Grunts

PROLOGUE

The American marine walked through the open door into the bar of the Goat and Compasses, ducking his head to enter.

Amy, behind the bar, registered him first as a shadow against the light. She put on her professional smile. “What can I get you?”

“Whiskey. Please.”

An American accent, with a slight Middle European edge. Thirty, maybe thirty-five, carrying himself with a tensile spring in his step. Amy read the brown identification tapes sewn above the breast pockets of the crisp brown-and-ochre camouflage jacket: STRYKER, one read, and the other, U.S. MARINES.

Conscious of the stir among the pub’s regular clientele, she had time to study the sturdy American, register camouflage colours made recognisable by weeks of TV Gulf War news broadcasts, and then the darts match in the snug broke up, and one of the older men from up on the housing estate said, “What are you having, mate? Bloody good job you did out there. That’s what I say. Bleedin’ good job. C’mon, what’re you having?”

The American marine rested his elbows on the polished bar. Under a forage cap his blond hair, shaved down almost to the scalp, gleamed under the pub lights.

“Whiskey,” he repeated quietly.

“Good for you, mate. Amy!”

“I’m here.” She poured a measure, watching the marine drink while she served others. There were lines about his eyes, as if he had spent time squinting into Arabian sunlight. She recalled news videos of similar men loaded with seventy-pound packs, piling out into rocky wastes blasted by aircraft and sown with mines. You could not tell, under the camouflage jacket, if his heavy arms and shoulders were tanned, but she thought they might be. She tried to make more eye contact.

“So what was it like out there, mate?” an old man persisted. “I saw it on the telly. Kill any wogs, did you?”

The American drank off half the whiskey. He leaned on the bar, in a position from which he could see both the public and the saloon bar door. Amy waited, almost holding her breath.

The brief roar of Tornado fighter jets flying back to RAF Chicksands vibrated through the building. The marine did not flinch. The regulars were turning back to their conversations, or watching the TV above the bar; the younger lads were playing the video machines, and Amy, flustered, wiped her hands on the bar-cloth. “Sorry about that. Sorry.”

The American raised his eyes from his glass.

“No harm, ma’am.” The quiet, accented voice did not alter.

Outside the lounge bar window, Darren—somewhere between the ages of seventeen and nineteen, wearing engineer boots, civilian copies of military-issue combat trousers, and a ripped Megadeth T-shirt—took out his black-bladed, serrated, guaranteed SAS Commando (style) knife and scored long lines on the bodywork of the parked U.S. Army military jeep. He pressed the knife’s point into the valves, deflating the tyres, and slashed at the rubber.

“You’re fucked!” The older youth, Mark, wiped his acne-ridden upper lip. His words slurred. He leaned too close over Darren and his breath was hot and beery. “You’re fuckin’ fucked! When he comes out.” He made the motions and noises of cocking a bolt-action rifle. “Kchaa!”

“I’m not bloody scared of him!” Darren wiped his streaming nose. He cast wary glances at the saloon bar door.

Two crowded, rusty vehicles swung into the car park in a skirl of gravel, shouts, and thrown beer cans. Mark elbowed him.

“Yes! Mike and Billy’re back!”

The American marine stepped out of the pub at that moment. Darren took him in from combat boots to the width of his shoulders. The man’s pale eyes flicked over him, registering his presence but not giving it any importance.

“Fucking squaddie!” Darren grunted.

Mark leaned on Darren and raised his voice belligerently. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Amy, collecting beer glasses from the pub garden’s tables, had paused to let her eyes travel across the countryside visible from the small village. There, under rolling English downs, a radio-farm marking the presence of a NATO bunker. There, across farmland and towards the much-patrolled North Sea, the white spheres of golfball-transmitters…

She spun around as brakes squealed in the car park, followed by the hollow bang! of crunched metal. She ran to the wall, aware of drinkers looking out of the open windows and coming to the pub door.

A large Ford Escort slewed caterwise across the car park, its crumpled hood buried against the U.S. Army jeep. Another car blocked the entrance. Ten or twelve youths that Amy recognised from the housing estate piled out of the cars and stood in a spread-out line between the crashed vehicle and the pub door, blocking the American’s path to the jeep.

“’Ere, you, you hit my fucking car!” Aggressive, daring a denial of the blatant lie, a tall and heavy-shouldered young man faced off against the American. “There I was an’ you ran right into me. S’right. What you going to do about it?”

The marine said levelly, with that slightly Germanic accent, “Drive away.”

“No, you bloody ain’t, my son. No fuckin’ way!”

Six of the young men began banging their fists and the flats of their hands on the jeep, laughing, rocking it on its wheelbase. Amy snapped her fingers at the assistant barman peering through the pub window and mouthed, Phone. Police. The barman nodded and vanished.

Caught without being able to cross the car park and get back into the pub, Amy stood and watched as the large American soldier came to a halt. He surveyed the shouting, raucous young men with a weary acceptance.

“I don’t want any trouble,” he stated.

The jeep failed to turn over. The dark-haired youth she vaguely recognised as Darren bawled, “Bleeding camel shaggers. Think you’re so bloody hot, don’t you? Well, come on, then. Do something. Unless you’re chicken!”

The marine’s eyes fixed on the middle distance, a stare that was not cold or angry or anything very much. Amy felt her stomach twist, abruptly afraid, not for this calm man, but for the half-drunk, violent children facing him. The American had moved with an economic grace, no energy wasted; and now he merely stood, nothing to prove, waiting until their voices died away.

“If I were you,” he said, “I’d get out of here before the cops arrive.”

“Chicken! Faggot!” The dark-haired youth jabbed his middle finger in the air. “Fuck you, asshole!”

Amy twisted the bar-cloth between her suddenly cold hands. She stepped towards them, whispering, “Stop,” just as the gang of youths shouldered forward together. The American’s feet moved. His eyes widened.

Without any warning, the earth turned suddenly sideways.

Behind the American the air curdled and opened.

Amy fell and barked her knuckles against the car park wall. Her fingernails broke as she dug her fingers into the brickwork, grinding her heels into the dirt to stop herself from skidding across the car park towards the sprawling youths and the American. The earth swivelled up and sideways, so that it seemed she hung against the gravel, pulled towards the vast dark hole in the air that opened near the main door of the Goat and Compasses.

The American vanished into it.

“Nooooooo……!

Screams, cries, a young man weeping; air sucked as if from a depressurising cockpit; the crunch of metal as parked cars slid across the gravel and into each other; a sharp crack of snapping wood as the pub sign broke and fell across the air—

Her bloodied fingers lost their hold on the wall. Amy screamed and plummeted towards the void.

Pressure vanished. She fell to earth in a sliding curve that raked gravel across her arms and thighs, banging her head against the bumper of a car. The bodies of young men, breath sucked from their lungs, sprawled across the tarmac like the aftermath of a battle.

There were sirens, after that, and a fire engine, and crowds come out from the houses in the village street, and arrests for disorderly behaviour. A police sergeant came and put his coat around Amy while the ambulance men checked her for shock and bandaged her hands.

“It was like a hole!” She looked up, eyes red-rimmed. A coal of fear burned in them that would not go out, but would remain an ember in her for the future. “A hole. In the air. Like a door opening behind him. I saw it—he fell. Into no- where. There wasn’t anywhere to go, but he just vanished. I… I saw what it looked like, where he went. I saw the other side. And it didn’t look like here at all.”

This was before the TV or newspaper reporters or military police arrived. She told her story only once, then, and another quiet, dangerous man in marine uniform ordered her to be silent, to admit it all the product of concussion, a hallucination, female nonsense… and could she please give them any real information as to the whereabouts of the missing man, Sergeant John H. Stryker of the U.S. Marine Corps?

1

The summer sun blazes down on the final of Graagryk’s first annual Orcball League.

Stands full of halfling workers watch the game, cheering, in their shirtsleeves, with knotted hankies on their heads.

“Of course,” Chancellor Cornelius Scroop remarked distastefully, “this game is nothing but a crowd-pleaser.”

“URP!” The great orc Ashnak, granite-skinned, Man-tall, and wide, sprawled in his chair, towering over the halflings in the ducal box. He dug into the hamper next to his seat, snared half a boar, and chomped his steel-strong jaws into it.

“General!” Scroop reproachfully wiped boar-grease from his court dress.

“Master Cornelius, I’m particular about my food these days.” Ashnak belched and threw the stripped bone over his shoulder. “As befits a ducal consort, I refuse to eat anything that hasn’t stopped moving yet.”

Out in the exposed arena, sweating orc marines plunged their heads into water barrels and loped back into the game, shaking sprays of water from their pointed ears. Clouds of dust rose into the still air.

Ashnak lumbered to his combat-booted feet, his bulk shadowing the box, farting with a crack as resonant as a grenade launch. “COME ON, YOU ORCS!”

The stadium hummed. A breeze brought the rank scent of the Inland Sea. In the ducal box, Graagryk’s respectable halflings sweltered in their best finery: baggy silk breeches and bucket-top boots, steel gorgets and rapiers, long barbered curls, and occasional velvet face-masks. Down in the stands, halfling workers bought pies and wine and exchanged betting slips.

“GOAL!”

The dust began to clear. It disclosed a dozen grunts leaping up and down and cheering; and thirteen tall, slender bodies slumped motionless on the worn turf.

Halfling helpers rushed to remove the Dark Elf team’s bodies.

A halfling mother in the ducal box covered her child’s eyes with her hand and tutted furiously, with an expression on her small features as if she were smelling something even more distasteful than sweaty orc.

“That’s better.” The dew had long since burned off the field. Even under the thatched stands, the air seared. Ashnak reached into the hamper for a magnum of champagne and emptied half down his throat and the remainder over his head. Sticky courtiers glared at him.

The halfling cheerleaders on the far side of the arena chanted, “Yaaay, Graagryk! G-R-DOUBLE-A, G-R-Y-KAY: Graaaaaagryk!”

At the near edge of the arena, Sergeant Varimnak lounged on the grass and chewed gum, conducting the orcish cheerleaders. Each of her small, spike-haired orcs wore studded leather boots, and filigreed-steel basques, and juggled maces and morningstars as if they were pompoms. The stand seats behind them were curiously empty.

“Halftime!” the troll referee called from the field. “New players!”

A brawny orc, stripped to the waist and wearing combat trousers and brightly polished boots, marched up and saluted Ashnak in the duchess’s box.

“General Ashnak, sah. Further representatives of the ‘Orde’s orc marines reporting to play Orcball, sah! Permission to pound these ’ere hairy-footed bastards into the turf, sah?”

Ashnak lazily returned the salute. “Permission granted, Sergeant Major Guzrak. Carry on.”

“Sah yes sah!”

Walking away, Sergeant Major Guzrak put his arm around one of the large orc marine’s shoulders and spoke to him in a fatherly fashion. “Soldier, I has some good news and some bad news. The good news is, you’ve made the Orcball team. The bad news is—as the ball…”

Captain Simone Vanderghast slammed a purse of gold down. “That says your marines lose to us, General!”

Ashnak regarded the civilian militia captain’s money. “That’s right, it is the home team next. You’re on!”

He spat on his horny palm and held it out. The halfling looked at it, swallowed, shut her eyes, and shook his hand gingerly. She then wiped her palm repeatedly against the wooden walls of the box.

From the tunnel at the far end of the stadium, twenty halflings rode out into the arena on well-groomed ponies. Bridles and stirrups flashed in the sun.

Ashnak’s eyebrows raised. “They’re mounted!”

Simone Vanderghast, smugly, said, “Nothing in the rules, General, about how one gets around the field of play.”

A pony whinnied.

The halfling leader buckled a black peaked helmet over his curls, brandished his crop, and galloped up to the centre line. Like all his fellow stout, hair-footed riders, he wore white breeches, riding boots, and a bright scarlet doublet and carried over his shoulder a long-handled mallet.

“One is ready to play!” he called.

A rumble went through the stands.

One of Ashnak’s aides, a black orc second lieutenant, leaned back from his seat in front of the general.

“Little fellas really take to this game, sir, don’t they?”

“So it seems,” Ashnak growled.

“I suppose a Kalashnikov is a missile weapon,” the lanky orc lieutenant reflected wistfully. “It’s a pity we’re not allowed to use them, sir. But I suppose it makes it more sportin’. Poleaxes and warhammers, well, it really takes you back, sir, doesn’t it?”

His head with its widely jutting ears and woodland camouflage forage cap bobbed in Ashnak’s field of vision. The tiered seats were hardly orc-sized. Ashnak reached forward, grabbed the lieutenant’s ears, slammed the orc’s head forward onto the guard rail, and resumed watching the field over the orc’s prone body.

“That’s better, Chahkamnit.” Ashnak leaned back comfortably. “I can see the game now.”

“Oh, jolly good, sir…” a weak voice whispered.

Cornelius Scroop waved his printed broadsheet-programme in front of Chahkamnit’s lugubrious orcish features. It did not noticeably revive him.

The troll referee brushed the field’s dust from his knees without having to bend down. He adjusted his loincloth and bellowed, in a voice loud enough to penetrate to the highest back row of the stadium:

“Final half! These are the rules. The object of the game is to get the orc’s head in the bucket. That bucket for you orc marines, and this bucket for the halfling team. Those are all the rules. There will be a new ball in just a moment!”

Somewhere in back of the stands there was a scream, a swish of metal, and a sticky thud.

“And now—”

The grunts in the lower stands cheered as a linesman returned with the new ball. It dripped a green trail behind it, and the tusks shone in the sun.

“—play on!”

The troll referee hurled the severed orc head towards the middle of the arena, lumbered into a sprint towards the far stands, and dived over a plank barrier. A few seconds later an optical device of metal and lenses appeared over the edge of the bunker.

“I must say, General,” Cornelius Scroop remarked disapprovingly, “the referee doesn’t seem to exercise much control over the game.”

“Control?” Ashnak said blankly.

Simone Vanderghast chuckled, pointing at the halfling leader, who raised his mallet, swung it forward, and whacked the orc head towards the marine end of the arena. “Your team isn’t even on the field yet, General.”

HHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRMMMM!!!

Sergeant Major Guzrak, at the head of a squad of fifteen grunts, gunned the motor of his Harley Davidson and zoomed out onto the field. His orc squad fanned out, steering their motorbikes casually with one hand and brandishing polo sticks with the other. The sun glinted on swords and maces slung across their backs.

“But,” Cornelius Scroop protested, “but—but—”

Guzrak skidded his Harley in a half-circle and saluted.

“I say, sir,” Second Lieutenant Chahkamnit remarked dazedly. “The sergeant major’s got a mascot on his handlebars. “How nice.”

Ashnak’s brows drew down in a massive frown. He glared at the pink fluffy toy orc adorning Guzrak’s Harley Davidson. The marine sergeant sweated and shuffled.

“‘S lucky, sah. Honest, sah.”

“I think,” Ashnak purred, “we’d better win. Don’t you?”

Sweat trickled down Guzrak’s green face. “Yessah!”

The cloudless sky seared. Halfling linesmen sprayed water to damp down the dust. The crowd roared, chanting.

“One has the ball!” a pudgy halfling in a red coat called, leaning off her pony to whack the orc head. “One has the—urk!”

Sergeant Major Guzrak hooked his mallet under the halfling’s, expertly flicked her off her pony, and rode off down the field in pursuit of the bouncing orc head.

The halfling sat up dizzily. “One had the ball…”

Simone Vanderghast cricked her neck, glaring up at Ashnak. “General, have you ever considered playing this game fairly?”

“Yes.”

Halflings rose to their feet, cheering, as four of the red-coated riders charged back to the sidelines, dropped their mallets, picked up stout spears, and galloped across to form an escort for the halfling with the ball. A biker orc zoomed to a halt just too late.

“Body detail!” Sergeant Major Guzrak bawled. “Body bag! Prepare to recover marine corpse. Corpse…wait for it, wait for it…corpse: recovered! Prepare to make substitution.”

The halfling riders galloped down the field, one slinging her spear between the spokes of a bike’s wheel. The Harley flipped. The orc rider sat wide-legged on the ground, shaking her head.

The pudgy halfling dismounted from her pony, mounted the bike, and opened the throttle wide, mallet swinging. “One has the ball! One has the b—”

The grunt whose Harley had been downed lowered her shoulder. She butted the halfling’s bike head-on. The halfling hurtled over the handlebars and thudded into the turf. The orc marine expertly swung the bike round, remounted it, and gunned it into action. Mace in one hand, mallet in the other, she charged the halfling team.

The halfling leader couched his mallet under his arm, pointed end forward. He dug his spurs into his pony’s barrel-sides, and galloped towards her from the opposite direction. “I say, tally-ho!”

Splat!

“Better than huntin’ peasants, what?” the scarlet-doubleted halfling called back gaily over his shoulder, trotting off.

Ashnak heard a low growl go around the stadium. Several of the rows began to boo.

“Well, really!” Cornelius Scroop said. “How can they boo their own side? Ungrateful plebs.”

“I’ve got the ball!” the pudgy halfling shrieked, still dismounted, emerging on foot from the scrum. The ball dripped green down her scarlet jacket. She waved it triumphantly. Ashnak glimpsed her startled expression as twenty halflings on ponies and fourteen orcs on Harley Davidsons converged on the spot where she stood.

The resulting dust cloud hit three-quarters of the field. Chancellor Scroop fanned his hand before his face, pale with exhaust fumes.

“We got the ball, sah!” Guzrak cried, emerging out of the ruck on his battered bike.

“We have the ball,” the halfling leader contradicted, galloping out of the enveloping cloud of dust. “We have the…er…”

The halfling held up an unmistakably curly-haired head.

“Oh, dear…”

“That’s more like it!” Ashnak enthused. “Come on, you ores! My money’s safe,” he added to the ashen-faced Simone Vanderghast, and turned back to the field, slitting his eyes against the white sunlight, cheering along with the stands full of halfling workers.

The halfling leader galloped furiously back towards the entrance tunnel and reined in his pony.

“You there!” he shouted. “Bring me my reserve mount!”

A huge shape loomed out of the heat and dust.

“Oh, what!” Ashnak slammed his fist down on the side of his chair, cracking the wood. “Foul! The referee must be blind! At least,” the orc general added, “he will be. Chahkamnit, make a note of that.”

The lanky black orc, now sitting well to one side of Ashnak’s field of view, murmured, “Very lenient of you, sir. Very sportin’.”

Ashnak leaned his elbow on the seat in front and, as Simone Vanderghast chuckled in his ear, watched the scarlet-coated halfling leader ride a huge, shaggy war-mammoth into the arena. It trumpeted and pounded towards the marine end of the field.

“Never fear, you orcs!” Sergeant Major Guzrak dismounted from his Harley, standing at a smart parade rest. “I has an infallible method of dealin’ with such a fiendish war device, what I learned on the eastern frontier. A chargin’ mammoth will never trample a fallen orc! Lay down, and stab upwards as it passes over you!”

The brawny orc sergeant flung himself to the turf, rolling onto his back and unsheathing his bayonet.

Splatt!

“So that’s why we had so much trouble on the eastern frontier,” a mounted orc corporal remarked. She stopped her Harley, leaned down, and released something tiny that appeared to be armoured in minute links of mail.

“What’s that?” Ashnak bellowed down.

“War-mouse, sir,” the orc corporal shouted over the terrified trumpeting of the fleeing mammoth.

Ashnak got to his feet.

“Right, marines! In the absence of Sergeant Major Guzrak—I’m coming down to take over the team!”

The orc marines cheered. The halflings in the stands cheered. Simone Vanderghast scowled.

“Husband and Consort,” a new voice said.

Ashnak hitched up the urban camouflage trousers that he wore tucked into laced high-ankle boots. He removed the peaked cap jammed between his ears, revealing the tribal scarring of the fighting Agaku and assorted marine tattoos.

“Magda!”

Ashnak whooped, slipped his hand between the female halfling’s legs, and lifted her up bodily in a whirl of black leather skirts. The city’s dignitaries tutted. He took her chin in his hand and planted a wet kiss squarely on her mouth. Her tongue probed his, darting.

“I’ve just arrived back from the arms factories.” Magdelene van Nassau, Duchess of Graagryk, seated herself, rearranged the flounces and layers of a skin-tight and full-length leather gown. Her hand dropped into the lap of Ashnak’s combat trousers, groping and squeezing. As the assembled councillors averted their gazes, her hand moved in thieves’ fingerspeech.

Ashnak, his mind at first on other things, deciphered:

—Urgent news! I must not speak of it in public. Even this finger-talk may be over-read!

“With you in a moment, my love!” Ashnak vaulted over the front of the box and dropped down to the field, loping across towards the scrum of bikes, ponies, halflings, and marines.

Magda described orcish sexual failings under her breath in fifteen languages. She snapped her fingers for her maid Safire to fan her in the summer heat; clapped formally, applauding the game; and addressed Cornelius Scroop.

“Our sales force abroad are doing extremely well… I rode back with the treasurer. He reports many interesting tidbits—the price of saltpetre in Shazmanar; rumours from further up the coast that the Kraken is being a danger to commercial shipping; Queen Shula’s lovers…But there, I mustn’t bore you with gossip. COME ON, YOU MOTHERFUCKER ORCS!”

Down on the field, Ashnak bestrode a Harley Davidson with a line of stickers on the engine casing, the most recent being a Dark Elf’s head with a line diagonally through it. He gunned the motor. The stuttering concussion beat at his ears. In the stands, tiers of halfling workers rose to their feet, ten thousand mouths showing like wide O’s.

“That halfling,” Ashnak pointed at the fastest rider, a stout, curly-haired fellow almost four feet tall. “Termination with extreme prejudice!”

“Yessir!” The orc corporal gunned her Harley, unslung a mace off her back, skidded in a circle that brought her speeding up behind the pony and rider, and swung the weapon.

The riderless pony galloped off the field.

The corporal tripped a second rider off his mount and wielded her mace in one hand and a warhammer in the other, pounding the remains of both into the turf.

“Bit excessive, Corporal.” Ashnak, motor idling, glanced down at what was left.

“Yeah, well…” The grunt grinned. “You know how it is at this time of the moon, sir.”

The squad of orc bikers formed up into an extended line, Ashnak at the centre, and roared down the field. Five of the ponies reared and ran away with their riders. The baffling leader, on foot, crimson coat stained with dust and blood, waved his polo mallet furiously.

“One is not going to be beaten by a miserable pack of greenies!”

An anonymous voice from the stands called, “‘Oo you kiddin’, guvner?”

The biker line hit.

“YO THE MARINES!”

Ashnak squelched the orc’s severed head down into the opposing team’s bucket. The halflings in the stands leaped to their feet, screaming applause. On Magda’s right, the halfling mother held her child up for a better view of the field, spittle flying from her mouth as she howled, “Are they marines?”

The halfling tot lisped, “They are mawines, Mama!”

Plumed hats soared up into the sunny air. Drums beat. The disposal teams wheeled their carts and shovels onto the field as the Badgurlz cheerleaders changed the scoreboards to the final 1-Nil result.

The surviving grunts drew themselves up and saluted in unison as Ashnak ambled back to the ducal box. Magda leaned down and gave him her hand to kiss.

“I need to speak with you!” she hissed.

The orc licked the sweat from her palm. He reached up and pocketed Vanderghast’s purse. “Sure thing…”

“Ahem!” A large marine trotted up to the duchess’s box, coughing discreetly for an orc. She wore green DPM camouflage fatigues, her crest was shaved down to the regulation quarter-inch, and her boots gleamed. Magda deduced garrison rather than field troops.

“Sir, excuse me, sir! Message from the barracks. They need you back there immediately, sir.”

Ashnak wiped sputum from the thigh of his urban combat trousers. “I’m busy! Tell Lugashaldim to handle it himself. Or I’ll rip your head off and you can carry that back to him for an answer!”

“Sir, yes sir!” Her leathery brow shone in the Southern Kingdoms’ heat, green skin pearled with sweat. “Sorry, sir, no, sir. Need you, sir.”

Ashnak kissed Magda’s hand. “You’ll have to excuse me, my little one. Present the Orcball League cup and make the relevant posthumous awards.”

“Hurry back, honey-cake!” Magda blew him a kiss. Her waving fingers moved in the signs for:

—Damn it, marine, I need to talk to you now!

Outside Graagryk Stadium, Ashnak glowered at his marine corporal. The orc saluted several times in succession and looked ready to continue it indefinitely. Ashnak picked the large orc up by her webbing and threw her headfirst against the stadium wall. The masonry held.

“Pull yourself together!” he snarled.

The corporal staggered upright, weaving. She made as if to salute again and thought better of it. “Confidential message for the general from Lieutenant Lugashaldim, sir. Please to report, the general has a visitor waiting for him back at the barracks.”

At that same hour, four thousand miles to the southwest of Graagryk and the Inland Sea, on the far side of all the Southern Kingdoms’ vast civilisation, and beyond the Deserts of Endless Sand, an orc marine mounted a podium in the main square of Gyzrathrani.

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

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

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

“Gentlemen: good morning!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Gyzrathrani!” the orc corporal beside him hissed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dakka-dakka-dakka-FOOM!

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

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

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

FOOOMMM!

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

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

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

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

KER-FOOM!

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

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

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

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

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

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

BOOOOOMM!

“Way to go!”

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

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

Bidding was brisk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ssssir…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

A figure sat behind the desk.

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

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

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

“Sir, yes sir!”

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

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

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

The nameless necromancer laughed.

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

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

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

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

“Respect my ass!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Across Graagryk, dogs began to wail. The noonday brilliance dimmed, and the smell of fresh frost haunted the streets. The stench of an opened charnel house, sour-sweet and dizzying, crept under the doors of halfling houses, darkness muddying the sun as far away as the arena, where the Duchess Magda looked up at the sky and shivered. Inside the barracks the orc marines stopped their various tasks and stood, ears pricked, heavy jaws hanging open, the seductive flute notes of an old slavery filling their ears.

Ashnak shook his heavy head and lumbered to his feet, boots apart, both hands gripping the pistol. The marine-issue dogtag talisman on its chain around his bull neck thrummed with its nullification of sorcery. “Fuck you, man! You’re outta here. You’re history!”

“So it is true.” Abruptly, the level of magic in the room increased. The nameless necromancer added smoothly, “Now we shall be a great presence, the nucleus of a new Horde of Darkness. My creature Ashnak, little orc, little captain; you have been a good steward in my absence. Now—before I snap that silly talisman like a sugar-stick—bow down and make your submission to me!”

FOOM!

Ashnak’s knees creaked. He caught himself with one hand against the desk. The Desert Eagle had bucked as it fired, and a shower of wood and plaster sprayed out of the wall behind the nameless necromancer’s head, missing the target by a yard.

“It’s like this.” Ashnak’s bandy legs shook. He kept a strong grip on the edge of the stone desk. “My orc marines are running the world’s number one arms dealing and marine training business. You make one move against us, and all the kingdoms from the Northern Waste to the Antarctic Icelands will land on your neck, and how do you like that, you lich-humping, skinny little fuck?”

The sun dimmed. The clamminess of long-buried flesh crept across Ashnak’s leathery hide. The nullity talisman whined. He sighted the pistol again, grip steady.

The room thawed.

“Consider yourself lucky,” the nameless necromancer purred, “that I have a sense of humour.”

The slender Man closed his war-fan and thrust it through his sash, reaching up to free his waist-length, fine black hair, smooth it, and then clasp it again in its silver ring. The summer sun warmed the office. Only the scent of old death remained from the power of moments ago.

“Riiiight…” The orc general stepped somewhat unsteadily round the desk and sank down into his chair. He rested the heavy pistol across his lap. He looked up at the ancient, youthful sorcerer, and picked meat from behind a cracked orc-fang.

“Lucky also,” the nameless necromancer added, smoothing the tanned Man-skin robes about his slender body, “that this is nothing to me. A game, merely.”

“Game.” Ashnak sat back and put his combat boots up on the desk, re-lit his pipe-weed cigar, and tugged the urban-commo forage cap down over his Neanderthal brows. “You came all the way from Dark-knows-where to Graagryk for a game. Suuure you did.”

Deep in the nameless’s black pupils, fire glinted. The thin-lipped mouth drew back in a smile.

“No,” the nameless necromancer corrected. “I came all this way to bring you a message from my master—who wishes to see you. Now.”

Ashnak choked on pipe-weed smoke. “Your master?”

The nameless necromancer folded his arms. Feet apart, the slender curved eastern blade thrust through his sash, he might have been any young Man warrior fighting on the side of the Dark. Only the face, only the eyes, only the strong stench of carrion gave him away.

He reached for the door handle.

“Oh,” the nameless necromancer said. “Haven’t you heard? The Dark Lord’s back. And this time He’s really pissed off.”

2

At that same hour, but six thousand miles to the southeast of Graagryk, on the other side of the continent, a black orc crouched in the bush in the Forest of Thyrion.

Even with his keen elvish eyes it took Gilmuriel several minutes to discover her. When he finally spotted her, the elf strolled across the clearing and stood over her.

“I’m not at all convinced this is going to work.” Gilmuriel, elf Hunt-Lord and now marine lieutenant, frowned down at his sergeant. “When the Forest-King of the elves bought this equipment from your salespeople, I said he was mistaken. We should never have given up the elven bow.”

Gilmuriel’s previous dealings with orcs—filthy, brutish creatures scuttling in darkness—had not prepared him for an orc who tucked sprays of creepers into her mottled uniform through loops sewn on for the purpose. Brown and green paint blotched her fanged orcish features. She had tied a red strip of cloth around her brow. Only the stink of orc was totally familiar. That and the coiled orc-whip hanging off her belt.

The orc sergeant looked up from cleaning her mud-splattered M16 assault rifle, lazily surveying the twelve elves who lounged in the bushes at the edges of the clearing, wearing their camouflage fatigues unwillingly. As usual, chores and tasks (such as cleaning weapons) had been abandoned when something more interesting presented itself. Four of the smaller female elves were singing a roundelay. The nominal marine first class was writing what appeared to be poetry on the back of his area map.

“Marine Belluriel Starharp!” the black orc snarled, wiping the sweat that shimmered in her quarter-inch unnaturally white crest. “Get those elves into cover, dammit!”

“This is only a—what is your word? An exercise.” Gilmuriel smiled. “We shall do it for as long it amuses us.”

Dakashnit, he thought, was a strange sergeant even for an orc. In between drilling the Elf King’s reluctant conscripts she had a habit of smoking pipe-weed from her own private store, after which she was prone to develop a several-thousand-yard stare, and declaim, “Don’t bother me, man,” even when there was no representative of the Man race for miles.

“This exercise is under your command,” Gunnery Sergeant Dakashnit of the orc marines reminded Gilmuriel. “What are your orders, L.t.?”

“Obviously we shall wait here until the craft returns to fly us back to the City of the Trees.”

A chugging noise sounded from above the jungle canopy. Gilmuriel stepped out into the clearing. A whirling blur emerged over the edge of the trees. Rotors whipping, pistons chugging, and vapour spurting from every joint, the steam Chinook helicopter hovered above the clearing.

Gilmuriel’s arched brows curved, dipping into a frown. “I don’t care what you say, Sergeant—that thing will never replace the milk-white elven steed.”

“Not one of Ugarit’s more sucessful efforts,” the orc admitted.

The helicopter’s curved windows glittered like the faceted eyes of giant insects. Sun slid down the olive-drab bodywork and shone in through the doors-off cargo bay. Gilmuriel took off his peaked forage cap, disclosing his pointed ears, and waved at the invisible pilot. The sunlight shone on his high cheekbones and the sleek braids decorating his shaggy golden hair.

Takka-takka-takka-FOOM!

A line of craters stitched across the clearing, spraying dirt high into the air. Gilmuriel threw himself flat, his arms over his head. He heard the screams of the other elves and the crashing of bushes as they fled into the jungle, all hunt-lore forgotten in panic.

Engines roaring, the twin-rotored, steam-powered helicopter sank down into the landing zone. It touched, settled, and the motors cut to tickover. Pistons hissed. The smell of hot steam and coal drenched the evening jungle heat.

“Just orcish high spirits, sir!” Sergeant Dakashnit stepped over Gilmuriel on her way to the helicopter. She swung herself up, exchanged a few inaudible words with the pilot, and began throwing sacks out of the back of the flying machine.

“See you got the idea of taking cover,” she called. “Works better when you’re behind something, Lieutenant.”

Gilmuriel stood up and dusted himself down. His high cheekbones burned red. Swearing under his breath, he bawled into the jungle for the return of his squad. They slipped from the shadows and reassembled.

Dakashnit tossed him one of the sacks, single-handed. He caught it with a whoof of breath. It was a pack, dangling straps, and whatever was inside it was soft.

“Today,” the orc sergeant said, “you elf marines get to do your first parachute jump. Those of you who survive until tomorrow get to do a second parachute jump. In the unlikely event that there are any of the squad left by the third day, we’ll do a number of jumps into different terrain. And when we have landed, we will conceal ourselves in cover, and we will not stand in the middle of the dropzone where everyone can see us—will we, sir?”

Gilmuriel put his hand to his hip, wishing for his slender elven knife, but he encountered only his water-bottle. He unscrewed the cap and took a long drink of water. “Any special instructions for us on this drop?”

Dakashnit nodded her heavy-jawed head. “Sure are, L.t. In the unhappy event that your ’chute fails to open, always remember one thing—take up the proper marine emergency landing position. Stick your elbows out, and cross your right leg over your left leg.”

Gilmuriel frowned. A number of the elf marines on the ready line were vaguely crossing their legs and lifting their elbows in a puzzled manner.

“And why should we do that, Gunnery Sergeant?”

Dakashnit showed all her fangs and tusks in a grin. “So that we can unscrew you out of the ground after you land…”

The orc uncoiled her whip and cracked it.

“Right, you elves, into the chopper, on the double, move it! Go, go, go!”

Once seated in the cockpit of the helicopter, Lieutenant Gilmuriel eased the unaccustomed headphones down over his pointed elven ears and stared at the jungle canopy receding beneath his feet. Pistons sliding with smooth precision, the steam helicopter wheeled around and chugged into a vast orange sunset.

“Plenty of time for a first drop.” Dakashnit’s voice came crackling over the headset. The uniformed orc gave him a gnarled thumbs-up and grinned toothily from under her mirror-visored flying helmet. “Don’t know how elves and parachutes will get along, L.t. You may not all make it. But hey, there’s always dropouts from every course…”

“You don’t like elves, do you, orc—I mean, Gunnery Sergeant?”

“Me?” The orc grinned and shrugged, massive shoulders rising almost to her pricked ears. “Man, I just love elf! You can’t beat roast and basted elf-haunch. Unless it’s breast-of-elf with chile peppers.”

Gilmuriel stared at the slavering creature, appalled. “This is impossible! Elves cannot serve with orcs! I shall inform the Lord of the Forest Elves of my resignation this very night!”

A fluting chorus of support came from the main body of the helicopter.

Dakashnit’s voice came back over the RT: “Fine by me. Let’s just say I’ve seen better marines than you lot, L.t.”

A third voice crackled in the headset, faint and breaking up. Gilmuriel frowned. The orc pilot fiddled with the receiver. Suddenly Dakashnit’s arm reached over his shoulder and tuned the signal in.

“—to any unit! Sergeant Moondream to any unit! We are taking hostile fire in Sector Seven Bravo, repeat, Sector Seven Bravo. This is not an exercise! We are coming under hostile fire, targets not visible. Sergeant Moondream to any unit—”

“Signal’s breaking up.” Dakashnit tried unsuccessfully for several moments. “Pilot, contact base! Tell them we’re altering course for Seven Bravo—if that’s all right with you, sir.”

She shoved the mirrored sunvisor up. Her deep-set piggy eyes glinted in a way that disturbed Gilmuriel. “I guess your Forest-King wouldn’t need trained troops if he wasn’t expecting battle, huh?”

“Well, I…Sergeant, perhaps we shouldn’t…”

“Who else is there, man? L.t., ask yourself how I feel about going into combat with this lot? We’re talking last-ditch emergency here!”

The lieutenant looked over his shoulder into the body of the steam helicopter and surveyed the rows of reluctant uniformed elves. Pointed ears darkened with camouflage cream, long-fingered musical hands stained with the green of jungle plants, slender bodies web-belted into uniforms that hung on them like sacks…Their ascetic, high-boned faces stared back at him sullenly.

“On the whole,” Gilmuriel agreed, “I’d rather be singing.”

In Graagryk, in the fortress of Graagryk’s ancient nobility, the stonework shows old. Unicorn tapestries cover the rough walls. Bear-pelts from the fabulous Antarctic Icelands are flung down on the flagstones. A fire burns in the great hearth, despite the summer, to take the edge off the room’s chill.

Ashnak strode across to the fireplace and stood, bowed legs planted widely apart, and pissed into the flames. He sighed with pleasure and re-buttoned his trousers; web-belt and bandoliers of 7.62-calibre ammunition shifting on his brawny frame.

“Anyone can see why you need the authority of a Dark Lord.” The big orc clasped his taloned hands behind him. “But the Dark Lord died at Samhain, at the Fields of Destruction, and some impersonator won’t fool anyone.”

The nameless necromancer spat, “You are the fool!”

Ashnak’s hairy nostrils flared. No corpse-stink here; the nameless necromancer muted his power—one could only suppose, out of assumed respect.

“The orc is here,” the black-haired Man announced, not to Ashnak, his skin robes whipping about his ankles as he strode towards the great arched window. Ashnak had not noticed the figure seated there, against the light, until now.

“So that’s it!” Ashnak guffawed. He planted huge fists on his hips, threw his tusked jaw up, and bellowed orcish laughter. “That’s what you did with her!”

He prowled closer, outside combat boots making no noise on the flagstones.

A female Man sat on the window seat, head bowed, the light shining on her sleek, bobbed yellow hair. The hands that rested in her lap were smooth, their skin patched black, grey, and fish-belly white. She was not wearing the full plate-armour of her last encounter with him. A dress forged from silver links so fine they ran like water clung to her form, shimmering with black light at every breath lifting her breasts.

“Lost out,” Ashnak commented. “Well, lady, that’s what you get for having a bastard like the nameless for your brother.”

Her head bowed. The window light illuminated her face. The lashes of her long eyes (that tilted up from the outer corners) rested on her piebald cheeks. Small tusks drew her lips up and apart, so that a thin thread of saliva ran down from the exposed corner of her mouth, across her pugnacious jaw.

Ashnak had always thought her orcishly handsome for one of the Man race.

“So you’ve destroyed The Named’s mind. So what? She still isn’t—” Turning his head to speak to the nameless, reaching one talon out to lift the female’s chin, Ashnak froze.

The ugly Man rose to her feet with a grace The Named had never possessed. Light sparked from her metal-mesh robe that chimed with the soft resonance of bells. A heavy perfume moved with her as she moved—throat-filling, musky, and ancient. She lifted her head.

Her eyes were without iris, pupil, or white. As her lashes lifted, her eye-sockets showed featureless orange. And even in full sunlight, they glowed perceptibly.

“Orc…”

A cloud lifted from Ashnak’s mind. Previously unnoticed figures of halfling servants in lace and linen became apparent to him, bringing choice ducal food and drink from the fortress’s cellars, their manner that of sleepwalkers. Guards drowsed with their halberds at attention. Graagyrk’s fortress dreamed a daymare, not even able to be restless in its sleep; and the city on the Island Sea, oblivious to the presence which cloaked Itself in their midst, continued with the commerce of a normal life.

The orc’s hide shivered, as if he had looked down to find himself standing on a pressure mine. “Dark Lord?”

“Yes.” She reached out and grasped his heavily muscled arm. Her touch made his skin wrinkle like rotten fruit.

The dogtag talisman about his neck burned to a degree that gave an orc pain, and then, with a high note, shattered.

“I am calling you to account for your life.” She paused. “After the defeat of Samhain, none of My Horde Commanders should remain living. But you do. What is your excuse, little orc?”

Ashnak, looking up from under his beetling brows, met that blind, all-seeing gaze.

The nameless necromancer said, “It pains me to admit it, but it was something more useful than cowardice.” Helping himself from a flagon of yellow wine at the table, he downed one tiny cup and then a second. “Great Lord of the Nightmare Dark.”

Ashnak had not previously witnessed the nameless necromancer afraid.

“Lord!” the big orc cried, suddenly falling to his knees on the flagstones before Her. Ashnak threw himself forward, arms outstretched, and banged his forehead on the stone.

“Lord, You live! Darkness be praised!”

A naked foot planted itself on his exposed neck. He controlled a shudder of relief and continued:

“Dread Lord, we nearly won the Samhain Battle for You—if I’d had support from the Horde Mages we could have turned the tide of the war. The orc marines are shit-hot! And we’re Your loyal servants. Servants such as no Dark Lord ever had before.”

“That,” Her contralto voice remarked, “I can well believe.”

The foot (small only by orc standards) removed itself from his neck. Ashnak’s eyes rolled up in their sockets while he remained abased before Her. He squinted hopefully in Her direction, seeing the wet-lipped mouth curve into a smile.

“You have bullied My necromancer and grovelled to Me.” Amusement sounded richly in Her voice. “Admirable. You had plans for his return, I think. Perhaps even for Mine. But not together, and not on the same day!”

There was a silence.

Ashnak climbed awkwardly to his feet, brushing dust from the knees of his combat trousers. He picked up his forage cap and jammed it down between his ears. The hypnotised halfling servants walked around his bulk on their way to serve more wine, and he looked down at them, but they showed no awareness of his presence.

“Er,” the orc general said. “Yes. Well. Erm…”

Splinters of the Visible College’s anti-magic talisman stood embedded in the hide of his chest. He brushed them out. At last looking at his Dark Master, he was startled to recognise green-irised eyes before Her gaze burned again the colour of fire.

“Yes. She lives within Me. I allow The Named to witness what she has become; the paladin of the Light, whom I inhabit.”

The Dark Lord stepped closer to Ashnak.

“It was in a church, was it not? A little temple somewhere in the northern countryside, and you grovelled to the Light’s paladin, and she said, All you need to know of me is, I am merciful, and, like a stupid fool, did not kill you. Orc, all you need to know of Me is, I am not merciful. Nor am I stupid. I am the Lord of Darkness, and you have failed Me, and you will answer for it here and now!”

Shadows hovered in the corners of the stone tower room, undiminished by sunlight. Not a presence of darkness so much as an absence of everything. The Man walked until She stood facing the window again, looking out over the halfling city to the Inland Sea. Towering thunderheads crept across the sun, lightning cracked and split the sky into jagged pieces, and hail lashed down on the summer streets. Visible only as a silhouette in the dim light. She languidly lifted one piebald finger.

“Great Lord!” Ashnak sensibly kept his hand away from the pistol holstered at his belt. “I have a force almost at brigade strength. I can train raw levies. When the new war against the Light begins, You’ll need the orc marines.”

The nameless necromancer muttered, “Need traitors and cowards!” as he put down the empty wine flagon.

“The loyal and the brave didn’t do so well at the Fields of Destruction,” Ashnak noted drily. He advanced a step, coming to a smart parade rest on the flagstones. “Great Lord of the Ebon Abyss, put no faith in his magic. You need superior firepower. Mages take territory, marines hold it. You need us for the post-Samhain campaign.”

The Dark Lord turned Her head, looking at him over Her slightly too-wide shoulder. The Named’s tall, raw-framed body carried the metal-mesh robe with a hint of awkwardness not yet tamed by the Dark Lord’s possession of her; she moved sometimes still as if she would rather have carried a sword in her hand than magery. A sooty darkness hovered in the corners of Ashnak’s vision. Recalling the briefing before the Last Battle, in the Dark Lord’s great towering Keep in the far east, a kind of orcish homesickness attacked him.

“I remember,” he said wistfully, “the legions of the Horde marching out of the Dark Land, descending on the west. Our warriors covered the earth, and our Dark beasts the skies, and You rode out to war on the back of a frostdrake, against the outnumbered small companies of the Light…”

The orange glow of Her eyes dimmed.

“The Horde of Darkness,” Ashnak concluded, bass-baritone voice roughening, “got its ass kicked. Great Sable Lord, I don’t want that to happen again. You need us. We’re loyal. And if we failed You once, we won’t fail again.”

Abruptly, the normal summer chill of the tower room returned. There was a strain in the air as if from the working of invisible great engines, familiar to Ashnak from the days when he wore black steel armour in place of combat fatigues, and his weapon was the fighting Agaku’s traditional poleaxe. He came to attention, boots slamming down on the flagstones.

“Awaiting your orders, Lord! When do I muster the troops?”

The nameless necromancer giggled.

Ashnak’s vision of a return to the old days faded with the glare in Her eyes. Her eyeballs shone momentarily like grey glass, and the dust of destroyed aeons whispered past Ashnak on no earthly wind. Death reaching so swiftly made him grab, automatically, for the pistol at his belt, although even without the loss of the talisman he would have doubted an automatic pistol’s validity against the Lord of Night and Silence.

“Be still.”

The orc, after some minutes, opened his eyes. Finding himself corporeal, and undamaged, he looked to the Dark Lord where She sat, now, on the window seat, Her bare feet swinging.

“Be still and attend to Me,” the Dark Lord said. “Did I have you brought here to Me to play games? Orc, your thuggery is of no use to Me. Domination by force of arms in this world is useless.”

The nameless necromancer’s finely chiselled lips curved into a patrician smile.

The Dark Lord added, “So is magic.”

Ashnak looked at the nameless necromancer. The nameless necromancer, his pale-lipped mouth falling slightly open, stared at Ashnak.

“What?” the orc general said.

The nameless necromancer added, “I beg your pardon?”

The Dark Lord sat, to all appearances a female Man of startling ugliness, the sun spotlighting Her piebald grey-and-white skin, shining back from Her burnished hair, but not dismissing the darknesses that hung in the folds of Her clinging robe. She lifted Her wrist and wiped saliva from the corners of Her mouth.

“I have returned. My ambition is undimmed. I will rule.” Her inhuman eyes glowed orange.

Ashnak for the second time in the space of half an hour took his life in his talons. He interrupted Her. “But you said—”

“There will be no military conquest,” She stated. “I have decided that conquering with Dark Armies is… outmoded. Old-fashioned. Passé.”

3

And at that very hour, twelve thousand miles to the south of the Inland Sea, in the fabled Antarctic Icelands, Razitshakra strode between the rows of huts that made up the tundra bootcamp. Snow crusted the squat female orc’s heavy military greatcoat as she stomped, bandy-legged, across the icefield. She rebuckled her webbing, pistol-holsters, and stick-grenades over her coat, looking up to check that the marine striped-and-starred Raven flag still proudly flew. It did.

