Grunts (15 page)

“Nahhh. War’s
fun
, sir, that’s what war is.” Captain Barashkukor brandished another book he had removed from the crate. “This one’s called ‘Pliny,’ sir.” He thumbed through it, eyes widening. “
Sir!
It mentions
ores
, sir! It says the orc is a marine monster.”

Ashnak raised a bushy eyebrow. “Wonder how he knew?”

“‘
Jane’s Medieval Small-Arms and Siege Weapons
,’ sir?”

“Obsolete, soldier.” Ashnak broke off, hearing a heavy multiple tread on the stairs. “Come!”

“Hut-two, hut-two, hut-two,
halt
! The marines you requested, sir!”

Company Sergeant Marukka saluted smartly. A tall, skinny male orc marched into the office beside another orc female, this one scruffy and wearing spectacles.

“—and because they’re
all
out to get me! Oh. Lord General!” Ugarit saluted with the wrong hand. His uniform pockets shifted, clinking with the weight of spanners in them.

Marukka howled, “Ugarit, you candyass marine, keep your mouth shut in front of the general! That’s fifty strokes of the lash for you.”

The tall, skinny orc began to tremble visibly. The scruffy female orc with him saluted rigidly.

“Dismissed, Sergeant,” Ashnak rumbled. “I shan’t be needing you either, Captain.”

Captain Barashkukor saluted and followed Marukka out. Ashnak stood for several minutes, looking the two marines up and down. He smiled nastily.

“You’re pathetic!” he barked. “Call yourselves marines? I wouldn’t wipe my arse with you! I’m going to straighten this company out
now
, and I’m starting by eviscerating you two! We’ve been occupying Nin-Edin for six hours and you
still
haven’t come up with a plan to defeat the enemy.”

“P-plan, sir…?” Marine Razitshakra’s combats had quill-pens protruding from every pocket. Her large pointed ears projected laterally from the sides of her head. Fog condensed and dripped from the tips of each. She blinked golden eyes. “Wh-what plan?”

“
I’ve
got a plan!
Alternative
firepower! General, it’s the only answer!” Ugarit, spluttering, unfolded scribbled-on sheets of paper, diagrams, a folding tape measure, and small mechanical models. “Arrows with ceramic heads! Kevlar armour! Carbon-fibre swordblades! I have all the designs, all the measurements—calculations—stress loads—they’ll
never
get me if I have all this!”

Razitshakra muttered something under her breath, of which Ashnak could distinguish only the phrase “several cogwheels short of a clock.”

“Very inventive.” Ashnak drew a breath and bellowed. “The first blast of mage-fire will
still
shatter them to ashes!
Are you telling me the whole Research and Development Unit can’t come up with anything better than that?”

Ugarit shook his head, water drops flying. “I had
everyone
working on it, General, sir.”

“And just how many personnel do you have in R&D?”

The skinny orc counted on his fingers for some minutes before announcing, “One, General, sir. Me.”

Ashnak walked across to the vast carved wooden chair liberated from some merchant’s wagon inadvisedly attempting the Nin-Edin pass, and sat down heavily at his desk. He wiped his hand across his face. He resisted, with difficulty, the impulse to crack Ugarit’s skull against the masonry and see if anything oozed out.

“Sir…” Razitshakra scribbled on a small piece of paper she extracted from her pocket, ticking off items on a list with her index talon. “I think I’ve got it, sir!”

“Please,” Ashnak purred, “do tell.”

“
Magic
, sir. That’s the answer. I don’t do it—I’m an orc, and we hate magic!—but I
know
about it. The other grunts avoid me because of that…” She met his gaze, narrowing her tilted eyes. “If you could find the nameless necromancer, or another Dark Mage—there must be
some
who didn’t die at the Fields of Destruction—we could survive. But then that person would automatically end up in command of us, sir. Wizards always commanded the Horde because they can use magic and we can’t.”

“True,” Ashnak rumbled.

“Only magic can defend against magic. You need someone who can deal with it—but does it have to be a Man? Or any other race? If we had orcs who could deal with magic, General, we’d be our
own
bosses.”

