Grunts (25 page)

Ned Brandiman smiled around the fuse clasped between his teeth. He dropped the handful of talismans, removed the fuse from his mouth, and said, “Better listen to her, big guy.”

The big orc, close enough now to rest one taloned hand on the mule’s neck, stared directly into the eyes of Ned Brandiman as the halfling sat in the front of the wagon. The mule shifted, bothered by orc smell. Ashnak abruptly closed his hand, wrenching a gobbet of living flesh from the beast, put it in his mouth, and chewed bloodily. The orc grunts cheered. The beast sank to its knees and tipped over in the shafts.

“
Put that fuse down!
” Ashnak snapped.

He held the halfling’s gaze, seeing in those brown eyes a concealed desperation. He edged a step forward.

Ned Brandiman cried, “You’ll die with me, orc!”

The halfling’s tensing muscles prepared Ashnak, the speech gave him the second in which to act. The orc grabbed the front of the wagon with both hands, his powerful arms projecting him forwards, and his jaws slammed shut, not on Ned Brandiman’s hand—the halfling was a fraction too fast in drawing back—but on the lit fuse, dowsing it in a mouthful of mucus and orc saliva.

Ashnak spat, sore-mouthed. His taloned hand seized the heavy crossbow in time to send the bolt through the roof of the wagon. He closed his hand, crumpling the metal firing mechanism. With his other hand he batted the halfling bodily out over the tailboard, where it vanished, biting and kicking, under a gang of marines.

“Major, escort my prisoner to the cells.
Alive
.” Ashnak
put his finger in his mouth, wiggled it around, touched a raw-burned spot, and winced.

“Marine Razitshakra, start dishing out these marine-issue anti-thaumaturgy talismans to the grunts! Corporal Ugarit, your tech orcs are going to incorporate nullity talismans into every weapons-casing you can find. Move your asses, marines!”

Ashnak got down from the wagon and walked untouched through the furious, orderly confusion of the inner compound. The sun, just beginning to wester, was a faint warmth on the back of his head.

Wide-winged ravens soared down from the mountains, haunting the churned earth of the outer compound, and he stared across it at the enemy camp, willing them to inactivity, willing them to desire the advantages of a night attack or a dawn attack or any attack at all, so long as it didn’t come within the next few precious hours.

“The only reason we’re alive is that he wants to kill us painfully and slowly.” Ned Brandiman shivered. “What that orc considers a painful death, I don’t want to think about.”

Will Brandiman chuckled, a small sound that slipped into a sob and a hard intake of breath. He looked down at his yellow-and-black-bruised arms, then stared up at the ceiling with wet eyes.

“Why did it have to be
that
son of a bitch? With anyone else it would have worked. Anyone else would have cared more about damage to the goods than damage to us.
Shit!
”

The torches in the corridor outside the cells dipped and flared. To Will, the air had the scent of night about it. But no attack on the fort yet. He fumbled tenderly at his bare arms and naked body, fingers feathering the cuts and contusions on his legs. He pressed the taut drum of his stomach and winced.

“Internal bleeding. I need a medic-mage. So do you.”

Ned Brandiman grunted. It was a weak sound. Will squinted at his brother in the yellow light from burning oil torches. The brown-haired halfling’s face was crusted with blood, one eye blue and squeezed shut by swelling and at least three teeth down to jagged stumps. Naked, he still shivered in the chill of the dungeons. Will watched for that shivering to cease: a fatal sign of hypothermia.

“You didn’t…keep lock-picks…?” Ned coughed, hugging
his bruised arms across his bare chest to restrain the racking movement. He glimmered white in the dim cell.

Will winced, lying on his side, recalling the penetrating orc fingers that had searched every orifice. “They took them all. We shouldn’t have come without backup.”

“Who could we trust?”

At a question that ingenuous, Will snorted and then grimaced at the pain that followed. Determined, he shifted up onto his knees, onto his feet, and staggered the few steps over to the cell door. The barred grill was two feet above his head.

“I hear something!” Will waved Ned to silence. “One. Maybe two. Make a noise! Get them in here!”

The elder halfling, propped up against the dank wall, raised his glinting eye to Will. “Will…
why
?”

