Grunts (37 page)

The big orc’s body stiffened—ramrod-straight from his combat boots to the tips of his pointed ears. His eyes rolled up in their deep sockets and showed the whites. Stiff as a board, pivoting from the heels, the orc’s body tipped over backwards. His skull impacted on the floor with such force that two tiles cracked. As he lay there unconscious, it could be seen that the General of the Orc Marines had wet himself.

The nameless necromancer stepped carefully over the orc’s supine body on his way to pour himself another drink, and stepped back over the body on his return, pausing only to spit in the orc’s face.

“You will not defy Me more than once,” She promised. “Ashnak, you may wake.”

The orc groaned, sat up, opened his mouth, and shut it again. He wiped his face and rubbed the back of his skull, and at last got to his feet. Dusting his filthy fatigues down with his forage cap, he regarded the Lord of Evil with the air of one unfairly tricked.

“My warrior-orc Ashnak, do you like what I have showed you?”

Ashnak said blankly, “What?”

“You do not remember the terror created from your past?”

Ashnak’s leathery brows furrowed. He shook his head. “Negative, ma’am.”

“Amazing,” the Dark Lord commented. “Finesse is wasted on orcs. Next time I shall merely kill you. Now…”

Her voice, soft from that command-roughened throat, soaked into the summer afternoon air of Graagryk. Nothing stirred in the tower room while She spoke.

“…I have no wish for easy victories. I am weary of war. There are only so many new ways to shed blood. I could take the souls of those fools of the Light and make them Mine. But I am weary of sucking souls: the little races of this world are tedious to the heart. It pleases Me now to do things otherwise.”

Ashnak slurred an orcish curse under his breath, unadmitted shock chilling his ox-body. He raised his voice again to audibility. “Lord…If not armies…or soul-magic…then
how
will you conquer?”

Her hair like sunlight, Her metal robe hiding all darknesses within its folds, the ugly Man stands against the light.
The splotched patchwork of Her skin blends Her into the dazzle. She smells of dead cities that breathe perfumed dust onto the world’s winds.

“This time,” the Dark Lord said, “I think it will please Me to win an election.”

Ashnak could not move, his muscles still shook and trembled. It took him all his strength of will to stay upright. He became aware of the nameless necromancer only as the black-haired Man strode forward to face the Dark Lord.

Simultaneously, both the orc general and the nameless necromancer demanded, “What’s an ‘election’?”

A ducal carriage rattled past the orc marine sentries and into the barracks compound, steel-shod wheels striking sparks from the cobbles under the archway.

As Lieutenant Lugashaldim of the Special Undead Services watched, Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau, Duchess of Graagryk, descended from the carriage in a flurry of aides, nursemaids, outriders, and guards. Her young children scurried about her feet, playing with a pack of wolfhounds twice their height, and tame parrots fluttered above her in scarlet and green. Magda snapped her fingers. Her chief lady-in-waiting, Safire, extended a parasol to protect the ducal head both from the late-afternoon sun, Lugashaldim imagined, and from the birds.

“You may let the children play here,” Magda announced to her entourage in a clear, carrying voice. She waved away the orc gate guards clattering across the cobbles towards her. “You! Lugashaldim!
You
may fetch me my Ashnak.
Now.
”

Behind the fortified walls that faced Graagryk city, sunlight slanted into the Orc Marine HQ and illuminated brick walls, machinery-cluttered sheds, gutted barracks, and deserted armoured vehicles. The off-duty orc marines sprawled on the grass of the compound, drinking Graagryk’s fine wines, roasting something of worrying dimensions on a spit, and fornicating energetically around the firepit and under the lime trees. Upon sighting an approaching Undead orc lieutenant they made a concerted effort to button uniforms and shuffle the worst of the debris out of sight.

“Ma’am.” Lugashaldim, sun shining through his mummified flesh and bones, looked down and saluted the female halfling. “I’m afraid the present whereabouts of General Ashnak are classified.”

The Duchess Magda stared down her halfling nose and replied in fluent marine. “I’m his
wife
, you dickhead!”

Her entourage snickered. The rotting orc marine shifted from combat boot to combat boot uneasily. “But, ma’am—”

“He is my ducal consort and I will speak with him
now
.”

