Grunts

1

It is Samhain. The Autumn Solstice, the Day of Dead Souls. The fate of the free world hangs in the balance.

The Final Battle of the Army of Light against the Horde of Darkness seethes backwards across the vast plain that chroniclers call the Fields of Destruction.

Squadrons of black-armoured orcs and wolverine-riding trolls, battalions of fire-demons and mutant ogres, companies of evil djinni, cacodaemons and dark elves, armies of witch-queens, and the thirteen necromancers of the Horde of Darkness, raven against the outnumbered Army of Light. Jagged swords, warhammers, and poleaxes bloodily rise and fall. Battalions of mutant monsters lumber into the carnage. Leather-winged beasts swoop down over the pitifully outnumbered forces of Good.

Vast is the Horde. Its sorcery crackles like black lightning around the horizon; it eclipses the sun at noon.

For the third time since midday, the right flank of the Evil Horde began piecemeal to retreat.

A voice yelped, “Hold the line!”

An evil ogre stood with his spiked helm firmly down over his brows, shield up, his warhammer poised over his head in fierce attack-posture.

“I said hold the line, soldier!” A small and oddly dressed orc loped down the hill from the ridge. The ogre’s brows contracted in confusion.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the newcomer snarled. He stood hip-high to the evil ogre, who looked down in puzzlement at the mottled green patterns on the orc’s round, visorless helmet, and breeches and padded jerkins. The small orc wore boots.

“I am holding the line. I’m facing the enemy,” the unwounded ogre explained. He blinked rapidly. “They won’t get past me! I’m holding the line all right.”

The small orc pulled off his helmet and threw it furiously to the ground. It bounced. The orc’s spindly, peaked ears began to unkink.

“You’re facing the enemy all right—from twenty yards behind our lines!” The orc used both hands to wave a snubbed metallic tube at the evil ogre. “Of course they won’t get past you, you snivelling excuse for a soldier. They’re way over there!”

“For the Lady of Light!” a lone heroic voice trumpeted, and a knight in impractically ornamented golden armour charged into a band of Undead, two hundred strong, over there. Magic seared the earth. Two hundred Undead fell at the stroke of the enchanted blade. The golden knight charged an even larger band of trolls.

The evil ogre pointed across the Fields of Destruction. “But, but, but—they got magic!”

“I don’t want to hear it! Now get into the fucking fighting line. Move it asshole!”

The small orc reached up, grabbed the ogre by the hem of his mail-shirt, and threw him bodily forward. The ogre, terminally startled, lumbered into battle. The small orc recovered his odd helmet, jammed it on his head, and doubled back along the rear of the line-fight towards the next reluctant warrior.

The ogre heard him mutter as he went, “I don’t know what the Dark Horde is coming too…”

An Undead barbarian warrior smashed desperately at a dwarf’s Virtue-enchanted helm before speaking to the ogre, now the next to him in the fighting line. “Who was that? What was that?”

“I don’t know. I do know one thing.” The ogre hacked tentatively at the Army of Light, still outnumbered, but now indisputably advancing. “I do know that the day is not ours.”

On the far side of the wooded ridge, Ashnak, general officer commanding the orc marines, shoved his urban-camouflaged GI helmet back on his misshapen skull and focussed his binoculars. The eddies and tides of the battle beat against the orc marine company, holding the right of the line.

A halfling Paladin strode up the slope towards him at the head of a band of Men.

“Fear not!” Her smiling confidence echoed across the field. “My virtue is such that I have never yet even had to draw my sword in anger—see, its peace-threads still bind it into the scabbard! Follow me!”

Farther down the line, an orc marine grinned broadly. Ashnak saw her sight the M16 she carried on the halfling’s elf silver mail-shirt.

SPLOOM!

Ashnak blinked gold and vermillion sparkles of Light magic out of his vision. A crater smoked where the grunt had been. Overhead, an eagle-mage soared away.

The halfling Paladin strode up the hill, oblivious. “Onward!”

“Take her out.” Ashnak glared at the halfling’s ostentatiously empty hands. “Take her out!”

An orc mortar team ran forward. The pair of grunts squatted, aimed, dropped in the missile—

SPLOOOOM!

Pieces of mortar rained down around Ashnak’s ears. He thoughtfully picked a green, sticky scrap of camouflage material off his boot and eyed the approaching band of Good warriors.

The halfling took off her helm, brown curls ruffling in the breeze, and turned her head to gaze back at her followers as she strode on up the hill. “Follow me, Men! Into the atta—awk!”

The armoured figure vanished. Ashnak raised his binos. Tracking along a fallen log, he came to where the Paladin sprawled over it, bright leg-harness at an unusual angle.

“Assistance!” the halfling Paladin called. “My leg is broke! Succour me before the forces of Evil attack!”

One orc marine beside Ashnak started to lift his antitank weapon, glanced suspiciously at the sky and the battlefield, and lowered it again. “Er…sir…”

There was a sudden burning sensation on Ashnak’s chest. He glanced down. Fiery worms of blue light threaded through his combat jacket and kevlar armour. He slapped at them, wincing, and saw a company of the Light’s mages moving in towards the foot of the ridge.

“Ashnak,” he radioed. “Marine standard-bearer to me now; out. Company Sergeant Marukka, get your platoon to pull back to me and regroup in the wood; over.”

“Marruka to General Ashnak, orders received, sah! Out.”

Booted orc feet pounded the earth. A tall, skinny orc in green DPM combat trousers and flak jacket loped along the foot of the wooded ridge towards Ashnak. Over one shoulder he carried a tall pole ornamented with Man-skulls, from which flew the tattered and magic-blackened marine flag.

“Ugarit is here, sir, General, sir!”

“Very good, marine.” Ashnak felt in his combat trouser pockets and extracted a roll of pipe-weed, which he jammed in the corner of his tusked mouth, unlit. “Stick with me, soldier. Right beside me. Or I’ll feed you your own fingers, one by one.”

The skinny orc saluted three or four times in rapid, terrified succession. “Yessir! I will, sir! Count on me, sir!”

“Company Sergeant Marukka to General Ashnak, we’re pulling back and letting the witch regiment take the brunt, sir. We are rejoining the main company on the ridge. Out.”

Orcs pounded back up the hill in flawless, disciplined order, falling into cover in the wood. Ashnak glimpsed urban camouflage and a horse-tail plume of orange hair. “I see you, Sergeant. Hold you position. Out.”

He hitched up his DPM combat trousers, sweating in the autumn chill, and pounded up the hill, Ugarit at his heels. Blood and flesh—none of it orcish—crusted his combat boots and reddened the black-and-grey fabric of his trousers to his bowed knees. Pistol and sheathed sword jolted, hanging heavy from his web-belt. He snatched air into his heaving lungs and narrowed his beetle-browed eyes.

“Sir, General Ashnak, sir!” A small orc pushed through the undergrowth, tugged his flak jacket straight, and snapped a smart salute, panting. “I keep putting the Horde back in the line, sir, but they won’t stay there.”

“Send another runner to Horde Command, Captain Barashkukor. We need Dark mages on this flank. We must have sorcerous support!”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Dumb motherfuckers!” Ashnak snarled. “If we don’t get some magical firepower over here, this flank will never hold.”

The lightning-strikes of Light’s magical discharges coloured the air aquamarine, vermillion, and gold. Sorcery went up in black plumes against the blue noonday sky. The shouting, spellcasting, and the clash of weapons must have echoed as far as the coast and Herethlion’s deserted streets. Ashnak spat, and thumbed his radio’s helmet-stud.

“Marines are never defeated!” he snarled.

A tinny, loud response echoed through from the four hundred orc grunts in the wood:

“SIR, NO SIR!”

“Barashkukor, did you pass my message on to the other Horde Commanders?”

“Sir, I did. No one knows where the nameless necromancer is. Even the Dark Lord doesn’t know, and He isn’t too pleased about that, sir.”

The big orc shook his tusked head cynically. “So our nameless commander’s gone missing. What a surprise, Captain. Where is the orc marines’ fearless patron? Where, indeed.”

“His sister The Named hasn’t been seen fighting for the Light, though, sir.”

“I suppose we should be thankful for that. Too much damn magic here as it is.”

In the battle’s centre, to Ashnak’s left, the infantry line-fight swayed—heroic bright uniforms, white shining armour, the rise and fall of enchanted blades. Trolls crushed skulls, witches cackled and transmuted their enemies to bloody offal, before falling to the Light’s magery. Blue fire-worms faded from Ashnak’s flesh. He wondered briefly if that meant that the enemy wizard battalions were having problems with the other flank of the battle; he wondered too why there was never a magic-sniffer around when you needed one…

At the foot of the ridge, a band of elven cavalry wheeled their horned mounts and charged up the slope towards the woods, firing short recurved bows as they came. Sunlight glinted from the unicorns’ spiral horns and from the elven mail.

Ashnak bellowed: “Heavy weapon fifty yards general targets fire!”

An orc squad on the far right opened up, raking the elves with Maxim guns.

“Captain Barashkukor, tell the drummers to signal Fire at will!”

A ragged cheer went down the line. Ashnak bared his fangs in a smile. He thumbed the RT. “All marine troops go over to primary weapons, repeat, all marine troops use primary weapons.”

He unslung an M60 machinegun from his back. With his standard-bearer close behind, he pushed into a gap between squads at the woods’ edge, cocked the weapon, and the stuttering roar of a firefight broke out. Grenades exploded, throwing up showers of dirt and meat. Cordite smoke obscured the battle. The orc squads around him fired on automatic, M16 and AK47 muzzles jabbing flame. The boom! and crack! of fire hurt his ears until they bled.

“Suck on that, motherfuckers!” Ashnak lifted his machinegun and fired again, emptying the magazine.

Hooves cut the turf as elvish cavalry pounded up the ridge towards him. Ashnak dropped to one knee, thumbed the magazine-release, and slid a full magazine in. The arrow-storm fell around him. Eighty jewelled riders: bright swords raised, banners flying, spurring their unicorns’ flanks bloody. He saw their mouths open, could not hear the Light’s spells over the firefight.

“Gotta admire them dumbass heroes. But…”

Ashnak emptied his M60 into the front rank.

Unicorns and elves slammed into the earth. The banners of the Light dropped and fell, trampled. Broken-legged mounts screamed, struggling to rise. One mail-shirted elf got to her hands and knees, blonde hair falling over her almond eyes, and Ashnak let off a burst that ripped her into bloody shrapnel.

“Keep firing! We’re gonna take ’em!”

As he spoke, an enemy fail-weapons spell glanced across the ridge and the wood. All the automatic weapons coughed and fell silent; all the grenades failed to explode. The sudden quiet filled with the screaming of wounded unicorns.

“Where the fuck are our mages? Damn it, we could turn the battle here!”

“They’ve run!” The standard-bearer, Ugarit, fell to his knees and began to giggle hysterically.

Captain Barashkukor hit dirt beside Ashnak. “Dark magic-users were supposed to be protecting his flank, sir, but they pulled out.”

A rare breath of wind parted the smoke and magical flames. Ashnak stared out from the ridge, across the battlefield. The fight on his left between the Undead and their dwarvish opponents swayed backwards and forwards and broke, the Dark Undead falling back in confusion.

To Ashnak’s right, the Dark’s trolls turned their backs and ran from Men in full plate harness advancing across the Fields towards the orcs’ position, the shimmer of spellfire blazing from their armour.

“If we don’t hold ’em now, we’ve lost it!” Ashnak slapped the butt of his M60. “Captain, pass the word down to the NCOs: if these weapons fail, the marines are to go over to axe and hammer. We’ve done it before. We’re the fighting Agaku! Drums: signal the advance. Let’s go, marines. Go, go, go!”

Pounding the earth, boots slipping in blood and intestines, Ashnak loped down over the fallen bodies of the elvish cavalry. Exposed now, on open ground, the orc machines pounded forward.

“Chaarrge!” Ashnak bellowed, deep voice lost in the foundry-racket of fire.

A good part of the right flank of the Horde began suddenly to roll forward with the orcs.

SPLOOOOM!!

Momentum gone, Horde warriors dived for cover in the waving grass and found none.

“How do you like that? The bastards are running out on us!” a voice marvelled in Ashnak’s ear. Company Sergeant Marukka swung her shoulder-fired rocket-launcher around and pulled the trigger. The whump! of high explosive failed to materialise. “This ain’t no Horde general advance, sah! We’re marooned way out in front of the battle! The enemy are going to take us on both flanks!”

The armoured Men closed the distance, screaming into the fight. Ashnak wiped his brows, damp with the fine spray of blood that filled the air above the infantry line. The sky stood empty of all but the eclipsed sun. Black riders grouped on a distant ridge to the east. No sign of his runner; no word from Horde Command.

“We can hold without firearms—but the rest of them candyass bastards won’t!”

The smoke of magic hid the left flank now, and rolled across the centre of the battle, so that all he could hear were screams, battlecries. Longbow arrows began dropping from the sky, scattering the command group around him, and an orc NCO lifted his helmeted head to shout orders and dropped with a steel bolt through GI pot and skull. Another fail-weapons spell sparked from field to ridge. The reserve squads’ weapons stuttered and died.

“Son of a bitch!” Ashnak howled. He pounded his useless M60 into the weapons-strewn, bloodstained, corpse-littered turf. “Somebody take out the White Mages!”

“We’re going to die!” Corporal Ugarit crouched at the foot of the marine standard-pole, skinny shoulders shaking. His wide eyes fixed on the advancing Army of Light. “I’m going to die—they’re going to get me—I’m outta here—arrggh!”

Ashnak wiped green orc blood from the butt of the M60 as he kicked Ugarit to his feet. Pragmatic and prosaic, he said, “If anyone’s going to die at the Last Battle, trust me, it won’t be the orc marines!”

He thumbed his helmet RT.

“Okay, listen up! Ashnak to all section leaders. Form up on the standard, repeat, form up on my standard. We can’t retreat from this position, we’ll never make it. We’re going to fight straight through the enemy lines, and we’re not stopping for anything, got that? Once we’re past them, keep going. We’ll regroup at our emergency rendezvous point. Assholes and elbows, you motherfuckers, and remember that you’re the orc marines!”

There was a momentary silence. Then, amid yells of “Fix bayonets!”, the company seized their secondary weapons and plunged into the advancing line of armoured Men, wielding their spears, halberds, morningstars, and flails.

The smoke of battle hid them from sight.

All across the Fields of Destruction, the evil Horde of Darkness broke, ran, and routed in utter confusion.

“Ho, Amarynth!”

The squat figure of a dwarf made a black silhouette against the sunset. She plodded across the field, stout-booted feet trampling over the fallen bodies of tribal orcs wearing black plate-armour. Her red hair, tightly braided on the crown of her head, shone in the level golden light.

“Amarynth, you elven rogue!”

The elven fighter-mage leaned wearily against a boulder. Trolls and cacodaemons lay at his feet, his white-fletched arrows jutting from their eye-sockets and mouths. A great many more of the corpses surrounding the rock showed the burns of magic. “Kazra—is that you?”

“Of course it’s me,” the dwarf grumbled, wiping the back of her broad hand across her forehead. It came away green with orc blood, black with the ichor of daemons. Similar blood spattered her small, broad breastplate and arm defences. She held out the hand.

Amarynth gripped it with slender brown fingers. He then examined his hand in distaste, wiping it down his silken tunic. “I never thought I should be glad to see a dwarf! Kazra, well met. Well met, on this day of all great days!”

“It is a great day,” the dwarf said, “and a great victory, although I suppose I must give some of the credit to elves and Men. But we dwarves! How we fought!”

“Yes. There will be many a sad burning tonight at the funeral pyres. But we have won the great Victory of our Age. Evil is vanquished!”

The elven fighter-mage clapped the dwarf on the back, reaching down low to do it. Picking their way among the dead bodies of orcs, enchantresses, and ogres, the two warriors of Light made their way across the Fields of Destruction to a low ridge.

There, beyond the crows flocking down to settle on the field of battle, the countryside of the Northern Kingdoms stretched away in the sunset light. Gold touched the cornfields, the spires of distant villages, and the quiet, winding rivers.

“We shall go to Herethlion,” Amarynth said softly. “There will be much singing. The heroes shall be honoured. And the greatest of them all shall be rewarded by the High King Kelyos Magorian.”

Kazra snorted, resting on the haft of her axe. “And the High King Magorian had better appoint some of us to his Council, since who but we who fought for the Northern Kingdoms best know how to govern them? There is much that needs putting right, friend Amarynth. Traitors and Dark-lovers yet remain in hiding. We must search them out—with an inquisition, if need be.”

An unexpected and unaccustomed smile spread over Amarynth’s aquiline brown features. His black hair shone in the sun. The last vestiges of magic fractured in gold light in his eyes.

“Fear not, Kazra. We have vermin to root out, I doubt not, but we this day have created a world to last a thousand years! A world for the Light, in which no shadow of Darkness shall trouble us again.”

“And what of the scattered remnants of the defeated Evil Horde?”

“Oh,” Amarynth said, “they have nowhere to run to. We shall exterminate them over the next few weeks. After all, their Dark Master is dead and their Dark Land invaded. Where can they go, and what help can they hope for? Every good man’s hand is against them.”

The elven fighter-mage and the dwarf began to walk west, into the light of the setting sun. Kazra’s boot squelched. She swore an ancient dwarvish oath and bent down to tug her foot free of tangled white intestines spilling from the gutted body of a great orc. She cracked an orc-rib and freed her boot, muttering at the stench of decomposing flesh. Two fat cows waddled across the earth towards the corpse.

“To Herethlion!” Amarynth cried.

Kazra echoed him. “To Herethlion!”

Side by side they strode west, into a world of golden light.

The first beams of dawn shafted down through the branches of the Old Forest. Sunlight fell through ancient beech trees to the leaf-covered forest floor. Under spreading oaks, bracken turned autumnal red. Dew hung grey on spiderwebs.

A bird began to sing.

FOOM!

Amid falling feathers, Company Sergeant Marukka blew a drift of smoke from her Desert Eagle pistol and reholstered it.

“All right, you grunts—hands off cocks; on socks!”

Company Sergeant Marukka strolled down the lines of recumbent orc bodies, bellowing, kicking out with her combat boots. Black unit insignia and sergeant’s chevrons tattooed her muscular green arms. Over her squat body she wore a camouflage jacket with the sleeves ripped off and a black undershirt that strained over her large breasts. Knives, grenades, and pistols hung from her webbing. Her orange hair was pulled up into a skull-ornamented plume on the crown of her head.

“I can’t wait all da-ay…” Marukka sang sweetly. “On your feet, marines!”

Marukka turned and stood with her back to the largest beech tree, bowed legs planted wide apart, her gnarled hands clasped behind her back. The many orc grunts who had slept concealed in bracken began to stir, sitting up and rubbing their heads. One green-skinned orc absently stood up to piss. A boot emerged from the bush he had chosen as his target and kicked him across the clearing. There was a clatter of weapons and armour as he landed.

“You’re going to hate my guts,” Marukka announced, satisfied. “I’m here to see you get it right, not to wipe your scaly bums! I’ll leave that to your mothers—those of you assholes who had mothers. Even a mother couldn’t love a scurvy, filthy, undisciplined bunch of wankers like you. Am I right?”

Half on their feet, partly armoured, each with a weapon to hand, the assembled orcs hastily chorused, “Yes, Sergeant!”

“Then get your asses in gear, you ’orrible little orcs, or I’ll have your bollocks for breakfast! Corporals, get your ores on parade! At the double! Now!” Marukka paced forward, still with her hands behind her back. She kept a wary eye on the broken-down hovel that temporarily housed the company’s officers. hearing muttering voices inside. She surveyed the orcs in the slanting sunlight—some pissing up trees, some fastening combat jackets and trousers, some still slumped on the ground.

“You think because you’ve just been through the Last Battle, that excuses you? You shower of shit! You’re marines. You there—your weapons are filthy. You—your kit is incomplete. Smarten it up, you ’orrible little lot!”

“YES SERGEANT!”

One orc marine sat down again, clutching his bleeding arm. In the daylight, a number of marine injuries were visible.

“Fit marines to the right,” Marukka bawled, “and wounded marines to the left. Crawl if you have to.”

The company split raggedly, some three hundred or more orc marines moving to the right side of the clearing and perhaps thirty (more slowly) to the left.

Marukka’s lips curled back in a snarl. She walked up to the dozen marines who still stood in the centre of the clearing.

“So. Can’t make up our minds, can we? Not fit or wounded marines? Just what do you think you lot are, then?”

An albino orc drew himself more smartly to attention. “Please, Sergeant, dead marines.”

“What?”

Marukka goggled. The twelve orc marines fiddled with their tattered bloody combat fatigues, attempting to conceal gaping gut wounds and various fractures. A chill came off them that was not the chill of dawn.

“To be completely accurate, Undead marines, Sergeant. We was raised, Sergeant, by a necromancer of unknown provenance.”

“Ah. Well. Lugashaldim, isn’t it? Very well, Corporal Lugashaldim.” Marukka nodded to the albino orc briskly. “Undead marine squad—carry on.”

“Yes, Sergeant!” The Undead orc marine saluted. A finger detached itself from his hand and flew across the clearing, striking a female orc lance-corporal under the left ear. She growled.

Marukka about-faced and marched across to the small hovel in time to salute Barashkukor as the captain came out. “Beg to report the company is ready for General Ashnak’s inspection.”

“The general is ready to inspect!”

While Ashnak walked around on inspection, Marukka ordered her lesser NCOs into assigning spare weapons, checking backpacks, correcting the use of camouflage-paint on scabby orc features, and checking the remaining rounds of ammunition. At the end of half an hour she saluted the orc general under the big beech tree.

“Ready to move out, sir. We’re low on ammunition until we get back to base. Suggest the marines use only their polearms, sir, if we run into opposition.”

“We’ll run into opposition, Sergeant. The Light is going to be combing the Northern Kingdoms for survivors of that battle. And we just made ourselves the number one target.” The big orc general pulled an urban camouflage forage cap down to shade his eyes. He chewed on an unlit cigar. “Thank you, Sergeant. Captain Barashkukor, get the orcs ready to move out.”

Barashkukor slammed a small booted foot into the leafmould and saluted. “Sir! Sir, what about the wounded who can’t walk?”

The orc general shrugged. “We’ve got a long march in front of us. They’re history.”

“Yessir!” Sergeant Marukka nodded sagely.

A strained expression made its appearance on the small orc’s features. Captain Barashkukor protested, “Sir, we don’t leave our own, sir!”

General Ashnak considered this new concept. After a few moments he nodded.

“You’re right, Captain. Of course you’re right. See to it. They’re not history—they’re field rations.”

The halfling Magda sat in her room in Herethlion.

The distant rumble of magic that had sounded all day from the east became sporadic, and finally died down completely around twilight. Mopping up after yesterday’s battle. Magda waited. It did not resume.

She got to her feet, continuing to brush her long auburn hair. A stamp of her tiny foot on the floor brought her halfling maid, Safire, running.

“Yes, miss?”

“Help me dress.”

Magda tossed the hairbrush onto her cluttered dressing table. After a moment’s thought she recovered it and threw it up onto the Man-sized bed. She tugged the gauze scarf from her full-length mirror.

A halfling, three feet three inches high, with auburn hair falling to her waist…Magda surveyed herself for a moment. She irritatedly pulled off the auburn hairpiece and began to fit a blonde wig over her own cropped brown hair.

“Your clothes, miss. Shall I help you with the laces?”

Magda hopped up to sit on the Man-bed and pull on the tight black leather trousers and laced leather bodice. While Safire adjusted the trouser lacings up the outside of her legs, Magda clipped spiked and studded leather bands around her wrists and neck and put on her chain-belt. She slid off the bed, wriggling her feet into stiletto-heeled black thighboots, and strode across to the mirror.

Slender curves tightly encased, Magda posed for her own satisfaction. She ran her hands over her black-leather-clad breasts and hips. “I have a girl’s figure still, Safire. A girl’s figure.”

“Yes, miss.”

Magda peered closely into the mirror, touching the lines around her eyes. “I shall be wearing the mask. You must give me warning if one of the customers wants me bare-face. I’ll need cosmetics.”

She reached up and took the whip from the dressing table, cracking it experimentally. There was a clatter of iron from the bedstead, where Safire checked the shackles. Female and male voices echoed excitedly down the House of Joy’s upper corridor, and in Herethlion’s streets hoofbeats sounded.

“Go on then, girl! Tell them that Mistress Whip is ready for business.”

“Yes, miss.”

The leather-clad halfling wobbled a couple of steps on her high heels, caught her balance, and picked up and put on the leather head-mask that had only eye- and mouth-holes to break its severity.

“Heroes coming back from the wars.” Magda heaved a happy sign that strained the laces over her diminutive breasts. “I’ll wager the Light is victorious…Either way, there’s custom enough out there for all of us for a week. No, a month! We’re going to be rich, Safire. Rich!”

2

Eight days orc-march away from the Fields of Destruction, the raw November fog rolled across General Ashnak as he stood in the compound of the Nin-Edin Marine Base.

“Our ass is grass,” he announced, slapping the barrel of his M60. “And these are the reason why.”

“‘Tisn’t fair on the grunts, sir,” Company Sergeant Marukku protested. “All the other defeated Dark war-bands are going to form themselves into Free Companies and ravage the countryside.”

“‘Snot fair at all, sir.” Captain Barashkukor wiped his nose. “All we wanted to be was brigands.”

“We’re marines,” Ashnak growled.

“Okay, sir—disciplined brigands. Aaaaaaashu!” The small orc wiped his nose on his sleeve, trailing mucus over his camouflage combat jacket. He sniffed. “I bet they’re all doing it. Taking towns, refusing to be shifted by threats or bribes, being declared heir when the present ruler dies of completely natural causes…I was really looking forward to being a duke, sir. Aasshu!”