Will flexed his bruised hands. Breathing evenly, concentrating to ignore the pain, ignore the two broken fingers, the wrist and elbow fractures; think of nothing now except escape, nothing about medic-mages or temple healing; think only that even naked one has teeth, nails, and strength; one is not weaponless—

Ned began wordlessly to howl. The sound made even the hairs on the back of Will’s neck stand up. He poised himself at one side of the cell door.

The metal covering on the grill slid back. An orc hand was briefly visible. Something metallic clinked against the bars. A small metal ovoid hit the cell floor, rolled across the flagstones, and came to rest a yard from Ned.

Before either halfling could speak or move, there was a flat
crack!
, frighteningly loud in the enclosed space. White fog billowed up, pouring rapidly into every corner of the cell. Will choked, coughed, ground his fists into his suddenly streaming eyes, bent double, and began to retch helplessly. In pain, through tears and convulsions, he heard Ned whimpering, an ululation of pain broken by racking coughs.

At some point an altercation between orc voices resulted in a silence, after which a key was turned in the lock. The cell door opened, clanged shut; bars and bolts were settled again. The booted footsteps departed.

Three people coughed, retched, lay choking on the damp cell floor.

Some while afterwards, his eyes still swollen shut and his lungs raw, Will Brandiman whispered, “Ned?”

His brother groaned.

A new voice said, “Son, is that you?”

Will Brandiman began to weep, with a sound not too far removed from laughter. At last he crawled across the flagstones until he encountered a soft bulk. A hand rumpled his hair. He seized it. In torchlight through the grill, with the foul mist gone, he made out the calm features of Magda Brandiman.

He wept in her lap for some while, and after that Ned was discovered to have stopped shivering, so between the two of them they chafed feeling back into his body and hypothermia out of it, and Magda wrapped her crimson velvet cloak around her sons’ bodies. They sat huddled together, arms around each other, in the least damp corner of the Nin-Edin cell. Brief mutters and whispers passed information on capture.

“You
paid
the Visible College…?” Breath failed Magda Brandiman. Will felt her small body tense. “That must have cost—you could have set me up in my own House—a chain of Houses—
you told me you were poor
!”

Embarrassed, Will murmured, “Mother, you know what you’re like with gold.”

“My
sons
!” She began to weep, small sounds of surprise and outrage rather than grief.

“Mother, we’ve come to rescue you!” Ned stopped and glanced around the dim, dank cell. “Look, don’t worry, we’ll think of something.”

The halfling raised her head, her dark cropped hair spiked up into cat’s-fur tufts, the lines prominent around her eyes and mouth. Her eyes glittered. “That big
orc
treats me better than my own boys! And who said I needed a rescue? Who
asked
you to come here? He and I— Oh, you could be killed!”

She wept again, softly this time, hugging Will and Ned to her prominent bosom, and neither of her sons winced against the pain of their injuries.

The air began to smell of deep night.

Will broke the long silence.

“I think I see a way. It isn’t easy. All of us will have to do things we don’t like. You most of all, Mother.”

Magda Brandiman’s voice came neutrally. “What must I do?”

Aching, the weakness of internal bleeding filling him with dread, Will schooled his voice to confidence.

“Simple enough, Mother. Come out of hiding, abandon your false name—come forward and be recognized as who you really are.”

Standing on the parapet, Ashnak spared a glance for the winter stars above Nin-Edin. Three hours till daybreak. And is the Light planning a pre-dawn attack too?

His broad, hairy nostrils suddenly flared.

“Sir!”

Ashnak took a salute from a rotting, albinoid figure in black combats that materialised out of the night. “Yes, Corporal?”

“Reports from the scouts, sir. One recon team got back,” Corporal Lugashaldim announced. “They advise that in the last hour dozens of messengers have been coming into the enemy camp.”

Ashnak wiped his hairy nostrils on his sleeve, his eyes watering at the proximity of the SUS marine. “
Reinforcements
, dammit! They’re getting reinforcements.”

“Nothing else it can be, sir. We think there are more Light forces in the general area.” The Undead marine grinned rather more widely than Ashnak found comfortable. “Guess they didn’t want Amarynth Fartarse to have all the glory of doing for us, sir.”

“Well done, marine. Keep me advised of any further reports. You!” He snapped his fingers at an orc marine aide, whose helmet slipped down over her eyes as she saluted. “Send the halfling prisoners to my quarters for interrogation. Start with the female. While I’m there, see that I receive regular situation reports on military developments.” Ashnak showed his fangs. “You know how involved I get in interrogations.”

