Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  “No such thing!” The dwarf waved his arms, appealing to the bench. “It couldn’t testify, even if it could testify!”

  Magorian scrubbed shaking fingers through his thinning hair. “What was that again?”

  “I said—”

  Uproar broke out, each citizen of Ferenzia trying to out-shout the orc marine sitting nearest him on the merits of a tank’s testimony. In vain the Order of White Mages used enhanced spells to bolster their calls for silence.

  “Silence in court!” the High King Magorian’s voice cracked. “Silence in court!”

  Ashnak raised his head. “I think I can help you there.” He snapped his fingers.

  FOOOOOOOOOMMMM!

  The T54’s 115mm cannon fired. The window glass imploded. A substantial section of the vaulted ceiling fell in, scattering the gallery and the floor of the court with wreckage. For a moment there was silence broken only by the moans of Men, elves, dwarves, and halflings bleeding from the ears.

  Ashnak reached up and pulled a large chunk of cotton wadding from his right ear and another one from his left ear. “That brought the house down.”

  “The smoke cleared to show High King Magorian waving his gavel in a dazed manner as he sank out of sight. “I said silence in court, dammit…”

  Barashkukor pulled several yards of cotton wadding from his ears. The other orc marines followed suit. Barashkukor brushed debris from his horsehair wig. “M’lud, I rest my case.”

  A small voice quavered from under the judge’s bench. “The jury may retire…”

  Seven Men, two halflings, a dwarf, an elf, and a half-elf left their seats at a run and pelted out of the court, knocking aside the stunned mages. The Captain of the Order of White Mages signalled her Men to sit down on the jurors’ vacated chairs, and tend to their wounded.

  Dakka-dakka-dakka!

  “Arrrgh!” The body of a brawling Ferenzi Man hit the floor, blown in through the windows from the fight in the square.

  “On second thought…” The High King Magorian scrambled into view behind the judge’s bench. “General Ashnak, I hereby pronounce you as thoroughly innocent as it’s possible to be and completely exonerated of every accusation ever brought against you. Now, or in the future. Will that do?” the old Man added, stumbling down from the bench on the arm of his elvish squire.

  “That,” Ashnak said over the cheers, yowls, and automatic rifle fire of the orc marines, “will do just fine, Your Honour.”

  In the square outside, over the noise of brawling, Ashnak clearly heard the gallows-builder’s yell. “What’s that you say, gentlesirs? A verdict of ‘innocent’?”

  There was a pause.

  “Oh, fuck!”

  “ASH-NAK! ASH-NAK! ASH-NAK!”

  “We did it!” Magda exclaimed, hurtling down from the gallery and into Ashnak’s embrace. He kissed the female halfling with enthusiasm.

  “We did, sir, didn’t we?” Barashkukor, dazed and starry-eyed, beamed at his general. “I told you you could rely on me, sir!”

  The Ferenzi citizens bolted for the exit, and the Order of White Mages did not even look up from their commandeered jury seats. A crowd of cheering orc marines lifted Ashnak and bore their commander on their shoulders out of the courtroom.

  “Congratulations, sir!” Marine Commissar Razitshakra shook Barashkukor firmly by the hand. The small orc’s wig fell off. “Politically correct in every respect.”

  Barashkukor weaved out of the courtroom between Razitshakra and Lieutenant Chahkamnit.

  The small orc grunt in the gallery front row blinked his way back to consciousness. Staggering to his feet, he made for the door in the wake of the cheering marines. A metallic object caught his foot.

  The orc bent down, picked it up, and looked at it thoughtfully. The cable trailed behind him as he stepped into the corridor, closing the doors behind him, and squeezed the device’s handle twice.

  BOOOOOMMM!

  “Arrrrrgghhhhh!”

  Ashnak glanced back down the corridor at the brick dust drifting out of the courtroom. He raised his jutting eyebrows, then shook his head.

  “Yo!” The hefty orc grunts carried Ashnak shoulder-high out into the square, where the midday sun shone on Ferenzi citizens still busy brawling. Off-duty orc marines stood and watched as if they couldn’t think what all the fuss might be about.

  “Hold!”

  Ashnak looked over the head of the crowd towards the voice. He slapped the shoulders of the marines carrying him and slid down to the cobbles, taking the clean urban combat jacket Barashkukor was holding out and putting it on.

