Grunts (56 page)

“State your case!” Ashnak roared.

“But—” The halfling stood, nervously smoothing down his waistcoat. “But, Your Honour, I’m a
witness
, not the counsel for the prosecution.”

“
That’s
contempt!”

FOOOOMM!

Ashnak looked over his half-spectacles at marine Major Barashkukor, standing smartly to attention behind the defence’s table. “Let that witness take the oath.”

Barashkukor poked around on the floor and finally held up the halfling’s severed hand.

“Does he swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing like the truth?”

Barashkukor looked enquiringly down at the mess. “He does, sir.”

“Good. And what does he have to say?”

The cyborg-orc rapped out: “The general didn’t do it, Your Honour!”

“Is that right?” Ashnak asked the witness.

Barashkukor picked up the severed head and nodded it vigorously. “That’s right!”

Ashnak seized up the heavy gavel that lay on the bench and bashed it down. “Not guilty—case dismissed!”

Deep-throated orcish cheers rung out, and the orc marines threw their forage caps and steel helmets up in the air, sometimes even catching them again. The Ferenzi who sat in the gallery huddled down into their seats in blank-eyed bewilderment and terror.

“You can’t do this!” an outraged juror protested from the jury box. The Man’s plum-coloured doublet matched his complexion. “Shedding blood in the house of justice—it’s intolerable!”

His neighbour juror, a blue-eyed elf, pulled the Man’s sleeve. “Sit down! Mother of Trees, it was only a pair of halflings!”

“
Cease!
”

Simultaneously with the mage-enhanced voice that rang out in the courtroom, the barred doors burst inwards. Orcs tumbled backwards. The
slam!
of the doors produced instant silence.

“This circus is ended,” the same voice said bitterly.

Oderic, High Wizard of Ferenzia, paced into the courtroom, leaning on his mage-staff. Twenty of the wizards of the Order of the White Mage followed at his heels. The gimlet-eyed old man glared at the rising tiers of seats. The twenty mages in white surcoats faced the rows of hunched orcs festooned with bandoleers, saw-tooth daggers, stick grenades, magazine pouches, pistols, M16s, Kalashnikov rifles, and at least one General Purpose Machinegun. The orc marines stamped, catcalled, whistled, and yowled.

“There
will
be a trial,” Oderic insisted. His fingers flashed with mage-fire. “Orc, step down from the bench. It shall not be forgotten that you are intimidating the Light’s witness.”

Ashnak bared odourous fangs at the wizard. “There isn’t enough of him left to intimidate!”

He moved the Colt .45 automatic pistol to the small of his back and shuffled down from the judge’s bench, making certain at all times that he faced Oderic, and joined Barashkukor at the defence’s desk.

“Didn’t think we’d get away with that one, Major.”

“Worth a try, sir.” Barashkukor’s long ears straightened. “Don’t want it to come to outright war if we can help it, sir. We’re going to need these lads in the near future.”

Ashnak nodded thoughtfully. He bellowed up at the stands, “Ten
HUT
!” and then, when the two hundred orcs snapped to attention in disciplined silence, added, “At ease! Stand easy!”

“The prisoner will refrain from giving orders!” Oderic snapped as he mounted the judge’s bench. He looked down at the carved seat and wiped it with his robe before he sat. The white wizard glanced at the halfling detail mopping up the floor and sighed. “That violence was ill done, orc. Especially since I am to be your judge. I do not approve of the waste of good halflings. Clerk of the court! Swear the jury in.”

A middle-aged Man began to move along the line of jurors with one of the Sacred Tomes. Ashnak turned in his chair and glared up at the orcs behind him He coughed.

A scuffle among the armed orc marines disclosed a somewhat cramped Duchess of Graagryk. The dark-haired female halfling stood up in the middle of a row of orcs in green DPM, her black leather grown and diamond-ornamented plume holder catching the sun pouring in through the court’s great windows.

“I appeal!” she called.

Oderic said testly. “It is customary, madam, to leave the appeal until
after
the sentence.”

Uncrushed by his sarcasm, Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau of Graagryk spoke with a penetrating clarity.

“I appeal to the highest justice of Ferenzia on behalf of my husband.”

“You have it.”

“No,” she corrected. “We do not. High Wizard, on capital matters Ferenzia has an ancient and honourable tradition. The defendant may apply for, and be granted, the right to be
tried by the highest justice in the land. We demand to be tried by the
Royal
justice. Mage, I demand as judge for my husband—the High King, Magorian himself!”