Ashnak glared up through the fog at the walls, and the travel-worn orc marine company hastily repossessing and rebuilding the Nin-Edin fort. “No. We’re prime targets. The marines were the best unit on the Fields of Destruction. The Light will put it down to these weapons. They’ll want us.”

Watery daytime torchlight illuminated his ugly features and brass-capped tusks. He scratched at his flea-infested combat fatigues.

“I want this place bristling with weapons! The Light can use magic to find us here. Even after the Last Battle, I’m willing to bet they’ll have mages to send against us.”

“Aascchhhu!”

CSM Marukku wiped disgustedly at the bowed leg of her combats and glared at Barashkukor with more than a sergeant’s distaste for junior officers. “Beg to report, General, I checked out our stores of Dagurashibanipal’s hoard in the bunkers here—we’re up to capacity on ammunition. I found some crates that ain’t matériel. One’s been taken up to your office for your inspection. I also took a tech squad up to the storage-depot caverns. The old wyrm must have had half the mountains hollowed out—there’s enough weapons, transport, and ammunition in there to equip an orc tribe for a decade!”

Barashkukor wiped his dripping nose. “And none of it any use to us without mage-protection! They can wipe us out with the simplest fail-weapons spell.”

Ashnak slapped his orc captain between the shoulder-blades. Barashkukor rolled head over heels several times, finishing up on his back with his combat boots up against the inner gate-tower’s iron portcullis.

“Cheer up! Damn it, Captain, we’re marines. We don’t take defeat lying down!”

“Sir, no sir—aaaaschuu!”

Marukka said, “The general’s got a plan. Haven’t you, General? He’s never let us down yet. We’re marines. We look after our own.”

Ashnak thought of the wounded and picked his teeth.

The female orc, suspicion fighting with military discipline in her tone, said, “You have got a plan, General?”

Ashnak thought, How long can Nin-Edin remain untouched by the Dark’s catastrophic defeat? The nameless necromancer—may he burn!—where is he?

With no mage-support, there’s a limit to how long Ashnak can play for time. “Don’t ask questions, Sergeant. Obey your orders! I want that standard-bearer, Ugarit, and Marine Rast—Razzis—”

Captain Barashkukor’s mucus-rimmed eyes suddenly lit up. “Razitshakra, sir. Marine Razitshakra.”

“Why does the general want them?” Marukka growled, puzzled. “They’re hardly fit to be called marines, either one of them.”

“I want them in my office,” Ashnak ordered. “Now.”

The rider of the refugee war-beast dug a makeshift thorn quirt behind its saillike ear. The great animal lifted a long proboscis, curling like a python, and swung ponderously to the left, padding up a steep hill slope.

A fresh wind blew from the ship-deserted sea.

The rider shifted blanket and leather strap, endeavouring to make the seat on the animal’s back more comfortable. Rough brown hide, thick with bristles, made uneasy riding. Rags of gold and red caparisons clung to its metal-armoured tusks. The animal’s tiny black eye swivelled in its socket, gazing up and back.

“Go, thou bastard offspring of a goat and the World Serpent! Go!”

The thorn quirt lashed down. The war-elephant turned away and inland, scaling the Downs, and trampling hedges, crops, and streamlets in the country beyond.

Freezing fog hung in the general’s office in Nin-Edin’s inner keep. Mists pearled on the tower’s yard-thick masonry walls. Ashnak ambled across to a large crate, fully accustomed to the strength and influence of the geas that radiated from any item of the dragon’s hoard.

“Is there anything useful in here, Barashkukor?”

“Don’t—asshu!” Barashkukor wiped his snot on his sleeve. “Don’t know, sir.”

“Then open it, you snivelling little rat!”

Ashnak put his hands behind his back, watching Barashkukor lever at the wood with fangs and talons. The planks splintered. Barashkukor peered down into the crate, his spindly ears shifting from lateral to vertical.

“Books, sir?”

“Books?” Ashnak took a tome out of the smaller orc’s hand. With one taloned finger he traced the printed letters on the cover. His wide lips moved as he read, literacy not being a prime requirement for a Horde captain. “‘Von…Clauswitz. On…War…”

He flicked through the pages and laboriously spelled out, “‘War is only the continu—continuation of politics, by other means…’”

“Nahhh. War’s fun, sir, that’s what war is.” Captain Barashkukor brandished another book he had removed from the crate. “This one’s called ‘Pliny,’ sir.” He thumbed through it, eyes widening. “Sir! It mentions ores, sir! It says the orc is a marine monster.”

Ashnak raised a bushy eyebrow. “Wonder how he knew?”

“‘Jane’s Medieval Small-Arms and Siege Weapons,’ sir?”

“Obsolete, soldier.” Ashnak broke off, hearing a heavy multiple tread on the stairs. “Come!”

“Hut-two, hut-two, hut-two, halt! The marines you requested, sir!”

Company Sergeant Marukka saluted smartly. A tall, skinny male orc marched into the office beside another orc female, this one scruffy and wearing spectacles.

“—and because they’re all out to get me! Oh. Lord General!” Ugarit saluted with the wrong hand. His uniform pockets shifted, clinking with the weight of spanners in them.

Marukka howled, “Ugarit, you candyass marine, keep your mouth shut in front of the general! That’s fifty strokes of the lash for you.”

The tall, skinny orc began to tremble visibly. The scruffy female orc with him saluted rigidly.

“Dismissed, Sergeant,” Ashnak rumbled. “I shan’t be needing you either, Captain.”

Captain Barashkukor saluted and followed Marukka out. Ashnak stood for several minutes, looking the two marines up and down. He smiled nastily.

“You’re pathetic!” he barked. “Call yourselves marines? I wouldn’t wipe my arse with you! I’m going to straighten this company out now, and I’m starting by eviscerating you two! We’ve been occupying Nin-Edin for six hours and you still haven’t come up with a plan to defeat the enemy.”

“P-plan, sir…?” Marine Razitshakra’s combats had quill-pens protruding from every pocket. Her large pointed ears projected laterally from the sides of her head. Fog condensed and dripped from the tips of each. She blinked golden eyes. “Wh-what plan?”

“I’ve got a plan! Alternative firepower! General, it’s the only answer!” Ugarit, spluttering, unfolded scribbled-on sheets of paper, diagrams, a folding tape measure, and small mechanical models. “Arrows with ceramic heads! Kevlar armour! Carbon-fibre swordblades! I have all the designs, all the measurements—calculations—stress loads—they’ll never get me if I have all this!”

Razitshakra muttered something under her breath, of which Ashnak could distinguish only the phrase “several cogwheels short of a clock.”

“Very inventive.” Ashnak drew a breath and bellowed. “The first blast of mage-fire will still shatter them to ashes! Are you telling me the whole Research and Development Unit can’t come up with anything better than that?”

Ugarit shook his head, water drops flying. “I had everyone working on it, General, sir.”

“And just how many personnel do you have in R&D?”

The skinny orc counted on his fingers for some minutes before announcing, “One, General, sir. Me.”

Ashnak walked across to the vast carved wooden chair liberated from some merchant’s wagon inadvisedly attempting the Nin-Edin pass, and sat down heavily at his desk. He wiped his hand across his face. He resisted, with difficulty, the impulse to crack Ugarit’s skull against the masonry and see if anything oozed out.

“Sir…” Razitshakra scribbled on a small piece of paper she extracted from her pocket, ticking off items on a list with her index talon. “I think I’ve got it, sir!”

“Please,” Ashnak purred, “do tell.”

“Magic, sir. That’s the answer. I don’t do it—I’m an orc, and we hate magic!—but I know about it. The other grunts avoid me because of that…” She met his gaze, narrowing her tilted eyes. “If you could find the nameless necromancer, or another Dark Mage—there must be some who didn’t die at the Fields of Destruction—we could survive. But then that person would automatically end up in command of us, sir. Wizards always commanded the Horde because they can use magic and we can’t.”

“True,” Ashnak rumbled.

“Only magic can defend against magic. You need someone who can deal with it—but does it have to be a Man? Or any other race? If we had orcs who could deal with magic, General, we’d be our own bosses.”

Ashnak, remembering a nest-sister of his own, magic-sniffer and dead now, shook his head. “Orcs and magic don’t mix.”

The female orc stabbed a taloned finger at her list. “Normally they don’t have to. In battle we’re protected by our side’s wizards. But we don’t have that here, sir! I’m not suggesting we use magic. Orcs don’t do that. We should just make certain no one can use it against us.”

Razitshakra crumpled her list and shoved it deep in her combats pocket, staring intently up at Ashnak.

“We don’t have to look for a new master, sir. Not if we can get some magical talismans or amulets. Protective magical talismans that we can carry into battle with us. So that the Light can throw fail-weapons magic at us and it won’t work.”

“As one of my nest-sisters, Shazgurim, used to say, I know Man-tales.” Ashnak’s heavy brows lifted. “Is it possible for orcs to have a Quest?”

“We orcs,” Marine Razitshakra said, “we orc marines don’t need a master, General. We can do all this ourselves!”

Ashnak considered this revolutionary idea.

“Tell me, orc who is knowledgable about magic,” he said softly, “where do you come by those golden eyes?”

Razitshakra’s wide mouth dropped open. Her fangs and tusks seemed smaller than usual for an orc of her size.

“Well, marine?”

Razitshakra removed her spectacles. Her skin turned a deep grass-green over her cheeks, ears, throat, and breasts. She stared down at the toes of her muddy combat boots.

“It’s not true that I’m a half-elf,” she mumbled. “Quarter-elven, sir. At most. Grandmother made a mistake on a dark night in the Enchanted Wood. So did her…ah…involuntary partner, sir—one he didn’t survive. I’m only a quarter-elvish, sir. I may know about magic, but I’m a real orc. Honest, sir!”

“Yes, yes.”

Ashnak was not familiar with the emotion of embarrassment, but he felt a strong urge to change the subject.

He stood and went to the window. Nin-Edin’s inner and outer walls loomed in the fog, covered with skull-standards and machineguns emplacements. Ancient masonry, solid as the mountains, but masonry has been brought down before now, by neither siege machines nor storming the walls, but by the Light’s filthy magic. Ashnak became aware that he was listening, and had been for some time.

Listening.

Waiting.

“These talismans, Marine Razitshakra. If such things exist—where would we get them?”

The golden-eyed orc brightened. “Ah. Yes, sir. Now that’s the interesting part.”

Wine had been spilt in the corridor of the House of Joy, and the halfling put his bare, hairy foot in it before he noticed. Making a face, he wiped his leathery sole on the bare boards. A few remaining coins clunked in his trunk-hose pockets.

The door at the end of the hall was ajar, and he pushed it open. Lanterns illuminated a Man-room—or so he first thought, looking at the bed—but the dressing table and washstand were halfling-sized furniture.

A whip snapped the air beside his left ear. “Onto the bed, slave!”

“Yes, mistress!” He fell to his knees, grovelling in front of a pair of very small, high, stiletto-heeled boots. The lantern light gleamed on black leather calves and slender thighs, and a studded belt from which hung shackles.

The whip cracked, stinging him smartly across the buttocks. He abased himself again, and then crawled over to the bed. It was impractical to crawl up onto it, it being Manfurniture. He stood and climbed up onto the rubber sheets.

“You will address me as Mistress, scum—Safire, I’m going to need the small shackles; hurry, girl!—and you will kiss my boots and be thankful for the privilege. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Mistress!” He writhed happily. The maid, whom he assumed to be Safire, locked shackles on his wrists and ankles in somewhat too much of a professional manner, but he could forgive that. He was not by any means the first of the Army of Light home from the wars.

“Now, what have we here…a helpless victim, is it? Or is it a bad boy who needs punishing? Is it a bad boy who needs a whipping?”

He whimpered happily. “Yes. I’ve been bad.”

The shackles tightened, pulled back and fastened at the four corners of the bedstead. He sprawled face-down on the bed, his small limbs stretched outwards. A leather-gloved hand slid up between his short legs and unbuttoned his trunk-hose.

“Now—” the voice of the whore, mock-triumphant, as she pulled down his breeches and exposed his bare buttocks. “Bad boy! I’ll give you a whipping you’ll never forget! Bad boy!”

A welt of fire lashed his buttocks. He was too startled to enjoy it.

“Wait—”

“You’re a bad boy!”

Unmistakable.

He did the best he could to roll on one side, and look up over his shoulder. The female halfling stood on the bed, legs astride him, coiling her whip. He stared up at the black leather head-mask, seeing only an impersonal pair of eyes.

Bad boy.

The voice was unmistakable.

He said, “Mother—is that you?”

The watery autumnal sunlight broke three days of continuous fog as Barashkukor marched smartly across the inner compound of the Nin-Edin fort.

Reaching the door of the stone outhouse designated “Research Laboratory No. 1037,” he took off his GI helmet and, after some thought, tucked it under his left arm. His long, hairless ears sprang upright.

“Asssschu!”

A voice from behind the closed door called, “What is it, Captain Barashkukor?”

His small brows indented. He lifted a fist to knock smartly on the wood. Somewhere inside the stone shed a loud explosion sounded. Smoke drifted out of the glassless windows. An orcish scream split the air. Barashkukor ignored it and knocked again. The door creaked open.

“We’re busy; what—” Marine Razitshakra stopped. “What?”

Barashkukor, his back ramrod straight, came to attention. The small orc’s combat boots gleamed, his green DPM camouflage trousers had been laundered and pressed, and a display of grenades and .50-calibre ammunition hung on bandoliers across his thin chest.

“Marine Razitshakra.” He thrust out his left hand. His helmet, forgotten, dropped and bounced painfully off his foot. “For you.”

Razitshakra inspected the posy of autumn wildflowers the small orc captain held out. “Um…That’s…um…sir…”

“They’re for you.”

Barashkukor stuffed the flowers into the orc marine’s hand, the tips of his ears drooping; then snapped a salute, about-faced, and marched off back across the compound.

The female orc took off her rimless spectacles and put them in her top pocket. She blinked. In the distance, Captain Barashkukor about-faced again, marched back, and bent to pick up the camouflage-covered GI pot.

“Forgot my helmet,” he explained.

Razitshakra lowered her broad nostrils into the posy and sniffed it. She took a bite. Tentatively at first, she began to chew the dog roses, holly, and nightshade.

Barashkukor’s shoulders slumped. He turned his back on her and walked away, feet dragging, his eyes on the beaten earth of the compound.

On the walls above, the marine alarm horns rang out, and an urgent drum began to beat.

Barashkukor shrugged skinny shoulders and carried on walking.

Orc squads pounded past him at the double, corporals and NCOs shouted alarmed orders, and somewhere Marukka’s bellow split the chill air. Weapons clashed. Up on the parapet, skull-pole standards were hastily raised. The inner iron portcullis clashed down, three yards from Barashkukor’s left elbow, burying its spikes several feet deep in the dirt.

“Captain!”

Moodily, Barashkukor glanced up. The rising bulk of Nin-Edin at his back, he gazed through the iron grating at the great mountain ranges rising to either side of the pass. Grey cloud still clung to the impassable peaks. Before him, beyond the outer bailey and outer defensive walls, a desolate valley ran down to the lowlands…

The distant road that wound up to this mountain pass glittered.

“Oh, shit,” Barashkukor said.

Lowland sunshine reflected back from the helms, shields, armour, and weapons of the approaching, besieging Army of Light.

3

“You’ve changed, son. I hardly know you.”

The halfling Magda emerged from behind the room’s silk screen wearing a crimson-furred velvet gown. She tied its belt firmly around her hourglass-waist.

“And I hardly expected to find you wearing that uniform.”

She walked across the room and picked up a thin roll of black pipe-weed, fitting it into a long ivory holder. Reaching up to a candleflame, she lit the pipe-weed and drew deeply. She passed her hand through her short dark hair.

“Mother, everyone knew which was going to be the winning side.”

Magda inhaled another lungful of pipe-weed. She studied her son as he sat in the chair by the window, watching for first light. His curly black hair was thickly streaked with white.

“Besides, I thought that the Army of Light had a better chance of collecting its pay arrears.”

He lounged back, fully clad; black mail-shirt glinting in the candlelight below the white of his small ruff. The favour of the Army of Light—a yellow sash—he wore tied about his left arm. His doublet and trunk-hose showed signs of wear, and the wood of his short-sword scabbard had split and been badly repaired with wire.

“You wrote that you had become wealthy.”

The halfling’s dark eyes flicked in her direction. There were lines bitten into his found face that had not been there eighteen months ago.

“Wealth doesn’t last. Gamblers had most of mine.”

“Mmm…” A little suspicious still, Magda walked to the window and stood on tiptoe to peer out. “And your brother, where is he?”

For the first time in an hour, her son smiled.

“Out there in the frost, wondering if he should come in and rescue me; and whether it’s danger that delays me, or over-indulgence in pleasure. Tonight was his turn to watch my back.”

Magda chuckled. “I’ll call Safire. We shall have hot mulled wine while we wait. I wonder how long it will take him?”

She inhaled pipe-weed smoke, becoming serious.

“I’ve been thinking. Life in Herethlion won’t be Easy Street for much longer. I give it a month before the celebrations and coronations are over—then the purge will begin. Anything with so much as a scent of corruption will be called the Dark! and banned. And that’ll take this Thieves’ Quarter with it. Believe me. I’ve seen it before.”

She breathed out a long plume of smoke.

“Fortuna is a tricky Goddess. I made an offering in her church last month for help. Behold, she sends my two sons back to me.”

Magda stubbed the pipe-weed out against the window-frame. She reached down as she crossed the room to call Safire, and squeezed her son’s small, hard bicep.

“I thought I might travel north. I shall need muscle—if I’m to set up business in a new city.”

The door of Nin-Edin’s main hall closed behind the last senior officer to enter. Ashnak leaned his bulging forearms on the podium and grinned, showing all his fangs and brass-capped tusks.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called you all here…”

The whistle of an incoming fireball-spell drowned out his next words. The assembled orc officers hit the floorboards. The fireball air-burst, shrapnelling the glassless windows. Sparks of green flame flicked in the high-roofed hall and went out.

“Now—”

“Fuck, man, you got us into some deep shit here!” A marine corporal with “FRAG THE OFFICERS!” stencilled on her helmet-cover sprang up and screamed, “What kind of dumb motherfucker gets us shut up in a death-trap like this?”

Another orc yelled up at the podium, “You ain’t got the balls to break out of this fort!”

The orc officers snarled, pounding the butts of their assault rifles on the flagstones. Ashnak’s lip curled. “And does anyone else hold that opinion?”

Waiting for the focus of trouble to manifest itself, he was at first irritated when Company Sergeant Marukka lumbered to her feet. He started to say, “Later: let me deal with this first,” and then realised that a silence had fallen on the sixty officers present. Four of the junior lieutenants also got to their feet. The senior captains eyed Ashnak with expressions between speculation and outrage.

“You?” Ashnak demanded.

“Me.” Marukka rested a ham-sized fist on her hip. She wore green tiger-stripe camouflage, a strip of which tied up her plume of orange hair, and a black tank-top with “BORN TO FIGHT!” stencilled on the front. Deliberately, she cocked her M16. “You failed in your duty, sir. You better let someone more competent take over the marines. I’ve decided. You’re not in command here anymore.”

“This is mutiny!”

Marukka grinned broadly at his bluster. “Too fuckin’ right, sah!”

Ashnak straightened his shoulders slightly. He looked down from the podium at the crowded hall and tense faces, chewing on his unlit cigar. Two marines behind Marukka got to their feet and flanked her in support, starting to unsling M16s from their shoulders.

FOOM! FOOM!

Wood splintered.

Ashnak shot through the podium that concealed the drawn and cocked .44 Magnum pistol in his hand, shredding the black sweatshirt over Marukka’s heart and putting a greenish-brown-rimmed hole between the eyes of the orc marine with “FRAG THE OFFICERS!” on her helmet. The third marine hit the floor, M16 raised, and a loyal grunt corporal put five rounds into her from behind with an AK47.

“No one’s taking over here except me!”

The junior officers who had stood up sat down, attempting to achieve invisibility. Ashnak strode down from the platform, backhanding the two nearest and catapulting them across the hall. Chairs went flying. He reached Marukka’s body and booted the orange-haired orc over onto her back. The wound pumped green blood less strongly now, pooling on the floor. Her eyes were open, unseeing. Tissue from the exit wound spattered the orc marines behind her.

“What do you shit-for-brains dumb motherfuckers expect me to do?” Ashnak snarled. “Stand there and ask her questions while she shoots me? Siege or no siege, this coup is over before it’s started. I’m general of the orc marines and it’s going to stay that way. Is that clear?”

“SIR, YES SIR!”

Ashnak stomped back to the dais, lighting his cigar.

“Now. As I was saying. We find ourselves in a hostile situation, siege-wise…”

Ignoring the wall map behind him, he pointed his swagger stick at the table set up below the dais. Orc majors and captains abandoned their folding wooden chairs, kicking and biting to be in the front row around the war-table. Ashnak glared down at the tops of helmets and forage caps and coughed meaningfully. Orc heads lifted, tusks gleaming in heavy lower jaws, piggy eyes glinting. Reluctantly they shuffled back a few inches.

On the table, a scale map of the Demonfest Mountains and surrounding area sported a liberal array of different-coloured map pins.

“Recon units report hostile troops on the roads from Sarderis, Herethlion, and some of the minor western towns—which have taken up positions here, here, and here, surrounding the Nin-Edin hill. As you know, we have our own well. However, our supply lines to the east have been cut, we can’t get out to raid the lowlands, and our stores are low.”

A second lieutenant stopped picking her broad, hairy nostril long enough to raise her taloned hand. “Sir, what strength are they, sir?”

“Good question, that orc. Strong enough to keep us bottled up here—they have Light Mages with them.”

Orc officers growled, boots pounding the flagstones. The wintery sun gleamed from the fortress hall’s whitewashed walls. It shone on the wooden podium with its bullet holes, orc marine insignia—an odd arrangement of stars and bars, with the Horde’s raven superimposed over them—and inscription: Operation Librarian.

Ashnak looked down across the tusked faces and assembled weaponry. “Now, you orcs. I shall be depending on you to hold the fort—I shall not be here with you.”

Orcs looked at one another.

The second lieutenant whispered, “Did he say…?”

“Did I ask any of you dumbfuck marines for an opinion? An orc general always leads from the front!”

Several orc marines cheered. Ashnak eyed Barashkukor for support. The small orc captain, seated on a chair, had his elbows on his knees and his pointed chin on his hands and was gazing dreamily in the direction of Marine Razitshakra.

“We orcs have been the servants of others for too long!” Ashnak proclaimed. “Dark Mages have run the orc marines, because they have control of the thaumaturgic firepower. I’m going to put a stop to that! The technical specialist marine (thaumaturgy) will now give us a briefing on my solution to this problem. Marine Razitshakra.”

“I’ve done intensive research for the general.” Razitshakra took off her spectacles and began to polish them with her desert camo bandanna. “We need what are technically known as nullity talismans. These are new. They’re small devices which any marine could carry. They produce a field which nullifies the operation of magical forces in a varyingly wide vicinity. Actually, they create sinkholes of space-time in which thaumatological forces cannot exist. The physics are fascinating…”

Ashnak’s muscled arms folded across the bullet bandoliers that crossed his barrel chest. The winter sun gleamed on his marine tattoos and Agaku tribal scars. He licked a fang and growled something that might have been “Never trust an intellectual orc…”

“Nullity talismans.” Razitshakra hastily replaced her spectacles. “They’re new, and they’re rare. I can come up with only one place where they’re likely to exist in sufficient quantity for the marines—that’s at the Thaumatological University’s research and development laboratories in Fourgate. The Visible College.”

Ashnak stepped forward. “Thank you, Marine. Return to your seat. Now listen up! I myself will be taking a commando group and penetrating the installation in Fourgate. For a mission this hazardous, I shall be asking for volunteers.”

“Let my unit do it, sir.”

At the back of the ranked orc officers, Corporal Lugashaldim stood up. His gaunt albino features had an increasingly livid tinge. Ashnak noted the marine corporal now wore black combat trousers and boots and a tight knitted woollen pullover with epaulets.

“Your unit?”

“The SUS, sir.” Lugashaldim saluted. “The Special Undead Services.”

Ashnak returned the salute. “Very well, Corporal. Get your orcs geared up for a dangerous mission.”

“Sir!” Lugashaldim resumed his seat at the back of the hall. The albino marine took out his commando knife, reached up, and trimmed his ears down to short points. He then fitted a black beret smartly on the side of his head, the unit insignia of orc-skull and crossbones to the fore with its SUS motto, Death, Then Glory.

“The technical specialist marine will accompany us,” Ashnak continued. “Captain Barashkukor—Captain!”

The small orc, his chin on his hands, continued to gaze fondly at Razitshakra, who ignored him.

“Captain!”

Barashkukor jumped three inches in his seat, stood up, saluted, and yelled, “Sir, yes sir!”

Ashnak sighed. “You are promoted to major, Barashkukor. You will hold Nin-Edin with the orcs until our return. Send out snipers, raiding parties, sallies—harass the enemy, Major, keep them off-balance.”

Barashkukor, his wistfully dreamy gaze returning to the spectacled female orc, murmured, “Yes, yes, of course. Whatever you think best, General.”

Ashnak of the orc marines rested his elbows on the podium and put his head in his hands. Once only, and very quietly, he whimpered. Straightening up, he glared at Barashkukor.

“You are Acting Commander, Major, until I get back. Dismiss!”

The hall cleared with startling rapidity.

Ashnak moved down from the podium and crouched beside the dead body of the orc who had been with the marines since the discovery of Dagurashibanipal’s hoard. He picked up Marukka’s limp, dead hand. For several moments he remained in that position.

Ashnak bent his head forward, bit off three of her fingers at the roots, and left the hall, chewing with some relish.

The war-elephant, having grazed on the overripe and unharvested corn of the lowlands, paused to drink from a spring in the foothills of the mountains.

Hurried scuffling could be heard among the concealing boulders and gorse bushes. A black-fletched arrow sprouted from the turf at the animal’s feet.