  “Honour guard, tenHUT!” he rasped. The orc grunts around Ashnak, Magda, and Barashkukor trained their M16s on the crowd, and on the High Wizard Oderic, who forced his way through at the head of a column of mages and fighters.

  “Reconvene the court,” Oderic shouted to Magorian.

  The High King blinked at the sunlight, squinting in the direction of his High Wizard. “You’ve got to be joking!”

  “I have a new witness.”

  Ashnak looked at Magda, who shrugged, and at Barashkukor, who paled. The White Mages behind Oderic parted their ranks.

  A shambling, hunched figure in patchwork leather robes limped forward. The temperature in the sunlit square dropped twenty degrees. The sweet scent of decay made Ashnak’s nostrils twitch.

  The nameless necromancer put his hood back from his deformed face.

  “I am hish witnesssh! I can vouch for your criminal actions at the halfling bombing, ‘General’ Ashnak.” The nameless smiled, yellowing tusks drawing his mouth out of shape, and wiped away a string of drool. “You and your accomplices. I have sheen it all. I wasss there!”

  Ashnak put his rock-sized fists on his hips and glared under lowered brows at the nameless. His hand inched towards the gun in the back of his belt. “That’s contempt…”

  “Sir! I say, sir!” The lanky Lieutenant Chahkamnit interrupted, marine radio in hand. “I rather think you ought to hear this, don’t you know?”

  Ashnak listened.

  He held the radio out so that Magorian, Oderic, and the nameless necromancer could hear the frantic broadcast:

  “—Bugs are past the southeastern suburbs of the city! Repeat, our security is compromised, we have hostiles in Ferenzia itself; the Bugs are past the southeastern suburbs of the city! All units alert!”

  “Lady of Light!” Oderic suddenly leaned on his staff, his face seeming that of a Man decades years older than his one hundred and twenty years. “How could they come on us so unprepared?”

  The nameless necromancer rounded on Lieutenant Chahkamnit. “Mobilise the marines!” he ordered.

  The black orc scratched uncomfortably at one peaked ear. “Awfully sorry, sir. I really don’t think I can do that.”

  “What?”

  The nameless necromancer elbowed past the stunned High Wizard Oderic. Ice formed on the cobbles of the sunlit square. The brawling ceased in mid-blow. The nameless ignored Chahkamnit and loomed over Barashkukor, yellow bile dripping from his fangs.

  “Major, you will mobilissse the orcses!”

  The orc’s cyborg-eye glowed ruby. “With respect—I don’t take my orders from a civilian.”

  The edges of the sky above Ferenzia’s rooftops darkened. The midday sun blurred. The head of the nameless necromancer swivelled, as he glared round at the mob of three hundred orc officers, sergeants, and grunts.

  “Is thissh a time to mutiny, with the fate of the world at stake?”

  Ashnak finished buttoning his urban combat jacket and tucked it into his trousers. Orc marines fitted him with combat boots, webbing, and pistol holster while he stood bow-legged in the square outside Ferenzia’s Hall of Justice. His hairy nostrils widened, sensing the acrid stink of inhuman invaders.

  “‘Snot our city,” an orc grunt remarked.

  An orc captain in the crowd’s front rank, General Purpose Machinegun resting over her shoulder, shouted, “This isn’t a mutiny! We’re awaitin
g orders from our commander.”

  The High Wizard Oderic of Ferenzia stared at Ashnak. The white mage swore. He threw his staff down on the sorcerously iced cobbles. The white oak, made brittle, snapped into four pieces.

  “That’s politically correct,” Commissar Razitshakra confirmed. “We’re waiting for orders from Joint Chief of Staff Ashnak. Or we marines don’t do anything—except pull out of Ferenzia.”

  10

  A great stretch of land lies between Ferenzia and the northeastern hills. The colour of the plain changes as if a great shadow is passing across the sun.

  The sun shines unhindered.

  The blackness on the face of the earth crawled, crept, advancing forward with slow irresistibility: exoskeletoned Bugs marching in their hundreds and their thousands. The crackle of living-metal weaponry hissed through the air.

  Unbroken, the lines of Bug soldiers pressed on towards the high ground. Orc vehicles and marines were visible in clumps, clusters, and retreating bands. Mortar fire covered their retreat. A line of helicopter gunships strafed the Bugs and wheeled away, firepower lost in the morass of chitinous bodies.

