Grunts (33 page)

Two marines flanked him: hulking granite-skinned orcs stripped down to brown and ochre desert camouflage fatigue trousers, belt-magazines of .50-calibre ammunition draped across their brawny chests. The equatorial sun of Gyzrathrani beat down on their kevlar helmets and M16s.

Between them, standing some three feet six inches tall, the orc with spindly ears crammed down under a black Stetson tugged on his black leather gloves, flicked the last grain of desert sand from his dress-issue black combats, and adjusted a pair of mirrorshade Ray·Bans more firmly on his small snout.

He stepped up onto an ammunition crate placed on top of the podium.

“Gentlemen: good morning!”

He tapped the stand-microphone mounted on the podium with one neatly trimmed talon. The microphone squealed. The sound echoed around the palm trees, honey-glazed bricks, and beehive-buildings of Gyzrathrani. Several of the assembled warlords—Mannish warriors with plumed headdresses and long robes—drew back, their tasseled spears raised, until one called, “It’s only magic!” and another added, “And not strong magic, neither!”

From slit windows in the tall beehive-shaped buildings,
the eyes of Gyzrathrani’s sequestered male Men watched. Distant giggles were just audible.

“I am your sales-orc, marine Major Barashkukor,” the short orc announced. “The demonstration you ordered will begin in just one moment.”

Barashkukor hastily checked his squad, assembled on the cobbles below the podium. Noon’s shadows pooled under the soft-top army lorry; light and heat slammed up from the earth. The twelve orc marines in brown-and-ochre desert camouflage fatigues rapidly unloaded a vast heap of crates, boxes, and steel cases from the truck.

“We here from Marine Sales and Services,” Major Barashkukor continued pleasantly, “are pleased to welcome the warriors of—of the fine city of—of the excellent city of—”

“Gyzrathrani!” the orc corporal beside him hissed.

“—Gyzrathrani,” Barashkukor finished, “to one of our private sales demonstrations. All right, you orcs, move it!”

The two orc corporals left the podium and descended into the crowd. The tall, brightly robed warriors, bored, barely moved aside to let the marines pass.

“My assistants,” the major continued, pulling at one ear and twisting it into corkscrews around his skinny finger, “will demonstrate the weaponry available. But first let me tell you a little about ourselves.”

In the square, a team of four orcs held up Kalashnikovs over their heads, then held up the curved magazines, and, in unison, fitted the one to the other.

“We are the Orc Marine Armaments Company.” Barashkukor drew himself up proudly. “Orc marines have been providing the most sophisticated infantry, tank, and air-war systems and services to discerning customers for, oh, it must be…over six months now.
We
counter threats to
your
security!”

“Fully automatic—
fire
!” the orc corporal shouted. The fire team raised their Kalashnikovs to leathery, brawny shoulders and squeezed the triggers.

Dakka-dakka-dakka-FOOM!

Shrapnelled brick flew across the main square, causing Gyzrathrani’s warriors to throw up their hands and mutter spells of protection. Screams sounded as these failed. The warriors stared up at the craters gouged across the glazed brick walls of their beehive-shaped buildings.

“Our reputation,” Major Barashkukor continued obliviously, “comes from our inventive product line and superb engineering. The orc marines are the recognised leaders in the field of anti-terrorism, security-protection, and general all-out firepower.”

The orc marines bustled around the truck and came up with what appeared to be clusters of steel tubes on their shoulders. The corporal swivelled his heavy-jawed head, surveying the square, and pointed a gnarled finger at the tallest of the beehive-buildings. “Target thirty metres, ten o’clock, high, one round, fire!”

FOOOMMM!

“We are particularly proud—” Barashkukor absently brushed brick-dust from the sleeve of his combats. “—of our infantry-fired missile systems. We are fully aware of all of our clients’ varied needs, and our experience in serving kingdoms, duchies, war-bands, empires, and independent city-states makes us ideally suited to inform you about our multiple enforcement-systems.”

The two veteran orc corporals below the podium exchanged glances, mouthed “
What’s
’e say?”, and shrugged.

Smoke and dust blanketed the main square, obscuring the blue sky. A heap of rubble now blocked the narrow streets on the west side, cascading down from the shattered building. The warriors of Gyzrathrani, retreating to the striped awnings and palm trees at the sides of the square, began to stamp their feet and chant a rhythmical desert magic.