The ideology class waited, drawn up to attention outside her command hut, in front of the wooden table that stood out in the snow. The orc seated herself at the table, placed her elbows on the wood, and rested her pugnacious chin on her talons.

“Recruit Balan Orcsbane,” she purred, eyes gleaming. “You of the unfortunate surname—perhaps you would be kind enough to state basic orc marine ideology.”

The dwarf drew himself stiffly to attention, his forked orange beard jutting horizontally. Like the rest of the twelve-dwarf recruit squad, he wore olive-drab fatigues rolled up at the ankles and to the elbows. His orange braids had been shaved down to a bare fuzz of hair on his scalp. He carried a much-abused Kalashnikov assault rifle and a steel helmet from which the sharp horns had been forcibly removed.

“Ma’am, politically correct orcish ideology is as follows.” Balan Orcsbane pointed at his fellow bootcamp trainees. “‘If you’re smaller than me, I’m in charge here. If you’re bigger than me—you’re in charge. And if something’s gone wrong, he’s in charge!’”

“Very good!” The Endless Sun glinted from Razitshakra’s round wire-rimmed spectacles and from the peaked brim of her cap. Her lateral-pointing ears twitched. She removed a small notepad from her greatcoat pocket and scribbled a few words. “Tell me more about command responsibility.”

The dwarf rapped out, “The commander is always right!”

“And?”

“The commander is always right,” Balan Orcsbane added smartly. “Even when he’s wrong.”

“Well done.” Razitshakra pointed at the next dwarf in the line. “You. Owaine Elfhunter. Name a test to determine whether a recruit is fit to become a marine.”

The dwarf scratched her trimmed beard. “The recruit is tied—” she hastily corrected herself “—the recruit volunteers to be tied to a sabre-toothed tiger and shut up in its cave. If the recruit comes out, she passed. If the tiger comes out, she failed. If she comes out riding the sabre-toothed tiger, make her a corporal.”

“Excellent.” Razitshakra’s unorcishly golden eyes gleamed. “Now—”

“Commissar, ma’am!” The centaur Coms officer galloped up, ice and snow spraying from his hooves, and thrust the radio handset towards Razitshakra. “It’s Alpha Squad. Commissar, you have to hear this!”

“That is not approved radio procedure. Barzoi! Take over the dwarf squad.” Razitshakra stepped aside, in the shadow of the glossy-coated centaur’s heaving flanks. The rasp of distant gunfire was plainly audible over the radio link. “Bootcamp Base to Squad Alpha—who authorised a live ammo exercise in that area?”

The reply crackled back:

“Squad Alpha to Bootcamp, this is not an exercise. Repeat, this is not an exercise.” Orc Corporal Zakkad’s gruff voice shook with urgency. “Ma’am, order all your recruits on full armed alert. There are hostiles coming out of the walls here! Species not seen. Weapons not recognised. Numbers unknown. They’re not stopping to talk, they’re just piling into us!”

“Zakkad!” Razitshakra barked resonantly into the mouthpiece. “Don’t lose your grip, orc! What weapons are you facing?”

“Unknown, ma’am. Could be mage-work—but it’s getting through to us! I’m out here with a squad of untrained dickheads, ma’am; it’s all I can do to manage a fighting retreat; we need urgent support—”

The line hissed. No further voice sounded.

“Sierra and Foxtrot squads reinforce the perimeter guard,” the orc commissar yelled, shambling through the camp at the double. “Barzoi, get the 483rd and the cold-drake to overfly map reference 098-756! Tango Platoon, gear up, you’re coming out with me. Move, move, move!”

The cyclopean ruins of an ancient city lay half buried in a glacier two miles to the south, at 098-756, its spires and ramps and towers long gone, leaving only a maze of broken masonry walls. Razitshakra had been in the habit of using it for a training ground for Fighting in Built-Up Areas.

The 483rd Airborne Division took off to fly air support.

“Hai-yaaaahh, yo!”

“Hai-yahhhh, yo!”

Winged white horses took off and wheeled in the air above the jagged mountain peaks. The brilliant Antarctic sun gleamed through the pinions of the tactical pegasi, shining on the heat-seeker fire-and-forget missiles carried under each wing.

“Hai-yah, yo!”

The airborne riders whooped and yelled. Frost sparkled on their mail-shirts, cinched in tight over their swelling breasts with wide leather swordbelts. Their long braids hung down. Fur leggings protected the riders’ shapely limbs; fur wristbands hugged their otherwise bare hands. Their horned steel helms glinted in the Endless Day.

One valkyrie marine reined her winged horse’s head up. “Missile away!”

BOOOMM!

The Hellfire missile zipped into the icefield several miles away, throwing up debris and steam.

“Damn you!” Razitshakra bawled over the com. “I want reconnaissance, not fire support! There are some of our own out there!”

The Valkyrie Marines wheeled their winged mounts above the plain, soaring through the sky. Passing close, one rider held out her hand, palm up; the other slapped it with her own palm and gave soprano voice to the marine recognition signal:

“YO!”

“No movement visible at map reference 098-756, ma’am,” an advance valkyrie marine radioed back. “Nothing at all…”

The advance by bounds on Alpha Squad’s last position took time. Commissar Razitshakra cuffed and kicked and bit, when necessary, to spur the raw recruits into battle. Pondering the wisdom of taking a recruit platoon into an attack (and indeed of leaving two-thirds of another recruit platoon to guard the base), the orc commissar cursed volubly.

“If it’s magery, you’ve got nothing to fear!” she snarled. “If it’s conventional weapons, remember you’re marines now. Are we marines?”

The dwarf squad, advancing almost tactically towards the cyclopean ruins marking the beginning of the Antarctic’s true Icelands, muttered in their braided beards.

“I said, Are we marines?, you political subversives!” Razitshakra raised her fist and brought it down on the back of one of the dwarf grunts. The dwarf fell to his knees, staggered up as Razitshakra booted him, and moved reluctantly on under the weight of a seventy-pound infantry pack.

The platoon determinedly continued to treat the orc commissar’s question as rhetorical.

“There’ll be an inquiry held after this,” Razitshakra promised. “Now clear the area through. Go! There may be some of our lads still alive in there.”

The dwarf recruit squads advanced more in a cluster than by fire and movement. Razitshakra, in the rear with the reserve ursoid squad for command and control, bellowed orders. No shot, no spell, no hostile sound broke the silence.

“Area clear!” the dwarf recruit Balan Orcsbane called.

“It had better be, marine. Secure the perimeter!”

The snow-covered glacier was dotted with prone lumps, leaking fluids. Even in the Antarctic chill, the area stank. Razitshakra’s orcish nostrils flared, identifying the blood and feces and urine of dwarves and orcs; all of it stinking of the fear, rather than the joy, of combat. Alpha Squad being the least trained, and the least exposed to Dagurashibanipal’s geas, she was not surprised to find that most of their weapons had not fired.

She prowled among the bodies for quite a while, under the Endless Sun’s radiance, tossing aside severed dwarf limbs ragged with blood, and heads from which the eyes had been sucked. A wind began to blow from the Icelands. The cold-drake, patrolling the skies, reported no hostile movement of any kind. The Endless Day wore on.

When she found him—his dead eyes staring up at her—orc corporal Zakkad of the marine training cadre lay in two parts; his arms, head, and torso in the cover of an ancient masonry wall, and his lower torso, legs, and genitalia in the open ground beyond.

One gnarled fist still grasped his rifle and exhausted magazine. Rags of his combat fatigues, stained with stiffening green blood, dotted the ground. Pale intestines shrivelled in the sun. Judging by the recruits around him, he had been trying to assault his way out through the enemy’s position. It is not an infallible technique, merely the least worst of options.

Nullity talismans on body and weapon were intact.

Squatting over the half-body, Razitshakra prized the powerful, low-slung jaws open. The fangs and tusks of the orc corporal were blackly discoloured. A black, conelike object blocked his throat, with teeth marks where the orc had bitten it off. Razitshakra poked at it with one talon. It echoed with a metallic sound.

After a while it began to stink.

Later, back at the Antarctic-warfare bootcamp, the dwarf recruit Balan Orcsbane approached Commissar Razitshakra where she stood, handset to her ear, cursing her Coms officer and her communications equipment. He plucked the sleeve of her greatcoat.

“Please, Commissar, ma’am. The recruits want permission to pack for immediate embarcation.”

“Nonsense!” Razitshakra, spectacles glinting, clapped the dwarf on the back with her free hand. “I’ve just officially renamed this training base ‘Camp Zakkad.’ Zakkad, our first Hero of the Orc Marines! Corporal Barzoi, make a note: recruits’ contributions to the memorial fund will be compulsory.”

The dwarf corporal saluted. The squad orc commissar stood, her hulking shoulders broad as five dwarves.

“Corporal Barzoi, you will proceed with the bootcamp training in my absence. Find a pilot for the cold-drake; I’ll fly back.”

“Absence? You’re deserting us!” recruit Balan Orcsbane gasped. “Retreating!”

Razitshakra slammed the handset of the RT back down, making the centaur Corns officer stagger. The orc glared up at the Endless Sky. Even had there been a night, the communications satellite would not have been visible.

“Orc marines never retreat!” Commissar Razitshakra snarled. “I’m flying back in person because there seems to be a complete communications breakdown with Marine HQ, Graagryk.”

“No military conquest?”

Incredulous, the orc general Ashnak showed all his bronze-capped tusks in a grin of ferocious bonhomie.

“Dread Lord, are You aware of what’s been happening during Your…unavoidable absence?”

Outside, the sluggishness of nightmare drifted through Graagryk’s streets, dimming the shine of cleansing magic on the cobbles, and poisoning the afternoon naps of halfling children and halfling elderly. The whistling of lizard-beasts quietened, barely audible here in this ancient tower room.

Her voice whispered, “My servant the nameless necromancer has informed Me of your new weaponry. I shall not need it.”

Ashnak, orcishly bow-legged, paced down the tapestry-hung hall, about-faced, and paced back towards the mullioned window. Overhead, the strange birds and beasts carved on the beams writhed, making obeisance to the female Man who sat with Her back to the sunlight.

“The south has just spent a year putting down the flood of Horde survivors and their own deserters fleeing the Fields of Destruction. They think it’s over now. They think this is peace.” Ashnak came to attention. “Dread Lord, as You’re the de facto Commander-in-Chief of what remains of the Horde of Darkness, let me officially inform You: my troops have proved magic-resistant to the highest degree. If You were to send the orc marines against these Southern Kingdoms—man, those guys’d have themselves a whole world of shit!”

The nameless necromancer downed another cup of straw-coloured wine, his gaze pitted with crimson.

“Dread Lord, pay no attention to this creature. His battles have all been in the north. Magic,” the Man said, his voice blurring, “is proportional to civitas, and derives therefrom. The north has no proper cities; its magic is therefore rare and weak. The cities of the south are great, and they have great magics like…like dogs have fleas. You would need ten thousand warriors of his sort, and he has not a tenth of that number!”

Ashnak glared, deep-set orc eyes staring into the sea-green, crimson-flecked gaze. His granite bulk loomed over the Man by several inches. The fingers of the nameless necromancer began to move.

The Dark Lord’s voice whispered, “No.”

The necromancer rubbed his fingertips together as if to expunge something barely begun.

Ashnak turned his heavy head to face the window. “Strategically this is the perfect time to attack! We should immediately mobilise—”

The Man straightened Her shoulders. Shadows chased themselves in the ultrafine chainmail of Her garment, and its soft chiming rang like the bells of drowned cities. “I have spoken. There will be no domination of the world by Dark Armies.”

Ashnak scratched at his peaked ears and settled his urban camouflage forage cap more securely on his bald head. “If you say not.”

Strands of yellow hair lay against Her piebald, black-and-grey cheek. Yellow lashes opened, and behind Her eyelids Her eyeballs were orange glass.

“I will travel to Ferenzia, that greatest of southern cities,” the Lord of Night and Silence announced. “You, orc Ashnak, shall choose a number of your marine warriors to form my honour guard.”

She ceased to speak. It might be that She smiled, the yellowing tusks pulled Her lip into such ambiguous shapes that Ashnak could not be sure. The yellow hair swung as She shook Her head. Gently, She added, “You are thinking, quite suddenly, that if I need a guard, I must therefore be vulnerable. You wonder if My defeat at Samhain has weakened Me. You ponder in your mind that I may be a bluff, a pretence, a pale copy of what I was in the heyday of My power.”

“Thought never crossed my mind,” Ashnak said.

“I choose your warriors for the honour of it,” She said. “For I will not go to Ferenzia without the ceremony and attendance that I am properly owed. And it may be that I shall make you one of My major-generals or field marshals—some rank befitting My status. Orc Ashnak, you are thinking now that I will not try conquest by force of arms because I fear certain defeat. You think therefore that I can be tricked, used, and manipulated into a figurehead for your plans.”

Ashnak shot a sideways glance at Her out of his tilted eyes. His gnarled thumbs lodged under his web-belt, pulling the pistol holster closer to his fist. His thin lips drew back from his fangs.

“Nobody fucks over the orc marines,” he growled. “Not even the Dark Lord. If You want the marines for Your protection, there’s a price. We want Your support when we attack Ferenzia and the other Southern Kingdoms. Otherwise, no deal!”

It being a calculated bluff, Ashnak was not completely surprised to find himself, at the flick of Her finger, immobilised. Held at attention, the heels of his combat boots together, staring eyes-front, he could just see the nameless necromancer retrieve from his table a whip braided from some strangely dubious skin.

Ashnak admitted gruffly, “Dread Lord, I erred in thinking You powerless.”

“But you will continue to test Me, I fear.”

Clicks marked the passage of Her bare feet across the flagstones, as if the soles of Her feet were sometimes chitinous. Her swaying blond hair did not come higher than Ashnak’s chin. Ashnak tensed his bull-muscled shoulders. There came a smell of rotten fruit: his skin began to soften, the colours of decay chasing themselves across his leathery hide. As soon as he relaxed it faded.

“Not torture!” Ashnak roughened his bass-baritone voice. “No, Dread Lord! Please, no! I beg you! Not that!”

“I have no intention of resorting to the question.” The Dark Lord lifted Her face. Her orange eyes in the sunlight did, quite visibly, glow. “I well know the amount of physical punishment an orc can take. And I know your general resistance to pain.”

Out of the corner of his long eye Ashnak witnessed the nameless necromancer, with scowling regret, replacing the metal-fanged whip on the table.

“But you must know Me, and My power.” The Lord of Night smiled and wiped a trail of saliva from Her lip. “I can reach into your soul, orc.”

“Illusions!” the orc sneered.

The Dark Lord cried, “I see into you! I know what you once most feared, living through night after night in the hierarchy of the Pits; inflicting and suffering abuse, proving your right to live and become adult. I know what hides, unacknowledged, in your memory; and from it I create soul pictures, pains more powerful than the severing of limbs. Ashnak, I touch your soul!”

The big orc’s body stiffened—ramrod-straight from his combat boots to the tips of his pointed ears. His eyes rolled up in their deep sockets and showed the whites. Stiff as a board, pivoting from the heels, the orc’s body tipped over backwards. His skull impacted on the floor with such force that two tiles cracked. As he lay there unconscious, it could be seen that the General of the Orc Marines had wet himself.

The nameless necromancer stepped carefully over the orc’s supine body on his way to pour himself another drink, and stepped back over the body on his return, pausing only to spit in the orc’s face.

“You will not defy Me more than once,” She promised. “Ashnak, you may wake.”

The orc groaned, sat up, opened his mouth, and shut it again. He wiped his face and rubbed the back of his skull, and at last got to his feet. Dusting his filthy fatigues down with his forage cap, he regarded the Lord of Evil with the air of one unfairly tricked.

“My warrior-orc Ashnak, do you like what I have showed you?”

Ashnak said blankly, “What?”

“You do not remember the terror created from your past?”

Ashnak’s leathery brows furrowed. He shook his head. “Negative, ma’am.”

“Amazing,” the Dark Lord commented. “Finesse is wasted on orcs. Next time I shall merely kill you. Now…”

Her voice, soft from that command-roughened throat, soaked into the summer afternoon air of Graagryk. Nothing stirred in the tower room while She spoke.

“…I have no wish for easy victories. I am weary of war. There are only so many new ways to shed blood. I could take the souls of those fools of the Light and make them Mine. But I am weary of sucking souls: the little races of this world are tedious to the heart. It pleases Me now to do things otherwise.”

Ashnak slurred an orcish curse under his breath, unadmitted shock chilling his ox-body. He raised his voice again to audibility. “Lord…If not armies…or soul-magic…then how will you conquer?”

Her hair like sunlight, Her metal robe hiding all darknesses within its folds, the ugly Man stands against the light. The splotched patchwork of Her skin blends Her into the dazzle. She smells of dead cities that breathe perfumed dust onto the world’s winds.

“This time,” the Dark Lord said, “I think it will please Me to win an election.”

Ashnak could not move, his muscles still shook and trembled. It took him all his strength of will to stay upright. He became aware of the nameless necromancer only as the black-haired Man strode forward to face the Dark Lord.

Simultaneously, both the orc general and the nameless necromancer demanded, “What’s an ‘election’?”

A ducal carriage rattled past the orc marine sentries and into the barracks compound, steel-shod wheels striking sparks from the cobbles under the archway.

As Lieutenant Lugashaldim of the Special Undead Services watched, Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau, Duchess of Graagryk, descended from the carriage in a flurry of aides, nursemaids, outriders, and guards. Her young children scurried about her feet, playing with a pack of wolfhounds twice their height, and tame parrots fluttered above her in scarlet and green. Magda snapped her fingers. Her chief lady-in-waiting, Safire, extended a parasol to protect the ducal head both from the late-afternoon sun, Lugashaldim imagined, and from the birds.

“You may let the children play here,” Magda announced to her entourage in a clear, carrying voice. She waved away the orc gate guards clattering across the cobbles towards her. “You! Lugashaldim! You may fetch me my Ashnak. Now.”

Behind the fortified walls that faced Graagryk city, sunlight slanted into the Orc Marine HQ and illuminated brick walls, machinery-cluttered sheds, gutted barracks, and deserted armoured vehicles. The off-duty orc marines sprawled on the grass of the compound, drinking Graagryk’s fine wines, roasting something of worrying dimensions on a spit, and fornicating energetically around the firepit and under the lime trees. Upon sighting an approaching Undead orc lieutenant they made a concerted effort to button uniforms and shuffle the worst of the debris out of sight.

“Ma’am.” Lugashaldim, sun shining through his mummified flesh and bones, looked down and saluted the female halfling. “I’m afraid the present whereabouts of General Ashnak are classified.”

The Duchess Magda stared down her halfling nose and replied in fluent marine. “I’m his wife, you dickhead!”

Her entourage snickered. The rotting orc marine shifted from combat boot to combat boot uneasily. “But, ma’am—”

“He is my ducal consort and I will speak with him now.”

The Undead officer blinked ragged eyelids over curdled eyeballs. The stripped bone of his skill gleamed, and he cast an elongated skeletal shadow on the grass. Magda’s nostrils flared.

“You may as well let the hounds off their leashes,” she remarked. “They need to relieve themselves, I think.”

Her servants obeyed. Five wolfhounds, two parrots, and the duchess’s children ran across the parade ground. Orc marines started to their feet, hauling automatic weapons out of the way of clutching hands and dogpiss. Childish shrieks of glee drowned out an orc sergeant’s order. A wolfhound stole the roast from the spit. Two marines pursued it as it dragged the meat off, snarling.

Lugashaldim wiped a parrot-dropping from his decaying uniform.

“I guess you can wait in his office, ma’am,” the lieutenant conceded weakly.

Calm amid the chaos of children, dogs, and orc marines trying to retrieve their belongings without being caught disposing of any intruders, Magda said, “I do not wish to wait at all. If I do, I shall wait right here.”

Lugashaldim gazed across the compound. Dormitories—long brick barracks that had stood just high enough to house halfling warriors—lay gutted. Marine ponchos had been fixed between their broken walls, and under these were the offal-strewn, refuse-ridden, rubble-buttressed lairs of siblings known as orc-nests. Brown, black, green, and albino limbs stirred frostily as the chaos spread, and he heard the familiar rumble of orc snores.

The Duchess Magda remarked loudly, “How unlike the home life of my own dear Ashnak!”

“Sorry, ma’am—” He paused as young orcs just out of the Pit shrieked and gibbered past Magda’s people, their orcish spawn-herd in close pursuit. Magda’s eyes followed their compact, long-armed bodies, pointed ears, and crimson-glaring eyes under beetling brows. The young orcs were herded back past the planks spiked with broken glass that covered the tops of the brick-lined Pits. Grunts, snuffles, screeches, and wails echoed up from the depths.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. He didn’t notify us of his departure, destination, or time of return.”

The Duchess Magda swore with a fluency gained in the brothels of two dozen kingdoms. “Then find him! Search!”

The Undead orc stood with his skeletal shoulders hunched, trying not to tower over her. “Ma’am, we don’t know where to look—”

“Magda!” a voice bawled.

Ashnak strode in under the barracks archway, his forage cap tugged well down over his eyes and a pipe-weed cigar jutting from one corner of his tusked mouth. Both he and his uniform looked somewhat the worse for wear, although with orcs it is difficult to tell. He drop-kicked a couple of slow-moving marines out of his path, and acknowledged Lugashaldim’s salute. “Magda, my dear…”

Gallantly, the large orc reached down and took her hand between two of his fingers, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it.

“Husband.” Magda drew herself up to her full three feet two inches. Gloveleather flounces frothed around her. She arranged her sleek petticoats more decorously. “Safire, you and the others may wait for me back at the carriage.”

Reaching up high, she took Ashnak’s muscular arm. Amid the panic of a garrison that has realised it just incurred a snap inspection, she led him to stroll in the dappled shade of the compound’s lime trees.

The big orc lowered his heavy head, gazing down at her. A shadow of Darkness still lingered in his eyes. “You brought the children to the barracks?”

“It’s time they saw where their father works. I don’t wish them to remain in ignorance. I myself,” Magda said, “am often uninformed.”

One corner of his lip lifted over a tusk in unwilling amusement.

“Things you did not tell me, for example,” Magda continued levelly, “include just how many offspring orcs spawn at one time. And how quickly they mature. There are six of my little half-orcs running around back there—and one of them is already talking. I can only assume she heard that kind of language from her father!”

Ashnak sidestepped the broken brick hurled by an approaching ducal offspring.

“Really, my sweetheart, the old ways are the best. Ah, the good old days in the Pit,” Ashnak remarked with nostalgia. “The shit-slinging contests…gangbangs…Eat-the-Runt…Finest days of your life, the Pits. Really make an orc out of you.”

Magda glared up at him. “Half-orc though they may be, I am not bringing our children up in any Pit! Although I have to admit, what they’re doing to the other halfling children in nursery school doesn’t bear thinking about.”

She scooped the running toddler up onto her hip. Already the size of a two-year-old, the half-orc halfling infant beamed, showing its first tiny tusks. Magda stroked the thatch of brown hair that fell over its prominent browridge.

“My heart, what have you done with your tutor this time?”

“Burp!”

“You see?” Magda complained. “I’m beginning to have difficulty getting nursing staff. I hear you’re making deals with the Dark Lord.”

“Y—” Ashnak halted, put his huge fists on his hips, and glared down at her. “Where the fuck did you hear that?”

“Be serious. I know you.”

Magda wiped their child’s wide mouth with the silk hem of her farthingale and set it down. It scuttled off to join its brothers and sisters in tormenting the off-duty marines. Rather than damage their general’s offspring—or, rather than explain such damage to him afterwards—the helpless grunts found themselves constrained into allowing the halfling half-breeds to climb over military equipment and personnel irrespective. Magda noted one orc surreptitiously wiping scarlet and green feathers from the corner of his mouth.

“I’ve not seen Wilhelm or Edvard of late,” she remarked inconsequentially. “I think my older sons have fled Graagryk.”

“Good!” the big orc grunted.

“That is no way to speak of your stepchildren, Ashnak! I want us all to be one big happy family.”

The orc seated himself on the turf, tucking one BDU combat-trousered leg under the other. He reached out and drew Magda into a powerful embrace. The pungent musk of orc filled her nostrils. The duchess squeaked. Eventually, seated in his lap as he leaned against a lime tree trunk, she heard him say:

“That was your news at the Orcball game? The Dark Lord’s return?”

“I wished to prepare you for any possible meeting. Little passes in Graagryk that isn’t my business—my contacts brought me word of His return. Why has He come to my city?”

“Why?” Ashnak’s voice vibrated through their flesh where she leaned against him. “Because He’s gone absolutely bugfuck, that’s why! He’s out of his fucking tree!”

The orc marine rested his elbows on the scuffed knees of his urban camouflage combat trousers and leaned his heavy jaw against her neck. Watching Lugashaldim do his best to discipline the Graagryk HQ, the orc said, “Have you ever heard of a thing called an election?”

The Duchess Magda, whose experience spanned several continents and a number of species, frowned. The crow’s-feet deepened around her eyes. “No. What manner of beast is it?”

Ashnak coughed. If he had not been the General of the Orc Marines, she might have thought him embarrassed.

“The Sable Eminence explained it to me. Apparently it’s a method of ruling a kingdom. You give everyone what they call a vote. Then, when you have commands, the people cast these votes to decide whether they’ll obey. The Lord of Night and Terror says they also get to cast these votes to decide who’ll be the kingdom’s ruler. And that’s called an election.”

Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau thought about it. “‘Casting’ votes. A vote will be a kind of stone, then? Certainly a missile of some sort…”

She abruptly stood up, removing herself from Ashnak’s embrace, and began to brush down her dress. Cheeks heated, she snapped, “The whole thing’s ridiculous! Think about it, you dumb orc. Give everyone one of these votes, and where are you? With every dirty peasant thinking she has as great a right as me to decide what is best for Graagryk! It’s…it’s immoral! Why—why, a duchess might even lose an election!”

She paced up and down rapidly, heels indenting the leaf-scattered turf. Over the noise and bustle of the orc HQ making itself minimally tidy, she said, “His Sable Eminence’s mind must have snapped completely! Samhain was such a blow, it’s driven Him into sanity! This is no way to bring about the Dark Domination!”

“The information is classified,” Ashnak said gloomily. “I’m not telling the marines about votes. It will only give them ideas.”

The halfling and the orc stared at each other for some minutes. A sergeant major bawled orders across the compound and squads of marines doubled in all directions, parking the APCs in straight lines and removing the bodies from the assault course. Sunset coloured the sky above the Inland Sea salmon-pink and violet. Evening lizards called.

Magda narrowed her eyes against the levelling light.

“Orcs,” she said. Ashnak raised his head, teeth and eyes gleaming.

Magda continued, “Orcs are tolerated in the Southern Kingdoms only on sufferance. My dear, yours is a very small company, and its presence here is totally dependent on your ability to run an arms industry. Come to think of it, His Nightmare Excellence may be a very good person to have on our side.”

The orc marine got to his feet, belts of ammunition shifting with his muscles. He removed the pipe-weed cigar from his mouth, looked at it, and threw it away. He removed his cap and scratched at his bald, leathery skull.

“He’s going to the capital of the south to talk to the Light Council—about elections.” The orc bared brass-capped fangs incredulously. “Why He thinks they won’t call down every battery of Light magic they’ve got on His head beats me.”

For the first time, Ashnak’s bass-baritone voice altered.

“I don’t consider disobeying the Dark Lord an acceptable level of risk. He could wipe out every orc in the marines just by snapping His fingers…His orders are, I’m to bring a platoon and escort Him to the capital, Ferenzia. We leave tomorrow.”

Magda stepped forward and threw her arms around Ashnak’s hips, burying her face against his web-belt and hard-muscled gut. Taloned hands gently stroked her fur-short hair.

She heard footsteps approaching and did not move. A creaking, deathly voice spoke.

“General Ashnak, sir. Satellite communications are back online. Sir, I really think you ought to listen to the situation reports that are coming in.”

4

The fort sweltered under the equatorial sun.

“Excuse me, sir.” A polite orcish voice spoke in Barashkukor’s ear. “The second recon patrol’s overdue, sir. What shall we do?”

Patrols are nothing more than habit on peacetime trips. Especially with a squad of sales-orcs. The major rested his skinny elbows on the deserted fort’s parapet and gazed out at rock and sand. Even though he was wearing Ray·Bans, the gusting yellow and white sand of the Endless Desert reflected the light back painfully. Hot now, and only an hour after dawn.

“Get back to HQ on the radio. Post them officially missing.”

The marine first class saluted Barashkukor with a hand upon which the talons were trimmed. Her uniform showed signs of being ironed, her combat boots shone, her tusks were polished. Of her M16, however, there was no sign. Barashkukor regarded his squad of twelve sales-orcs with despair.

“Sir,” she added, “Corporal Uzkaddit didn’t come back either. What are we going to do, sir?”

Under any other circumstances Barashkukor would have said, Act like an orc! Appreciating that it might be futile in this case, he refrained. Having only two combat veterans in his sales-force, it might have been an error to send them both out on recce…

“We’re not even fighting anyone,” the large orc Arakingu whimpered. “Sir, we aren’t at war here, sir, are we? We’re here to sell things—”

Patience expired. Major Barashkukor climbed up onto the step of the parapet, drew back his black-gloved fist, and punched the orc squarely in the face. When she got to her feet, combat fatigues dusty, there was a glint of red in her eyes.

“You’re a marine, orc! I don’t care if you’re support services, you’re a marine!”

“Sir, yes sir!”

The rear echelon marine retired to the other end of the parapet to tinker with radio equipment, muttering something about a slur on a fine body of orcs. Major Barashkukor, adjusting his black Stetson, strode bandy-legged down into the compound and went around his orcs at the walls’ murderholes, checking weapons and boosting morale. The fort, little more than a square of walls around a tiny courtyard and well, was small enough that Barashkukor could cross it in five strides.

“Sir.” The MFC, Arakingu, appeared at his elbow. “Sorry, sir, satellite link’s down again.”

“That does it. Get Graagryk back,” the small orc major said fiercely. “I don’t care how you do it, but contact them. Tell them we’ve got trouble here, and we’re understrength. Either we get reinforcements or they pull us out—I want an airlift, and I want it today!”

At the same moment a marine called from the walls, “Sir—it’s out there again, sir!”

“Give me distance and direction, you snivelling ball of orc-dung!” Major Barashkukor loped over to the walls, black cowboy boots kicking up sand. He squinted through the slit in the masonry. “Where is it?”

Dredging up some memory of basic training, the grunt muttered, “Those rocks at two o’clock, sir. Movement. Number of hostiles unknown.”

“Well done, Luzdrak.” Barashkukor shoved up the brim of his Stetson and wiped sweat from his leathery forehead. His long, thin ears wavered, drooping in the heat. “Remember, orcs, we have the demo ammunition from the trucks. We outgun everything for miles. Keep your heads and we’ll dogmeat this sucker! Are we marines?”

The marine major pointed up at the striped-and-starred marine flag, with the Horde’s raven superimposed, flying bravely from the ruined fort’s flagpole. The dozen sales-orcs grinned, showing tusks and fangs, and rumbled, “We are marines!” with a certain bloodthirsty gleam in their deep-set eyes.

“It doesn’t matter if there are hundreds of Desert Riders out there!” Major Barashkukor enthused. “We have the firepower. More important, we are trained and disciplined soldiers.”

“Oh, my god!” Luzdrak shrieked, clutching his superior officer. “It’s horrible! It’s out there! It’s coming for us!”

Barashkukor shoved the orc bodily out of the way and crouched down at the wall-slit. A hot wind blew. Squinting into the eastern light, he made out movement in the rocks a hundred yards away.

“Shit….” Luzdrak crooned. “Oh, shit, man, we are some unhappy mothers! What is that thing?”

“Don’t worry, marine. I am completely familiar with the native indigenous life-forms of the desert terrain…” Barashkukor’s voice trailed off.

Segments of chitin hauled themselves up over the rocks on jointed black legs—and then it stood upright. Desert sunlight shone on a black carapace.

Barashkukor registered a shiny, elongated Man-like body, with clawed hind limbs, half as tall again as an orc. A scorpion-like tail curved up and hung above its long, domed chitinous skull. Spines lined the clawed forelimbs. Soft clusters of rubbery black objects hung on its underbelly.

The orc stared. “Man, that fucker’s big!”

Arakingu called, “Sir, I’m through to Graagryk!”

“Call in air support. Now!” Barashkukor showed small fangs in a satisfied smile. “That’s got to be the mother who took the recce patrols. Marine, I want you to put one aimed round into that piece of shit—encourage it to lose our trail!”

Luzdrak raised his AK47 assault rifle and settled the wooden stock into his brawny shoulder. One tilted eye squeezed almost shut. Barashkukor caught the moment when the orc marine held his breath. The trigger pulled. The muzzle jerked fire.

FOOM!

Tensed against the noise, like a hammer banging steel an inch from his ear, Barashkukor peered through binoculars at the rocks. The insectoid beast shambled up into the open on jointed hind legs, claws jutting from its shiny, hard forelimbs. It jerked. A spray of black substance punched out from the soft underside of its body and spattered the rocks.

Beside him, orc marines cheered.

“Let’s see if it’s got sense enough to run from that.” Barashkukor held the binoculars steady. “Holy shit.”

Seven more of the creatures appeared. The first insectoid monstrosity hesitated, shiny black against the white rocks and sand, its sectioned tubular body shimmering in heat distortion. Segmented claws dipped down behind the rock. When they came into sight again, a green and dripping mess hung between them.

The orc’s body leaked blood darkly onto the sand. His head and body had a curiously chewed appearance. Both arms and one leg had been bitten off. His jaw, wrenched loose from its sockets, flapped as the insect brandished the body high in the hot desert air. A scent of carrion travelled on the wind. The cloth of combat fatigues, belts of bullets, and twisted metal that might have been an M16 assault rifle, were embedded in the ribcage of the dead orc marine.

“That’s Corporal Uzkaddit…” Barashkukor breathed. “Right! Fireteam one, hold your position. Fireteam two, withdraw to the trucks. Luzdrak, when you hear the engines, pull out. Use mortars. We’re going to make a fighting withdrawal. Arakingu, give HQ our position, let ’em bomb the fuck out of here as soon as we’re gone.”

“Yessir.” Luzdrak blanched a very pale grey. “Sir, what are those things, sir?”

“I’ve told you. Just native wildlife,” Major Barashkukor said firmly. “Okay, marines, let’s bug out. Move it!”

The silent desert echoed to the shouts of orc marines. Barashkukor led the run for the trucks, the Corns marine Arakingu at his heels, an M16 a comfortable weight in his arms. Hitting cover behind the Bedford vans, he ducked down as the remaining two orcs in his team jumped for the cabins and ferociously gunned the engines.

“In!” the small orc snarled.

Clinging to the truck door, Barashkukor glanced back towards the tiny fort.

The first insectoid horror, outdistancing the rest, galloped over rock on segmented, clawed legs. It held two limbs outstretched before it. The thin tail jutted high over its head, spike or sting catching the sun. Metallic flashes shone from the body-segment. A thin whistling jetted from the clashing mandibles that dripped a black substance on the desert sand.

“Yo!” Luzdrak’s team broke for the trucks at the sound of engines.

“Fire at will!” Barashkukor leaned from one window of the lead truck with Arakingu, firing, the metal of the gun hot against his leathery hands. Rounds impacted on the insect’s chitinous shell and ricocheted off, leaving only silver metal smears: no damage apparent. He wrenched a taloned finger off the trigger, pulled a grenade, and hurled it towards the insect-monsters—that close? that large?—and ducked his head.

At the fort, mortars coughed.

FOOOOM!

Fragments of black carapace bowled along the rocks, end over end. Soft tissue spattered the truck. Barashkukor raised his head and glimpsed the insectoid thing rearing over the back of the truck, one forelimb missing, mandibles slavering.

The forelimb, even as it twitched, began to re-form. To grow. Fast.

“Hit it!” Barashkukor yelled at the orc marine driver. “Go, go, go!”

The truck’s wheels dug deep into sand, hit rock, and the vehicle lurched forward and away. Screams echoed from the morning behind them. The engine growled and roared.

“Sir!” Arakingu shook him by his black uniform collar. “Sir, what about Luzdrak and the rest!”

Barashkukor cuffed her across the side of her head, skinning his knuckles on her kevlar helmet. “Get through to HQ, marine! That’s your job.”

The small orc clung to the open window of the truck as it dipped and weaved across the desert. No mortar fire now. Sunlight flashed from shiny black shells. The hammer of automatic fire rang out across the desert. The second truck had not moved. Stalled.

“One thing they teach you in officer training.” Barashkukor looked at his radio operator, eyes hard, haunted, sad. “It doesn’t matter if none of the grunts get out, so long as the officer does. I’m command and control. I have to make it back out and report. Marine, get into the back of the truck and start slinging crates out; I want us lightened for speed!”

Barashkukor stared back. The heavy-shouldered forms of orc marines ran and scattered across the desert, going into cover behind rocks, firing. The hollow, unimpressive whuck! of grenades sounded. From the rear of the stalled truck, flame jetted. The shoulder-fired antitank missile impacted on one of the insectoids.

BOOOMM!

“Sales Force Alpha to Graagryk Headquarters!” He shoved the headset on and yelled over the engine’s roar, spraying automatic fire back towards the racing giant insects. The truck jounced wildly. “HQ, are you receiving? Acknowledge! We got us a fucking bug-hunt here, man! Are you—”

The front of the truck rose up at an angle of forty-five degrees.

The orc had one glimpse through the shattering windscreen of a rearing black carapace, frothing mandibles, and faceted eyes.

The truck flipped.

Barashkukor opened his eyes to see a truncated orc foot. All green with blood, the boot still on it, black leather covered in dust. It rested on rock a yard from his face. He rolled over, skin stinging from the sun. A stink of oil and petrol made him gag. There was the smell of feces. He looked down at his ragged, green-bloodstained, filthy combats. Shock chilled him; he could not feel what his eyes saw. A chunk of muscle tissue blown out of his thigh, large enough to put a fist through, and bone gleaming in the depths. And the foot was obviously his, too.

“Marine Arakingu…?”

The truck’s wheels still spun. Something hissed.

The bug loomed over him, black against the bright blue of the desert sky. Its segmented body convulsed, twitching, and the clawed forelimbs went under its body, into the clusters of rubbery black organs that hung down between the powerful hind legs. Barashkukor registered that some of the shine about its body-segments was black metal, not chitin. Devices, not organs.

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

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

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

The bug’s shadow fell across him.

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

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

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

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

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

FOOM!

Shrapnel ricocheted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Bugging out, General!”

The muzzle flash ignited the spilled fuel.

Graagryk’s military airfield sweated under midsummer sun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, great Sable Lord,” Ashnak protested.

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

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

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

“Brother, take your shape again!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chahkamnit glanced at his superior officer, who remained silent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t care. Just do it!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Door gunners,” Ashnak checked.

“Yo, sir!”

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

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

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

Ashnak winced.

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

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

The Mages of the Light circled above the city.

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

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

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

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

The Hind ceased forward motion and hung, thrumming.

Ashnak leaned forward, taloned hands resting flat on his massive thighs, sweating odorously under the weight of flak jacket, webbing, and arms; but it was not the sweat of fear.

“Well, now,” he remarked cheerfully, “I’m carrying 57mm rockets, wire-guided antitank missiles, 23mm cannon, and an electrically powered gatling-gun in the chin-mounted gun turret. I suppose that might put a hole in your precious city. And I wouldn’t count on those motheaten eagles outflying an attack helicopter with a crack pilot, either.”

Chahkamnit blushed light brown. “Jolly decent of you, sir. Wouldn’t have said that myself, you know.”

The Mage-voices sharpened, echoing through the Hind’s metal frame. “We will perish gladly, knowing that we take with us the Blight of the Earth, the Evil Emperor, the Lord of Darkness Himself!”

The eagles broke their flight patterns, wings beating as they gained height to strike. Ashnak regretfully abandoned his taunts.

“The Lord of Darkness Himself is with us, but I formally advise you now that He’s not making any threat against your ground establishment or personnel. You’ll be making a completely unprovoked attack on us!”

There was a puzzled silence, after which one of the voices, somewhat petulantly, said, “We cannot let you pass unhindered! You have the Dark Lord with you!”

The second Mage-voice cut in. “It’s a trick! If the Dark Lord is here, with these few troops, then He must have an army hidden from our sight, about to descend on our city! Why else would He come here but to make hideous war on us?”

“Actually,” Ashnak rumbled, “He just wants to talk to you.”

There was a pause.

“Talk?” inquired the first voice.

“Talk!” spat the second.

“He wants to talk,” Ashnak said, “but I’ve got no objection to blowing you dumbass flyboys out of the sky if I have to. I’m putting this chopper down. You go talk to whoever commands in Ferenzia. If they ain’t outside the town in under fifteen minutes, I’m gonna take and strafe the fuck outta you. Do I make myself clear?”

In Ashnak’s headphones, the Dark Lord sighed.

“Diplomacy,” She reminded him. “Tact.”

“Highly overrated virtues, Ma’am. Ah. There they go. Chahkamnit, take us down.”

“Roger, sir. Going down.”

Making no overtly hostile moves, the Hind sank down with the beauty of machinery defying gravity, escorted by one of the vast-pinioned eagles. A preying yellow eye stared in through the Hind’s canopy with infinite amusement and weariness in it, tolerating the mage that rode its feathered back.

Lieutenant Chahkamnit brought the helicopter down in a textbook landing on the hard shore between the lake and the city wall. As the wheels touched, the orc marine squad disembarked to secure the perimeter.

Chahkamnit took off his flying helmet and peered out at the Chinook, two squads of orc marines belly-down behind cover and the third squad forming up as the Lord of Midnight’s bodyguard.

“I say, sir, does the Dark Lord consider this hostile territory? I didn’t think we were actually at war yet.”

Ashnak fastened the chinstrap of his marine-issue helmet. “We’re not, son. The question is, does Herself consider anywhere not hostile territory? And then there’s the Ferenzi.”

“Ah. Yes, sir, I take your point.”

Ashnak unbuckled the seat’s crotch straps. Built for a race that certainly was not orcish, they constricted rather more than his circulation. Rubbing his groin, the orc field marshal muttered, “Keep the rotors turning!” and disembarked from the helicopter.

In the deserts of Gyzrathrani, in the jungles of Thyrion, in the tundras of the Antarctic Icelands—there is movement of a kind which has not existed before.

And in other places, too, now.

The animals scent it as if it were a forest fire.

Those beasts that are most magical flee first.

The dwarvish band struck up a waltz. The barbarian swordswoman—persuaded for this official Ferenzi “Heroes of the Last Battle” reception to drape a selection of shawls, at least, over her curvacious form and chainmail groin-covering—ceased to sing. The warrior guests in their evening dress took their partners and moved out onto the dance floor, under the magic-fuelled crystalline chandeliers.

Oderic, High Wizard of Ferenzia, eased through the crowd, his long yellow teeth bared in an official smile of welcome.

“Gandoran!” Oderic shot his cuffs, and shook hands with the Hero of Spine Gap. The tall blond warrior nodded uncomfortably and muttered something appreciative. Oderic added, “Varella will take care of you. Won’t you, Madam Varella?”

The jungle swordswoman, sweaty from the bandstand, flashed her eyes at Gandoran and took his hand, beaming. The Hero of Spine Gap cheered up. Oderic bowed and retreated.

Summer’s late-evening light coloured the sky butterfly-wing blue. Multiple voices rose over the thumping dwarf-music and the clink of magically replenished wine glasses. Oderic proceeded through the ballroom crowd, under the light of spellcast gas-lamps, pausing for a word here, a smile there.

“The reception is a success so far,” a voice said below his elbow.

One veined hand went up to smooth back the white hair that flowed down over Oderic’s cravat and the shoulders of his tweed jacket. The elderly wizard beamed. “Corinna Halfelven!”

You would not know, to look at her, that she had been one of the greatest mages at the Fields of Destruction, second only to Oderic himself. Here in the great Assembly Rooms of the Ferenzi palace, the nobles of Ferenzia wore formal long-tailed black coats and stiff, high collars, with the sashes of knightly orders across their chests. The women (with the exception of a few, including one fighter who continued to wear full plate harness and stood red-faced and sweating alone by a potted palm) wore multi-petticoated silken ballgowns and precious stones in their braided hair.

Corinna Halfelven wore a lavender-and-lace gown that hugged her three-foot-tall form and swept the floor over her diminutively slippered feet. The ostrich plume in her tiara was tall enough to come level with Oderic’s shoulder.

“We have waited three seasons to honour these heroes,” the half-elven halfling remarked. “It should be a joyous occasion, and yet…I have a dire premonition of evil, Magus Oderic.”

Oderic felt in his jacket pockets for a foul-smelling black pipe, took it out, lit it with a tiny ball of fire from one thumb, and drew deeply. Corinna wrinkled her sensitive elven nostrils at the stench of pipe-weed that always accompanied the famous wizard. She moved a pace away.

“These are those who fought against the vilest corruption in the Last Battle.” Oderic blew a perfect smoke ring. “Is it to be wondered at if those who have touched pitch smell a little of defilement?”

Her small golden eyes narrowed under her fair brows. “You sense it too!”

Leaning on the white oak staff that he carried, Oderic gestured at the thronging hall.

“Here are the greatest nobles of Ferenzia—and mark me well, a lord in Ferenzia is worth a king in a smaller kingdom. Here are the heroes of last Samhain’s Battle, warriors and mages from across the Known World. The heroes of the greatest victory the world will ever see.” Oderic gave a dry, old man’s cough. “Some have journeyed for months to arrive here for this night. I told the High King Magorian, if we cancel this celebration, we shall look fools, and the other kingdoms will lose all confidence in the economy of Ferenzia. So, if there is evil…we must simply be prepared to deal with it. I can count on you, Lady Corinna?”

The half-elven halfling glanced towards the canopied throne at the far end of the ballroom. “Of course. But King Magorian—”

“Wait.” Oderic threw back his head, sniffing through equine nostrils. “Ah. I fear, gracious lady, that we were both correct in our premonitions!”

The High Wizard turned and walked as briskly as was possible through the crowd. Corinna Halfelven scurried at his heels, plume bobbing over her pointed ears. The old wizard, his yellow waistcoat and flowing hair marking him out in that formal gathering, leaned heavily on his white oak staff as he approached the great double doors of the Assembly Rooms.