“Sir, yes sir!” The orc marine left at the double.

Ashnak loped slope-shouldered through the chill night. Inside the keep it was colder, with the damp of ancient stones. The chambers and corridors echoed to the shouts of orc marines gearing up, NCOs bawling out their grunts, officers shouting for reconnaissance and situation reports. He walked through it all, grumbling under his breath about the burdens of command, and shrugged his flak jacket tighter across his muscled, hairless chest.

Approaching Nin-Edin’s largest tower, and his command post, a noise attracted his attention. He paused by the closed door of the guard-room, hearing the whistle of a whip.

“Ah. Interrogating prisoners. Well done, marines.” Cheered, Ashnak opened the door and beamed. “Possibly a
little
in advance of ourselves…”

Chained face to the wall, stripped of everything but leather underwear, Perdita del Verro winced and arched her back as the lash struck. Ashnak glimpsed her between the six or seven grunts surrounding her chained body—female orcs with spiked white hair, in a somewhat unorthodox Battle Dress Uniform of black leather, with studded belts and wristbands.

The Badgurlz marines jeered their helpless victim. Sergeant Varimnak, sleeves rolled up, black cloth headband tied around her brows, wielded the heavy whip. “Take that, bitch!”

“Mercy!”

Ashnak beamed sentimentally to himself at the traditional sight of orcs inflicting pain.

A petite Badgurlz marine with silver studs through her hairless ears, nostrils, and nipples elbowed Varimnak in the ribs. “She’s had
ages
, Sarge. What about the rest of us?”

Perdita del Verro turned her head, chin resting on her striped, bleeding shoulder. “You
stopped
…” she complained.

“Take her down,” Varimnak ordered. “Hey, Tukurash, get up there; I’m gonna make hamburger of your pretty ass! Unless our guest…?”

Ashnak witnessed the
Warrior of Fortune
correspondent climb down from the stone bench, and grin painfully and widely at Varimnak. The elf’s glossy braids had come half undone, her red ribbons were sweat-stained. She took Varimnak’s black leather whip.

“Take that, bitch!” The elf cracked the tip of it accurately across Tukurash’s back. The orc marine whimpered. Varimnak nodded admiringly.

“
You’re
supposed to torture the prisoners!” Ashnak exclaimed, affronted. “Damn it, they’re not supposed to torture
you
!”

Varimnak put her muscular arm around the female elf’s sweating shoulders. “You do it your way, General. We’ll do it ours.”

Ashnak opened his mouth, and after some thought he closed it again and shut the guard-room door behind him as he left. Shaking his head, he strode back up through the tower towards the command post. He gathered himself together enough to order further preparations for the pre-dawn attack, speak with his sub-commanders, and set basic strategy and tactics before entering his inner office.

The female halfling sat waiting for him in a torn robe.

“Now, my prisoner…”

Ashnak reached down and took Magda Brandiman’s hand, drawing her through into the inner chamber. He closed the door. Starlight illuminated the bare room and his camp bed.

Her hand, tiny in his, felt hot and dry. Ashnak seated himself on the edge of the camp bed and drew her to him between his thighs. She freed her hand. The starlight profiled her sharp face, easing the lines of age, gleaming from her short hair.

She cupped the orc’s face in her hands, drawing her fingers across his rough, horny cheeks; catching the lobes of his pointed ears between fingers and thumbs and nipping. She drew his head forward, kissing the corner of his mouth, darting her tongue between his wide, thin lips.

Ashnak made a sound, half groan and half sigh, and fell back on the bed. It creaked. Magda Brandiman sprawled across his chest and body, small legs straddling him, muttering under her breath as she winced, bruising her hands against webbing, water bottle, and flak jacket. She stripped him impatiently until they lay in a bed full of military equipment, bruising knees and elbows.

He put his hands around her body, so small that he could encompass her waist with ease. Her skin like finest chamois leather rippled under his fingers, and the soft hair on her feet tickled his thighs. She grunted, at first sitting up, and then easing herself down on his erection, gradually taking more than seemed possible and rocking in the starlight, silver-limned, her eyes half shut, her face smiling.