“Should you purchase our systems,” the orc major continued, “they come complete with orc marine cadre troops who will train you in their use, advise you on tactics and strategy, provide a secondary command-structure, and—”

KER-FOOM!

“We are also proud…” Barashkukor removed his hat and took off his Ray·Bans. He surveyed the shrapnel-fragment embedded in the Stetson’s crown, shrugged, and put his hat back on. He slitted his tilted eyes against the towering column of black smoke and orange flame that now blocked the eastern streets of Gyzrathrani. “Also proud, I may say, of our antitank weaponry. Gentlemen, our weapons-systems have the advantage of being entirely impervious to hostile acts of magery—”

Spear raised, screaming, a warrior-wage of Gyzrathrani charged the podium. Her face contorting, she screamed powerful
spells and curses. The orc corporal raised his M16, sighted, and shot her between the eyes. The body’s momentum carried it forward to thud against the portable podium, just under the banner that read
Orc Marine Armaments Company—Our Business Is Killing People
.

“Entirely impervious to magery—where was I? Ah, yes.” Barashkukor beamed across the square in the general direction of those warriors who had taken cover inside buildings. He turned the volume of the microphone up.

“Our weaponry has a further advantage over magic, gentlemen, in that magic, while doubtless superior, takes decades of training; and our weaponry, while possibly inferior to planetary-level strategic magery, can be used after the standard twelve-week marine training course. I’m sure you can see the advantages when it comes to mounting a snap-decision campaign or responding to unprovoked retaliation.”

The orc marine squad, at the double, produced a small metal trailer upon which sat a pointed steel cylinder. Seeing this, the robed and spear-carrying warriors of Gyzrathrani frantically increased their mage-chants.

“That building
there
!” the corporal cried, with the expression of an orc who enjoys his work. “Take it out!”

BOOOOOMM!

“Way to go!”

Barashkukor coughed brick-dust from his throat. In the silence, warriors crept out from under fallen palm trees and from behind walls, their exit cut off by the collapsed buildings to the north of the square and the orc marine podium in the south.

“Warriors of Gyzrathrani!” Barashkukor pointed expansively at the crates still on the truck. “Now that you have seen some of our top-of-the-line equipment, let me introduce you to some of the less budget-straining secondhand equipment we can provide. Now, this job lot of M16 assault rifles with M203 grenade-launchers, we ourselves bought back from the Syannis—as you know, the Syannis tribe campaigns only one month in every twenty-five, for religious reasons, so I think I can safely say that we are offering this bargain lot in as-new condition…What am I bid?”

Bidding was brisk.

Later, with the truck and support vehicles on the road to the next settlement, Major Barashkukor relaxed in his staff car as they jolted south. The steel lockbox was heavy with
silver ingots and copper bangles. His wide nostrils flared to the smell of hot metal and oil, and he sighed with pleasure.

“Only two more settlements. Be good to finish this tour of duty,” he remarked. “Don’t you think so, Corporal?”

Orc Corporal Uzkaddit, his regular driver, shrugged shoulders muscled like boulders and grinned. “It has its good points, sir.”

“I suppose it does.” The small orc sighed. “But I miss the dear old barracks back home in Graagryk…”

Outpacing the three marine guards at his heels, Ashnak ploughed through the door into the anteroom of his office.

Suddenly the sweetness of decomposing flesh filled Ashnak’s hairy nostrils. A sickly chill shivered across his leathery hide. With a creaking squelch, a tall figure lurched up from behind the office desk.

Its rotting uniform might once have belonged to an orc marine. The black combat trousers and woollen pullover with epaulets were white with mould and hung in tatters. Albino flesh, dried and mummified, still clung to the skeletal figure looming up over Ashnak. Two mucus-white eyeballs swivelled in their sockets. The sun glinted on its bare ribs and flesh-stripped arm as the partly decomposed orc corpse saluted.

“Ssssir…”

“Lieutenant Lugashaldim.” Ashnak ignored the salute and seized his Undead officer by the front of his rotting Special Forces pullover. “We get a visitor you can’t handle, so you haul me out of the goddamn Orcball
finals
to deal with it—your ass is grass, soldier!”

It is always tempting to reprimand the Special Undead Services marines for insolence.

“Sssir, the SUS can’t act against him; we need you here!”