Before he could reach them, the double doors burst open.

The dwarvish band clattered and thumped to a halt, trailing off in a scatter of tuba notes. Dancers slowed their whirling steps. Heads turned towards the door; conversation dropped to shocked whispers; and over the sudden silence Oderic heard a plaintive voice from the canopied throne:

“What is it now? No one ever tells me anything. Where’s Oderic? Where’s my wizard?”

“Here, High King.” Oderic’s venerable voice was resonant. He did not bother to look back at the king. The open door now filled with a scurry of red-coated soldiers carrying ceremonial halberds. One of the eagle-rider mages appeared, rushed up to Oderic, and whispered frantically in the wizard’s ear. Oderic’s bushy eyebrows lifted. A further whisper, and the wizard’s features went completely blank.

Recovering himself, he called, “Ladies and gentlemen, I must beg you not to be alarmed by anything you see or hear—”

Squat figures appeared in the doorway.

Oderic muttered a protective ward, only to have his fingertips flash blue sparks as it flew back at him.

“My magic will not bite on them!” Corinna whispered, panic-stricken.

“Nor mine. Wait,” Oderic counselled, his hand shaking. “Do you realise what these horrors must be, elven lady? We are witnessing a new legend of evil!”

The squat figures marched into the hall in close formation. Their muscular brown, green, and black forms proclaimed them orcs, and the tusked mouths and deep-set glinting eyes were familiar enough to the veteran warriors there. Oderic heard shouts for weapons from the crowd behind him. He held up a commanding hand.

“Wait!”

Large boots rang out on the parquet flooring. In smooth order the uniformed orcs marched into the hall, raised metallic tubes to their shoulders, and pointed them each at a different sector of the hall. One barked something in orcish.

“These must be those strange Dark warriors of whom Amarynth Firehand spoke,” Oderic said loudly. “Orcs! What do you in Ferenzia?”

A very large orc indeed stomped through the doorway. His shrewd, tiny eyes swept the Ferenzi nobility and their guests.

“Freeze, motherfucker!” the orc grated.

Corinna Halfelven stilled her fingers, that had begun to weave the Powers of the Air.

“Awriiight! That’s better. Now, where’s this High King Magorian?”

Behind Oderic, the sea of faces parted. The High King Kelyos Magorian, Lord of the South and North Domains, Defender against the East, limped forward on the arm of a young squire.

Magorian, almost lost in a crimson, ermine-trimmed robe, halted under the glittering brilliance of the magical chandeliers, surrounded by the nobles of the greatest of the Southern Kingdoms. His golden hair had thinned to the point of invisibility. The hands that once wielded enchanted sword and shield now shook, veins prominent on their backs. He lifted cataracted eyes to the orc.

“What is that?” he quavered peevishly. “It doesn’t matter. Say the usual thing, I suppose. You enter our court with a show of force: vile creature, we are not afraid of you!”

Beside Oderic, Corinna whispered, “But you, wizard. You are afraid of something, and it is not orcs!”

The High King demanded plaintively, “This thing defiles the air of Ferenzia. Why is it allowed to remain here?”

Some of the visiting warriors were already making for the weapons-cache in the cloakroom. Men in sashed waistcoats tutted and glared, and Oderic overheard one bemedalled general mutter, “Damned green scum!”

The orc tipped his round helmet back on his bald head, scratched his ears, and caught Oderic’s eye.

“You.” The orcish voice grated the common tongue. “Wizard. The old guy’s obviously lost his marbles. Get me someone who can count beyond five without using their fingers and I’ll say what I have to say to them.”

“I—ah—I am not familiar with your idiom, sir.” Oderic kept his piercing blue eyes fixed on the squat creature. The eagle-mage’s warning echoed in his ears. He leaned heavily on his staff. “But to spare His Majesty the undue strain of addressing a—ah—an orc, perhaps it would be better if you spoke with me. I am Oderic, High Wizard of Ferenzia.”

With surprising formality, the great orc touched its helmet with the talons of its free hand. “Ashnak. Field Marshal of the Horde, and General Officer Commanding the Orc Marines.”

Oderic raised his voice. “The hall will now be cleared of all but the members of the High Council!”

The High Wizard rested his hands on the pommel of his staff, knuckles white, fearing greatly the resurgence of Evil with only one humble old man to stand between it and the Good Peoples. The crowd began to move towards the doors. All of the begowned women shuffled that way, accompanied by men with campaign medals on their dress suits, and some with the sashes of knightly orders. Clerks, merchant princes, and lesser mages began to move, reluctantly. Those who did not stir were those who wore thick robes of state, ornamented gorgets and dress swords—Ferenzi men of middle age with closed, shrewd faces.

The orc barked an unfamiliar word. The other orcs raised their metal sticks.

Dukka-dukka-dukka-FOOM!

Oderic instantly whipped his staff up, casting a Shield of Protection as the room’s chandeliers shattered into crystal splinters. Women screamed. The crowd milled about. The glowing blue fire of the ward brushed the crystal fragments harmlessly away.

The High Wizard had just time to notice that metal shrapnel passed through the magic unharmed.

“Quiet!” The orc did not speak much above a conversational tone, but the great assembly hall became silent and still. The orc flipped open one of the many pouches on his complicated belt, extracted a pipe-weed cigar, and stuck it in his tusked mouth. Looking at Oderic, he jerked a taloned thumb at the warriors and mages in their evening dress.

“They’re staying right here,” the big orc said. “Nobody leaves. We got no secrets. C’mon, wizard, get your ass in gear! And by the way—have you got a light?”

Oderic caused the orc’s cigar to bloom a small ember of flame. “Well? What can you have to say to us?”

The orc ambled forward into the room, bandy-legged, grinning as only an orc can. “As marine military ambassador, may I present to you—the Death of Empires, the Blight of Man, the Heresy of Elvenkind, the One Who Lays Waste to Worlds…the Dark Lord of the East!”

Someone screamed.

A hubbub of voices rose, sound flattened by the draped walls. Corinna’s elvishly musical tones sounded clearly:

“It can’t be! He’s dead. I was there at the Fields of Destruction when we slew Him!” The small half-breed leaned up to whisper to Oderic, “Was that the warning they brought you? It can’t be, I tell you!”

“Peace,” Oderic commanded sternly. “It will be an imposter, of course.”

He witnessed Corinna’s elf-gold eyes widen. “No…”

The High Wizard Oderic turned to face the double doors, his last hope gone.

A young female stood there, of a stature tall among Men. Shadows clung to Her yellow hair that was bobbed level with Her chin. Shadows haunted the folds of Her fine metal-ring robe. Her smooth face held a porcelain calm. She did not raise Her head.

Oderic’s bones chilled.

Eight orc marines surrounded Her, green bulging muscles gleaming in the remaining candlelight, bald heads and ears shining. They stood shoulder to shoulder, facing outwards. The large orc, Ashnak, snarled the incomprehensible phrase “muzzle sweep!” and the orc warriors immediately lifted the metal sticks to point away from him. They pointed them at the crowd of Ferenzi nobility instead.

“Odo, send them away!” Magorian protested, tugging the wizard’s sleeve. “Can’t have my royal hall full of damned spear-chuckin’ greenies from bongo-bongo land. Get rid of ’em! Don’t know what the world’s coming to; greenies starting getting above themselves. And who’s that damned fine woman? Nice filly, but she’s hardly dressed for my royal court.”

The elderly wizard snapped testily, “That is the Dark Lord, whom we thought to be dead!”

“Really?” Uninterested, Magorian clutched the arm of his squire and began limping back towards his canopied throne. “Wasn’t like this at the Battle of Moonheart. Mowed ’em down in ranks, we did. Hordes of spear-chucking greenies…”

Before Oderic could restrain her, Corinna Halfelven strode out of the crowd. She glared up—and up—at the tall shape of the female Man. “Die, vile creature of Darkness!”

All the windows along the assembly hall shattered inwards. A wind icy as the heights above mountains soared in. Oderic felt the Powers of the Air, which are vast as the world, press into the palace, masonry groaning at the pressure.

Corinna Halfelven, at the centre of the power vortex, threw out one long-gloved hand and pointed her finger at the heart of the Dark Lord. Her other hand held up the petticoats of her ballgown. Wood-ash pale hair floated about her tiny aquiline face. She cried out in the elvish tongue an incantation older than the glaciers. The Powers of the Air poised at her command.

The Dark Lord, Her voice gentle, said, “No, I don’t think so.”

A smear of grease smoked on the marble floor tiles of the Royal Assembly Hall of Ferenzia—all that remained of the halfling mage.

The Dark Lord stepped delicately over it on bare feet, light from the remaining candles sliding down Her metal-mesh robe. Glints of black light flashed. She raised Her chin, bobbed yellow hair swinging.

“A mage-assassin. The Light has grown hypocritical of late. No matter. It does not harm me. Being dead has, I think, been good for My evil magic.”

Oderic broke the shocked, impressed silence by snapping his fingers. Halfling servants in brown waistcoats, with their shirtsleeves rolled up, pushed through the crowd with mops and cloths, and cleared what remained of Corinna Halfelven from the floor.

“Be swift,” he directed, “but reverent.”

A chill walked down the knobs of Oderic’s spine. He recognised the Dark Lord’s impatience. Battle-hardened, he took his time in turning.

Four orcs clustered tightly around the Dark Lord, blocking the crowd’s sight of Her. The other four split into pairs, heavy metal sticks slung across their backs, and shoved between frock-coated Men, tearing down the few remaining drapes and lace curtains to expose the night-view of Ferenzia beyond the palace windows, and secreting abandoned champagne bottles about their persons. The Ferenzi nobility complained in precise, hysterical accents about “green barbarians.” Oderic kept the same disgust, icy and strong, from showing on his lined features.

“Dark Master.” The big orc knelt formally. “The Royal Assembly of Ferenzia hears you.”

The four orcs with Her knelt, covering the crowd.

Formless Darkness coalesced in Her eyes. The tall, straight young woman raised Her head. A dryness, as of ancient dust, caught in the throats of Men, and those nearest Her grew age-lines in their faces that they never, from that day forwards, lost.

She rested Her hands, lightly, on the shoulders of two armed, kneeling orcs. The assembled nobility of the Light shaded their eyes from Her darkness. Her voice spoke into the silence.

“You thought you had defeated Me at the Fields of Destruction. Poor warriors! Poor mages! Instead you have made Me more strong. For I have died and lived, and what is more strong than that which can overcome death? You think that you have the world in your hands, after that battle. You think the Ages of the World have turned.”

Now laughter, so quiet that Oderic shuddered. To win so great a victory against such hopeless odds, with such sacrifice, and now to see it all to do again…In the crowd, Men wept.

“If I wish, I am strong enough to take the world from you. If I wish, there will be a battle that is truly the last, for after it no Man, no beast, no blade of grass will stir on this unbreathing world. If I wish, I can still the heart in your breast and the breath in your body, merely by My wishing it. If I wish.”

Oderic swayed. Of the heroes of the Light assembled together in the halls of Ferenzia, only he remained on his feet. Sweat rolled down his old Man’s face.

“It was not meant that you should come here and throw this filth in our faces,” the wizard snapped. His bony hand fluttered at his throat and his lips turned blue.

“Was it not?” The Dark Lord seemed unmoved. “But I do not wish to destroy the world in gaining it. It will be more entertaining for Me if it is whole. And therefore…I will step down into the world and compete with you all, upon your terms, in equal contest for election to the Throne of the World.”

Oderic, in the silence that followed, could feel the puzzlement of four hundred and fifty Men.

“‘Election’?” The High Wizard got his breath. “That heresy! I might have expected that from the Lord of Darkness! Who can You say is qualified to elect a candidate to the Throne of the World?”

The Dark Lord, an ancient smile on Her lips, merely inclined Her head slightly. Her big orc got to his feet. Fists on hips, he grinned at Oderic.

“Who qualifies? The same ‘who’ that would have fought at the next Last Battle, that’s who! That means everybody, sucker. Everybody from Men to elves; from hill-giants to halflings!”

The wizard stared testily at the orc.

“Some of my best friends are halflings,” Oderic said, appalled beyond belief, “but really: no. If you once allow halflings—good people though they may be—a say in the councils of the wise, then the next thing you know, we’ll be asked to consult trolls, witches, werewolves…Lady save us, even orcs and necromancers! It just won’t do, I say.”

The halfling servants paused in mopping the tiles, looked at each other, and murmured, “‘E’s right, you know, that there wizard. We know our place, see if we don’t.”

Oderic finished, “We can never agree to it! You’re mad!”

“I ain’t mad.” The orc switched the pipe-weed cigar to the other corner of his tusked mouth and blew a lopsided smoke-ring. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m mad. Okay, you guys, listen up! You heard the Dark Lord. That’s the way it’s going to be!”

Oderic lifted his head, white hair flowing back over his tweed collar. He caught the eye of others in the crowd—the Lords of Goistan, Lalgrenda, and Istan; Shugbar, Vendivil, Kaanistad, and Hurost. Old companions, who had been carefree soldiers of fortune or wandering mages and who now ruled the estates they had been rewarded with in Ferenzia. Their waists were thickening, they might be more intent on politics now than on drinking or questing, but he saw agreement in their eyes.

“I suppose it was already too late for us,” Oderic said, “when You survived Samhain. I am an old and foolish man, and I should have guessed. I failed. But this remains to me—I will die before I obey one order of the Dark Lord! I speak for every Man here. We can yet go into the afterlife with honour. Do Your worst!”

Cheers rang in the shattered room. Those few Men who had got to the weapons in the cloakroom clashed spear against shield and loosened their tight evening collars.

The Dark Lord’s long-lashed eyelids lifted. Her eyes glowed orange. The hall quieted. Wrapped in a pride as cold as the tiles upon which Corinna Halfelven had died, the Dark Lord of the East regarded Her ancient foes. Oderic saw that She would no longer condescend to explain, much less beg.

“Gentlemen…” The orc, Ashnak, stepped a few paces closer to the crowd. He put his short metal stick in a holster on his belt, and stretched out his open hands.

The sight of an orc willingly disarming itself, rather than bloodily flinging itself into the defenceless crowd, axe-blade swinging, got the attention of the assembled dignitaries, ambassadors, and ministers.

“Gentlemen. Ladies. I know I am an orc,” he said gruffly, “but I appeal to you to hear me. Most of you may already know—we have another enemy on our borders. A terrible enemy. We must unite to fight! We’re facing a geopolitical conflict that makes nonsense of distinctions between Light and Dark. I assure you, gentlemen, we’re all on the same side now.”

A babble of curiosity rose in the Assembly Hall. The orc field marshal reached up, pulled off his helmet, and scratched at his ears. Seeming curiously unprotected, standing between the nobility of Ferenzia and the silent Dark Lord, the orc spoke again.

“I am a plain soldier,” Ashnak said, “and I have always respected the Light as a brave opponent. Now we face a force which is vicious, unstoppable, and vile. Men of the Light, your virtues are well known. Trust me when I say they’ll slow you down and weaken you in the face of an enemy who doesn’t know what mercy or kindness means.”

“What enemy?” a Ferenzi lord demanded.

The hall full of Men in evening dress clutched at their hastily recovered weapons and pressed forward in shouting groups. Orc warriors lowered their fire-sticks. The big orc struck one warrior’s fire-stick up to point at the chandeliers.

“This enemy!” The big orc felt in a large pouch attached to his jacket. He lifted something out, raised his arm, and threw it down on the floor. It cracked. People flinched away, then crowded near.

“Recognise that?” The orc bared brass-capped tusks. “Lost any outlying settlements recently?” Mysterious disappearances? Parties of adventurers gone missing?”

Oderic hitched up the knees of his tweed trousers before squatting to see exactly what was encased in the transparent envelope the orc had thrown down. When he recognised the chitinous fragments, he had to use his staff purely as a stick to help him rise.

“The…the Black Claw! It is a true token,” the High Wizard admitted brokenly. “The Light’s mages have been secretly combating this menace for days. But we are not of sufficient strength to defeat it!”

The orc grinned.

“If you good guys can’t handle it, then let us badass orc bastards do it for you! If you elect my Dark Master as War Leader—purely for the duration of this emergency—then I can mobilise the entire forces of the orc marines, elite corps and reserves, on your side. Without a War Leader, you’ll fall into confusion, quarrel among yourselves, while these monsters ravage your homes. We must have this election, and we must have it soon!”

A voice from the back of the wrecked hall cheered, “Yes!”

“Preposterous!” a fat woman in satin snarled, and a silken-cloaked man beside her protested, “How can we trust them?”

Another voice called, “It’s our only chance!”

In the great hall the Ferenzi nobility squabbled among themselves. A number gathered around the canopied throne, harassing the half-asleep High King Magorian. And as is the way with half-breed mages, no matter how they may seem to be accepted into polite society, Corinna Halfelven’s murder was not officially protested. The High Wizard Oderic felt suddenly bent with age.

“The plans of evil are cunning,” he whispered, watching the hall full of milling people: how they forgot and turned their backs on the strange orc warriors, how they tolerated in that smashed audience chamber the presence of Darkness Incarnate.

“You think you got problems.” The orc field marshal dropped his pipe-weed cigar and crushed it under one heavy boot. His pit-deep eyes gleamed at Oderic.

“I got two of them on my back. Not that he’s much, compared to Her. I can hack it. And She may be well out to lunch, but yours is out to lunch, dinner, and breakfast the following day…”

Oderic brushed pipe-weed ash from his tweed jacket, his piercing blue gaze searching out the High King Magorian. Ashnak and the High Wizard Oderic exchanged the kind of glance that ensues between the servants of masters who are, for one reason or another, somewhat unpredictable.

Ashnak added, “And I got you Light guys on my back and my marines getting chewed up in the boonies. Bitchin’, ain’t it?”

The emergency backup magical spells cut in, and the Assembly Rooms’ lights whirred into action. Small magics began to mend the drapes, reglaze the windows, and replenish the buffet table. Halfling servants brought ladies their fans, gloves, and cantrips from the cloakrooms.

Oderic took a deep breath. All certainties gone, he ventured to say, “Sir orc, you have some plan for combating this monstrous menace that we face?”

“Oh, sure.” The orc buffed a brass-capped tusk with his gnarled knuckle. His eyes gleamed. “But, plans later. First—we’ve got an election to hold. Chahkamnit, we’re all done here, bring her in.”

A strange whup-whup-whup sounded beyond the windows. The High Wizard Oderic walked forward to see what devilish engine was settling down outside the palace.

“An election,” the wizard mused. “Elections can be won, sir orc. But they can also be lost. What chance can the Lord of Evil possibly stand of winning the hearts and minds of the free peoples of the south?”

5

The Inland Sea and the Western Ocean are kept from joining, at their most adjacent point, by a ribbon of land and the mountain chain known as The Spine. The road through The Spine’s magnificent peaks runs from Herethlion to the south, with only one settlement of any consequence at which to break a journey or hold a battle.

Towards the end of an afternoon, a sizable crowd in woollen tunics and fur leggings surrounded a covered wagon parked in the main square of Spine Gap. Those inhabitants of the town who did not hear the thumping drums and tinkling bells were swiftly informed by their neighbours and arrived hurriedly, panting, in case they should miss it. A large number of the town’s motley population, composed mostly of poor labourers and elderly females, herded themselves into the space between the town hall and the tavern.

“Keep an eye on the town hall,” the halfling Will Brandiman whispered from inside the wagon. “We don’t want the councillors over here.”

“They’re richer,” Ned Brandiman pointed out.

“They’re smarter. That’s how they got to be rich in the first place. What I always say,” Will remarked, “is that robbing the poor is easier.”

“It’s the Holy One’s mission!” a female dwarf cried, wiping the remains of her tea from her beard.

“My brethren!” Will Brandiman let down the backboard at the rear of the wagon and emerged onto the platform it made. Above him a banner read Mission of Light—Souls Saved—A Refusal of Credit Often Offends.

The assembled dwarves, frost giants, half-elves, and Men of the town of Spine Gap gazed up at him. A frost giant rumbled, “Amen!”

“My sisters!” The Reverend William Brandiman threw out his arms in a benevolent, all-embracing gesture, smiling with gleaming white teeth. He wore a tightly buttoned black doublet and breeches and a small white collar devoid of lace; his dyed black hair was slicked back from his brow. His eyes blazed down upon the crowd. “You poor sinners! I truly believe you do not know how you suffer. My heart goes out to you!”

Another halfling stomped out from behind the curtain that closed off the covered part of the wagon. She hitched up the skirts of her red robe. The nun’s habit, whip, and spiked belt marked her as one of the Little Sisters of Mortification. A red wimple covered her hair, disclosing only a round face to which lip-paint, eye-paint, and rouge had been added with a hand more enthusiastic than skillful.

“Brother, brother,” Ned Brandiman rebuked in a rich contralto, adjusting his wimple. “You have not yet told these good people who we are.”

Will swept his oiled hair back from his brow with his fingers, and then brought his hands palms together in front of him. “True, Mother Edwina, true. Know then, you good people of Spine Gap—for I know, despite everything, that you must be good people—who it is that speaks to you. I am the Reverend William Aloysius Brandiman, of the Mission of the Holy One. This, my sister, is the good Abbess Edwina. We have come to bring you the Light!”

“Don’t need no light,” a somewhat obtuse hill troll remarked from the front row of the crowd. “Sun’s still up.”

A number of heads turned to the west to confirm that the sun was, indeed, still visible. The peaks and high flanks of the Spine Mountains themselves blocked the view to north and south.

“I mean the Light of Virtue.” The Reverend William Brandiman bared his teeth in a dazzling smile. “I mean that Light without which we are all lost!”

Several mail-shirted dwarves in the crowd cried, “Amen, brother!”

“Oh, I feel the sin!” the good Abbess Edwina cried. She took a tambourine from behind her back and struck it to emphasise her words. “I feel the sin!”

Ting!

“I feel the misery of those sunk in depravity, striving to escape, yet not knowing which way to turn!”

Clash!

Two or three female Men in woollen gowns clapped their hands to the tambourine.

“I hear the voices of souls crying out, save me! save me! Crying save me before it is too late!”

Ting! Clang!

A raffish-looking male Man wiped his beard on his sleeve. “If it’s too late already, I’m going back in the tavern before Old Joss closes up for the night.”

A half-elf shushed him.

“Ah, my son, you may wish to do so.” The Reverend Brandiman oiled his way across the small platform and stood beaming down at the Man. “But your soul says, ‘That tavern is a place of sin and depravity, where Men gamble and lose the honest money they make at their labour, where the drink is served watered, the bar-maids have foul diseases, and no one dares complain for fear of violent retaliation.’”

The Man scratched his lice-ridden hair.

“No, it isn’t,” he contradicted.

Will frowned. At his elbow, the Abbess Ned pointed a dramatic hand at the frontage of the town hall, where a group of worthies in fur-lined gowns stood watching the wagon from the steps.

“There is the sink of corruption, brother!”

Ting!

“There is the source of misery. What chance have souls to see the Light, when the grasping councillors throw single mothers into the streets when they cannot pay their rent?”

Clash!

“When the taxes that should go to repairing the roads, rebuilding a hostelry after the war, and feeding the children of the poor—”

Ting!

“—instead go to line the pockets of the villains who sent strong yokels from Spine Gap to the Last Battle and yet remained at home themselves to batten and grow rich?”

Clash-Ting! Clang!

One of a number of raggedly dressed labourers waved from the back of the crowd, yelling, “No, they didn’t. They went off and fought, same as the rest of us. And what’s taxes?”

The Reverend William Brandiman shook his head in sorrow. “Ah, the power of Darkness to deceive! We here at the Holy Mission often find this. You good people do not know how much you need us. You do not know what the Light can do for your lives.”

Clash-Ting!

Will shot a look at Ned, who put his somewhat large and roughened hands behind his back, stilling the tambourine.

“You, sir, for example.” The Reverend William Brandiman pointed at a half-elf who stood, arms folded, to one side. “That wound of yours, sir, was taken from a Dark-corrupted weapon, am I right?”

The half-elf fingered his saturnine jaw, letting the crowd see the unhealed cut that wept a pale fluid. He called harmoniously, “From an orcish blade, at the Battle of Sarderis.”

“And you—and you—and you, mistress!” Will pointed in turn to a Man with an amputated arm, another hill troll with a patch over one eye, and a female elf on crutches. “All wounds of Darkness, if I am not mistaken? Yes! Ah, how you need our Mission of Light! Though healer-mages fail, and have given you up as lost, yet a prayer to the Lady, through our Holy Master, is never in vain!”

A one-legged dwarf began to weep and cry, “Heal us poor sinners!”

Ting! Clash-Ting! Ting!

Under cover of the enthusiastic tambourine the good Abbess Edwina, in a somewhat deeper voice than she had used to address the crowd, muttered, “I thought we were never going to hit it!”

The reverend slicked back his short, oiled locks. “Never fear, brother Ned. Look at them. The cannon-fodder of the battle, by the looks of it—I thought the Spine Gap levies were locally raised.”

Will reached into the back of the wagon and brought out a crate.

“These relics and devices have been blessed by our Master, the Holy One, the favoured of the Lady. Come forward, brother.” Will Brandiman beckoned the half-elf. “Let me see…prayer shawls…beads…ah, the Holy One’s sacred elixir. It is very scarce and precious, brother, but let us see if it will answer your case.”

Taking a cloth and wetting it with the liquid from the tiny green bottle, he wiped the half-elf’s face. The weeping scar came away. It left, Will was glad to see, no trace of Ned’s face-paint. A great gasp went up from the crowd.

The female dwarf bawled, “It’s a miracle!”

Clash-Ting!

Under cover of bringing out another crate, Ned growled, “Think the half-breed’ll keep his mouth shut?”

Will put the special green bottle into the back of the covered wagon. Before straightening, he murmured, “The half-elf will be out of Spine Gap in an hour; I told him we’d run this same scam down the road. We may, but he won’t be with us. I never trust convenient rogues found in taverns. Mind that bottle, and remind me to bum that rag afterwards. It’s a contact poison.”

“Well thought of, brother!” Ned Brandiman stepped forward, holding his hands out to the beings that crowded closely round the back of the wagon. “You good people! Oh, how it warms my heart to be able to help you!”

Ting-Clash! Clash-Ting-CLANG!

Ned glared back at Will, who gave the tambourine another enthusiastic shake. Continuing in a light contralto, Ned cried, “And I know that you’ll want to help us.”

Several people in the crowd called, “How?” and “Yes!”

“You all know that our Holy Master is building a prayer-wheel,” Ned said piously. “When it is complete, it will send prayers from him to the Lady of Light every day and every night, and then we can heal all the wounds the Dark dealt out in the last war, we can save each and every one of you, we can do it, yes, we can do it!”

The hill troll in the front row bellowed, “Hallelujah!”

“Oh, yes!” Ned swayed hypnotically. “As you take these prayer rugs—and prayer beads—and bottles of elixir, please give your contributions generously. No amount is too small. Or too big. Give us your money so that the great prayer-wheel can be built! Give us your money for the Holy One!”

“HALLELUJAH!”

Some thirty minutes later the Mission wagon rolled up out of the Spine Gap pass, the draught-manticore pulling with all the strength in its scarlet lion-scorpion body. Will counted copper, silver, and even the occasional gold piece into a small wooden chest.

“Hallelujah!’ Edvard Ragald Rupert Brechie van Nassau wrapped the wagon’s reins around his ankle, hitching up his nun’s robe and disclosing hirsute halfling feet. He dove into a hamper of food. Through a mouthful of roast bear and thrush-in-aspic, he remarked, “Let’s go and give the Holy One the good news.”

“About ten per cent of it.” Wilhelm Hieronymous Cornelius Mikhail Brechie van Nassau pushed the lid of the wooden chest down and grinned at his brother. “Now. About that other idea we were discussing…”

Shortly after dawn the next day, with the mountain vultures whistling and crying in the pale air, the Mission wagon creaked up the winding road and under the archway of the Mission Citadel. The air tasted thin in the halflings’ mouths, and cold chilled their fingertips and hairy toes. Will automatically tucked one hand up into his armpit, keeping the muscles warm for use, and simultaneously checking the position of one heavy throwing-dagger.

The Holy One saw their arrival from his place on the Citadel’s parapet, where the mountain wind blew across his shaved elven head. The air was, after all, no colder than camp sentry duty or a knight’s vigil in a stone chapel. The tall elf locked the fingers of his dark-skinned hands together, banishing the military thoughts and the panic that began to attend them.

“Send them to my cell.” He gestured his attendant priests to obedience. They instantly scurried away. The Mission of Light kept a soldierly discipline in its priestly ranks.

The elf wrapped his ragged white habit more firmly around his dark-skinned body. The cold of the high altitude bit into his thin fingers and the tips of his pointed ears. His long golden eyes filled with tears of mortification. When he could avoid comfort no longer, he went inside the chill stone corridors of the monastery. The black-haired halfling priest and his plain (but doubtless good-hearted) abbess sister were already waiting in the bare cell that was the Holy One’s abode.

“Sir paladin!” The Reverend Brandiman knelt on the bare flagstones. His sister curtsied low.

“Do not call me that! It is a title of shame!” The Holy One clasped one fine-fingered hand to his brow. His other hand twitched. He no longer carried weapons, not even a knife; but his hands sometimes searched for knightly accoutrements without his knowledge.

Abashed, the male halfling lowered his gaze. “I beg forgiveness, Holy One. Your Holiness, there is news. Terrible news!”

The Holy One sank down on the bare planks that served as his bed, a hand plucking at his monk’s habit where the hair shirt under it chafed at his brown skin.

“There can be no news more terrible than that the Dark Lord yet lives.” The elf reached across to the whip rack, selected a short thong, and began absently to scourge himself. “And that, when they ride out against Him, I cannot ride with them!”

Elvish blood spattered the masonry. The Holy One stared at the walls of the dank cell as if he could see through them to all the great kingdoms of the south.

“One tiny fort,” he whispered. “One stronghold that I could not take. And so I am disgraced.” The elf lord’s thin, ascetic features twisted, eyes squeezed shut. Sweat inched down his brown face. The whip drooped in his hand. “When I held a sword in my hand, and could not defeat mine enemies, the southern cities laughed at me. My name was made a mockery at Nin-Edin! How can I live with such disgrace? Orcs, orcs, orcs—”

“Funny you should mention them.” The deep-voiced abbess got to her hairy feet. “For those orcs are once again at the right hand of Darkness. Your Holiness, the news we have is that there is a terrible task to be done, and no one can be found who is humble enough to submit to it.”

The Holy One’s sunken golden eyes brightened. “What is that, my child? And what of the—ssss!—orcs?”

The Reverend Brandiman said smoothly, “Your Holiness has heard of the insidious evil plan of Darkness; how the Dread Lord of the East refuses to go to arms and instead challenges the free world to a contest of votes.”

“Yes, I have heard.” The elf found his slender hand moving as if it would clutch a blade. “That Great Heretic!”

“Just so,” the halfling priest continued. “Now the free world must choose its own candidate—someone who will submit to the utter humiliation of contesting with the Dark Lord on His own terms. That person, whoever they may be, must endure the shame of condoning the actions of Evil by setting themselves up as equal candidate for War Leader in the coming holocaust, and afterwards for the Throne of the World.”

The abbess added, “Holy One, where can such a person be found, who will descend into the mire, and besmirch themselves, so that the Dark Lord will not run uncontested into high office?”

“But the orcs?” the Holy One persisted.

The Reverend Brandiman smoothed his slick hair back from his brow. “Those same orcs of Nin-Edin once again serve their Dark Master, Your Holiness. They are running what they term His ‘election campaign.’”

“Now I see!”

A light burst in the Holy One’s mind. The elf sprang to his feet. He seized the shoulders of his faithful halfling priest and nun and gazed down into their trusting eyes.

“I have had a revelation!”

Laughing, easy tears ran down the elf’s high-boned cheeks.

“In my torment, the Lady speaks to me! She tells me that my disgrace and humiliation were all for her sake, and only for a short time. Nin-Edin was my dark night of the soul, but now, now I may be revenged. Orcs, orcs! Hold your lives cheap, for my time of repentance and scourging is over.”

“It is?” the abbess said.

“I shall bring no sword but the Sword of Righteousness and wear no armour but the Armour of Light!”

The Reverend Brandiman frowned. “Pardon me, Your Holiness, but I don’t quite understand.”

“Ah. You are afraid, because you sense the Lady’s power in me. Do not fear!” cried the elf. “For I, whose name was once Amarynth, called Firehand; Sir Amarynth the Paladin-Mage and Commander of the Army of Light, am myself again.”

He clasped his long fingers across the front of his ragged habit, already planning the new habits that he and his followers would wear: embroidered with a sword, and the silver crescent of the Lady, and perhaps made with integral hair shirts.

Amarynth continued, “To descend to the Dark Lord’s level must be a disgrace. But I hear the Lady of Light speaking through you, her humble mouthpieces. I clearly perceive that it is my duty to offer myself as this sacrifice, to save others from the terrible task—and to bring the sword of vengeance down upon those unclean orcs. It is my duty to stand for election. And, if elected, it is my terrible fate to serve as Ruler of the Free World.”

He threw up his hand.

“The Crusade of Light is beginning!”

The Holy One’s halfling priest and abbess looked at each other for a moment, mouths open, doubtless quite overcome with piety.

The road from Spine Gap travels south, branching once it reaches the north shores of the Inland Sea, but a part of it, at least, runs down the coast through the ochre-coloured farmlands and hunting preserves of the Southern Kingdoms until it becomes the main artery running into Graagryk.

The Duchess Magda Brandiman descended her coach’s steps, extended her parasol, and opened it. Its lace shaded her from the hammering midday sun; mage-spells woven into the fabric cooled her immediately. Two of her bodyguards checked under the coach. Two more melted into the background around the high brick factory walls.

Seeing Cornelius Scroop with the picket line, Magda signalled to him. “Chancellor!”

The mage-wards on the industrial district momentarily lifted. Magda walked forward under a lowering sky of chimneys and black smoke. A stench of oil and coal assailed her flaring nostrils. But all the normal sounds—hammering, beating, shrieking iron, saws, earsplitting whistles—were silent.

Her fat Chancellor-Mage padded forward on large hirsute feet. “Your Grace, the picket line refuses to let me through!”

His face above his wilting lace collar glowed purple. Magda waved him to silence, stepped past the halfling’s rotund bulk, and beckoned to one of the workers on the picket line.

The halfling worker took off his flat brown velvet cap and held it in both hands as he approached her. Sweat soaked the underarms of his collarless shirt, even with his sleeves rolled up, and he wore no stockings under his knee-length velveteen breeches.

“Bring me your shop steward,” Magda directed.

“Yes’m.” The halfling nervously ducked his head. “Bert! ’Ere, Bert! She wants you, Bert.”

Another halfling emerged from the fifty or so who stood clustered round the factory gates, placards drooping in the heat. The curly hair on his feet was grey, and there were lines in his round face.

“Bert van der Klump, Your Grace,” he introduced himself. “Official shop steward of the Graagryk chapel of the Associated Socialist Halfling Workers Unions. Look ’ere, Your Grace. It says ’ere in the ASHWU minutes under section forty-three, sub-section thirty-seven, paragraph twelve, items seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fifteen, and twenty, that—”

The halfling stopped, rubbing his fist across his forehead.

“What does it say?” Magda inquired interestedly.

“I forgets,” Bert van der Klump confessed. He looked from the duchess to the chancellor, back at his duchess, and responded to the crinkling laugh-lines around the female halfing’s eyes. “Honest an’ truthful, ma’am, I fink it says refer to section nine, subsection four, paragraph twelve, point fourteen, above, but I can’t remember exactly. ’Owever, ma’am, the gist of it is as follows. We ’ere—”

He waved his hands at the halflings around the factory gate. They raised their placards and waved them, chanting enthusiastically. Magda read Halflings Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! and Ducal Rule—What Is to Be Done?

“We ’ere,” Bert repeated, “are striking, Your Grace, for a bigger slice of the cake.”

“Outrageous!” Chancellor Scroop, at Magda’s side, wiped his forehead with a soaking hankerchief, his magery gone with his concentration. “The city’s budget is stretched to the utmost! We don’t have gold to pay grasping, traitorous, blackmailing, malingering—”

“Oh, do be quiet,” Magda Brandiman said. “Meister van der Klump, how would it be if I met your demands?”

She busied herself straightening her lace-work elbow gloves and fluffing her silk gown’s petticoats. The halfling in cap and knee breeches snapped his fingers, and he and a dozen of his coworkers went into a huddle. They emerged, sweating.

Van der Klump demanded, “An’ what h’exactly would be the terms of this ’ere settlement, Yer Grace?”

“The ducal treasury will grant you all a further two tea-breaks, every hour, with bakery goods fresh from the city’s finest bakeries,” Magda said. She paused. Bert van der Klump’s boot-button eyes fixed firmly on her face. She added, “And four square meals a day at weekends in the workplace instead of the current three. What do you say, Meister?”

“Bert Klump, you ain’t sellin’ us out to the ducal-orcish consortium,” a worker yelled. “We got our principles! No dealin’ with the class enemy—urk.”

A placard dropped onto the worker’s head from the picket line behind her, and she sat down dazedly on the cobbles. The halfling with bulging muscles who carried the placard remarked gravely, “Oops.”

Albert van der Klump hurriedly wiped his hand on the seat of his velveteen breeches and held it out to the halfling duchess. “It’s a deal, ma’am!”

“Congratulations on your shrewd negotiations.” Magda jerked a ducal thumb at the vast brick armaments factories. “Now get back to work.”

Albert van der Klump replaced his flat velvet cap on his greying curls. “Workers of Graagryk! Three cheers for the Duchess Magdelene! Hip, hip—”

“HOORAY!”

Magda Brandiman turned on her heel and strode from the factory gates towards her closed coach, acknowledging applause with a wave of her lace-gloved hand.

Cornelius Scroop stumbled behind her. “Your Grace, are you mad? Those scum know we need the arms factories working night and day! They’re a menace. They’re undermining the fabric of halfling society! They’ll just make further demands until they’ve bled the ducal treasury dry. And,” he added, “the city can’t afford bakery goods. Not for grubby little jumped-up peasants.”

“Aw, c’mon,” the duchess protested. “Let them eat cake.” Cornelius Scroop sniffled with hayfever that even mage-spells couldn’t cure.

“Chancellor, I’ll leave you here to sort out the practical details.”

Two well-built halflings in baggy breeches and silk doublets that did not disguise the bulge of automatic pistol holsters flanked the duchess to her black-painted coach. She nodded to the one who held the door open and accompanied her inside.

Professor Julia Orrin looked up from where she lay across the seat, chewing her thumbnail and throwing dice left hand against right. The female Man sat up, cracking her head against the roof as the coach set off. She tugged the lace froth back from her wrists and fanned her face vainly against Graagryk’s heat, face as scarlet as her frock coat.

“Damned if it isn’t hot as the Abyss! Not like this in Fourgate.” She peered down at Magda, pushing powdered grey hair back from her wet forehead. “Your Grace, are you quite sure you don’t have relatives there? There was a halfling in the Abbey Park, looked just like you, couldn’t be you, of course, she’s a madam, but I used to frequent the bath-houses—”

“I briefly ran the Gibbet & Spigot tavern and bath-house in the Abbey Park last year, but had to give it up to resume my duties as duchess.”

Julia Orrin’s powdered brows lifted. “Really?”

“The barracks, Fyodor,” Magda ordered, removing her dark glasses. “But go by way of the coaching inn. Professor Orrin will wish to return to the north today.”

“I will?” Julia Orrin narrowed her eyes. “Then, madam, I warn you. We at the Visible College are examining very closely our commercial links with Graagryk. Very closely indeed. We may find it uneconomic to continue trading with you.”

“Uneconomic, or merely embarrassing?”

Midday sun pooled the black coach’s shadow on the street. A form of minor magery polarised the windows against the southern sun, and another mage-spell chilled the air inside. The wheels rattled. Magda gazed out through the darkened window at one halfling outrider, spear at attention, riding his lizard-beast through Graagryk’s deserted streets.

“It isn’t a contract with Graagryk, ma’am. It’s a contract with orcs. Questions are being asked. The college’s board of governors don’t like greenies.”

“That is not a term I care to have used in my presence.” Magda icily regarded the large, magic-scarred hands resting in the Man’s lap. One finger sported a silver and lapis lazuli ring. “I remember you from the Gibbet & Spigot. Rattan canes and mustard, wasn’t it, Professor Orrin?”

At the female Man’s expression, Magda smiled.

“Fortunately my professional discretion still applies. Now. The Visible College sells its nullity talismans to the orc marines, and you must be aware that the immunity to magical attack conferred on marines and their weapons is what makes them unbeatable. Like it or not, what you’re doing is selling armaments to greenies.”

The female Man said stiffly, “My colleagues and I prefer to regard ourselves as being in a defence industry.”

“Where does Graagryk’s money go?”

Julia Orrin frowned at the change of direction. “Don’t see what concern it is of Your Grace, but it goes into funding research. I specialise in pure research, myself. I’m proud to say that I doubt if I have ever created a spell that had any practical use whatsoever. Don’t care to visit manufactuaries. We’re not interested in commerce.”

“As long as you have enough money to purchase the expensive range of magical ingredients necessary for your research programmes.” Magda Brandiman removed a long ivory holder from her purse and inserted a slender roll of pipe-weed. Her attendant bodyguard clinked steel and flint until a spark flared. Magda inhaled deeply and blew out a plume of smoke.

“I used to wonder why you didn’t just create the gold you need,” the duchess said thoughtfully, “since it’s well known that there are more alchemists in the Visible College than there are whores in the Abbey Park. Except, I suppose, that such an influx of gold would devalue the currency, destabilise the entire economy, and bring every mage and king of the south down on your back if you tried it. Even magic is subservient to economics and the Gross National Product…”

“We’re northerners,” Julia Orrin said resentfully. “The north is poor. Fourgate Council keeps us on a tight budget. Always has. No way we could manage without outside funding of some kind.”

Magda Brandiman drew deeply on her pipe-weed holder. “You have a permanent and almost inexhaustible source of revenue in the orc marines. As long as you continue to exclusively sell us magic-null talismans, the orcs will continue to buy. It’s a growing business, armaments.”

The Professor-Mage dug in the capacious pockets of her frock coat, extracted a silver box, opened it, and sniffed a pinch of some substance up her right and left nostrils. “That’s—asschuuu!—essentially correct, Your Grace. It would cost us too much time to sell the talismans to individual customers. And in any case, they’re highly experimental technology. Probably unsafe. Civilians wouldn’t use them without far more extensive testing. Asshhuu!”

Julia Orrin wiped her streaming eyes and continued, “Which are all good reasons why this commerce is becoming too risky for the Visible College to continue it. If we’re found to be involved with gr—with orcs, then our reputations…”

Magda removed her pipe-weed stub, dropped it on the floor of the coach, and crushed it under one tiny heel.

“Let me introduce you to some of the facts of life, Madam Orrin. As far as the general public is concerned, dogtag talismans are standard protective devices. It is not known that they nullify magic. If that were known a scandal would ensue, and enquiries would be made about the talismans’ origin.”

“Madam,” Julia Orrin protested.

Magda continued relentlessly. “The Southern Kingdoms can’t damage the Visible College. They would be stupid to try. But in the face of public scandal—for example, proof of your selling proscribed magic to orcs—I think they might decline to sell you any magical ingredients you need for your research programmes. I really think they may do that.”

Professor-Mage Julia Orrin sat sweating and completely silent.

“And if your sources of supply dry up…well, as you say, you’re a pure research institute. You don’t produce a product. Nothing to prevent your bankruptcy, anyway. Madam Professor, the Visible College was lost from the first day, when you took my sons’ money for nullity talismans—and didn’t enquire too carefully to whom they would be sold.”

The Duchess Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau leaned forward and put her small hand on the Man’s knee.

“Don’t cancel a deal that’s advantageous to both of our peoples. Don’t worry about selling experimental magic to orcs. Your job is to worry about research. I suggest,” Magda said, “that you return to the city of Fourgate and continue it. I’ll handle the business end in Graagryk. I’m sure we’ll continue to deal usefully together for many years to come.”

Magda sat back in her seat and smiled at the back of the frock-coated Man, descending to the steps of the coaching inn.

She remained gazing at the summer sky for some moments.

“Why,” she murmured, “couldn’t I get the easy job, gallivanting around the Kingdoms running elections? Orcs!”

Beyond Graagryk the roads run south away from the Inland Sea, into the heart of the great and ancient Southern Kingdoms.

Ashnak chewed on the butt of an unlit cigar, his head lifting momentarily as he watched a wind-clipper sail over the roofs of the Serpent Temple in Shazmanar. In the great cities and civilisations of the south there are no ox-carts plodding dusty roads. The mage-powered ship’s wooden keel brushed the tops of palms growing on the temple’s roof-garden. The clipper spread more sail to catch the sun. Hull-down, it drove west.

“Very pretty,” the chief Serpent-Priest remarked.

General Ashnak, in full dress uniform of brown tunic, trousers, and flat peaked cap, reassured him, “Orcs don’t mind beauty. We’re broadminded. It doesn’t offend us. Much.”

The orc gazed across the square at the Serpent Temple’s candystick pillars, wide atrium, and snake-pattern mosaics.

“I’m officially requisitioning that building.” Ashnak belched. “In the name of Ferenzia. Lieutenant Chahkamnit, make a note of the marine temporary campaign headquarters. Priest, let the townspeople know that voting will take place this afternoon, after speeches by Her Dark Magnificence, the Lord of the Empire of Evil.”

“Yessss…” The priest, naked but for chainmail groin-covering, hissed agreement and glided off towards the ochre-and-crimson-painted temple. His skin was curiously sheened for one of the Man-race.

The black orc lieutenant at Ashnak’s elbow beamed. “First class accommodation, sir, what? Nothing’s too good for Herself. Shall I see about mobilising the orcs, sir?”

Ashnak growled, “Get this set up at the double, L.t.!”

“Absolutely, sir.” Lieutenant Chahkamnit saluted. “Only too pleased to be of assistance. Over here, if you please, Corporal Hikz!”

Around midday, the general of the orc marines stood squat-legged on the roof-garden of the Serpent Temple, surveying what could be seen of Shazmanar. The Shazmanarians thronged the main square, staring, with eyes that did not blink in the scalding southern light, at the five parked Bedford trucks and two M113 APCs under a palm tree. The temple beneath echoed to the tramp of combat boots and the bellows of orc NCOs.