“Hai!” The rider unhooked his two-handed axe from his back and brandished it single-handed. “Come out, vermin, and fight me man to man!”

The beast abandoned the cold water, lifting its trunk and screaming rage to the overcast skies. Bushes rustled again, nearer to the beast’s rear leg. Steel flashed. The war-elephant reached down with its trunk, seized a concealed orc by the thigh, wrenched the limb loose as a man might break apart a chicken, and beat the screaming orc with the pulverized limb until—after a surprisingly long interval—all noise ceased.

The wind blew shrill amongst the tumbled stones of the tors.

“Come out and fight, you puling cowards!”

An apologetic voice said, “Mighty mage! We don’t wish to fight the keeper of this great beast.”

“Then step out where I can see you, boy!”

A large orc in a black breastplate, with a ragged green-stained bandage covering his left eye, stepped out of concealment. A rather larger orc in battered plate moved out from behind her boulder. Two orcs in mail appeared, one still bearing a halberd with a hacked edge to its blade. Three more; two archers; five; a dozen…

Something on the order of forty orcs stepped out of concealment among the scattered boulders. The war-elephant lifted its trunk and trumpeted. One of the smaller orcs dived back behind a clump of gorse.

The orc in the black breastplate gazed up. A northern barbarian sat high on the elephant’s neck; bare-armed, barelegged, impervious to the wind that ruffled his wolf-pelt tunic and wolf-fur leggings. The barbarian’s bright mail-shirt glinted, and the horns on his helmet appeared wickedly sharp. Thick blond braids fell either side of a weathered face, from which piercing blue eyes surveyed the orcs.

Cautiously the orc demanded, “Your name, great lord of this magic beast?”

“I hight Blond Wolf!”

The elephant coiled its trunk around the rider and lowered him to the earth.

The orc stared.

“’Ere,” the orc said, “you’re not a Man.”

“I’m Great Lord Blond Wolf of the Howlfang Mountains!” the rider snarled. “Mightiest barbarian warrior of the Dark; and you pig-swivers can call me ‘Great.’”

“You’re not as big as a Man.” The orc peered down. “You’re not as big as a dwarf. You’re not as big as a halfling, even.”

Narrowed blue eyes fixed on the orc from a point some two feet and seven inches above ground-level. The barbarian snarled, inflating his chest. His helmet, with its attached horns that jutted out a good armspan to either side, slipped down over his nose. He shoved it to the back of his head.

“What did you say?”

The orc guffawed. “You’re pretty short for a barbarian, ain’ tcha?”

The northern barbarian clapped his hands. The war-elephant lowered its trunk from the makeshift howdah on its back and set a small pair of wooden steps in front of its master. Lord Blond Wolf spat on his hands, unfolded the ladder, and set it up in front of the large orc. He drew his axe, plodded up the steps, and swung his weapon.

The blade clanged into the side of the orc’s helmet. The orc, catapulted backwards, knocked three of its nest-brothers into the heather.

“I’m riding to succour Evil, damn it, after our defeat!” The northern barbarian climbed back down his ladder, waving his axe. “Will that teach you not to insult a warrior, you rat’s arseholes?”

The orc looked up hesitantly, rubbing its skull. “Where are you riding to, master?”

The northern barbarian threw back his head, tendons cording his throat, and laughed richly. With the orc on its hands and knees, he looked it squarely in the eye. “What damn business is it of yours anyway, wartface?”

The orcs glanced at each other, rapid consultations going on in lowered voices. Scuffles broke out. The armoured and mailed orcs looked up at the war-elephant, and the trackless foothills of the mountains.

“Noble Lord Blond Wolf.” The orc banged its forehead experimentally on the earth, watching the barbarian from one upturned eye. “We’ll form your Dark honour guard, if you let us ride with you.”

4

The besieging Army of Light set up just in time for the first snow.

Immense and aloof, the monumental rockfaces of the mountains that loomed above the pass silted up with whiteness. Snow blurred the lines of tents on the slopes below Nin-Edin, outside firing range. Snow shrouded the earth siegeworks. Blue and silver banners shone through the falling flakes.

Major Barashkukor, Commander (Part-Time, Acting, Unpaid) of Nin-Edin, stared down from the parapet of the outer walls.

“I don’t like it, Sergeant. It’s too quiet.”

FOOM!

Barashkukor fingered his hairless peaked ear, a pained expression on his features. “Cease fire! Sergeant, what is that?”

Sergeant Varimnak chewed gum noisily. A hulking, trim, and broad-shouldered brown orc, she wore her black combat fatigues ripped, with engineer boots, and a spiked black leather belt in place of her webbing. Her cropped crest had been spiked and bleached white.

The Badgurlz sergeant narrowed her eyes, removed the gum, and stuck it under one of the crenellations. “Looks like they want to parley with us. Fuck knows why.”

Barashkukor waited, vainly. He drew a deep breath, filling his thin chest to capacity. “That’s ‘fuck knows why, sir,’ Sergeant!”

“Yes sir, Major, sir!” The stocky orc grinned.

Varimnak’s squad, composed of the smaller female orcs, seemed almost lost in their large ripped marine-issue black combat fatigues. They leaned into the cover of the crenellations, two of them carrying shoulder-fired grenade-launchers; three, M60 machineguns; and one a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile. Barashkukor surveyed the Badgurlz’s spiked crests, scars, and tattoos, and his chest swelled with pride.

He sprang up to stand in one of the icy stone gaps in the crenellations, ignoring the thirty-foot drop in front of his combat boots. “Yo, down there!”

The approaching party halted.

A knight in full plate harness bent his head and removed his helm. His destrier stamped. In his armoured right hand he carried a white standard of truce. “Orcs of the Horde! I am Amarynth, Commander of the Light, Mage and Warrior both. Listen to my words of wisdom!”

Sergeant Varimnak looked up from where she squatted, bandy legs bent, cradling an AK47.

“Exactly who is that asshole, sir?”

“Some damn hero or other.”

Barashkukor straightened the peak of his green forage cap and settled his web-belt more comfortably around his thin waist.

“You down there! Unauthorized personnel! I give you statutory warning that you are adopting a hostile posture by surrounding Marine Base Nin-Edin, home of the 483rd Airborne, and by the rules of war I am therefore justified in—”

Barashkukor stopped in bewilderment as the elvish knight dismounted from his steed and knelt in the snow outside Nin-Edin’s walls.

“Lady of Light!” the elf prayed loudly. “Hear my vow! Be with me today, as I battle in the name of Good. Grant me the power to speedily end this battle, so that they shall sing of us throughout the generations, and our glory shall be the greater…”

The dark-skinned elven warrior pushed his black hair back behind his pointed ears, frowning.

“…ah, yes. And so that fewer of the Light’s warriors perish. Grant me the strength of steel and magic both, so that I may wipe these orcs, blood and bone, from the earth! Hack their foul heads from their deformed bodies, tear out their intestines! Gouge out their eyes! Rip the fangs from their jaws and the skin from their faces!”

Panting, the elf smoothed down his blue and silver livery, which had two crescent moons woven into it. His fluted plate-armour shone cream-coloured under the snow-leaking sky.

“Carve the blood eagle on their wretched carcasses,” he concluded, standing up, “and put to the fire their still-living remains! In the name of your Mercy, Lady, amen!”

The orcs looked at each other.

“Well, sir,” Varimnak said, “I guess he was the most diplomatic one they could find to talk to us.”

“Orcs of Nin-Edin! Surrender now and we may spare your miserable lives.” The elvish knight remounted and reined in his rearing unicorn. Flakes of snow frosted his pointed ears and high cheekbones. “Throw down your weapons now! You filth will die, like your master the nameless necromancer, unless you make honest reparation for your crimes. There is much work to be done, rebuilding the world after the Dark Lord’s defeat, and it is meet that you should labour in it.”

“Go into slavery, you mean!” Barashkukor turned to speak to Varimnak and found his sergeant missing. He showed small fangs in a scowl.

“‘s pure ungratefulness, sir,” a Badgurlz MFC complained. “After we won the Fields of Destruction for them by fucking off…”

The Badgurlz marine surreptitiously sighted her shoulder-fired missile-launcher.

“No!” the major snarled. “Not yet. Bad orc!”

Ignoring the indignant Light party, Barashkukor climbed down from the crenellation and strode across the parapet. Sergeant Varimnak trotted back up the steps from the bailey.

“Dumb Light fuckers won’t attack under a parley flag,” she grunted. “But, like I guessed, there was someone hanging around to take advantage. Major, I got something you got to see.”

The Light’s increasingly impatient shouts faded as Barashkukor followed the bleach-haired orc sergeant up across the bailey and the hill, into the inner compound. A thin snow skittered and rolled in waves, powdery as sand, and stung his eyes. The rebuilt parapets and squat towers of Nin-Edin bristled with wires, spikes, and dishes.

“Remind me to have a word with Corporal Ugarit, Sergeant, about that new equipment he keeps mounting—How the fuck did that get in here?”

“This prisoner, sir? Sneaked in while you were at the main gate.” Varimnak showed orc-fangs smugly. “I’m gonna have those rear-guard squads drilling till they drop.”

A squad of orc marines stood around something, brandishing AK47s and SA80s. Barashkukor marched up, shouldered through, and came to an abrupt halt.

Seated cross-legged on the frost-hardened earth, with her bare hands resting palm-up on her knees, a female elf looked up at him and smiled.

“Another elf!” Barashkukor anguished. “Have the marines responsible shot!”

“Sure thing, Major, sir.”

Barashkukor strolled closer and snapped, “On your feet!”

He then gazed up at the six-foot-tall female elf with some misgivings.

Her glossy brown hair was braided from jaw level down, woven with strips of red cloth and tied around her brow with a red headband. It showed both her pointed elvish ears and the deep scar that crossed her cheek from outer eye to jaw. She wore a laced brown leather bodice and thonged leather trousers, and high boots, sorcerously oblivious to the cold. Dark lashes shaded her golden eyes.

There were the scabbards of daggers at her belt, boots, and back—but no weapons.

“She’s obviously a spy for the Light, Sergeant. Why haven’t you executed her?”

The slender young elf put one hand up to her bodice and pointed at a silver badge. The insignia was easily recognisable.

“Press,” she said briskly. “My name is Perdita del Verro. I’m a war correspondent—from Warrior of Fortune broadsheet. You’ve heard of Warrior of Fortune.”

“Warrior of Fortune!” Barashkukor breathed. “Wow! That is, I—well, I read it for the advertisements, of course. Military supplies. Very useful. You’re—did you say you write for them?”

“Chief news reporter.” Perdita del Verro smiled down at him. She produced a small notebook and a pencil. “Things have been slow since the Last Battle. I really couldn’t miss the chance to come along with Amarynth and interview your boys. No, don’t bother with the weapons—I have the usual magical press immunity. So, Commander…‘Barashkukor,’ is it? How do you spell that?”

“Assschuu!”

Perdita del Verro smiled dazzlingly down at the orc, warmth infusing her golden eyes.

Thoughts of the siege parley completely slipped his mind. Major Barashkukor wiped his nose and began, starry-eyed, to look around the compound of the Nin-Edin fort for something of sufficient interest to impress the elven journalist.

Far from Sarderis and Herethlion and the sea, north beyond the wilderness that interpenetrates the Demonfest mountain range, lies the Four-Gated City. The city has many more gates than four—they number in the hundreds, if not in the thousands—but of the original gates there are only four remaining: Tourmaline, Chrysoberyl, Lapis Lazuli, and Onyx. The first three are often used, the last never.

Ashnak’s commandos sensibly chose to make their entrance through the Tourmaline Gate. To remove locks and bars, terminate guards, avoid the Sunset Alarms, and booby-trap the watch-house was no greater task than running the Wilderness for six days and practising marine survival techniques at the unfriendly end of the Demonfest Mountains.

Twenty-four hours’ surveillance from the attic of a deserted mansion left Ashnak chewing his talons. Past sundown, he lifted the night-vision sights of his M16 to his eyes, watching the last frock-coated and bewigged Men leave the grounds of the Visible College.

“Not so much as a dwarf down there,” he muttered to Razitshakra. “Not a halfling, not an elf—certainly none of us. No race but Men. That leaves us with forcible entry.”

Ashnak surveyed the high walls of the Visible College in the curious green illumination of night-sights. He lowered the gun, his own sight being somewhat better. The fifty-foot outer wall gave way inside to parklike spaces with convolutedly trimmed hedges and to buildings with domes, cupolas, columned porticos, and very un-Classical slit windows.

“Okay, marines. We’re going in…”

Camouflaged, doing a slow leopard-crawl, it took them an hour to cross unobserved the empty space between the last mansions and the wall of the Visible College. Evening’s noise faded. Ashnak flexed his broad hands in the cover of the wall, craning his neck to look upward.

The moon rose from the rooftops, gibbous, in its last quarter. Its faint illumination showed him Razitshakra and the other marines crouched against the wall. Ashnak moved silently over to Lugashaldim, looking up at the masonry.

“Corporal, give me a hand.”

“Can’t, sir.”

“What?”

“It fell off, sir.” The Undead orc marine shuffled, embarrassed. In his large, horny right hand he held his left hand. “I’ll fix it, sir, it won’t take a minute.”

Stuffing the hand in one of his combats pockets, Lugashaldim detached his sewing-kit from his web-belt one-handed and looked a little helplessly at the thread and needles. One of the other Undead grunts grumbled something, threaded the needle in the faint moonlight, and set about sewing the offending limb back on.

“If you pussies have quite finished!” Ashnak hissed. “Are we an elite commando squad or are we a fucking sewing circle?”

There were mutters of “Sorry, sir,” and the Undead orc marines returned their attention to the Visible College.

“Bound to be guarded with magic,” one SUS marine whispered to his companion.

The other orc shivered. “Nobody said nothing about magic. That’s the marine corps for you. We get sent on these missions; nobody knows if they’re safe; could have wizards here for all we know; and do we get asked if we—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Ashnak hissed. “Marine Razitshakra, what are your recommendations?”

The scruffy orc removed her spectacles and gazed for some minutes at the walls surrounding the Visible College. She fixed on the largest dome.

“If we can go in through that we’ll probably find something. It smells right.” She shot a shamefaced glance at Ashnak. “I’m not really a magic-sniffer, honest, sir. It’s just that sometimes I can tell…”

“Right. Assault team, that is your target. Corporal Lugashaldim, take them in. Support team Razitshakra and myself will maintain watch here. Maintain radio silence until you’ve scouted the ground thoroughly, then I want to know what’s in there.” Ashnak nodded. “Okay, go.”

The three marines drew hammers and pitons from their assault vests and, muffling the noise of the strokes, drove staples into the wall up to head height. Lugashaldim swarmed up the wall, and began to drive higher pitons in. The other two marines followed. Slowly, almost silently, they reached the top of the fifty-foot wall.

Razitshakra whimpered.

Barely warned, Ashnak hit the ground, covering the back of his neck with both horn-hided hands. A searing flare of blue light crisped his vision. Heat burned his back, even through his urban camouflage jacket. He heard a scream that grew louder and cut off, a thud, and then two more solid, bone-crushing impacts, felt through the earth. An unearthly wail split the night.

Ashnak scrambled to his feet.

“Bug out, marine!” He slapped Razitshakra’s shoulder. “Go, go, go! Corporal! Move it!”

The siren blared. Lugashaldim pounded past him, away from the walls. Ashnak sprinted, combat boots ringing on the cobbles, into the safety of the dark alleys. He loped quietly, and almost as fast, for ten minutes. The commando unit slowed and regrouped.

“Magical…defences…very strong…” Razitshakra bent double, squat orc body heaving. Her ears drooped from vertical to horizontal. “I’ve never run into anything like it, General! I never anticipated they’d have something like that.”

Ashnak turned to Lugashaldim. “Your orcs all right, Corporal?”

“Yessssah!” Lugashaldim brushed lumps of charred flesh from his rotting chest, legs, and face. His decomposing fingers smoked. Part of the back of his skull had been smashed in by the fall. The two other marines were in a similar state.

“Undead marines do make the best commandos,” Ashnak observed. “Good command decision, though I say so myself. Marine Razitshakra, what chance is there of getting through those defences with explosives?”

The female orc brushed wretchedly at her spectacles. Shattered glass fell from one frame, where the magical impact had knocked her flying. “Almost none. Those are Repeating Ring defences. Knock one down and there’ll just be another. I didn’t think a research establishment…We’re fucked, General.”

The moon rose higher. Fourgate’s houses gleamed with lamplight, and Ashnak could hear the talk and laughter from salons five streets away. Orcs on the streets of Fourgate were not exactly inconspicuous.

“We’re in a city. I’ve been in cities before. I know what we need…”

The Undead marines and Razitshakra stared at their commanding officer. Ashnak widened his grin, fangs glinting in the starlight.

“General, look out!”

His peaked ears swivelled, catching the noise of footsteps coming down the road. Quite a number of them: casual, non-urgent.

Using silent hand signals, Ashnak directed the orc marine commandos towards the far end of the alley.

Perdita del Verro flicked her glossy brown hair into neatness with the same minor magery that reddened her cold cheeks and lips. The tips of her pointed ears stung with the frost. Her eyes shone, her breath huffed visibly on the air. She about-faced.

Her spellcast pigeon perched on the battlements of Nin-Edin, blank silver eyes fixed. Perdita gave it her sexiest smile.

“This is Perdita del Verro reporting to you, the loyal readers of Warrior of Fortune. Well, I’ve fallen on my feet here, quite unexpectedly. I’m in the Nin-Edin fort, in the orc encampment, engaged in a siege that has already lasted a whole week. There’s certainly plenty of action—the Light Mage in the besieging camp favours heavy spells from the St. Baphomet Cartulary Grimoire, his elves-at-arms have made a dozen attempts to storm the walls, there may also be sappers at work—but still this garrison is holding out!”

Perdita gave her trademark lopsided grin into the silver eyes of the pigeon’s magical sound-and-vision memory.

“Readers, this dishonourable encampment is holding up the great Lord Amarynth himself as he destroys the last remnants of the Horde. I came here expecting to report his swift, glorious victory. These orc warriors—or orc marines, as this strange tribe prefer to be called—don’t have a Dark Mage with them, which normally would make this a very short engagement. Of course, you may wonder why Warrior of Fortune is bothering with such orcish scum…”

The elf put her fists on her leather-clad hips.

“Firstly there is their unorcish courage. I shall be bringing you some orcish-interest stories later on. But, more importantly, these orcs have acquired from somewhere a variety of strange, magical weapons. A detailed report of these follows—right now.”

She snapped her fingers. The pigeon’s eyes returned to black-and-gold. It shivered. She picked the bird up, her hands warming its frostbitten feathers, and threw it high. It scuttered into flight, winging its way unharmed above the snow-covered tents of the Light.

Major Barashkukor abandoned his desk—completely covered in guard rosters, stores allocations, transfers of weapons, itineraries, stock lists, and personnel forms in quadruplicate—and studied his reflection in the fortress office’s polished stone mirror. He carefully settled a pair of dark sunglasses on his snout. He adjusted the holster at his belt so that the .44 Magnum pistol hung more comfortably and tugged on a pair of tight black leather gloves over his clawed fingers.

His aide hammered on the door. “Major! She’s there!”

Barashkukor picked up a low-crowned black hat, its wide brim rolled up at either side. The hatband was decorated with a small tuft of feathers. After some thought he reluctantly removed the decoration’s centrepiece—a dried elf’s ear—and tugged the brim down over his forehead. His Stetsoned reflection looked back at him through Ray·Bans.

“Yo the marines!” he beamed, and left the tower.

The female elf waited with his junior officers on the inner wall parapet, overlooking the central compound. Barashkukor strolled briskly up to join her, a dazzled smile widening his lipless mouth. He signalled to the assembled marines by the Research and Development sheds. “Begin the weapons tests, corporal!”

“Yessir!” Corporal Ugarit, too-large boots crunching through the snow, saluted his superior officer. A new light glinted in his porcine eyes.

“One!” Ugarit announced. “The precision-guided, fully automatic trebuchet, with smart warhead. Fire!”

BOOM!

The large orc by the war-catapult heaved a heavy wooden lever down. The catapult arm rose, hurtling a vast chunk of stone and metal into the air; fell back, rose again, and another missile whammed into the air. Another; and another…

Barashkukor stood on the parapet beside the Warrior of Fortune correspondent, small fists on hips, watching the missiles fall. Snow sifted down from a grey sky, and a wet cold wind seared his exposed flesh. The small orc grinned, unmoved, as the first missile described a lazy parabola that would take it well past the enemy camp.

In mid-air it zigged, zagged, and proceeded to crash through the roof of a concealed sapper’s diggings. Distant cries came up through the snowy air. Perdita blinked in amazement. Barashkukor reached up to pat the female elf’s arm, his spindly, hairless ears straightening.

“Spectacular, isn’t it? We have a superb Research Unit, ma’am. We can match anything Amarynth can throw at us.”

“Two,” Ugarit shouted, “the repeating crossbow. Radar-guided bolts, fires bursts at three bolts per second. Fire!”

One orc held up a bulky crossbow, pointing it over the parapet at the enemy tents. A gunner walked up to it, twisted her forage cap back to front on her forehead, squinted through the sights, and pulled the trigger.

TAKKA-TAKKA-TAKKA-DUKKA-FOOM!

Heavy steel-headed crossbow bolts shrapnelled the hundred yards between the fort and the first tents, shredding canvas, collapsing stores, ricocheting through the smith’s and barber’s tents. Armed Men and elves dived for cover while the useless shimmer of a protective spell shot up into the chill air.

“Yo!” Ugarit’s tilted eyes flashed with an unearthly shine. The tall corporal wore a steel helmet well down on his head, and a heavy-duty flak jacket strapped around his skinny body. Barashkukor glanced down from the parapet at the orc, who stood something over a metre taller than he did, and made a command decision to let the weapons tests go ahead unhindered.

“Three—smart personal weapons! Ready to demonstrate, sir and ma’am!”

Ugarit skittered up and down the line of waiting marines in the compound, handing out poleaxes and warhammers with jutting metallic and cable additions and adjuncts.

“Fire-and-forget hand weaponry! Remember, these weapons are smarter than you are, so just swing them and let them do the rest. No, no! Let me get out of the way first!”

Squeaking, the tall corporal loped up the steps and took refuge on the snow-covered parapet beside Barashkukor and the female elf. The orc marine squad below spat on their horny hands, gripped the unfamiliar shafts of adapted polearms, and raised them.

SPLAT!

Barashkukor winced. A casual swipe from one poleaxe hacked off one marine’s arm, twisted in mid-air to block another weapon, changed trajectory one hundred and eighty degrees and smashed an orc-skull, described three separate curves in the space of milliseconds, and dragged its wielder back out of the fight by sheer momentum.

A smart warhammer drove into that patch of snow-covered earth two seconds later, rebounded, and swung again.

Half the squad dragged their visibly unwilling weapons backwards. A squat and solid orc marine giggled, swinging his poleaxe with gusto. The endspike impaled an orc corporal. She swore. The axe blade swung the squat orc in a circle, and marines leaped out of range. The poleaxe lifted in its owner’s grip, hovered a second—

“Halt!” Barashkukor bellowed shrilly.

The poleaxe twisted up and over and whistled in a short arc, severing the squat orc’s own head. The trunk collapsed. Orc blood steamed and sizzled viridian in the snow.

The orc marine squad—having carefully put down their weaponry first—slapped each other on the back and set about gathering up severed limbs and the unlucky corpses. The squad leader kicked the bleeding orc-head thoughtfully and raised his head to gaze up at the parapet.

“Permission to hold an Orcball tournament, Major, sir?”

Barashkukor looked into the upsidedown eyes of the severed head. “Not until you go off-duty, marine.”

“Oh, that’s all right, sir. It’ll keep in this weather anyway.” The Marine First Class picked up the severed orc-head by the ears and walked back to his squad, debating in an undertone with his buddy. “You don’t get such a long game when they’ve gone squishy. They’re better good and solid. Maybe we can sell tickets…”

“No—I don’t want to know.” The female elf sat down a little suddenly on the snow-covered parapet. “Orcball?”

“Sometimes it’s a raffle,” Barashkukor said helpfully. He fussed, getting the tall, slender elf to her feet, brushing the caked snow off her leather trousers. He waved at his R&D squad. “Not entirely successful, Corporal Ugarit…”

“Nossir. And fourthly,” Ugarit said, eyes darting feverishly around, “my state-of-the-art invention. Personal powered armour. It’s a motherfucker of a defence. Just let them try to take me out now! I shall demonstrate this one myself, Major.”

Barashkukor noted the way the elven reporter’s mouth hung open. Obviously impressed. He proudly puffed out his thin chest, clasping his hands behind his back.

“Watch this, ma’am.”

The doors of the Research and Development building crashed open. A team of heavily built orcs wheeled a wooden trailer out into the compound. Resting on it was what at first appeared to be a metal and glass statue of an orc, or possibly unusually full plate harness.

“Is that armour?” Perdita del Verro queried. “I don’t recognise the country of origin…”

Ugarit skipped up to the trailer, waving the other orc marines back. He scrambled up, opened panels in the metal casing, and climbed into the steel exoskeleton. The panels clicked shut.

Barashkukor called, “Corporal?”

The exoskeleton lay still. A high-pitched whine began to build. Several of the radar and satellite dishes now sprouting from the parapets began to turn. Ugarit, in the full body armour, sat up.

Metal plate and thick glass sheathed him from his skinny ears to his taloned feet. The powered armour whined, servo-mechanisms activating, put its heavy feet down on the snow-covered earth, and lurched upright. Ugarit’s face, where it was visible, was contorted with glee. His hands could be seen manipulating pressure pads in the heavy glass-and-steel gloves.

His mechanically amplified voice boomed out, “I’m invincible! I feel like a god! No one can get me now, Major, no one!”

Ugarit took one step forward.

