Grunts (13 page)

The skinny orc saluted three or four times in rapid, terrified succession. “Yessir! I will, sir! Count on me, sir!”

“
Company Sergeant Marukka to General Ashnak, we’re pulling back and letting the witch regiment take the brunt, sir. We are rejoining the main company on the ridge. Out
.”

Orcs pounded back up the hill in flawless, disciplined order, falling into cover in the wood. Ashnak glimpsed urban camouflage and a horse-tail plume of orange hair. “I see you, Sergeant. Hold you position. Out.”

He hitched up his DPM combat trousers, sweating in the autumn chill, and pounded up the hill, Ugarit at his heels. Blood and flesh—none of it orcish—crusted his combat boots and reddened the black-and-grey fabric of his trousers to his bowed knees. Pistol and sheathed sword jolted, hanging heavy from his web-belt. He snatched air into his heaving lungs and narrowed his beetle-browed eyes.

“Sir, General Ashnak, sir!” A small orc pushed through the undergrowth, tugged his flak jacket straight, and snapped a smart salute, panting. “I keep putting the Horde back in the line, sir, but they won’t stay there.”

“Send another runner to Horde Command, Captain Barashkukor. We need Dark mages on this flank. We must have sorcerous support!”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Dumb motherfuckers!” Ashnak snarled. “If we don’t get some magical firepower over here, this flank will
never
hold.”

The lightning-strikes of Light’s magical discharges coloured the air aquamarine, vermillion, and gold. Sorcery went up in black plumes against the blue noonday sky. The shouting, spellcasting, and the clash of weapons must have echoed as far as the coast and Herethlion’s deserted streets. Ashnak spat, and thumbed his radio’s helmet-stud.

“Marines are never defeated!” he snarled.

A tinny, loud response echoed through from the four hundred orc grunts in the wood:

“
SIR, NO SIR!
”

“Barashkukor, did you pass my message on to the other Horde Commanders?”

“Sir, I did.
No one
knows where the nameless necromancer is. Even the Dark Lord doesn’t know, and He isn’t too pleased about that, sir.”

The big orc shook his tusked head cynically. “So our nameless commander’s gone missing. What a surprise, Captain. Where is the orc marines’ fearless patron? Where, indeed.”

“His sister The Named hasn’t been seen fighting for the Light, though, sir.”

“I suppose we should be thankful for that. Too much damn magic here as it is.”

In the battle’s centre, to Ashnak’s left, the infantry line-fight swayed—heroic bright uniforms, white shining armour, the rise and fall of enchanted blades. Trolls crushed skulls, witches cackled and transmuted their enemies to bloody offal, before falling to the Light’s magery. Blue fire-worms faded from Ashnak’s flesh. He wondered briefly if that meant that the enemy wizard battalions were having problems with the other flank of the battle; he wondered too why there was never a magic-sniffer around when you needed one…

At the foot of the ridge, a band of elven cavalry wheeled their horned mounts and charged up the slope towards the woods, firing short recurved bows as they came. Sunlight glinted from the unicorns’ spiral horns and from the elven mail.

Ashnak bellowed: “Heavy weapon fifty yards general targets
fire!”

An orc squad on the far right opened up, raking the elves with Maxim guns.

“Captain Barashkukor, tell the drummers to signal
Fire at will!”

A ragged cheer went down the line. Ashnak bared his fangs in a smile. He thumbed the RT. “All marine troops go over to primary weapons, repeat,
all marine troops use primary weapons.”

He unslung an M60 machinegun from his back. With his standard-bearer close behind, he pushed into a gap between
squads at the woods’ edge, cocked the weapon, and the stuttering roar of a firefight broke out. Grenades exploded, throwing up showers of dirt and meat. Cordite smoke obscured the battle. The orc squads around him fired on automatic, M16 and AK47 muzzles jabbing flame. The
boom!
and
crack!
of fire hurt his ears until they bled.

“Suck on that, motherfuckers!” Ashnak lifted his machinegun and fired again, emptying the magazine.

Hooves cut the turf as elvish cavalry pounded up the ridge towards him. Ashnak dropped to one knee, thumbed the magazine-release, and slid a full magazine in. The arrow-storm fell around him. Eighty jewelled riders: bright swords raised, banners flying, spurring their unicorns’ flanks bloody. He saw their mouths open, could not hear the Light’s spells over the firefight.

“Gotta admire them dumbass heroes.
But
…”

Ashnak emptied his M60 into the front rank.