  Unit by unit, company by company, horde by horde, the approaching thousands of Bugs flowed towards the orc marine battalion in the hills. Weapons splashed fire against the granite ridges. Smoke rose up against the sun.

  “Sir, look at the range on those things!” Major Barashkukor gaped at the figures the head-up display on his cyborg-eye gave him. “We don’t have the firepower to deal with that!”

  “There’s a battalion of us, and fifteen thousand of them. Where’s the problem?”

  Ashnak drew on his cigar and exhaled a plume of foul-smelling smoke in the direction of the Lord of Night and Silence.

  “Thinking of going into battle, Dread Lord?”

  Rank upon rank of great orcs, common orcs, wolf-riders, kobolds, hobgoblins, dark elves, and lich riders lined the ridge, their ragged banners darkening the sky. Before the Horde of Darkness, a great palanquin of bone—the yellowed ribcage of some Dragon of the elder world—was supported on the shoulders of six Gnarly Trolls. Black pennants and horse skulls dangled from its corner posts.

  The Dark Lord sat on Her throne in the palanquin. Her ash-blonde hair shadowed copper and cyan in the sunlight. She wore black armour, polished as ebony, fluted and pierced and decorated.

  “They do not announce the formal election to the Throne of the World until tomorrow.” She leaned Her chin upon Her hand, Her armoured elbow denting the skull of one of the troll palanquin-bearers. “Having played the game thus far, I do not wish to lose it.”

  Ashnak shoved his steel helmet up from his brows. “Now that’s what I want to talk to You about, Ma’am.”

  A detachment of elf hussars rode up, sabres jingling, and broke formation to disclose High King Magorian, Oderic, and the White Mages. A band of Knights Flagellant rode up in their wake, but without Amarynth Firehand.

  “Just taking up a stronger position.” Oderic puffed on his pipe, and with the stem indicated the pass through the northeastern hills to the country beyond. “Going that way…”

  The Dark Lord abruptly signalled to Her trolls. They set the bone palanquin down. She leaped lithely to Her feet with the clatter of full plate harness. Her black steel-gauntleted hand fell on Ashnak’s shoulder. He bit back a groan, legs bowing even more than was natural.

  “Let Us talk,” the Dark Lord said, and Her spell of inaudibility flickered around them, stinging Ashnak’s dogtag into searing pain. “You have a request, little orc, do you not? Amuse Me by telling Me what it is.”

  “Quite simple, Ma’am.” Ashnak assumed a bluff, military manner. “Don’t want other units getting in the way of my marines. Bugs will make cat’s meat of us if that happens. You’d better put me in charge of the lot—before I have to pull my forces out. Give me the rank of Supreme Commander, Ma’am.”

  “Supreme Commander of the Horde,” She mused. “I have not appointed one of those in aeons.”

  Ashnak coughed. “Not exactly, Ma’am. I mean Supreme Commander of the Dark and Light forces.”

  The Dark Lord laughed, a sound like subterranean bells. The nullity talisman around Ashnak’s neck broke into powder under the weight of the one magic of the Lord of Darkness.

  “‘There are at least five other major spearheads of Bug attack, Ma’am, other than this one on Ferenzia. You need the orc marines. Unless you’re planning to just wipe out all the Bugs like that.” Ashnak snapped his talons.

  “The magic of obliteration is not a subtle magic. Yes, little orc, I could. But if I wipe these Bugs from the face of the earth, I shall in turn destroy the city they are in, and the land upon which they walk, so great is my power. No, my Ashnak. You shall have to face them in battle.”

  She broke the spell of inaudibility and turned back to Her palanquin.

  “White Mage!” She cried. “I and My Horde shall accompany you back into the hills. My orc, in whom I am well pleased, is appointed over you all, to the command of this battle. Your people shall obey him as they would Me, or else suffer the same penalties.”

  “But, but,” Oderic stuttered. “But—”

  The vanguard of the Evil Horde began to march on into the hills, drums thumping and horns blaring, with the Lord of Dead Aeons in the bone palanquin.

  “She didn’t like that, Supreme Commander,” Barashkukor said.

  “I did.” Ashnak shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. He grinned. “Awriiiiight! Let’s get this show on the road—officer meeting, my tent, now!”

