Grunts (39 page)

Between him and the fort, nothing else moved but bugs.

A cold sensation flooded his back. The orc raised his head again. A Kalashnikov lay beside him, magazine still in place. Blood covered the bolt, wet and sticky. Arakingu lay on her back two yards away, helmet fallen from her bald head, her brains hanging out in a green glob. Barashkukor began to reach for the rifle.

The hissing came from the headset, still jammed into his long spindly ears.

The bug’s shadow fell across him.

“This is…Major Barashkukor…calling Graagryk. Over.”

“
Graagryk receiving. Your signal’s breaking up, Major. What’s the situation on the ground? Over
.”

The insectoid thing’s clawed forelimbs rummaged in the rubbery organs under its body. They came out clasping an angular, long shape. Barashkukor squinted sand-blasted eyes. Stock, receiver, barrel…

The insectoid being stood over him, a chitin-and-metal replica of an M16 held in its claws. The orc in shocked amazement gazed up at alien organs that might replicate weapons, his small, heavy jaw hanging open. Dizzily, he thought,
But I suppose they had Corporal Uzkaddit to copy from
.

It raised its forelimbs and pointed the organic weapon into the desert, pulling the replica trigger.

FOOM!

Shrapnel ricocheted.

“
Graagryk calling Barashkukor! Major, give me a sit rep, now!
”

A different voice. Ashnak’s familiar bass rumble, fading with the satellite’s struggle to keep the link open. Barashkukor’s mouth widened and he showed small fangs in a tired grin.

“General, I am receiving you…Foreign hostiles; eight seen; no mage-power; chameleon technology possible…” He breathed harshly. “Some kind of giant bugs, General. They followed us last night, took the patrols this morning. We couldn’t pull out…Man, we just got our asses kicked…!”

The muzzle of the organic weapon swept down, turning, aiming towards Barashkukor.

The coldness flooding his back, soaking his marine uniform jacket, was petrol.

“
Barashkukor are you receiving me? We have target-acquisition. ETA bombers twenty-five minutes. Vacate the area!
” And then, lost in static, “
Barashkukor, for fuck’s sake get your skinny little ass out of there!
”

Heat shimmered up from the rock of the Endless Desert, evaporating the fuel. Silence hung over the fort. From that distance Barashkukor could hear the chewing of mandibles over the unanswered hissing of the radio. The bug stood with its centaur-legs straddling him. He could move nothing but his arms.

While he could still feel the chill of petrol soaking
through to his skinny back, and before the state of shock wore off to let him feel the pain of amputation, Major Barashkukor of the orc marines took the Kalashnikov in a two-handed grip, pointed the muzzle up at the belly of the bug, flipped the fire-selector to fully automatic, and squeezed the trigger.

“Bugging out, General!”

The muzzle flash ignited the spilled fuel.

Graagryk’s military airfield sweated under midsummer sun.

Ashnak flattened his peaked ears against the blast of the cold-drake’s wings as the beast took off, heading back south at a considerable rate.

“Working for the
Dark Lord
again?” Behind her round wire-rimmed spectacles, the newly arrived Commissar Razitshakra narrowed her eyes. “But, sir—are you certain He’s ideologically sound? After all, He’s a civilian.”

The orc general made no reply to this impertinence. City living can make an orc soft. Marine Commissar Razitshakra began to eye the married Duke Ashnak with suspicion as he examined closely the fragment of black substance enclosed in a plastic envelope that she handed to him.

“I wonder, sir,” she ventured, “if
that
has anything to do with what the late Major Barashkukor reported?”

Without looking up, Ashnak absently drew back his fist and drove it forward.

The orc commissar picked herself up off the hard earth and wiped a trickle of green from her jaw. She spoke approvingly, if somewhat indistinctly. “Good to see you’re still a marine, General Ashnak!”

“That’s ‘Field Marshal Ashnak’ to you,” Ashnak snarled.

The heavy
whup-whup
of a Chinook sounded. The big orc looked up as the troop-carrier touched down. Beyond the airfield the candy-bright colours of Graagryk city gleamed, scoured clean by magery, with never a plume of smoke from the factories lining the Inland Sea coast. Three APCs also approached, crossing the field.

A Hind touched down fifty yards away, rotors whipping over its two stubby wings, and rocket and gun-pods.

Ashnak thumbed the RT stud in his kevlar helmet. “Chahkamnit, I’m gonna want a rapid dust-off. On my word: count of five:
mark
.”