The exoskeleton’s left foot came down on compacted snow and skidded forward. Servo-mechanisms shrieked and gyros whirred, compensating. Ugarit’s face, high up and small, could not be seen now, but a wail echoed down from the machine. The powered armour’s right leg lurched another step, came down in soft ice and lodged. The left leg jerked, attempting to pull the other free. Sparks shot from all the powered armour’s joints. The left leg crabbed itself around, beginning to circle faster.

“Help!”

Ugarit’s powered-armour suit swayed and began to pivot with increasing rapidity about its trapped right foot. Mechanisms sheared. Sparks flew. Two explosions sent sickly thick black smoke into the air.

“Aaaiieee!”

“Incoming!” Barashkukor threw himself flat. Fast as he was, the Warrior of Fortune reporter hit the dirt before he did. A solid loud crack! sounded. Panels of powered armour whipped across the compound, slamming into buildings. A choking, acrid smoke spread through the still, snowy air. Barashkukor buried his face in his arms while fragments hissed into the snow around him. Slush soaked through his combat trousers.

BOOM!-taka-taka-taka…click…

tkk!

“Is it safe?” Perdita del Verro whispered.

“Erm…Maybe. Yes. Of course!”

Orc marines picked themselves up out of the slush, brushing down green and brown combats and scratching their heads. The powered armour had apparently snapped at the waist, the top now hanging over upsidedown. It smoked gently.

“Uhhhnn…”

The Research and Development Department (Nin-Edin Marine Base) crawled out from under a collapsed shed. His combats steamed, and green blood dripped from rents in the camouflage cloth. Ugarit wiped his singed crest away from his blackened face, staggered to his feet, and aimed a cross-eyed salute several yards to Barashkukor’s left.

“Sorry about that, sir,” the tall orc corporal apologized, dazed. “I’ll take that one back to the planning stage.”

Barashkukor coughed and forced a sickly grin. The back of his neck burned with embarrassment at having the elf witness the failure. “We have enough weaponry to be going on with, Corporal. Put the rest of the stuff into production immediately.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Ugarit stared fixedly into the middle distance. “Permission to report sick, sir?”

“Permission granted,” Barashkukor sighed.

“Thank you, sir.” The tall, thin orc saluted, shut his eyes with his hand still raised, fell forward with his body unbending, and smacked face-first into the slush.

Perdita’s hand rested on Barashkukor’s thin, muscular shoulder; warm in the winter air. “Major, I see what you’re doing! Every strange new weapon you can throw at the besiegers stops them—for a day, or half a day, or a few hours—by sheer surprise. It’s a war of the mind. Psychological warfare.”

Barashkukor internally debated the wisdom of, in the first flush of his enthusiasm, having let the elf poke around in some of Dagurashibanipal’s miscellaneous crates.

The elf added softly, “But each time it gains you less respite. Major, you can’t go on like this forever. That’s a lot of army out there. What are you waiting for?”

5

The dawn of the siege’s eighth day coloured the eastern heavens lemon-bright above the Demonfest peaks.

A trebuchet thunked and whirred. A gelatinous sphere hurtled from its catapult-scoop on a rising trajectory and struck Nin-Edin’s walls just below the outer gate-house. The sticky substance clung and burst into sorcerous blue and gold flame, brilliant against the fresh snow.

The dwarvish engineer Kazra, hip-deep in snow, rubbed her small calloused palms together.

“Ah. I love the smell of Greek Fire in the morning…”

Another scoop of sorcerous fire sparked trails over the white landscape. Just visible on the walls, orcs scurried with gravel buckets. The sparks of hammer on steel flew from the armourers’ firepits, and their welcome clangour made music in her ears. She drew in a breath of frozen air and the scent of magic.

“My old friend and comrade.” Lord Commander Amarynth reached brown fingers down to touch the shoulder of her padded brigandine. “With magery’s help today we will winkle out these obstinate sinners—Lady of Light!”

The gilded ball on the peak of the main command tent dipped and went down as the central pole collapsed. Acres of snow-wet canvas billowed. An unearthly shriek split the morning. Men and elves ran through trampled slush, hurriedly pulling on pieces of armour, shouting. Kazra unshipped her war-axe from her back. A serpent uncoiled against the sky.

“War-elephant!” Kazra screamed. Orcs in black breast-plates and riding on wild mountain wolves reared up in front of her, out of the breached camp’s confusion, and she swung and missed, swung again and dented one breastplate.

“Ho, the dwarves!” Kazra hacked her way down to where Amarynth, blue cloak falling back from his silver armour, fought in the first blaze of dawn to touch the mountain’s lower slopes.

“Revenge!” cried the wolf-riding orcs. “Revenge for Samhain! Kill their commanding officers!”

Amarynth idly gestured a spell, inverting both wolves and riders.

Abruptly, dwarves, Men, and elves were all Kazra could see. No orcs that were not writhing masses of intestines. The war-elephant trampled out from the ruins of the command tent. High above, the rider coolly gestured, and the beast ponderously reared to crush.

Kazra cocked her arm, muttered an incantation, hurled her war-axe, and caught the elephant’s rider solidly on the helmet. The rider fell. The elephant, released, rampaged up the slope towards Nin-Edin, the Light’s warriors sprinting out of its path.

“For the Dark!”

Amarynth stepped past her at that cry, slender sword pointing towards the elephant’s rider. The rider scrambled to his feet, glaring out at the surrounding men-at-arms from under a dented horned helmet. His eyes, fiercely blue, glittered like the northern skies. Kazra forced her way into the front rank of the crowd and looked down at him.

“Bit short for a Man, aren’t you?” the dwarf enquired.

The diminutive barbarian, feet planted in the ruins of the command tent, stood with his two-handed axe braced over his head, flashing back the dawn’s light.

“Who’s asking you, you fucking midget? I’m here for the sodding Dark, to relieve Nin-Edin! Single combat, warrior against warrior! Which one of you flea-bitten, whore-mongering, arse-licking goat-fuckers thinks you can take me?”

Kazra looked up at the slender, dark-skinned elf. Amarynth looked down at her. Simultaneously, they remarked, “How barbaric.”

Simultaneously they sheathed sword and put away axe, turned to the surrounding fifty men-at-arms, and directed, “Take him.”

The northern barbarian vanished under a heap of armored bodies.

“Prepare that Dark scum for questioning,” Amarynth ordered.

Kazra turned to look back up the slope.

A few fleeting orcs, screaming in their own guttural tongue, arrived before the gates of Nin-Edin. Kazra saw how, before her own people could reach the walls, the defenders opened the gates, and the refugee orcs streamed in to join them.

The gates being open, and no orc being about to attempt to prevent it, the war-elephant also lumbered inside Nin-Edin.

The gates slammed rapidly shut.

Twelve hours later, at the far end of the Demonfest mountain range, four figures emerged from an alley in Fourgate.

The four tottered on high-heeled red shoes. Piled and powdered white wigs uneasily surmounted their heads, and they swathed themselves in the folds of black silk cloaks to hide the rips in their coats. Ashnak abandoned hope of buttoning his frock coat up to his chin and adjusted the strings of his black domino-mask.

“Marines?” he hissed.

“Yessir!” Lugashaldim shrugged his cloak over his bulging, muscular shoulders and rested the ferrule of his amber cane on the cobbles. The two SUS orc marines with him mumbled, “Yo!” and went back to arranging their lace ruffles and pulling silk gloves on over their bulging, taloned hands.

“Razitshakra!”

The fifth orc emerged from the alleyway, shaking out the immense flounces of a silk brocade gown. Razitshakra tugged the bodice of the ballgown lower, covered her granite-coloured breasts with a lace fichu, and swept the aquamarine silk cloak about her shoulders. A black velvet mask covered most of her features, leaving visible only a somewhat protruding jaw. Her white, feather-spangled wig sat slightly crooked on her head.

“It’ll have to do,” Ashnak said firmly. “Forward, marines!”

The five bewigged orcs minced out into the street. Lugashaldim flourished his cane with style. Ashnak reached across and grabbed it from him, cracking it down on the cobbles with an equal flourish, and set off down the road, cloak swinging.

“Sir!” Ashnak accosted a passerby, holding a silk kerchief to his wide mouth and relying on that and the indistinct moonlight. “We are strangers come to Fourgate for the celebrations. I pray you, sir, where might one find a little—Guild thievery and pleasure?”

The passerby lifted a minuscule velvet hat from a towering peruke and bowed. “You need the Abbey Park, brave sir. You will be well advised to take your swords, as I see you do, but there you will find all that you desire.”

Ashnak bowed and twisted his ankle, not used to high-heeled court shoes. He muttered muffled thanks and marched off in the direction indicated. The houses leaned together over the streets here, darkening them still further, with only the linkboys’ torches to light the way for Men, elves, halflings, and dwarves. Ashnak’s night-vision served him perfectly adequately.

“Here,” Razitshakra objected, “I haven’t got a sword.”

The fourth orc marine fiddled with the butterfly-hilted small-sword at his belt and growled, “Call this a sword?”

Razitshakra replaced one of the dragon hoard’s thin books within her fur muff. “I don’t see why male orcs should have the monopoly of coercive force. It’s a politically unsound principle.”

“What?”

“Why haven’t I got one?”

“Because you’re a Lady!” Ashnak snarled. “Quiet, marine. This must be it.”

A tall temple stood deserted on their right. The road opened into a piazza crowded with all races. Ashnak’s wide nostrils flared at the scent of enemies. An elf in a gold-embroidered brocade coat strolling past, talking with a ragged orange-seller…Two dwarves in frieze coats and slouch hats muttering about interest rates and then diving into the low door of a dwarf tavern…Male and female Men eating at the food-shacks and drinking outside bagnios and public baths…

“There.” Ashnak nodded. A bottleglass-windowed coffee-house stood on the corner across from the temple. In the last glare of the setting moon, and the new flaring of torches about the piazza, he could spell out its name: At the Sign of the Dancing Orc.

The roughly drawn picture was of an orc, its feet waving as it dangled from a noose.

Lugashaldim growled deep in his throat. Ashnak, suddenly scenting the SUS orc marines, waved his silk kerchief in front of his masked nostrils and walked to open the door of the coffee-house.

“Stand aside!” A young flaxen-bearded dwarf with a torch straight-armed Ashnak away from the door. He hesitated, wrung his wrist, and stared up at the broad-shouldered, masked figure. “’Ere, you’re a strong cove, ain’tcha? No matter. Way for Mistress Betsy Careless! Way for Captain Mad Jack Montague! Make way, I say!”

Ashnak trod back on Lugashaldim’s foot. He bowed, getting his balance better this time. The dwarf—a boy hardly more than forty, dressed in ragged blue velvet—cackled, and kicked open the coffee-house door. A sedan-chair creaked as its bearers let it thump to the ground, and Razitshakra and the two masked grunts were forced to step back from the figure seated astride the sedan-chair’s roof, wildly waving a broadsword.

“Ho! Little Cazey!”

The dwarf leered and bowed to Ashnak. “That’s me, sir. Laurence Casey, not at your service, but at his.”

The Man leapt down and flung open the sedan’s door. “My lady! Accompany me, I pray!”

The dwarf filled his lungs and bellowed through the open door: “My Lord Mad Jack Montague, Earl of Ruxminster! His paramour, the very gay and sprightly Betsy Careless! Make way!”

Ashnak let the noble bully and his cyprian clear the door and then led his orc marines inside, under cover of their noise. The low-ceilinged room hung heavy with pipe-weed smoke and the fumes of coffee brewing. Ashnak slitted his tilted eyes and gazed around—mostly Men, dwarves, and halfings, in silk breeches and frock coats: some reading broadsheets, all with bottles of arrack or brandy at their elbows; the yellow lamplight gleaming on the exposed breasts of whores; the noise of raucous singing filling the air.

Lugashaldim chuckled. It was not visible behind the domino-mask, but Ashnak guessed the albino orc to be grinning. “This is all right, General. A home away from home, you might say.”

“Quiet, marine. Ashnak pointed to a table, hobbling over and taking a seat in one of the alcoves. The oak settle was hardly comfortable, but the partitions screened him from other patrons. The other four seated themselves along the table.

“An’ what would you gentlemen—and lady—be wanting?”

Ashnak glanced up, then lowered his vision. A tiny halfling child, no more than knee-height and dressed in ragged shawl and robe, licked her diminutive finger and poised a pencil over a scrap of paper.

“Bring me the day’s broadsheets,” Ashnak ordered, “and your best Java coffee; a bottle of arrack; no companions, for the meanwhile; and speech with the landlord when it shall be convenient.”

The halfling child bobbed its head and scuttled away. Lugashaldim, half-buried in the flounces of his lace cravat, said in an amazed tone, “You’ve done this before, General?”

Ashnak made to draw off his gloves and thought better of it. “I know how to behave in polite society.”

Squat and wide-shouldered, Lugashaldim leaned out of the partitioned alcove, peering through the fug to the back rooms. Greasy playing-cards were being slapped down on a stained tabletop; whores in cotton lace took frock-coated Men and dwarves up the back stairs; and Mad Jack Montague had his head buried in the bosoms of Betsy Careless.

A voice said, “Mighty curious, ain’tcha—gents?”

Ashnak leaned back against the oak partition, removing his masked face from the direct lamplight. His wig wobbled precariously. The big orc looked up through the velvet mask’s slits at a broad, black-haired man in leather apron and bag-breeches.

“Mine host?”

“I be Jan Tompkyns, ay. Who might you be?”

White wig powder trickled down Ashnak’s forehead under the mask, irritating his wide nostrils. Under the table, he prized his cramped feet out of the court shoes, flexing taloned toes. Every muscle tense, about to spring—

“I am the Lady Razit—Rasvinniah,” the orc marine Razitshakra said in a bored tone, taking the day’s broadsheet from the little halfling bar-girl, flicking it open, and peering over her spectacles. “Landlord, you will have heard of Rasvinniah, the famous blue-stocking, and her circle of Wits. We are come to view the Abbey Park and your fine establishment.”

Ashnak recovered his dropped jaw in time to nod, firmly, when Jan Tompkyns looked at him.

“Then your ladyship is perhaps composing a poem, dedicated to the Dancing Orc and its customers?” The Man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Which you will read, tonight, to yonder other Wits—I mean my journalist friends from the Spectator broadsheet.”

“Of course.” Razitshakra inclined her head. The feathers decorating her wig brushed cobwebs from the ceiling.

“Then I bid you good evening, and pray you enjoy my house.” The landlord stomped off.

“Poem?” Ashnak demanded. “Poem?”

Razitshakra flourished the bar-girl’s pencil and began to scribble on the back of one of the roughly printed broadsheets. “I’ve been reading some good books lately. A marine should be fully trained in all skills, General.”

“Poetry! It should take three marines for a mission of that nature,” Ashnak grumbled. “One who can read, one who can write—and one to keep watch over those other two dangerous subversives.”

“I’ll allay the landlord’s suspicions, sir. Trust me.” Razitshakra thrust the pencil-point up her nose and sniffed. “Now let me think…”

“Dance wiv me, governor?” A female Man, her ears pointed enough to make Ashnak suspect that she was half-elven, leaned over the table and thrust her breasts into the big orc’s masked face. “Come on! Blind Dick’s about to play ’is fiddle. Dance with Poor Meg or be called a coward forever!”

The whore’s hand slipped beneath the table top and groped Ashnak’s groin. Her eyes widened.

“’Ere! You are a big boy, ain’tcha? Come upstairs with me, mister. Only two silver shillings. We’ll dance the dance you do on yer back.”

Ashnak placed her hand back up on the table. He pitched his voice high, with difficulty making his accent genteel. “Can’t you see I have drink and companions? I’ll call on you when I need you; for now, begone!”

The piping of a whistle and the sawing of a fiddle filled the air of the Dancing Orc. A raucous lavatorial song broke out in one corner, soon drowned out by the competition of a dozen Men singing of the skills of one Bet “Little-Infamy” Davies. Ashnak took a mouthful of the arrack, scowled, and turned his attention to the steaming pot of coffee. There was a silence at the table broken only by Razitshakra’s furious scribbling and one of the other marines’ scratching through the thick cloth of his frock coat for fleas. Despite this attempt to blend in, there was, Ashnak felt, still something unmistakably military about the party.

His tilted eyes narrowed, searching the room. Plenty of patrons with the signs of the Thieves’ Guild on them, but which to approach?

“Are you done, my lady?” The black-haired landlord, Jan Tompkyns, loomed over the table. A gaggle of peruked Men in stained velvet coats hung at his elbows.

Razitshakra rustled the broadsheet, peered at her scribble, cleared her throat, and announced modestly: “An Ode to Jan Tompkyn’s Hostelry”:

One periwigged Man clapped his hands and the rest began to applaud, more in relief than appreciation.

“‘Tis well done!”

“Ay, you cannot say it isn’t. We are indebted to you, my lady.”

“If you are inclined to publish,” an elderly, prune-faced Man hung back and addressed Razitshakra as the rest departed, “I can offer you reasonable terms, and the anonymity due to a Lady of Quality…”

“I—” Razitshakra brought her fan up to cover her masked face, wincing. Ashnak, who had clawed her under the table, nodded affably at the Man.

“It is her pastime only, sir.”

It was unnecessary to show the decorated hilt of his short-sword. At Ashnak’s bass-voiced comment, the Man bowed and hurriedly departed to his comrades on the far side of the coffee-house. Ashnak drew breath, about to speak, and the landlord returned and leaned over and planted a jug of arrack and five mugs on the table. His black-browed face had cleared.

“Welcome, sirs and madam, welcome. I do apologise for my suspicions, but we have Justices come here in disguises searching out vice, and then it is myself and my wife who will be whipped at the cart-tail for keeping a bawdy-house, do you see, girl? Please drink this on the house.”

Ashnak, still leaning back out of the lamplight, said confidentially, “we are not Justices, sir, I warrant you. The very opposite, in fact. I hear the Guild knows this tavern, landlord. To tell the truth, we need to hire a servant or two—servants who shall know how to thieve, but not from their employers…”

Jan Tomkyns straightened, wiping his hands down his leather apron. Tall for a Man, he would have topped Ashnak only by half a head if they had both been standing; and Ashnak huddled into his cloak and coat so as not to have it noticed that he was himself four times as heavily built as the landlord.

“Ah, sir, now I appreciate…yes. The custom is for the house to recommend, and a small fee—why, thank you, sir. Very kind. Now let me think…Do you see her, yonder?”

Ashnak noticed one of his silk gloves had split, showing the granite-coloured skin and talon beneath. He tucked his large hands up into the cuffs of his frock coat. He peered through the smog. A female halfling sat alone in an opposite nook, her crimson cloak hood drawn up, shadowing her face.

“She is a thief?”

“What, Magda, sir? Lord, sir, no! But she’s the mother of two of the most ingenious thieves in the kingdom, and if you speak with her, I’m sure you can come to terms.”

Ashnak nodded to Razitshakra. “Write a note for the halfling Magda. Landlord, I would as soon leave this note with you to give to her. Here is silver.”

“Holloa! I’ve won!”

Captain Mad Jack Montague, Earl of Ruxminster, leaving the back gaming room riding on the shoulders of a stout whore, whipped at her with his crop. His boot swung round and caught the table, knocking arrack and lukewarm coffee into the laps of Ashnak and the orc marines.

“Faith, ye’re wet! Baptised ye, ye Lightless dogs!”

Lugashaldim stood, furious, wiping himself down, bandy-legged in silk breeches. Ashnak inclined his wigged head. “No harm done, sir.”

“Faith, a piss-britches coward!” The Earl Captain swung his sword above his head, knocking one of the lamps, and galloped his whore around the room, kicking at other tables and ducking the jugs and shoes flung piecemeal at his head.

Razitshakra finished writing. Ashnak took the letter. He did not read it, it not being a common thing in a Wit to have to spell prose out letter by letter, lips moving. Besides, the marine had her orders. He folded the paper and handed it to the landlord.

“You are to give this to the female halfling’s thieves. To the thieves themselves. Will you remember that?”

“To the thieves?” Jan Tompkyns looked puzzled. “But you may speak with Magda herself now, sir, at your pleasure.”

“No.” Ashnak stood up and moved out of the partition, not bothering to conceal his bulk or his quickness. A number of the patrons glanced over, and he saw how they took in five square-built, hunch-shouldered, supposed Men in frock coats and silk gown, features hidden behind domino-masks. At his back he heard the four other orcs scuffling out from the benches. He thrust the letter into the landlord’s hand. “You will remember, sir, I promise you. The thieves must have this letter. Do it.”

“Yes, sir. But sir—”

Ashnak casually backhanded the Man across the face, breaking his jaw and rendering him unconscious. The landlord fell across chairs and hit the floor. Ashnak caught Lugashaldim’s and Razitshakra’s eyes. He nodded.

“Now.”

Wading in swatches of silk, bow-legged and broad-shouldered, Razitshakra kicked over tables and chairs and coffee-drinkers on her way across the room. Lugashaldim shook his head, peruke and domino-mask flying off. Someone gasped and swore. In no more than fifteen seconds the two orcs ploughed across the room, snatched up the female halfling, bundled her in a cloak, and bashed their way out, demolishing one of the doorposts as they went.

A dozen or so of the less-drunk patrons drew sword. Ashnak clawed the cloak off his back and unholstered his concealed Uzi automatic submachine-gun. The two remaining orc marines dropped cloaks and masks and shifted M16s into firing position. Ashnak cocked the gun, moved the fire-selector to automatic, and let off a series of three-shot bursts.

“Aaiiiiiieee!”

The M16s opened up. Noise shattered the coffee-house. Ashnak scythed down Captain Mad Jack and his whore, the flaxen-haired dwarf, the table of Spectator journalists and then emptied the magazine through the back door. Bodies jerked, staggered, caught half-rising. The halfling bar-girl, picked up by the force of the shots, splattered across the back wall as it collapsed.

The big orc hit the magazine-release catch, snicked a full magazine home, and—firing on semi-auto to conserve ammunition—slewed a burst of fire around the room and fell in behind the remaining two orc marines as they left the Dancing Orc by way of the demolished back wall. Human, dwarf, and halfling blood painted the walls, spattered the ceilings; Men clutched at guts spilling through burned and tattered frock coats and lace shirts; faces minced, limbs shattered, bone-fragments flying like shrapnel.

In less than thirty seconds, and always firing above waist-level so as to avoid hitting the unconscious body of Tomkyns, the orc marines cleared the building and disappeared into the alleyways around Abbey Park.

Jan Tompkyns, eventually conscious and in great pain, did not think to study the letter until he had had a surgeon to his jaw, fled two streets away before the Justices should investigate the room of bleeding, stinking corpses in the Dancing Orc, and wept hysterically for close onto four hours.

It was some time after midnight when Magda’s sons found him.

“Our mother—she’s not among the dead. Damn you,” the elder demanded, “what happened?”

His jaw bound up, the landlord could not speak. He proffered the stained letter. The elder son took it. The younger read over his shoulder.

It was unsigned.

6

The war is over now.

Vultures wheel at heights from whicn the Demonfest Mountains are only rumpled white rock patching the curved earth. The birds’ centre-magnified vision sees all:

The Northern Kingdoms ravaged, fields unharvested rotting in early winter rain. Men and other races huddle in their villages against famine and death, while in Herethlion and Fourgate songs are sung of heroes’ victories. Vultures avoid the cities of Men. The dead tossed over the walls stink of plague.

The war is over.

The abandoned Dark strongholds, the magical dead of the east, are desolate now beyond even vultures’ picking.

And vultures follow the Last Battle’s soldiers in their company-sized refugee bands, waiting as they take forts and castles, hold them for a time, lose them to their lawful owners or (more often) to larger marauding bands, leaving enough behind to glut the vultures so that they can barely fly.

The war is over. This is peace.

Vultures circle at heights where, like the fields of destruction beneath, the only rules are those of hunger.

The unseasonable November snow whitened the porticos of Fourgate’s mansions and turned to peach-coloured slush in the cobbled streets. Will Brandiman tipped the carriers of his sedan chair, got out, and trod cautiously across the slippery flagstones of the courtyard outside the Visible College.

A small girl with brown pigtails hurled a snowball. It burst against Will’s tricorn hat. He growled, “Cut it out, Ned!”

The girl, slightly taller than Will, stuffed one somewhat coarse hand inside a rabbit-fur muff and picked up the hem of her gown and cloak together as she skipped across the street. Close at hand, her hair was a little too short for braiding, and her brows too thick, and her mouth had lines about it that eight-year-olds do not commonly have…

The brown-haired halfling shuffled his large, hirsute feet under the scarlet velvet of his dress. He lowered his head demurely. “Greetings, brother Will.”

“Brother Ned.”

They both looked at the Visible College.

“Let’s set fire to the building,” Ned Brandiman said. “Then when everyone comes rushing out, we can rush in…”

“Dark damn it, Ned, that’s your answer to everything!”

“It works,” the elder halfling said, miffed. “Well? I’ve watched outside this place for two hours. We’re not going to get in. I’m not surprised orcs didn’t make it. There’s magic oozing out of the very stones.”

Will Brandiman raised his head. Cold wind and flakes of snow brushed his eyes. The monumental walls of the Visible College here gave way to a terraced frontage, lined with Corinthian columns, and a vast set of double doors flanked by stone griffins. Uniformed Wilderness mercenaries patrolled the colonnade in front of the doors.

Ned squatted and began constructing a snowman, singing a child’s game-rhyme in a high-pitched voice. The mercenaries’ gazes slid away. Will stopped pretending to be digging in his purse for coppers.

They casually walked away from the courtyard to one of the hot-chestnut-sellers’ braziers in the street and stood picking the shells off finger-burning nuts and chewing them, then dropping the husks.

Will swallowed thoughtfully. “It’s guarded. Magic and steel. The walls are insurmountable. I don’t fancy coming back tonight to pick the lock on that door. It’ll probably turn you into a hippogriff if you don’t have the right magical key.”

“We could set fire—”

“Ned!”

“It was only a suggestion.”