“General, sir…” a voice creaked.

Ashnak turned his heavy-jawed head. The midday sun shone on a skeletal orc lieutenant whose rotting black uniform and flesh were rapidly mummifying in the southern heat. One hand, on whose fingers no flesh remained, saluted. Pinpricks of red light burned in rotting eyes and sockets.

“Sir, beg pardon, sir.” Lugashaldim came to attention. “The lieutenant wishes to have the general’s permission to form the Undead marines into a new unit.”

Ashnak pulled a frond from the nearest palm tree, chewed on it experimentally, and spat it out. His dress-uniform jacket pulled tight across his bulging shoulders.

“And why’s that, Lieutenant?”

“Sir, problems of being Undead, sir. We’re magical. Can’t wear nullity talismans.” The orc lieutenant made the kind of motion that in a living orc would indicate taking a deep breath. “Can’t use talisman-protected weaponry either, sir. Have to use it without the nullity talismans. That means the Special Undead Services have had to become very good at covert actions. Sir, I want permission for the Undead to form a unit that can act covertly in military and civil situations.”

Ashnak’s beetling brows raised. “Explain, Lieutenant.”

“Covert Intelligence Actions, sir, that’s what I thought we could call ourselves. We’ve been working on new technology for our CIA elite force, too.” The orc lieutenant, enthusiastic, swung his backpack from his rotting shoulders and began to rummage through it. “Here, sir.”

A skeletal hand proffered a miniature crossbow, almost lost in Ashnak’s hand when the big orc took it. The Undead lieutenant held up a crossbow bolt, and a set of headphones.

“Put the headphones on, sir. That’s it. Now if I take this crossbow bolt with me, over to the far side of the roof…that’s it…you couldn’t hear me now, sir, normally, sir, could you?”

Ashnak peered through palm tree fronds. The sun beat down on the roof-garden. Only a faint smell of carrion gave away the presence of the orc lieutenant. “Very clever, Lugashaldim.”

Lugashaldim thrashed back through the plants to emerge beside the orc general. “It’s a microphone, sir, fitted in the bolt of the crossbow. We can fire this from long distance into a wall or a room and overhear anything that takes place there!”

Ashnak leaned his elbows on the parapet of the roof-garden. He pointed at a slit-windowed building on the far side of Shazmanar’s main square. “Target that second window on the left, Lieutenant. Let’s see if this mother works.”

The Undead orc took the crossbow, swiftly fitted the bolt, raised it and sighted through one milk-blue dead eyeball, and fired. The bolt impacted.

“Holy shit!” Ashnak snatched the headset from his hairless, pointed ears. “Next time you do that without a warning, marine, your balls are going to be on my breakfast table!”

“Sorry, sir. Didn’t think, sir. Try it now, sir!”

Ashnak tentatively replaced the headphones and twiddled the volume control. His leathery forehead ridged as he frowned. Seeing that, the Undead orc frantically fiddled with the RT in his backpack.

“Dead air,” Ashnak said. “Not even an open channel.”

“No, sir,” Lugashaldim admitted.

The two orcs looked down from the roof-garden at the distant window. The speck of the crossbow bolt was plainly embedded in the frame.

Ashnak inquired, “Delicate mechanism, is it, this microphone of yours?”

Lugashaldim looked at the crossbow in his skeletal orcish hand. “Ah. Erm. Well…”

“Go away,” Ashnak said very softly, “and don’t bother me, marine. I have an election to win.”

A greater crowd had gathered down in the main square, many of them staring up, listening to the distant whup-whup-whup of an Apache helicopter gunship. Ashnak swung round, only to walk into the shining bone of his lieutenant.

“Sir!” Lugashaldim held out a black box. “There’s this, sir. In case of sabotage attempts by the opposite side.”

The orc general made a fist.

His Undead lieutenant gabbled: “It’s a remote control device, General. Imagine the scene—one morning you leave your temporary campaign HQ, your driver starts the ignition of your APC, and boom!, there’s an explosive device under it. I don’t trust the Light not to use that dwarven rock-blasting powder of theirs. The CIA will specialise in antiterrorist security, General.”

Ashnak unclenched his ham-sized fist and took the black box. “This does what, exactly, Lieutenant?”

“It’s a remote, sir. The other sensor is attached to the vehicle. It can remote-detonate any device that may have been placed under your vehicle, from a distance of up to one kilometre away. Boom! We lose an APC—but you’re safe, General.”

Ashnak’s large, hairy nostrils flared. “Hmmm…”

“I fixed up a test device under the last van, sir. If the general would like to activate the remote—”

BOOOOMM!

A pillar of black smoke and orange flame rolled up from the main square. Glass shattered in all the surrounding windows. Over the noise of screams, shrieks, and running feet, Ashnak commented, “Hardly what I’d call covert, Lieutenant.”

“But effective, sir. If that had been a terrorist device, we orcs would have taken no casualties from it whatsoever.”

Down in Shazmanar’s square, healer-mages rushed in from the rest of the city, and bodies too fragmented for magery had cloaks and robes thrown over them.

“Yes,” the orc general remarked. “You’re right—no orc casualties at all. I like that. Very well, Lieutenant Lugashaldim Form your Covert Intelligence Actions elite force and keep me posted as to their progress.”

“Yessir, General, sir!” The Undead lieutenant departed, jaws gleaming. A squad passed him, doubling up onto the clear area of the roof, and the honour guard, led by a lean green orc, Corporal Hikz, formed up as the Dark Lord’s helicopter touched down.

Darkness clung to the hot metal of the Apache helicopter gunship, muddying the bright southern sun. A slender form first emerged, cowled in glove-soft leather, a wine bottle tucked under one arm.

The orc saw, under the hood, green eyes glaring from a Man’s face blotched with grey and black. The slobbering lips pulled back, and saliva ran freely down and dripped from the nameless necromancer’s lumpy chin. The front of his robe was damp with spit and wine.

“Assshhnak…Behold our Mashter.”

The Darkness coalesced and oozed from the AH 64 Apache helicopter cabin, and hung, staining the tiles, behind him.

“This way, Your Sable Eminence.” Ashnak addressed the Darkness, touching his talons to the gold braid on the peak of his cap. His medalled tunic clinked. “Everything’s set up.”

“I will speak now. Summon the people of Shazmanar.”

Ashnak descended through the labyrinthine passages of the Serpent Temple. The nameless followed, hood cowling his misshapen head. Darkness dogged their heels, impenetrable even to orc-vision.

“Thish better go right,” the voice of the nameless necromancer slurred.

“Herself in a bad mood? Damn whistlestop tours.” Ashnak kicked and booted the orc marine election HQ staff into rapid movement, medals and ribbons bouncing on his uniformed barrel chest. “Corporal, herd that crowd into the square and shut ’em up! Sergeant, I want that PA activated, and I want it now. Get your asses in gear, you orcs. Go, go, GO!”

A very few minutes later the crowd of serpent-eyed male and female Men of Shazmanar faced wooden posts erected in front of their Serpent Temple. Black hangings hung festooned from the structure, with occasional purple trimmings. Two squads of orcs in heavy boots and a great deal of metalware stood in stiff poses on the temple steps. A banner strung from the wooden posts read “VOTE FOR THE DARK LORD—YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE.”

A very large orc in a constricting brown uniform mounted the marble steps and cleared his throat. Black boxes at the corners of the square echoed his noise, so that all heard him clearly when he spoke.

“People of Shazmanar! Please give a great big enthusiastic welcome for your Powers of Darkness candidate in the coming election…the Dark Lord!”

The orc walked down the steps. A chill touched the gathered population of Shazmanar. There was a black-cloaked figure in front of the temple now, and none of them had seen it come.

The figure raised pale hands and put the cowl back from its head. The material chimed, as if it might be metal.

Possession was having its effect on the body of The Named. Her rich yellow hair now caught the sun as a bleached white. Sepia-blue shadows haunted the fine-featured face. The rangy Man’s body began to seem swamped in the folds of the black metalmesh robes.

Her eyes opened, lids rising to expose an orange glow.

“Hear Me, people of Shazmanar,” She said, “for I have come to solicit your vote…”

Having heard the speech a dozen times before, Ashnak of the orc marines settled himself behind the Bedford trucks and lit up a pipe-weed cigar, cap pulled down over his eyes. The PA system brought him snatches of the speech:

“…and My aim will be to provide a number of healer-mages in every town who will perform their services freely, because they will be paid by My central government. My government will also be paying a wage to the crime enforcement-wizards, thus cutting down on bribery and corruption…”

The Shazmanarians muttered. Ashnak caught one hiss of “Lunacsssy…!”

“I don’t think She’s quite got the gift of public speaking, sir.” Lieutenant Chahkamnit peered at the standing crowd. “More used to giving orders, I suppose. At least they’re not walking out on Her, sir.”

“They won’t be doing that, Lieutenant. I have Kestrel and Vulture squads deployed at the exits of the square.”

The PA crackled. “…and free housing, together with weekly sums of money paid to those who have reached the end of their working lives. To enable My Dark government to keep these election promises, I shall, if I have your votes, institute a system of voluntary contributions of tiny amounts of money from each of you, which shall be called ‘taxes’…”

A Shazmanarian called, “Evil and corruptsssion!”

Ashnak yawned widely, exposing yellowing fangs and brass-capped tusks to the sun, and belched. A lizard scuttled past. The orc trapped its tail under his combat boot, popped the lizard in his mouth, and chewed contentedly.

“…and under My government, as I am committed to the principle of a multi-ethnic society, I shall ensure that all of us—serpent-people, orcs, liches, witches, and enchanters—live together in unity and prosperity…”

Someone at the back booed.

“Watch the crowd. Single out the obvious troublemakers, Chahkamnit,” Ashnak directed. “You’ll be bringing them to me for interrogation.”

“…and in conclusion, may I add this. We face the greatest peril of this world’s age. We all face an enemy whom even Darkness may, without prejudice, admit to fear. But, who is better able to deal with vileness than the Evil Empire? I say again: if elected, I will pursue with all speed the eradication of this dreadful force from the earth…”

Ashnak ground out his cigar. “Stand by to see Herself back to the Apache, Lieutenant. I’ll handle the rest of this.”

He prostrated himself in front of the Dark Lord as She passed, shrouded again in impenetrable Darkness and bad temper. A bell-like voice addressed him from the murk.

“Tell Me, My orc, is this something I cannot do? When I harangued the Horde in days gone by, they cheered Me loyally to the echo. Where is My error?”

Ashnak refrained from pointing out the Horde of Darkness’s susceptibility to Dark magic (at least at the humble foot soldier’s level) and the general inadvisability of appearing unenthusiastic whilst in the Dark Lord’s Blasted Redoubt of the East.

“It’s only because they’re not used to You, Dread Lord,” the orc general said. “They’re overawed.”

“Ah. Yes. That must be it.”

The nameless necromancer cradled his baby-orc-skull wine-cup, trailing in the Darkness’s wake. From the dark of his hood, his voice slurred, “Perchance it’sh your orcsh, Dread Lord. They do have a negative public image.”

“Yes,” the voice of the Dark Lord mused. “I am disappointed in you, orc. I should not have made you My field marshal. You may consider yourself returned to the rank of general.”

“Ma’am.” Ashnak and the nameless glared at each other.

“Come!”

The Dark Lord departed. Allowing some minutes for the usual turmoil to subside, Ashnak shambled back up onto the temple steps.

“Awriiight! Now listen up, people of Shazmanar. You all know how this here ‘election’ works. Yesterday you saw the Light. Now you’ve seen the Dark. Now you’re gonna vote. And you’re gonna do it right. Ain’tcha? Okay, Lieutenant, get ’em into lines.”

The afternoon sun beat down on Shazmanar’s candy-twist architecture and flowing palm trees. The serpent-people in their mail groin-coverings hissed as orc marines, assault rifles slung over their brawny shoulders, herded them into long columns that wavered across the square. A squad of grunts scurried about with cardboard boxes full of mimeographed sheets, handing them out by the fistful.

“This,” Ashnak waved a specimen sheet of paper above his head, “is called a ballot form. It has ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ written on it. You make your mark beside whichever one you want to vote for. If you cannot read, my orcs will assist you. Then you put the paper through the slots in these sealed boxes here. Then we count ’em up. Everybody got that?”

Ashnak strode down the steps into the square, elbowing his way to the marines guarding the ballot boxes. Lieutenant Chahkamnit sat with a carton of ballot forms beside him, marking the ‘Dark Lord’ box on each, and stuffing them into the sealed boxes.

“Well done,” the orc general remarked. He shot out a muscular arm, stopping a serpent-man from approaching the sealed box, and plucked the ballot paper out of the startled Shazmanarian’s hand.

“Isss meant to be a ssssecret ballot!” the snake-Man protested.

Ashnak unfolded the paper, furrowing his brow as he read it. “‘The candidate I wish to elect is the Light candidate’…”

The orc shot out a hand, caught the serpent-Man around the throat, lifted him bodily, and threw him over the heads of the crowd. There was a trailing sibilant scream and a thud.

“Wrong!” Ashnak reproved the Shazmanarian as the serpent-Man clawed his way upright. “Now try again, you sorry mother, and this time get it right.”

The crowd hissed and muttered. From somewhere there came the snk! of a bolt-action rifle. As one, the Shazmanarians shuffled forward to the ballot boxes.

Under the gleaming eye of Ashnak, general officer commanding the orc marines, the city of Shazmanar proceeded to record their votes for the Grand Election to the Throne of the World.

6

The further southeast from the kingdoms, the more the roads thin out and eventually vanish altogether. Until, half a continent away from the Inland Sea, the elven rainforests of Thyrion swelter under an equatorial sun.

In the back of the speeding river assault craft, Marine Elendylis Goldenfire abandoned the stately plucking of her harp and gave out with three wailing chord progressions. Marine Illurian Swiftbow cut in with a backbeat, and added a hard-driving guitar riff. The elven music began to motor as the assault craft rocked crazily from side to side on the foaming brown water.

“Move your ass, L.t.!” Gunnery Sergeant Dakashnit bawled over the noise. “Gear up! What’s the matter with you elves? Do you wanna live forever?”

“Funny you should say that,” Lieutenant Gilmuriel Hunt-Lord remarked.

Starlight Squad, last of Gilmuriel’s platoon to hit a dropzone, and the command group he had chosen to go in with, sprawled among heaps of equipment in the body of the assault craft and exchanged laconic backchat as they geared up. Beads and bangles ornamented the elf marines’ combat fatigues, dulled with hard wear, muddy and worn. Marines Dyraddin Treewaker and Belluriel Starharp wore ragged silk scarves as headbands, and marines Goldenfire and Swiftbow had adopted round wire-rimmed smoked glasses. A curious sigil—a circle with a stylised three-toed bird’s claw imprinted on it—had been stencilled on their helmet covers. Corporal Silthanis Blackrose smoked a roll of Dakashnit’s pipe-weed.

“You’ve certainly made these elves into marines, Sergeant,” Gilmuriel sighed in very reluctant admiration. He tipped his helmet back and scratched his pointed ears. “Now—HQ says no chance of reinforcements for at least five days.”

“We ain’t gonna get no help till the election’s over.” Dakashnit straightened up and shook foam from her straight razor, having shaved her crest down to a regulation marine crewcut. She emptied the soapy water from her helmet into the river. The orc then relieved herself in the helmet, tipped it over the side of the boat again, and emptied her pack of combat rations into it. Chewing, she added, “L.t., we’re always getting fucked by the politicians.”

The hulking orc grunt piloting the speeding boat muttered, “Squeakies! Ain’t no fucking use as marines! It’s us orcs has to do the job.”

With heavy sarcasm, Gilmuriel fluted, “I suppose a few hundred orcs are enough to hold back the Bugs’ advance.”

The grunt said proudly, “We’re cadre troops. The marines’ finest. Okay, so we ain’t here in force—just call us the thin green line.”

Dakashnit leaned over. “Marines, these may be squeakies—but they’re my squeakies. Let’s hear some respect.”

“Uh, yessir, Sergeant, ma’am!” The orc steered the powerful boat in towards the bank. “Here’s your drop point.”

Engines throbbed overhead: helicopter support. The nose of the boat beached. The eight-elf squad pitched over the side into leech-ridden mud and squelched ashore. Gilmuriel didn’t pause to watch the rest of the Forest King’s expeditionary force hitting the waterline. The elf, fine-fingered hand grasping his automatic pistol, pounded across the open space and hit jungle cover.

Squatting in the shade of a fronded tree, the other elves clustered around her, Aradmel Brightblade murmured, “We don’t even know what this ‘enemy’ is, Sergeant.”

“Isn’t what they are that’s important,” Dakashnit drawled. The dappled sun and shadow hid her even when Gilmuriel knew where he was looking for the orc. “These Bugs butchered Moondream’s squad, so we know they’re hostile. All we need to know is—where they are…”

Two youngsters—Dyraddin Treewaker and Bellurial Starharp, neither more than three centuries old, to Gilmuriel’s certain knowledge—abandoned interest in the mission and began discussing elven genealogies and the Lost Lands of the Oversea. Gilmuriel cuffed them.

“There is a term in the marines for this formation,” he snapped. “Clusterfuck. If you cluster up like that—we’re fucked! The enemy will waste all of us with one burst. Now let us get sorted out for line of march.”

The jungle fronds of Thyrion dripped a humid damp. Gilmuriel took a deep breath, smelling the decay of leaves, the spoor of beasts, and the age of the great spiring trees. His elven instincts shrieked at him of a wrongness in the rain-forest. A scent of evil beast, apart from orc; and metal, over and above the weapons of the elf marines.

The last sun to sift through the canopy illuminated Gilmuriel’s blond hair and woodland cammo bandanna. Weighed down under kit, he crouched with the black-haired radio elf beside him.

“Now listen up, you elves! This is our first real combat mission. We are to be in position on Hill 300 before dawn, dug in, with the rest of the company. Daylight will be the signal for the assault on the enemy. We’re going to hold back the Bug advance from the City of the Trees.”

The damp vapours of Thyrion Forest wreathed. The slide and lock of M16 bolts sounded muffled under the heat haze, and the omnipresent buzzing of insects.

“You may think the Forest King has sent us out to hold where no force could hold, to give up our lives in the hope it will buy time for the rest of the free peoples. If so, well and good. The long lives of the elven kind are not lightly given up, except in the cause of a great sacrifice.”

Dakashnit gave a baritone chuckle. She sprawled back in a bush, massive bow-legs spread, scratching at her crotch through ragged combat trousers. Thyrion’s insect population swarmed over her black hide; the few that managed to bite through it falling off, poisoned.

“Last stand be buggered!” Camouflage paint irregularly striped the sergeant’s craggy, grinning features. “L.t., if it gets too hot, we’re outta here. We’re professional soldiers—we get paid for running away.”

Dakashnit slid silently to her feet, weighted down with ammunition belts, grenades, and with a belt-fed General Purpose Machinegun resting idly across one broad shoulder.

“Recap. Basic marine technique for reporting the sighting of hostiles. If you see one enemy…” Dakashnit raised a sharp-taloned finger. “You hold up one finger. This is two enemy sighted. This is three.”

The orc held up four taloned fingers.

“This is many.”

Silthanis Blackrose solemnly nodded. Sergeant Dakashnit nodded at him. “Corporal, how many enemy is this?”

The tall, pudgy elf regarded the whole orc-hand held up.

“Don’t know, Sarge,” he admitted.

“That,” Dakashnit said, “is too many. Now. Them Bugs is steaming west, towards the centres of highest population density. So let’s go give ’em a hard time!”

Festooned with packs, water-bottles, spare magazines, entrenching tools, and everything else they assumed useful, the eight tall and delicate-boned elves grinned back at their sergeant. “Yo!”

“Now you listen up,” Dakashnit repeated, in a tone that for an orc was gentle. “Out here we’re gonna be depending on each other. You screw up, you gonna get somebody else killed. Do you hear me? You watch your buddy’s back. Your buddy watches yours. If anyone goes down, you tell me or the L.t. about it, and you don’t wait. Now I don’t wanna hear any more talk about nobly laying down our lives. We’re marines! What are we gonna do?”

“Kick ass, Sergeant!” the tiny radio operator, Byrna Silkentress, squeaked.

Dakashnit beamed. “That’s what I like to hear. Keep your heads down and your eyes open. And just remember—a sucking chest wound is Nature’s way of telling you to stay out of a firefight…”

Several hours of tactical night movement through another part of the Forest of Thyrion, which resembled exactly every other part of the Forest of Thyrion, brought them to within striking distance of their startline objective. Gilmuriel paused on the edge of a clearing, letting his elvish vision read the map by starlight.

Aradmel Brightblade began a hymn of praise to the stars, and abruptly clapped her hand over her mouth.

The gunnery sergeant, night-vision equally good, peered over Gilmuriel’s shoulder. “I don’t reckon we’re headed right, L.t.”

“We need no maps!” Gilmuriel folded his and returned it to his map-case. “We are elves in the ancient forest of our forefathers. This way.”

After an hour and a half of increasingly slow movement, Gilmuriel was about to consult the map again and damn elvish instincts when starlight skylined a distinctive ridge and vast goldentrees.

“Well, whaddya know?” Sergeant Dakashnit breathed. “Okay, you elves, let’s see you dug in quietly.”

“We are elves,” Gilmuriel objected. “We shall take to the trees.”

“Man, I don’t care if you take to drink!” the squat orc hissed. “But we is part of a company attack, which is part of a brigade attack, which means we do what we’re told, when we’re told, and we was told to dig in, not roost up in the trees like the fucking birds!”

Lieutenant Gilmuriel’s eyes glowed golden in the forest dark. “I didn’t ask for an argument, Sergeant. I gave you an order!”

Dawn brought first the screeching and warbling of ten thousand birds, before light showed in the sky. Night had chilled the earth below the ridge: now it began to smell again of rot and decaying meat. Thyrion’s trees are strong and wide. The eight elves, in buddy-buddy pairs among the branches, ate their waybread, a certain professionalism apparent. Four ate, four others attended to radio, weapons check, and sentry duty.

A talon tapped a weapon. Gilmuriel automatically glanced towards the sound.

Sergeant Dakashnit sprawled on an outer branch, belly down, peering through the thinning leaves on the tree’s east side. She tapped her shoulder and then her head. Gilmuriel moved lightly out to crouch beside her.

Dawn shone into the valley below the ridge.

“I smell something I don’t like, L.t.”

Gilmuriel’s gaze swept the ridge on the far side of the valley, seeking smoke, or any sign that the enemy were encamped where orcish Military Intelligence had reported.

The rising morning vapours drifted unchecked.

The sun growing warm on his face, Gilmuriel spat. “That hill is as bare as a dwarf’s bottom. There aren’t any Bugs there.”

Dakashnit wordlessly pointed downwards.

The expected smoke plumes of the Elf Expeditionary Force lined the ridge they currently occupied. Gilmuriel smelled cooking fires, roasting meat. His keen sight distinguished dug-outs, trenches, camouflage netting—

“Mother of Forests…” the elf lieutenant breathed. “Shit!”

Morning sun glinted on the shining, sticky, dripping black carapaces of Bugs.

In every dug-out, every position…

“There’s Bugs encamped all right,” Sergeant Dakashnit whispered. “On this hill! We got a whole company round us, ’cept it isn’t ours. L.t., that’s the last time I trust elf instincts over a map.”

“That’s the last time I trust Military Intelligence!”

Gilmuriel, heart pounding, watched the scorpion-tailed insectoids moving in dug-outs not twenty feet from the hole of the goldentree. The fronds of the forest plants shrank back from touching the blue-black carapaces and shrivelled when a Bug brushed through them.

“I want fire support!” Lieutenant Gilmuriel whispered. “I want tanks, mortars, artillery, and fighter-ground attack!”

“It’s all miles behind us, L.t., at the original map reference. Leastways, I hope. Shit, lookit that!”

A particularly large specimen of Bug, some eight feet tall, stood just below the tree the squad occupied. Morning sun striped its dripping jaws, powerful exoskeleton, and faceted eyes. At this close a range Gilmuriel could make out the straps of its body harness, and the pouches and packs hanging off it.

“HHHRRRASSHHHHH!”

Twenty Bugs poured from the nearest dug-out. Gilmuriel witnessed claws adjusting peculiar long-barreled weapons, fixing straps and clips, and grabbing for equipment. The seven-foot-tall insectoids shambled into the open space under the tree and formed a straggling line, facing the large Bug.

“HRASSSH-SKKKRRRAGHH!”

The line instantly straightened. Bugs shuffled on their clawed hind feet. Gilmuriel surveyed the row of carapaced heads below him. Each quartet of eyes faced forward. Each pair of dangling skeletal arms hung down by the slumping thorax.

The large insectoid hissed, slime dripping from its jaws. Each Bug froze into immobility. It paced up and down the line, snarling sibilantly. It stopped at one Bug to straighten a strap, at another to jingle a loose neck-harness, and at a third—its hiss rising to a furious pitch—to wave skeletal arms and spit slime.

The Bug dug its claws into its soft underbelly. They emerged holding a weapon. It slammed its exoskeletal heels together, scorpion tail jutting over its head at a strained angle.

“SKAHHHH—SRISSH-KAAAH!”

The line of Bugs faced east smartly and jogged off into the insectoid encampment. Gilmuriel and the orc gunnery sergeant gazed down from the fifty-foot drop either side of the branch they stood on.

“Y’know, L.t.” Dakashnit scratched her head. “That looks familiar, somehow…”

Gilmuriel shook himself and moved back to the main trunk of the goldentree, beckoning Starlight squad to join him.

Aradmel Brightblade chuckled under her breath. “Hey, sir—tell the orc to go and crap in the Bugs’ dug-outs, sir—it’s called ‘area denial’!”

Dakashnit uncharacteristically ignored her. “L.t., they got the ground sewn up down there. We ain’t going anywhere.”

“Move with the shadowed silence of our ancient race,” Lieutenant Gilmuriel directed. He gestured at the surrounding goldentrees and at their broad branches that stretched away like paths above the forest floor. “We don’t need the earth. We’re elves, Sergeant, and we’re out of here!”

A long hour later, the elf marines descended from the trees.

“You’re on point, Sergeant,” Gilmuriel said.

There was nothing from the orc but a soft “Yo!” and when Gilmuriel looked, she vanished, blending with the rain-forest’s shadows. He led the marine recruits off down a faint track, ears pricked, elf-instincts at full stretch.

Dakka-dakka-dakka-FOOM!

Bushes rustled. Gilmuriel heard a succession of thuds. He looked back from where he stood alone on the track. All twelve elf marines had dived into the bushes, only the shaking leaves marking their passage.

Gilmuriel abruptly ducked his head and slid into cover beside Corporal Silthanis. “Get your elves up, marine! This is the real thing! Our first firefight!”

“I know that, sir.” The elf looked up at his lieutenant from under a too-large GI helmet with BORN TO SING stencilled on the cover. “Lord Gilmuriel, let’s go back. Call in the helicopter and let’s go home!”

The bush under which Silthanis Blackrose cowered shook itself and became the orc sergeant Dakashnit, camouflage fatigues stuck at every point with tree-fronds and rushes. Her piglike eyes gleamed under the rim of her kevlar helmet.

“I’ll take a recon team down there, Lieutenant,” Dakashnit volunteered enthusiastically. “Yo!”

The sound of real gunfire made Gilmuriel’s stomach flip over.

“No, orc. We return to the main company, or better still, the City of the Trees. Byrna Silkentress, call the helicopter.”

With no rustle of leaves, the orc’s GPMG swung up to cover Gilmuriel. “Get down there and fire on the hostiles, L.t. The enemy might miss you. I certainly won’t.”

Gilmuriel glared with the arrogance of fifty generations of High Elven ancestors. The orc, head sunk down almost between her shoulders, showed a yellow fang.

“There’s elf recruits down there, L.t. I just saw. Marines don’t leave their own. Even if they are a useless mob of squeakies. What are your guys down there gonna do to the Bugs, Lieutenant—sing at them?”

An unexpected smile broke on the elf’s fine, aquiline features. He put one finger up, still with harp-string callouses on the pad, and pushed the machinegun barrel to one side. Dakashnit noted that it now pointed directly at Byrna Silkentress. Assuming this to be an accident, she elevated her weapon’s muzzle skyward.

Takka-Takka-BOOM!

“If there are other forest elves down in that mess, we must come to their aid, of course. Very well. Gunnery Sergeant, line the recruits up for order of march.”

“Awrriiiight! Marines Illurian Swiftbow and Aradmel Brightblade, take the back door. If anything comes up behind us, I wanna know about it. Marines Dyraddin Treewaker and Elendylis Goldenfire, you’re on point. The rest of you, five-metre spacing, don’t close up, watch your buddies, watch for silent signals, and keep your fucking golden eyes open for the enemy!”

Gilmuriel took his place towards the centre of the line of march. A very un-elven sweat trickled down between his angular shoulder-blades, soaking the coarse cloth of his combat fatigues.

The orc sergeant reappeared by becoming a bush Gilmuriel had not noticed. “L.t., take ’em up to the top of that ridge and we can make a killing zone of this valley.”

Takka-Takka-FOOM!

Shredded leaves spattered Gilmuriel’s camouflage-painted features. A chunk of raw wood dripping sap caught him in the stomach and he sat down heavily. Rounds whipped over his head. Rolling and crawling, he made cover behind a moss-shrouded rock.

FOOOM!

“Number and distance!” Dakashnit bawled, from behind another rock. “Come on, you fuckwitted shit-for-brains marines! Didn’t I teach you anything? Anyone see where that came from?”

“Over there,” a shrill elvish voice quavered. Belluriel Starharp.

“Over where?”

“Over there!”

“Over where?—oh, fuck it,” the orc sergeant swore. “This is what your training is devised to avoid, grunts. Give me a fucking clock direction on axis of march!”

Belluriel Starharp, sounding very bemused, asked, “What is time to one of the elven-kind?”

Gilmuriel called, “Four o’clock, Sergeant.”

Back pressed flat to a rock outcrop, shivering, he found himself facing the rest of his squad. The elves lay face-down in a cluster in the leafmould of the forest floor, fingernails digging into the dirt. Only Corporal Silthanis had taken any reasonable cover: the tall, dark-skinned elf was scrunched down behind a fallen tree.

“First time under fire,” the orc sergeant sighed. “Damn squeakies.”

BOOM! Dukka-dukka-FOOM!

The orc broke cover, sprinting across the ground in a low crouch, seizing two elves by their sweat-soaked combat jacket collars and dragging them towards the rocks. “Move your asses or you’re dead meat!”

Dakashnit threw Byrna Silkentress and the ex-healer-mage Ravenharp the White into the cover of the granite outcrops. She ducked her head and shambled back across the open ground towards the recruits. Gilmuriel saw her jerk, miss a step, then run on at a crouch.

TAKKA-TAKKA-TAKKA-TAKKA!

Adrenaline fired him. He drew his pistol, winced at the feel of cold iron, and replaced it in the holster; sprinted across the open ground of the killing zone—muzzle flashes to the right of the line of march: thirty metres—and dragged Aradmel Brightblade to her feet.

“Move your buddy into the rocks!”

The elf stared at him with glazed eyes. Gilmuriel backhanded her across the jaw, then sucked the skinned knuckles of hands not used to violence. Marine Aradmel ran for the rocks on her own. The lieutenant got both hands under Marine Illurian’s armpits and dragged her, combat-booted heels jouncing, back into the granite outcrop.

DAKKA-FOOOMM!

“Fuck, man!” The orc sergeant hit the rock beside him, crouching down, her brawny shoulder pushed into the moss-covered granite. Her helmet was missing—out in open ground, Gilmuriel saw, with a smear of silver metal across it—and sweat shone in her cropped, bleached crest. “You did good, L.t.”

The elf blushed a delicate rose at her praise.

Busily re-tying the red sweatband around her bloodstained brows, Dakashnit said quietly, “Gonna have to assault through the enemy position. Now, L.t. Call us in some indirect fire support for when we’ve fought through.”

“Byrna Silkentress!” Gilmuriel signalled to his radio operator, crouched behind a rock five yards away. The tiny black-haired elf shivered and wept, a dark stain spreading at the crotch of her combat trousers. “Marine Byrna! Raise the artillery camp and call in fire support on this position—five minutes, on my mark—now.”

Trembling so that her fingers could hardly work the radiocom, the elf marine obeyed. Lieutenant Gilmuriel leaned back, tensed his thighs, and lifted himself to peer over the top of the granite outcrop. Only his blond hair, his eyes, and the tops of his pointed ears showed. “Prepare to advance—”

Ker-FOOM!

“—what the fuck was that?”

“Mortar, sounds like. I reckon we’ll re-supply at Firebase Charlie,” Dakashnit speculated. “Remind me to stock you guys up on mortars. Hey, squeaky! Bug-bait! Wake up. That’s the fucking enemy over there. Start firing back!”

Takka-takka-dukka-dukka-FOOM!

“Yo, man! I see you, you son of a bitch!”

The orc reared up, General Purpose Machinegun grasped in her taloned paws, firing from the hip. The noise wrenched all breath from Gilmuriel’s lungs. He refilled them to yell, “Give that orc supporting fire, you miserable pointy-eared bastards, or I’ll shoot you myself!”

“Way to go, L.t.!” Sergeant Dakashnit fell back into cover beside Gilmuriel. “Listen up, you elves—those are the Bugs that chewed up Baradaka’s squad! Fireteam One, give ’em hell; Fireteam Two, advance under covering fire. Go!”

Gilmuriel, under cover of a ragged barrage from Silthanis and half the squad, loped at a crouch up to another granite outcrop. One glance over his shoulder showed him a hostile, running left to right, hitting cover—

The glimpse of black chitinous shell dripping with bodily secretions, the half-humanoid form with its scorpion tail raised high, shining blue-black and silver in the dappled leaf-light; the noise of the firefight—all this conspired to make Gilmuriel’s stomach churn. The elf bent forward and vomited. “We’re fucking dead!”

“Fight through,” Dakashnit bawled, “or we’ll have our own fucking mortars landing on our heads—what the fuck is that?”

“Magery! No,” Gilmuriel corrected himself, elvish instincts screaming. “No, it isn’t…”

Across the leaf-strewn expanse of the Bugs’ killing ground, the sun and shadow-dappled air twisted and somehow opened. A dark silhouette became visible within it. Too stocky for an elf, too tall for an orc. The shape of a Man, outlined in black fire.

The elf whispered, “It has no smell of Good or Evil about it!”

Dakashnit hastily changed magazines. “Look at the Bugs, L.t. It’s stopped ’em cold. They ain’t got no fucking idea what it is, either!”

The air folded, taking into itself green shadows and sunlight, becoming a whirling vortex of golden light. The Man-silhouette suddenly snapped into movement.

“Mother of Forests protect us!” Gilmuriel gaped, his jaw dropping. The three-dimensional figure of a Man appeared out of the vortex, facing the elf lieutenant, seeming to step backwards from something that was not the Forest of Thyrion.

“Holy shit!” Dakashnit half-straightened from her crouch.

The sounds of gunfire fell silent on both sides.

The orc’s eyes gleamed, and all her tusks showed in a grin. “Do you know what that is?”

The Man stood quite still, his polished brown combat boots crushing the leaves under his feet with undeniable solidity. He was almost as tall as an elf, but broad across the shoulders and massively muscled. Gilmuriel let his gaze travel up the Man’s body—brown-and-ochre camouflage fatigues; web-belt, pouches, and pistol; commando knife; rubber-edged dogtag shining on a silver chain—until it reached the face. Sunlight-dappled regular, square features, a strong jawline, and crewcut hair glinting blond. The Man’s piercing blue eyes met his.

“What is that?” the elf mumbled.

“That’s a real marine!” Gunnery Sergeant Dakashnit brandished her GPMG. “Just feel the aura on that! I ain’t felt nothing like it since I was up in old Dagurashibanipal’s caverns—I don’t know where he’s from, or how the fuck he got here, but that is one genuine marine. The finest killing machine ever devised by Man. The elite. The best.”

The orc straightened, as much as orcs are able, gripping stock and barrel of the machinegun. She threw the GPMG bodily towards the Man. Smoothly and as if by long training, the Man raised his hands and the GPMG slapped into his grip.

Dakashnit called, “Yo, m’man! Hostiles thirty metres to your rear! Chaarge!”

The smartly uniformed Man turned his head slowly. No hurry. No hesitation.

Ninety feet away, their chitinous heads weaving as if bemused by the vortex’s visitation, the Bugs emerged slowly out of light cover. Thyrion’s green fronds caressed sticky black carapaces, horns, and clawed forelimbs. The slender scorpion tails curved up. Shadow slid across the belts and packs slung across their articulated thoraxes, glinting from the black metal of their weapons. One opened its vast jaws in a sticky, slime-dripping yawn. Gilmuriel shuddered.

“Hostile targets!” the orc called to the newly appeared Man. “Take ’em out, marine!”

The Man’s hands opened.

The machinegun thudded to the jungle floor, ignored.

The uniformed Man opened his mouth.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargggghhhh!”

One large combat boot caught Gilmuriel and bowled the elf over as the Man barrelled past him. The Man sprinted at top speed, bawling, eyes glazed and wide with shock, mouth a square of fear.

“Wha’—?” Dakashnit mouthed. “What?”

“Fuck it!” Gilmuriel fluted, scrambling back onto his feet and signalling to his squad, ignoring the flabbergasted orc sergeant. He pointed after the running Man. “You elves—don’t ask questions—follow that marine!”

There are no roads to the east.

The Blasted Redoubt kills the land about its bastions. The dead shadows of those grim towers, those windowless high walls and courtyards where sun never shines, devastate the crop-yield for leagues around. The Redoubt itself is vast enough to create its own rain-shadow, so that one approaches from the west through a landscape of cracked earth, shrivelled moss, and cold desolation; and approaches from the east—but who knows what mud and storms lurk to the east of the Blasted Redoubt? Only the slaves of the Dark Lord ever travel there, and they are, for the most part, singularly reticent.

“All I can say,” Ned Brandiman remarked grumpily, “is that it’s frightening the manticore.”

The wagon’s draught-beast fluffed up its lion pelt, docked scorpion tail twitching, its Man’s features showing distress. Ned threw it a tidbit of fried toad.

“Have no fear!” Amarynth Firehand called, striding beside the wagon, his ragged white habit tangling in briars. Thorns lacerated the elf’s dark skin. His eyes glowing, the Holy One exclaimed, “This is the ideal place to begin the Light’s Crusade!”

Ned muttered, “Ideal, my hairy left foot!”

“Mother Edwina!” Will Brandiman reproved. “The Holy One is guided by the Lady of Light. If he says that we begin the Light’s election campaign in the middle of desolation, in the Dark Lord’s own fortress Redoubt—we, a company of barely two dozen, on a perilous journey from the rich, comfortable south and its plentiful supplies of food, for example—then that’s exactly what we do.”

“Amen!” the good Abbess Edwina snarled.

The Holy Paladin Amarynth strode unmoved through the black land, his shaggy mass of dark hair flowing back from his pointed ears, in his hand a staff that glowed as white as his ragged monk’s robes. The elf turned to look back at the wagons of the Mission of Light, his slender form silhouetted against the bastions, flying buttresses, walls, balconies, spires, towers, pinnacles, and sheer masonry bulk of the Blasted Redoubt.

“On!” the elf cried. “Onward!”

Tiny figures began to scurry along the Redoubt’s parapets and into the shadow of the great West Gate. Ned’s long sight detected orcs, their smaller cousins the kobolds, the giant wolf-steeds orcs use in battle, and the leathery fanged steeds-of-the-air unnamed in the west.

“Wonderful!” Ned looked back over his shoulder.

Behind the Mission of Light’s wagon a dozen of the Holy Order of Flagellant Knights plodded along the desolate track. Each raised a metal-thonged whip and cracked it down on the back of the male or female elf in front. Periodically the leaders of the columns would swap with the back markers. The Mission wagon had been dogged for forty miles by vultures following the scent of the blood.

“Know what I think?” Ned observed, scratching under the hem of his nun’s habit at his hairy bare feet. “I think we should’ve gone back and burned the Inn of the Sixteen Varied Delights, and that laundry, and then we should have left Graagryk for good.”

His brother whipped out an ebony comb, slicking his spell-dyed hair back from his brows.

“You can always burn down taverns that have thrown us out. How often does a halfling get a chance to enter the Blasted Redoubt?”

It crossed Ned’s mind to ask, “How often does a halfling want a chance to enter the Blasted Redoubt?” But the thought of ebony carvings, jet stones, sable furs, and black diamonds—doubtless with no special guard on them, other than being in the orc-haunted, evil magic-spelled, heart-of-desolation fortress of the Dark Lord—made his eyes gleam in his chubby face.

“Take the reins,” Ned directed, handing the manticore’s tack to his brother, and proceeded to freshen up his lip- and eye-paint. By the time the Mission wagon rolled into one of the Redoubt’s outer courtyards he had repaired the worst ravages of travel and brushed the mud from his red habit.

Kobolds shambled from the shadows in increasing numbers, their eyes catching the light redly. The larger orcs herded them back with poleaxes and jagged black swords. Ned snapped his fingers at a wolf that stood several hand-spans higher at the shoulder than any halfling.

“Good doggie!”

“HRRRAAAGGGH…”

“Edwina, stop teasing that poor animal.” His brother, teeth gleaming whitely in the courtyard’s gloom, stepped past Ned to address a hulking orc in a studded leather jerkin and black steel helm—obviously one of the fighting Agaku. “Good afternoon, sir. Allow me to introduce myself: I am the campaign manager for the Holy Paladin-Mage Amarynth, your Light candidate in the forthcoming election to the Throne of the World.”

The black-clad orc shuffled from foot to taloned foot and scratched at his pointed, hairless ears with the spike of his poleaxe. “Um…we’ve been supporters of the Dark here for generations. Don’t want to be rude, but, well, isn’t much point in you coming here, is there?”

Ned raised his chin. Familiar with Man architecture as well as the townships of halflings, he was not unused to walls that towered like cliffs, but the soaring masonry of the Redoubt courtyard lost itself in mist far too far above his head. It dripped with moisture; and the stench of excrement and the shrieks of the incarcerated echoed down from barred slit windows.

“My son.” Ned unclipped the whip from his spiked belt and cracked it. The noise echoed across the gathered heads of the Dark masses. Orcs twitched by reflex. He beamed at the Agaku. “I know you won’t disappoint a poor old woman—a poor old woman trained in the mage-craft of the Little Sisters of Mortification—and not hear our candidate. Will you?”

The orc shambled around, clawed feet kicking bones across the black cobbles. “Silence! If anyone so much as breathes, I’ll send his miserable carcass to the Pit! Dire-wolves, you have free rein to harry any who speaks but the elf, be it bat, kobold, goblin, or orc!”

Edwina smiled sweetly. “Thank you.”

“Well done, our good and faithful servants!” the Holy One exclaimed, resting long-fingered hands on the heads of his halfling priest and abbess. In the abrupt silence, the Holy One paced across the courtyard and took his place on the cyclopean-size steps of the nearest tower entrance, looking out across the beady eyes, red pupils, snouts, and twitching claws of his audience.

“Scum of the Blasted Redoubt!” the elf sang melodiously. “Do you wonder why we have no fear, standing before you as we do in the heart of Dark’s citadel? That is because you do not yet know who we are. We are Amarynth, who was a mortal elven paladin, but who you may now know as the Holy One, the Most Holy. We are the Son of the Lady herself!”

Ned abandoned the Mission wagon—there being no interrupting Amarynth once he had begun using we—and rejoined his brother on the other side of a locked postern door, inside the Blasted Redoubt. Black torches burned in wall cressets, nitre spidered the masonry, and the bronchial coughing of an orc guard echoed down from the upper reaches.

“Cellars, is my guess,” Ned said.

His brother nodded. “If it was Men, I’d say tops of the towers. But orcs and Dark Lords, they think subterranean. Got your stuff?”

Ned guffawed. The nun’s robe made packing throwing-daggers, poison needles, fine mail gauntlets (for trying traps) and lock-picks easier than doublet and hose. Slits cut in the cloth under the arms aided easy access to them.

“Let’s hit the shadows,” Ned said.

A sudden clatter of feet interrupted. Bare, hard feet. Torchlight glimmered first from the passage at their left, then from the passage on their right. Six or seven orcs piled into the tower entrance’s narrow antichamber.

“Ah,” Ned exclaimed. “Good brother priest William, here are more souls who have yet to hear the word of our Mission.”

The orc in the lead growled, “Oh, we’ve heard him. Promising the great last crusade against the Forces of Evil, your elf is. Says he’ll field another Army of Light against the Horde of Darkness.”

Ned saw his brother momentarily squeeze his eyes shut, then open them, smiling a wide smile.

“Perhaps I can interest you gentlemen,” Will Brandiman said, “in contributing to the Holy Prayer Wheel Fund of the Mission of Light? Now, you’re fighting orcs, I can see that, and the object of the Prayer Wheel is to heal all wounds caused in battle—no matter upon which side the fighter fought.”

“‘S not right,” the leading orc protested.

The Reverend Brandiman and the good Abbess Edwina exchanged glances. Neither benefited.

“Of course, if you don’t wish to make a contribution to the Holy One’s prayer wheel,” Will oozed. “Should you be so poor that you cannot afford a copper piece, a button, a shred, a bone…why then, you may take these—ah—these prayer-beads, for free. But search your heart, brother orc, and see if you can afford to deprive the world (for it will be you doing the depriving) of the benefits of the Son of Light’s Holy Prayer Wheel.”

The orc’s heavy brows lowered. He looked to have Agaku stock in him, Ned considered: a magnificent specimen of orc-hood some six feet high, with hulkingly muscled shoulders, and wearing nothing over his leathery green skin but a loincloth.

“He’s war-mongering,” the orc accused. “Your Holy One is. Promoting a war which serves only the interests of the Dark and Light Commands and not those of the orc in the Pit.”

Ned gaped at the orc. The group of five or six other orcs crowded round, some brown- and some grey-skinned, all wearing the odd scrap of mail or plate or nail-studded padded jerkins. Prick-ears flattened, and tusks and talons glinted.

“I’m sure you gentlemen have your point of view,” Ned said, a little breathlessly.

The leader orc loomed over Will Brandiman, reached down, and prodded him between two doublet buttons.

“I’m an official representative, me. I represent the Orc Pacifist Movement.” The orc waved a taloned hand. “Us here, we’re a OPM protest. We’re protesting against your Paladin coming in here and telling us to fight. He don’t go out with the foot soldiers, do he?”

