Grunts

by Mary Gentle

  Ashnak, holding his cocked hat on with one taloned hand, sauntered back across the deck to stand with Magda Brandiman. Nets whisked into the air, opening and falling; a rain of harpoons darted out from every ship of the Graagryk fleet. Ashnak craned his squat neck to look up at the Bug.

  “Son, if you got any complaints, now’s the time to tell me. Once we’ve caught it, we sure as hell ain’t going to throw it back.”

  Hive Commander Kah-Sissh hissed with pleasure, dripping acid slime on the quinquireme’s deck. “It will suffice.”

  Madga Brandiman leaned on the rail and watched a vast golden eye close. “I think we can probably consider the peace treaty ratified now, Hive Commander. Don’t you?”

  Orc marines cheered. Water flashed, dropping in diamonds from the raised orcs of the quinquireme. Vast scaly tentacles broke above the waves, and subsided. The less speedy ships of the Graagryk Navy closed in, adding their own magic-assisted stun harpoons to the melee.

  Major-General Barashkukor looked thoughtfully up at his Supreme Commander.

  “Sir, what do you think, sir? Could we have a campaign medal struck for the Great Kraken Hunt, sir? Could we, sir? Please, sir?—OW!”

  Half an hour later, Admiral of the Fleet Ashnak, upon returning to his cabin, found the door ajar. Desert Eagle pistol in hand, he kicked the cabin door open.

  A male halfling, black hair showing a plentiful crop of grey, sat cross-legged on the admiral’s chair behind the desk. His black doublet and breeches and yellow ruff showed some travel stains. A rapier and dagger were visible at his waist, and there was an additional bulge under one armpit.

  “Stepfather,” Will Brandiman greeted Ashnak.

  The big orc slammed the cabin door shut. With a nasty gleam in his eye, he advanced on the halfling.

  “Ned knows I’m here,” Will said. “I don’t know where Ned is, exactly. Something to do with Archipelago silk, I believe. Anyway, he’ll be only too pleased to tell Mother that I didn’t accidentally fall off a galley, if I don’t show up after today.”

  Ashnak crossed the cabin in a stride, opened the drinks cabinet, and downed half a bottle of Spice Isles brandy without blanching. He wiped his mouth on the gold-embroidered sleeve of his naval jacket. “Whaddya want?”

  “Is that any way to speak to your stepson?” Will Brandiman enquired. “You should be pleased that I’m taking an interest in your work, Father.”

  “Don’t,” Ashnak said, “push your luck.”

  Will Brandiman smiled a slick smile and slipped down from the chair. He rested his shoulder against the edge of the admiral’s desk.

  “Nice setup for taking the Kraken,” Will approved. “Got the whole Visible College running ’round supplying you, I see. Funny how anxious they are now to work for the Great Peacemaker Ashnak, isn’t it? Be a shame if any evidence came to light that would start the Red Gullies war crime scandal up again, what with the Dark Lord’s coronation as Ruler of the World coming up and all.”

  The orc shoved his Desert Eagle automatic pistol back in its holster. “You’re bluffing.”

  “Probably,” Will Brandiman agreed. “But I’m a generous halfling. I’m not asking for favours. Not really.”

  “Well?”

  “Funnily enough, Stepfather,” the stowaway halfling said, “there is something you can do for me…”

  Ashnak stripped off his jacket, kicked off his seaboots, and thudded down into the admiral’s carved chair. His bright eyes fixed on the halfling with unwavering bale.

  “What is it this time? Grand larceny? You’re stealing Ferenzia because it’s not nailed down? Well, I got news for you, boy. This time the answer’s ‘no’!” The Great Peacemaker Ashnak showed his tusks in satisfaction. “Frankly, son, I wouldn’t piss on you if your hair was on fire. Now, out!”

  Overhead fire had stripped the glass from the paned roof of the great Assembly Hall of Ferenzia. Warm air and the smell of morning drifted in. Repair-magiks slowly knitted silicon together. Orc marines with buckets and mops, under the direction of a sergeant-major, cleared the rubbish away, whitewashed the more immovable heaps of masonry, and set out officially lettered marine signs reading, “KEEP OFF THE RUBBLE.”

  “He’s through here, sir.” Major-General Barashkukor pointed.

  Orc marines in ceremonial studded leather armour stood around the Assembly Hall’s panelled walls. They sloped arms with poleaxes as Supreme Commander Ashnak entered.