Unicorns and elves slammed into the earth. The banners of the Light dropped and fell, trampled. Broken-legged mounts screamed, struggling to rise. One mail-shirted elf got to her hands and knees, blonde hair falling over her almond eyes, and Ashnak let off a burst that ripped her into bloody shrapnel.

“Keep firing! We’re gonna take ’em!”

As he spoke, an enemy fail-weapons spell glanced across the ridge and the wood. All the automatic weapons coughed and fell silent; all the grenades failed to explode. The sudden quiet filled with the screaming of wounded unicorns.

“Where the
fuck
are our mages? Damn it, we could turn the battle here!”

“They’ve run!” The standard-bearer, Ugarit, fell to his knees and began to giggle hysterically.

Captain Barashkukor hit dirt beside Ashnak. “Dark magic-users were supposed to be protecting his flank, sir, but they pulled out.”

A rare breath of wind parted the smoke and magical flames. Ashnak stared out from the ridge, across the battlefield. The fight on his left between the Undead and their dwarvish opponents swayed backwards and forwards and broke, the Dark Undead falling back in confusion.

To Ashnak’s right, the Dark’s trolls turned their backs and ran from Men in full plate harness advancing across the
Fields towards the orcs’ position, the shimmer of spellfire blazing from their armour.

“If we don’t hold ’em now, we’ve lost it!” Ashnak slapped the butt of his M60. “Captain, pass the word down to the NCOs: if these weapons fail, the marines are to go over to axe and hammer. We’ve done it before. We’re the fighting Agaku! Drums: signal the advance. Let’s go, marines.
Go, go, go!
”

Pounding the earth, boots slipping in blood and intestines, Ashnak loped down over the fallen bodies of the elvish cavalry. Exposed now, on open ground, the orc machines pounded forward.

“
Chaarrge!
” Ashnak bellowed, deep voice lost in the foundry-racket of fire.

A good part of the right flank of the Horde began suddenly to roll forward with the orcs.

SPLOOOOM!!

Momentum gone, Horde warriors dived for cover in the waving grass and found none.

“How do you like that? The bastards are running out on us!” a voice marvelled in Ashnak’s ear. Company Sergeant Marukka swung her shoulder-fired rocket-launcher around and pulled the trigger. The
whump!
of high explosive failed to materialise. “This ain’t no Horde general advance, sah! We’re marooned way out in front of the battle! The enemy are going to take us on both flanks!”

The armoured Men closed the distance, screaming into the fight. Ashnak wiped his brows, damp with the fine spray of blood that filled the air above the infantry line. The sky stood empty of all but the eclipsed sun. Black riders grouped on a distant ridge to the east. No sign of his runner; no word from Horde Command.

“
We
can hold without firearms—but the rest of them candyass bastards won’t!”

The smoke of magic hid the left flank now, and rolled across the centre of the battle, so that all he could hear were screams, battlecries. Longbow arrows began dropping from the sky, scattering the command group around him, and an orc NCO lifted his helmeted head to shout orders and dropped with a steel bolt through GI pot and skull. Another fail-weapons spell sparked from field to ridge. The reserve squads’ weapons stuttered and died.

“Son of a
bitch
!” Ashnak howled. He pounded his useless
M60 into the weapons-strewn, bloodstained, corpse-littered turf. “
Somebody take out the White Mages!
”

“We’re going to die!” Corporal Ugarit crouched at the foot of the marine standard-pole, skinny shoulders shaking. His wide eyes fixed on the advancing Army of Light.
“I’m
going to die—they’re going to get me—I’m outta here—
arrggh!
”

Ashnak wiped green orc blood from the butt of the M60 as he kicked Ugarit to his feet. Pragmatic and prosaic, he said, “If anyone’s going to die at the Last Battle, trust me, it won’t be the orc marines!”

He thumbed his helmet RT.

“Okay,
listen up
! Ashnak to all section leaders. Form up on the standard, repeat, form up on my standard. We can’t retreat from this position, we’ll never make it. We’re going to fight
straight through
the enemy lines, and we’re not stopping for anything, got that? Once we’re past them,
keep going
. We’ll regroup at our emergency rendezvous point. Assholes and elbows, you motherfuckers, and remember that you’re the orc marines!”

There was a momentary silence. Then, amid yells of “Fix bayonets!”, the company seized their secondary weapons and plunged into the advancing line of armoured Men, wielding their spears, halberds, morningstars, and flails.