Will stamped his booted feet in the slush. There was no jingle from the mail-shirt under his cloak, nor from the bandoleer of throwing-knives he wore over his doublet, nor the daggers at his belt and in his boots. A thin coil of elven rope, wound about his waist, made him the image of a fat, possibly dwarfish, merchant (but not his feet). The wind blew through his curly black hair, silver at the temples. He narrowed his eyes.

“But there’s Mother to be thought of…”

“Yes.”

The two halflings exchanged glances.

“If they harm her…” Ned scowled.

Will said viciously, “I’d like to take something else out of the Visible College. Enough experimental magic to make mincemeat out of her kidnappers!”

“No point. Not if we’re stealing magic-null talismans for them. I don’t think we dare cheat.”

“Damn it.”

There was a pause, in the deadened silence that comes with snowfall. A coach crept by, cartwheels skidding, Percherons straining to pull it across the icy cobbles. Will nodded absently. He wiped wind-tears from the lined corners of his eyes.

“The Nin-Edin fort,” he asserted, “we already know. Those are the orcs we bemused into giving us an armed escort out of the Wilderness three months ago. Chances are it’s the same orcs there now—”

“No way!” Ned shook his head emphatically. One pink ribbon slipped from his braids. Nimbly, he picked it up and began plaiting his hair again as he watched the frontage of the Visible College. “After the Last Battle? There are stray orcs all over the place!”

“You’d know about the Last Battle,” Will said sceptically.

“And you’d know too, I suppose?” His brother gave him a look of absolute cynicism. “Having fought impressively on the side of the Light—as you insist on telling all the gamblers and ruffians and whores in Fourgate?”

“That has nothing to do with anything!”

Snow fell faster from a lowering sky, the flakes black against the clouds, white against the masonry of mansions and arcades. Will flexed his fingers inside embroidered gauntlets. It is never wise to let hands become too cold to act. He eyed the lantern light shining through the windowed dome of the Visible College—a dome accessible only by flight, if then.

“It has to be the same orcs! They lost their leaders at Guthranc, but they weren’t all massacred, not by any means. The question is, Do they know it’s us?” Will shivered in the wind. “I do wish Mother wouldn’t pray to Fortuna. It brings about the most amazing coincidences.”

Ned Brandiman hurled a snowball at the nut-seller. The elderly woman good-naturedly tossed a bag of hot chestnuts back. She turned back to her cash-tray, counted, and began to frown.

Boots stamped and weapon-butts hit the flagstones as the mercenaries changed guard. Will eyed the oiled brilliance of their halberds and the much-worn grips of their swords. Under his breath he murmured, “No, thank you…”

“Perhaps you should have told Mother that we still have all that money,” Ned observed.

Will nodded morosely. “Perhaps I should. But you know what she’s like with gold…I didn’t want to put temptation in her way.”

The snow fell faster, silting up in the creases of Will’s cloak. Ned put both hands inside his rabbit-fur muff.

“So how are we going to get in there?”

“You’re not,” Will said. He surveyed the crimson velvet gown and grinned. “You’re going to freeze your ass off in the snow, waiting to see if I make it, and if I don’t, you’re going to come in and rescue me. Right, brother Ned?”

Ned Brandiman groaned. “Right, brother Will. All right. I’ll try that again. How are you going to get into the Visible College?”

Will brushed down his cloak, taking advantage of the movement to unobtrusively check the position of throwing-knives, daggers, concealed poison needles, and blackjacks. There were bulges at his belt. He straightened his shoulders and stared through the falling snow at the steps and colonnade and guards outside the Visible College.

“In cases like these,” he said, “I always find that the judicious application of enormous amounts of money works wonders. Excuse me.”

Careful of the ice, he strode across the road and up the steps towards the mercenaries, taking out from under his fashionable cloak a bag of gold as large as a troll’s fist.

“Here.” He clapped it into the mercenary captain’s hand. About to bellow, she first hefted the bag thoughtfully, opened it, and her eyebrows then attempted to climb through her hairline.

“That’s for you,” Will said, “with another one when I come out. I wish to speak to the director of the Visible College, with a view to making some purchases—a large quantity, wholesale.”

“I must no longer let myself be distracted by their devilish engines!”

The Paladin-Mage stood silhouetted against the racing black clouds that hid the peaks of the Demonfest Mountains. A fierce cold wind flapped the white surcoat he wore over his armour to signify the purity of his intent, and seared into his dark, aquiline face. Amarynth did not so much as blink.

“Lady,” he prayed, “now send me Grace!”

He stared up the Nin-Edin pass at the squat, dark fortress, silhouetted with old snow, bristling with guns and flags on the keep and inner walls, and (on the outer, lower walls which Amarynth now faced) crowded with jeering orcs.

A brown orc leaned between the crenellations, starting a chant:

Amarynth lifted both his dark hands and spoke a word.

“You c—”

The orcs ceased to chant. In the sudden silence, a whispering noise sounded. It might have been the wind. It became louder, a rushing roaring and pouring.

Mortar turned to powder and leaked out between the stones of Nin-Edin’s outer wall.

Lichen and iron-rot darted up the dank walls. Nitre spidered across the cracking masonry. Within the space of three heartbeats, the stone aged.

Aged, crumbled, and fell into ruin.

The outermost of the main gate’s towers slid two yards down the hill, tilted, and the masonry blocks showered out into the air, falling down the slops, and fading, before they hit dirt, into the dust of aeons.

The cold, snow-laden wind blew down the pass. Orcs, running, fell with the dissolving walls, tumbling into shale and earth and a rising cloud of putrefaction, as the entire outer wall of the ancient Nin-Edin fort collapsed within the space of thirty heartbeats.

The clouds broke.

Spiked and cusped armour encased Amarynth, each plate bright with pierced gold borders. As the Powers of the Air bowed to his command, the sun struck down through the pass, and he raised his arm, and his gauntlet took white flame.

“Amarynth Firehand!” one of the elvish warriors cried, and the name was taken up through the massed ranks of the Light encampment. A silver trumpet rang out, high and clear, echoing from rockface to rockface, until it seemed a thousand armies stirred in the mountains. Amarynth vaulted, fully armoured, into the saddle of his caparisoned war-unicorn.

“My part is done!” he cried. “Warriors of the Light, the next glory is yours!”

He walked his horned mount over the broken outer defences, with the charging elves, dwarves, and Men. Evil witch-fires blazed and stuttered from the keep and the inner walls of Nin-Edin. Harsh orcish voices shrieked commands.

The Paladin ignored them, staring down.

Among the rubble lay twitching bundles. He dismounted and knelt by one. The orc soldier dribbled feebly and gazed up with eyes upon which cataracts had already formed. Age withered the bulging muscles, made the palsied claws shake. The mouth drooled, attempting to form words.

“Her Grace did come upon me,” Amarynth said, satisfied.

He remounted and rode on a few paces, picking his way through the rubble and the dozens of orcs dead of old age.

“Die, motherfucker!”

Sword in hand, Amarynth leaned down. An orc lay pinned under a masonry block. Obviously too far from the epicentre of magic to be affected, this orc was yet young. It spat through broken tusks and hurled a rock with its unbroken arm.

“Poor creature!” The elf dismounted and, carefully keeping clear of the orc’s fangs, laid a gauntleted hand on its sweating brow. “Do you repent of your sins?”

The uniformed orc coughed. It stared around at the hundreds of elf, dwarf, and Men warriors tramping up the hill, their bright swords dripping with the blood of the aged orcs caught in the outer walls’ wreckage.

“Hell, yes! I repent, man. I repent! Take me prisoner—”

A great pity welled up in Amarynth’s heart. He thrust his swordblade deep into the orc’s throat. The creature’s startled eyes dulled as it dribbled green blood.

“I have saved your soul by sending you to a better world while you were in a state of grace. Who knows but that as a prisoner you might have fallen back into evil ways?”

Masonry shards whipped through the air. Amarynth cast a casual fail-weapons spell at the prone, firing orcs farther up the hill. The orcs—he was close enough now to see their snarling, ugly features, their hunched bodies, and vile clothing—cursed and threw down their useless weapons.

An authoritative orc voice shrieked. “Fall back by fire and movement!”

The odd incantation meant nothing to Amarynth, skilled though he was in arcane lore. He watched the orcs run, led by a smaller orc in black, who limped.

“Now,” he cried. “They run! Now, for the Light!”

The Man infantry cheered, pounding their green-stained blades against their painted shields. Beams of sun shone on their mail-shirts and cloaks as they swarmed up the slope.

Some orcs hid in cover and fired while other bands of orcs retreated; the retreating orcs would then stop in turn and begin to fire. Incomprehensible. The Paladin-Mage Amarynth cast fail-weapons spells to his left and right as he rode up the hill, head bare to the chill of the day.

A skinny orc danced on the battlements of the inner walls. He frothed at the mouth as Amarynth stared up, the feathers and chains that ornamented him shaking and jangling.

The red-bearded dwarf Kazra appeared suddenly from the rear of Nin-Edin, stomping through the bloody slush. “Lord Commander, they won’t take the bait. They won’t leave the inner walls and come out and fight us!”

A slender elf Captain of Archers stepped forward and smiled. “Impossible, dwarf. Orcs always respond to taunting.”

“They do?” Kazra stared up at the armed, uniformed orcs lining the crenellations. “Orcs! Cowardly scum!”

A battered and bleeding albino-crested orc muttered, “You called?”

“I believe I begin to comprehend their strange tongue, Lord Commander,” the engineer-mage said. She pointed up at a large orc. “Your mother wears combat boots, and pisses standing up!”

An expression of confusion crossed the orc’s face. “Doesn’t everyone’s?”

The dwarf’s face reddened with more than the icy cold. After a moment’s silence, the elf archer sang out, “All orcs are cowardly filth! You have not one true warrior amongst you!”

Rows of silent, motionless orcs lined Nin-Edin’s inner walls. Amarynth saw no sign now of the strange witch-weaponry. Instead, the orcs swung axes and maces, gripped jagged swords and spears and spiked clubs.

A small orc in black leaned over the battlements and met Amarynth’s gaze.

“We lost a lot of people down there.” Its voice was guttural as it pointed to the demolished outer walls. “If you want us, elf, you’re gonna have to come in and take us!”

“What is the matter with them, my lord?” The elf Captain of Archers squeaked in frustration. “These are orc warriors. They should charge out, tormented to fury by our very presence in front of them! Each tribe should seek to outdo the other by flinging themselves hopelessly into the midst of our fighting elves. Why do they not do this?”

“What does it matter?” Amarynth shrugged. “Take the inner walls.”

The commander of the Man infantry shuffled back, drawing a ragged breath. “Don’t give that order, my lord. I don’t think you’ll be obeyed.”

“But we have them completely at our mercy!”

“These aren’t like other orcs, my lord! They’re…they’re not natural! This isn’t what fighting orcs is like. Orcs run. Orcs are stupid. These orcs…”

The dwarf Kazra, at the head of her halberdiers, grunted. “Maybe they’re right. This is some unnatural evil beyond our comprehension.”

Amarynth Firehand bowed his head for a moment and then lifted it again. The sun, level through the clouds, sparked back in points of fire from his white harness. He drew a breath that sucked cold mountain air deep into his lungs.

“This is mere foolery.”

Casually, Amarynth gestured. A noise that seemed the earth’s own voice shook the world. It avalanched snow down from rockfaces further up the pass.

The inner walls of Nin-Edin, moved by the Powers of Earth, shifted. Orcs howled as stone tottered. The inner gate split in two. The masonry arch cracked from top to bottom, the two halves by some freak happenstance remaining upright, leaving the portcullis jammed at an angle in the dirt, with space to pass on either side.

“Oh, Lady,” Amarynth prayed, “since I may grow weary in the killing that now follows, send me yet more of your Grace—”

FOOM!

The thunderclap noise of the shot startled the war-unicorn. Amarynth reined it in. No pain came to him. He looked down. Unmarked.

“My lord!”

The Captain of Archers’ yell made him look down to where she knelt. The dwarf engineer-mage Kazra lay on the ground. Amarynth dismounted from the unicorn.

“Kazra, fellow-warrior, what do you there?”

The elf archer turned the dwarf over. Most of the dwarf’s face and the side of her head had been blown off. Blood and tissue and bone fragments glistened, matting her fiery hair.

“Yo the snipers!”

Amarynth fell to his knees, ignoring the orcs.

“Lord Commander.” The Man infantry commander squatted down beside him. “A healing mage can—Ah. No.”

Amarynth wiped his mouth, catching his lip painfully on the edge of his gauntlet, and fumbled to strip the armour off. The mountain air felt cold on his skin.

He picked Kazra up. What remained of the dwarf’s head fell back across his arm. She had no mouth or jaw to fall open. Her weight made him stagger. Blood and the last of her sweat cooled on his hands, and the smallness and solidity of her body in her mail-shirt made him open his mouth and bawl like a child.

“My lord!” the archer protested.

Amarynth Firehand turned and picked his way down the hill. He stumbled, his knees giving way under him. The sun shone full in his eyes now. Water dripped down his face, ran off his chin, soaked his surcoat. Although nothing short of a miracle would do, he muttered healing charms constantly.

The dwarf did not move between the time he took her from the wall and the time he laid her down in the rich furnishings of his own bed, in his own tent. He sat by her, bent over, watching for the slightest breath, the slightest motion, to tell him he might be wrong, that Kazra was only wounded.

Some time later, when it became apparent even to him that the dwarf was dead, Amarynth Firehand got stiffly up from the bed and left the tent.

His commanders awaited him outside.

“Bury her in stone,” the elf said. “What was it all for? She was my oldest friend. I shall never say anything more to her. Not even farewell.”

“Lord Commander,” the Captain of Archers ventured, “what of the fort?”

“Leave me.” Amarynth turned back to his tent. “I am going to pray until I can find it in my heart to forgive the orcs for Kazra. Then we shall take Nin-Edin and raze it to the ground.”

7

The ravaged countryside teems not only with deserters but also with the Light.

Driven out of the arctic safety of the Demonfest Mountains, Ashnak hooded his eyes against the winter wind. The stench of corpses made his broad nostrils flare. The SUS marine ahead of him looked back and signalled thumbs-down: enemy seen or suspected.

“That’s two wandering Light war-bands we’ve run into in two days. Still mopping up after the Last Battle. Lugashaldim, tell the orcs to exercise all caution, but to make their best speed.”

“Sir, yes sir!” The Undead marine corporal, black-clad and carrying a hefty commando knife in his rotting hand, doubled over and ran up through the cover of a burned orchard towards the rest of the unit.

“Are you sure we can trust these orcs, sir?”

Ashnak stopped peering through the fallen, burned tree trunks and stared at the female orc beside him. “Of course you can’t trust them, Marine Razitshakra. They’re orcs!”

“No, sir. I mean ideologically, sir.” She wrenched a paperback book from her combats, waving it in an ink-stained hand. “If we’re going to be the vanguard of the proletariat and massacre the oppressing classes—elves and Men, halflings, dwarves; that kind of filth—we have to be sure of everybody, sir, don’t we?”

Razitshakra adjusted her rimless spectacles and gave Ashnak a long, hard stare.

“Vanguard of the what?” Ashnak took the dog-eared paperback. “The what Manifesto? I’ve warned you before about reading, marine. Just take it from me, we’re thoroughly—what is it?—ideologically correct.”

Razitshakra gave him a knowing look, a smile, and a deliberately sharp salute. “Sir, yes sir.”

“And you can take this from me, too.”

Ashnak grabbed the orc marine by the back of her combats, swung her bodily around his head and let go. Razitshakra’s chunky body flew a short distance and whacked into a tree. She slid to the earth.

“You can free all the oppressed masses you like,” Ashnak grinned, “provided you remember orcish political ideology. That is—I’m in charge. I am a big, hard bastard and you take my orders. When I say Jump! you don’t say Yessir and you don’t say How high? You say General, when do I come down? Got that?”

Razitshakra clawed her way up the tree and back onto her feet, muttering, “Yessir, that’s what I said, sir, isn’t it, sir?”

“You might defy gravity, but you won’t defy me!” He clapped the marine on the back as she attempted to adjust her rimless spectacles. His grip abruptly tightened. “Take cover! I hear more riders.”

His unit went to ground. The next few minutes spent at a low crawl brought Ashnak, alone, to where he could peer down off the wooded ridge at the crowded countryside of Men. The Demonfest Mountains loomed to the east. A whole squad of orcs would undoubtedly be intercepted. A single orc on his own, however…

A single orc, travelling alone, might sneak up into the foothills, double back north, make his way round the end of the mountain range, and vanish off into the Dark Lands of the East. Which, although conquered, were doubtless better for an orc’s health than being inside a mountain fort surrounded by the Light’s finest mages and warriors.

Ashnak crawled down onto the very inviting goat trail that would backtrack up into the mountains.

He bellied up to a hummock and slid over it.

“Going somewhere, were we, sir?”

The sharp whisper came from one of the Undead grunts surrounding Lugashaldim and Razitshakra. The female orc fixed a very chilly gaze on Ashnak. “Like you said, sir, we’d better make our best speed back to Nin-Edin.”

Ashnak fingered his brass-capped tusks. A war-band of wild orcs might easily be persuaded out of returning to the fortress. He momentarily wished for a war-band of wild orcs, not orcs with the glint of marine in their eyes.

Lugashaldim rasped, “Wouldn’t want to think Marukka had been right, sir, would we?”

A great orc is tough, but a dozen Undead orcs together are conceivably tougher.

When there is no other option, an orc keeps his promises.

“Of course we’re going back, soldier.” Ashnak beamed expansively. “I was just scouting out the best route. Okay, marines. Harch!”

In a countryside burned and ravaged by the Dark, but still occupied by uncountable Men, elves, and other hostile races, Ashnak’s Commandos sought desperate and elusive concealment on their way south.

The fifteenth day of the siege dawns cold and clear.

Work parties of Men and elves used picks to rapidly demolish the rubble of the outer walls of Nin-Edin. Winter light flooded the slope. Views of the mountain pass appeared where there had been only masonry. The smell of magic building up stung in the air, making orcs’ eyes and nostrils weep a thin mucus fluid.

“They’re going to come right over us!” Corporal Ugarit, a flak jacket tied on over his ceramic and steel armour, stared down at the devastated inner walls, and the forces of Light behind earth-banks and wooden barricades. “It’s going to be soon! I’m going to die!”

Barashkukor seized the skinny orc’s collar, dragged him down squat nostril to nostril, and spat into his face. “Be an orc, Ugarit! We’ll hold this fort to the last orc—the last enlisted orc, that is.”

“He’s right, man…” Sergeant Varimnak smoked a thin roll of pipe-weed, the slit pupils of her eyes shrunk to vertical lines. She stood behind Barashkukor, AK47 slung across her back, a ragged strip of black cloth bandaging her shaven skull. “Fighting Agaku, man! Call in the artillery! Call in an airstrike!”

“Will you listen?” The skinny orc corporal whimpered. “Every so often those guys down there stop waving flags and polishing their armour and realise they need only the simplest magic and we’re wiped out. They only have to stick that Amarynth motherfucker out in front for long enough, and they’re gonna come over these walls like a flash flood!”

And at midnight:

A close voice hissed out of the darkness, “Password Dagurashibanipal!”

“Adva—” The orc marine sentry, fear and relief searing his nerves, raised the muzzle of his SA80 assault rifle. His finger accidentally closed on the trigger.

A burst of automatic fire cut the darkness. The echo roared back from the keep walls. Muzzle flash strobed, outlining a figure hammered back by bullet impacts. It whirled and fell.

The orc marine sentry whimpered and took a hesitant step forward, looking down at the supine body.

“Dumbfuck!” The body sat up. It got to its feet. Corporal Lugashaldim glared at the hapless orc sentry.

“Sir, sorry, sir! Accidental discharge, sir!” The guard cringed.

“I’ll give you accidental discharge,” Lugashaldim snarled. The rounds had ripped his black combats to pieces and shot away most of his stomach and lower torso. He made a vain attempt to stuff his spilling intestines back inside his body cavity. They slid out.

“Shit!” Lugashaldim shoved handfuls of slick white tubes up under his ribs. They slid out again. Muttering, he grabbed his intestines between two gnarled hands, ripped them and the colon off short, and threw the entire mess of tubes over his shoulders. It hit the keep wall and slopped to the flagstones.

“You’re on a charge, marine! So’s your sentry partner, for being absent from duty.”

The second guard, who had just finished a roll of pipe-weed in the gate-house, looked out dreamily, remarked “Fuck, we’ve been sussed!” and vanished back inside.

“Any problems, Lugashaldim?” the orc general inquired, strolling out of the darkness beyond the broken walls with the remainder of the Undead marines.

“No, sir, General Ashnak, sir! None that these fuckwitted, shit-stupid excuses for marines won’t regret from now until their dying day—and after.” Lugashaldim bared long teeth in a rotting grin and clapped the guard on the shoulder. “You know what they say, soldier. Join the marines, and see the world—join the SUS, and see the next…”

A few moments later a sweating Barashkukor appeared out of the darkness. The orc major saluted his superior officer.

“The mission, sir?” he enquired anxiously. “Was it a success? Do we have the talismans, sir?”

Ashnak turned his heavy-jawed head back from surveying the ravaged fort. “Well,” he said, “not exactly…”

The morning came white with frost.

Will Brandiman rejoined his brother in the hills below Nin-Edin. He drew his grey-green concealing cloak back from the mail-shirt and helm that had made him a reasonable facsimile of the Light’s soldiers.

“Well?” Ned said.

“You tell me.” Will shrugged. “You’ve seen the elf. Go up to him and say, ‘We have to break siege and go into the fort because they’re holding our mother hostage’; and he’ll say, ‘Tough, war is hell, no dealings whatsoever with the forces of Darkness.’ Or am I wrong?”

Ned shook his head. “Not if I’m any judge of elves.”

Both halflings returned to their wagons, parked sufficiently far from the siege camp that the Light’s scouts had not yet discovered them—which, given the camp’s predilection for concentrating on Nin-Edin itself, amounted to about half a mile. Will looked back at the squat, broken fort in the pass.

“We don’t have long, Ned. I kept my eyes open going through the Light’s camp. If we don’t get into the fort today, there isn’t going to be a fort to get into.”

Ned Brandiman scratched through his greasy brown hair. “We could always set fire to the besiegers’ tents.”

“Why do the orcs any favours?”

“Or we could hire an army of mercenaries. There’s plenty of stray soldiers around.”

Will put his fists on his hips. “And we’re going to get them collected, organised, paid, and here in the next two hours, are we?”

“I’m not totally bereft of practical suggestions.”

Looking injured, Ned moved to the back of one of the wagons and, with some effort, unloaded a wooden chest. He thumped it down onto the snow-covered turf. The icy wind ruffled the curly hair on his feet.

“I knew we’d have to find a way past the besiegers into Nin-Edin, brother Will. So I made plans.”

Late-morning wind blasted out of the blue sky, cold enough to make even an orc shiver.

Ashnak stared out through the portcullis of Nin-Edin’s inner gate-house. The whole arch above his head was cracked, blocks hanging down precariously a yard lower on the southern side.

“Beg me for terms, then.” The elf removed his sallet helm, exposing aquiline brown features. He sneered down from his horse. “Is that not why you have summoned me? I have suffered a great loss here…I do you infinitely more honour than you deserve in speaking to you.”

Inside the taken bailey, warriors of the Light jeered, banging swords against shields. Ashnak scowled, estimating firepower, morale, magic…

He bared his fangs in a grin. “Better listen good, you pointy-eared asshole. Orcs ain’t the only personnel on the Nin-Edin Marine Base!”

He removed his clawed hands from behind his back, holding a female halfling up bodily above his head, gripping her by the shoulders of her crimson velvet gown. Her bare heels brushed futilely at his peaked ears as she kicked, and her flailing fingernails failed even to scratch his skin.

Amarynth Firehand gasped. “An innocent halfling!”

The forces of Good hissed. Ashnak let them have a good look and then lowered her to the earth in front of him, his talons resting on her diminutive shoulders. “This is a prisoner of war, Commander. Her safety depends solely upon your actions.”

“I… I don’t understand.”

Ashnak showed sharp, curved fangs. “I might hold a military tribunal and decide she’s not a prisoner of war. She might be a spy. Spies get gutted and eaten, or hung on hooks on the walls. Think about it, elf.”

The elven fighter-mage’s eyes brimmed with tears. For a moment there was only the huff of the unicorn’s breath, and the flapping of its indigo caparisons in the wind.

“We… No. No! We can never give in to blackmail. We cannot spare a whole fortress of evil for the sake of one innocent creature,” Amarynth Firehand stated proudly. “We shall kill you all—the Lady will know her own.”

Ashnak shrugged. “Then the halfling gets it.”

He began to tighten his hands, getting a solid grip on the small and muscular shoulders, preparing to rip the halfling’s arms from their sockets.

Faster even than orc-reflexes, nimble halfling fingers groped at the front of Ashnak’s combat trousers, undid the buttons, and slipped inside. A small hand gripped him firmly by the testicles. Sharp halfling nails pricked tender skin.

“On the other hand,” Ashnak hastily added, “I’m not in any way an unreasonable orc…”

The nails retracted fractionally.

Ashnak looked down. The female halfling stared absently out through the portcullis at the besieging army. Apparently resting back against her captor, both hands behind her back. A small hand grasped his member. Another pricked his balls. Ashnak very carefully loosened his grip on her shoulders, which rested against him at belt-buckle height. He swallowed hard.

“I’m always open to the concept of negotiations…”

Both hands kept a firm, chilly grip.

Barashkukor, behind him, gasped. “Sir, are you out of your mind, sir?”

Ashnak snarled dramatically at the elf. “I’m going to give you one last chance!”

“And I shall give you one hour to give her up. Then, orc, you shall pay for all your atrocities.” Outside the gate, the dark elf reined in his destrier and rode back down the hill.

The forces of Light began to mass, preparing to attack.

Small hands began most professionally to squeeze and stroke.