Ashnak, remembering a nest-sister of his own, magic-sniffer and dead now, shook his head. “Orcs and magic don’t mix.”

The female orc stabbed a taloned finger at her list. “Normally they don’t have to. In battle we’re protected by our side’s wizards. But we don’t
have
that here, sir! I’m not suggesting we
use
magic. Orcs don’t do that. We should just make certain no one can use it against us.”

Razitshakra crumpled her list and shoved it deep in her combats pocket, staring intently up at Ashnak.

“We don’t have to look for a new master, sir. Not if we can get some magical talismans or amulets.
Protective
magical
talismans that we can carry into battle with us. So that the Light can throw fail-weapons magic at us and it won’t work.”

“As one of my nest-sisters, Shazgurim, used to say,
I
know Man-tales.” Ashnak’s heavy brows lifted. “Is it possible for orcs to have a Quest?”

“We orcs,” Marine Razitshakra said, “we orc marines
don’t
need a master, General. We can do all this ourselves!”

Ashnak considered this revolutionary idea.

“Tell me, orc who is knowledgable about magic,” he said softly, “where do you come by those golden eyes?”

Razitshakra’s wide mouth dropped open. Her fangs and tusks seemed smaller than usual for an orc of her size.

“Well, marine?”

Razitshakra removed her spectacles. Her skin turned a deep grass-green over her cheeks, ears, throat, and breasts. She stared down at the toes of her muddy combat boots.

“It’s not
true
that I’m a half-elf,” she mumbled. “Quarter-elven, sir. At most. Grandmother made a mistake on a dark night in the Enchanted Wood. So did her…ah…involuntary partner, sir—one he didn’t survive. I’m only a quarter-elvish, sir. I may know about magic, but I’m a real orc. Honest, sir!”

“Yes, yes.”

Ashnak was not familiar with the emotion of embarrassment, but he felt a strong urge to change the subject.

He stood and went to the window. Nin-Edin’s inner and outer walls loomed in the fog, covered with skull-standards and machineguns emplacements. Ancient masonry, solid as the mountains, but masonry has been brought down before now, by neither siege machines nor storming the walls, but by the Light’s filthy magic. Ashnak became aware that he was listening, and had been for some time.

Listening.

Waiting.

“These talismans, Marine Razitshakra.
If
such things exist—where would we get them?”

The golden-eyed orc brightened. “Ah. Yes, sir. Now that’s the interesting part.”

Wine had been spilt in the corridor of the House of Joy, and the halfling put his bare, hairy foot in it before he noticed. Making a face, he wiped his leathery sole on the bare
boards. A few remaining coins clunked in his trunk-hose pockets.

The door at the end of the hall was ajar, and he pushed it open. Lanterns illuminated a Man-room—or so he first thought, looking at the bed—but the dressing table and washstand were halfling-sized furniture.

A whip snapped the air beside his left ear. “Onto the bed, slave!”

“Yes, mistress!” He fell to his knees, grovelling in front of a pair of very small, high, stiletto-heeled boots. The lantern light gleamed on black leather calves and slender thighs, and a studded belt from which hung shackles.

The whip cracked, stinging him smartly across the buttocks. He abased himself again, and then crawled over to the bed. It was impractical to crawl up onto it, it being Manfurniture. He stood and climbed up onto the rubber sheets.

“You will address me as Mistress, scum—Safire, I’m going to need the small shackles;
hurry
, girl!—and you will kiss my boots and be thankful for the privilege. Is that
clear
?”

“Yes, Mistress!” He writhed happily. The maid, whom he assumed to be Safire, locked shackles on his wrists and ankles in somewhat too much of a professional manner, but he could forgive that. He was not by any means the first of the Army of Light home from the wars.

“Now, what have we here…a helpless victim, is it? Or is it a bad boy who needs punishing? Is it a bad boy who needs a whipping?”

He whimpered happily. “Yes. I’ve been bad.”

The shackles tightened, pulled back and fastened at the four corners of the bedstead. He sprawled face-down on the bed, his small limbs stretched outwards. A leather-gloved hand slid up between his short legs and unbuttoned his trunk-hose.