  “Nice touch,” Ashnak approved.

  “Thank you, sir!” Barashkukor saluted. “Traditional ceremonial weapon of the orc, the poleaxe. The M203 grenade-launcher attachments were my idea too, sir.”

  Ashnak strode across the Hall to where the High King Kelyos Magorian slumped in a carved chair at a table.

  “You’re about to miss the first convocation of the World Parliament, Your Majesty,” Ashnak rumbled.

  Kelyos Magorian raised his balding head. He screwed a monocle into his eye, staring up at the two orcs—the smaller one in a tailored and bemedalled brown tunic, with more gold braid on his peaked cap than it could fairly carry, and the large one in urbans, web-belt sagging under the weight of pistols, grenades, spare magazines, and formal hand-axe.

  “Go away,” the High King said. “Damned greenies! Spoil the game. Two sugars!”

  His halfling servant filled a steaming porcelain bowl from a silver trolley beside the oak table, placing it by Magorian on the green cloth covering. The elderly Man muttered, moving the bowl away from copses of dyed-green lichen and contour-carved miniature hills.

  “Ha!” Magorian spilled dice from his blue-veined fist and peered at them through his monocle. “The Horde routs! The Light wins, dammit.”

  Ashnak reached across to the halfling servant’s trolley and grabbed a fistful of biscuits. Chewing, he lowered his tusked head and studied the table. The myriad model warriors were set out in much the same array as the previous Hallows Eve’s Last Battle.

  “Parliament,” he reminded Magorian.

  “Think I’m going to watch that damned female now She’s been crowned Ruler of the World? Damned right I’m not. They don’t need me now. Going to retire and do what I enjoy. Fight these battles the way they should have gone.” The High King Magorian blinked fiercely at the orc. “The Light wins. Always. I’ve proved it!”

  Ashnak snapped his fingers. A very large orc corporal trotted up, a voluminous blue-velvet-and-ermine robe clutched in her arms. Her squad’s combat boots pounded the parquet floor as they approached at the double.

  “By the numbers,” Ashnak ordered, “High King Magorian, for the parliamentary session: dress. Regal crown of Ferenzia: on. Squaaad…wait for it, wait for it…to the Opticon, High King Magorian, marine escort: march!”

  Ashnak and Barashkukor strolled out of the Assembly Hall in the wake of the grunts and a protesting High King.

  “That the last one, Major-General?”

  “Sir, yes sir! We’ve rounded them all up. We have the full legal complement for the new World Parliament, sir.”

  Bells battered the bright summer air, ringing out from the only cathedral left standing in Ferenzia after the Bug invasion. Walls demolished, suburbs flattened, the Lake Fleet burned at the quayside; Ferenzia was recovered just enough to welcome delegates from all corners of the civilised land.

  Ashnak loped to his jeep, Barashkukor at his heels, and hauled himself into the vehicle. He demanded, “Where’s Magda?”

  The skeletal orc driver in the black beret and assault vest surveyed Ashnak though dark glasses. “The colonel-duchess said something about the press, sir, and getting the WFTV cameras into the Opticon.”

  CIA Chief Lugashaldim slammed the vehicle into gear and they roared off through the Ferenzi streets, engine noise racketing between the high buildings, crowds hurling themselves out of the jeep’s path.

  “I understand Magda Brandiman Enterprizes (Graagryk) Limited has the monopoly on Parliamentary broadcast pictures, sir. Three silver shillings colour, two copper groats
black and white.”

  Ashnak rested his chin on his fist. “That’s my Magda…”

  The jeep hurtled through war-torn Ferenzia, held up in places by the various ongoing victory parades—the Sixth Elf Hussars, the Dwarf Sappers and Miners Brigade, the Eagles (Ferenzia Eyrie, 1st Tactical Wing)—until at last it pulled up outside a domed masonry building with two wings.

  “Opticon surrounded by honour guard, as you ordered, sir.” Major-General Barashkukor bustled Magorian towards the arched entrance. Ashnak strolled after, taking the salute from the cordon of heavily armed and flak-jacketed orc marines.

  The shelling and street-fighting had by some fluke passed the interior of the Opticon by, doing no more than knock a level of dust from its endless shelves of books. Above the books, on the unshelved wall-space, great fresco maps gleamed intact, picturing in blue and gold and ochre paint the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, and the Wild Lands to the East, and the Land beyond the Western Oceans.