The other orcs shook their heads in unison. Their leader continued:

“He don’t have to trail a poleaxe over hill and dale, out of this lovely mucky land, and go down south where it’s green. He don’t get his balls shot off by some trigger-happy crossbowelf. Not your Paladin! He don’t end up hacking some poor Light sod to shreds just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it’s him or you.”

Behind the large orc, his fellows began a guttural chant of “Dark, no! We won’t go! We won’t fight—”

“GRAZHDNAG!” an orcish yell interrupted from outside the tower. “Get your filthy, worm-eating scum down here or I’ll flay you alive!”

The leading orc, Grazhdnag, cowered. His followers whimpered. They slunk past the halflings (ignoring Will Brandiman’s outstretched hand, which still contained a string of Mission beads) and shambled out into the courtyard, whence the sound of bone-cracking blows echoed.

“I’ll teach you, you lazy scum—!”

Ned and Will listened briefly to the Agaku’s voice, grinned, and split up, the better to cover more of the Blasted Redoubt’s cellars in the available time.

On his fifth trip back—choosy now, the wagon’s false bottom almost full of the more portable items from the Redoubt’s treasury—Ned Brandiman found himself climbing a narrow, winding stone stair. He climbed until his calf muscles ached. At last he heard, through as-yet-invisible windows, the voice of Amarynth rising to a peroration in that one of the outer courtyards that, by experience, Ned had found to be merely a tiny satellite of the vast atriums, pits, coliseum, and air-shafts that pierced the mass of the Blasted Redoubt.

He reached the top of the steps and started down a corridor. Here there were torches, meaning concealing shadows, and he stayed in them by instinct.

An interior portcullis slammed down behind him. Ned leaped forward, grazing the back of his bare heel. He froze, listening, checked the trap-mechanism and discovered it to be ancient but well oiled, decided that it had only cut him off from cellars already looted, and continued on.

Loud footsteps echoed down the corridor ahead.

An approaching shadow danced on the walls, distorted by the light from the black cressets and growing larger, taller, much taller than a halfling—

“Good lord,” Ned Brandiman observed, “the press really do get everywhere.”

A female elf walking in the shadows of the Blasted Redoubt’s black masonry halted, staring.

When Ned had last seen the elf she had been wearing the same leather bodice and thonged leather trousers, high boots, and cloak; her dark braids had been tied around her brow with a strip of red cloth. A badge pinned on her vest over the upper slope of one breast now read “Warrior of Fortune.”

Perdita del Verro regarded Ned Brandiman with suspicion. “Don’t I know you, mistress?”

Ned himself had been stark naked at the time of their last meeting and not known to be the owner of a Little Sisters of Mortification red habit. He removed his fingers from where they rested, through slit cloth, on a throwing-dagger, and pitched his voice melodiously higher. “I doubt we’ve met, my child, but we are all Sisters in the Light.”

“I must have seen you with the Holy One.” The elf narrowed her eyes. Her flyaway brows dipped, the frown accentuating the old scar on her left cheek. “I’d like an interview—get to see him close up. Seems to me the Light candidate needs all the good press he can get in this election.”

Ned led her down from the tower and out into the courtyard. He kicked the back of the Mission wagon with his hirsute foot. “Your Holiness, an elf of the press is here to interview you. Is it convenient?”

Amarynth, bent over and clutching the wagon’s wooden frame with both hands, looked up irritatedly and gestured the attendant knight-priest to cease scourging the Holy back.

“Oh…very well.” Pulling up his monk’s habit and slipping his arms into the sleeves, the Holy One looked at the female elf.

“Lord Amarynth? Paladin, it is you, isn’t it! By the Light!” The elf blinked. “Your campaign speech—I was too far away to tell—”

Regally, the dark elf stated, “We were Amarynth, called Firehand, and are now the Son of the Lady on earth.”

“Amarynth the Paladin-Mage! You commanded the forces of the Light at Nin-Edin!”

Ned Brandiman ducked his head. The expected explosion failed to materialise. Ned, who never let a previously friendly meeting dictate the likelihood of a permanent alliance, congratulated himself on his caution when Perdita del Verro scowled and continued:

“Holy One, I’m extremely glad we’ve met. I was badly taken in by those scum of Nin-Edin and their criminal allies. When I found out what they’d done in the mountains after the siege—”

“After?” Amarynth sounded surprised.

The elf lifted a brow, distorting the brawler’s scar that crossed her cheek. Her voice echoed clearly across the courtyard of the Blasted Redoubt. “You don’t know, Sir Knight? Mother of Trees! While there’s yet time before the election, then—I know something about the orcs of Nin-Edin that you ought to know.”

7

The seventh day before the final election to the Throne of the World dawned bright and clear.

Early summer light chased down the masts of ships moored at Port Mirandus. Long shadows spidered from the beasts, Men, and monstrosities lading craft to catch the morning tide. Shouts and the creaking of ropes echoed back from the warehouse frontages on the quayside, and leather-winged vampire gulls shrieked, soaring down the estuary of the River Faex that here flows into the Western Ocean. Haze, presaging warmth, drifted across the harbour’s lapping, odourous waves.

“The Lord of Darknesh’s orders are perfectly clear,” the nameless necromancer slurred primly, from under the concealment of his cowl. “Send no relieving forces to Thyrion or anywhere else.”

“Damn it, Man, my marines are getting chewed up out there!”

Ashnak, general officer commanding the orc marines, spat over the side of his barge. An unlucky harbour fish rose to the surface, belly-up. “We could send in support troops any time She lets us!”

A gloved hand went up to the hood, came down glistening with saliva. “What an interesting coincidence—since it takshes time to do the logistical planning for moving an army. Ready to move, are you, orc? I wonder what you were planning before She returned?”

Ashnak avoided that issue. “All I know is, there’s a damn good fight going on out there, and She won’t let me—my orcs, I mean—join in!”

“Of coursh not. While the Bugs are advancing on the borders of the Southern Kingdoms, they’re pressure to vote for Her Dark Magnificence…Orc, you will do no fighting until the elecshion’s won, and your foot soldiers must become used to dying while they wait.” The nameless necromancer whuffled a laugh. “It’sh like old times—orcses to waste.”

The nameless limped off towards the silk canopies at the rear of the barge.

“And fuck you, asshole,” Ashnak grated.

Air flattened the water over the great fleet of upriver barges. The whuck-whuck-whuck of an approaching Apache helicopter gunship aroused no curiousity. The dockhands of Port Mirandus are used to miracles.

“Steady!” Ashnak bawled into his headset microphone.

“Oh, I say, sir, do give a chap some credit. I am doing my…best. There! There you are, sir.”

Lieutenant Chahkamnit’s voice fell silent over the radio link as the steel crate the orc pilot was lowering touched the deck of the rivership. The Apache hovered while two deckhands unhooked the load, then rose again, cable winching, nose down, rotors beating the water into circumferences of foam.

“Park that damn thing on one of the air-support barges,” Ashnak ordered, “and get your ass back here, Chahkamnit! This travelling election circus should have cast off four hours ago!”

“Absolutely, sir. Just as you say.”

Ashnak thumbed his headset off. Marine Commissar Razitshakra stood beside him on the rivership’s deck, olive greatcoat hanging open in the southern heat, her peaked cap pulled down to her wire-spectacled nose.

“Prepare to interrogate the prisoner!” Ashnak barked, pointing.

“Sir, yes sir!” Commissar Razitshakra enthusiastically snapped the steel crate’s holding pins bare-handed. The front of the crate fell open. “It’s been too long since we’ve had some honest prisoner-torturing just for the fun of it, sir.”

A large body huddled in the close confines of the crate. It wore excrement-stained desert camouflage fatigues. Ashnak chewed more ferociously on his cigar and peered down at the broad-shouldered, big, and solidly built Man, dirty with days of confinement, the stubble on his chin growing out the same blond as his crewcut.

“On your feet, marine!” Ashnak snarled.

It rubbed at its streaming eyes. “My name, rank, and number are Sergeant John H. Stryker—sweet Jesus, it’s still fuckin’ real!”

“He speaks marine,” Commissar Razitshakra observed.

The Man stared out of the steel crate. “This cannot be real, man. I promise I won’t ever do that shit again! I’ve got a wife and kids at home.”

“He checks out. Same aura as Dagurashibanipal’s hoard, General.”

Stryker forced his big body to rise, straightening for the first time after six days’ confinement in a metre-square steel crate. Staggering, filthy, on his feet, he felt the warm, stinking breeze of a harbour blow across his face. The skin around his eyes twitched, and his eyelids opened again.

A humanoid thing stood in front of him. Eight feet tall, muscled like a mountain; predator’s fangs, leather-skinned, cat-quick, and with the frightening gleam of high intelligence in its piggy eyes. Even with its shoulders humped and long arms dangling, it stared Stryker levelly in the eye.

And there was a cigar jutting from its tusked nightmare of face.

It wore…

Stryker chuckled deeply. In his Stateside Germanic accent, he said, “You guys can’t fool me! Either this is the best shit I ever cut, or you guys are making a summer season movie. But I’m warning you—you shouldn’t have messed with the Corps.”

Ashnak drew deeply, then blew the odd-smelling smoke from his cigar into Stryker’s face. “We are the Corps. What are you?”

“Please!” Stryker’s stubbled chin began to twitch. His face crumpling, his eyes began to leak water. He sat down on the deck as if his hamstrings had been severed. “Don’t hurt me!”

“Show some guts, Man!” Razitshakra growled. “You’re a marine! Don’t disgrace your uniform!”

“What’s the matter with you, son?” Ashnak inquired, nudging the now-sobbing Stryker with the toe of a combat boot. “Anyone would think you’d never seen an orc before.”

The Man raised his stained face. “A what?”

Razitshakra’s whip ripped a channel across the back of his ribs, tearing his combat jacket and his flesh. He screamed, a full-blooded man’s scream, hand going up, and a metal-thonged whip coiled around his wrist, bloodying his knuckles. He grabbed the thong.

“For fuck’s sake, you can’t do that!”

Razitshakra tugged speculatively on the whip’s butt, with no effort pulling him clear across deck.

“The traditional methods are the best,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s the Way of the Orc. To torture prisoners. I’ll strip the hide from him and then, when he’s flayed, he’ll talk.”

“I’ll talk, I’ll talk now!” Stryker scrabbled across the barge deck. “Hey, you just ask me—I’ll tell you whatever you want to know! This is too fuckin’ crazy for me. I’ve never been in combat, never mind under heavy interrogation.”

“Never been in combat?” Ashnak’s ridged brows lifted in astonishment. “But you’re a marine! Ah. I know how it must have been—you’re a newly trained elite soldier, and you accidentally discovered a way through from your world to here, and your superior officers sent you to recce. Happens all the time. Right?”

“Hell, no!” Sergeant John H. Stryker wiped the sweat pouring down his strong, regular features, sprawled on his backside on the deck. “I haven’t had my hands on a gun in twenty years, and that was in basic training. I’m a clerk. I shift army gear and personnel. This gang of asshole kids jumped me. They totalled my jeep and they were gonna total me. I was gonna get the hell out, and then something happened—”

“You ran away from a brawl?” The orc commissar shuddered.

“Shit, there were dozens of the little bastards! For all I know they were carrying knives; of course I’m outta there! Look,” the Man’s tenor voice protested plaintively, “so far I’ve been kidnapped and dumped in the fucking jungle, for God’s sake, seeing things I never thought to see outside of a trip. If I don’t get back to base I’m AWOL and they’re gonna have my ass. And there’s a load of Tornado spares that I got to get shipped through.”

“Support services,” Razitshakra remarked. “Rear echelon.”

Ashnak snarled. “We have the first real proof that there’s a world where Dagurashibanipal’s marines exist! Where you can get the weapons systems we only dream about. A heroes’ world! And what do we get? We get this.”

Leather-winged birds gibbered and yawped over the estuary. Razitshakra unholstered a Desert Eagle automatic pistol, thumbed back the hammer, and placed the cold metal muzzle in Stryker’s ear. “I say we waste him, General, right now. He’s useless.”

“Aw, why not—fuck.”

A cloaked figure with bodyguards paced up the gangplank.

Ashnak came smartly to attention and performed a parade-perfect salute. The Man chewed his large-knuckled fist, smothering a high-pitched giggle.

Razitshakra kept the muzzle of the Desert Eagle automatic pistol pointed at his head. The Man flinched each time the circle of darkness lined up on him.

“Yes, indeed,” Ashnak rumbled, “I’m attempting to ascertain that very thing myself, your Dark Magnificence, how perspicacious of you to mention it. I believe this to be a marine from Dagurashibanipal’s collection. One of my NCOs in Thyrion found it. Said it cracked up at the first sight of the enemy.”

Razitshakra muttered, “Definitely ideologically unsound!”

The hooded figure lifted pale hands and put the cowl back from its face. At this point Sergeant John H. Stryker of the U.S. Marine Corps understood that he really should have read the $4.95 fantasy hack-and-slay paperbacks that turned up in the mess. Or at least watched more of the videos. Thriller, beaver, and private eye don’t teach you rules for survival where orcs carry M16s. Or where women have glowing neon-orange eyes.

The air dirtied as if a cloud had passed across the dawn. Only She shone. Her gaunt face had shadows of the palest blue lining hollow cheeks and eye-sockets. A great starburst of white-blonde hair cascaded back from Her smooth forehead. Smothered in heavy black robes, fragile, She gazed down at Stryker where he sprawled on the barge’s deck.

Her voice like bells said, “Curious and interesting.”

“Yes, Dread Lord.” Ashnak pointed at the barge fleet, the grunts crewing it, and the confusion apparent on most of the vessels. “It appears to be a logistics expert, Ma’am. I thought we might see what it can do. Or we could try eating it.”

“No!” Sergeant Stryker added, as a confused afterthought, “Sir!”

The Dark Lord said, “You may accompany Me below, My Ashnak. Bring that with you.”

Ashnak saluted, gestured to the commissar, and set off down into the bowels of the Faex River barge. Under the prow cables hummed, strung up through beams and hooks to a portable generator. An acrid smell hung in the air. Ashnak moved forward to the laboratory benches.

“What have you got here, Technician?”

Behind Ashnak, the Man whimpered. He shot a glare at Razitshakra, who put her taloned hand firmly over the Man’s mouth. Blue eyes bugged, staring—so far as Ashnak could make out—at Tech-Captain Ugarit.

“Sir, General Ashnak, sir! Look at these babies!” Green spittle trailed down Ugarit’s chin. The skinny orc’s white laboratory coat pockets clinked with scalpels as he danced in place, head bobbing between Ashnak and the silent figure of the Dark Lord.

Ashnak supposed that, if you weren’t used to it, Ugarit’s habit of piercing his pointed ears with feathers and studs might be a little startling. The tall, skinny orc wiped his hands down his bloodstained coat, eyes and fangs glinting in the light of naked bulbs, giggling and saluting. As he moved aside, Ashnak saw the dissected carapace of a Bug resting on the makeshift laboratory table. Sticky fluids flowed down onto the deck.

The Man whimpered, even through Razitshakra’s muffling hand.

“Acid blood!” Ugarit enthused. “Regeneration of parts! Tiny brains! They’re perfect killing machines, your Dark Magnificence, perfect. Oh I do envy them so…”

The skinny orc dribbled again. Ashnak momentarily debated the wisdom of having moved Captain Ugarit from technical development to biological research.

“This,” the Dark Lord pointed, “this is not flesh…”

Ugarit reached a heavily gloved hand into the mess on the bench and extracted what looked to Ashnak like a steel mechanism.

“They secrete me-muhh-uhn-uhn-uhn—!”

Ashnak stepped forward and punched Ugarit firmly in the face. The orc’s head bounced off one of the barge’s beams. A daffy grin spread itself across his thin green features.

“They secrete metal,” he repeated, slightly more in control. “They replace parts of their bodies with it. O Great Mistress, I think they can grow their own weapons. I think they can grow our weapons, now they’ve captured some to copy. Mistress, imagine if I could harness their growth mechanism, we could grow our own armaments!”

Ugarit reached back and rested fond gloved claws on the Bug’s sticky shell.

“I always wanted to do cybernetic research,” the skinny orc murmured dreamily. “Grafting parts. Inserting bits. This organic mechanism is so much simpler. Cyber-mech. That’s it. Cyber-mech weapons systems…”

Ashnak looked at the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord’s cowl turned in the general direction of Ashnak. She rested Her hand on Ugarit’s bowed head. The sound of Her soft voice brought small rodents scurrying from the hold, spiders crawling from the beams, and Darknesses to scurry about the orcs’ feet:

“He is most ingenious, My Ugarit, is he not? Perhaps We should let him dismantle your captive marine. We might learn much from that.”

Ashnak ignored the snivelling from the Man behind him.

“Good idea, Dread Lord,” he said brightly. “Thing’s a disgrace to the marines anyway.”

“Look,” Sergeant John H. Stryker protested, “I’ve seen a few videos, I remember how this is supposed to work! I come here, you train me, you make me into a warrior, I beat the shit out of your enemies; all that crap. Sir, I’ve seen those things fight. Never happen, sir.”

“Damn right,” Ashnak sniffed. “Fancy you with a garlic sauce, myself. Very tasty, Man and garlic. Dread Lord, it’s a pure waste of good meat to let the captain here have him.” He brightened. “Unless we could have what’s left over afterwards?”

Darkness hung and dripped from the underside of the barge deck, the electric bulbs spawned sepia and blue shadows, and a constant rustling of invisible homage sounded around the Dark Lord’s bare robed feet.

Stryker gabbled, “You’re the ranking officer here, right, Ma’am?”

Her narrow lips twitched up at the corners.

The Man stumbled on. “And You’ve got a conflict situation here? And a presidential election? That takes planning. I can plan! I’m shit hot, Ma’am. What I can do is make sure You and every other unit gets where they’re meant to be, when they’re meant to be there. Really, Ma’am.”

“It is intelligent enough to eavesdrop. Well.” The Lord of Darkness wrapped Her thick black robes closer about Her body. The hold’s smell of spices was overlain with a thicker scent. “One might delay dissection, I suppose…”

“Yes, Dread Lord.” Ashnak resentfully ignored his rumbling gut.

The Heart of Evil shook back the pale hair from Her face, that seemed childlike amongst the heavy robes, and She smiled, holding out one of Her long-boned hands in front of Her and turning it from side to side in examination.

“It is strange,” She said, “to inhabit a female body, after so many aeons.”

The arcing electric bulbs in the hold illuminated Her gull-wing brows, delicate tiny ears, and shapely mouth.

“There must be many things One can do with a female body,” the Dark Lord said. Her speculative gaze lingered on General Ashnak, who came to attention and a terrified eyes-front, then passed to Biotech-Captain Ugarit, who giggled, Razitshakra (obliviously reciting cantos from the Way of the Orc to herself), and finally fixed on John H. Stryker. She smiled.

“Have that boy washed,” She ordered, “and sent to My cabin.”

“Yes, Dread Lord!” Ashnak remained with his head bowed until She had departed for Her quarters. “Commissar Razitshakra, you heard the Dark Lord. While you’re doing that, interrogate the Man carefully. You may cause it pain, but don’t damage it. Dismiss!”

Biotech-Captain Ugarit followed Ashnak back up onto the deck. Ashnak’s despairing gaze travelled across the orc marine barge fleet, still not ready to cast off and direct their prows up the River Faex—up the river, through all the townships and cities and the capitals of the Southern Kingdoms, on the last and heaviest stages of the Dark Lord’s election campaign. And only seven more days…

“Sir,” Ugarit pleaded, “may I have him, sir? Just a tiny bit, sir?”

“Well, I suppose She wouldn’t miss a toe or a finger, or one of the smaller organs,” Ashnak mused. “On the other hand, we—”

“General, what’s that?” Ugarit, his dirty white laboratory coat flapping around his ankles in the river breeze, suddenly snickered, whinnied, and pointed.

“Don’t interrupt me, you puking excuse for an orc ma—” Ashnak stopped, speechless. “Pits!”

A cloud of dust rose up over the bank of the River Faex. Delta mud, dry as a bone in this summer season, kicked up sky high. Following the plume down to its base led Ashnak’s eyes to a black blob, travelling at high speed towards the moored barge fleet.

“That’s an armoured vehicle.” Ashnak’s nostrils flared, failing to catch the scent of any magic. “That’s one of our armoured vehicles.”

Ugarit removed from his lab coat pocket a miniaturised radiocom, held it to his skinny ear, and shook it. “Sir, they can’t get it to identify, General, sir!”

Ashnak vaulted the poop deck rail, landing heavily and squarely on the lower deck. He strode to the barge rail nearest to the quay. “Perimeter guards!”

A racheting roar shook the earth and sky. The plume of dust switched direction, turning towards the river, trailing clouds of black exhaust. Juddering at its top speed of 30 mph, swaying, gun dipping and rising in a vain attempt to compensate for the terrain, a T54 Main Battle Tank swung down onto the quayside.

Before Ashnak could bellow a warning over the comlink, and with orc marines leaping into the water out of its way, the speeding tank rocketed down the bank, onto the wooden jetty in front of the barge, ground up a spray of timbers in its treads, and shuddered to a halt, its metal casing three feet from where Ashnak stood at the barge rail.

The wooden piles of the quay groaned, cracked, and sank two yards with a sudden jolt.

Ashnak surveyed the banks of the River Faex. Dockworkers fled the wooden quay as the whole length of it swayed. Orc marines who had plummeted off the side swam, in full kit, back towards their own barges. Anxious signals jammed the radio frequencies, coming from farther down the fleet.

“Get me artillery support!”

“Yessir!” Ugarit squeaked.

Ashnak leaned his horn-skinned elbow on the rail of the barge, and rested his massive-jawed chin on his hand. The steel hatch of the T54 flipped open. Ashnak raised his free hand, holding his .44 Magnum officer’s pistol.

A small figure stood up in the hull hatch of the T54 Main Battle Tank. The wooden beams and pilings of the quay creaked, snapped, and sank another foot, tilting the tank’s nose towards the swirling black waters of the Faex. The figure ignored this. It saluted snappily and gave a joyous cry.

“Sir, General Ashnak, sir!”

Ashnak suspiciously narrowed his deep tilted eyes.

The helmeted figure, visible from the waist up, saluted again, and cried shrilly over the noise of the river birds, “Sir, General Ashnak, sir. Major Barashkukor reporting back for duty, sir!”

Ashnak’s you-can’t-fool-me-dickhead-I’m-a-marine expression vanished. “What?!”

“Sir, it is me, sir. Honest, sir!”

The orc standing in the T54’s hatch pulled off its helmet. Long, hairless ears sprang momentarily upright, then drooped in the heat. A broad grin spread itself over only-too-familiar features.

Ashnak stared.

The small orc wore the remnants of a desert camouflage jacket and one glove only. His other hand and arm seemed covered in shiny silver—no, were made of silver metal. And his eye…

The small orc’s right eye had been replaced by a metal socket and zoom-lens, which whirred as he focussed in on his general and flashed in the dawn sun of Port Mirandus.

Ashnak thumbed back the hammer of the pistol he held. “You sure as hell don’t look like any kind of orc to me, boy.”

The small orc cyborg’s face brightened. Both his ears perked up. “Sir, the major can explain that to the general, sir!”

“You’d damn well better be able to!”

As Ashnak drew a bead on the figure in the tank, the dock timbers groaned and gave further way. The back of the tank dropped a yard. The upper casing of the Main Battle Tank was now below Ashnak, the gun swivelling to aim straight between the large orc’s eyes.

“And don’t point that thing at me, you dumbass excuse for a marine!”

“Sir, yes sir!” Barashkukor exclaimed happily. He hitched himself further up out of the T54’s hatch, by the mounted machinegun. “Sir, it was a terrible experience, sir.” The small orc watched Ashnak out of the corner of his one eye. “Worth a medal, sir, do you think?”

“Get on with it!”

“Yessir! Well, it was like this, sir. In attempting to immolate myself and the hostile Bug, I omitted to remember that petrol evaporates.” The small orc, unmistakably Barashkukor despite alterations, sighed wistfully. “There was a flash-burn, not much else. So I expected them to tear me to pieces, sir, same as they did my corporal, but I guess it was having the corporal to practise with gave them ideas, sir, and they more or less put me back together. Not altogether correctly, I have to say, but I think I was an experiment—”

The T54 dropped bodily by six feet. The black waters of the Faex washed around its treads, suspended on the last few pilings of the collapsing dock.

“Well, sir,” the orc continued obliviously, looking up at Ashnak, “after that it was my duty as a marine to escape, so I let them prod me about a bit, and then when they lost interest—well, I think it was more like, put me on one side for lunch—I cammo’d myself up and hid in the desert. Tell you the truth, sir, I don’t think they can smell very well, and they don’t have magic, so they didn’t find me. I made my way back to Gyzrathrani. Couldn’t get through on the comlink, and the Gyzrathrani weren’t being very cooperative, so I told them their OT64 needed a test-drive…”

Ashnak leaned over the barge rail, looking down.

“That is not an OT64 armoured personnel carrier.”

“No, sir. Beg to report, the OT64 broke down seventy miles north of Gyzrathrani. I commandeered another vehicle.” The small orc major coloured. “A camel, sir, I believe they call it. Nasty spitting creature. That got me as far as the edge of the Endless Desert. Damn things don’t taste like much either, sir. Then I ran into a contingent of Gargoyle Marines and got their airborne tactical wing to bring me as far north as Aztechia. Couldn’t reach you on the com, sir, the radio operators didn’t seem to believe who I was. So I borrowed a despatch rider’s motorcycle.”

Barashkukor felt in the ragged combat jacket’s pockets.

“Think I’ve still got his despatches on me somewhere, sir. That broke down two hundred miles back, near the High Ranges. Well, sir, the garrison there still wouldn’t put me through to you—said I had to be an imposter, or some sort of monster.”

The small orc looked hurt.

“Not my fault if the Bugs put me back together with metal. It works, sir. Well. Most of the time.”

A fresh wind swept across the estuary of the Faex River, bringing the homely scent of vampire-bird dung, ogre cooking fires, and sweating orcs. Ashnak raised one beetling eyebrow.

“I’m a reasonable orc, Barashkukor. I just know there’s a good reason why you turn up here in one of my tanks and trash it beyond repair. I just know it. So tell your old general—you ‘borrowed’ the tank from the High Ranges?”

Barashkukor saluted again, catching his ear with the steel fingers of his right hand, and wincing at the pain.

“Not exactly, sir. I borrowed a Cobra helicopter gunship from the High Ranges. But you know how I am about flying, General. It sort of…it…it developed a severely reduced flight potential.”

“It crashed.” Ashnak covered his eyes with his free hand. He thoughtfully weighed the pistol he still held. “And then you took a tank.”

“No sir.” Barashkukor swallowed audibly. “Then I commandeered a military Hovercraft, sir, to come up the coast of the Western Ocean to Port Mirandus. It, er, sank, sir. I didn’t do anything to it, sir, honest! I think those machines have a design fault.”

“How far did you get, marine?”

“Lalgrenda, sir.”

“Then the tank?”

“No sir. Another APC from Lalgrenda to Kaanistad. The engine burned out on that one. Then I borrowed a staff car. That was fine.” Barashkukor’s eye gleamed, and his socketed lens whirred. “Rolls Royce Silver Shadow with armoured chassis, sir. Sweet as a nut. Drove like a dream.”

“That,” Ashnak pointed at the T54 Main Battle Tank, the water now lapping halfway up its filth-crusted sides, “is not a staff car.”

Barashkukor rested one gloved and one steel hand down on the rim of the hatch. He regarded the tank thoughtfully.

“Not a staff car, sir, no, sir. The Fourteenth Armoured Troll Division at Vendivil wouldn’t believe my identity either, sir, so they shelled the staff car. I got out all right, though. That was when I decided I needed armoured capability to get to you, General Ashnak, sir, so that’s when I commandeered this tank from their motor pool. Unofficially. I did leave a chitty.”

The small orc took a deep breath, and coughed, immediately regretting it. The River Faex, as the hot sun warmed it, began to hum.

“Lots of essential information for you, sir, about the Bugs, sir! That’s why I had to get back to you, General.” Barashkukor drew himself up, standing waist-deep in the hull hatch of the sinking T54, his single eye fixed on Ashnak and glowing with hero-worship. “Sir, did I show enough initiative, sir?”

The T54 Main Battle Tank lurched and settled deeper into the greasy water.

“I did my best, sir,” the orc major protested.

Ashnak carefully thumbed down the hammer and replaced his pistol in his belt holster. He braced both hands on the rail of the barge and leaned over.

“Abandon armoured submersible!”

“Sir, yes sir!” The small orc clambered up out of the hatch.

Ragged brown desert-camouflaged combat trousers clung to his skinny leg, rolled up at one ankle. He wore only one combat boot. His other leg, from thigh to foot, shone brightly in the sun. Ashnak stared at the steel bones, tendons, pulleys, and plates.

“I’ll be right—” whirrr-click! “right with you, General Ashnak, sir!”

The small orc hitched himself out of the hatch, skinny buttocks pointing at the sky, then straightened up, picked up his helmet and crammed it down over his long ears, walked across the casing of the T54 as the tank shuddered, juddered, and—among the scream of splintering timber—sank beneath the surface of the river. Barashkukor flexed his small legs and sprang.

His normal orc-leg pushed feebly. Barashkukor’s cyborg-leg, Ashnak noted with some interest, flexed and sprang with vicious speed.

The small orc shot up and sideways.

“HEEAAARGGGH!”

Barashkukor smacked into the side of the barge two feet below Ashnak. The large orc reached down, seized the small orc marine officer by the seat of his combat trousers, and dragged him up and over the rail. He dropped Barashkukor on the deck.

“Salute when you see an officer!” Ashnak roared.

Barashkukor’s helmet rolled in small circles on the deck of the barge. The small orc’s ears flattened in the blast. Hurriedly, whirring and clicking the while, Barashkukor got to his feet, made a vain attempt to smarten his uniform and combat boot, and directed a salute in the general direction of Ashnak. “Sir!”

The cyborg-orc wavered dizzily as he stood upright.

Biotechnician Ugarit wiped his hands down his white lab coat and edged closer, eyes gleaming as he studied the metal leg, hand, and eye of the orc officer. “May I, General? May I have him? Please, may I?”

“Sir!” Barashkukor’s right eye whirred, focussing. He edged away from the skinny orc technician.

“Well, well, well…” Ashnak reached down, purring.

The large orc hooked a talon in the back of Barashkukor’s collar, hoisting him three feet into the air. He dangled the small orc in the hot southern air, turned him from side to side, inspected him above and below, held him out at arm’s length, and dropped him back on the deck.

Unable to prevent himself, Ashnak showed all his fangs and brass-capped tusks in a beam.

“Welcome aboard, Barashkukor! Welcome back! Between the Dark Lord and the Bugs—you got here just in time for the fun.”

Northeast of Port Mirandus, far up the River Faex, the great Royal Hall of Ferenzia was packed, mostly with Men, which meant every elbow was at face-height, and Will Brandiman twice nearly lost an eye to an unguarded rapier-hilt. He shouldered his way through mail-clad hips, tassets, the tops of high boots, and the horned helmets of a party of dwarves.

In front of him, an elf smoothed down the lapels of her military-cut civilian tunic, touched her brown hair to make sure her glossy braids flowed back behind her pointed ears, and turned to a contraption on a tripod.

“This is Perdita del Verro, your WFTV News reporter at Ferenzia, capital of the south, covering the arrival of the Light candidate in the forthcoming election, the Holy Paladin Amarynth Goddess-Son. With the election only six days away, and the promised scandalous revelations about to be disclosed, tension here is steadily mounting—”

Will Brandiman slicked back his glossy black curls (from which the grey had again been removed with dye-spells), arranged his plain white collar and tightly buttoned doublet, and smiled directly over her shoulder at the camera lens as he passed. Like all WoF’s recording equipment it had “Made in Graagryk” stamped on it.

“‘Kinematographic theatres,’” he murmured, “‘To bring images of the news to one and all, across the Southern Kingdoms.’ I wonder if I could interest Mother in carrying broadcasts from the Good Abbess Edwina and the Reverend William, appealing for the Holy Prayer Wheel Fund…”

He arrived at his vantage-point on the steps of the first gallery.

“I don’t know about you,” a gruff contralto said in his ear, “but I feel like a young halfling let loose in a chocolate factory!”

Ned Brandiman’s red habit bulged more than Will remembered it to, especially around the waistline. He had the suspicion that if he picked his brother up and shook him, the wimpled halfling would clink.

“I’ve told you before about purses,” Will reprimanded. “We’re here for much bigger game.”

Ned’s powdered and painted face creased with laughter-lines. A brown curl escaped from under the edge of his wimple and he tucked it back. “Brother, be sensible. We’ve robbed the Blasted Redoubt. There aren’t any challenges left! Even taking Magorian’s Regalia would be taking sweet-breads from elflings.”

“What I really like about this,” Will observed obliviously, “is that the only thing that orc bastard thinks he has to worry about is the Dark Lord’s election chances. And the Bugs.” He rubbed small calloused hands together. “Little does he know!”

A shrill blasting of silver trumpets shook the chamber. Dirt sifted down from the gothic vaultings. The Royal Hall was only brought out and dusted for occasions of extreme ceremony, Will remembered (from the coronation of High King Magorian, which had also been profitable for purses), and now sweltered behind pointed ogee windows that did not open and behind vast oaken doors that were currently shut.

“Hail Amarynth! Hand of Fire, Goddess-Son!”

The great double doors banged open to another screech of brass. Will, from the first gallery rail, watched the Ferenzi nobles—vastly uncomfortable in the ancient but traditional formal wear of doublet and skin-tight hose, fur robes, tippets, and liripipe hats; none of which seemed overly suited to midsummer in the south—turn their noble heads first for the breath of cool air that entered down the central aisle and then for sight of Amarynth Firehand.

“As you know, I’m not talking about worldly profit, Mother Edwina,” Will observed quietly. “There is a more satisfying spiritual spoil to be had.”

Ned’s plucked eyebrows raised. “Is that what you call it?”

“Trust me,” Will said smugly. “And keep on your furry little toes, brother.”

Dust motes filled the regulation sunbeams that spotlit the throne at the far end of the Hall, under the rose-window, flashing back from King Magorian’s golden armour (which, close up, Ned Brandiman had established to be only gilt) and from the flowing white locks of the High Wizard Oderic.

A rhythmic tread shook the granite floor of the Royal Hall.

Twelve Flagellant Knights in full plate harness clashed through the double doors and down towards the throne. Somewhere in the centre of their banners and ostrich plumes Will detected the dark-skinned Holy elf paladin. He bowed as deeply as the rest of the assembled nobles, in case Amarynth should have his eye on his priest and abbess, and with his head down muttered to Ned, “Is it there?”

“Under one of the knight’s cloaks. Never one to miss a dramatic moment, our Holy One.”

“O great Nobles of Ferenzia!” the elf cried, his high voice quieting the Royal Hall completely. “High King of the South, Magorian of glorious fame!”

“Mpph, what?” The High King sat up, scratching at his balding scalp.

The High Wizard Oderic patted him comfortingly on the arm and stepped forward onto the marble floor before the throne. “Great Amarynth, your return to the councils of the wise is most welcome.”

“But I bring fell news,” Amarynth replied as if rehearsed. Will Brandiman, who had spent much of the past three days rehearsing him, found his lips moving in the shape of the next words: a foul crime has been committed—

“A foul, murderous, impious, and vicious crime has been committed!” Amarynth exclaimed.

“Everybody’s an improviser,” Will grumbled.

He noted that the hot and thirsty assembly, who had assumed themselves there merely for a formal welcoming of the Light candidate to the great and honourable city of Ferenzia, jewel of the south, et cetera and et cetera, straightened up and began to take notice.

The elf bowed deeply to the throne, moving to where another sunbeam illuminated the much-worn granite flooring. The light shone from his brown pointed ears, his glossy black starburst-hair now fastened back with a silver fillet, his plain white habit (made from Archipelago silk), and his ivory staff.

“Listen to a humble pilgrim!” Amarynth beseeched.

Will Brandiman caught the Holy One’s eye and nodded reassurance.

“Without more ado,” the ex-Paladin cried, “High King Magorian, must I bring to your attention a most foul and despicable crime. My Lords, the other candidate in this heretical election—”

Amarynth’s brown nostrils flared. His high cheekbones coloured bronze, and he began to pant.

“That blasphemy! That He, the epitome of Evil, dare appear in a female form to mock my mother Goddess, the Lady of Light! Blasphemous mockery!”

Will Brandiman filled his chest and sang out resonantly, “Amen!” Several others of the assembled Knights Flagellant and a number of the Ferenzi nobles echoed him. And, as Will had calculated, the sound of a familiar voice recalled Amarynth to his script.

“My Lord High King, I bring to your knowledge a crime against peace and humanity, for which the perpetrator must be arrested and tried.”

The elf swept back his ragged flowing hair, his eyes blazing.

“When I was an elf of war, I laid siege to a wilderness fortress, Nin-Edin of the north. The story of that is familiar to all. The orcish filth of that fortress held out, by some devilry, until I and my army were recalled.”

One or two of the younger, more fashionably dressed Men smiled. The beefy, gorget-wearing old campaigners watched impassively.

“We marched,” Amarynth continued, “instantly to the relief of Sarderis. Infantry and cavalry, we fell upon the remnants of the Evil Horde and freed the city. In doing so we had undertaken a forced march and come from Nin-Edin to Sarderis in a time never beaten. And—our baggage train followed. Followed us far more slowly, and with but one junior mage, because as you know, the baggage train is sacred under the rules of war.”

The Royal Hall came alive and electric with attention. Will caught Ned’s eye, and the Good Abbess grinned. The two halflings at the gallery rail then composed their faces into expressions of righteous indignation.

Amarynth Firehand dropped smartly to one knee. He had not yet, Will assumed, become accustomed to not wearing armour. Will saw the dark elf wince.

“Great King,” Amarynth fluted, “it is known far and wide that the baggage train of the Army of Light perished that day, butchered in the Red Gullies. It is known, and yet none know how. Was it deserters from the Horde, stray beasts and monsters, or even reinforcements for the orc-filth? Because all perished—and none of them, my lords, was above the age of fifteen—because all these children perished, there was no way to know.”

Amarynth paused.

“But now there is!”

Almost without moving his lips, Ned Brandiman murmured, “Every old theatrical trick, eh, Will?”

“If it works, don’t knock it.”

Amarynth filled his lungs and shrilled melodiously, “The atrocity was committed by the orcish filth of Nin-Edin themselves!”

The Royal Hall buzzed with voices, one or two raised in shouts, demanding answers, justice, and revenge in about equal measure. The High King Magorian’s head rolled to one side and he began to snore quietly.

Oderic stepped forward, sweeping his formal grey robes about himself. “But this is a most serious accusation, Lord Amarynth. What proof have you that this is true?”

“You ask us for proof?” The elf’s face contorted. “We, who are the Son of the Lady on earth?”

“I knew he’d go haywire somewhere…” Will Brandiman rubbed his knuckles across his eyes. He sighed. About to slip out of the gallery and go down to Amarynth, he stopped as one of the Knights Flagellant moved forward, uncovering what had been concealed by his silken cloak.

In a subdued voice nonetheless audible in that silence, the knight said, “High Wizard Oderic, here is your proof.”

The wizard moved forward, leaning on his staff. Will heard a most satisfactory gasp from the assembled nobility of Ferenzia.

The Knight Flagellant had left off his steel arm-defences so that the body he cradled should suffer less pain. What he carried in his arms was a Man-child no more than nine or ten years of age. Her skull seemed swollen and her eyes huge, and her upper arms, under her shift, could have been encircled by finger and thumb. She leaned her head listlessly against his breastplate.

A scar crossed her face, shattering one eye-socket. It wept yellow fluid. At some point her hair had been red, but it had been shaved back so that the continuation of the scar across her skull could be stitched, and now the hair grew out in patches.

All her bones stood out sharp as a bird’s breastbone.

“Look!” Amarynth Firehand seized the Man-child, grotesquely, by one leg. He raised the thin limb. An angry red-and-black scar across the back of her knee showed where her hamstrings had been cut.

“They took her maidenhood.” The elf lifted the child’s chin. “Kyrial, speak. Tell what you have told to me.”

The child’s face screwed up. Water rolled out of her eye.

“The orcs lay with her,” Amarynth said, into the appalled silence, “as they lay with all: prisoners and those whom they had killed in their first attack. Kyrial, elf-friend, speak. Say how you escaped them.”

The Man-child began visibly to shake. She wore a grey shift, under which her body was bones rolling in a thin covering of skin. Her hands and feet appeared uncommonly large. She mewed.

“Say,” Amarynth persisted.

“…hid…”

The child’s voice was ugly, dissonant. The white-haired wizard approached, his face kindly.

“Speak, my dear. Where did you hide?” Oderic frowned. “You must tell us, you know.”

The child huddled against the metal breastplate of the knight.

“Where?” Oderic queried.

The Knight Flagellant tucked Kyrial’s head against his shoulder, where his cloak cushioned his armour. Soothing, he whispered something to her, then raised his head. “Sirs, she hid herself in a pile of butchered bodies, most of them companions she had grown up with, and passed as a corpse. There was no one to rescue her. She lay three nights that way.”

Amarynth said, “One hundred and fifty youngsters rode in charge of my baggage train. All were butchered. Raped, then murdered. We had thought there were no survivors. But here is Kyrial to swear, on her oath, who is responsible for the atrocity of Red Gullies. And who it is should answer for this crime against the rules of warfare.”

Will savoured the silence in the Royal Hall of Ferenzia, appreciating vicariously the frisson of horror.

Oderic, a tear rolling down his lined face, lay his hand on the Man-child’s head for a brief moment. Will caught a movement out of the corner of his eye: Perdita del Verro circling down from the far gallery for an additional close-up with a hand-held newsreel camera.

Oderic spoke up. “Poor innocent! Lord Amarynth, how came she to you now?”

The Holy One turned to his Knight Flagellant.

Prompted, the elven knight said, “She was found wandering, many months ago, my lords, by a family of dwarves. They tended to her in the mountains. She had no speech. Not until I came across her by chance did she speak and say ‘Red Gullies.’ But since then, she has refused to eat, and starves herself to death.”

At the mention of the Red Gullies the child began to cry.

“She shall be made a Ward of Ferenzia,” the High Wizard Oderic proclaimed. “We shall care for the poor child. But, my Lord Amarynth, I think you have the right of it. The best care will be to bring to justice the evil filth that did this act!”

Will whispered, “Awriiight!”

“But you have not heard all,” the Holy One, Amarynth, said. “Beloved child, speak what else remains.”

The scarred child’s head rolled back loosely.

“The name,” Amarynth prompted. “You heard the orcs call a name, elf-friend. Speak it now. You heard them shout their leader’s name. Speak it to us now. Speak.”

“Ashnak.” An ugly, weak, but unmistakable noise. “Ashnak.”

With grim satisfaction, Amarynth held the High Wizard’s shocked gaze. He said triumphantly, “Ashnak. The orc ‘general.’ The same filthy Ashnak who is henchman to the Dark Lord—and who now acts as His campaign manager in the election to the Throne of the World.”

Riot. Every Man in the gallery turning on his neighbour and yelling, every Man in the main body of the Royal Hall clamouring for instant justice, instant vengeance.

“Get out of that,” Will Brandiman exulted. “He may be our stepfather, but I haven’t forgotten the dungeons of Nin-Edin.”

“No,” Ned Brandiman agreed. “No, Will. Nor have I. Brother, he should have realised. We make bad enemies.”

The stewards and officers tried in vain to restore order to the Royal Hall of Ferenzia. The High King Magorian sat up and blinked at the court. Oderic, High Wizard, rapped his mage’s staff on the granite floor.

“My lords and kings of the south! Be not hasty!”

The wizard’s white hair gleamed in a shaft of sun, slanting down from the hall’s gothic heights. He placed one arm carefully on the shoulder of the scarred child weeping in the knight’s arms. “My lords, it is hard, in the face of this, but we must beware of haste. We must beware of folly—of condemnation without proof.”

Oderic shook his head wisely.

“And so I will say this to you. We may rightly now demand of Evil that there is held, immediately—before the election—a tribunal. A fair and just tribunal to find out the truth of the Red Gullies atrocity and to bring the true culprit to justice. We demand the immediate arrest of the orc general Ashnak for a war crimes trial!”

8

The evening sun slanted level and gold across the outlying halfling suburb of Ferenzia. A large orc in urban combats, forage cap jammed between his pointed ears, regarded the round, brightly painted doorholes, the thronging hairy-footed population, and the fly-posters stuck up on all the vast oak tree boles that dotted the market square, with sour distaste. The posters all, without exception, read, “Vote for the Light!”

“Only four days to the election, sir,” Barashkukor reminded his commanding orc. “Surely She’ll let us fight the Bugs after that, sir?”

The general of the orc marines glanced down at him. Barashkukor’s chest swelled with pride in his smartly pressed green DPM combats. His polished cyborg-hand and -leg gleamed. His cyborg-eye whirred.

“It still isn’t the true Way of the Orc! All this voting and peaceful campaigning. It just isn’t orcish. We should be out fighting Bugs!” Marine Commissar Razitshakra took off her steel-rimmed spectacles, polished them, and put them back on her snout.

The three orcs in green DPM camouflage combats stood in the main street of the halfling district, pistols firmly holstered, assault rifles slung over hulking shoulders. The street was jammed with wagons and pony-and-traps piled high with halfling refugees from the Bug advances into the eastern kingdoms.

“Begging the general’s pardon.” Barashkukor stood even more smartly to attention. “The commissar’s right, sir. Don’t know when my marines last had a real mission, sir.”

Ashnak’s bass baritone voice grated, “Are you questioning my judgement, Lieutenant?”

The small orc paled several shades. “Sir, no sir! Wouldn’t dream of it. Just wish you’d send us out on combat missions. Those orcs out fighting in Thyrion and Gyzrathrani and Shazmanar, they can’t hold the Bugs back forever. They need us, sir!”

“What we’re going to do,” the large orc general growled, “is win this election as fast as possible.”

“How can we do that, sir?”

Ashnak’s eyes glinted. “I may just have a dangerous mission for you personally, Major. Volunteers only. I can trust you to volunteer?”