“Now—” the voice of the whore, mock-triumphant, as she pulled down his breeches and exposed his bare buttocks. “Bad boy! I’ll give you a whipping you’ll never forget!
Bad
boy!”

A welt of fire lashed his buttocks. He was too startled to enjoy it.

“Wait—”

“You’re a bad boy!”

Unmistakable.

He did the best he could to roll on one side, and look up over his shoulder. The female halfling stood on the bed, legs astride him, coiling her whip. He stared up at the black leather head-mask, seeing only an impersonal pair of eyes.

Bad boy
.

The voice was unmistakable.

He said, “Mother—is that
you
?”

The watery autumnal sunlight broke three days of continuous fog as Barashkukor marched smartly across the inner compound of the Nin-Edin fort.

Reaching the door of the stone outhouse designated “Research Laboratory No. 1037,” he took off his GI helmet and, after some thought, tucked it under his left arm. His long, hairless ears sprang upright.

“
Asssschu!
”

A voice from behind the closed door called, “What is it, Captain Barashkukor?”

His small brows indented. He lifted a fist to knock smartly on the wood. Somewhere inside the stone shed a loud explosion sounded. Smoke drifted out of the glassless windows. An orcish scream split the air. Barashkukor ignored it and knocked again. The door creaked open.

“We’re busy; what—” Marine Razitshakra stopped. “
What?
”

Barashkukor, his back ramrod straight, came to attention. The small orc’s combat boots gleamed, his green DPM camouflage trousers had been laundered and pressed, and a display of grenades and .50-calibre ammunition hung on bandoliers across his thin chest.

“Marine Razitshakra.” He thrust out his left hand. His helmet, forgotten, dropped and bounced painfully off his foot. “For you.”

Razitshakra inspected the posy of autumn wildflowers the small orc captain held out. “Um…That’s…um…sir…”

“They’re for you.”

Barashkukor stuffed the flowers into the orc marine’s hand, the tips of his ears drooping; then snapped a salute, about-faced, and marched off back across the compound.

The female orc took off her rimless spectacles and put them in her top pocket. She blinked. In the distance, Captain
Barashkukor about-faced again, marched back, and bent to pick up the camouflage-covered GI pot.

“Forgot my helmet,” he explained.

Razitshakra lowered her broad nostrils into the posy and sniffed it. She took a bite. Tentatively at first, she began to chew the dog roses, holly, and nightshade.

Barashkukor’s shoulders slumped. He turned his back on her and walked away, feet dragging, his eyes on the beaten earth of the compound.

On the walls above, the marine alarm horns rang out, and an urgent drum began to beat.

Barashkukor shrugged skinny shoulders and carried on walking.

Orc squads pounded past him at the double, corporals and NCOs shouted alarmed orders, and somewhere Marukka’s bellow split the chill air. Weapons clashed. Up on the parapet, skull-pole standards were hastily raised. The inner iron portcullis clashed down, three yards from Barashkukor’s left elbow, burying its spikes several feet deep in the dirt.

“Captain!”

Moodily, Barashkukor glanced up. The rising bulk of Nin-Edin at his back, he gazed through the iron grating at the great mountain ranges rising to either side of the pass. Grey cloud still clung to the impassable peaks. Before him, beyond the outer bailey and outer defensive walls, a desolate valley ran down to the lowlands…

The distant road that wound up to this mountain pass glittered.

“Oh,
shit,”
Barashkukor said.

Lowland sunshine reflected back from the helms, shields, armour, and weapons of the approaching, besieging Army of Light.

“You’ve changed, son. I hardly know you.”

The halfling Magda emerged from behind the room’s silk screen wearing a crimson-furred velvet gown. She tied its belt firmly around her hourglass-waist.

“And I hardly expected to find you wearing
that
uniform.”

She walked across the room and picked up a thin roll of black pipe-weed, fitting it into a long ivory holder. Reaching up to a candleflame, she lit the pipe-weed and drew deeply. She passed her hand through her short dark hair.