Grunts (12 page)

The nameless necromancer says in that unknown tongue, “May not I submit myself as you did?
Exactly
as you did—and do—my Ashnak.”

In rueful acknowledgement, and for the last time, Ashnak fell to his knees and prostrated himself, banging his forehead on the trampled grass. Frost-blighted poppies bloomed scarlet in the corners of his vision.

“Yes, master! At once, master!”

Cowering in a practised fashion, head still bent, Ashnak swivelled his eyes up to watch the Men, Elves, and Dwarves depart. The nameless necromancer bowed gracefully, gesturing for his sister to precede him.

In the nameless necromancer’s eyes Ashnak sees the look of one who is sizing up yellow hair, grey-white skin, and fresh bones for domestic utility.

A last whistle of incoming fire brought him to his belly, rolling into concealment behind a section of broken wall and reaching for his helmet RT. “CEASE FIRE, MARINES! Fall back! Emergency rendezvous at Nin-Edin—
bug out!
NOW!”

“
Acknowledged
—”

“—
I copy—
”

The few voices cease.

Craters steamed in the westering sun. Smoke, cordite, and the sparkling fog of magic began to clear. Vapours drifted
over slumped bodies, charred DPM combats, abandoned heavy weapons, and minced flesh. The dead lay in clumps and rows.

Because it is our flesh, it seems it should be different. Ashnak shook his head at the thought. Knobs of bone, shining joints, slick muscle tissue; all no different from a shambles or abattoir.

Even looking at the nearest area of the battlefield he can see recognisable corpses.
Three companies: practically a battalion
. The orc marines of Nin-Edin…Kusaritku and Azarluhi together, and several with them burned beyond identification. Duranki, Tukurash, Kazadhuron. And, ahead of the rest, as always leading the charge as a commander should, lies Captain Imhullu. The sun shines down on his blind face.

But The Named will not ride at Samhain. Ashnak will bet on it. For whatever her absence is worth.

Not much, as ever, to the dead.

Ashnak stood, the black fire of the necromancer’s rough and ready healing coursing through him. He wiped pus and blood from his remaining burns and straightened, sniffing, pulling deep breaths down into his broad chest. The air stank of shit and blood.

He took out his forage cap and put it on, pulling down the peak. The charred remnants of his uniform pocket yielded, amazingly, fresh pipe-weed. He stuck a cigar in his mouth and strolled across to the wreck of the helicopter.

A heap of masonry some yards from the Huey collapsed and disclosed the two orcs who had gone to cover. The larger, a female with her orange hair tied up in a horse-tail, shook herself. The smaller, who appeared to have been attempting to hide under his own GI helmet, sat up beside her.

“So what
does
an orc call a halfling?” the small orc inquired.

“Lunch.” The large female orc slapped her DPM-camouflaged thigh. “Lunch!”

“Damn right,” Ashnak growled.

The smaller orc sprang to his feet and saluted. “Sir, General Ashnak, sir!”

“At ease, Lieutenant…
Captain
Barashkukor,” Ashnak corrected himself.

Marukka saluted. “The firefight’s over.” The orange-haired orc hefted a shoulder-fired missile-launcher in one
hand. “I guess we won’t be using these anymore, will we, sir? I want my poleaxe back.”

Barashkukor folded his small arms over his flak jacket. “But I like the armour.”

Ashnak bent down, recovering water bottles and knives from corpses, slinging them from his webbing. He left the guns. He grinned toothily and began to laugh, deep belly laughs that shook him until his tilted eyes watered.

“It’s not important.” Ashnak put his horny arms around the two orcs’ shoulders. “Fuck, man, the weapons aren’t important!”

In the Old Forest, now, or in the Man-countryside, there will be orc survivors heading back to Nin-Edin. They’ve been taught how to fall back and regroup. They’ll obey. They’re marines. They’re
grunts
.

Ashnak of the fighting Agaku grinned an orc grin, and stared into the red light of the setting sun.

“So the hostiles have magic. So what!
Think
about what happened down there, marines. We were disciplined. We fought as units. We were tactical. Orcs fought as a
team.
”

“Yeah,” Marukka said slowly. “It wasn’t just warriors charging off into the fight on their own, or killing each other instead of the enemy. Different orc-tribes fought side by side! My squad kicked ass! If we hadn’t had to stop when we did…”

Ashnak looked away from the sunset, black dots swimming in his vision. He rubbed the wet corners of his tilted eyes. Beside him, Barashkukor brought one small booted foot down hard, coming smartly to attention.

“Sir, we are marines, sir!”

“That’s right…”

Ashnak tugged his forage cap down over his hairless skull, between his peaked ears. He shifted the unlit cigar to the corner of his tusked mouth and thumped Barashkukor between his skinny shoulder-blades. The small orc staggered and sat down hard on the turf.

“That’s
right
.” Ashnak grinned ferociously. “There can be more of us. I promise you. There’s always the Last Battle. There’s always
after
the Last Battle…”

“Sir, yes sir!”

The crimson sun shines on the three of them, casting their shadows long across the carnage of the battlefield
around Guthranc. The forces of Light, badly mauled, limp away from the scene of their victory. Below the Tower, the orc marines are already lighting fires and roasting the wounded.

It is Samhain. The Autumn Solstice, the Day of Dead Souls. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance.

The Final Battle of the Army of Light against the Horde of Darkness seethes backwards across the vast plain that chroniclers call the Fields of Destruction.