“Mmm…Major, I…ahhhm…” Ashnak’s hands fell to his sides. He muttered, “Stop it! That’s an order!” under his breath, and glanced back over his shoulder at Barashkukor.

“Delaying tactics, Major. We must…must buy time. Go and see if the scouts report anyone approaching. If we can hold out until the talismans arrive—urk!”

Ashnak coughed. Barashkukor and the other officers’ departing boots echoed under the gate arch. The cold wind ruffled the female halfling’s fur-short hair.

She leaned her body back against him, hands still hidden behind her, and the halfling and the orc stood under the arch, gazing out through the portcullis, unseeing of the warriors’ preparations, for quite some time.

A sudden silver trumpet rang a clarion call across the siegeworks of the Light.

“Monks would have been bad enough!” Will Brandiman whispered.

The road cut deeper into the defile as it approached Nin-Edin. The sun, overhead at midday, illuminated blackened slush and deep cart-ruts. The covered wagon jolted and rocked. He grabbed at Ned and the backboard to steady his balance.

“Patience, Sister. We must put up with discomfort to bring succour to poor sinners.” Ned whacked his cart-whip down on the mules’ quarters with unmaidenly strength. Will wondered momentarily if the skill was genetic.

“Maybe we should have fired the camp…” Will adjusted his gown, hiding his large, booted feet. The faded red homespun wool itched across his shoulders and under his arms. He tightened his burr-lined mortification belt. A Talisman of the Light lay heavy on his padded but still somewhat flat chest.

“I’m going on your judgement of his character.” Ned Brandiman ran a thumb around the edge of his wimple, making sure no coarse hair showed. “This is the only thing I can think of that will get us inside Nin-Edin.”

Will Brandiman stroked his beardless chin. A smear of rouge marked his hand when he lowered it, and he scrubbed it fiercely against his dress, staring all the while up at the broken fortress. The cart slowed, creaking uphill on the main road, and he began to hear the shouts and hammering of the besieging camp, the bawled orders, the clash of warriors scrambling into armour.

“If he’s that good a mage,” he said unhappily, “he’s going to know, isn’t he? And then what?”

“A good mage is not necessarily a clever mage—nor,” Ned observed sententiously, “better at looking under the surface than the next elf. You can always sing to him, sister. Elves like songs.”

Will rumbled under his breath as the heavily laden covered cart ground up between the tents and earthworks, a verse of which the first lines seemed to be There was a maid whose vast capacity / Was only equalled by her rapacity…He studied the faces of the thronging warriors they passed—elves with gilded bows. Men dressed in thonged leggings and carrying painted shields, dwarves with axes and hastily braided beards, a few halflings running errands for the cooks.

“That looks like the final attack. You’re right, brother. Sister, I mean. If anything’s to be done, it’s to be done now. And there he is.” Will squeezed Ned’s shoulder.

The cartwheels slipped on the shale as Ned reined the mules in. Will got down with restrained speed and picked his way between tent guy-ropes in Ned’s wake. Lord Commander Amarynth Firehand stood with a group of Men and dwarves in front of an over-embroidered and somewhat battered command tent and turned his dark aquiline face as the two halflings approached.

“The Lady of Light greets you,” Ned said in a flawless contralto, “through her humble servants Sister Hope and Sister Faith.”

Will watched his brother, hands clasped at the buckle of his mortification belt, bow his head humbly. He followed suit. Ned straightened, interlocked his fingers, gazed around wide-eyed at the warriors, and exclaimed, “Glory! To see the power and right arm of the Light, her heroes assembled; it moves my poor heart. All the Little Sisters of Mortification shall pray for you, be assured of that!”

Politeness made Amarynth incline his head. Seeing him on the point of turning back to his companions and ordering the attack, Will pitched his voice high and quavery and spoke. “Sister, do you not recognise him? This is that mighty elven warrior-mage spoken of in Herethlion, and in all the cities of the south. It is Lord Amarynth Firehand himself! The Lady of Light has steered us to you, my great Lord. Her grace shines upon us.”

“Do not let it be said that Amarynth Firehand was ungracious to age.” The elf preened his blue surcoat. “Speak, aged one. What has the Lady of Light to say to Her holy knight before I enter into battle?”

Now that’s a Dark-damned good question! Will looked under his lashes at Ned. His brother’s eyes widened fractionally. No help there. Will drew an unobtrusive deep breath.

“We have travelled far,” he began, “and with great privation have we come to you, although great sustenance lies within our wagon. Not mortal food and wine, but spiritual food—the words of the Lady of Light, which feed beyond measure and satisfy beyond pleasure.”

“We thank you—”

“Do not thank me so soon.” Will held up his gloved hand. He put it down by his side again quickly, the stubby fingers being broad and unfeminine. “The Lady of Light tries you, my great Lord. She knows that you are great in Her service, a mighty warrior before Her chalcedony throne; and that you have slain your thousands and your tens of thousands…”

Very occasionally, Will thought, I have cause to thank Mother for leaving us in the care of a convent school.

“…and that you are a warrior and a mage unparalleled. Now, She tries your mercy.”

Ned Brandiman clapped his hands together, turned his eyes up to the blue midday sky, and exclaimed, “Glory, glory!” Two or three of the elves in the group by the tent echoed his words.

Amarynth Firehand knelt in the churned snow, bringing his dark features on a level with Will’s face. Will lowered paint-thickened lashes. The elf’s slender, steel-shod knees reflected the tents, fires, and weapons of the camp in curved miniature.

“Speak. What will the Light bid me? I will do it.”

Best in public, Will rejoiced. If there’s an ideal place for making theatrical gestures, it has to be in front of his command tent, under the eyes of half his army.

“You must send us up yonder hill. Sister Faith and myself must go, alone and with no armed guard, up into the fortress. There we must give the Light’s word to the poor sinners within. And you must give us time in which to perform this holy act.”

Silence.

Will Brandiman raised his eyes and stared the dark elf in the face. Black-lashed eyes narrowed momentarily, and the fine elven nostrils flared. A sick feeling churned in the halfling’s gut.

Amarynth declaimed, “Let Holy Sisters go unguarded into a nest of orcs? No! No, it cannot be! It shall not be said that I sent two most gallant ladies to their deaths. Never! If you may have no other of my army, then I myself, with my trusty blade, shall walk with you and defend you single-handed against a whole host of orcs.”

Relief robbed Will of words. Ned Brandiman cut in swiftly.

“You must let us go alone, my great Lord. It is your test. It is our test. Our faith must be great enough that we enter even into the citadels of evil to bring Light, and I am named for that Faith. I must live as I am named. Or else how are we better than those who grovel in Darkness? You cannot deny us, great elven Lord!”

Will, his hand fisting his robe, stared right into the face of the elven fighter-mage. “And I am named for Hope, my Lord; the holy Hope that we shall prevail against the Darkness in the souls of those poor transgressors. What does it matter if our bodies are violated, torn, dismembered, dissected—”

He heard Ned make a small noise of distress.

“—or even eaten, so long as we give our souls into the hands of the Light? We are called. You must let us go.”

Amarynth sprang to his feet. The midday sun seared back from his mirrorplate armour and the silver moons embroidered into his blue surcoat. He gestured with one armoured hand.

“You have—” Amarynth’s voice broke. “You have great courage. I will delay my assault on the walls! I could wish that the Lady had called me, as She has so clearly called you, no matter how hard the task. Willingly would I be scourged, whipped, burned, and broken, for Her sake. Oh, that She would cast me naked into the snow, humiliated before mine enemies, if that would mean I might serve Her! I would cast myself wounded, torn, and bleeding at Her feet—”

The elven warrior-mage broke off, choking. Men and dwarves rattled their swords against their shields in applause. Will murmured, “Remind me, sometime, to introduce you to my mother.”

“What saith thou, good nun?” Amarynth queried.

“I said, the Light is a mother to us all, and no mother will let her children come to lasting harm.” Will bared his teeth. It passed for a smile.

Wiping tears from his dark cheeks, the elf snapped his fingers. An aide ran into the command tent and emerged seconds later with a furled flag.

“Take this white ensign. It is an acknowledged sign of peace. It is all I can do. Yet know that you go with Amarynth Firehand’s blessing—and regrets.”

Two hands seized his shoulders. Will found himself smearily kissed, first on one shaven cheek and then on the other. He reached up and took the furled flag, bowed speechlessly, and tottered back towards the wagon. He heard Ned behind him adding felicitous farewells; then his brother was at his side, climbing up onto the front of the cart.

“Haai-yah!” Ned Brandiman whispered, cracking the reins against the mules’ flanks.

“They didn’t even bother to search the cart,” Will grumbled under his breath. “You’ve been hauling that load of scrolls around for nothing. Dark damn it, if I’d known it was going to be that easy…”

A silver clarion call echoed around the military camp, reverberating back from the high mountain walls. His brother shoved the reins into Will’s hands, stripping off his gloves and worrying at the fastenings of the white flag. He shot a glance ahead and upwards as he worked.

Nin-Edin’s outer bailey was a mess of snow, slush, dried blood, mud, trampled bodies, broken weapons, and cast-off dented armour. None of the siege army crossed it, except behind new and hastily thrown up earthworks from which stiffening orc limbs protruded. Nin-Edin’s inner walls glowered down—blackened with sorcerous fire, lined with silent watching orcs.

“That was the easy part,” Ned said.

Will brushed his robes, holding the reins single-handed, and checked the positions of poisoned darts, throwing-knives, short-sword, and small cases of the secret dwarven rock-blasting powder. The bitter wind brought tears to his eyes. He grinned fiercely.

“Sister, where’s your faith?”

8

Ashnak of the orc marines stood in the great hall of Nin-Edin’s keep.

“When they attack, we can break out.”

Barashkukor, standing to attention, touched the brim of his black Stetson. “Yessir!”

“I want all the spare weaponry got out of stores. Each orc is to carry as many weapons as he or she can. If we’re lucky, a fail-weapons spell will affect only the weapon it’s directly cast at—have the marines carry spares and use them one after another. That should give us just enough of a surprise element to break out. We’ll then regroup and take up positions in the mountain caverns, with Dagurashibanipal’s hoard. We can set traps and ambushes, and take prisoners, and I,” Ashnak observed, “have never refused to eat elf or Man in my life. And dwarves are only stringy when the meat isn’t well bruised.”

“But, sir, the caverns can be taken by magic, just as easily as the fort.”

Ashnak growled deep in his throat. Barashkukor swallowed audibly, but continued:

“Sir, there’s nowhere to run to, sir! Not if we don’t have anti-magic capability. Maybe we could find another Dark Mage in time—”

Ashnak drew his jackhammer fist back. He was interrupted by a Badgurlz marine, AK47 held loosely over her shoulder, who stuck her spiked and crested head around the doorway. “Two non-identified non-combatants approaching main gate from the east! They appear to be halflings, sir, in a vehicle. Sir, Varimnak’s squad subjecting them to fire, sir!”

“Halflings?” Barashkukor abruptly sat down on one of the hall’s wooden chairs.

“Halflings!” Ashnak hit his fist into his palm. His eyes blazed. “Major, get your orcs under control! Stop the firing, take the non-combatants prisoner, bring them to me in my office in ten minutes, alert Corporal Ugarit and Marine Razitshakra; move it, marines!”

Ashnak strode out through the cold and wet stone corridors of Nin-Edin. Old snow crusted the floor. Orc marines snapped to attention as he passed. The two SUS marines forming the honour guard at his door saluted carefully, with the less detachable of their limbs.

Five minutes later Ashnak sat behind the vast desk in his command post, chewing an unlit cigar and sorting through piles of paperwork. With his back to the slit window he was a black silhouette of immense bulk and invisible expression. From time to time the sunlight glinted off one of his fangs as he turned his head.

A hand rapped on the door, and Ashnak buried his attention in a sheaf of papers. “Enter!”

His eyes on the difficult print, he did not bother to look up. His ears swivelled slightly, hearing two sets of footsteps; one heavy and one light. His nostrils flared to the scent of halfling. And something familiar…

“Sir, General Ashnak, sir!” Barashkukor’s heeled cowboy boot hit the flagstones. His voice throbbed with military enthusiasm. “Prisoner present, sir! Beg to report that the other prisoner refuses to leave her vehicle, to wit, one mule-drawn covered wagon, on threat of firing charges of dwarven rock-blasting powder that are aboard it. We are unable to establish this as true without—”

Ashnak swivelled his eyes up in their sockets. Major Barashkukor, still wearing his Ray·Bans inside the fort, was addressing his remarks rather to the right of Ashnak’s desk. Beside the small orc, a robed halfling stood with her head bowed. Ashnak’s nostrils flared widely and he frowned.

“Hhhrmmmnnn…surely not.”

The halfling lifted her head.

“YOU?”

Ashnak instantly backhanded piles of paperwork into the air. The whirling files deflected two panic-thrown daggers. Before the halfling could move again Ashnak stood, thrusting the desk bodily back three yards. He sprang, seized the Little Sister of Mortification by her metal-burred belt and yanked her into the air until they were eye to eye. His free hand chopped palm-edge against each of the halfling’s arms in turn.

Shaken off, the pinned wimple fell to the floor, disclosing curly black hair with streaks of white in it.

“It’s a male!” Barashkukor exclaimed. “Sir, I know this halfling, sir!”

“So do I.” Ashnak tightened his claws on the halfling’s belt and stared into Will Brandiman’s wide-eyed face. Both the halfling’s arms hung paralysed or broken. The faded red wool gown pulled up, disclosing enormous booted feet. Ashnak growled, the corner of his lip lifting over one sharp fang.

“Thief,” he snarled, “how is it with you now? Are you rich from betraying us to The Named, the great captain of the Light who is not heard of now? Did she suffer for trusting you and your weasel brother?”

He put one calloused hand over the halfling’s mouth and nostrils as he laid the kicking, struggling body flat on the office desk. Exultant, Ashnak grated, “Did you think I was dead too? Asshole, it ain’t your lucky day!”

With one dextrous claw he slit Will Brandiman’s robe from neck to hem, tore it off, broke the belt and threw it aside, and picked knives, needles, and small weapons from the holding straps on the tiny body. Barashkukor, an expression of distaste on his small features, dropped them into the office wastebasket.

When Will Brandiman lay squirming and naked on his back, Ashnak raised his hand briefly and then closed it again about the halfling’s throat.

“I’ll eat your heart raw,” Ashnak promised, poising a claw over the tiny ribcage, “and you’ll live just long enough to see me doing it.”

“…talismans…”

Ashnak batted the halfling irritably, quarter-strength. The naked body smacked against the stone wall and slid down, bleeding a little, to the floor. Ashnak waited until Will Brandiman collected himself and got unsteadily to his hairy feet.

“You are Magda’s sons.”

“Yes.”

“You have the nullity talismans.”

“Yes.”

“A brief conversation. That pleases me. It argues some respect.” Ashnak chuckled deep in his throat. He sat on one corner of the desk, looking down at the halfling, and slapped his camouflage-trousered thigh, remembering Guthranc. “Ha!”

Will Brandiman wiped his bloody face against his shoulder. Both arms hung useless. His lip and cheek were swelling darkly. The halfling drew himself up to his full three feet six, attempting dignity. “The bargain, Ashnak. I wish to see our mother alive and unharmed. I wish for safe conduct for myself and my brother.”

Major Barashkukor gave a high-pitched giggle. “Son, you have got yourself a whole world of grief…”

Ashnak beamed. His tusks flashed in the winter sun. Without a word he got up, seized the halfling by one leg, and slung the small body across his shoulder. He strode out of his office and through the stone corridors of Nin-Edin. Barashkukor marched smartly at his heels.

“Sir, permission to remove the other halfling from the vehicle, sir?”

“Leave that to me!”

Down three levels, where the walls were running with damp and white with nitre, Ashnak paused outside a heavily barred door. He pulled it open, threw the halfling bodily into the unlit cell beyond it, slammed the door, and twisted the key in the lock. He stood for some seconds in the torchlight looking at the key. No rats squeaked in the cells, which was to be regretted. All eaten days ago.

Ashnak dropped the key into the filth-brimming gutter that paralleled the corridor. It glinted and vanished into the excrement. His grin widened.

“Now the other one,” he promised.

Ignoring the surprisingly loud protests from behind the locked and barred cell door, Ashnak strode up from the lower levels of the keep and out into the inner compound. He squinted against the blue sky and bright sunlight. Those platoons on guard lined the parapets, weapons pointed towards the siegeworks of the enemy. Most of the off-duty marines formed a wide circle around a mule-driven cart that stood just inside the broken portcullis.

Seeing their general, the orc marines leaped up and down, banging their weapons on the frozen earth and flagstones, their cheers reverberating from the keep’s walls:

“Ash-nak! Ash-nak!”

“Fighting Agaku!”

“Yo Ashnak!”

“Are we marines?”

“WE ARE MARINES, SIR!”

He elbowed his way to the front rank of marines surrounding the wagon and stood, fists on hips, chewing his unlit cigar. A swift glance found him Ugarit and Razitshakra. The orc technical specialist shivered continuously, his broad, hairy nostrils running with mucus, and his eyes flicked around every corner of the inner keep’s defences. His combats, armour, and flak jacket were smeared with oil and less identifiable substances.

Eyes narrowed to slits in the sun, Razitshakra watched him, her pencil poised eagerly over a small notepad. She scribbled occasional words when Ugarit’s terrified muttering reached clarity: “Ideological instability…Un-orcish sentiments…”

Barashkukor watched her with dewy-eyed admiration. Ashnak growled in his throat. All became silent. He stared at the wagon.

“Yo, halfling! Mistress nun!” He paused a calculated moment. “Ned Brandiman!”

The ragged curtain at the front of the wagon twitched aside. Ashnak looked at the dishevelled figure of a male halfling wearing the red habit of one of the Little Sisters of Mortification. The brown-haired halfling, his skirt hiked up to his knees to disclose hirsute feet, sat astride a wooden barrel. With one hand he rested a cocked heavy crossbow across his lap, finger on the trigger. In the other hand a fuse burned and sputtered, audible over the noise of the orc marines.

The halfling’s face paled. The orc saw the small lips soundlessly form the name Ashnak. He stepped two paces forward of the front rank.

“A bargain!” The halfling’s voice came shrilly across the compound. “My mother and brother for these talismans. Else they’re blown to pieces before your eyes, orc!”

“I remember you and dwarvish blasting powder—if you’d had your way, boy, I’d be buried under half a mountain!” He began to walk towards Ned Brandiman, combat boots loud on the flagstones.

“I wouldn’t put it past you, boy, to come here with nothing more in that wagon than empty boxes, and try and trick your way out again with your mother—if that cutprice whore is your mother.” Ashnak registered the halfling’s snarl and grinned. “What did you expect? Dumbfuck wild orcs, that’s what you expected. What you get is orc marines, boy. What you get is me.”

The heavy crossbow shifted, the point of the bolt following Ashnak. He walked steadily forward. The halfling, in a scurry, shoved the sputtering fuse between his teeth, dug into a barrel behind him, and held up a handful of tiny metallic objects. Strung on wire, they clattered together.

Razitshakra loped across the compound, nostrils flaring. “That’s them, General, sir! Nullity talismans. I smell them true! And—I smell dwarven sorcery too.”

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.

This time he worked until she arched her back and cried out—a sound sufficiently like pain to satisfy any orc who might be listening. Ashnak groaned, his hands clamping her hips tightly down, his body jackhammering up; and when the world came back to him he sprawled on his back, grinning so that all his tusks showed.

The female halfling ferreted in his combats pocket and brought out a thin roll of pipe-weed.

Magda struck flint against Nin-Edin’s walls, lit the pipe-weed, and drew deeply. The flare of light illuminated her lined face.

“I’ve been thinking about retiring.”

Ashnak made a small, querulous noise of protest.

“Going into management.” She blew out a plume of pipe-weed smoke and wriggled further up into the odorous crook of Ashnak’s armpit. Her feet brushed his hip. “You could set me up in a nice little business. Some girls, some boys—some fabulous beasts.”

Ashnak unkinked the tips of his hairless ears and leered. “I got other things on my mind right now…”

Magda ignored him. “I said I had been thinking about retiring. But now I can see only one way to ensure the safety of my sons.”

“No way! They’re dogmeat!”

The halfling leaned back in the rough marine-issue blankets, the red eye of the pipe-weed roll swelling and dying. The night sky gloomed outside the window, stars covered in cloud. She said nothing more.

Cooling sweat slicked Ashnak’s hide. “Halfling, you expect me to—”

Magda exhaled, utter confidence in her voice. “You’re going to win the battle tomorrow.”

“I am? I mean: I am!”

“But what happens after that, my orc?”

There was a very long silence.

“So what,” Ashnak rumbled, “are you suggesting?”

Magda Brandiman rolled over, feline, and drew a finger down the centre of the orc’s broad, hairless chest.

“I’ll tell you later.”

“You’ll what?”

Ashnak glared, watching her with orcish night-vision. The female halfling rummaged in the tumbled bed. One of her hands seized his wrist; not able to encompass it with her fingers, she swiftly knotted his trouser-belt about it and then tied it to the bed’s post.

“Oi!”

Searching among miscellaneous military equipment for another leather belt, the female halfling looked up directly into Ashnak’s eyes.

“I don’t believe in instant gratification. Let me show you. In a while I’ll tell you about my plan.”

Her tongue darted out to lick her lower lip. She smiled.

“You’ll like it. Trust me, you’ll like it.”

9

Major Barashkukor squinted through the pre-dawn darkness.

With some reluctance he folded his Ray·Bans and put them carefully in a pouch on his web-belt. “All right, you orcs. Check your weapons.”

Foom!

A red-crested orc in desert combats looked down the smoking muzzle of her Kalashnikov. “I think mine was loaded, sir.”

“Quiet!” Barashkukor snarled.

Chill slid down from the heights of the mountains on just-stirring breezes. Orc-vision alone could glimpse the east’s growing light. Stars still clustered in the arch of the sky; no birds sang. Barashkukor lifted his head and squinted up at Nin-Edin’s magic-blackened and battered inner walls. Hundreds of orcs lined the parapets, scaling ladders ready; orcs clustered in dozens of squads in the inner compound, receiving their last briefings.

Barashkukor shook out and re-tied a white silk scarf around his thin neck. The small orc’s long, hairless ears whivvered in the dawn wind, and he crammed his Stetson down over them. Drawing his Desert Eagle pistol from its belt holster, muzzle skyward, he tucked one black-gloved thumb under his web-belt and leaned into the cover of the broken gateway.

Nothing stirred in the enemy siegeworks, a scant thirty yards away.

“We must be alert, orcs,” Barashkukor whispered. “We must think on our feet—Not you, Corporal.”

Corporal Lugashaldim of the SUS looked up briefly from his marine-issue survival sewing-kit, murmured “Yezzer!”, and went back to threading a needle and more securely sewing on the toes of his left foot.

“Any minute now—”

“Sir!”

“What is it?” Barashkukor took his gaze off the enemy siegeworks. Sergeant Varimnak saluted him lazily. She nodded at the nearest squad of orcs: newcomer refugees in plate-armour, carrying axes.

“We got a problem, sir.”

“Not now, Sergeant!”

“Sorry ’bout that. It’s those refugees we took in. Dumb motherfuckers say they ain’t going in on no front wave, Major.” Varimnak shrugged leather-clad shoulders. She shifted her chewing gum to the other side of her heavy jaws. “Guess we haven’t had ’em in here long enough. Funny thing, Major, they don’t seem to be able to work the weapons when they first get ’em—have to drill the dumb shits into the ground, make real marines out of ’em, then the guns start firing. Guess that’s the Dragon’s Curse. But they say they’re not going in with inferior weapons.”

Barashkukor fumed, tapping the toe of one tooled cowboy boot on the cold earth. “Don’t worry, Sergeant, I’ll handle this.”

The small orc marched smartly up to the band of orc warriors who, in the growing half-light, leaned disconsolately on a selection of obsolete polearms.

“New recruits, Ten-HUT! We gave you refuge in here—so you can damn well fight for us.”

The orc warriors muttered recalcitrantly.

Barashkukor glared at them. “You’re marines now and that means you obey orders!”

“‘Oo’s orders?” A bow-legged, grey-skinned orc grinned, showing a jaw full of broken fangs. He towered over Barashkukor by a metre or more. “Your orders, you little runt?”

The grey-skinned orc snarled menacingly, hefting a poleaxe.

Barashkukor gripped his massive Desert Eagle pistol two-handed, drew himself up to his full three feet six inches, and faced the leader of the refugee orcs.

“One wrong move,” Barashkukor announced, “and you’re history!”

The looming orc paused, scratching his head. “What’s hist’ry?”

Foom!

“Anyone else want an academic education?” Barashkukor demanded.

Thirty different squad leaders hissed, “Ssssshhh!”

“You, marine!” Barashkukor whispered, blowing the smoke from the muzzle of the pistol. “Clear up that mess. As for the rest of you new guys, get down to the gate. You’re going in with the forward units!”

With some satisfaction, he watched the refugee orcs run. He thumbed the RT. “Forward unit Bravo to command, forward unit to command.”

General Ashnak’s voice crackled: “Command post to forward unit Bravo. Artillery barrage going in. Standby; over.”

“Forward unit, message received, standing by.”

Without warning the pre-dawn split apart and lit up like noon.

Dukka-dukka-dukka-FOOM!

Missile emplacements on the walls and towers opened up simultaneously with the precision-guided trebuchets and heat-seeker crossbows. Tracer fire seared the lightening sky. Great gouts of earth shot up from the siegeworks. Flashes of fire strobed the outer compound’s wreckage. Barashkukor shaded his eyes with his gloved hand, small fangs gleaming in the glare.

“Major!”

He barely heard Ugarit’s yell. Turning, he saw the tall, skinny orc straighten up from tightening a leather strap harness around the body of one of the smaller orcs.

“My latest military development, Major!”