  Sunlight filtered down through the circular window in the top of the central dome.

  One beam of light illuminated the Throne of the World.

  Plush benches had been set up in the gallery space. Ashnak pointed at the front row of benches to the right of the Throne, under the star-painted ceiling of the West Wing.

  “That’ll do for His Lordship.”

  Barashkukor hustled the elderly hero forward.

  A library-hush muted the noise of the Light delegates—Men, dwarves, elves, and halflings—shuffling onto their benches. Ashnak caught the eye of one elf, the marks of age shocking on his face, seated between the Mayor of Sarderis and a Snake Priest of Shazmanar. “Inquisitor Elinturanbar.”

  “You do not belong on this side!” the long-dying elf hissed. “Come not near! We shall bring justice down on you one day soon.”

  The races of Darkness—trolls, witches, necromancers, Undead, kobolds, and the rest—scrambled for places on the benches on the left-hand side. Ashnak’s hairy nostrils flared. At the centre of the front bench a figure slouched, its leather robe a patchwork of hands and limbs, eyes and lips, all tanned and sewn together with silver wire.

  “Lord Necromancer,” Ashnak acknowledged, out of sheer habit.

  Dirt and dried blood stiffened the nameless necromancer’s skin robe. What could be seen of his tusked face under the cowl had a greenish, decaying cast. He creaked.

  “Ssscum!” the nameless hissed. “Traitor to thish side of the House. Do you think you can betray the Dark by letting the Bug-filth live and not yourself live to bitterly regret your mercy?”

  “Ain’t you pissed you,” Ashnak grinned. “Nothing to do with missing the victory celebrations due to being dead, of course.”

  “Bah!”

  Light gleamed down from the Opticon’s dome onto the first World Parliament. The Dark delegates crowded each other unmercifully—whistling, throwing dung, hauling the books down from the shelves behind them, and reading the more dubious passages aloud.

  “Call them to order!” Oderic, High Wizard of Ferenzia, demanded as Ashnak approached him.

  Ashnak surveyed his grunts, who were mostly leaning up against the panelled seats and bumming pipe-weed from the delegates, and the Order of White Mages, who strode about in their Sun-ornamented surcoats attempting to reduce the chaos.

  “No point,” Ashnak rumbled. “They’ll quieten down soon enough when—yo! There!”

  Outside, a sparkling blue sky shone over the Dread Lord of Dead Aeons as She descended from Her bone palanquin, surrounded by cheering Ferenzi and the Horde of Darkness.

  The Dark Lord entered the vast, book-dusty hall of the Opticon. Black dire-wolf furs swathed Her head to foot. Under the cloak a tight-fitting black silk robe rippled, slashed to the thigh, and belted with a jeweled waistband. Intricate steel-and-silver jewelry clasped Her arms and Her ankles. Her ash-blonde hair gleamed, Her head uncovered and unadorned.

  Cheering crowds pressed in close behind Major-General Barashkukor’s cordon of orc marine guards at the double doors, waving flags and chanting:

  “DARK LORD! DARK LORD! DARK LORD!”

  Ashnak hitched up his web-belt and combat trousers and ambled across the floor of the Opticon to the Dark Lord. “Your Parliament assembled, Ma’am, for the first free, frank, and democratic exchange of views between Your loyal government and Your loyal opposition. As soon as they can make their minds up which is which.”

  The Dark Lord surveyed the benches to left and right of the Throne, Her delicate profile turned to Ashnak. “Shall I preside well, do you think, little orc? This power has been so long in the achieving, I think I have forgotten what it was I would do with it.”

  “Buck up, Ma’am!” Ashnak removed his forage cap, coming solidly to attention. “You just do what every other Ruler of the World’s done and You’ll be all right—reward a few, hang a few, and tax everything that moves.”

  She laughed, a sound of ancient amusement. “You advise Me well, orc. Perhaps I shall make you My chancellor.” Ashnak grunted noncommittally.

  “Or perhaps I shall not…There is something I wish to have done, after this. It is a proud and lonely thing to be Ruler of the World. Therefore I shall not sit upon My throne alone. I shall take a companion, a consort. Mine will be thought a strange choice, but I have seen, and in seeing desired, and desiring, must have. Shall it be thought strange to raise a commoner, and one not of My own race? Then so be it. And, orc Ashnak—you know the one.”