The twin-rotored troop-carrier thundered, standing on the
flattened grass. A platoon of orc marines left the APCs and doubled across the field towards it.

Two figures followed them, more slowly, and where those walked, shadow haunted the grass. Graagryk did not question their going. Could not notice it, save as the withdrawal of a nightmare not remembered on waking.

“Have your report complete by the time we land at Ferenzia, Commissar,” Ashnak ordered. “I’ll listen to it there.”

The orc, sweating in her heavy greatcoat, stared across the Graagryk landing field at the approaching figures.

“Sir, I can’t approve the presence of non-orcish civilians on military transport! It isn’t wise during the present crisis. Orc lips make slips—”

Ashnak swung his head around and displayed a grin so full of teeth that the marine commissar saluted twice and made for the Chinook on the double. Ashnak waited, the Hind’s rotor-blast whipping the material of his camouflage trousers, GI pot pulled down over his beetling brows, pipe-weed cigar in one corner of his mouth. The heavy flak jacket made him sweat.

“Field Marshal.” The nameless necromancer greeted Ashnak silkily. The slender, handsome Man wrinkled his ascetic features at the peculiarly pungent smell of hot orc and fanned himself with his Man-skin fan. “You
are
ready to transport the Dark Lord to Ferenzia, I trust?”

The sashed leather robes of the necromancer and his waist-length black hair fluttered in the rotor-blast from the helicopter gunship. The Dark Lord’s fine mesh robe did not stir. The winds did not disturb Her glossy yellow hair. The heat did not spring sweat from Her piebald skin.

“We go to Ferenzia in peace,” She said clearly. “I will have no fighting, Field Marshal Ashnak. Neither there nor here. My servant the nameless necromancer will remain here as My regent. Your marines are to obey him as they would obey Me.”

Ashnak saluted. “Of course, Dread Lord, Ma’am. Naturally.”

She turned her back on the nameless necromancer and walked towards the Hind, barefoot on grass that withered under Her feet. Ashnak followed, webbing clanking with grenades, magazines, and his shoulder-slung M16.

“Diplomacy, little Ashnak. Peace.” Her upward-tilting,
rheumy eye-sockets glowed with a certain fiery amusement. Her small tusks lifted Her turned-back lip, and a trickle of saliva slid down Her chin. Without bothering to wipe it, She said, “There is one thing more before I leave.”

She did not raise Her voice, but it carried over the mechanised roar of the Chinook’s takeoff as they approached the Hind. The smell of hot metal and oil filled the air. Ashnak chewed his cigar and tightened his webbing. RT traffic whispered in his headset.

“I think your orc marines will trouble My creature the nameless.”

“No, great Sable Lord,” Ashnak protested.

“I will make him a more suitable commander for them.” Her eyes laughed, and momentarily flashed green: the Paladin of the Light looking out from Her face in panic. The glimpse of the trapped soul vanished. “When this body was otherwise, it once said, ‘He wears my virtue, unearned, on his face, as I wear the ugliness of his sin on my body.’”

The Lord of Night and Silence held out Her arms, gazing down at Her borrowed body as they came to the Hind. Looking up into the belly of the machine, She asked, “Am I ugly, as Men conceive it? Possibly. I will not be laughed at, Ashnak, in Ferenzia.”

“Think You’re a damned handsome woman, myself, Dread Lord,” Ashnak said gallantly. “We’re cleared for takeoff, so if—”

“
Brother, take your shape again!
”

She raised Her blank orange gaze. Piebald black and grey withdrew, tidally, leaving skin of a pinkish-cream. Soft blond lashes lay over down-softened cheeks. Her long eyes were now level and wide-set, under gull-wing brows, and Her lips curved lusciously bronze over small, even teeth.

“Very nice, Ma’am,” Ashnak said unenthusiastically.

A high, wavering, and prolonged shriek sounded from the far side of the airfield.

“Come!” The Dark Lord clapped Ashnak on the shoulder with that Virtue-augmented strength that had staggered the orc in a small church in a northern village. Ashnak glanced up at the bubble-glass cabin and Lieutenant Chahkamnit.

“Cleared to go!” Ashnak handed the Dark Lord a helmet and headset, helping Her into the armoured body of the machine.

She buckled the helmet down over Her blond hair. Lieutenant
Chahkamnit, glancing across, took the full benefit of glowing orange eye-sockets, sat rigidly forward in his pilot’s seat, and began flight-checks with a concentration that nothing short of air-to-air missile fire could have disturbed.