The smoke of battle hid them from sight.

All across the Fields of Destruction, the evil Horde of Darkness broke, ran, and routed in utter confusion.

“Ho, Amarynth!”

The squat figure of a dwarf made a black silhouette against the sunset. She plodded across the field, stout-booted feet trampling over the fallen bodies of tribal orcs wearing black plate-armour. Her red hair, tightly braided on the crown of her head, shone in the level golden light.

“Amarynth, you elven rogue!”

The elven fighter-mage leaned wearily against a boulder. Trolls and cacodaemons lay at his feet, his white-fletched arrows jutting from their eye-sockets and mouths. A great many more of the corpses surrounding the rock showed the burns of magic. “Kazra—is that you?”

“Of course it’s me,” the dwarf grumbled, wiping the back of her broad hand across her forehead. It came away green with orc blood, black with the ichor of daemons. Similar
blood spattered her small, broad breastplate and arm defences. She held out the hand.

Amarynth gripped it with slender brown fingers. He then examined his hand in distaste, wiping it down his silken tunic. “I never thought I should be glad to see a dwarf! Kazra, well met. Well met, on this day of all great days!”

“It is a great day,” the dwarf said, “and a great victory, although I suppose I must give some of the credit to elves and Men. But we dwarves! How we fought!”

“Yes. There will be many a sad burning tonight at the funeral pyres. But we have won the great Victory of our Age. Evil is vanquished!”

The elven fighter-mage clapped the dwarf on the back, reaching down low to do it. Picking their way among the dead bodies of orcs, enchantresses, and ogres, the two warriors of Light made their way across the Fields of Destruction to a low ridge.

There, beyond the crows flocking down to settle on the field of battle, the countryside of the Northern Kingdoms stretched away in the sunset light. Gold touched the cornfields, the spires of distant villages, and the quiet, winding rivers.

“We shall go to Herethlion,” Amarynth said softly. “There will be much singing. The heroes shall be honoured. And the greatest of them all shall be rewarded by the High King Kelyos Magorian.”

Kazra snorted, resting on the haft of her axe. “And the High King Magorian had better appoint some of us to his Council, since who but we who fought for the Northern Kingdoms best know how to govern them? There is much that needs putting right, friend Amarynth. Traitors and Dark-lovers yet remain in hiding. We must search them out—with an inquisition, if need be.”

An unexpected and unaccustomed smile spread over Amarynth’s aquiline brown features. His black hair shone in the sun. The last vestiges of magic fractured in gold light in his eyes.

“Fear not, Kazra. We have vermin to root out, I doubt not, but we this day have created a world to last a thousand years! A world for the Light, in which no shadow of Darkness shall trouble us again.”

“And what of the scattered remnants of the defeated Evil Horde?”

“Oh,” Amarynth said, “they have nowhere to run to. We shall exterminate them over the next few weeks. After all, their Dark Master is dead and their Dark Land invaded. Where can they go, and what help can they hope for? Every good man’s hand is against them.”

The elven fighter-mage and the dwarf began to walk west, into the light of the setting sun. Kazra’s boot squelched. She swore an ancient dwarvish oath and bent down to tug her foot free of tangled white intestines spilling from the gutted body of a great orc. She cracked an orc-rib and freed her boot, muttering at the stench of decomposing flesh. Two fat cows waddled across the earth towards the corpse.

“To Herethlion!” Amarynth cried.

Kazra echoed him. “To Herethlion!”

Side by side they strode west, into a world of golden light.

The first beams of dawn shafted down through the branches of the Old Forest. Sunlight fell through ancient beech trees to the leaf-covered forest floor. Under spreading oaks, bracken turned autumnal red. Dew hung grey on spiderwebs.

A bird began to sing.

FOOM!

Amid falling feathers, Company Sergeant Marukka blew a drift of smoke from her Desert Eagle pistol and reholstered it.

“All
right
, you grunts—hands off cocks; on socks!”

Company Sergeant Marukka strolled down the lines of recumbent orc bodies, bellowing, kicking out with her combat boots. Black unit insignia and sergeant’s chevrons tattooed her muscular green arms. Over her squat body she wore a camouflage jacket with the sleeves ripped off and a black undershirt that strained over her large breasts. Knives, grenades, and pistols hung from her webbing. Her orange hair was pulled up into a skull-ornamented plume on the crown of her head.