The High Wizard’s eyes bulged. “But he’s—”

“Yes?” the halfling duchess said sweetly. She fluttered her eyelashes. “You were about to say, he is the High King, and therefore well known to be a great and
wise
judge?”

“Er…”

“Of course you were. I really don’t need to remind you that this is within our legal rights, do I, Your Mageship?”

The Duchess of Graagryk seated herself again, her dignity somewhat spoiled by six hulking orc marines leaning across to slap her on the back and growl, “Yo!”

Oderic scowled, got to his feet, held a muttered conversation with the captain of the Order of White Mages, and then stomped from the court, his staff crashing down on the tiles and dying in the distance. Ashnak leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head and his bare feet on the table.

“It’ll work, sir, won’t it?” Barashkukor said stoutly.

Ashnak bit off a toe-claw and flicked it. It spanged off the bald head of a middle-aged dwarf, who winced and clapped a handkerchief to the bleeding wound.

“Steady on, sir. That’s counsel for the prosecution.”

“The hell you say.” Contented, Ashnak slid back in his chair and closed his eyes, listening to the orcs in the courtroom chanting, “Yo the marines!” The halfling ushers attempted verbally to restrain them from the floor of the court, unwilling to venture up the steps. The mages of the White Order watched with a dispassionate contempt.

A faint knocking sound impinged on Ashnak’s consciousness. He opened his eyes, turning his head to look out of the courtroom’s open window.

A stark frame of wood rose towards the morning sky.

A gallows.

The gibbet was already complete, and the hammering came from an elderly Man fitting the trapdoor below the noose. Ashnak noted a number of orc marines in off-duty fatigues lounging around the gallows.

“Are you sure you’re getting a long enough drop?” a squat orc marine lieutenant asked, her voice coming up thinly to Ashnak from the square below.

“Tear ’is ’ead off if it’s wrong,” an orc grunt added. “Won’t it, ma’am?”

The elderly Man spat out another nail and hammered it in. “I’m sure you’re right, mum. Don’t ’ee worry none! Begging yur pardon, I’ll have ’un set up a treat by the time the orc hanging’s due. He’s a big ’un, so I’ll be sure and drop a few sandbags through first and check, mum, now’s you’ve been so kind as to mention it.”

A fanfare of trumpets drowned out the noise of hammering. Ashnak lumbered to his feet as the High King Kelyos Magorian entered, holding the arm of a squire, and was escorted by his helmed and mailed guards to the judge’s bench. Ashnak saluted. Barashkukor threw out his chest and sprang to attention, the steel fingers of his right hand touching the peak of his flat cap.

“TenHUT!” the small orc bawled. The orc marines in the court joined the standing citizens of Ferenzia in what Magda Brandiman had demanded as a politic show of respect.

There was, Ashnak noted, no sign of Oderic.

“…mmm, and I hadn’t finished breakfast
either
,” Magorian grumbled. He irritatedly swatted at his elf squire, who continued to button him into a long black judge’s gown. “Damme, what I am here for, Kalmyrinth?”

The elf straightened the long curled horsehair wig on his sovereign’s head and stepped down from the bench. “You are presiding over the trial of orc general Ashnak for war crimes, sire.”

“Oh,
good!
” Magorian brightened. “If he’s sent down, then all of those damned greenies will leave. That means property prices in the Royal Quarter will stop falling. Guilty!”

The bald dwarf prosecutor stood up at his desk. “No, sire, we have to hold the trial first.
Then
we can hang him.”

The High King subsided into his robes, blue-veined hands shaking, and gestured at no one in particular. “Let the case begin!”

“Your justicular Majesty,” the dwarf began, walking out onto the floor of the courtroom. He turned to the jury box. “Distinguished citizens of Ferenzia.” He turned towards the gallery seats. “Lovers of justice. I am Zhazba-darabat of the Deep Mountain, and I appear for the prosecution. Today you will hear the details of a most heinous crime. The orc before you—”

Zhazba-darabat’s gnarled finger stabbed up at Ashnak, lounging in his chair at the defense’s desk.

“—this orc, most trusted general of Her Dark Majesty, an orc long experienced in the hardships of war, stands accused of the greatest offense a soldier can commit. Citizens, this orc has committed a massacre of helpless civilian baggage-handlers, against all the civilised rules of warfare. He has butchered witnesses to his crime. And he has interfered with the running of the great Election to the Throne of the World, to wit, by causing explosive atrocities among the voting population.”