“Erm…” Barashkukor swallowed audibly. “Yessir! You can rely on me. Erm. How dangerous exactly, sir?”

Razitshakra nodded her head judiciously. “Ah, the true orcish spirit. I only wish I could join you, Major Barashkukor, but my political duties keep me from the battle.”

Barashkukor looked up at his general. The large orc’s craggy face creased into an evil grin. Barashkukor snickered.

“Alternatively,” Ashnak said, laying an extremely heavy hand on Commissar Razitshakra’s shoulder, “I may just have a mission for you. Barashkukor, where’s that halfling?”

“Over here, sir.” The small orc walked back to the APC parked between a covered wagon and a halfling delivery cart. Ragged halflings whose belongings were scattered, abandoned, on every road from the east and south of Ferenzia, moved aside to avoid him. Tiny spurts of steam hissed from the knee-joint of his artificial leg, and a whirr-click! sound followed him across the road.

He heard Ashnak, behind him, remarking, “I think you’ll find that this mission accords with your political duties, Commissar. Since it’s a matter of ideology.”

“I’m your orc, sir!” Razitshakra snapped to attention, eyes gleaming behind her spectacles. “Trust me, sir, I have a firm grasp of orcish ideology. If that’s what this mission requires, I can do it! I can promote the Way of the Orc—”

“You certainly can,” Ashnak sighed.

Barashkukor clicked his way back across the dusty road, his steel hand clamped firmly on the shoulder of a fat, hairy-footed halfling. The halfling wiped sweat-plastered curls from his wet forehead.

“Just remember,” Major Barashkukor jerked his free orcthumb back at the APC, “that the rest of your spawn, er, family, stays in there until your return. Their health is dependent on your good conduct.”

“Don’t ’urt me, sir,” the halfling pleaded. His brown eyes sought the orc general’s forbidding face. “I’s always been a secret supporter of the Dark, honest, governor.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” The big orc frowned. “You may not be useful to us after all. Major Barashkukor, warn the cook to prepare a garlic and herb sauce tonight, for basted halfling.”

“I means, I pretended to be for the Dark,” the halfling gasped. “Really I’m a solid Light voter. No one stauncher.”

“Then now’s your chance to prove it.” General Ashnak nodded at the town hall, some blocks down the street. Most of the thronging halfling population, swelled by the influx of refugees, had vanished inside. A straggling line of shaggy ponies and rickety carts parked outside gave the clue that a town meeting was in progress. “The major has told you the message you have to deliver?”

“Oh, yes, governor.” The halfling puffed out his chest, pulling his food-stained jerkin awry. “You can rely on Alfred Meadowsweet. I goes in to the town meeting, and I tells them, ‘This here’s from the Halfling Popular Front.’ Then I shouts, ‘Long live Amarynth Firehand!’ and I leaves. Must say I think it’s good of you to deliver packages for the Light, what with you being on the other side and all, sir.”

“Think nothing of it. We may be sworn to Evil,” the orc general said righteously, “but that doesn’t mean we’re not honourable. In our own way. Commissar Razitshakra, you will act as escort for Master Meadowsweet to the town hall. I think what he has to deliver is a little heavy for a halfling.”

Razitshakra’s heels clicked together. She scowled at the general of the orc marines. “Yessir! Of course, sir. Sir, what are we doing helping the Light’s election campaign?”

The large orc tightened his talons on the commissar’s shoulder.

“Isn’t there something in the Way of the Orc about questioning the decisions of one’s general?” he purred. “Because if there isn’t, marine, I suggest you write it in. Now!”

Razitshakra’s pointed ears flattened back against her skull. She straightened her peaked cap. “Sir, yes sir!”

Barashkukor whirred and clicked his way to the APC, pausing only to hit his steel knee with a hammer that he extracted for the purpose from a pouch on his web-belt. He staggered back again, skinny legs bowing under the weight of an ammunition box. He set it down heavily, raised his head, and looked for his general.

From the far side of the street, Ashnak called, “You may remove the package now, Major. Commissar Razitshakra, carry it for Master Meadowsweet.”

Razitshakra’s “Yessir!” echoed across the street as Barashkukor joined Ashnak.

The large and the small orc marched smartly towards their APC. Barashkukor’s cyborg-eye whirred, extended itself on a jointed steel arm, and gave him a view back down the street. Halfling officials at the town hall door were talking to the orc marine commissar and Alfred Meadowsweet. Barashkukor retracted his eye, quickened his pace, and scrambled adeptly up and into the APC after Ashnak. He showed his fangs at the female halfling and four brats cowering in one corner.

“Shall I order that herb and garlic sauce anyway, sir?”

The large orc looked shocked. “Of course not. What are you thinking of, Major?”

“Sorry, sir.” Barashkukor’s shoulders slumped. He raised a contrite face to his general. “I should have remembered—for young halfling meat, it’s chili pepper and rock salt.”

Ashnak’s snarl widened into a pleased smile. Barashkukor extended his cyborg-eye up through the APC’s hatch.

“Mission entering the town hall now, sir.”

“…fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.” Ashnak pushed a button on a device hanging from his webbing.

KER-FOOOMM!!!

The halfling mother and her children screamed. Debris rattled down against the outside of the APC for some moments.

“Anti-personnel charge,” Ashnak explained.

Barashkukor, having retracted his eye just in time, crammed his GI pot down over his long ears and stuck his head outside. The long, muscular arm of his general pushed him up and out into the evening sunlight.

Smoke drifted across the street. Halflings and the odd dwarf ran in panic. Bricks, wood, and broken glass covered the cobbles and had embedded themselves in the round, painted halfling-hole doors. Healer-mages flapped and bustled around the smoking heap of bricks and mortar that was all that remained of the town hall building, their white robes splashed and dripping with red.

“Now if that doesn’t convince them to vote for Herself,” the orc general Ashnak remarked, “then I’m a half-elf.”

Barashkukor picked himself up and dusted his combats down. He nodded smartly. “Very clever, sir. If they blame Amarynth and the Light, they’ll vote for us. And if they think it was done by the Dark, they’ll vote for us to stop it happening again. Sir, well done, sir!”

“And another advantage…” The large orc’s voice trailed off.

A singed and blackened figure shambled up the road towards the APC, green hide smoking, long olive-drab greatcoat hanging in smouldering rags, and wire-rimmed spectacles dangling smashed from one pointed ear.

Orc Political Commissar Razitshakra, swaying on her bandy legs, saluted up at Ashnak filling the hatch of the APC.

“Truly orcish, sir!” she enthused. “That’s what I call politically correct! Can I do the next mission too, sir?”

“How fortuitoush,” a voice remarked.

Barashkukor, turning, was startled to see a figure cowled in a patchwork leather robe. A dozen Ferenzi troopers in striped hose, carrying halberds, accompanied the figure. It slowly reached up and put the hood back from its head.

Level sunlight through the explosion’s dust shone on grey, black, and fish-belly-white skin. Ragged black hair surrounded a face now almost pleasant, by orc standards. Barashkukor had some difficulty in recognising the nameless necromancer.

“Sir,” the small orc acknowledged, startled, but nevertheless according him the respect of a soldier for an exemployer.

“General Ashnak!” the nameless necromancer cried, slobbering round the tusks that twisted his mouth awry. “You stand accushed of crimesh against peasch and humanity!”

The great orc frowned. “Accused of what?”

“Crimes against peace and humanity,” Major Barashkukor deciphered helpfully. He watched his commanding officer blush the colour of basalt.

“Thank you,” Ashnak said gruffly.

“It’sh a charge, not a commendation!” the nameless necromancer spluttered. “You’re under arresht!”

Barashkukor fingered his pistol in its belt holster and looked inquiringly at Razitshakra, who swayed, singed and cross-eyed, and then at Ashnak. The big orc rested his hand on the machinegun mounted by the APC’s hatch.

“Can’t say I’m impressed by magical firepower these days,” the orc general drawled. “Not even the nameless necromancer’s.”

The disfigured face twisted. It was several seconds before Barashkukor worked out that this orcishly handsome member of the Man race was smiling.

“But it ish not I who arresht you,” he said. “I hold the authority of another.”

“The Light?” Ashnak’s upper lip lifted over his fangs as he snarled at the Ferenzi guards.

Barashkukor pulled his cap straight between his drooping ears. His steel leg clicked and emitted a jet of steam as he stepped forward, positioning himself between the APC and the nameless necromancer’s escort of Ferenzi troopers.

“The Lords of Light have no military jurisdiction over the orc marines,” Barashkukor proclaimed primly, unfastening his pistol holster.

“But I do not shpeak for the Light,” the Man slurred.

Behind Barashkukor, Ashnak gave a guttural cough. “So who is trying to arrest me, if not the Light?”

The nameless necromancer drew his skin robe about his hunch-shouldered body, snuffling a little with triumph.

“Why,” he said, “General Ashnak, you are placshed under arrest now by the authority of the Dark Lord Hershelf.”

The silence of evacuated territory pervaded the root tunnels below the City of the Trees. Lieutenant Gilmuriel Hunt-Lord signalled Fireteam One of Starlight Squad to halt.

“Fourteen!” he called, voice squeaking with exhaustion.

“Nine!”

The challenge being a number over ten, and the correct response a number under it, the blond elf sighed in relief and advanced down the corridor.

Carved out of the thick roots of aeons-old trees, the polished tunnel walls gleamed gold in the near-darkness. Woodgrain swirled, looped, and waved. Faint light came up from under the circular tunnel floor, across which thinner roots had been trained and grown into walkway-gratings. Gilmuriel’s boots fell on pierced wood so ancient it rang hard as metal.

“Yo, L.t.!” A lean, green-skinned orc with corporal’s chevrons on his sleeve advanced to meet Gilmuriel. Several orc marines in mechanic’s overalls followed him.

“Corporal Hikz, your patrol’s overdue.”

“Sorry, sir.” The lean orc corporal saluted. “Sir, nothing much to report. The sq— the inhabitants have all cleared out of the city. The place is practically deserted.”

“Practically?”

“We discovered a small Man-child last night, sir.” Orc Corporal Hikz gestured at the corridor’s walkway root flooring. “Under those gratings. Plucky little yellow-haired thing she was, sir. Obviously in hiding from the Bugs.”

Gilmuriel looked at the five or six orcs behind Hikz. “And what have you and your orcs done with the Man-child, Corporal?”

“We ate her, sir.”

“What!”

“And very tasty she was too, thank you, sir.”

“Well done, that orc!” Sergeant Dakashnit appeared silently in their midst from a side corridor, showing all her tusks in a grin. As Gilmuriel belatedly turned to give the challenge, Fireteam Two of Starlight Squad limped into view.

“Tried taking the radio up to treetop level,” Dakashnit jerked a gnarled thumb at marine radio operator Silkentress. “Can’t raise the rest of the platoon, or the company. All the firebases east of the river have been overrun. Saw Bugs in at least battalion strength—they’re across the city perimeter and headed this way fast.” The female orc removed her steel helmet and wiped her shaven head. “This is what we in the marines call a target-rich environment.”

Gilmuriel frowned. “Target-rich environment, Sergeant?”

Corporal Hikz said, “Overwhelming enemy forces, sir!”

Sssssssssssssssszakkk!

Gilmuriel’s pointed ears pricked at the sound of firing. He looked swiftly from side to side.

“That lateral corridor leads to the supply rooms,” he said crisply. “Down this way is the Plant Room. I’m assuming that will be one of their objectives. Corporal Hikz, I think it’s time for you to deploy your experimental weaponry here. The rest of the squad will set up an ambush from the supply rooms.”

With every impression of being amazed by his decisiveness, Gunnery Sergeant Dakashnit saluted. “Corporal Blackrose, recce the supply rooms and access tunnels.” She paused. “Corporal Hikz—that wouldn’t by any chance be Tech-Captain Ugarit’s experimental weaponry, would it?”

“Yur,” Hikz said laconically.

“Oh, shit…”

HHHHSSSSSSSH-ZK-FOOM!

Over the bustle of the squad reconnoitering the nearby tunnels, and Hikz’s mechanic orcs cracking open the crates they carried and rapidly assembling machinery, Lieutenant Gilmuriel Hunt-Lord heard the sound of the Bugs’ incomprehensible weapons firing.

“Move it!” he fluted. “Hikz, what is this new weapon?”

The lean corporal emerged from under a stout steel tripod, brandishing a spanner. “Tech-Captain Ugarit calls it a smart weapons system. Basically a heavy machinegun, sir. Marine Karakingat!”

Hikz scrambled up onto his feet, kicking the large mechanic orcs out of his way. A rather smaller orc in a desert camo forage cap staggered down the tunnel from the direction of the Plant Room, draped in heavy belts of ammunition, which he slung around his thin neck, over his arms, elbows, and around his waist, and still managed to trail on the ground.

“Sir, smart ammo, sir!” Karakingat saluted, dropping the belts on the wooden grating at Gilmuriel’s feet.

Gilmuriel squatted down. The belts of ammunition gleamed gold, catching the tiny amount of light elf eyes need for vision.

“The gun.” Hikz slapped the heavy machinegun on its tripod. It reeked of oil. “Got laser sensors, sir, that’s what the tech-captain calls ’em. It’ll lock on to anything that comes within its range, acquire a target, and blow the fuck out it. On its own—no operator. Called a smart gun, sir. This is the ammo for it. That can track a target after it’s been fired, sir. Karakingat, start bringing up the rest of it!”

The ammunition appeared bulkier than Gilmuriel was used to. A small panel set into the side of each round glowed with a liquid crystal display of targeting calculations.

The LCD blinked, shifting from numerals to letters.

…46-453-56…SIR, SHOOT ME AT THE BASTARDS NOW, SIR…647-3…

“Smart ammo,” the elf lieutenant commented.

He glanced up the corridor. From somewhere far above, in the outbuildings that clung to trunks two hundred feet above the forest floor, the sound of firing echoed. The Bugs would be entering the vast goldentree trunks whose chambers and grottos had been a city since the Sea’s withdrawal, unaccounted ages past.

“Load it up!” he ordered.

“Yessir!” The orc corporal fed one belt into the heavy machinegun and hooked up the next belt for automatic reload. “Marine Karakingat, prepare for weapons-test!”

“Sir, yes sir!” The small orc perked up his ears, rolled up the sleeves of his combat jacket, and began to flick triggers, bolts, and carriers back and forth.

“Checklist correct, sir!” Marine Karakingat peered down the cluster-barrels of the weapon. “Ready to go—”

Dakka-dakka-dakka-FOOM!

“Arrrgh!” Karakingat vanished. Green spatters splashed the far end of the root corridor.

“He’s been fired,” one of the large mechanic orcs remarked.

“Ah…” Corporal Hikz sighed. “We’ll never find another orc of his calibre.”

Hikz’s ridged brows furrowed as he looked down at the second ammunition belt in his hands. “Sir…”

Gilmuriel looked over the orc’s uniformed shoulder. The LCD display on the next rounds ticked past:

“Even smarter ammunition,” the elf lord commented. “Do what you can, Corporal. Sergeant! Do we have a KZ set up?”

“We can make this corridor a killing zone, L.t., and fall back through the supply rooms to the water-pumps.”

“Then let’s roll!”

HHHHSSSSSSSH-ZK-FOOM!

“Contact!”

Chunks of wood ricocheted. A line of brilliance opened, as if the world had cracked apart to show the sun. Blue-white, it seared down the corridor and impacted.

FOOM!

“Targets twelve o’clock, fifty metres low, down corridor!”

“Seen!”

“Seen!”

“Seen!”

“How many?”

“Thirty-plus!”

“Fall back by fire and movement!”

“Grenade!”

FOOM!

“Contact six o’clock! Thirty metres. They’re behind us!”

“ERV! Go, go, go!”

“One elf down!”

“Mother of Forests, carry him! Move out! Go, go, go!”

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

“Hostiles fifty-plus!

“Team Two pull back!”

“Arrrgghhhh!”

“Go go GO!”

Lieutenant Gilmuriel pounded across a lateral corridor, the back-flashes of weapons lighting the gnarled walls and the pierced gratings. The deep roar of the smart gun hammered at his ears. Elves ran past and fell into the shelter of sideturnings, waited until the next team ran past, and gave covering fire.

Gilmuriel slammed into the cover of the Plant Room doors. Elven combat boots thudded past him. The crouching elf, sweat-stained woodland camo bandanna tied behind his pointed ears, cradled his automatic pistol and stared back up the smoke-filled corridor. His elf marine squad hugged the scant cover of wall niches. Orcs in overalls and BDUs shambled back out of the haze.

The hefty bulk of orc sergeant Dakashnit slammed in beside Gilmuriel, her M16 stinking of hot metal. Ejected ammunition cases rattled across the gratings. She looked up and down the corridor, and then at the wooden-gated Plant Room beside her.

“If we close these doors, L.t., will they hold?”

“Not against those weapons. What are they?”

“Fuck knows, L.t.!”

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM—–

The hammering fire of the smart gun abruptly cut off. Gilmuriel peered through the haze. Torch-beams cut the smoke, dazzling him until his elvish sight adjusted.

The beams dipped, crossed, jabbed towards the Plant Room. Sharp hisses of command echoed down the corridor. The first glint of a blue-black carapace brought Gilmuriel’s pistol up. Dakashnit closed her large, taloned hand on his arm.

“L.t.” The orc had a strange expression. “Look at that. It’s a textbook advance…”

Gilmuriel looked down the wood-walled corridor at the twelve or fifteen insectoids tactically advancing, bulgebarreled weapons held at the ready, hugging their hard exoskeletons into every piece of cover. Rapid commands passed between them. They advanced down the hundred metres of exposed corridor with frightening speed.

The elf lieutenant shook the orc’s hand off. “Sergeant, pull yourself together! Those Bugs are history!”

Dakashnit protested, “But look, L.t., they ain’t no different from us. They’re soldiers.”

Gilmuriel bared his teeth in a maniacal grin, sighting his pistol. “Okay, so they’re military history!”

FOOM!

Narrow beams spattered across the hardwood ceiling and seared down into the walkways underfoot, hissing and sparking electric-blue down their lengths. A dozen more hostiles appeared through the smoke from slowly smouldering goldentree roots.

“Pull out!” Gilmuriel bawled. “GO!”

BOOM! BOOM!

Grenades covered their escape. At the next RV point, Gilmuriel sank panting against the wall of a six-corridor intersection. Marines Aradmel Brightblade and Ravenharp the White sprinted into the open space, the twisting, screaming body of an elf carried between them, and laid her down. The lieutenant stepped over debris to stare at Byrna Silkentress. A beam of spitting light had caught her directly across one cheek, bubbling her dark skin. Another shot had glanced across her belly, not deep enough to sever her body in two, but deep enough to split the peritoneum wall beyond repair.

The wounded elf writhed, bulges of flesh pressing out between her slick fingers as she tried to hold her intestines inside her body cavity. Blood soaked her combats sopping wet.

“Shit!” Aradmel Brightblade moaned. “Oh, shit, man, I told her to run through.”

“Brightblade!” Gilmuriel snapped. “On guard, that corridor, now!”

Marine Ravenharp the White knelt down by Byrna’s side, his hand going to touch the dogtags fused into the flesh of her neck by the blast. “I used to be a healer-mage…”

“Magery won’t work for marines.” Gilmuriel dragged another word from his increasing marine vocabulary, appealing back over his shoulder to Dakashnit. “Medic!”

The orc sergeant looked at him blankly. “What’s a ‘medic’?”

“Please!” Byrna Silkentress screamed. “Please!”

Gilmuriel’s hand slipped, wet with the ropes of her spilling intestines. He wiped his fingers on his combat trousers and drew his automatic pistol. With one hand he turned her head away. He placed the muzzle of his automatic pistol on her skull at the base of her neck and squeezed the trigger. A slew of blood and bone punched out her skull from eyes to crown, splattering the corridor wall with red tissue. Byrna’s body relaxed.

“Marine Starharp.” Gilmuriel swallowed bile. “Take over radio duties.”

“Yes, sir.” Removing the rig from Byrna’s body, Belluriel’s long-fingered musician’s hands shook.

“Enemy seen?” Dakashnit questioned the squad harshly. “Come on, assholes! I’m gonna get the rest of you out of here alive if it kills me. Enemy seen?”

“Not seen.”

“Not seen.”

“Not seen!”

Eighteen hours later, Lieutenant Gilmuriel and the elf marine squad patrolled from the lower to the upper levels of the root tunnels. Nerves stretched, ears pricked, hands slick on rifles.

“If it were an ambush we’d have hit the kay-zee by now,” Dakashnit advised. “L.t., I think the Bugs did a sweep through the area and that was it. They haven’t occupied the city at all. They’re gone.”

“Leaving hostile forces behind them?”

“Uh-huh.” The orc looked thoughtfully at Marine Starharp. “See if you can raise HQ now, L.t. Send a despatch.”

“Saying what?” Gilmuriel Hunt-Lord stood aching, weary, and filthy in the city of the Elven Lords. Above him vast ancient canopies reached for the sun; capillary action drank up moisture from the roots; but the whorled chambers and high platforms of the City of the Trees lay deserted, blood-spattered, home only to bodies and the circling carrion eagles. A persistent smell of burning stung his eyes: the slow fires that, once begun, would smoulder for decades before finally burning the city to the ground.

“They’re not holding territory,” Dakashnit said.

“They’re not holding this territory, Gunnery Sergeant…” Without turning, Gilmuriel spoke to Belluriel Starharp. “Raise HQ, marine. Advise them to plot the Bugs’ advance—use satellite observation to find out exactly where they are. Inform them there’s a possibility the Bugs may have a specific objective to which they are advancing.”

9

“Certain irregularities have come to light,” the Dark Lord stated, “about your conduct in the late war. And your administration of My election campaign.”

“Must be some mistake, Ma’am.” Ashnak shifted his massive weight from foot to foot, now bare of combat boots. The chains fettered to his wrists and ankles clinked.

The black canvas walls of the Dark Lord’s Night Pavilion flapped in the night wind. Silver embroidered sigils of Evil glinted in the electric light. The outside generator hummed.

“And I am under no illusion,” the Lord of Nightmare added, “as to the strength of those chains.”

Ashnak was wearing the fetters more from a sense of appropriateness than from coercion. His hand-to-hand fight with the Ferenzi guards had also been in a spirit of play, resulting in no more than their minor maiming.

“Yessir, Ma’am!” He brought his bare heels down on the pelts and carpets that covered the earth six-deep in the night Pavilion. His combat trousers slid an inch or so lower about his hips, his belt and webbing having being confiscated. The electric light gleamed on his bald head. “Not planning to escape, Dread Lord. Nothing to be afraid of. I’m innocent.”

The Dark Lord laughed, a soft sound that killed the night insects buzzing around the lamps. She sat enthroned in a chair of basalt subtly carved with all the creatures that slide, or creep, or sting. Masses of paperwork covered her stone desk. Her face showed violet-shadowed, beautiful, and dire.

“There remain only two days before the final accounting of votes…” She said. “Ah. Brother.”

The tent flap was pulled up by one of the guards outside—not an orc marine, Ashnak noted—and the cowled figure of the nameless necromancer strode in. Oderic, High Wizard of Ferenzia, followed him, trailing a cloud of blue pipe-weed smoke and leaning on his staff.

The wind blew chill across the encampment of Evil that lay outside Ferenzia’s Royal Quarter.

“Orcs!” The High Wizard Oderic stared at Ashnak, knocking his pipe out on the edge of the Dark Lord’s table. Without waiting for permission he eased himself down into one of the plush chairs. “Only goes to prove what I’ve always said about them, M’dear. Orcs are all well and good, I dare say, in their own lands to the east, but would You want Your daughter to marry one?”

There was an eye-contact between the nameless necromancer and the Dark Lord of which the white mage seemed utterly unaware.

Ashnak drew himself up as erect as is consistent with the sloping posture of an orc and bellowed resonantly, “I demand a trial to clear my good name!”

The white-haired wizard guffawed.

“But you see,” the Lord of Darkness said, “orc Ashnak, it is not a matter of your good name, it is a matter of Mine. You were one of My Horde Commanders. I cannot have My reputation soiled by atrocities you may have committed without My orders.”

There was no direct response to make to that which would not result in his head being on a pike before dawn. Ashnak settled for falling to his knees in a multiple rattle of chains. The impact of his weight shook the ink-stand on the stone table. He held up his fettered hands in a suitable attitude of appeal.

“Rather than bring disgrace upon my Mistress I will fall upon my own sword! But,” Ashnak added hastily, catching the gleam in the necromancer’s eye, “that would not clear You, Dread Lord, of the accusations of electoral corruption. That can only be done by bringing me to trial and proving me innocent as soon as possible—Ma’am, you’re going to need the orc marines very shortly, since the last situation report on the Bugs gave their position as being just south of the River Faex.”

“We need not worry about that,” the Lord of Darkness said. “My brother the nameless, you have had some experience with these orc soldiers. I hereby appoint you the authority of My name. Take over command as their general.”

Ashnak came up onto his taloned feet with all the speed and strength of a great orc, rock-sized fists clenched, chain taut between them. His voice hit tenor in outrage. “No!”

“Orc Ashnak, you will not defy Me!”

Ashnak’s breathing slowed. His granite-coloured hide rippled, blood-gorged muscles relaxing. He dropped his taloned fists back in front of him. “Ma’am—I’m thinking of my orcs. The nameless necromancer has no experience of marine combat! He’ll get my boys killed.”

The nameless necromancer sprayed spittle across the Dark Pavilion. “What are orcsh for? Battle-fodder! You have been acting above your station for too long now!”

The Dark Lord said, “Mage Oderic of Ferenzia, you see that I am willing to commit My servant Ashnak here to the Light’s trial.”

The wizard looked up from searching through the pockets of his tweed robe for pipe-weed. “High King Magorian has decided to appoint my humble self as the judge. I have the trial scheduled for the fifth day after New Moon. That’s ten days from now.”

The nameless necromancer spoke from the darkness of his cowl. “That is not accsheptible, mage of the Light. The trial must take plasch now, before the electshion to the Throne of the World. My Mishtressh the Dark Lord demandsh it—as your War Leader.”

Just so there should be no mistaking the intention, the nameless necromancer paused for an obligatory two heartbeats before adding, “The marinesh are not yet fully mobilished. It would be unfortunate if they were not available to use againsht the invaders.”

Ashnak caught the featureless orange eye of the Dark Lord with a look that spoke volumes, mostly about the nameless necromancer’s failing acquaintance with subtlety.

“Hold the trial tomorrow,” the Dark Lord suggested.

“Ah, very well. If you insist.” The wizard conjured up, with a flick of yellow-stained fingers, pipe-weed and a burning match. He lit his pipe. “Shall we say th—hkkk! hkkkhkkkk! kah!—the Hall of Justice, at ten?”

Ashnak, who had no doubts whatsoever about the Light’s verdict, rehearsed a number of possibilities and reluctantly dismissed physical mayhem. He allowed his massive shoulders to slump. “Am I to be held in military custody, then, Ma’ am?”

“And have the marines report your unfortunate escape? I think not—” The Lord of Night and Silence halted, Her delicate head tilted to one side as if listening. “Let them enter.”

The flap of the Night Pavilion was drawn back again by braided silver cords. The wind brought Ashnak the scent of troll-flesh and metal from the door guards, overlain by a pervasive corruption, and a very familiar smell of halfling.

Magda Brandiman marched across the fur pelts and lifted an armful of broadsheets up onto the stone table. “Latest election edition of Warrior of Fortune, Dark Lady. Hot off the presses. I also have some information too recent to have made the news.”

For some reason that Ashnak could not fathom, the Dark Lord and the female halfling glared at each other for a moment in silence. Magda’s fur-short hair slicked up like a cat’s under the electricity. The Dark Lord leaned back, pale hair and shadowed face framed by her black robes.

“We were not aware of your interest in broadsheets.”

“Graagryk had need of a new sheet with inter-kingdom circulation,” the duchess said, “so I made it my business to acquire one. It is a recent purchase.”

The halfling had the appearance of having come from a social function to the press room, before coming to the Dark Pavilion. Her arms were ink-smudged below the sleeves of her black gown, and her diamond tiara had been shoved back to make room for a green eyeshade.

“And this is one of my sources in the military,” Magda said crisply. “Lieutenant Lugashaldim of Covert Intelligence Actions.”

The Undead orc wore dark glasses, a black beret on one side of his flesh-stripped skull, and a sleeveless black vest apparently made up entirely of pouches and pockets. “Dark Lord, Ma’am! General Ashnak, sir!”

“I won’t intrude on your private conversations.” The white wizard Oderic eased himself up out of his seat with palpable reluctance.

The Dark Lord said, “We have nothing to hide in this matter. Duchess of Graagryk, you may speak.”

“Lugashaldim,” the halfling prompted. Magda stood on one leg, momentarily leaning her hand against Ashnak’s hip for balance, and scratched the sole of her hairy foot. Her other hand, resting against his skin, made the fingerspeech movements for:

—Watch. Wait.

“Lieutenant Lugashaldim, you may regard this as a debrief,” Ashnak said.

“Very well, sir.” The Special Undead Services orc put the heels of his rotting boots together. “It recently came to the attention of the CIA that a smear campaign was being conducted against the general during the present election. We have thoroughly investigated this, and I can now announce that there is no foundation in it whatsoever.”

High Wizard Oderic grunted sarcastically. “And the evidence, foul Undead creature? What of that?”

Lugashaldim’s gaze remained firmly fixed on the Dark Lord. “Ma’am, the Light candidate Amarynth has no substantial evidence against General Ashnak—the supposed written confession of the witness Kyrial cannot be found. The Man-child herself has vanished. As for the halfling Meadowsweet and his family, they or their inheritors can’t be traced either. Lord Amarynth has no one willing to come forward and testify, Ma’am.”

Ashnak, having a reasonable idea as to why no written evidence could be found, and where the witnesses might have gone, smirked.

“But there is the noble elf, Perdita del Verro,” Oderic protested.

“Regrettably,” Magda Brandiman said, “as I discovered upon Graagryk’s purchase of Warrior of Fortune, the previous owners seem to have sent Mistress del Verro to cover the bush wars in the Drowned Lands, five thousand miles to the west. Even more regrettably, we can’t contact her while she’s on board ship for the two-year voyage. She could be anywhere on the Western Ocean. I fear she will not be able to return in time for the trial.”

“How regrettable,” the Dark Lord remarked drily.

Ashnak picked his nose to cover a broad grin.

“But,” the Dark Lord added, “I’m afraid I cannot expect the Light to take our word for lack of evidence.”

Magda’s hand slid into Ashnak’s, gripping his gnarled fingers. He looked down at the top of her head and pulled her close for a moment. Between their bodies her fingers moved again:

—Don’t give up hope!

“You still agree to a trial, then?” Oderic sounded surprised.

The Lord of Dead Aeons closed Her long lashes over Her glowing eyes, sitting as still as any effigy in the Halls of Those Who Sleep.

The nameless necromancer’s hood turned towards Oderic. “What She has said, sho let it be!”

“Well, well. Goodness me.” Oderic, still standing, blew a succession of smoke-rings, each a further degree of colour up the spectrum than the last. “I’ll inform the jury of the new time for the trial. No, no, don’t bother to see me out. I know my own way.”

After the guttural challenge of the troll guard ceased, the nameless necromancer spoke again, hobbling away from the stone table. “Lich orc, you are now under my command. You will come with me and tell me all you know. Your Grace of Graagryk, good night.”

The necromancer held up the tent flap pointedly. Magda dropped a very formal curtsey to Dark Lord and walked out without a backward look. Lugashaldim, after glancing at Ashnak for guidance, followed her.

“And take off that shilly talishman!” The nameless pointed at the marine-issue dogtag slung around Ashnak’s bull neck. “Dark Lord, I shall return for the orc prishoner in just one moment.”

Ashnak thoughtfully tested the chains between his wrist fetters. The metal groaned. Troll Irregulars are stronger than common orcs, though not stronger than great orcs. The Royal Quarter of Ferenzia is not that far from the military encampment of the orc marines.

“I would find you,” a voice whispered, dry as the husks of dead bees. Lashes lifted and the Dark Lord once again watched from Her great basalt throne.

Nor is it far from the Dark Pavilion to the orc marine camp where the retributive powers of the Lord of Night and Silence are concerned.

“Since I have consented to play this game, I will not lose it now. If it is My pleasure that you be sacrificed to make My name good in the eyes of fools, then so be it. You are Mine, little orc.”

The black robes rustled like leaves, and a pale hand upon which the sword calluses were long healed reached out.

Ashnak by tensing his muscles snapped the fetters around his wrists. He reached up and broke the chain of the marine-issue dogtag, and dropped the nullity talisman onto the stone table before Her implacable gaze.

The same night wind that tugged the guy ropes of the night Pavilion whistled through Ferenzia Station.

The Reverend Will Brandiman tucked his marine-surplus radio rig back inside his doublet and leaned out of the steam train’s window. “There they are, Ned—right on time.”

His brother stuck a wimpled head out of the window as the train hissed, chugged, and screeched to a halt on the southern-incoming platform. The air under the high panelled-glass station roof smelled of steam, grit, and food-stalls. A crowd of brightly dressed halflings, elves, dwarves, and Men thronged the platform, all illuminated by the spitting naphtha flares. Their waving banners read, “VOTE LIGHT, VOTE AMARYNTH!” and “AMARYNTH FOR THE THRONE OF THE WORLD!”

“There’s upwards of five hundred,” Ned marvelled, “on the platform alone. Are all of them Mother’s rent-a-mob?”

Will tapped the radio rig. “That’s what she says. An audience for us.”

The two halflings looked at each other as doors banged open down the length of the election express special, echoing in the vast interior space.

Ned grinned. “Let’s do it!”

Will slicked back his dyed black hair, still leaning out of the train window. He touched the transit button on the radio. “Hairfoot to Grace, we’re coming in, do you copy?”

“Grace to Hairfoot, copy loud and clear. Take it away, boys.”

Cheers echoed. Four fat dwarves unrolled a red velvet carpet towards the Holy One’s carriage. Will ducked back into the train and made his way forward, Ned at his heels.

“Your Holy Paladinship.” Will bowed. “Your people wish to greet you.”

“And so they shall greet us.” The dark elf Amarynth, Holy Son of the Lady, stood accoutred in a white robe sewn with pearls. Diamonds fastened his shaggy mane of black hair back above his pointed ears. “Come, let us descend.”

A flurry of Flagellant Knights descended first, clearing the crowds back. Will assumed a pious expression and clasped his hands before his breast, treading in a stately manner down the small flight of movable steps to the platform. A muttered curse at his back informed him that Ned had trod on his habit’s hem again.

Questions came rapid-fire from the crowd:

“Your Reverendship, will you say a few words for the press?”

“This way, Reverend—smile for the camera!”

“How’s the campaign going?”

“Mother Edwina, will you say something for the women of Ferenzia?”

Will held up his hands soberly. The thronging crowd of halfling ballad-singers, Human gossips, dwarf rumourmongers, and an elven broadsheet camera crew formed a half-circle around the train steps. “Gentlemen! Ladies! One at a time, please!”

Mother Edwina picked up his skirts and walked to join his brother, whip and handcuffs jangling on his chain belt. “Good people of Ferenzia! It is not we who should speak to you. Behold—the Lady’s Son himself, your Light candidate, Amarynth!”

Flashbulbs popped and the general decibel level of questions rose to screaming pitch. The crowd behind the press waved their banners, chanting “AM-A-RYNTH! AM-A-RYNTH!” The Holy One appeared in the train door, paused for a moment, then swept down the steps and onto the red carpet.

“We stand before you filled with Light and hope!” The elf spread his arms. The sleeves of his white robe flashed back the illumination of the naphtha lamps. “In two days the final accounting is due—our victory, which will wipe the treacherous forces of Darkness from the face of the earth!”

Reverend William Brandiman and Mother Edwina proceeded to orchestrate the taking of questions, Will with half an eye on the guardsmen shepherding Ferenzia’s enthusiastic general public. The gate from the platform into the main body of the station was hopelessly blocked. Will searched the broadsheet gossip-mongers for any familiar face.

In the second rank of the crowd, effectively concealed by Men’s legs and the skirts of their doublets, Magda Brandiman stood with notebook and quill in hand, a slouch hat pulled down over her eyes.

“There.” Will nudged Mother Edwina. The wimpled halfling followed his gaze.

“I see, brother. Mother Edwina will call on her for a question after the dwarf has finished.”

Will took a deep breath to steady himself. The Holy One’s answer to the dwarf interviewer’s question seemed unusually extensive. He glanced up at Amarynth.

“…And furthermore,” Amarynth said, “in the certain knowledge of our victory, we have an announcement to make. A most important announcement! It should perhaps wait—but we are so anxious that we cannot.”

Amarynth Firehand beamed, first at the crowd of journalists and then directly at Will and Ned. The Holy One stepped forward in the expectant silence.

He sank gracefully to one knee in front of Ned Brandiman.

“Mother Edwina!” Amarynth Firehand began. “We know that your Order, the Little Sisters of Mortification, is not an Order that forbids congress with members of the opposite sex. Indeed, many of the Little Sisters even marry. Oh, Edwina, marry me!”

A fury of flashbulbs burst, tripod-cameras catching the expression of stunned amazement on the halfling features of Mother Edwina. Someone behind Will said, “Aw, that’s so sweet!”

“You must know how we feel!” Amarynth exclaimed. “Edwina, our feelings cannot come as a surprise to you.”

Ned Brandiman regarded Amarynth for a confused moment. “You’re an elf. I’m a halfling. It would never work.”

“But it will!” the Holy One protested, holding out a beseeching hand. “Edwina, make us the happiest of elves! Say yes!”

The crowd of elves, dwarves, and Men around Will scribbled furiously, glancing from the Light’s candidate to the halfling in her red nun’s habit. Will belatedly shut his open mouth. A Man muttered excitedly, “Headline: LIGHT CANDIDATE PROPOSES TO GOOD ABBESS, WEDDING OF THE YEAR, question mark!”

The Good Abbess Edwina stood on the station platform, her motherly, wrinkled face catching the naphtha lights. The night wind blew around the skirts of her red robe. The silver tip of her whip gleamed. For a long moment she stood perfectly still, gazing into the eyes of the kneeling elf, which were just on her level.

She reached up slowly and pulled off her wimple, disclosing tight brown curls and a fair amount of chin-stubble.

“I’m a male halfling,” Ned Brandiman pointed out gruffly.

“No one of us is perfect,” Amarynth shrugged.

The elf’s response was drowned in the flash of bulbs and the screech of questions, and a baying howl from the crowds at the platform gate. They broke the guards’ cordon and flooded in. The Knights Flagellant moved forward and scuffles broke out. Will Brandiman stepped back in among the journalists, effectively concealing himself, and stripped off his tight black doublet. He reversed it to show the scarlet lining and struggled to get his arms back into the sleeves.

“Amazing,” a familiar voice commented. Magda Brandiman removed her slouch hat and passed it to her son, standing revealed in an evening dress and fur stole, the picture of a socialite halfling. “Much more effective than planting a question about the reverend’s financial irregularities Amarynth might have wriggled out of that. This is his political death.”

“Mother, it was nothing to do with us!” Will tugged the hat down over his eyes and pointed to where the dark elf and the defrocked abbess were being pushed and shoved. Ugly noises sounded from the crowd. “Let’s get Ned out before real trouble starts.”

The halfling smiled, tiny crow’s-feet wrinkling in the corners of her dark eyes. “There’s always an old favourite,” she murmured, moving to the opposite platform’s edge, striking a sulphur-match, and dropping it into the litter between the rails.

Will filled his lungs and bellowed. “FIRE!”

The stench of burning rags filled the air and the crowd panicked. Will elbowed his way between the dwarf correspondent and the elf camera crew, caught Ned’s arm and pulled; the two halflings rolled and dived and dropped down between the edge of the platform and Amarynth’s election-special express. Ned tore his habit to tunic-length and wiped off his face-paint. Heads ducked down, they loped along under the train and exited on the far side, merging with the crowd disembarking from a northerly stopping train, and slipping out onto the far platform.

The Duchess of Graagryk’s coach departed from the outside of Ferenzia’s main station, Her Grace naturally enough not wishing to be involved in the riot that, beginning on platform seven, spread out from there and before the night’s end had barricades up in fifty streets of the poorer quarter. The duchess’s coach, as well as its driver and complement of baffling bodyguards, acquired two new coachmen, who rode in the chilling air without complaint as the coach jolted over the cobbles towards the Royal Quarter.

“I don’t know, Will.” Ned Brandiman shook his head. “I’m not saying I won’t accept him. It was just so sudden. A girl likes to have time to make up her mind.”

Will Brandiman perched beside Ned on the tiger’s seat at the back of the coach, watching the dark streets of Ferenzia jolt by. He put his head in his hands. His voice came muffled to Ned. “What I say is, never marry an elf who refers to himself in the plural, that’s what I say.”

“Well…” Reluctantly, Ned conceded, “There may be something in that.”

The ducal coach left the cobbled streets of the Royal Quarter, the horses’ hooves muffled on the turf of the Royal Park, where the forces of Darkness were encamped. The Duchess Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau leaned out the window and spoke briefly to the kobold and dire-wolf guards.

She alighted in front of the Dark Pavilion and entered.

By the time she reappeared Will had engaged in dice-throwing with the kobold guard and was the proud possessor of two saw-tooth daggers (with spikes on pommels), a wyvern-skin ration bag (with split seam), and four copper coins of indeterminate value. The red eyes of the kobolds glowed at this total pillage of their wealth. Will tactfully palmed his other set of loaded dice and lost a double-or-nothing last throw. He joined Ned and his mother in the coach.

“Well?”

“I could have had a beautiful bride’s gown,” Ned mourned. “With ribbons.”

“Brother, be quiet!” Will scratched at his itchy hair, determined to remove the dye-spell as soon as possible. “So, Mother, what’s happening?”

Ned added, “And those little flounce things, with lace…”

Magda Brandiman struck flint to steel, the light blossoming in the dark body of the coach. As the vehicle clopped away she lit a thin black roll of pipe-weed, placed it in her pipe-weed holder, and inhaled deeply.

“We’ve done you a considerable favour,” Will pointed out. “That routine with the prayer-wheel was good for months yet. Ned and I could have been rich. Richer. Comfortably off, even.”

“And afforded a wedding gown with a train,” Ned Brandiman put in. “Twenty yards of the best Archipelago silk.”

Will elbowed his brother halfling firmly in the ribs. “As a favour to our mother, we sink the Light’s election candidate—yes, I know it wasn’t us, precisely, but we were going to. I’d prepared a marvellously touching speech where I broke down and confessed to Amarynth’s forcing me to extort money from the pilgrims.”

Slightly miffed, he added, “It was really good, for a rush job. Shame. However, the chances of Amarynth Firehand winning the election to the Throne of the World are slender now, to say the least, and we want to know, Mother—what did the Dark Lord offer you as a reward? And how much is our share of it?”

Chiaroscuro shadows chased across Magda Brandiman’s lined, sallow face and the swell of her small breasts under her evening gown. She frowned, exhaling pipe-weed smoke. “That Bitch! I know exactly what She’s after, She doesn’t fool me for one minute. Which is more than I can say for a certain starry-eyed orc…”

Will frowned. “Mother, I think you’d better tell us about this. What have orcs got to do with it?”

Magda Brandiman turned her head, her delicate profile appearing against the window as the grey of false dawn streaked the sky over Ferenzia.

“I may have misled you, son,” she confessed. “Removing Amarynth wasn’t the Dark Lord’s idea. It was mine. It occurred to me, you see, that with no rival in the election, and Her victory therefore certain, it wouldn’t be necessary for my Ashnak’s trial to go ahead.”

“Oh, no,” Will Brandiman groaned. “Ashnak!”

“The evidence against your stepfather has been, shall we say, mislaid. And She doesn’t need a propaganda victory with Amarynth Firehand disgraced. But,” Magda snarled, “will She cancel his trial? She will not! Ten o’clock this morning, it goes ahead.”

“You mean we’ve just attempted to help that—orc—out of trouble?” Will Brandiman demanded. He glared at Ned for help, but the brown-haired halfling leaned back in the jolting coach seat and hummed a wedding march. “Mother! How could you?”

“I couldn’t count on your voluntary assistance.” Magda Brandiman stubbed out the pipe-weed holder on the gilt frame of the coach window, scowling. “I begin to see it now. I’m a fool. There’s no way She’ll stop the trial or settle for any verdict less than guilty. With my Ashnak out of the way She controls the marines. And they’re the only thing now that stands between us and the Bugs.”

The condemned orc ate a hearty breakfast.

Morning sun shone down from the grill into the tiny cell the Order of White Mages had allotted their prisoners. Ashnak blinked as the sun moved across his eyes. Fathoms of spellcast chain rattled as he rolled off the plank bunk and onto his bare feet.

“Urrp!” He scratched his crotch through his ragged combat trousers, chains rattling again, and relieved himself against the cell wall. The sun’s heat raised a malodorous warmth. The orc beamed and belched again.

“General Ashnak!” A thunderous banging sounded on the door, succeeded by the rattle of keys, and the heavy oaken door swung open.

A small orc in smart brown uniform tunic and breeches backed through the doorway, holding a silver breakfast salver in one steel- and one orc-hand. A clean white towel hung over his arm, and he jauntily wore a tall white cook’s hat.

“Good morning, General, sir!” Major Barashkukor said. “How would you like your witness?”

Ashnak chuckled. “Well done!”

The small orc whipped off the domed cover of the salver to disclose sizzling haunch of halfling, crisped to a dark brown. Ashnak seized it and sank his teeth in it, saying through a full mouth, “That’ll do nicely…”

“Last of the young Meadowsweet spawn, sir.” Barashkukor assumed an expression of modesty. “Cooked it myself. Glad you like it, sir. I told the Order of White Mages it was deer-haunch, sir, and they let me through. After they’d insisted on tasting it first.”

Ashnak stripped the succulent meat to the bone, broke the bone and sucked the marrow, the chains on his wrists hardly hampering him at all.

“What about my other order?” he rumbled.

“Yessir!” The small major unbuttoned his uniform jacket and removed a spare set of dogtags. He held the nullity talismans in his hand for a bewildered moment, then scrambled up onto the bunk and passed the chains over Ashnak’s heavy head, dropping the tags down under the fettered orc’s ragged marine sweatshirt. “There you are, sir.”

Staves clashed down the passage and a dozen of the white-surcoated Ferenzi Order of Mages appeared. The female Man who was their leader scowled at Ashnak, who wiped the last halfling-grease from his chin and drew himself up to his full stature.