The Undead officer blinked ragged eyelids over curdled eyeballs. The stripped bone of his skill gleamed, and he cast an elongated skeletal shadow on the grass. Magda’s nostrils flared.

“You may as well let the hounds off their leashes,” she remarked. “They need to relieve themselves, I think.”

Her servants obeyed. Five wolfhounds, two parrots, and the duchess’s children ran across the parade ground. Orc marines started to their feet, hauling automatic weapons out of the way of clutching hands and dogpiss. Childish shrieks of glee drowned out an orc sergeant’s order. A wolfhound stole the roast from the spit. Two marines pursued it as it dragged the meat off, snarling.

Lugashaldim wiped a parrot-dropping from his decaying uniform.

“I guess you can wait in his office, ma’am,” the lieutenant conceded weakly.

Calm amid the chaos of children, dogs, and orc marines trying to retrieve their belongings without being caught disposing of any intruders, Magda said, “I do not wish to wait at all. If I do, I shall wait right here.”

Lugashaldim gazed across the compound. Dormitories—long brick barracks that had stood just high enough to house halfling warriors—lay gutted. Marine ponchos had been fixed between their broken walls, and under these were the offal-strewn, refuse-ridden, rubble-buttressed lairs of siblings known as
orc-nests
. Brown, black, green, and albino limbs stirred frostily as the chaos spread, and he heard the familiar rumble of orc snores.

The Duchess Magda remarked loudly, “How unlike the home life of my own dear Ashnak!”

“Sorry, ma’am—” He paused as young orcs just out of the Pit shrieked and gibbered past Magda’s people, their orcish spawn-herd in close pursuit. Magda’s eyes followed their compact, long-armed bodies, pointed ears, and crimson-glaring eyes under beetling brows. The young orcs were herded back past the planks spiked with broken glass that
covered the tops of the brick-lined Pits. Grunts, snuffles, screeches, and wails echoed up from the depths.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. He didn’t notify us of his departure, destination, or time of return.”

The Duchess Magda swore with a fluency gained in the brothels of two dozen kingdoms. “Then find him! Search!”

The Undead orc stood with his skeletal shoulders hunched, trying not to tower over her. “Ma’am, we don’t know where to look—”

“
Magda!
” a voice bawled.

Ashnak strode in under the barracks archway, his forage cap tugged well down over his eyes and a pipe-weed cigar jutting from one corner of his tusked mouth. Both he and his uniform looked somewhat the worse for wear, although with orcs it is difficult to tell. He drop-kicked a couple of slow-moving marines out of his path, and acknowledged Lugashaldim’s salute. “Magda, my dear…”

Gallantly, the large orc reached down and took her hand between two of his fingers, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it.

“Husband.” Magda drew herself up to her full three feet two inches. Gloveleather flounces frothed around her. She arranged her sleek petticoats more decorously. “Safire, you and the others may wait for me back at the carriage.”

Reaching up high, she took Ashnak’s muscular arm. Amid the panic of a garrison that has realised it just incurred a snap inspection, she led him to stroll in the dappled shade of the compound’s lime trees.

The big orc lowered his heavy head, gazing down at her. A shadow of Darkness still lingered in his eyes. “You brought the children to the barracks?”

“It’s time they saw where their father works. I don’t wish them to remain in ignorance. I myself,” Magda said, “am often uninformed.”

One corner of his lip lifted over a tusk in unwilling amusement.

“Things you did not tell me, for example,” Magda continued levelly, “include just how many offspring orcs spawn at one time.
And
how quickly they mature. There are six of my little half-orcs running around back there—and one of them is already talking. I can only assume she heard
that
kind of language from her father!”

Ashnak sidestepped the broken brick hurled by an approaching ducal offspring.

“Really, my sweetheart, the old ways are the best. Ah, the good old days in the Pit,” Ashnak remarked with nostalgia. “The shit-slinging contests…gangbangs…Eat-the-Runt…Finest days of your life, the Pits. Really make an
orc
out of you.”

Magda glared up at him. “Half-orc though they may be, I am not bringing our children up in any Pit! Although I have to admit, what they’re doing to the other halfling children in nursery school doesn’t bear thinking about.”