“Objection!” Barashkukor bounded to his feet.

Magorian looked down at the small orc. “Ah. Um. On what grounds does the counsel for the defence object?”

Major Barashkukor frowned. “He shouldn’t say that sort of thing about my general!”

Magorian’s sandy eyebrows raised. “Well, I admit, it does seem a little harsh…What?” The High King held a hand cupped to his ear as the Man clerk of the court whispered. “Ah. It appears that counsel for the prosecution is
obliged
to do this. Well, well.” He beamed encouragingly. “I shall make sure you have your turn later on, Major, have no fear of that.”

The dwarf prosecutor sighed and wiped his face with a large handkerchief. Ashnak gave him a wide, unnerving grin. At his imperceptible hand-signal the orc marines in the gallery began to crash the butts of their rifles against the floor.

“WE WANT ASHNAK! LET THE GENERAL SPEAK!”

The Order of White Mages moved across the floor of the courtroom in a businesslike manner, and the High King Magorian picked up his judge’s gavel and banged it down with a fine disregard for aim “Order!
Order!
”

“Mine’s a pint!” a very small orc grunt in the front row yelped.

“Oh, good grief.” An enormous orc sergeant leaned down from behind and brought his fist down smartly on the grunt’s skull. The grunt’s long ears jolted bolt upright, then wavered and crossed as the small orc subsided to the floor.

Marine Commissar Razitshakra, who had been sitting next to the grunt, looked at the bench beside her. “This seat needs cleaning—pass me a halfling.”

After a small scuffle, one of the halfling ushers was seized
and passed hand-to-hand, protesting, over the orc marines’ heads, down to Razitshakra. She wiped the leather cushion first with its curly hair and then with its hairy feet. “Anyone want this seat?”

Lieutenant Chahkamnit looked down from three rows above. “Er. No. Not right now.”

The marine commissar scowled. “Anyone want this halfling, then?”

“Nah,” a corporal said. “It’s been used.”

“I’ve got a roll to put him in,” a hopeful voice remarked from the back row.

“
Silence!
” The captain of the White Mages let go a bolt of fire that singed the ceiling and had the Ferenzi citizens cowering in their seats. The unimpressed orc marines looked at Ashnak and, at his signal, subsided.

“Your Majestic Honour,” the White Mage protested, her blonde hair swinging as she spun to face the bench, “you simply cannot allow that rabble to behave like this!”

“Mmph?” The High King looked up from doodling with a griffin’s-feather pen on his notepad. “Is that all the case for the prosecution?”

Prosecuting counsel Zhazba-darabat marched across the courtroom floor to the bench, stepping over a number of cables marked “
OFFICIAL DO NOT REMOVE
.” The dwarf stared up at the edge of the bench, with no line of sight to the judge. “Your Honour—”

“What?” Magorian blinked rheumy eyes, gazing around. “Has the little fella finished? You, orc, whatever your name is. Do your bit.”

Barashkukor bounded to his feet again. “Objection!”

“What is it
this
time?”

“I’m not ready yet.”

Magorian glowered. “State your case, greenie. And make it quick. I want my dinner.”

Ashnak shifted in his chair, the metal bulk of the Colt .45 pressing against his spine. Through slitted eyes he watched the mages of the Light.

“M’lud.” Barashkukor straightened up from behind the defence’s desk. He exchanged his peaked cap for a horsehair wig whose long side-flaps dangled down to his web-belt. “M’lud, the defence’s case is as follows. General Ashnak didn’t do it, it wasn’t him, and besides he was somewhere
else at the time! I would now like to call a character witness.”

Magorian’s sandy eyebrows raised. “Oh…very well.”

Barashkukor marched out into the floor of the court. “Call Lugbash!”

A halfling usher opened the doors and bawled down the corridor. “
Call Lugbash
!”

A distant voice echoed: “
CALL LUGBASH
…”

Ashnak leaned one muscular arm over the back of his chair and spoke to marine Commissar Razitshakra in the gallery’s front row. “Who the fuck is Lugbash?”

Before the commissar could answer, a hunched orc in a ragged dress and shawl hobbled into the court. Barashkukor gallantly offered her his steel arm as she climbed up into the witness stand.

“I remember Ashnak,” she crooned without provocation. “’E were a lovely little orc, ’e were. I was his nanny, you know, the dear sweet thing.”