“I’ll ride gunner.” Ashnak climbed in behind the lanky black orc lieutenant, who was wearing a bomber jacket and a close-fitting leather flying helmet and goggles. Chahkamnit pushed foot pedals and pulled levers, and the troop-carrier lifted with an earsplitting roar.

“
My creature Ashnak
.” The Sable Lord’s voice sounded over the headset.

“
Yes, Dark Lord?
” Ashnak watched Graagryk dwindle to toy houses; agricultural patterns, pastel shapes on the Inland Sea’s coast. The Hind drove nose-down, due south.

“
I will
not
have My peace negotiations disturbed. There must be no brushfire wars on the Southern Kingdoms’ borders. What has happened to your major who reported from Gyzrathrani?
”

Chahkamnit glanced at his superior officer, who remained silent.

“
The last we heard, Dread Lord, he’d got a little hot under the collar
,” the second lieutenant transmitted. “
Jolly rotten show, I say. But he was a marine—at least he went out with a bang
.”

The solid vibration of ’copter flight reverberated through Ashnak. The big orc waited until the Dark Lord either slept or (more likely) achieved some interior trance of Her own; then he flicked to a separate wavelength.

“
Lieutenant Chahkamnit, you heard the Dark Lord. No fighting around Ferenzia. There are no orc marine units giving unofficial fire support to the deserters, mercenaries, and bandits on the Ferenzi borders—are there? Especially not where Herself is going to land. See to it, Chahkamnit
.”

“
Oh, I say, sir! How am I supposed to do that?
”

“
Contact our ground forces there and tell them to move the battle!
”

“
Move a battle, sir?
” the orc lieutenant demanded. “
How do you move
a battle?”

“
I don’t care. Just do it!
”

Chahkamnit raised the ground forces north of Ferenzia. “
Right, lads
,” he directed lugubriously. “
Shoot faster
…”

Sun reflected from the curving glass canopy. Ashnak pulled the visor of his flight helmet down over his porcine
eyes, polarising the light. When he woke, the country below stretched out widely, much wider than the Northern Kingdoms’ mountain-ridden patches of fertile land. Forested hills rolled out to a distant horizon, interspersed with strip-fields, grazing lands, castles built on high peaks, and wide, slow rivers. A blazing sun bleached the colour from the ripening corn.

Due south, the sprawling suburbs of Ferenzia stretched towards the great lakes.

“
I say, sir, contact ahead—the Ferenzi must have spotted us coming. Pretty good for them, isn’t it, what?
”

Ashnak cast a disillusioned eye at the sky. Circling dots, higher than the Hind, were vultures. Lower, on the helicopter’s flight level, twin giant eagles flew figure-eights over the spires and towers of the mighty city.

“
Door gunners
,” Ashnak checked.

“
Yo, sir!
”

The Dark Lord’s voice said, “
I have been watching them for some time now. They are two of Ferenzia’s most potent Mages of the Light
.”

Chahkamnit squinted into the sun. “
Really, Ma’am? How can You tell?
”

The Dark Lord said, “
The vultures are—have always been—My eyes
.”

Ashnak winced.

The soft voice in his helmet continued, “
It is quite like the old days, watching orcs scurry about. I found that mountain siege quite gripping to watch. And I will not blame you for beginning wars when you did not know of My survival, and therefore could not know My wishes in the matter, and I have been most amused to watch you try to conceal your actions. However, the joke is over. Nothing must interfere with what I do now
.”

It took the orc field marshal two fumbled attempts before he reached the commander of the ground forces on the Ferenzi border and convinced him of both his authority and his orders.

The Mages of the Light circled above the city.

“
Speak with them, Ashnak
,” the Dark Lord commanded. “
I will ensure, by My power, that you are heard
.”

The orc cleared his throat and spat between his feet. Phlegm spattered the foot pedals. Five hundred feet below
his boots, Ferenzia’s blue-tiled roofs cast mid-afternoon shadows into the streets, clear and precise.

“
This is Field Marshal Ashnak, Orc Marine Command, calling Mages of the Light
.”

Thin, magical voices whispered in the hot cabin, vibrating through the talisman-protected metal. “Vile creature of Darkness! Your hideous engine does not hide our Great Enemy from our eyes. Surrender yourself. Give Him up to our justice, and we may spare you!”