Squadrons of black-armoured orcs and wolverine-riding trolls, battalions of fire-demons and mutant ogres, companies of evil djinni, cacodaemons and dark elves, armies of witch-queens, and the thirteen necromancers of the Horde of Darkness, raven against the outnumbered Army of Light. Jagged swords, warhammers, and poleaxes bloodily rise and fall. Battalions of mutant monsters lumber into the carnage. Leather-winged beasts swoop down over the pitifully outnumbered forces of Good.

Vast is the Horde. Its sorcery crackles like black lightning around the horizon; it eclipses the sun at noon.

For the third time since midday, the right flank of the Evil Horde began piecemeal to retreat.

A voice yelped, “Hold the line!”

An evil ogre stood with his spiked helm firmly down over his brows, shield up, his warhammer poised over his head in fierce attack-posture.

“I said
hold the line
, soldier!” A small and oddly dressed orc loped down the hill from the ridge. The ogre’s brows contracted in confusion.

“What the
fuck
do you think you’re doing?” the newcomer snarled. He stood hip-high to the evil ogre, who looked down in puzzlement at the mottled green patterns on the orc’s round, visorless helmet, and breeches and padded jerkins. The small orc wore boots.

“I
am
holding the line. I’m facing the enemy,” the unwounded ogre explained. He blinked rapidly. “They won’t get past me! I’m holding the line all right.”

The small orc pulled off his helmet and threw it furiously to the ground. It bounced. The orc’s spindly, peaked ears began to unkink.

“You’re facing the enemy all right—from twenty yards
behind
our lines!” The orc used both hands to wave a snubbed metallic tube at the evil ogre. “Of course they won’t get
past
you, you snivelling excuse for a soldier. They’re way over
there!”

“For the Lady of Light!” a lone heroic voice trumpeted, and a knight in impractically ornamented golden armour charged into a band of Undead, two hundred strong, over
there
. Magic seared the earth. Two hundred Undead fell at the stroke of the enchanted blade. The golden knight charged an even larger band of trolls.

The evil ogre pointed across the Fields of Destruction. “But, but, but—they got magic!”

“I don’t want to hear it! Now
get into the fucking fighting line
. Move it asshole!”

The small orc reached up, grabbed the ogre by the hem of his mail-shirt, and threw him bodily forward. The ogre, terminally startled, lumbered into battle. The small orc recovered his odd helmet, jammed it on his head, and doubled back along the rear of the line-fight towards the next reluctant warrior.

The ogre heard him mutter as he went, “I don’t know what the Dark Horde is
coming
too…”

An Undead barbarian warrior smashed desperately at a dwarf’s Virtue-enchanted helm before speaking to the ogre, now the next to him in the fighting line. “Who was that?
What
was that?”

“I don’t know. I do know one thing.” The ogre hacked tentatively at the Army of Light, still outnumbered, but now indisputably advancing. “I do know that the day is not ours.”

On the far side of the wooded ridge, Ashnak, general officer commanding the orc marines, shoved his urban-camouflaged GI helmet back on his misshapen skull and focussed his binoculars. The eddies and tides of the battle beat against the orc marine company, holding the right of the line.

A halfling Paladin strode up the slope towards him at the head of a band of Men.

“Fear not!” Her smiling confidence echoed across the field. “My virtue is such that I have never yet even had to
draw my sword in anger—see, its peace-threads still bind it into the scabbard! Follow me!”

Farther down the line, an orc marine grinned broadly. Ashnak saw her sight the M16 she carried on the halfling’s elf silver mail-shirt.

SPLOOM!

Ashnak blinked gold and vermillion sparkles of Light magic out of his vision. A crater smoked where the grunt had been. Overhead, an eagle-mage soared away.

The halfling Paladin strode up the hill, oblivious. “Onward!”

“Take her out.” Ashnak glared at the halfling’s ostentatiously empty hands. “Take her
out!”

An orc mortar team ran forward. The pair of grunts squatted, aimed, dropped in the missile—

SPLOOOOM!

Pieces of mortar rained down around Ashnak’s ears. He thoughtfully picked a green, sticky scrap of camouflage material off his boot and eyed the approaching band of Good warriors.

The halfling took off her helm, brown curls ruffling in the breeze, and turned her head to gaze back at her followers as she strode on up the hill. “Follow me, Men! Into the
atta—awk!”

The armoured figure vanished. Ashnak raised his binos. Tracking along a fallen log, he came to where the Paladin sprawled over it, bright leg-harness at an unusual angle.

“Assistance!” the halfling Paladin called. “My leg is broke! Succour me before the forces of Evil attack!”

One orc marine beside Ashnak started to lift his antitank weapon, glanced suspiciously at the sky and the battlefield, and lowered it again. “Er…sir…”

There was a sudden burning sensation on Ashnak’s chest. He glanced down. Fiery worms of blue light threaded through his combat jacket and kevlar armour. He slapped at them, wincing, and saw a company of the Light’s mages moving in towards the foot of the ridge.

“Ashnak,” he radioed. “Marine standard-bearer to me now; out. Company Sergeant Marukka, get your platoon to pull back to me and regroup in the wood; over.”

“Marruka to General Ashnak, orders received, sah! Out.”

Booted orc feet pounded the earth. A tall, skinny orc in green DPM combat trousers and flak jacket loped along the
foot of the wooded ridge towards Ashnak. Over one shoulder he carried a tall pole ornamented with Man-skulls, from which flew the tattered and magic-blackened marine flag.

“Ugarit is here, sir, General, sir!”

“Very good, marine.” Ashnak felt in his combat trouser pockets and extracted a roll of pipe-weed, which he jammed in the corner of his tusked mouth, unlit. “Stick with me, soldier. Right beside me. Or I’ll feed you your own fingers, one by one.”