  Dust rose up from the plain north of Ferenzia. Weapons and carapaces glinted through the murk. Dust rose up from the low ridges, canyons, gullies, and cliffs of the hills. Below every ridge, concealed in every hollow, orcs and other marines in combat drab crouched with their weapons. Infantry battalions, field artillery groups, land-mine companies; signals, engineers, anti-aircraft, antitank and missile batteries; and behind them the auxiliary services, motor transport, fuel supply, repair workshops, bakery and butchery…

  Cobra gunships and Hueys crisscrossed the midday skies above Ferenzia, flying nose-down over peaked roofs and spires. Radio traffic filled the air. Surface-to-air missiles roared into the sky.

  “We have a go situation!” Sergeant John H. Stryker of the U.S. Marine Corps put the jeep into a skidding handbrake turn and brought it around in front of Ashnak’s field command tent, five miles to the north of the city. “Sir, everyone and everything is where it ought to be, sir—on time, sir!”

  “Fuck me,” Ashnak said as he leaped down from the vehicle. “Well done, Sergeant. Maybe you Otherworld marines do have your uses.”

  Followed by Barashkukor, the great orc strode into the command tent.

  “I want recce reports on the Bugs’ firepower and tactics. Then I want a confirmation of the assault plan; and rehearsals, if performed. Then I’ll give orders. Any questions?”

  Lieutenant Chahkamnit, Commissar Razitshakra, Biotech-Captain Ugarit, Sergeant Dakashnit, Lieutenant Lugashaldim, and the higher-ranking general staff, seated on rickety chairs around comlinks and map-tables, shook their tusked heads. The canvas-filtered sunlight gleamed on one marine, not an orc, tall and skinny, in a uniform decorated with beads, scarves, and silver trinkets.

  “I’ve got that report on what it is we’re facing here, sir.” The hard-eyed elf Lieutenant Gilmuriel lounged to his feet. He snapped slender fingers. Ugarit cranked the handle on a kinematographic machine. A jerky moving image flashed on the pull-down screen.

  “I don’t know what the Bugs call ’em,” Gilmuriel drawled, “sir. We call this one a ‘blaster.’”

  A bolt of charged particles seethes through the air of Thyrion, exploding at the point of impact, taking out three elf marines. Another elf seems caught in a beam of wavering air. Her body explodes in a rain of blood.

  “That’s a ‘disruptor,’” Gilmuriel continued. “They use that one a lot. That thing there—”

  A black cylinder of metal
hovers in the air, above the ruins of the City of the Trees.

  “—we call that a ‘hunter’ missile. It has the instincts of an elf, to track and follow its quarry. Explosion has a two-hundred-metre radius. Couldn’t get footage of the ‘homing’ grenades they use, sir. This…”

  The elf glared at Ugarit. The skinny orc clicked the kinematographic machine rapidly, removed a slide, and replaced it the other way up.

  A wavering bolt of energy tracks across an open jungle clearing, impacts on an armoured vehicle, explodes, and knocks the APC forty feet into the air.

  “‘Plasma gun.’” The elf leaned one foot up on a chair, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He wore a brightly patterned scarf as a headband, and his pointed ears were pierced with silver studs. “If they can see us, man, they can hit us! There are heavy weapons versions of that. And a contra-gravity harness, sir, I’m certain.”

  Ashnak scowled. “What’s their armoured capability? What about airpower?”

  The hefty black orc sergeant beside Gilmuriel stirred.

  “Ain’t seen nothing else but infantry, sir,” Dakashnit said. “Their flight capability is jump-packs. No troop transporters. No ground vehicles, less’n they got some of ours. Hell, Commander, they don’t need ’em.”

  “Well, we’ve had about all the time for rehearsals we’re going to get—” Ashnak swung round.

  Dust-covered and sweating, the nameless necromancer stumbled into the tent and shambled into the circle of ores. “Talking? You orcs should be out there fighting! You shall pay for thish disobediensche.”

  Ashnak took two swift paces forward and loomed over the necromancer. “Sit. Down.”

  The nameless found himself sitting in one of the folding chairs.

  “About bleeding time, too,” Ashnak growled. “My troops have moved out of the assembly areas to the forming-up points and startline. You, Lord Necromancer, can get the Light’s troops off their asses! I’m committing the Light to the attack in Ferenzia itself. Hold ’em as long as you can, then pull back.”

  The necromancer glared. “That is a task for marines!”