  “Erm.” Ashnak sweated in the sunlight filtering down from the Opticon’s central dome. “Really, Ma’am?”

  The Dark Lord frowned. “Don’t be coy.”

  “I suppose,” Ashnak grated, salt sweat trickling into his eyes, “I could hazard a guess, and while I’m sensible of the honour, Dread Lord, I really don’t think I—”

  The Dark Lord spoke over his mumbling.

  “We have met few enough times, of course, but often enough to spark My desire. And she is not, after all, a complete commoner.”

  “I—she?” Ashnak barked.

  The Dark Lord turned Her ancient, humanly beautiful face towards the orc as She paced towards the Throne. “Why yes. Ever since the night she came to My tent, I have known that I must have Magdelene, Duchess of Graaagryk. My beautiful Magda! Be so good as to inform her that we will wed, after I have settled affairs in Ferenzia and quietened the south. You, Ashnak, may be best orc and give the bride away.”

  Ashnak growled. “She’s married.”

  “She’s divorced. I have said so: so let it be. We shall,” the Dark Lord added, “have to think of a suitable role for you also in this new world, little orc. Some backwater province that needs a junior governor. Of course, the orc marines will be disbanded…”

  “Ma’am!” Ashnak saluted, his gaze sliding across the seats and registering, in the upper gallery, the Duchess of Graagryk’s cameras.

  To the ringing of the White Mages’ silver trumpets and the fluttering wings of a thousand released black doves, the Lord of Darkness advanced up the hall of the Opticon and stood before the Throne of the World.

  The marble floor tiles ceased under the central dome. Four Men of the Order of White mages knelt there, where, surrounded by its marble dais, a fang of ancient continental bedrock jutted up. Living rock—around which first the Opticon and later Ferenzia itself had been built. The black stone breathed antiquity.

  Hands older than the city of Ferenzia had carved this basalt outcrop into a throne. Ancient winged and scaled beasts ornamented each of its corners as supporters. The seat shone with intricately chiselled flowers, fruits, vines, and corn-ears. The massive back of the throne rose up to a point, every inch carved with wings, eyes, globes, and solar discs.

  The Dark Lord lifted Her arms, letting Her wolf-fur cloak fall. She stood, slender and tall, in Her clinging robe of ebony silk, Her jeweled belt flashing in the sunlit, dusty air. As She seated Herself, lounging back on the piled velvet cushions, Ashnak picked up Her robe and took his station to the left of the T
hrone of the World. High Wizard Oderic reluctantly stood to Her right, in his arms an onyx-and-diamond crown.

  “Behold,” Oderic of Ferenzia cried, “the first democratic Parliament of the ruler of the World.”

  “No, sssister!” a voice lisped from the front row of the Dark delegates.

  The nameless necromancer hunched and slumped his way to his feet and onto the floor before the Throne. Ashnak rubbed his mouth, tasting the sudden metallic flavour of wizardry.

  “We have both of ush been betrayed, sister! Now—avenge us!”

  Orc marine squad leaders watched Ashnak for orders. He held up a restraining hand, his eyes on the Throne.

  The Dark Lord lounged against one of the Throne’s carved arms, Her black robe falling back from her calf, knee, and thigh. Her skin glowed sepia-pale in the dusty light. Her orange eyes flared.

  “What, little Man? Do you challenge Me?”

  “Sssister mine!” the nameless necromancer appealed. “I know your schpirit, your ssoul, still lives within that body. Wake, wake, and take your body back!”

  The Dark Lord’s chin dipped towards her silk-clad breast. She looked up from under Her brows at the suddenly silenced Parliament.

  She spoke.

  “You who were My greatest enemy, you who were called The Named—look now and see what I have made of you. I have kept your spirit alive within Me until now, so that you may see Evil ruling from the Throne of the World.”

  “Madam President!” A black-bearded dwarf raised his hand from the Light’s back benches. Ashnak recognized Prosecuting Counsel Zhazba-darabat. “You mean, ‘Evil presiding over this democratically elected assembly.’”

  “Of course,” the Dark Lord purred. “Now. You who were called The Named, behold your shame, and your brother’s extinction for daring to challenge Me!”

  The Dark Lord’s featureless orange eyes dimmed. Her cyan-and-sepia-shadowed face contorted. Ashnak, meeting her gaze, saw green Man-eyes suddenly stare out wildly at the crowd.