Ashnak dropped Lugashaldim, hitched up his webbing, which strained to encompass his huge orc’s body, and drew his sidearm. The Desert Eagle pistol all but vanished in his gnarled hand. He snapped his talons at the three M16-carrying marines. “That door, forcible entry,
now.
”

The first marine rapidly crossed to the far side of the inner office door. His partner flattened herself against the wall on the near side, weapon raised. At a nod from the other two marines, the first orc kicked the door open, the third charged
in, M16 aimed, and his hoarse voice bawled, “
Freeze, motherfucker!
”

Ashnak, still holding the pistol, shouldered his way into the inner office. The hot Graagryk sun shone in on wall-maps, partly disassembled weapons, manuals and textbooks of strategy, map-tables, field-telephones, a heavy typewriter, and the vast stone desk transported down (with no little difficulty) over the four hundred miles of terrain called the Spine that lies between the Nin-Edin Marine Base in the Demonfest Mountains and Graagryk.

A figure sat behind the desk.

“Shall I blow the mother away, sir?” The orc marine who had been acting as first doorman raised the M16 to his shoulder.

The temperature in the room plummeted. It grew so cold that the moisture covering Ashnak’s eyeballs froze. He rumbled a deep chuckle down in his chest, threw one camouflage-covered leg up on the corner of his own desk, sat, took out a thick pipe-weed cigar, and shoved it in the corner of his tusked mouth.

“Out!” he growled. “Lugashaldim, you too. Stay on guard outside. Move it, fuckheads!”

“Sir, yes sir!”

The clatter of orc marine boots was punctuated by the slam of the office door. Ashnak shifted his huge bulk to a more comfortable position, struck his talon against the stone desk to create a spark, and sucked deeply on the glowing cigar.

Rime-frost dripped from window-ledges, the edge of the desk, and the chair in which the seated figure sprawled. Ashnak slitted his long eyes against the window’s sunlight.

“
We
were at the Last Battle,” he growled. “Where the fuck were
you
?”

The nameless necromancer laughed.

He lounged in the carved chair, a tall Man with black hair fastened in a silver ring at the nape of his neck. Through the sash of his long robe was stuck a flute, the brown colour of old bone, about the length of a halfling’s thigh. The nameless necromancer fanned himself languidly with a war-fan, the struts of which had the sheen of dragonbone, and the folds the suspicious fineness of tanned Man skin.

“My creature grows insolent.” His voice set up echoes in the bones of Ashnak’s skull, and his green-eyed gaze bored
into the orc’s eyes. “My creature will be punished, unless he submits and pays me the proper respect.”

His patchwork robe of fine multicoloured leather was sewn with silver thread. The shapes of the patches were not, to anyone with a field-knowledge of anatomy, reassuring.

Ashnak drew deep on his pipe-weed and blew a plume of smoke towards the nameless necromancer. With his free hand he thumbed back the hammer of the Desert Eagle pistol.

“
Respect my ass!
”

The nameless necromancer’s aquiline features tautened. A red spark burned deep in his black pupils. “You will feel, slave, the wrath of the necromancer. Is that your wish?”

Ashnak bared his brass-capped fangs. “Whaddaya want me to do, bang my head on the floor and beg for mercy? Things have
changed
around here.”

It became obvious that, wherever the nameless necromancer had spent the twelve months since the Last Battle, it had not been far enough away that rumours of the orc marines had not reached him. His chin and his fine-featured face lifted as he brayed a laugh.

“Oh, very good. Very good! You must forgive me if I attempt to put our relationship back on its old footing. But I think very fondly of old times. Don’t you?”

“Can’t say as how I do,” Ashnak rumbled. He switched the cigar to the other corner of his heavy-jawed mouth. “Dammit, you deserted the orc marines at the Last Battle!”

“But my sister The Named did not ride against you.”

“Thought you’d have robes made out of grey-and-white skin if you ever turned up again—maybe with yellow hair fringes. The Named never stood much chance against you.” Ashnak kept the pistol’s muzzle steadily on the nameless’s chest.

“You may spare yourself the trouble, Captain—and the ammunition.” The temperature in the office continued to drop. Sun glinted off icicles hanging from the cupboards and from Ashnak’s boots. From the anteroom came the ululating howl of an Undead orc marine officer in pain.