She scooped the running toddler up onto her hip. Already the size of a two-year-old, the half-orc halfling infant beamed, showing its first tiny tusks. Magda stroked the thatch of brown hair that fell over its prominent browridge.

“My heart, what have you done with your tutor
this
time?”

“
Burp!
”

“You see?” Magda complained. “I’m beginning to have difficulty getting nursing staff. I hear you’re making deals with the Dark Lord.”

“Y—” Ashnak halted, put his huge fists on his hips, and glared down at her. “Where the fuck did you hear that?”

“Be serious. I know you.”

Magda wiped their child’s wide mouth with the silk hem of her farthingale and set it down. It scuttled off to join its brothers and sisters in tormenting the off-duty marines. Rather than damage their general’s offspring—or, rather than explain such damage to him afterwards—the helpless grunts found themselves constrained into allowing the halfling half-breeds to climb over military equipment and personnel irrespective. Magda noted one orc surreptitiously wiping scarlet and green feathers from the corner of his mouth.

“I’ve not seen Wilhelm or Edvard of late,” she remarked inconsequentially. “I think my older sons have fled Graagryk.”

“Good!” the big orc grunted.

“That is no way to speak of your stepchildren, Ashnak! I want us all to be one big happy family.”

The orc seated himself on the turf, tucking one BDU combat-trousered leg under the other. He reached out and drew Magda into a powerful embrace. The pungent musk of orc filled her nostrils. The duchess squeaked. Eventually,
seated in his lap as he leaned against a lime tree trunk, she heard him say:

“That was your news at the Orcball game? The Dark Lord’s return?”

“I wished to prepare you for any possible meeting. Little passes in Graagryk that isn’t my business—my contacts brought me word of His return. Why has He come to my city?”

“Why?” Ashnak’s voice vibrated through their flesh where she leaned against him. “Because He’s gone absolutely bugfuck, that’s why! He’s out of his fucking tree!”

The orc marine rested his elbows on the scuffed knees of his urban camouflage combat trousers and leaned his heavy jaw against her neck. Watching Lugashaldim do his best to discipline the Graagryk HQ, the orc said, “Have you ever heard of a thing called an
election
?”

The Duchess Magda, whose experience spanned several continents and a number of species, frowned. The crow’s-feet deepened around her eyes. “No. What manner of beast is it?”

Ashnak coughed. If he had not been the General of the Orc Marines, she might have thought him embarrassed.

“The Sable Eminence explained it to me. Apparently it’s a method of ruling a kingdom. You give everyone what they call a
vote
. Then, when you have commands, the people cast these
votes
to decide whether they’ll obey. The Lord of Night and Terror says they also get to cast these
votes
to decide who’ll be the kingdom’s ruler. And that’s called an
election
.”

Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau thought about it. “‘Casting’
votes
. A
vote
will be a kind of stone, then? Certainly a missile of some sort…”

She abruptly stood up, removing herself from Ashnak’s embrace, and began to brush down her dress. Cheeks heated, she snapped, “The whole thing’s ridiculous! Think about it, you dumb orc. Give
everyone
one of these
votes
, and where are you? With every dirty peasant thinking she has as great a right as me to decide what is best for Graagryk! It’s…it’s immoral! Why—why, a duchess might even
lose an election
!”

She paced up and down rapidly, heels indenting the leaf-scattered turf. Over the noise and bustle of the orc HQ
making itself minimally tidy, she said, “His Sable Eminence’s mind must have snapped completely! Samhain was such a blow, it’s driven Him into sanity! This is no way to bring about the Dark Domination!”

“The information is classified,” Ashnak said gloomily. “I’m not telling the marines about
votes
. It will only give them ideas.”

The halfling and the orc stared at each other for some minutes. A sergeant major bawled orders across the compound and squads of marines doubled in all directions, parking the APCs in straight lines and removing the bodies from the assault course. Sunset coloured the sky above the Inland Sea salmon-pink and violet. Evening lizards called.

Magda narrowed her eyes against the levelling light.

“Orcs,” she said. Ashnak raised his head, teeth and eyes gleaming.

Magda continued, “Orcs are tolerated in the Southern Kingdoms only on sufferance. My dear, yours is a very small company, and its presence here is totally dependent on your ability to run an arms industry. Come to think of it, His Nightmare Excellence may be a very good person to have on our side.”