The tiny orc, bandy legs bowing even further, puffed under the weight of a heavy metal casing now attached to her back. She took the goggles Ugarit handed to her, putting them over her wide-set, tilted eyes, and staggered off into the gloom.

Barashkukor said, “What?”

“It’s quite simple, Major.”

The squads in the compound moved back in orderly formation, letting something through. Barashkukor gazed up at a great black bulk.

The war-elephant clanked to a halt.

Kevlar and steel armour covered its limbs and body, and a fine metal mesh shielded its trunk and eyes. Spikes jutted from the armour, and flags with marine unit insignia, and the Raven with stars-and-bars.

A steel howdah sprouting wires, spindles, nozzles, dishes, and heavy-duty power packs had been attached to the beast’s back. The inside of the howdah was lined with orc marines.

“Yo, Major!” Varimnak climbed up to sit with her muscular legs either side of the elephant’s ears. She pulled on a sheepskin-lined black leather jacket with the marine flag painted on the back.

Barashkukor coughed, blushing as he noted Perdita del Verro slipping out of the gloom with elvish quietness to stand gaping up at the war-elephant. “I think you’d better explain what it is you’re doing here, Corporal Ugarit.”

Ugarit chuckled and rubbed his knobbly knuckles. He beamed at the elf correspondent. “A simple scratch-built anti-gravity device, sir and ma’am. This is its maiden flight! I’ll demonstrate. Sergeant Varimnak, ma’am! Prepare for takeoff.”

The peroxide-haired orc removed her chewing gum and stuck it under the elephant’s right ear. She pulled goggles down over her eyes, zipped up her jacket, and held a metal quirt up in the air. Radar dishes on Nin-Edin’s walls swivelled. The quirt radiated infraspectral colours, bright against the pre-dawn indigo sky. She turned her head to address the orcs seated in rows down each side of the howdah. “Flight check one! Sound off, marines.”

“Squad one all present, Sergeant.”

“Squad two, present and correct!”

Sergeant Varimnak grinned and wiped her splayed nostrils, streaming in the cold air. The RT built into her helmet crackled. Barashkukor heard her call, “This is Flight One to Control. Yo! Ready for takeoff, man!”

Ugarit skipped up and down on the spot, clicking his heels together, slavering over the walkie-talkie he held. “You have mission clearance, Flight One—go, go, go!”

The elephant lifted its trunk and trumpeted. Barashkukor grabbed his Stetson with both hands. Perdita del Verro scribbled furiously in her notebook. Powdery snow blasted back as the war-elephant beat its ears, rearing its front legs an inch or two above the earth. The ground shook under Barashkukor’s boots. Varimnak brandished the quirt. The whine of a high-powered para-electrical field rose beyond even orc-hearing.

“—achieved takeoff!” the RT squawked.

The war-elephant’s ears beat strongly and rhythmically. Clouds of dirt and snow whirled across the compound. Barashkukor slitted his eyes. The beast reared.

Up out of the dirt and darkness, into the new light of dawn. The sparkling quirt appeared, and the great crowded howdah, and Varimnak banged her studded boots in behind the war-elephant’s ears, triggering the cybernetic flight-guidance systems. A blast of warm air shook Barashkukor. He craned his neck to look up, look up higher…

Ears beating, cradled in the sparkling discharges of a para-gravitational field, the great war-elephant gradually lifted above the compound. Grunts cheered. Gaining height rapidly, legs trailing, the war-elephant narrowly cleared the walls of Nin-Edin and soared up into the dawn air.

Perdita del Verro lifted her patrician chin, glossy braids gleaming, and breathed, “Now I think I’ve seen about everything…”

Her gold eyes widened. “What a scoop! What an exclusive!”

“I’ve done it! I’m safe at last!” Ugarit jumped up and down, shaking spanners and soldering irons out of the crevices of his flak jacket. “The unbeatable weapon! Bomber Flight One away!”

Barashkukor ran for the gate. He hit the portcullis some seconds after Perdita del Verro, grabbing at the stone-chilled metal and staring out into the vast air of the mountain pass. The war-elephant’s lights made a tiny speck high above, circling over the enemy positions.

“Varimnak to base, man. About to commence first stragetic bombing run, over.”

“Sergeant, this is Major Barashkukor. Proceed with experimental bombing run. Over.”

“Ya got it, man! Out.”

The war-elephant circled high above the pass of Nin-Edin, illuminated by the sunrise while the world below was yet dark. A small speck fell from the back of the elephant. Then a second, a third, a fourth…

Barashkukor lifted armoured binoculars and focussed. “Corporal Ugarit…”

The binos brought Barashkukor the image of one orc marine hanging on to the straps of his pack harness, face contorted against the cold wind as he fell. The great mass of the bomb strapped to his back made him plummet towards the earth. As Barashkukor watched, the orc pulled a tag. A small drogue chute opened—not large enough to arrest his fall but strong enough to slow the rate of descent.

The orc grunt reached up, grabbed the straps, and began to pull them one way and another, guiding his plummeting descent towards the position of the besieger’s main tents and the impact.

“There you are, sir!” Ugarit yelled triumphantly as the first explosion shattered the cold air, and a ball of black and orange smoke went up. “Terminally guided munitions!”

Another explosion rocked the ground. Barashkukor clutched the female elf’s elbow. Her mouth hung open. There was a light in her eyes. Black ash and fragments of wood rained down across the snowbound fort.

“Have to ask you to move to the rear now, ma’am.” Barashkukor thumbed the RT. “This is Bravo to Command. Am going in now, sir.”

“Okay, marines, let’s rock and roll!”

The artillery barrage cut out. Orc voices bellowed commands. The noise of ladders sounded strangely loud as the squads went over the top, down the walls, and fanned out to cross the outer compound. Grenades cracked; heavy weapons bellowed. The earth shook.

Barashkukor sprinted behind his squad, clear across the outer compound, over the ruined walls and into the main enemy camp. Ahead of the forward squads, ahead of heavy weapons—

“Yee-hah!” Barashkukor fired the Desert Eagle pistol.

DUKKA-DUKKA-ker-FOOM!

“Bravo to Command, repeat Bravo to Command, we are encountering minimal resistance. We did it, sir! We’ve taken them completely by surprise! Move the troops up on my position; over.”

“Wilco, Bravo. Out.”

Cloud cleared. The dawn sun’s light swept across the siegeworks and the enemy camp.

Barashkukor lowered his pistol. He reholstered it.

The sun shone on long-dead campfires from which the cooking gear had been removed, abandoned tents with a few broken weapons scattered outside, and a vast pattern of circles of dead turf where panoplied tents had once stood. The beams shone on piles of horse dung, but no horses. Cartruts, but no baggage carts. Holes where flagpoles had been sited, but no Colours or Ensigns of the Light.

Barashkukor stared. He tipped the Stetson back on his head. One long ear drooped. Still staring, he used his radio to direct Varimnak’s armoured war-elephant to overfly the whole length of the Light’s camp.

“Nothing, man! No warriors. No surprise ambush. No traps or pits. Nothing!”

A stray shell from the creeping barrage ahead dropped short, fragments whistling past Barashkukor’s ears.

Barashkukor fumbled for the RT and screamed: “Abort attack! Bravo unit to Command, abort the attack, repeat, abort the attack! We have no hostiles. I repeat, we have no hostiles. Send out recon. Sir, they’ve gone, sir!”

The noise of suppressive and speculative fire died away.

“Command to Bravo.” Ashnak’s voice came loud and distorted over the channel. “What do you mean, you have no hostiles! It must be a trap!”

The rising sun shone full into the valley of the Nin-Edin pass. In its light Barashkukor looked back and saw the devastated fort, the swarms of orc marines going into cover and holding the outer bailey. He stared forward at the abandoned siegeworks and the completely deserted enemy camp.

“It’s not a trap. Come out and look for yourself, sir,” Barashkukor whimpered. “They’ve all gone away.”

10

Ashnak leaned his horny elbow on the side of his jeep, camouflage sleeve rolled up, bare orc-hide resting against metal biting cold in the morning frost.

“Someone must have yelled for help,” Ashnak switched the chewed roll of pipe-weed to the other side of his wide mouth, “and Amarynth Arselicker got orders to pull out. Elfshit! Just when we could have done with a fight to knock the new marines into shape.”

Since this was not wholly bravado, he was pleased to see his subordinate orc salute smartly and with every appearance of regret. Major Barashkukor stood beside the jeep, thumbs hooked under his belt, small booted feet planted wide apart. His Ray·Bans reflected Ashnak’s camouflage-creamed features.

“They must’ve moved out stealthily after midnight. Sorry, sir!”

“You will be,” General Ashnak promised. “And so will my reconnaissance teams.”

Ashnak sprang down from the jeep, boots crunching the trodden slush and black embers of the abandoned enemy camp. Squads of orc marines combed the slopes of Nin-Edin in disciplined order. He narrowed his eyes against the knife-wind and early sun.

East, the foothills ran down into empty country, the farmlands of Sarderis too far away to be properly seen. White frost covered the hills, white mist blurred the sunrise. Vultures wheeled in the high sky. Ashnak drew in breath cold enough to freeze a Northlands orc.

“Wonder how long a start they got?”

Barashkukor looked nervous. “There are still whole armies of Light out there, sir.”

A SUS marine scrambled up the slope towards Ashnak, halted, and snapped a bony salute. About to reprimand the orc for grinning at a superior officer, Ashnak concluded that he might be mistaken in this when it came to the Undead.

“What is it, marine?”

“Sir, report from Corporal Lugashaldim’s Special Services recon group. Amarynth’s main force is six hours away from us, and closing on Sarderis; armed and ready for battle with the rogue mercenary units down there. The SUS report we can’t catch them up, sir.”

Ashnak nodded morosely. The Undead orc marine continued:

“Sir, Corporal Lugashaldim also reports that the enemy baggage train is only two hours away, down the main Sarderis road. It’s moving very slowly. And it’s unguarded, except for one mage.”

This time there was no mistaking the orc marine’s grin, Undead or otherwise.

“The Light’s ‘rules of war,’ sir. Since the baggage train’s sacred, they’ve bothered to put only a couple of crossbowmen with it, at the van and the rear. We could intercept it in the Red Gullies, sir. What are your orders?”

“Tell Lugashaldim we’re on our way!” Ashnak slammed his fist into his palm. “Major Barashkukor, get your platoons together and move out to the Gullies. I’ll follow with mine!”

“Sir, yes sir!”

Galvanised into action, two platoons of orc marines loaded themselves into four-tracks and jeeps. Ashnak, beaming, swung himself up into a jeep, jammed shoulder to shoulder with Varimnak’s Badgurlz, their M16s and grenade-launchers jutting into the air. Sergeant Varimnak stood her booted feet down on the pedals, and the jeep roared away down the hill-slope, rocking and juddering.

“Go, marines!” the peroxide-haired orc bellowed, overtaking the assembling column of vehicles. Ashnak saw her hit a control on the dashboard. Loud music blared out into the snowy silent dawn.

“Marine, give me an assault weapon,” he demanded.

A hulking orc in woodland camouflage combats proudly handed over an XM18 grenade-launcher. “Eighteen rounds in five seconds, sir, four hundred metres range. Loaded with alternate smoke, flares, gas, frag, and anti-personnel shells.”

Ashnak checked the drum magazine. The weapon smelled beautifully of grease and metal and wax. “Okay, you marines, listen up! No need for a stealth approach. This is a baggage train, it moves at the speed of the slowest horse-and-cart, it isn’t going anywhere. Those pointy-eared mothers cut us up in Nin-Edin—now it’s our turn!”

“YAYYY ASHNAK!”

A short time later the jeep crested the hill above the Red Gullies. The road, almost past the foothills and into the lowlands, here split into a dozen narrow tracks between outcrops of red sandstone.

Wagons blocked all the narrow tracks.

Ashnak took it in at a glance: seventy or eighty heavy wagons weighed down with tents, chests, cooking gear, spare armour, cord, anvils, hammers, saws, bottles, benches, chairs and beds, candles, flagpoles, haybales—everything that heroic warriors need but cannot carry on their backs.

Elves barely of an age to walk sat on the wagons and sang. Scurrying around the draught horses’ heads, young Men and dwarves fought with the recalcitrant beasts. Ashnak spotted the crossbow guards. He raised the XM18.

Crack!

Two mailed bodies tore apart, splattering the sandstone walls of the Gullies.

“Chaaarge!” Ashnak bawled over the RT’s open channel, pounding Varimnak’s back. The jeep dipped, rolled, and drove down on the rear of the column, music blaring, horn sounding. And over all else, the Badgurlz ripped off rounds of suppressive fire:

Taka-taka-taka-taka-FOOM!

The young elves, dwarves, and Men ran in panic. Ashnak stood, steady, bracing the grenade-launcher and firing. An antitank grenade coughed, soared, and impacted on a tent-carrying wagon. Fingernail-sized scraps of canvas and cord spattered the Gullies.

The lone mage—a dwarf young enough that his beard had barely grown past his belt—raised hands flaming with the Powers of Earth. “Fail weapons!”

Ashnak grinned, holding his breath.

A bolt of Earth power enveloped the jeep. A shrill cheer rose from the Light youngsters. Ashnak, one taloned hand gripping the side of the vehicle and the other his XM18, shook his head. The talismans around his neck stung.

The green dazzles in his vision faded, harmlessly.

The jeep’s engine raced and roared, intact.

“Eat this!” Ashnak lifted the XM18 and fired, looking directly into the dwarf’s terror-stricken eyes.

FOOOM!

The mage and the Earth power aura vanished together, tough flesh not so much blown apart as vapourised.

“Close weapons!” Ashnak made himself heard over the RT. “No projectiles. Hand-to-hand!”

The orc marines bayed.

The sun rose higher, slanting into the slush-ridden Red Gullies. Something over a hundred and fifty elves and Men—none of them more than children or adolescents, and kept safe with the baggage train for that very reason—ran about, their screams piercing the morning. Ashnak abandoned the vehicle. He swept a green-robed young female elf off her feet and tucked her, scrabbling and weeping, under one muscular arm. With the other hand he wielded a commando knife, rejoicing (as all orcs do) in close-quarters combat. The knife, dripping, rose and fell as he loped up the line of jammed wagons.

An older elf sprang down from a sandstone outcrop, swinging a mace, screaming. Ashnak batted her aside. She hit the earth and slumped, sacklike. Fifteen or so adolescent Men and dwarves—spawn-herds, Ashnak assumed—recovered enough to attack as a group.

He stunned the elf-child and dropped her between his feet, wielding the knife and his free, taloned hand. Varimnak, using the bayonet and butt of her assault rifle to strike, came up and stood back to back with him.

Most of the jeeps were empty now, disgruntled marine drivers gunning the motors. The squads of grunts rampaged over the wagons, tearing bundles free, ripping chests open, scattering the tools and gear and keepsakes of the Army of Light all through the Gullies’ trodden red slush.

The first killing done, the sound of elf-shrieks rose into the air: prisoners kept alive to provide amusement.

Ashnak rolled the semi-conscious female elf onto her back, unbuckled his webbing and trouser-belt and knelt down.

Varimnak licked red blood from the butt of her assault rifle with a rasping tongue. “Hey, man, we got ’em! The whole fucking baggage train! No survivors!”

A grunt on top of one of the red sandstone outcrops stared down into the deep crevass on the far side of it.

“Sarge,” she called down to Varimnak, “you want to know something about elves?”

“What’s that, Shakmash?”

“They don’t bounce.” The orc marine shrugged. “’Ere, Sarge, can I have a doggy-bag?”

Varimnak grinned.

Ashnak saw a Badgurlz marine run past, dragging a semi-conscious elf by the ankle. The elf’s skull cracked and jolted against rocks on the path. Another marine humped a dwarf with a slit throat.

From the Gullies Ashnak heard shrieks and the butcher’s-shop sound of blows.

“Hhnff!” Ashnak braced his elbows and toes, his blood-rimmed palms in the icy slush. Head hanging down, body pumping; his spittle draped the elf-girl’s face. “Good. My grunts need R&R. Post scouts. Just—in—hhnf!—case…”

He smelled Varimnak lighting up another of the thin, black, oddly scented rolls of pipe-weed that she affected. Her voice above him agreed, “You got it, man.”

Ashnak stopped moving.

“And pass me another elf, Sergeant. This one’s split.”

The noon sun penetrated the depths of Nin-Edin’s dungeons at several removes and faintly, but clear enough for Will to see Perdita del Verro.

“Of course I’m a minor healer-mage,” the elf confirmed. “It’s a necessity in my line of work.”

“What is your line of work? Mistress,” Will beamed politely.

“War correspondent.”

Ned Brandiman groaned and made some attempt to cover his filth-caked, naked body with bruised hands; his hemorrhage-tight stomach tender. “No kidding. An investigative mage-reporter.”

Magda Brandiman’s face appeared outside the bars as the elf lifted her like a child. The halfling was, Will noted, wearing what appeared to be an over-large combat jacket.

“Boys, I think we can do business with Mistress del Verro.”

“What kind of business, Mother?” Will asked.

Magda smiled.

“Firstly,” she said, “there’s the matter of Perdita’s pigeons.”

A fist hammered on his door. “General Ashnak, sir!”

Ashnak snapped the wrist-bonds tying him to the bedposts and sat up. He kissed Magda Brandiman passionately, scrambled into his combat trousers, and flung open the door.

“What do you want, Major?”

Major Barashkukor’s ears flattened tightly down on his skull. He hastily took off his Ray·Bans and put them in his combats pocket, cringed, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “Sir, it’s time, sir!”

Ashnak backhanded the small orc, who impacted against the oak door frame and bounced back off, shaking his ringing head.

“It’s bad timing, marine. And I do mean ‘marine.’” Ashnak shut the door behind him, clipping his web-belt and pistol holster around his muscular body. “Because if you interrupt any more of my interrogations, major, you’re busted down to marine, and on permanent latrine duty!”

“Sir, yes sir!” Barashkukor swallowed audibly. “But it’s one of the new halflings, sir. Cornelius Scroop—the Chancellor of Graagryk. He wants some cushions.”

“Whaddya mean, cushions?” Ashnak demanded. “This is an armed camp, for fuck’s sake; where does he expect me to find cushions!”

Major Barashkukor ceased punching the dents out of his formal marine flat hat, “Sir, both the halflings say they can’t see over the conference table. They’re right, sir. They can’t.”

Ashnak groaned. Dangerously quietly, he said, “Find some blankets. Fold them. Use those as cushions. Dismiss.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

Barashkukor precipitously fled.

“I’m surrounded by idiots!” Ashnak strode off down the tower stairs. Tech-Corporal Ugarit joined him on the way to the main hall.

“Magic!” the skinny orc muttered disgustedly.

“Instantaneous trans-location spells, Corporal,” Ashnak said expansively. “High-level, very expensive Southern Kingdoms magic. Has everyone that I want here for the conference arrived?”

“Yes, General! Had to site the transfer point outside the fort, because of the nullity talisman influence, but they’re here. All the way from the Southern Continent.”

Ashnak strode through the doors of the main hall. Commissar Razitshakra saluted him from behind a table. She tore off a small piece of paper.

“Ticket for the Orc Ball, sir?”

“I’ve already got one!” Ashnak regarded the big hall. “This your idea of a high-level conference, is it?”

Marine flags were pinned up all around the walls of the bright, war-battered hall. One squad had sacrificed marine-issue sheets and a pot of khaki paint. The resultant banner read, NIN-EDIN ANNUAL MARINE DINNER DANCE. A bar, set up at the opposite end of the hall to the dais, was crowded with orc marines in off-duty fatigues. Above Ashnak’s head, among the spell-blackened beams and slit windows, a multifaceted glass ball began to spin. Small lights chased over the off-duty grunts.

“Wouldn’t want a high-level conference to look conspicuous, sir,” Commissar Razitshakra remarked. “This way it blends into the general victory festivities.”

Ashnak grinned.

A voice spoke from approximately the height of the great orc’s belt buckle.

“Lord General, I really must protest! You cannot expect us to sit on these greasy, smelly blankets. I demand that you find us either higher chairs or a lower table best becoming a Graagryk halfling’s dignity!”

Ashnak looked down at Cornelius Scroop. The halfling from the southern city of Graagryk wore a full-length fur gown, upon which rested his S-linked gold chain of office, and a velvet cap on his long, barbered red curls.

“Those are marine-issue blankets, Chancellor Cornelius, and marines get nothing but the best.”

“They’re dirty!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Unwashed, perhaps. Oh, you mean the blankets.”

“Things are not done like this in the South!”

Ashnak, who had been hearing that refrain for some hours now, merely rested a clawed hand on Scroop’s shoulder and pointed the halfling towards a long table standing by one wall. Corporal Ugarit clanked his way back carrying a tray of beer glasses.

Eight marines from the Badgurlz squad marched smartly up to the dais at the end of the hall, Major Barashkukor at their head. The small orc saluted Ashnak, then snapped his fingers. One marine set up a pot of greenery, hiding the wall-map. The others unpacked what Ashnak took to be musical instruments of varying descriptions.

Barashkukor drew himself up to attention in polished and brushed brown dress uniform, surmounted by silver-surfaced spectacles and flat hat. “Sir, entertainment detail present and correct, sir!”

“Carry on, Major.”

The Badgurlz band launched into something with a good deal of rhythm and spark. Marines moved out into the cleared centre of the hall and began to jitterbug enthusiastically.

A soberly clad halfling in black silk doublet, breeches, half-cloak, and sword, already sat over a plate at the long table, jingling her spurs. She nodded cheerfully to Ashnak and offered her hand to the body-armoured Ugarit.

“Simone Vanderghast. Captain of the Graagryk city civilian militia.”

Ugarit inspected the small, callused hand. “General, it says it’s a civilian, General.”

“It’s an honourary marine for this evening, Corporal, and you are not to eat it, do you understand?”

Ugarit muttered, “Yes, General!” in a dispirited manner and clanked off to find the bar steward.

Ashnak seated himself at the head of the conference table. “Now, gentlemen.”

Chancellor Scroop sniffed. “This blanket is dirty. This mug has not been washed. Admittedly this is an orc encampment and has just suffered siege warfare, but nevertheless one has standards!”

Simone Vanderghast chuckled in her bluff, soldierly manner. “Come, Chancellor, these are times of war, rough times, one must make the best of it. You! One has just found a cockroach on one’s plate. Take it away!”

Commissar Razitshakra removed the offending insect in passing, her eyes gleaming avidly.

“We marines—” Ashnak slurped beer and wiped his tusked mouth with his sleeve. “We marines want to come to a business arrangement with Graagryk.”

“At last we get to it!” Cornelius Scroop spread his hands, upon the pudgy fingers of which rings glinted. “There is a problem. With all due respect, General, look at you. You’re orcs.”

Ashnak sat back in his chair. It creaked. His muscled bulk overspread it considerably, and the wooden legs bowed. He glanced across Nin-Edin’s hall at the orc marines standing by the bar. Two hunch-shouldered grunts were engaging each other in a belching contest.

“You’re not meant to throw up when you do that!” Ashnak called. “Wipe the bar-orc down and order another drink. And you, orc. Stop picking your nose!”

“Yessir!” The third grunt cheerfully turned to picking the nostril of the orc next to her.

The Southern halfling groaned. “No one will trust you enough to deal with you, General. And if it were known we had dealings with orcs, then no one would trade with us.”

The music screeched to a halt. Ashnak glanced up as Major Barashkukor rapped the microphone. It squealed. Barashkukor beamed out at the hall full of orcs, tapping his baton to call the band to order.

“And now,” the small orc cried, “a song I’ve dedicated to Quartermaster Zaruk. He tells me he’s been getting a lot of requests from you orcs for those camouflage cloth squares you can roll up and tie around your head. Unfortunately there aren’t any left in the stores.”

“That right?” a grunt drawled from the floor.

“Oh, yes.” Major Barashkukor lifted his baton and launched into song. “Yes, we have no bandannas…”

Ashnak, who had opened his mouth, shut it again and shook his head. A movement caught his eye at the hall door.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “allow me to introduce another of the delegates to this conference.”

Magda Brandiman swept into the hall, her expression serene. She wore a full-length court gown which showed no signs of its having been cobbled together from reject parachute silk. She inclined her head to Ashnak and his guests.

“General. Chancellor Scroop. Captain Vanderghast.”

“Magda Brandiman, gentlemen.”

Ashnak, with extreme satisfaction, watched the halflings’ jaws drop.

“But—” Simone Vanderghast sprang to her feet, toppling off the chair and blankets in the process. She stared up from the floor, booted ankles tangled round her sword-scabbard, and shifted with difficulty onto her knees. “Your Grace!”

Chancellor Scroop slid until his heeled court shoes touched the flagstones. He stood and stared.

“Cornelius,” Magda Brandiman said gently, “is this manners?”

Scroop sank to one knee. “Your Grace…is it really you?”

She rubbed her hand ruefully across her fur-short hair as she seated herself at the conference table, leaving Scroop and Vanderghast kneeling on the floor.

“Has it been so long? I flattered myself I was still recognisable.” She turned graciously to Ashnak. “I apologise, sir. Magda is not my name. At least, not all my name. I am Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau.”

“Magdelene of Nassau!” Cornelius Scroop breathed. “The Duchess of Graagryk!”

Ashnak guffawed in mock surprise. “Graagryk! All those scrubbed streets and polished doorsteps. No wonder you left.”

Magda fixed the orc with a steely eye. “I left, sir orc, because I was thought unsuitable to be a duchess. Fortunately not all of my courtiers thought so. This is why I asked you to invite Master Scroop and Captain Vanderghast here for this conference. Ah, it has been so long since I saw any of my own people!”

“Ten years or more.” Simone Vanderghast regained her seat, still gazing in a dazzled fashion at Magda. “Your Grace, what have you been doing all these years? How have you lived?”

“There will be time for such discussions later,” Magda said smoothly. “After our business talks.”

“Smile for the camera!” a voice chirruped.

Light flashed.