“You!” she said harshly. “To court, now, and no tricks. My mages will burn you where you stand if you try anything. I would welcome the chance to wipe you from the face of the earth.”

Ashnak regarded their tall ironwood mage-staffs and bared his brass-capped fangs in a smile. “Kiss my ass!”

“Excuse me, madam.” Barashkukor belatedly climbed down from the plank bed, removing and folding his towel and chef’s hat. Under the chef’s hat he wore a flat peaked cap with major’s insignia. “I am Major Barashkukor of Five Company. According to marine regulations, appointed the Prisoner’s Friend.” He beamed at Ashnak. “I am even now preparing your defence, sir.”

The white mage looked down at the orc, her serenely beautiful features wrinkling in disgust. With no more words the mages fell in around Ashnak as he left the cell, Barashkukor at his heels, and strode down the echoing tunnels of the prison.

A covered bridge took them from the prison to the court. The noise of a crowd could be heard through the bridge’s ventilation slits. Ashnak’s deep eyes glinted in the gloom. He quickened his step, forcing the mages to run to keep up. His chains dragged three or four yards behind him, sweeping away the dust of ages.

“Here…” Panting, the head of the mage escort handed Ashnak over to the court ushers at the entrance to the courtroom. Most of the ushers were halflings. The two who approached Ashnak were orcs with “DEPUTY USHER” stencilled across their fatigues.

“As you suggested, sir, I mentioned to the lads that they might like to come along.” Barashkukor beamed up at the gallery on the left of the door, his cyborg-eye whirring. Upwards of two hundred orcs packed the tiered seats, their elbows, shoulders, and knees crushing the dwarves, elves, halflings, and Men sitting in with them. The orc marines threw nuts and offal and chorused barrack-room songs. Their whistles and orc-calls echoed through the court’s high vault. The grunts chanted, “Ash-nak! Ash-nak!”

“How very touching.” Ashnak let his eyes sweep the courtroom—the witness stand in front of the judge’s bench, the desks for prosecuting and defence counsels, and the twelve good Ferenzi and true sitting in the jury box. Members of Ferenzia’s general public filed in towards the last gallery seats.

“Oh, it’s such a shame…” A female dwarf wept copiously as two orc grunts helped her towards a seat. “He didn’t do it, he’s a nice boy…He’s my only support in my old age!”

“Your support?” one hulking, granite-skinned orc queried.

“Aw, she wants Court Four,” the other grunt said, his ugly features clearing. “Thoin Bardsbane, the dwarf axe murderer.”

“My little boy!” the old dwarf female wept, tears trickling into her beard. “He didn’t do it!”

“Haven’t they hanged Thoin Bardsbane already?” the first grunt remarked.

“Naw.” The second orc paused. “Hung, drawn, and quartered.”

The female dwarf broke into a howl and buried her sobbing face in a kerchief. The two orcs in green fatigues escorted her back out of the courtroom. Their voices came faintly to Ashnak:

“When did that happen, then? I never seen a quartered dwarf.”

“You missed it. Sunrise, that was. Pretty good, too…”

A staff tapped on the tiles behind Ashnak and he turned to see a grizzled orc sergeant-major intercept a white-haired old Man in grey robes. “’Ere, you! No weapons in the Hall of Justice!”

The old Man seemed to become even more hunched and bent. Leaning on the gnarled oak, he quavered, “Would you deny a feeble old man his staff?”

The orc sergeant-major guffawed.

“No, you don’t, granddad, I’ve been had like that before!” The orc plucked the staff away, snapped it over his knee, and tossed the pieces back out of the door.

“But, but—”

“If you can’t walk, crawl!”

Ashnak watched the old Man crawl on all fours up the gallery steps. Then he turned his head and nodded. The orc ushers slammed the outer doors of the courtroom on the White Mages and shoved bars into place.

Ashnak twisted his hands in the spellcast chains, pulled, and snapped the steel links. He stripped the fetters away, muscles bulging, and took a pistol from Barashkukor, which he shoved under the waistband of his combat trousers.

“You!” Ashnak strode forward, pointing at a halfling usher. “Call this court to order. I will not suffer this unruly behaviour.”

“But—but—but—”

“That’s contempt.”

FOOM!

“I will not stand for contempt in this courtroom!”

To orcish yowls of applause, Ashnak blew smoke from the Colt .45’s muzzle. He loped up onto the judge’s bench and seated himself in the carved, high-backed chair. Ashnak donned a pair of half-spectacles abandoned on the bench and gazed righteously down into the court, bald head and peaked ears gleaming.

“Clear up that mess!” At the snap of his fingers, six more halflings rushed forward with buckets. Ashnak turned his heavy-jawed head towards prosecuting counsel’s desk.

“You! Counsel for the Prosecution.” Ashnak’s bushy brows lowered. His deep-set eyes gleamed over the half-spectacles. “Why have you not yet made your speech?”

A small curly-footed halfling in brown breeches, the only being as yet sitting by the prosecution’s desk, first looked over his shoulder, then all around, and then back at Ashnak.

“Me?”

“State your case!” Ashnak roared.

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

“That’s contempt!”

FOOOOMM!

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

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

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

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

“Good. And what does he have to say?”

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

“Is that right?” Ashnak asked the witness.

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

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

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

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

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

“Cease!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I appeal!” she called.

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

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

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

“You have it.”

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

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

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

“Er…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A stark frame of wood rose towards the morning sky.

A gallows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was, Ashnak noted, no sign of Oderic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Objection!” Barashkukor bounded to his feet.

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

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

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

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

“WE WANT ASHNAK! LET THE GENERAL SPEAK!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barashkukor bounded to his feet again. “Objection!”

“What is it this time?”

“I’m not ready yet.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

A distant voice echoed: “CALL LUGBASH…”

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

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

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

Barashkukor clasped his hands behind his back. “And in your opinion, Nanny Lugbash, is your charge capable of committing the acts of which he is accused?”

“What, my dear little Nakkie?” The orc’s shawl slipped and she grabbed at it, but not before Ashnak had caught sight of a lantern jaw and corporal’s chevrons. “Of course ’e couldn’t, dearie. Never did anyone any harm, and such a good little orc. Always ate his meals. Ate the plate, come to that. And the dog…”

“No further questions,” Barashkukor said hastily. “I would now like to call as a further character witness Biotech-Captain Ugarit—”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Ashnak growled.

“—No, I wouldn’t. Erm.” The orc major turned on his heel. The ends of his wig flew out, swatting a halfling usher. He strode back to the desk. “I will now claim precedent!”

“’Nakkie,” indeed!” Ashnak rested his hand across his eyes as Barashkukor busied himself digging out a heap of tomes. The faint knocking of the gallows-maker’s hammer became more pronounced.

“Don’t think it’ll work,” a dubious orc voice remarked in the square outside. “That crosspiece is far too high. And look at that strut. Shoddy workmanship, I calls it.”

“Rubbish!” another orc proclaimed. “Superb piece of execution engineering.”

“Sez ’oo?”

Ashnak glanced out of the window as the work-Man stood to one side, avoiding the orcs swinging punches at each other.

“Kind of you to say so, gentlesirs. Most kind,” the Man said, tucking another hammer away on a loop on his carpenter’s apron. Ashnak heard the Man add under his breath, “When it comes to gallows, everyone’s a h’expert…”

Ashnak turned back to the courtroom as Zhazba-darabat threw his long velvet robes about him and began unearthing books from the prosecution desk. In a voice too low for the judge to catch, the dwarf growled, “I have witnessed centuries of precedent, orc. How skilled in law are you?”

“Erm…” Barashkukor shot a haunted look at Ashnak, swallowed, and hauled a book out from the bottom of his pile. “I cite the unanswerable case of Hashbanipal Shadowtree vs. The Blue Elves.”

The dwarf slammed a heavier tome down. “I contradict you with Meliadis the Savage vs. Brukgug Halforc.”

“But I quote Bishop Filgrindibad vs. The Secret Masters of the Halls!”

“And I return: Mistress Shulikan vs. Dolf, Dexis, and Durundibar!”

Barashkukor flicked back the ends of his wig, stunning another halfling, and appealed to the jury. “I therefore cite the unanswerable precedent of Berendis vs. All the Elves of Thyrion!”

Several of the jurors applauded. Those who had been glancing from Barashkukor to Zhazba-darabat rubbed their necks.

“Alaric Bonegrinder vs. The Red Paladin Hugon!” Zhazba-darabat cried triumphantly. “And what do you say to that?”

The small orc scrambled up onto the pile of books already cited, steel leg glinting, and thumbed another tome, rocking precariously. “I will answer that with—erm—with…”

“Order!” Magorian’s gavel crashed down. The orc sergeant in the third row glowered at the front-row grunt. Only a pair of orc ears remained visible, and they did not so much as twitch.

There was silence, apart from the growing noise of the brawl outside in the square, which seemed to have attracted a number of non-orc combatants.

“I rule those precedents out of court,” Magorian quavered. “If you think I’m going to sit here and listen to all that rubbish, you’re much mistaken. Counsel for the defence, do you have anything else to say?”

“I can’t wait,” Ashnak rumbled under his breath, his bloodshot gaze fixed on the small orc major. Behind him, Razitshakra chuckled. Ashnak looked over his muscular shoulder.

The orc marine commissar rested her elbows on the front row of the gallery. “Don’t worry, sir,” she murmured. “I’ve rigged the jury.”

Ashnak glared red-eyed at the jury box. Seven well-fed Men, an elf, two halflings, a dwarf, and a half-elf. “Those aren’t our people.”

“No, no, sir; I’ve rigged the jury.” Concealing her movements from the White Mages, Razitshakra briefly drew open her greatcoat. Ashnak saw that the commissar’s free hand held an M57 firing device.

“Claymore mines under the chairs, sir.”

One of the floor-cables ran across from the gallery to the jury box. Studying them, Ashnak noted beads of sweat on the foreheads of the Man and halfling jurors. Even the elf looked a little uncomfortable.

“Nice work, Commissar,” he approved.

Several shots sounded from the square, over the noise of brawling. The captain of the White Mages scowled and ordered half her force outside. She fixed Ashnak with a challenging glare. Ashnak flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his ripped combat trousers.

“My client,” Barashkukor proclaimed shrilly, “was somewhere else entirely at the time when the said atrocities were committed. M’lud, I am my own witness here—at the time in question, the general was observing my handling of a T54 Main Battle Tank in the River Faex.”

Magorian looked doubtful. “I don’t think you can be your own witness, counsel.”

“Oh.” The small orc’s face fell. Then he brightened. “Very well. I never did trust paperwork. I’m an orc of action, I am. Call the T54 Main Battle Tank!”

The same halfling usher flung open the door to the corridor. “Call the T54 Main Battle Tank!”

“CALL THE T54 MAIN BATTLE…WHAT?”

“I don’t think you can do that.” Magorian looked from the clerk of the court to the Captain of the White Mages. “Can he do that?”

Whatever answer he received was drowned out by the grinding roar of the tank. The orc marines in the gallery cheered, banging their weapons on the floor. A grunt carrying a red flag on a stick walked in through the courtroom door.

Ashnak stood as first the gun-barrel, then the tracks, and finally the chassis of a T54 tank ground into the courtroom. Since it was not more than a few inches wider than the door, it did no more than knock large chunks out of the doorframe. The tracks ripped the tiled flooring to shreds.

The T54’s motor chugged, coughed, and idled. A broad-shouldered orc grunt in a steel helmet flipped open the lid and leaned his elbows on the hatch, one arm close to the mounted machinegun.

“Officer on deck!” Razitshakra bawled from the gallery. The orc caught sight of Ashnak and saluted rigidly. Ashnak returned the salute.

“I demand you rule this tank out of court!” Zhazba-darabat screamed.

The High King Magorian regarded the battered doorway. “You rule it out of court!”

The dwarf prosecutor threw all his papers up into the air in disgust. “Your Honour, I object!”

“Why?” Barashkukor asked smugly. Zhazba-darabat marched up to the small orc and glared at him, nose to nose.

“Because it isn’t even the same tank, that’s why! Your T54 Main Battle Tank is at the bottom of the River Faex, isn’t that right, Major?”

Flustered, the orc major muttered, “It’s a representative T54 Main Battle Tank.”

“No such thing!” The dwarf waved his arms, appealing to the bench. “It couldn’t testify, even if it could testify!”

Magorian scrubbed shaking fingers through his thinning hair. “What was that again?”

“I said—”

Uproar broke out, each citizen of Ferenzia trying to out-shout the orc marine sitting nearest him on the merits of a tank’s testimony. In vain the Order of White Mages used enhanced spells to bolster their calls for silence.

“Silence in court!” the High King Magorian’s voice cracked. “Silence in court!”

Ashnak raised his head. “I think I can help you there.” He snapped his fingers.

FOOOOOOOOOMMMM!

The T54’s 115mm cannon fired. The window glass imploded. A substantial section of the vaulted ceiling fell in, scattering the gallery and the floor of the court with wreckage. For a moment there was silence broken only by the moans of Men, elves, dwarves, and halflings bleeding from the ears.

Ashnak reached up and pulled a large chunk of cotton wadding from his right ear and another one from his left ear. “That brought the house down.”

“The smoke cleared to show High King Magorian waving his gavel in a dazed manner as he sank out of sight. “I said silence in court, dammit…”

Barashkukor pulled several yards of cotton wadding from his ears. The other orc marines followed suit. Barashkukor brushed debris from his horsehair wig. “M’lud, I rest my case.”

A small voice quavered from under the judge’s bench. “The jury may retire…”

Seven Men, two halflings, a dwarf, an elf, and a half-elf left their seats at a run and pelted out of the court, knocking aside the stunned mages. The Captain of the Order of White Mages signalled her Men to sit down on the jurors’ vacated chairs, and tend to their wounded.

Dakka-dakka-dakka!

“Arrrgh!” The body of a brawling Ferenzi Man hit the floor, blown in through the windows from the fight in the square.

“On second thought…” The High King Magorian scrambled into view behind the judge’s bench. “General Ashnak, I hereby pronounce you as thoroughly innocent as it’s possible to be and completely exonerated of every accusation ever brought against you. Now, or in the future. Will that do?” the old Man added, stumbling down from the bench on the arm of his elvish squire.

“That,” Ashnak said over the cheers, yowls, and automatic rifle fire of the orc marines, “will do just fine, Your Honour.”

In the square outside, over the noise of brawling, Ashnak clearly heard the gallows-builder’s yell. “What’s that you say, gentlesirs? A verdict of ‘innocent’?”

There was a pause.

“Oh, fuck!”

“ASH-NAK! ASH-NAK! ASH-NAK!”

“We did it!” Magda exclaimed, hurtling down from the gallery and into Ashnak’s embrace. He kissed the female halfling with enthusiasm.

“We did, sir, didn’t we?” Barashkukor, dazed and starry-eyed, beamed at his general. “I told you you could rely on me, sir!”

The Ferenzi citizens bolted for the exit, and the Order of White Mages did not even look up from their commandeered jury seats. A crowd of cheering orc marines lifted Ashnak and bore their commander on their shoulders out of the courtroom.

“Congratulations, sir!” Marine Commissar Razitshakra shook Barashkukor firmly by the hand. The small orc’s wig fell off. “Politically correct in every respect.”

Barashkukor weaved out of the courtroom between Razitshakra and Lieutenant Chahkamnit.

The small orc grunt in the gallery front row blinked his way back to consciousness. Staggering to his feet, he made for the door in the wake of the cheering marines. A metallic object caught his foot.

The orc bent down, picked it up, and looked at it thoughtfully. The cable trailed behind him as he stepped into the corridor, closing the doors behind him, and squeezed the device’s handle twice.

BOOOOOMMM!

“Arrrrrgghhhhh!”

Ashnak glanced back down the corridor at the brick dust drifting out of the courtroom. He raised his jutting eyebrows, then shook his head.

“Yo!” The hefty orc grunts carried Ashnak shoulder-high out into the square, where the midday sun shone on Ferenzi citizens still busy brawling. Off-duty orc marines stood and watched as if they couldn’t think what all the fuss might be about.

“Hold!”

Ashnak looked over the head of the crowd towards the voice. He slapped the shoulders of the marines carrying him and slid down to the cobbles, taking the clean urban combat jacket Barashkukor was holding out and putting it on.

“Honour guard, tenHUT!” he rasped. The orc grunts around Ashnak, Magda, and Barashkukor trained their M16s on the crowd, and on the High Wizard Oderic, who forced his way through at the head of a column of mages and fighters.

“Reconvene the court,” Oderic shouted to Magorian.

The High King blinked at the sunlight, squinting in the direction of his High Wizard. “You’ve got to be joking!”

“I have a new witness.”

Ashnak looked at Magda, who shrugged, and at Barashkukor, who paled. The White Mages behind Oderic parted their ranks.

A shambling, hunched figure in patchwork leather robes limped forward. The temperature in the sunlit square dropped twenty degrees. The sweet scent of decay made Ashnak’s nostrils twitch.

The nameless necromancer put his hood back from his deformed face.

“I am hish witnesssh! I can vouch for your criminal actions at the halfling bombing, ‘General’ Ashnak.” The nameless smiled, yellowing tusks drawing his mouth out of shape, and wiped away a string of drool. “You and your accomplices. I have sheen it all. I wasss there!”

Ashnak put his rock-sized fists on his hips and glared under lowered brows at the nameless. His hand inched towards the gun in the back of his belt. “That’s contempt…”

“Sir! I say, sir!” The lanky Lieutenant Chahkamnit interrupted, marine radio in hand. “I rather think you ought to hear this, don’t you know?”

Ashnak listened.

He held the radio out so that Magorian, Oderic, and the nameless necromancer could hear the frantic broadcast:

“—Bugs are past the southeastern suburbs of the city! Repeat, our security is compromised, we have hostiles in Ferenzia itself; the Bugs are past the southeastern suburbs of the city! All units alert!”

“Lady of Light!” Oderic suddenly leaned on his staff, his face seeming that of a Man decades years older than his one hundred and twenty years. “How could they come on us so unprepared?”

The nameless necromancer rounded on Lieutenant Chahkamnit. “Mobilise the marines!” he ordered.

The black orc scratched uncomfortably at one peaked ear. “Awfully sorry, sir. I really don’t think I can do that.”

“What?”

The nameless necromancer elbowed past the stunned High Wizard Oderic. Ice formed on the cobbles of the sunlit square. The brawling ceased in mid-blow. The nameless ignored Chahkamnit and loomed over Barashkukor, yellow bile dripping from his fangs.

“Major, you will mobilissse the orcses!”

The orc’s cyborg-eye glowed ruby. “With respect—I don’t take my orders from a civilian.”

The edges of the sky above Ferenzia’s rooftops darkened. The midday sun blurred. The head of the nameless necromancer swivelled, as he glared round at the mob of three hundred orc officers, sergeants, and grunts.

“Is thissh a time to mutiny, with the fate of the world at stake?”

Ashnak finished buttoning his urban combat jacket and tucked it into his trousers. Orc marines fitted him with combat boots, webbing, and pistol holster while he stood bow-legged in the square outside Ferenzia’s Hall of Justice. His hairy nostrils widened, sensing the acrid stink of inhuman invaders.

“‘Snot our city,” an orc grunt remarked.

An orc captain in the crowd’s front rank, General Purpose Machinegun resting over her shoulder, shouted, “This isn’t a mutiny! We’re awaiting orders from our commander.”

The High Wizard Oderic of Ferenzia stared at Ashnak. The white mage swore. He threw his staff down on the sorcerously iced cobbles. The white oak, made brittle, snapped into four pieces.

“That’s politically correct,” Commissar Razitshakra confirmed. “We’re waiting for orders from Joint Chief of Staff Ashnak. Or we marines don’t do anything—except pull out of Ferenzia.”

10

A great stretch of land lies between Ferenzia and the northeastern hills. The colour of the plain changes as if a great shadow is passing across the sun.

The sun shines unhindered.

The blackness on the face of the earth crawled, crept, advancing forward with slow irresistibility: exoskeletoned Bugs marching in their hundreds and their thousands. The crackle of living-metal weaponry hissed through the air.

Unbroken, the lines of Bug soldiers pressed on towards the high ground. Orc vehicles and marines were visible in clumps, clusters, and retreating bands. Mortar fire covered their retreat. A line of helicopter gunships strafed the Bugs and wheeled away, firepower lost in the morass of chitinous bodies.

Unit by unit, company by company, horde by horde, the approaching thousands of Bugs flowed towards the orc marine battalion in the hills. Weapons splashed fire against the granite ridges. Smoke rose up against the sun.

“Sir, look at the range on those things!” Major Barashkukor gaped at the figures the head-up display on his cyborg-eye gave him. “We don’t have the firepower to deal with that!”

“There’s a battalion of us, and fifteen thousand of them. Where’s the problem?”

Ashnak drew on his cigar and exhaled a plume of foul-smelling smoke in the direction of the Lord of Night and Silence.

“Thinking of going into battle, Dread Lord?”

Rank upon rank of great orcs, common orcs, wolf-riders, kobolds, hobgoblins, dark elves, and lich riders lined the ridge, their ragged banners darkening the sky. Before the Horde of Darkness, a great palanquin of bone—the yellowed ribcage of some Dragon of the elder world—was supported on the shoulders of six Gnarly Trolls. Black pennants and horse skulls dangled from its corner posts.

The Dark Lord sat on Her throne in the palanquin. Her ash-blonde hair shadowed copper and cyan in the sunlight. She wore black armour, polished as ebony, fluted and pierced and decorated.

“They do not announce the formal election to the Throne of the World until tomorrow.” She leaned Her chin upon Her hand, Her armoured elbow denting the skull of one of the troll palanquin-bearers. “Having played the game thus far, I do not wish to lose it.”

Ashnak shoved his steel helmet up from his brows. “Now that’s what I want to talk to You about, Ma’am.”

A detachment of elf hussars rode up, sabres jingling, and broke formation to disclose High King Magorian, Oderic, and the White Mages. A band of Knights Flagellant rode up in their wake, but without Amarynth Firehand.

“Just taking up a stronger position.” Oderic puffed on his pipe, and with the stem indicated the pass through the northeastern hills to the country beyond. “Going that way…”

The Dark Lord abruptly signalled to Her trolls. They set the bone palanquin down. She leaped lithely to Her feet with the clatter of full plate harness. Her black steel-gauntleted hand fell on Ashnak’s shoulder. He bit back a groan, legs bowing even more than was natural.

“Let Us talk,” the Dark Lord said, and Her spell of inaudibility flickered around them, stinging Ashnak’s dogtag into searing pain. “You have a request, little orc, do you not? Amuse Me by telling Me what it is.”

“Quite simple, Ma’am.” Ashnak assumed a bluff, military manner. “Don’t want other units getting in the way of my marines. Bugs will make cat’s meat of us if that happens. You’d better put me in charge of the lot—before I have to pull my forces out. Give me the rank of Supreme Commander, Ma’am.”

“Supreme Commander of the Horde,” She mused. “I have not appointed one of those in aeons.”

Ashnak coughed. “Not exactly, Ma’am. I mean Supreme Commander of the Dark and Light forces.”

The Dark Lord laughed, a sound like subterranean bells. The nullity talisman around Ashnak’s neck broke into powder under the weight of the one magic of the Lord of Darkness.

“‘There are at least five other major spearheads of Bug attack, Ma’am, other than this one on Ferenzia. You need the orc marines. Unless you’re planning to just wipe out all the Bugs like that.” Ashnak snapped his talons.

“The magic of obliteration is not a subtle magic. Yes, little orc, I could. But if I wipe these Bugs from the face of the earth, I shall in turn destroy the city they are in, and the land upon which they walk, so great is my power. No, my Ashnak. You shall have to face them in battle.”

She broke the spell of inaudibility and turned back to Her palanquin.

“White Mage!” She cried. “I and My Horde shall accompany you back into the hills. My orc, in whom I am well pleased, is appointed over you all, to the command of this battle. Your people shall obey him as they would Me, or else suffer the same penalties.”

“But, but,” Oderic stuttered. “But—”

The vanguard of the Evil Horde began to march on into the hills, drums thumping and horns blaring, with the Lord of Dead Aeons in the bone palanquin.

“She didn’t like that, Supreme Commander,” Barashkukor said.

“I did.” Ashnak shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. He grinned. “Awriiiiight! Let’s get this show on the road—officer meeting, my tent, now!”

Dust rose up from the plain north of Ferenzia. Weapons and carapaces glinted through the murk. Dust rose up from the low ridges, canyons, gullies, and cliffs of the hills. Below every ridge, concealed in every hollow, orcs and other marines in combat drab crouched with their weapons. Infantry battalions, field artillery groups, land-mine companies; signals, engineers, anti-aircraft, antitank and missile batteries; and behind them the auxiliary services, motor transport, fuel supply, repair workshops, bakery and butchery…

Cobra gunships and Hueys crisscrossed the midday skies above Ferenzia, flying nose-down over peaked roofs and spires. Radio traffic filled the air. Surface-to-air missiles roared into the sky.

“We have a go situation!” Sergeant John H. Stryker of the U.S. Marine Corps put the jeep into a skidding handbrake turn and brought it around in front of Ashnak’s field command tent, five miles to the north of the city. “Sir, everyone and everything is where it ought to be, sir—on time, sir!”

“Fuck me,” Ashnak said as he leaped down from the vehicle. “Well done, Sergeant. Maybe you Otherworld marines do have your uses.”

Followed by Barashkukor, the great orc strode into the command tent.

“I want recce reports on the Bugs’ firepower and tactics. Then I want a confirmation of the assault plan; and rehearsals, if performed. Then I’ll give orders. Any questions?”

Lieutenant Chahkamnit, Commissar Razitshakra, Biotech-Captain Ugarit, Sergeant Dakashnit, Lieutenant Lugashaldim, and the higher-ranking general staff, seated on rickety chairs around comlinks and map-tables, shook their tusked heads. The canvas-filtered sunlight gleamed on one marine, not an orc, tall and skinny, in a uniform decorated with beads, scarves, and silver trinkets.

“I’ve got that report on what it is we’re facing here, sir.” The hard-eyed elf Lieutenant Gilmuriel lounged to his feet. He snapped slender fingers. Ugarit cranked the handle on a kinematographic machine. A jerky moving image flashed on the pull-down screen.

“I don’t know what the Bugs call ’em,” Gilmuriel drawled, “sir. We call this one a ‘blaster.’”

A bolt of charged particles seethes through the air of Thyrion, exploding at the point of impact, taking out three elf marines. Another elf seems caught in a beam of wavering air. Her body explodes in a rain of blood.

“That’s a ‘disruptor,’” Gilmuriel continued. “They use that one a lot. That thing there—”

A black cylinder of metal hovers in the air, above the ruins of the City of the Trees.

“—we call that a ‘hunter’ missile. It has the instincts of an elf, to track and follow its quarry. Explosion has a two-hundred-metre radius. Couldn’t get footage of the ‘homing’ grenades they use, sir. This…”

The elf glared at Ugarit. The skinny orc clicked the kinematographic machine rapidly, removed a slide, and replaced it the other way up.

A wavering bolt of energy tracks across an open jungle clearing, impacts on an armoured vehicle, explodes, and knocks the APC forty feet into the air.

“‘Plasma gun.’” The elf leaned one foot up on a chair, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He wore a brightly patterned scarf as a headband, and his pointed ears were pierced with silver studs. “If they can see us, man, they can hit us! There are heavy weapons versions of that. And a contra-gravity harness, sir, I’m certain.”

Ashnak scowled. “What’s their armoured capability? What about airpower?”

The hefty black orc sergeant beside Gilmuriel stirred.

“Ain’t seen nothing else but infantry, sir,” Dakashnit said. “Their flight capability is jump-packs. No troop transporters. No ground vehicles, less’n they got some of ours. Hell, Commander, they don’t need ’em.”

“Well, we’ve had about all the time for rehearsals we’re going to get—” Ashnak swung round.

Dust-covered and sweating, the nameless necromancer stumbled into the tent and shambled into the circle of ores. “Talking? You orcs should be out there fighting! You shall pay for thish disobediensche.”

Ashnak took two swift paces forward and loomed over the necromancer. “Sit. Down.”

The nameless found himself sitting in one of the folding chairs.

“About bleeding time, too,” Ashnak growled. “My troops have moved out of the assembly areas to the forming-up points and startline. You, Lord Necromancer, can get the Light’s troops off their asses! I’m committing the Light to the attack in Ferenzia itself. Hold ’em as long as you can, then pull back.”

The necromancer glared. “That is a task for marines!”

“I’ve got more than enough problems,” the big combat-clad orc snarled, “without fighting through built-up areas. Get those lily-livered sons of bitches down there! Those Bugs are throwing fuck-knows-what against us! You’re gonna hold ’em up enough so’s we can take ’em on their way north out of the city, here on this line of hills. Any questions?”

There was silence in the command tent. The nameless necromancer slobbered and hissed, standing and drawing himself up to his full height.

“Sir?”

A hand went up at the back.

“Sergeant Stryker?” Ashnak said.

The blond Man stood. New combats and weaponry made him the very image of a marine. His muscular frame bulked as large as any there, except the largest orcs. The nameless necromancer sniffed suspiciously. That would be the Otherworld marine’s aura, Ashnak guessed. He gestured for the Man to continue.

“Well, it’s just this, sir.” John Stryker shifted his feet uncomfortably. His blue eyes met Ashnak’s.

“I know the Bugs are supposed to be these homicidal, mindless, alien psychopaths and killing-machines,” John Stryker said, “but has anyone ever tried just talking to them?”

Some thirty minutes later, at a forward gun position on the edge of the line of hills, the small orc major said, “It might work, sir.”

Ashnak ducked down behind the sandbag walls. “Are you out of your mind, Major?”

“Nossir!” Barashkukor protested. His cyborg-eye whirred, left its socket, and extended on a jointed steel rod. With some care the small orc extended it over the sandbags of the hillside gun emplacement.

Having chewed up the Light’s armoured infantry in the streets of Ferenzia and mangled the crack elf cavalry on the plain beyond, the Bug soldiers were just becoming visible through the haze. Walking towards them, carrying a white flag on a pole, Sergeant John H. Stryker of the U.S. Marine Corps strode down the track from the hills.

“A brave Man!” Barashkukor enthused. “A true marine! Don’t you think so, Supreme Commander?”

“I think the Dragon’s Curse has a lot to answer for.” Supreme Commander Ashnak lowered his binoculars and grunted, crouching over the orc marine with an RT backpack, phoneset in his other taloned hand. “At odds of fifteen to one against us, I’ll try anything. Let’s hope the Visible College’s translation talismans work, soldier.”

The distant figure of John Stryker reached his goal.

Barashkukor focused his extended eye.

“I see him, Supreme Commander! He’s…he’s talking to them!”

Heat haze jumbled the air. As if through running water, Major Barashkukor watched the blond crewcut Man sergeant.

The Man stood before a semicircle of Bugs, gathering around him. They towered over his six-foot height by eighteen inches or more. The sun gleamed blue from their black carapaces and dripping jaws. Dust stained their hard exoskeletons, and their black living-metal weapons were dull shapes of menace.

Stryker drove the pole of the truce flag into the dirt.

Barashkukor watched the Man wave his arms. Through the heat haze, it was visible how his lips moved. The great carapaced heads of the Bugs dipped and swayed. One extruded foot-long inner jaws and salivated.

The saliva burned holes in the earth.

“They’re not attacking him, sir! They’re listening to him!”

Barashkukor’s cyborg-eye tracked left and right. Through the dust, the light kept flashing back from harness, weapons, and chitin shells. The advance line of Bugs wavered, slowed…

“It’s working!” Barashkukor jumped up and down on the spot. His eye-stilt jerked to and fro.

The Supreme Commander (Dark and Light Forces) lifted his head from the radio set. “Mission successful, Major?”

In the sharply focussed view of Barashkukor’s metal eye, the Bugs around Sergeant John H. Stryker stepped towards the Man on their skeletal hind legs. Their shining heads rose up, and they raised their clawed forefeet patiently. Stryker turned. Even over the long distance Barashkukor could see the broad smile on the Man’s face.

The orc’s long ears perked up and his small tusks gleamed. “Supreme Commander, sir, mission successful!—oh.”

Stryker’s head exploded in a rain of meat.

The Bug who had impaled him on an extensible rigid tongue let the body drop. The other Bugs moved in, jaws dripping, feeding quickly and messily.

“Oh, well.” The small orc sighed. His eye whirred, sank down, and clicked home into its socket. “Not entirely successful, sir. They ate him. Incoming!”

CRAAAACK!

A wavering bolt of blue fire impacted on the hillside forty yards away. The explosion threw up dirt and bedrock. Two or three pieces of debris bounced off Barashkukor’s helmet as the small orc crouched in the corner of the emplacement.

“Time we got serious about this,” Supreme Commander Ashnak announced. “Command group moving back. Go, go, go!”

“I’ll drive, sir!” Barashkukor leaped lopsidedly into the jeep after the rest of the grunts and pushed his cyborg-foot down on the accelerator. The vehicle jolted down the far side of the hill, spraying showers of dirt and grit. Barashkukor whooped, one steel hand and one orc-hand wrestling with the wheel. Ashnak tightened the strap on his helmet.

“Forward unit engaged!” the orc marine radio operator yelped. She listened to the headset and added, “Captain Hashnabul reports a problem, Supreme Commander—the grunts keep stopping to invent suitable tortures for Bug prisoners.”

Ashnak’s helmet cracked against the rollbar. “Dammit, tell them they’re not supposed to be taking prisoners anyway!”

“Oh, they don’t have any prisoners yet, sir. They’re just inventing the tortures…”

Barashkukor spun the wheel and ran the jeep up an impossible slope. The vehicle’s wheels spun. The small orc reached out and seized a juniper stump with his cyborg-arm and pulled, and the jeep pivoted and came down on a path made by the tracks of tanks. One of the orc marine runners left the vehicle on the bounce, and Major Barashkukor somewhat reluctantly stopped to let her climb back on board before he gunned the engine and shot off again.

“Isn’t this thrilling, sir?”

“Thrilling,” Ashnak growled, recovering his cigar from the body of the jolting vehicle. He jammed it in the side of his mouth. “Dammit, Major, can’t you get any speed out of this thing?”

CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKK!

White plasma-fire split the dust and exploded against the cliff in front. One-handed, Major Barashkukor spun the wheel. The jeep swerved violently, successfully avoided the landslip, and jolted on towards the rear of the orc marine company.

“For you, Commander.” The RT orc passed the handset over to Ashnak.

“Lieutenant Chahkamnit here, sir. I say, what an absolutely cracking good show this is, sir!”

Ashnak chewed his cigar. “What’s your position, Lieutenant?”

“Directly over yours, sir.”

The big orc caught hold of a strut and leaned out of the jeep, gazing up at a blue afternoon sky that appeared completely empty. “Can’t see you, Chahkamnit.”

“No, sir, of course you can’t. I’m piloting the stealth dragon, sir.”

Barashkukor’s cyborg-eye whirred into the infrared. While his orc-eye watched the road, his lens swivelled to study the heat-outlined shape of a dragon large enough to cover Ferenzia itself.

“Painted it with blue radar-reflective paint,” the major approved. “Smart idea, sir.”

Ashnak spat out the remnants of his chewed cigar. “Take her down, Lieutenant Chahkamnit. Start giving me some fighter ground-attack!”

Another voice spluttered from the RT handset:

“Hai-yah, yo! Comin’ in NOW!”

The jeep swerved wildly as both Ashnak and Barashkukor attempted to watch the sky and the road simultaneously. The small orc pointed with his orc-hand, steering with the metal one.

“There, sir!”

A squadron of winged white horses wheeled over the hills in perfect formation. Stark against the blue sky were the Hellfire missiles under each wing. Their riders, mail byrnies flashing in the sun, the wind whipping the fur of their leggings and their long yellow braids, dug their heels into the flanks of the pegasi, urging them on with shrieks and cries.

“Going in!”

The Valkyrie Marines peeled off and pitched down towards the plain. A laser-guided missile fired and left a searing trail across the sky. A bolt of blue light leaped up from the plain’s dust. The Valkyrie Marines folded their wings as one, dived for speed, and came in low and hard over the target area. A female voice crackled over the RT:

“Dah dah-dah DAH dah, Dah dah-dah DAH dah…”

Barashkukor dragged the jeep’s wheel round and steered behind a granite ridge, jouncing out into sunlight at the end of it. His commanding officer’s hand smacked him smartly across the back of the head. His helmet rang.

“—and stop when I tell you!” The great orc leapt from the slowing jeep and loped across to a squad of grunts at the end of the ridge. Sun glinted through the ribs of the Special Undead Services.

“Give me a sit-rep,” Supreme Commander Ashnak demanded.

Lieutenant Lugashaldim saluted, skeletal fingers touching his rotting beret. The lenses of his sunglasses reflected unearthly shapes in their curve.

“Setting up a crack sniper squad here, sir.” The lich orc marine indicated the rest of the Undead grunts nestling into hollows in the rock, overlooking the plain below. “See, sir, the main difference between an orc who’ll make a good sniper and an orc who won’t is heartbeat. Shakes the sights, sir. Well, naturally enough, Undead orcs make the best sniper-teams.”

Ashnak nodded his tusked head. “What results are you getting?”

“Following the standard procedure, sir. Shooting to maim, not kill, so that the enemy will have to risk fire to rescue the injured soldier, with subsequent effect on their morale.” The Undead orc removed his sunglasses. Pinpricks of red shone in his mummified eye-sockets. “All very well, sir, but these Bugs don’t seem at all bothered by their mates being wounded. They just leave them writhing, sir.”

“Keep shooting to maim, in any case,” Ashnak ordered. “It’ll have a good effect on our lads’ morale.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Lugashaldim sighed. “Only wish I had more of the SUS on hand here. As it is, sir, we’re only a skeleton staff.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Just the nine, sir.”

The crack and whumph of mortar and artillery fire shook the hills. Puffs of dirt shot up on the plain below. Major Barashkukor gunned the jeep’s motor as soon as his commanding officer vaulted back into the front seat, and sped off, overtaking a column of T54s deploying to the front.

Hooves thundered behind Barashkukor. The small orc jerked his attention back to the road. A troop of black horses split to gallop past the jeep, hooves cutting the earth. The riders, black cloaks swirling to disclose shining spiked black armour, spurred their thundering steeds. Barashkukor coaxed a tad more out of the engine, keeping level.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Ashnak bawled, deep orc-voice rising above hoofbeats and whining gears.

The hood of the last rider slid down. It disclosed rat’s-tail black hair and a piebald grey-and-black face snarling in a rictus of fear. The nameless necromancer freed one patchwork-gloved hand from the reins to point wildly down at Ferenzia and the plain.

“We’ve been overrun! We’re all going to die!”

Ashnak’s upper lip pulled back from his tusks in a snarl. “You’re a necromancer, dammit. It isn’t death—it’s a learning experience!”

The troop of black riders kept pace with the jeep, hooves kicking up the heavy golden dust. Barashkukor glanced sideways. His commanding orc, squat in urban camouflage battledress, held the front bar of the jeep with one hand, and with the other unbuckled the flap of his pistol holster.

“I’ve got a forty-five-calibre Colt automatic here that says you’re going back to the front line!”

The black riders wheeled and plunged away down a trail that led back into the hills, where any might conceal themselves and hide from catastrophic defeat. The nameless necromancer, his silver-threaded leather robe flying, snarled an obscenity at Ashnak.

“Fly, fool of an orc! Or stay here and die!”

FOOOM!

“Good shot, sir!”

Barashkukor’s metal eye extended above his helmet and stared back down the road. A riderless horse fell back, reins trailing. A dark figure slumped on the dirt track in a splash of intestines.

“He’ll be back,” Ashnak said. “Yo! Here, Major. I said here. I said—”

An orc fist impacted the side of Barashkukor’s helmet.

“—STOP!”

Airbursts and groundbursts shook the world as Barashkukor slewed the jeep to a halt in an artillery emplacement. Camouflage netting blocked the sky, filling in the gulley. The battery of guns faced the plain below. The small orc slipped the jeep’s ignition keys into his pocket and followed his commanding orc over to the forward observation post.

“Estimate—” whirrr-click! “—upwards of sixteen thousand hostiles, Supreme Commander.”

The radio orc and the runners clustered around Ashnak as the great orc surveyed the plain below through field glasses. Writhing lines of marines and Bugs became visible through the dust, then vanished again. Monitoring headquarters’ radio traffic brought a constant stream of situation reports. Barashkukor picked out an elvish voice among the radio traffic.

“I don’t care if it is orders, Sergeant! Marines never retreat!”

“No, L.t.,” Dakashnit’s laconic voice answered Lieutenant Gilmuriel. “’Course not. Think of it as ‘advancing to the rear.’”

Without looking, Supreme Commander Ashnak snapped his talons for the handset. “Ashnak to command post, Ashnak to command post. Commissar Razitshakra—keep pulling ’em back. Get ’em out of there. Over.”

“I copy, Commander.” Razitshakra’s voice crackled. “Command post to all units, repeat, command post to all units. Fall back. Repeat, fall back now!”

Orc gun crews pounded past Barashkukor to their stations but did not fire. Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit emerged from the back of one of several Bedford trucks parked under the camouflage netting. The skinny orc spotted Barashkukor, stared fixedly at the major’s metal arm and leg, and began to drool.

“Tech-Captain!”

Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit sidled past Barashkukor and approached Ashnak. Dust, oil, and less recognisable stains covered his long white coat and the uniform beneath. A succession of studs, chains, and feathers dangled from his pierced, pointed ears.

“Sir!” The skinny orc tugged at Ashnak’s sleeve. The Supreme Commander lowered his field glasses. Ugarit grabbed, “May I try it, sir, please may I; never get another chance like this, sir, please?”

“Wait.” Ashnak lifted his field glasses again, studying the plain.

The roiling dust began to clear now, a light breeze blowing from the east. Thin lines of light seared crisscross. The woodpecker-rattle of automatic fire sounded incessantly. Cordite stung. The heavy cough of artillery rang out further down the line of hills.

Sixteen thousand Bugs advanced towards the orc marine defensive positions.

Supreme Commander Ashnak regarded the battle.

“Captain Ugarit, are we loaded up?”

The skinny orc saluted with the wrong hand. “Yes, Lord General!”

Ashnak lifted the radio orc’s handset to his tusked mouth. “Artillery crew, on my mark—fire!”

A thunderous barrage broke out over Barashkukor’s head. The small orc rapidly retrieved the chunks of cotton wool from his uniform jacket and stuffed them into his ears. The gun muzzles recoiled, carriages jolting; and the suck and concussion of the air beat at him, the noise resounding in his torso and testicles.

WHOMMMMPH!

The bright afternoon shook. Barashkukor staggered to the forward observation post and peered through the gaps between the sandbags.

At first the battlefield appeared so different. Then, from the craters of the artillery strikes, Barashkukor noticed a yellow mist drifting across the plain.

Helicopter gunships whipped overhead, rocket motors spurting from the missiles they fired. Barashkukor followed their tracks to the earth below. More sluggish and low-lying yellow fog caught the breeze and drifted away from the missile strike areas.

“Ranging shots are good.” Supreme Commander Ashnak’s voice approved. “Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit, continue to target according to previous strikes.”

“You got it, Commander!”

Barashkukor stared at Ashnak. The big orc leaned his elbows on the sandbags and turned his glasses on the uneven ground between Ferenzia and the hills. The sun, hardly an hour past noon, filtered in beams through the slowly drifting mists.

The small orc thumbed his helmet radio. “Sir, what is that, sir?”

“That, Major,” Ashnak’s voice crackled over the radio, in Barashkukor’s cotton-blocked ear, “is chemical warfare. Mustard and nerve gas. That over there is sarin and tabun, mostly, with some lewisite, and a little anthrax for entertainment value.”

WHOMPH! FOOM! WHOMMPH!

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Took it from Dagurashibanipal’s hoard, I did. Adapted it! Lots of lovely dead Bugs to play with. I’ve genetically tailored it for them and not us, we’re safe, but they’re not!”

Filled with irresistible emotion, Major Barashkukor seized the gibbering Ugarit’s hand and shook it firmly. “Oh, well done!”

“Thank you…” Ugarit retained a vicelike grip on Barashkukor’s metal hand, whipped out a magnifying glass, and began to subject it to close scrutiny. Barashkukor wrenched it away.

“Commander Ashnak to command post—give me the field units’ situation reports.”

Commissar Razitshakra’s deep orcish tones over the open channel broke with emotion. “Commander, the Bugs are dropping right, left, and centre!”

The small orc major leaped for the sandbagged wall, his cyborg-leg propelling him smartly upwards. Clinging to the top of the emplacement, Barashkukor focussed his long-distance sight on the battlefield.

“It’s true, sir! It’s true! They’re going down! We’ve done it!”

The great orc said grimly, “Now let’s put the real barrage down. Tech-Captain Ugarit!”

Barashkukor, amazed, stood up and pushed his helmet back on his head. His long ears sprang upright. “No, sir, wait.”

The small orc scrabbled down, lost his grip, and fell heavily on his commanding officer’s boots. He got to his feet, pointing excitedly towards the plain. “Sir, what’s that?”

Far out on the plain, visible to technology-assisted eyes, a unit of thirty or forty Bugs clustered on high ground. Burning trees and buildings marked the hill as one of the outlying hamlets on the road from Ferenzia to the north. The yellow fog swirled about the foot of the rise, clinging to the low-lying earth below the one or two hovels left standing.

None of the Bugs were firing their weapons.

One Bug, taller than the rest, its exoskeleton a gleaming ebony, held something in its front claws. As Supreme Commander Ashnak stared through his field glasses, he recognised John Stryker’s pole and white pennant.

The Bug raised its arms and frantically waved the white flag.

“Cheeky bugger!” the orc major yelped. “Land the next barrage smack on that position, sir. Of all the nerve—offering to surrender to orcs.”

Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit yelled, “Artillery group, depress elevation—”

Ashnak brought his fist down on the top of Ugarit’s head. The skinny orc folded like a dropped brick. Ashnak rumbled, “All artillery units on stand-by. Repeat, on stand-by. No one fires without my order.”

“But sir!” Barashkukor protested.

Supreme Commander Ashnak surveyed the battlefield outside Ferenzia, the white flag, and the clouds of nerve gas even now dissolving on the slight easterly breeze.

He picked up the radio handset.

