve elf marines had dived into the bushes, only the shaking leaves marking their passage.

  Gilmuriel abruptly ducked his head and slid into cover beside Corporal Silthanis. “Get your elves up, marine! This is the real thing! Our first firefight!”

  “I know that, sir.” The elf looked up at his lieutenant from under a too-large GI helmet with BORN TO SING stencilled on the cover. “Lord Gilmuriel, let’s go back. Call in the helicopter and let’s go home!”

  The bush under which Silthanis Blackrose cowered shook itself and became the orc sergeant Dakashnit, camouflage fatigues stuck at every point with tree-fronds and rushes. Her piglike eyes gleamed under the rim of her kevlar helmet.

  “I’ll take a recon team down there, Lieutenant,” Dakashnit volunteered enthusiastically. “Yo!”

  The sound of real gunfire made Gilmuriel’s stomach flip over.

  “No, orc. We return to the main company, or better still, the City of the Trees. Byrna Silkentress, call the helicopter.”

  With no rustle of leaves, the orc’s GPMG swung up to cover Gilmuriel. “Get down there and fire on the hostiles, L.t. The enemy might miss you. I certainly won’t.”

  Gilmuriel glared with the arrogance of fifty generations of High Elven ancestors. The orc, head sunk down almost between her shoulders, showed a yellow fang.

  “There’s elf recruits down there, L.t. I just saw. Marines don’t leave their own. Even if they are a useless mob of squeakies. What are your guys down there gonna do to the Bugs, Lieutenant—sing at them?”

  An unexpected smile broke on the elf’s fine, aquiline features. He put one finger up, still with harp-string callouses on the pad, and pushed the machinegun barrel to one side. Dakashnit noted that it now pointed directly at Byrna Silkentress. Assuming this to be an accident, she elevated her weapon’s muzzle skyward.

  Takka-Takka-BOOM!

  “If there are other forest elves down in that mess, we must come to their aid, of course. Very well. Gunnery Sergeant, line the recruits up for order of march.”

  “Awrriiiight! Marines Illurian Swiftbow and Aradmel Brightblade, take the back door. If anything comes up behind us, I wanna know about it. Marines Dyraddin Treewaker and Elendylis Goldenfire, you’re on point. The rest of you, five-metre spacing, don’t close up, watch your buddies, watch for silent signals, and keep your fucking golden eyes open for the enemy!”

  Gilmuriel took his place towards the centre of the line of march. A very un-elven sweat trickled down between his angular shoulder-blades, soaking the coarse cloth of his combat fatigues.

  The orc sergeant reappeared by becoming a bush Gilmuriel had not noticed. “L.t., take ’em up to the top of that ridge and we can make a killing zone of this valley.”

  Takka-Takka-FOOM!

  Shredded leaves spattered Gilmuriel’s camouflage-painted features. A chunk of raw wood dripping sap caught him in the stomach and he sat down heavily. Rounds whipped over his head. Rolling and crawling, he made cover behind a moss-shrouded rock.

  FOOOM!

  “Number and distance!” Dakashnit bawled, from behind another rock. “Come on, you fuckwitted shit-for-brains marines! Didn’t I teach you anything? Anyone see where that came from?”

  “Over there,” a shrill elvish voice quavered. Belluriel Starharp.

  “Over where?”

  “Over there!”

  “Over where?—oh, fuck it,” the orc sergeant swore. “This is what your training is devised to avoid, grunts. Give me a fucking clock direction on axis of march!”

  Belluriel Starharp, sounding very bemused, asked, “What is time to one of the elven-kind?”

  Gilmuriel called, “Four o’clock, Sergeant.”

  Back pressed flat to a rock outcrop, shivering, he found himself facing the rest of his squad. The elves lay face-down in a cluster in the leafmould of the forest floor, fingernails digging into the dirt. Only Corporal Silthanis had taken any reasonable cover: the tall, dark-skinned elf was scrunched down behind a fallen tree.

  “First time under fire,” the orc sergeant sighed. “Damn squeakies.”

  BOOM! Dukka-dukka-FOOM!

  The orc broke cover, sprinting across the ground in a low crouch, seizing two elves by their sweat-soaked combat jacket collars and dragging them towards the rocks. “Move your asses or you’re dead meat!”

  Dakashnit threw Byrna Silkentress and the ex-healer-mage Ravenharp the White into the cover of the granite outcrops. She ducked her head and shambled back across the open ground towards the recruits. Gilmuriel saw her jerk, miss a step, then run on at a crouch.

  TAKKA-TAKKA-TAKKA-TAKKA!

  Adrenaline fired him. He drew his pistol, winced at the feel of cold iron, and replaced it in the holster; sprinted across the open ground of the killing zone—muzzle flashes to the right of the line of march: thirty metres—and dragged Aradmel Brightblade to her feet.

  “
Move your buddy into the rocks!”

  The elf stared at him with glazed eyes. Gilmuriel backhanded her across the jaw, then sucked the skinned knuckles of hands not used to violence. Marine Aradmel ran for the rocks on her own. The lieutenant got both hands under Marine Illurian’s armpits and dragged her, combat-booted heels jouncing, back into the granite outcrop.

  DAKKA-FOOOMM!

  “Fuck, man!” The orc sergeant hit the rock beside him, crouching down, her brawny shoulder pushed into the moss-covered granite. Her helmet was missing—out in open ground, Gilmuriel saw, with a smear of silver metal across it—and sweat shone in her cropped, bleached crest. “You did good, L.t.”

  The elf blushed a delicate rose at her praise.

  Busily re-tying the red sweatband around her bloodstained brows, Dakashnit said quietly, “Gonna have to assault through the enemy position. Now, L.t. Call us in some indirect fire support for when we’ve fought through.”

  “Byrna Silkentress!” Gilmuriel signalled to his radio operator, crouched behind a rock five yards away. The tiny black-haired elf shivered and wept, a dark stain spreading at the crotch of her combat trousers. “Marine Byrna! Raise the artillery camp and call in fire support on this position—five minutes, on my mark—now.”

  Trembling so that her fingers could hardly work the radiocom, the elf marine obeyed. Lieutenant Gilmuriel leaned back, tensed his thighs, and lifted himself to peer over the top of the granite outcrop. Only his blond hair, his eyes, and the tops of his pointed ears showed. “Prepare to advance—”

  Ker-FOOM!

  “—what the fuck was that?”

  “Mortar, sounds like. I reckon we’ll re-supply at Firebase Charlie,” Dakashnit speculated. “Remind me to stock you guys up on mortars. Hey, squeaky! Bug-bait! Wake up. That’s the fucking enemy over there. Start firing back!”