Perdita del Verro had exchanged her pigeons, Ashnak saw, for some of the more complex reconnaissance equipment out of Dagurashibanipal’s caverns and was busy pointing a zoom-lens at him. He preened himself, adjusting bullet-bandoleers, combat-stained trousers, and combat jacket with the sleeves rolled up over his tattooed muscles, to best advantage.

“General, may I have full technical details of your new range of weapons? Warrior of Fortune would like to buy exclusive rights to details of weight, bore, stock length, magazine capacity, fire rate—”

Ashnak eyed Ugarit. The tech-corporal shrugged in an embarrassed manner.

“She was interested, Lord General. What could I do?”

The words “elf stew” went through Ashnak’s mind every time he looked into the elf’s warm golden eyes, but it is never entirely wise to offend the press.

“You can have an exclusive on any details cleared for general release,” he said pointedly. “We shall be issuing a conference statement later on.”

The elf reluctantly left the table.

“That,” Ashnak said, “brings me to the subject of these negotiations. We’ve won a victory here at Nin-Edin. That’s why my orcs are celebrating. But I think ahead, gentlemen. I think about the next few years. As you say, orcs are not well respected.”

Cornelius Scroop, re-seating himself on the greasy blanket, snorted.

Ashnak continued. “The marines want to come to a business arrangement with Graagryk. We have a problem, gentlemen. Namely—arms manufacture.”

Vanderghast took her eyes off Magda and gaped. “What?”

“We have a limited supply of the new weapons you’ve seen. At some point soon, we’re going to need to make more. However, gentlemen, you will have noticed that we have very little in the way of an industrial base up here in the Demonfest Mountains—which is why my Corporal Ugarit has done a great deal more experimental weapons development than manufacture. We need an ally who does have a substantial economic base.”

Ashnak flexed his talons.

“The economics of the problem are simple. It’s Dark-damned expensive to manufacture arms, because they’re complex—so we’ll have to make more than we ourselves need, purely to keep the price down to something economic. We will then have a surplus to sell.”

Simone Vanderghast looked at Cornelius Scroop. Then both of them looked at Magda van Nassau. She, in the process of lighting a long and slender roll of pipe-weed, glanced up. “The general is not the sort of orc you’re used to dealing with, Chancellor. Do try to bear that in mind.”

“A recent but classified development means that the orc marines are no longer seriously challenged by forces such as Amarynth’s. We would have very little trouble in coming south and taking over a kingdom or a duchy. But I find,” Ashnak said reflectively, “that warfare tends to wreck a country’s economy. We don’t have time to rebuild it if we’re going to get a decent arms trade up and running in the next few months.”

The chancellor and the captain stared, the glazed shock on their faces giving way to something Ashnak had no trouble in identifying. Greed.

“This needs thought,” Captain Vanderghast said.

“Have some more food while you’re thinking.” Ashnak snapped his fingers, and Ugarit’s stewards replenished the plates. The halflings dug into the traditional mountain dishes of blackbirds, thrushes, and snails.

Ashnak pondered the advisability of eating raw food and decided against it. Even if it were dead raw food, it would probably not be tactful.

“I’ll leave you gentlemen to discuss matters.” He beamed at Magda. “And catch up on old times.”

Ashnak headed between the orc marines foxtrotting across the dance floor, making for the bar. His grunts greeted him with shouts and cheers. The wooden boards echoed to the stomp of combat boots. Witch-ball lights flashed. The Badgurlz ripped into keyboard, strings, and horn with vigour.

Perdita del Verro passed him, swaying to some ancient unheard ancestral music of her elvish blood. Major Barashkukor wheeled around on the podium, baton still keeping the rhythm, fixed his eyes on her, and began to sing:

Ashnak fixed Barashkukor with a baleful glare. The band clattered and screeched into silence. The milling throng on the dance floor slowed to a halt, gazing apprehensively at their general.

Barashkukor audibly swallowed. He tapped his baton on the edge of the podium.

“Ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, TAH!” he murmured, and as the music restarted, launched into:

“Better,” Ashnak grunted, reaching the bar. “Ah. There you are.”

Wearing their cut-down, borrowed DPM combat trousers and jackets over their bruises with some dignity, Will and Ned Brandiman slitted their eyes against light brilliant after Nin-Edin’s dungeons.

“You wanted another dam fur-jockstrap villain,” Ned Brandiman said, flicking back straggling brown hair that Ashnak only marginally resisted bellowing at him to get cut. “We’ve got you one.”

A northern barbarian peered up at the bar, his wolf-pelts cleaned of campaign dirt and his wide-horned helmet balanced precariously on the back of his head. He glared up at Ashnak and bawled, “Warriors of the north cannot live within walls! Our honour lives with us under the sky, not in amongst the stink of elves and halflings and orcs. Could we at least have one frigging window open?”

“See what I can do,” Ashnak promised as he steered the three of them back to the conference table.

“Lord Blond Wolf,” he introduced, as the barbarian scrambled up a pair of steps onto his seat.

“My sons,” Magda added. “Wilhelm and Edvard van Nassau, Princes of Graagryk.”

“We prefer to think of ourselves as defence analysts,” Will said sourly, sitting down on his cushions with some care.

Simone Vanderghast glanced up from her plate and said shrewdly, “General, why are you so eager to let marine weapons out of your own hands? Given how orcs are regarded, it’s foolhardly.”

“The dragon’s geas on these weapons involves certain conditions. Training, gentlemen. Training.” Ashnak gestured expansively as he resumed his seat. “These weapons just don’t work for untrained personnel. What is going to have to happen, gentlemen, is that the orc marines get used as cadre troops, sent out to whoever buys the surplus weapons, to train that country’s troops in their use. Make them into marines. And—once a marine, always a marine. Loyal to other marines.”

Grunts crowded past the conference table, queueing up for the buffet the stewards set out on the bar. One orc returned, balancing a glass and digging into a loaded paper plate. “Why do I always get the bit with the boot in it?” she complained.

Chancellor Scroop put down his knife and fork. He swallowed greenly. “Your firepower demonstrations earlier today were…interesting. As was the tour of Corporal Ugarit’s workshops. But…How could this arrangement possibly work? We couldn’t sell these arms to just anyone.”

Ashnak nodded to Magda.

“It’s necessary to sell surplus arms legitimately to fund manufacture.” Magda leaned her small, muscular arms on the tabletop. “I say legitimately, because—as we all know—the High King and his council are clamping down on anything that looks remotely dodgy. What the marines can do for Graagryk in that respect is simple. They can provide end-user certificates, certificates to show that we’ve sold our arms to a good, Light-fearing land that needs them to defend itself against the leftover Horde.”

Simone Vanderghast fingered her sword-hilt. “End-user certificates. I like it.”

Ashnak drank his beer down in one swallow, belched, and wiped his wide, lipless mouth.

“Lord Blond Wolf here, perhaps,” the orc rumbled, “comes from a small northern Light-loving kingdom which needs to defend itself against evil neighbours?”

Magda’s eyes danced. “They do have a troublesome border, yes.”

“Probably a poor kingdom,” Cornelius Scroop speculated. “Most of the northern ones are—a bit of mining, if the dwarves don’t get it; bit of forestry; nothing much for export.”

He paused.

“Be honoured to extend a loan, Lord Wolf.”

The northern barbarian picked up a dish, stuck his finger in it, licked it, and remarked, “Fish eggs.” He then fixed his ice-pale eyes on Ashnak.

“I’ll lend you frigging orcs my name, like the lady here explained to me, and that’s all you swiving sons of goats will get from me! I wouldn’t touch your arms with a shit-pole. Honest iron’s for me! Honour of the north!” He slurped a beer tankard dry. “Couldn’t afford ’em anyway. Ship ’em where the fuck you please, just not to us. Bugger our economy if you did. But for the right price you can use our name.”

“Ah…yes.” Cornelius Scroop blinked at Vanderghast.

The Badgurlz marines reached the end of a number and screeched into silence, dropping their instruments and ploughing through the startled dancers in a flying wedge aimed at the bar. Major Barashkukor left the podium and approached a corner table where Commissar Razitshakra sat, the peak of her cap pulled down, taking surreptitious notes.

“Razzi…”

The commissar turned her back. “Suspect little creep! Fraternising with civilians. Elvish civilians, at that.”

The major moped back towards the bandstand and the returning Badgurlz.

“Won’t speak to me since she came back from that commando mission,” he muttered. “Isn’t my fault I didn’t go on a commando mission. I’d like to go on a commando mission. Mistress del Verro knows how to appreciate a soldier, even if she is a civilian…”

A light came into the small orc’s eyes, and he marched out onto the dance floor and tapped Perdita del Verro’s orc partner on the back.

Sergeant Varimnak glanced over her shoulder. She freed one hand and pushed her talons through her cropped white crest in a soldierly manner. “Just doing my bit to cement interspecies relations, sir.”

Perdita, standing head and shoulders taller than her partner’s muscular bulk, rested in the orc’s arms, dancing with her golden eyes half shut.

“May I have the—erm—the pleasure of this dance?” Barashkukor asked the elf.

She ignored him.

Varimnak looked down lazily. “Sir—fuck off, sir.”

Left standing, the major plodded dispiritedly towards the bar. The Badgurlz band, with a certain amount of schadenfreude, began to play “He Was Her Orc, but She Done Him Wrong.”

“General.” Cornelius Scroop recalled Ashnak’s attention. “This has a promise of being profitable, true—you orcs will be developing and making arms, ostensibly for your own defence and for the defence of certain minor kingdoms, while being funded by us and using our industries.”

Ashnak nodded. “We’ll make arms for any mercenary band, enemy country, or overseas force who’ll pay. They’ll have to hire marine instructors or the weapons will remain deactivated. The price of Dagurashibanipal, gentlemen, the moral of which is: never unnecessarily kill a dragon; they have graveyard tempers.”

“But,” Scroop went on doggedly, “you’re an orc.”

Commissar Razitshakra shouldered past the long table. Ashnak overheard her spit, “Fraternising with civilians!” as Sergeant Varimnak left the dance floor, the elf journalist on her arm.

The Badgurlz sergeant stopped, grinned, polished the studs on her black leathers, and remarked, “Hey, man! I hear some of us have done more than fraternise…”

Varimnak’s gaze deliberately shifted to the band podium.

Commissar Razitshakra stomped off.

Magda Brandiman slid to the floor in a flurry of silk. “You’ll have to excuse me, sirs. Powder my nose.”

Ashnak grunted an absentminded acknowledgement. He prodded his disappointingly immobile meal and glared at Cornelius Scroop and Simone Vanderghast. “Of course I’m an orc!”

Tech-Corporal Ugarit stared across the dance floor. “The tuba’s a musical instrument, isn’t it, General?”

“What? Yes, corporal. It is. Why do you ask?”

“It’s just that Major Barashkukor appears to be wearing one.” Ugarit pointed. “You can see his boots sticking out of the bell end.”

Ashnak’s eyebrow lifted as he watched Commissar Razitshakra stalk back across the dance floor with a highly satisfied expression.

“Orcish high spirits. Victory celebrations,” he said confidently to the two influential halflings. “Now, as we were saying…”

Some minutes later, Magda Brandiman emerged back into the main hall. She tapped an orc’s shoulder as he leaned morosely on the bar.

Barashkukor leaped six inches into the air and regarded the female halfling with wild eyes. “I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me!”

“Woman-trouble, soldier?”

The battered orc major sighed. His shoulders relaxed. “Sure thing, ma’am—I mean, Your Grace.”

“News gets around.” Magda gathered her silk petticoats and turned, regarding the dance floor and the oblivious great orc at the conference table. The corner of her mouth twitched up.

The female halfling proffered her arm.

Barashkukor glanced to either side, then over his shoulder, and finally back at Magdelene van Nassau. He pressed one spindly finger to his chest. “Me, ma’am?”

“A little jealousy,” Magda Brandiman said, “never hurt anyone.”

Barashkukor tugged his tunic straight, stuck his small snout in the air, gripped Magda’s hand and waist, and waltzed off past a startled orc commissar and elf journalist. The Badgurlz band played “It Takes Three to Tango.”

When Magda returned, the great orc was tapping his talons on the tablecloth.

“But you’re an orc!” Chancellor Scroop wailed, in the tones of a halfling seeing an opportunity for profit vanishing. “No one will ever trust an orc!”

Simone Vanderghast agreed. “The High King would have an army in Graagryk in days!”

Corporal Ugarit chuckled—a thin, high sound. “Let ’em send an army! We’re not afraid of magic now, not even southern magic, no we’re not. Let ’em come, I’ll have ’em, I’ll take ’em all—”

Ashnak lifted his fist and brought it down on the top of Ugarit’s head. The kevlar helmet cracked. Ugarit beamed daffily, fell off his chair, rolled over on the floorboards, and began to snore.

“There is some truth in what my corporal says,” Ashnak confirmed. “However, my strategy at the moment doesn’t involve fighting the High King and all his many, many allies. As I said, it involves peaceful trade.”

“But how?”

Ashnak eyed the two halflings. They did not seem anything like as convinced as he had imagined they would be at this point. He scowled.

“As to how,” Magda Brandiman said, “firstly, I am an accredited Southern Kingdoms duchess. Magda Brandiman can vanish, and Magdelene van Nassau return with no stain on her reputation. She could make the orcs and their general welcome in Graagryk…”

Ashnak beamed and nodded.

“…but, of course, that would still give the High King and Council great excuse for suspicion. So that won’t work.”

Ashnak’s heavy jaw dropped.

“But that was our plan!” he spluttered.

“That won’t work alone,” Magda emphasised. “However, I have the perfect answer. It will turn the orc marines into Graagryk’s trusted allies; and by that move, make them the Light and the High King’s allies too.”

“What it is, Your Grace?” Cornelius Scroop queried.

Simone Vanderghast said, “Your Grace, the city would welcome your return. How we would welcome it! Only I don’t understand what you can do about this political problem of orcs’ being unacceptable in the Southern Kingdoms…”

“I can make the orc marines respectable,” Magda Brandiman said.

She rested her diminutive chin on her interlinked fingers and met Ashnak’s bemused gaze. She smiled.

“I can make the general of the orc marines respectable,” the Duchess Magdelene said. “Ashnak, will you marry me?”

“No! Listen up: I’m telling you for the last time! I won’t do it!”

“Yes, you will.”

“It isn’t what we planned! It’s nothing like it!”

“I know.”

“Dark damn it, halfling, I am not going to marry you!”

“Yes, you are.”

“Fuck off and die!”

“If that’s what you want. But let me hear you tell me twice.”

“I’m not getting married! No way!”

“No industry. No arms trade.”

“I don’t care!”

“No Magda Brandiman.”

“So what!”

“You’ll do it. When you get to my age, you know these things.”

“And how old are you, exactly?”

“Let’s just say I don’t look as though I have two sons in their late forties, do I?”

“I won’t do it! I’m a marine, and I’m an orc; and when an orc marine says something, he means it, and I’m saying it now: we are not getting married!”

11

Four hundred miles to the south of the Demonfest Mountains, the Duchy of Graagryk lies on the flat lands bordering the southern coast of the Inland Sea. Snow perches pristine white on roofs and leafless trees, as it properly should, and does not clog the boots of the Graagryk halflings as they hurry towards the city’s great cathedral.

Chimneys belch smoke at the edges of the frozen salt flats—smoke that by magery is made to vanish even as the factories produce it. The warm winter sun shines down on a clean land. Even the poorest halfling housewife has the use of cleansing magery, and the very cobbles in the streets gleam, cleaned of slush.

Baroque horns ring out. Graagryk’s thronging citizens fall silent entering the great halfling cathedral—which by orc standards is a largish church. The pews being too small to take his bulk, Ashnak, general of the orc marines, remains standing.

“—but I must talk to you immediately after the ceremony!” Chancellor-Mage Cornelius Scroop protested. “The political situation is becoming urgent!”

Ashnak peered down at the flowing red tresses of the Chancellor-Mage of Graagryk, at last making out a pair of mournful halfling eyes regarding him from amongst swathes of haberdashery.

“See me later, stumpy,” the orc snarled, tugging the lapels of his brown formal marine uniform straight. For some reason the tunic collar seemed more than usually tight around his bull neck.

The holly decorations of Yule Solstice made the interior of the white cathedral bright with red and green. Candles burned in sconces. Outside the high, pointed windows the sky glowed a fierce winter blue.

“Ash-nak! Ash-nak! ASH-NAK!”

Orc marines, unmagicked snow crusting their boots, crowded the pews behind Ashnak. Uniformed, armed grunts sat up in the window embrasures, hung off candlestands, stood on the bases of pillars and the backs of pews, and sat hip to bony hip along the edge of the lectern. They chanted:

There were probably a lot fewer marines present than there were halfling citizens of Graagryk. It was just, Ashnak reflected, that orc marines seem to take up more room.

Halflings in aprons, carrying mundane brushes and buckets, scurried from nave to aisle and back, hopelessly scrubbing and wiping in the orcs’ wake. Ashnak resignedly lifted his combat boots, one at a time, as a Graagryk cleaner mopped under them. The nullity talisman around his leathery bull neck tingled. Breath fluttered under his breastbone.

“Urgency?” he queried.

The halfling chancellor waved his lace-cuffed hands. “The news is that companions-in-arms from the disbanded Dark and Light armies are ravaging the kingdoms from the south to the sea! They take towns and fortresses, are driven out again, take others; take good men for ransom and are paid, or kill their prisoners out of hand; it’s terrible!”

Ashnak raised beetling brows in surprise. “It is?”

Cornelius’s round face sharpened. “We have orders for arms flooding in from every kingdom for leagues around—contracts to be signed, they stipulate, only after this ceremony.”

“Civilians!” Ashnak showed his carious fangs. “Don’t worry. Your percentage is safe…”

Major Barashkukor trotted smartly down the aisle from the cathedral entrance. The small orc wore parade dress: black uniform brushed and belt buckle shining. His thin crest had been combed and watered flat to his misshapen skull, and he wore a new black Stetson.

“Yo, sir!” He saluted, taking off his mirrorshades. “She’s coming, sir!”

Ashnak glanced down at his own polished black boots, worried by their unorcishly pristine splendour. “The ring?”

“Sir, got it, sir! Here, sir!” Barashkukor patted the top pocket of his black tunic. His spindly, clawed fingers groped at the cloth. Suddenly panic-stricken, he dug his hand into the pocket and brought it out with a sigh of relief, clasped around a small gold ring, plain except for some script engraved around the inside.

“One size fits all, they said. Nice piece of goods, sir.”

“Should be. I had enough trouble to get hold of it.”

“Ash-nak! Ash-nak!”

The orc marines cheered, their voices echoing up into the low cathedral roof, and then abruptly fell silent. The organ sonorously blasted out a few bars of something Ashnak charitably recognised as the orc marine march. A Badgurlz marine added her saxophone to the cacophony. Ashnak turned his head, looking back down the aisle.

Magda stood in the doorway, silhouetted against bright snow and blue sky and the crowds in Graagryk’s main square. Her satin and white lace dress trailed in the trodden slush from the orc marines’ boots. A maid in a pink satin farthingale, her brown hair braided up on her head, picked up the train and walked down the aisle behind Magda.

“Erm.” Barashkukor spoke sotto voce. “Isn’t that Ned Brandiman carrying her train? Sir, I mean Edvard van Nassau, sir.”

Asknak nodded his great tusked head ponderously. “Yes, Major. That’s him.”

“Is that what he does, sir?”

Ashnak sighed. “I don’t think it’s all he does. Scroop mentioned something about him building a fireworks display for the celebrations afterwards…”

Magda walked sedately forward between lines of orc marines and the burghers of Graagryk, all of them cheering so loudly that the music of the organ was drowned out. A veil of white lace and diamonds covered her delicate face, flowing back over her hair that today was long and blonde and curly. Plain white silk cupped her small breasts, hugged her narrow hips, and foamed in lace and frills around her tiny white-booted feet. Ashnak recognised Archipelago mulberry silk, the purchase of a single bolt of which can beggar a ducal household.

A shaven-headed halfling priest walked out onto the steps before the altar, his purple robe sweeping the marble. “People of Graagryk! Merchants, militia, and great duchess! We are gathered together at this Yuletide Solstice to perform a solemn ceremony…”

Out of the side of his wide mouth Ashnak muttered, “Ought I to be doing his?”

Barashkukor patted his elbow in a fatherly manner. “Yes, sir, you should, sir. Think of how popular it’s going to make you. And the rest of us. And besides, sir, she’s…”

Ashnak’s heavy brows lowered. “Yes, Major?”

The small orc spread his hands widely. “The boys love her, sir. She’s—erm—been like a mother to us.”

Ashnak had no more time to speak. Magda Brandiman arrived at his side, her trainbearer in her wake, and the great cathedral full of orcs, citizens, vagabonds, burghers, deserters, merchants, and mercenaries became hushed. He looked down, and further down, and gazed at the bright blue eyes he could see through the thin veil.

Magda Brandiman winked.

The priest cleared his throat. “Who giveth away this halfling?”

Will Brandiman took his mother’s arm. Spruce, clean, scrubbed and polished, his greying black hair newly cut and his doublet and hose banished in favour of viridian silk coat and breeches, he still bore the traces of his beating. He regarded the large orc marine with a look that plainly denoted neither forgiveness nor finished business. “I do.”

Wilhelm van Nassau looked for a moment at the manicured, muscular hand in his; glanced up at Ashnak, and somewhat unceremoniously shoved his mother’s appendage at the orc. Ashnak took the small, hot hand in his own. His granite fist enclosed it entirely.

The priest coughed and adjusted his half-moon spectacles. “We are gathered here on this auspicious occasion to join together in matrimony this orc and this halfling. If anyone knows of any reason why this marriage should not happen, let them speak now, or forever remain silent.”

Ashnak glanced over his broad shoulder. The church was silent enough to hear a sergeant’s stripes drop. Ranked orc marines looked back at him, quite a number grinning rather more broadly than he appreciated.

The priest’s voice echoed sonorously:

“Do you, Ashnak of the Horde of Darkness, General Officer Commanding the Orc Marines, betrothed of the Duchess of this great city of Graagryk, take the halfling Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau to be your lawful wedded spouse?”

Ashnak looked huntedly from side to side. The bride’s trainbearer chuckled in an unexpected baritone. Will Brandiman folded his arms; rather more purses at his belt than could be accounted for by his changing into the dress of a Graagryk prince.

Major Barashkukor, starry-eyed, nudged his commanding officer in the ribs. “Sir!”

“I suppose so,” Ashnak rumbled.

“Do you, Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau, Duchess of Graagryk, hereditary Holder of the Golden Cobble, Six Hundred and Seventh Admiral of the Inland Sea, take this—this orc marine to be your lawfully wedded consort?”

“I’ll think about it,” Magda said. “Oh, all right then.”

“I hereby pronounce you heir and consort, orc-husband and halfling-wife,” the priest finished, “and may the Lady have mercy on your souls!”

With a curious delicacy Ashnak fitted the ring to the halfling’s largest finger. Scant seconds later, it seemed to him, he stood in the snow and trodden slush outside Graagryk’s cathedral. The press of the crowd prevented him from moving forward.

“Well, my love, we—”

Bells drowned out his words.

Wild in the snowy air, shaking ice down from the cathedral’s gargoyles, the deep bells clanged out across the city. The citizen militia, in velvet and lace, brandished their halberds, leaning back in a cordon against the front rank of the crowd as the cathedral doors were thrown wide open.

“What?” Magda bawled.

“We may have lost—I SAID WE MAY HAVE LOST—”

Magda waved him to silence in the clangour of the bells. A dozen squads of orc marines clumped out at the double into the snow, shouting, cheering, and throwing snowballs. Company Sergeant Varimnak, her black leather uniform dark against the whiteness, bellowed orders.

The orc marines formed two smart lines leading out from the cathedral’s entrance, unslung their AK47s, and on command let off a blast of automatic fire over the heads of the crowd. Halflings, Men, and the few elves present screamed, ducking. The orcs bellowed with laughter and fired the next volley lower.

“Marines, ten-HUT!”

Ninety booted feet slammed into the snow as the honour guard came to attention. The orc marines nearest the cathedral doors held up an arch of poleaxes, warhammers, and M60s.

“Here we go.” The halfling squeezed his hand with a surprisingly strong grip. Ashnak looked down at her and grinned.

“Yo!” He scooped her up, long-trained wedding dress and all, and sat her firmly on his shoulders. The female halfling, resplendent in white satin, silk, and lace, turned her unveiled face up to the bright blue sky. She kicked her legs free of the skirts, her booted feet resting on his barrel chest; snatched off his peaked cap and waved it joyously at the crowd.

Major Barashkukor inflated his small chest and bellowed, “Three cheers for Duke Ashnak and Duchess Magda! Hip, hip—”

“HOORAY!”

TAKKA-TAKKA-TAKKA-FOOM!

A volley of automatic fire ricocheted off the cathedral frontage. Stone chips spanged, and a gargoyle toppled over and fell with a dull thud into a snowdrift. Orc marines, drinking from water bottles that patently obviously did not contain water, began to sing raucously and fire at random. Major Barashkukor beamed at them tearfully.

“I do so love a wedding,” he observed.

Magda Brandiman wriggled, sitting on Ashnak’s shoulder, and threw her bouquet of winter blossoms into the crowd. A stocky figure in pink silk straight-armed a burgher out of the way, snatched the bouquet out of the air, and in a gruff voice bellowed, “Me next!”

“Your stepsons,” Magda said demurely, “they really do need a father’s hand…”

“Stepsons!” Ashnak groaned.

Magda reached down a hand upon which the veins were beginning to stand out. She took Ashnak’s horny hand in her own. Her ring caught fire from the sun. He slitted tilted eyes against the light, and his talons spiked her expensive silk bodice, drawing her down to where he could plant a kiss squarely on her mouth.

“You can’t keep a bad orc down.”

The orc duke surveyed the halfling city of Graagryk and looked up at Magda van Nassau. He belched and grinned.

“We may have lost the Last Battle—but we definitely won the war!”