“All units—cease fire! Say again: cease fire. Commissar Razitshakra, I’m taking a unit out to grid reference ohseven-three nine-eight-zero. I’m going to accept the enemy’s surrender.”

11

The yellow-white Class G star seared down through the smoke of burning trees and native buildings. Two rotor-driven flying machines rested on the scorched fields. A cordon of indigenous life-forms surrounded the blitzed village on the hill, their curiously separable weapons pointed at the Jassik soldiers.

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh regarded the hot, smelly, fleshly body of the nearest indigenous life-form—so suitable for incubating eggs—and clicked his mandibles in regret. His salivating hiss sounded above the surrussation of the wounded and the rotors of the natives’ flying machines:

“I am Hive Commander Kah-Sissh.”

“Supreme Commander Ashnak,” the life-form growled. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Fifty metres away a Jassik soldier rolled, black carapace shredding in the clinging yellow gas. Exoskeletal limbs sprouted, malformed, desperately attempted to re-grow. She finally dissolved into a metallic black sludge, self-repair mechanisms run wild.

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh spat, “It is our dishonour to surrender ourselves to you, indigenous life-form!”

The native scratched with taloned manipulators at the division of its bifurcated trunk.

“That’s ‘orc’ to you.” Its tusked head lifted, staring up at the Jassik Hive Commander, and it jerked one of its opposable thumbs at the only native hovel left standing in the area. “Inside!”

The translation device that the other native had carried burned against Kah-Sissh’s thorax. He understood. The novelty of studying these creatures other than to kill them momentarily took his interest.

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh looked up at the three-story building, set like an island here where two major roads crossed: north-south and east-west. A creaking wooden panel suspended on the frontage bore a two-dimensional image—one of the native beasts of burden, portrayed as rearing in an anatomically unlikely manner.

“I consent.” Hive Commander Kah-Sissh hissed an order. Thirty exoskeletal Jassik heels clicked down onto the dirt. The command escort’s lines straightened up smartly, their carapaced heads jutting forward in a uniform position, odorous slime dripping down and eating into the soil at their feet. Kah-Sissh’s thorax expanded with a desperate pride.

“Battlemaster! Flightmaster! To me!”

Two of the largest Jassik stepped out, black metal harnesses glittering on their articulated thoraxes, disruptor and blaster power cables growing from their backs. The raised marks grown into the chitin of their shoulders marked them as high-ranking officers, suitable to accompany Kah-Sissh into disgrace.

“Awright, awright!” The native life-form did something to its dead-metal weapon that made it click. “I’m not running a goddamn party here. Get your Bug asses inside there, sharp!”

The Battlemaster and Flightmaster followed Kah-Sissh into the low-beamed structure. The Jassik Hive Commander picked his way distastefully through the overturned chairs, tables, and broken glass of what was obviously a shell-battered civilian hostelry.

“This will suffice for the Immolation of Disgrace,” Kah-Sissh announced, seating himself in the middle of the floor and gazing down at the fleshy bipeds.

“Not in this here inn, you don’t!” a portly native of the Man variety announced, bustling out from behind the long bench that stretched the length of the room. “‘Scuse me, master orc, but are these…‘visitors’ with you?”

Kah-Sissh watched Supreme Commander Ashnak draw himself up to his full height and glare round the interior of the inn. “This is where I’m holding our top-secret, highly confidential peace negotiations. Any objections?”

There was a clink of glasses from seats in a niche by the chimney that Kah-Sissh took to be the local heating-source. Several much smaller natives, the curly hair on their pedal extremities grizzled and grey, raised button-black eyes to the orc.

“Holding peace negotiations, is it?” one remarked.

“‘Oo’s stopping you, boy?” another commented. “So long as us halflings gets a quiet drink, we doesn’t care. Does we, Walter?”

“That us don’t, Matthew. That us don’t. Got better things to do than listen to orcs.” The more elderly of the halflings grumbled, sinking its mouth into a tankard. “By the Light! but it’s getting hard to find a good pint, what with the war an’ all. I recall as how you used to get a good pint at the Dog and Leggit—”

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh tapped the translation device hanging from his thorax, and despite himself queried: “The Dog and Leggit?”

“Ar,” the elderly halfling, Walter, replied. “Inn over at Bremetys, that were. Called that on account of you threw up over the dog and then you legged it.”

Kah-Sissh eventually decoded the small natives’ hissing expirations as amusement.

“Cider was better in the Dragon’s Nest,” the third halfling drinker remarked, from a seat at the back of the snug. “Whatever ’appened to the Dragon’s Nest?”

“‘Undred and fifty-five millimetre, six rounds of,” Walter remarked dolefully. “Drink ain’t never been the same since this ’ere danged fighting.”

The portly Man bustled across the inn floor and bowed to the orc commander, his gaze sliding sideways to Kah-Sissh. “If you gentlesirs will wait just one moment, I’ll set you up a table. Dick! Tom! Drat it, where have those lads gone?”

Kah-Sissh watched as the portly innkeeper stomped into the back of the building. His keen hearing caught the Man’s muttering:

“…don’t know what it’s all coming to; all we had to contend with in the old days was cloaked strangers in hoods, and sometimes a disappearing halfling or two; the odd black rider; t’isn’t like we had all these newfangled Bugs to put up with…”

The outer door banged. A smaller uniformed orc entered and marched up to its commander. “Supreme Commander Ashnak, sir, you can’t agree to let these things surrender! We can wipe them out to a Bug, sir. Strategically it’s the only thing to do.”

The small biped lowered its voice, its eyes on Kah-Sissh. The Hive Commander noted how its spindly ears drooped, under the rim of its dead-metal helmet.

“We’re orcs, sir,” it whispered. “We can’t go around sparing enemies. The grunts will never stand for it. We’ll never live it down!”

Another of the orc-bipeds strode in, completely ignoring Kah-Sissh and the other Jassik. This one wore peaked headgear and a long olive-drag garment over battle-stained fatigues.

“Barashkukor’s right, sir. It isn’t the Way of the Orc, sparing enemies. Why have you stopped the battle? We ought to massacre—”

The large orc commander pointed his dead-metal weapon at the ceiling and pulled the trigger.

FOOM!

A proportion of the ceiling vapourised. Chunks of plaster drifted down, whitening the Hive Commander’s battle-scarred carapace. Kah-Sissh brushed himself clean. The halfling drinkers in the hearth-snug glanced up momentarily, then returned to a game they were playing with black-and-white spotted counters.

“I protest!” Kah-Sissh hissed. “The dignity of these proceedings is severely impaired, Supreme Commander Ashnak, by your continued failure to observe the correct ceremonies.”

The large orc ignored Kah-Sissh, rounding on his underlings. “If I say these are peace negotiations, these are peace negotiations. Are you receiving me, marines?”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Good…” The orc bared his teeth as more be-weaponed orcs entered the inn, taking up covering positions at the hostelry’s windows. They had an encouragingly exoskeletal appearance—but it was not, the Jassik Hive Commander noted with regret, natural to the species.

“We have not surrendered to an honourable enemy,” Kah-Sissh announced to the Battlemaster and Flightmaster.

“No, Hive Commander.” The Flightmaster extended her jaws, acid saliva etching the hostelry’s wooden floor. “Are they are of sufficient honour even to witness the Immolation of Disgrace?”

Before Hive Commander Kah-Sissh could express his opinion, the large orc stomped across the floor towards the Jassik. He pulled out a chair from the table a young Man had just set upright and covered with a white cloth, and seated himself; throwing one booted hind limb over the chair’s arm, his battle-stained peaked cap shading his deep-set eyes.

“Welcome to the peace talks,” he announced jovially.

“My Swarm Commander is damaged,” Kah-Sissh mourned. “Regretfully, therefore, we cannot treat with you, orc commander.”

“No kidding?” The Supreme Commander grinned, a not particularly reassuring sight. “I’ve got an orc here who’s just aching to try out our full range of biological and chemical warfare devices on your other Bug divisions. Isn’t that right, Bio-tech-Captain Ugarit?”

A muffled “Yessir!” came through the glass face plate of a breathing-mask worn by a skinny green biped.

The Supreme Commander frowned. “Ugarit, you’re certain that nerve gas out there is harmless to orcs?”

“Oh, yes, Supreme Commander! Completely and utterly sure, Supreme Commander! Absolutely and totally—awk!”

The big orc regarded the breathing mask that he now held in his large paw, sniffed at it, and slung it over his shoulder. It bounced off a sleeping quadruped in the corner, which fled, yelping. The skinny green orc clasped its fingers over its mouth, enormous eyes staring at Kah-Sissh.

“I’m sure you’ll see your way clear to negotiating,” Supreme Commander Ashnak surmised.

“Excuse me, gentlesirs.” The portly Man innkeeper looked out from a door behind the bar. “Times is hard, master orc. All we has on the menu is pony stew, and none too fresh, either.”

“Pony stew? My favourite. Serve up, innkeeper!”

The Battlemaster looked across at Kah-Sissh from where she sat with one exoskeletal arm about the shoulders of the Flightmaster.

“You want my opinion,” she said crisply, “the Immolation of Disgrace is out. Waste of time with these ‘orcs,’ Hive Commander. Wouldn’t make any impression on them at all.”

Kah-Sissh rattled his jaws in a sigh. “I refuse to accept that, Battlemaster, until it is proven beyond all doubt.”

The orc commander took a container from the approaching young Man servant and drained it, slopping half the contents down his splotch-patterned battle gear. To Kah-Sissh’s complete confusion the orc then took out a roll of dried vegetable matter, set fire to one end of the cylinder, put it between his jaws, and inhaled the smoke. The Hive Commander’s metal-enhanced jaws sensed alcohol and toxins; a possibly flammable mixture.

“It’s like this.” The orc exhaled a plume of smoke. “You guys can quit fighting now and we can come to an agreement. A mutually beneficial agreement. Or else my grunts abandon the truce, carry on fighting, and you’re fucked. Do I make myself plain?—URP!”

The weight of the translation device on Kah-Sissh’s thorax was negligible now. The language of the orc came to him almost naturally. With a sigh, bowing to the inevitable, the Hive Commander expanded all the plates of his thorax, drawing in the oxy-nitrogen atmosphere, and copied the orc’s ceremonial eructation:

“URRRRP!”

The orc commander picked himself up off the floorboards and set his chair upright again. The smaller orc rushed up with a brush and whisked it down his commander’s battledress, recovered the peaked cap, and handed it to the big orc.

“Okay…” the orc Supreme Commander beamed. “You’re getting the hang of this. Let’s talk.”

Kah-Sissh inclined his carapaced head. “I do not understand, Commander. You have sent a hive-sibling of yours out to me, to teach me your manner of surrender. You have killed my hive-kin. What else is there to discuss except our extermination at your hands?”

The Flightmaster added, “The Jassik are never defeated!”

“You see, sir?” The small orc, Major Barashkukor, appeared again at the table. A white cloth was draped over his arm, and he pushed a wheeled trolley on which sat porcelain bowls and a container of steaming liquid. “Marines are marines, sir, even if they are Bugs. One lump or two?”

Kah-Sissh watched the orc pour yellow liquid from the container into the bowls, add a white liquid (that the Hive Commander’s sensors informed him was mammal-derived) and two small crystalline lumps. The orc major placed the bowl onto a second, much shallower bowl and extended it towards Kah-Sissh.

“Allow me, Hive Commander.” The Battlemaster took the two bowls in her front claws, picked up one, her smallest claw jutting out, and sipped. Lights flickered across her living-metal battle harness. “Non-toxic. Mmm…”

The orc Supreme Commander reached across to a glass container on the trolley. “I’ll have something stronger.”

Supreme Commander Ashnak knocked the top of the container off in a shower of shards, and tipped a darker brown liquid down his throat. Hive Commander Kah-Sissh watched the orc for a moment to see if another ceremonial eructation was required. It apparently was not.

Kah-Sissh took his own set of bowls from Major Barashkukor, and sipped delicately. “There is nothing to discuss except the manner of the Jassik’s extermination.”

“Now that’s where you’re wrong, son.”

Kah-Sissh hesitated. His metal-assisted mandibles twitched on the air. Lights flickered on his body harness and he touched the devices with the tip of one claw. He lowered his shining black head until his faceted eyes were on a level with Supreme Commander Ashnak’s face. “Wonderful beverage…what issh it that you call it?”

The orc stared at Kah-Sissh, who beamed back at him. The small orc major interrupted the silence.

“Tea, Hive Commander, sir. It’s called tea.”

“Marvellous.” Kah-Sissh extended his dripping jaws in pleasure. His faceted eyes glimmered. “Where was I? Oh, yes. Our honour requires us to perish, now, at our own hands. Each and every one of us. Qweep!”

The big orc scratched at his bald head and peaked ears, and drew on the smoking vegetable-matter again.

“I’ve been watching you boys,” Ashnak said affably, “on satellite. You’re not from around these parts, are you, son? I coordinated reports from my combat units and plotted the directions you guys have been coming in from. Well, some of you came out of Thyrion, and some of you from Gyzrathrani, and some from the Antarctic Icelands. But that’s not the interesting part.”

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh extruded his dripping jaws slightly, then retracted them. “I will sssay nothing more than is required by the honour of war. Qweep!”

“That’s our commander!” The Battlemaster waved her own tea-dish in an extravagant claw. “Perish at the height of military glory! No prisoners! Qweeeep!”

“Riiight…” The orc commander looked somewhat askance at Kah-Sissh, picked up the tea bowl, and sniffed at it. The small orc major and the skinny orc technician looked at each other, looked at the bowls, shrugged, and shook their heads.

Kah-Sissh beamed at the Battlemaster and the empty space beside her. Momentarily sobered, he looked for the Flightmaster.

A female orc voice explained, “That’s called double top…”

The Jassik Flightmaster, her carapaced head bent so as to avoid the plastered ceiling, stood beside the squat orc in the long coat and spectacles. Both faced the wall of the inn, where a small concentric-ringed target hung. The orc pointed, lifted another tiny fletched arrow, and hurled it at the target.

“Qweep! I see, I see!” the Flightmaster exclaimed excitedly. She extruded from her chitinous underparts a large black living-metal weapon, hefted it up onto her shoulder, aimed, and pulled its trigger.

HHZAAAKKKK!

The hanging target vanished, as did a sizable chunk of the wall.

“Game!” the Flightmaster exclaimed sibilantly.

Kah-Sissh saw the orc commander glance over his shoulder, catch the eye of the female orc, and murmur, “Let the Jassik win,” before turning back to the conference table.

“As I was saying.” Ashnak’s voice rumbled deep enough to vibrate through Kah-Sissh’s thorax. His dark eyes gleamed. “You Bugs are coming in from the four corners of the earth. I want the answer to one question. My orcs have plotted you and those six other Bug divisions on the map-table, extending your lines of advance to see where they intersect and what your objective is. Now answer me one thing, Hive Commander—why is it that all your forces, without exception, are headed straight for the middle of the Inland Sea?”

“Ah, the Sssssea…” Hive Commander Kah-Sissh sighed. He was peripherally aware of the small orc major’s refilling his tea bowl. He lowered his mandibles and drank, finally lifting his shining head to survey the orc Supreme Commander.

“Your ssseas are too deep,” Kah-Sissh explained, careful with a speech that seemed to contain entirely too many sibilants. “And your lakess are too cold. We need a ssufficiently ssshallow, warm, and large body of water.”

All the orcs gathered behind their commander, the squat female peering through her wire-rimmed lenses, the skinny technician and the small major gazing wide-eyed at the Jassik.

“What in the name of the Dark do you need a sea for?” the orc commander demanded.

Expansive in the admiration of his new friends, Kah-Sissh waved a claw and elaborated.

“This is a cold world, Commander, and I find it ssuch a trial to be continually breathing oxygen! Had our starship not broken up in your star’s gravitational field, we should not have ssset claw upon your pathetic little world. But we fell in our escape pods as our great ship broke up and burned…”

The skinny orc leaped from foot to foot and bent to whisper something in Supreme Commander Ashnak’s pointed ear. Kah-Sissh hummed pleasurably to himself. The Battlemaster slumped against his chitinous shoulder, half-full tea bowl slopping from her claw as she buzzed in deep slumber.

“So why,” the orc persisted, “head for the Inland Sea?”

Kah-Sissh shrugged. “It is most suitable for incubating a ship-egg.”

“A ship-egg?” the orc said. “A ship-egg?”

“A starship-egg.”

“Yo!” The skinny orc technician slavered in an almost civilised fashion. “They can grow weapons! They can grow star-travelling ships! Wonderful!”

“There is the difficult matter of finding a beast large enough to serve as host.” Kah-Sissh inhaled again the warm, pungent smell of the orc bipeds. “Then it is merely a matter of subduing this paltry planet while we wait for the ship to grow, then off again to the stars and further worlds to conquer for the Hive!”

A low buzzing sounded from the other side of the inn room. Kah-Sissh looked across the expanse of overturned chairs and broken window glass. The Flightmaster, audibly asleep, had curled up under a table with the four-footed furry quadruped sleeping on her thorax.

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh took a coldly oxygen-scented breath, compressed his thorax-plates, and began to wail a Jassik drinking medley.

“Hive Commander—I say, Hive Commander!” The big orc stood, glaring up into Kah-Sissh’s mandibles as the Jassik beat time with one waving claw. “Now don’t you fade out on me, boy!”

A dose of cold air shocked Kah-Sissh back into coordination. He rattled his mandibles sulkily at orc Major Barashkukor, who had opened a window.

“We ssshall not perform the Immolation of Disgrace,” Kah-Sissh remarked, his tone petulant. “It would be wasted on such savages. We are the Jassik, proud and noble warriors!”

The orc major and technician simultaneously muttered something that sounded to Kah-Sissh very like, “Psychopathic mindless alien killing-machines!”

“So tell me,” the orc commander demanded, “if all you needed to do was get from your crash-sites to the Inland Sea, why butcher your way through from there to here?”

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh, hurt, protested, “We like killing things.”

Supreme Commander Ashnak and Major Barashkukor exchanged glances.

“I can identify with that, sir,” the small orc remarked.

The big orc sat down at the table and put his head in his hands, sitting up only when the Man landlord emerged from the kitchens with a bowl of burned muscle-tissue, steaming odourously.

“Pony stew?” Supreme Commander Ashnak offered.

Kah-Sissh hissed a nauseous moan. In order to bring dignity to the proceedings the Jassik Hive Commander rose onto his hind limbs, clicked his claws, and began the delicate movements of the Dance of Lesser Victory Concealed in Overwhelming Defeat. The Battlemaster fell over, snoring. Kah-Sissh caught his foot in one of the drinkers at the bar (halfling and tray going flying) and sat down in a clatter of living-metal weaponry. He raised his great head to find himself surrounded and covered by the dead-metal implements of the orc marine guard.

“About our deal,” the seated orc commander, Ashnak, said through a mouthful of dead, cooked flesh.

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh’s faceted eyes glimmered. “Our Swarm Master perished, but there are other Hive Commanders such as myself, and they, be assured, will dance the Immolation of Disgrace and burn your paltry continent down to the bedrock!”

“Nerve gas,” the orc reminded him. “We can dust off every one of your divisions, son.”

Kah-Sissh froze.

The orc smiled. “I like a Bug that’s susceptible to rational argument.”

“Peasants—Qweep!” Hive Commander Kah-Sissh gathered the remnants of his dignity and rose from the floor, folding his exoskeletal limbs so that he seated himself again before the negotiating table. “Rest assured, we ssshall not live to be your ssslaves.”

“Now who said anything about slavery?” The orc’s beetling brows raised affably. He leaned both elbows on the table and smiled toothily up at the Jassik warrior. “Access to the Inland Sea could be one of the terms of your surrender. If you want to grow your ‘ship-egg’ and get your Bug asses off my world, then I sure as hell won’t object.”

“In return,” Kah-Sissh said sharply, “for what?”

“Ah. Yes. Believe it or not,” the big orc purred, “there is something that you Bugs can do for me and the lads…”

The G-type star declined as the planet turned. Shadows lengthened.

Outside, Jassik warriors waiting at attention accepted with comradely gratitude the beverages offered by the local military life-forms.

Before long, Jassik warrior songs hissed up to the stars.

Under them sounded the deep rumble of armoured divisions pulling back, of infantry regrouping, of air support patrolling the neutral ground between the two waiting armies, and of the occasional interchange of friendly fire.

12

“Hard a-starboard!” Supreme Commander Ashnak bellowed. “Hard a-port! Lower the jib! Man the tops’l! Pull, ye lubbers, pull!”

The quinquireme S.S. Gibbet and Spigot out of Graagryk heeled into the wind. Massed ranks of orc rowers in DPM battledress trousers and steel helmets heaved on the oars, sweating under the cloudless, windless blue sky.

Ashnak paced up and down the central walkway of the ship, cracking his oiled leather whip. “You’re meant to be marines, aren’t you? Pull!”

He strode aft, past the glistening muscled backs of orcs stripped down to combat trousers and boots. The galley’s drummer kept a rhythmic oar-stroke, to which Ashnak had been attempting to encourage the marines to sing sea-shanties. As a result, the portside grunts were giving a spirited rendition of “How Much Is That Shoggoth in the Window?”, loudly challenged by the starboard-side rowers chorusing “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Balrog.” The quinquireme wavered on a somewhat indirect course across the limpid waters of the Inland Sea.

The waves glowed pearl-blue under a blazing sky. Ashnak lifted his binoculars, spotting the wheeling pegasi of the valkyrie marines some klicks to the north and the vast shadow of the stealth dragon on the waves to the east. Twelve more galleys and sixteen sailing ships kept a parallel course to the Gibbet and Spigot. There was no sign of land.

Ashnak loped up onto the poop deck. “Steady as she goes, pilot!”

Lieutenant-Colonel Dakashnit (a battlefield promotion) leaned on the vast spoked wheel of the galley, swinging it with one muscular black arm. She grinned and touched her GI pot. “You got it, m’man!”

Major-General Barashkukor also saluted his commanding orc. “Sir, flagship of the Graagryk Navy proceeding as you ordered, sir. We are entering deep waters now, sir…”

The small orc’s features paled. He fixed Ashnak with bulging eyes, abruptly about-faced, and leaned over the back of the poop deck. Ashnak regarded his heaving shoulders. Ignoring the retching sounds, he slapped Barashkukor on the back. “Well done, son!”

The patter of small but heavy feet warned him. Ashnak turned in time to catch a half-orc halfling as it hurled itself at his leg. He scooped the child up, threw it up into the air, and (after a split second’s hesitation) caught it again. With its tiny taloned hand in his, Supreme Commander Ashnak crossed the poop deck.

“Pepin, sweetheart, don’t annoy your father while he’s working.” Honorary Colonel-in-Chief Magdelene of Graagryk absently patted the curly-footed tot’s head, avoiding its milk-fangs with practised ease. “Go and play with your brothers and sisters.”

Magda Brandiman reclined at her ease in a long, cushion-padded chair resting on the deck. An orc stood behind her with a parasol, shading the honorary colonel from the sun, and Magda leaned back, the wind whipping her hair, and sipped from a tall glass full of alcohol and fruit. Her infants sat at her feet, playing “Hang-orc.” Her mirrored Ray·Bans reflected Ashnak as she turned her head.

Ashnak gallantly kissed her free hand. “We’ve been at sea for five hours, my love…”

“Trust me.” Magda hitched down her mirrorshades and gazed at her orc over the rims. “Would I lie to you? Just keep on this course.”

The quinquireme wheeled again. Dozens of orc marines swarmed up the rigging, letting out the meagre sails to assist the rowers. Ashnak watched them swinging one-handed from ropes, rifles still slung across their backs. It became apparent that the port-side orc sailors were setting up an assault course through the lines and sheets.

“Splice the mainbrace!” Ashnak bellowed happily. “Ship ahoy! Yo ho ho!”

The spate of orders had little or no effect on the ship’s crew. The colour of the water under the Gibbet and Spigot changed to royal blue, and white foam flecked the waves. A line of orc marine rowers, their oars abandoned, leaned over the ship’s side, vomiting. Ashnak noted those who threw up over the windward side for possible demotion.

“Sssupreme Commander…”

Ashnak turned at the hissed sibilants. The midday sun gleamed from the blue-black carapace and black metal harness of the Jassik Hive Commander. The Bug had wedged its long body and exoskeletal hind legs into the corner of the poop deck, claw-hands gripping the rails.

“When…” Kah-Sissh lowered his shining head. “When will this ssstorm abate, Commander?”

“That’s ‘Admiral of the Fleet’ to you, Kah-Sissh,” Ashnak said, cheerfully slapping the Bug on the back. He winced and blew on his palm. “Storm? What storm? This is good sailing weather, this is!”

The Bug’s faceted eyes dulled. Kah-Sissh’s head slumped onto the rail, dribbling a thin trail of slime from extensible jaws.

“Our guest isn’t well,” the big orc observed. “Probably time for another meal. Barashkukor! Send down to the cook for some fat pork and poached eggs—and the remains of the jellyfish, if there’s any left.”

“You’re a cruel orc, my love,” Magda Brandiman observed.

“Nothing of the sort.” Ashnak held Major-General Barashkukor over the side by one leg to avoid having the vomiting orc spray him, and grinned toothily. “Can I help it if I’m a good sailor? I’m a marine!”

Ashnak dropped Barashkukor back on the deck and drew a deep, satisfying breath. Under the smell of orc sweat and vomit, his hairy nostrils caught the scent of sun-hot wood and rope, of spices from the Gibbet and Spigot’s last commercial voyage, and the alien tang of the Jassik’s bodily fluids. A whiff of pipe-weed made him look round.

“Man, you better come up with something soon, sir.” Pilot Dakashnit, now smoking a cigar, lazily spun the wheel. “Them Bugs don’t do at all well on water, but we still got six divisions of them sitting out there in the neutral zone, and patience is something they ain’t got, sir.”

Ashnak donned his cocked hat, planted his bowed legs widely apart, and put his hands behind his back, gazing forward. “Trust me, soldier, I’m an orc.”

“Stealth dragon to flagship, stealth dragon to flagship, over.”

Admiral Ashnak stuck one hand into his naval topcoat. He removed it, holding a radio handset. “Flagship receiving.”

“I say, sir, wonderful view of you from up here! Life on the ocean wave, eh, what?”

Ashnak stared up at the empty sky. “Are you sure you’re happy in your work, marine?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Tophole! Well, you know what they say, sir. Life’s a bitch, and then you fly…”

Ashnak growled.

“We may have just what you need,” Wing Commander Chahkamnit’s voice crackled hurriedly. “Bearing zero nine three relative, sir. Distance five miles.”

“Course change to zero nine three degrees!” Ashnak whooped.

The three grunts manning the tiller put their heads together, muttering. The largest counted on his fingers, pointed decisively, and declared, “That way!”

The quinquireme wallowed, orc marines scurrying, no more than half a dozen falling overboard. The galley’s bow bit deep into the waves. The oars rose and dipped furiously. A marine with flags semaphored wildly to the rest of the fleet, and the other ships began to wheel about and follow the S.S. Gibbet and Spigot’s wake.

“Man the guns!” Ashnak bellowed. Crews scurried towards the galley’s ballistas, rail-mounted crossbows, and six-inch naval artillery.

Magda Brandiman put down her empty glass. The halfling rose from her chair, smoothing her white sun-dress, and walked elegantly across the deck to stand beside Ashnak, her head level with his belt-buckle. She put one hand to her sun-hat in the stiff breeze.

“I’m going forward,” she announced.

Ashnak strode down the central walkway behind the female halfling. A number of the orc marine rowers whistled and cheered, which the Colonel-Duchess of Graagryk acknowledged with a wave, never missing her footing. Ashnak loped up behind her into the bow.

“THAR SHE BLOWS!”

Ashnak fingered his ringing ear. He then wiped his talon down his naval jacket and glared at Tech-Colonel Ugarit. The skinny green orc hung over the rail, bow-wave intermittently soaking his white lab coat, pointing and yelling.

“Thar she—”

Ashnak seized one of the skinny orc’s legs and lifted. Ugarit vanished over the ship’s side.

“—heeaaarg gh!”

“I heard you the first time,” Ashnak growled.

The big orc leaned on the rail. Some yards below, Tech-Colonel Ugarit (having landed on the upper tier of oars) was clambering back up towards the ship’s side. Ahead, there was nothing but the open sea. White waves flecked the deeps.

“Not seen, sir!” the elven lieutenant Gilmuriel reported to Ashnak. His golden eyes appeared to be slightly crossed. Ashnak looked at the elf marines, their dogtags removed, who clustered round the enormous retrofitted harpoon launcher that occupied all of the galley’s bow-space. Most of the elf marines were leaning over the side of the ship.

“Sorry, sir,” Gilmuriel added, wiping at a stain on his woodland camouflage. “You really need the Sea Elves for this, sir—blehh!”

Ashnak sidestepped smartly.

“Do I have to do everything myself?” The great orc leaned precariously over the rail, staring ahead through rubber-armoured binoculars. A sibilant hiss and Magda Brandiman’s gracious greeting told him they had been joined by Hive Commander Kah-Sissh.

“There, sir.” Major-General Barashkukor tugged his commanding orc’s sleeve. “Sir, there, sir!”

“Where?”

“There!”

“I said—oh, fuck it!” Ashnak picked the orc major-general up by the back of his collar. “Point, dammit!”

Ashnak followed the direction of the small orc’s quivering finger. He narrowed his beetle-browed eyes.

At first the orc saw nothing. The Graagryk Navy appeared to be passing through a shallower part of the Inland Sea, brownish weed floating some distance under the surface. Ashnak narrowed his eyes against the sun flashing off the waves. Salt crusted his nostrils as they flared to scent the air.

“Nothing!” he swore. “Magda, woman, you told me the Kraken had been sighted here in the Inland Sea—well, where is it?”

Major-General Barashkukor continued to point, his skinny fingers shaking. The small orc made a mewling sound, dangling from Ashnak’s fist, and a thin trickle of liquid spattered down onto the deck. Ashnak dropped him and leaped up to stand on the Gibbet and Spigot’s prow.

“There,” Magda Brandiman said.

From high on the prow, Ashnak looked across the waves to the fleet’s smaller galleys and sailing ships. A pearl mist dulled the sun. The mass of shallow-water weed stretched out around the fleet to the horizon.

The brown weed’s tendrils waved, thick as redwood trunks.

The brown weed opened one lazy golden eye and stared up at Ashnak.

Ashnak stared down at the vast, sea-encompassing coils of the Great Kraken.

“Yo!” The orc beamed and sprang down onto the deck. Ashnak strode over to Hive Commander Kah-Sissh, who stood on the quinquireme’s deck, towering over the diminutive female halfling. He grinned up at the exoskeletal Bug.

“Your egg needs its host living.” Ashnak jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “New marine-issue harpoon system. Visible College magic, sleep-inducing weapons, guaranteed to put out anything.”

Tech-Colonel Ugarit, having regained the deck, dripped and muttered something about “field-tests” and “prototype models.”

Ashnak slapped Lieutenant Gilmuriel on the back, seized the elf marine’s collar to prevent him from ricocheting overboard, and bellowed, “Load up and fire! Barashkukor! Signal all ships to fire at will! Go, go, go!”

Two hundred orc rowers dug their heels into the boards, backing oars. Rashes of signal flags broke out on the lines. The orc marine crew of the S.S. Gibbet and Spigot hurtled to their stations, unearthing from the cargo hold league upon league of fine, magic-wove netting.

Ashnak, holding his cocked hat on with one taloned hand, sauntered back across the deck to stand with Magda Brandiman. Nets whisked into the air, opening and falling; a rain of harpoons darted out from every ship of the Graagryk fleet. Ashnak craned his squat neck to look up at the Bug.

“Son, if you got any complaints, now’s the time to tell me. Once we’ve caught it, we sure as hell ain’t going to throw it back.”

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh hissed with pleasure, dripping acid slime on the quinquireme’s deck. “It will suffice.”

Madga Brandiman leaned on the rail and watched a vast golden eye close. “I think we can probably consider the peace treaty ratified now, Hive Commander. Don’t you?”

Orc marines cheered. Water flashed, dropping in diamonds from the raised orcs of the quinquireme. Vast scaly tentacles broke above the waves, and subsided. The less speedy ships of the Graagryk Navy closed in, adding their own magic-assisted stun harpoons to the melee.

Major-General Barashkukor looked thoughtfully up at his Supreme Commander.

“Sir, what do you think, sir? Could we have a campaign medal struck for the Great Kraken Hunt, sir? Could we, sir? Please, sir?—OW!”

Half an hour later, Admiral of the Fleet Ashnak, upon returning to his cabin, found the door ajar. Desert Eagle pistol in hand, he kicked the cabin door open.

A male halfling, black hair showing a plentiful crop of grey, sat cross-legged on the admiral’s chair behind the desk. His black doublet and breeches and yellow ruff showed some travel stains. A rapier and dagger were visible at his waist, and there was an additional bulge under one armpit.

“Stepfather,” Will Brandiman greeted Ashnak.

The big orc slammed the cabin door shut. With a nasty gleam in his eye, he advanced on the halfling.

“Ned knows I’m here,” Will said. “I don’t know where Ned is, exactly. Something to do with Archipelago silk, I believe. Anyway, he’ll be only too pleased to tell Mother that I didn’t accidentally fall off a galley, if I don’t show up after today.”

Ashnak crossed the cabin in a stride, opened the drinks cabinet, and downed half a bottle of Spice Isles brandy without blanching. He wiped his mouth on the gold-embroidered sleeve of his naval jacket. “Whaddya want?”

“Is that any way to speak to your stepson?” Will Brandiman enquired. “You should be pleased that I’m taking an interest in your work, Father.”

“Don’t,” Ashnak said, “push your luck.”

Will Brandiman smiled a slick smile and slipped down from the chair. He rested his shoulder against the edge of the admiral’s desk.

“Nice setup for taking the Kraken,” Will approved. “Got the whole Visible College running ’round supplying you, I see. Funny how anxious they are now to work for the Great Peacemaker Ashnak, isn’t it? Be a shame if any evidence came to light that would start the Red Gullies war crime scandal up again, what with the Dark Lord’s coronation as Ruler of the World coming up and all.”

The orc shoved his Desert Eagle automatic pistol back in its holster. “You’re bluffing.”

“Probably,” Will Brandiman agreed. “But I’m a generous halfling. I’m not asking for favours. Not really.”

“Well?”

“Funnily enough, Stepfather,” the stowaway halfling said, “there is something you can do for me…”

Ashnak stripped off his jacket, kicked off his seaboots, and thudded down into the admiral’s carved chair. His bright eyes fixed on the halfling with unwavering bale.

“What is it this time? Grand larceny? You’re stealing Ferenzia because it’s not nailed down? Well, I got news for you, boy. This time the answer’s ‘no’!” The Great Peacemaker Ashnak showed his tusks in satisfaction. “Frankly, son, I wouldn’t piss on you if your hair was on fire. Now, out!”

Overhead fire had stripped the glass from the paned roof of the great Assembly Hall of Ferenzia. Warm air and the smell of morning drifted in. Repair-magiks slowly knitted silicon together. Orc marines with buckets and mops, under the direction of a sergeant-major, cleared the rubbish away, whitewashed the more immovable heaps of masonry, and set out officially lettered marine signs reading, “KEEP OFF THE RUBBLE.”

“He’s through here, sir.” Major-General Barashkukor pointed.

Orc marines in ceremonial studded leather armour stood around the Assembly Hall’s panelled walls. They sloped arms with poleaxes as Supreme Commander Ashnak entered.

“Nice touch,” Ashnak approved.

“Thank you, sir!” Barashkukor saluted. “Traditional ceremonial weapon of the orc, the poleaxe. The M203 grenade-launcher attachments were my idea too, sir.”

Ashnak strode across the Hall to where the High King Kelyos Magorian slumped in a carved chair at a table.

“You’re about to miss the first convocation of the World Parliament, Your Majesty,” Ashnak rumbled.

Kelyos Magorian raised his balding head. He screwed a monocle into his eye, staring up at the two orcs—the smaller one in a tailored and bemedalled brown tunic, with more gold braid on his peaked cap than it could fairly carry, and the large one in urbans, web-belt sagging under the weight of pistols, grenades, spare magazines, and formal hand-axe.

“Go away,” the High King said. “Damned greenies! Spoil the game. Two sugars!”

His halfling servant filled a steaming porcelain bowl from a silver trolley beside the oak table, placing it by Magorian on the green cloth covering. The elderly Man muttered, moving the bowl away from copses of dyed-green lichen and contour-carved miniature hills.

“Ha!” Magorian spilled dice from his blue-veined fist and peered at them through his monocle. “The Horde routs! The Light wins, dammit.”

Ashnak reached across to the halfling servant’s trolley and grabbed a fistful of biscuits. Chewing, he lowered his tusked head and studied the table. The myriad model warriors were set out in much the same array as the previous Hallows Eve’s Last Battle.

“Parliament,” he reminded Magorian.

“Think I’m going to watch that damned female now She’s been crowned Ruler of the World? Damned right I’m not. They don’t need me now. Going to retire and do what I enjoy. Fight these battles the way they should have gone.” The High King Magorian blinked fiercely at the orc. “The Light wins. Always. I’ve proved it!”

Ashnak snapped his fingers. A very large orc corporal trotted up, a voluminous blue-velvet-and-ermine robe clutched in her arms. Her squad’s combat boots pounded the parquet floor as they approached at the double.

“By the numbers,” Ashnak ordered, “High King Magorian, for the parliamentary session: dress. Regal crown of Ferenzia: on. Squaaad…wait for it, wait for it…to the Opticon, High King Magorian, marine escort: march!”

Ashnak and Barashkukor strolled out of the Assembly Hall in the wake of the grunts and a protesting High King.

“That the last one, Major-General?”

“Sir, yes sir! We’ve rounded them all up. We have the full legal complement for the new World Parliament, sir.”

Bells battered the bright summer air, ringing out from the only cathedral left standing in Ferenzia after the Bug invasion. Walls demolished, suburbs flattened, the Lake Fleet burned at the quayside; Ferenzia was recovered just enough to welcome delegates from all corners of the civilised land.

Ashnak loped to his jeep, Barashkukor at his heels, and hauled himself into the vehicle. He demanded, “Where’s Magda?”

The skeletal orc driver in the black beret and assault vest surveyed Ashnak though dark glasses. “The colonel-duchess said something about the press, sir, and getting the WFTV cameras into the Opticon.”

CIA Chief Lugashaldim slammed the vehicle into gear and they roared off through the Ferenzi streets, engine noise racketing between the high buildings, crowds hurling themselves out of the jeep’s path.

“I understand Magda Brandiman Enterprizes (Graagryk) Limited has the monopoly on Parliamentary broadcast pictures, sir. Three silver shillings colour, two copper groats black and white.”

Ashnak rested his chin on his fist. “That’s my Magda…”

The jeep hurtled through war-torn Ferenzia, held up in places by the various ongoing victory parades—the Sixth Elf Hussars, the Dwarf Sappers and Miners Brigade, the Eagles (Ferenzia Eyrie, 1st Tactical Wing)—until at last it pulled up outside a domed masonry building with two wings.

“Opticon surrounded by honour guard, as you ordered, sir.” Major-General Barashkukor bustled Magorian towards the arched entrance. Ashnak strolled after, taking the salute from the cordon of heavily armed and flak-jacketed orc marines.

The shelling and street-fighting had by some fluke passed the interior of the Opticon by, doing no more than knock a level of dust from its endless shelves of books. Above the books, on the unshelved wall-space, great fresco maps gleamed intact, picturing in blue and gold and ochre paint the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, and the Wild Lands to the East, and the Land beyond the Western Oceans.

Sunlight filtered down through the circular window in the top of the central dome.

One beam of light illuminated the Throne of the World.

Plush benches had been set up in the gallery space. Ashnak pointed at the front row of benches to the right of the Throne, under the star-painted ceiling of the West Wing.

“That’ll do for His Lordship.”

Barashkukor hustled the elderly hero forward.

A library-hush muted the noise of the Light delegates—Men, dwarves, elves, and halflings—shuffling onto their benches. Ashnak caught the eye of one elf, the marks of age shocking on his face, seated between the Mayor of Sarderis and a Snake Priest of Shazmanar. “Inquisitor Elinturanbar.”

“You do not belong on this side!” the long-dying elf hissed. “Come not near! We shall bring justice down on you one day soon.”

The races of Darkness—trolls, witches, necromancers, Undead, kobolds, and the rest—scrambled for places on the benches on the left-hand side. Ashnak’s hairy nostrils flared. At the centre of the front bench a figure slouched, its leather robe a patchwork of hands and limbs, eyes and lips, all tanned and sewn together with silver wire.

“Lord Necromancer,” Ashnak acknowledged, out of sheer habit.

Dirt and dried blood stiffened the nameless necromancer’s skin robe. What could be seen of his tusked face under the cowl had a greenish, decaying cast. He creaked.

“Ssscum!” the nameless hissed. “Traitor to thish side of the House. Do you think you can betray the Dark by letting the Bug-filth live and not yourself live to bitterly regret your mercy?”

“Ain’t you pissed you,” Ashnak grinned. “Nothing to do with missing the victory celebrations due to being dead, of course.”

“Bah!”

Light gleamed down from the Opticon’s dome onto the first World Parliament. The Dark delegates crowded each other unmercifully—whistling, throwing dung, hauling the books down from the shelves behind them, and reading the more dubious passages aloud.

“Call them to order!” Oderic, High Wizard of Ferenzia, demanded as Ashnak approached him.

Ashnak surveyed his grunts, who were mostly leaning up against the panelled seats and bumming pipe-weed from the delegates, and the Order of White Mages, who strode about in their Sun-ornamented surcoats attempting to reduce the chaos.

“No point,” Ashnak rumbled. “They’ll quieten down soon enough when—yo! There!”

Outside, a sparkling blue sky shone over the Dread Lord of Dead Aeons as She descended from Her bone palanquin, surrounded by cheering Ferenzi and the Horde of Darkness.

The Dark Lord entered the vast, book-dusty hall of the Opticon. Black dire-wolf furs swathed Her head to foot. Under the cloak a tight-fitting black silk robe rippled, slashed to the thigh, and belted with a jeweled waistband. Intricate steel-and-silver jewelry clasped Her arms and Her ankles. Her ash-blonde hair gleamed, Her head uncovered and unadorned.

Cheering crowds pressed in close behind Major-General Barashkukor’s cordon of orc marine guards at the double doors, waving flags and chanting:

“DARK LORD! DARK LORD! DARK LORD!”

Ashnak hitched up his web-belt and combat trousers and ambled across the floor of the Opticon to the Dark Lord. “Your Parliament assembled, Ma’am, for the first free, frank, and democratic exchange of views between Your loyal government and Your loyal opposition. As soon as they can make their minds up which is which.”

The Dark Lord surveyed the benches to left and right of the Throne, Her delicate profile turned to Ashnak. “Shall I preside well, do you think, little orc? This power has been so long in the achieving, I think I have forgotten what it was I would do with it.”

“Buck up, Ma’am!” Ashnak removed his forage cap, coming solidly to attention. “You just do what every other Ruler of the World’s done and You’ll be all right—reward a few, hang a few, and tax everything that moves.”

She laughed, a sound of ancient amusement. “You advise Me well, orc. Perhaps I shall make you My chancellor.” Ashnak grunted noncommittally.

“Or perhaps I shall not…There is something I wish to have done, after this. It is a proud and lonely thing to be Ruler of the World. Therefore I shall not sit upon My throne alone. I shall take a companion, a consort. Mine will be thought a strange choice, but I have seen, and in seeing desired, and desiring, must have. Shall it be thought strange to raise a commoner, and one not of My own race? Then so be it. And, orc Ashnak—you know the one.”

“Erm.” Ashnak sweated in the sunlight filtering down from the Opticon’s central dome. “Really, Ma’am?”

The Dark Lord frowned. “Don’t be coy.”

“I suppose,” Ashnak grated, salt sweat trickling into his eyes, “I could hazard a guess, and while I’m sensible of the honour, Dread Lord, I really don’t think I—”

The Dark Lord spoke over his mumbling.

“We have met few enough times, of course, but often enough to spark My desire. And she is not, after all, a complete commoner.”

“I—she?” Ashnak barked.

The Dark Lord turned Her ancient, humanly beautiful face towards the orc as She paced towards the Throne. “Why yes. Ever since the night she came to My tent, I have known that I must have Magdelene, Duchess of Graaagryk. My beautiful Magda! Be so good as to inform her that we will wed, after I have settled affairs in Ferenzia and quietened the south. You, Ashnak, may be best orc and give the bride away.”

Ashnak growled. “She’s married.”

“She’s divorced. I have said so: so let it be. We shall,” the Dark Lord added, “have to think of a suitable role for you also in this new world, little orc. Some backwater province that needs a junior governor. Of course, the orc marines will be disbanded…”

“Ma’am!” Ashnak saluted, his gaze sliding across the seats and registering, in the upper gallery, the Duchess of Graagryk’s cameras.

To the ringing of the White Mages’ silver trumpets and the fluttering wings of a thousand released black doves, the Lord of Darkness advanced up the hall of the Opticon and stood before the Throne of the World.

The marble floor tiles ceased under the central dome. Four Men of the Order of White mages knelt there, where, surrounded by its marble dais, a fang of ancient continental bedrock jutted up. Living rock—around which first the Opticon and later Ferenzia itself had been built. The black stone breathed antiquity.

Hands older than the city of Ferenzia had carved this basalt outcrop into a throne. Ancient winged and scaled beasts ornamented each of its corners as supporters. The seat shone with intricately chiselled flowers, fruits, vines, and corn-ears. The massive back of the throne rose up to a point, every inch carved with wings, eyes, globes, and solar discs.

The Dark Lord lifted Her arms, letting Her wolf-fur cloak fall. She stood, slender and tall, in Her clinging robe of ebony silk, Her jeweled belt flashing in the sunlit, dusty air. As She seated Herself, lounging back on the piled velvet cushions, Ashnak picked up Her robe and took his station to the left of the Throne of the World. High Wizard Oderic reluctantly stood to Her right, in his arms an onyx-and-diamond crown.

“Behold,” Oderic of Ferenzia cried, “the first democratic Parliament of the ruler of the World.”

“No, sssister!” a voice lisped from the front row of the Dark delegates.

The nameless necromancer hunched and slumped his way to his feet and onto the floor before the Throne. Ashnak rubbed his mouth, tasting the sudden metallic flavour of wizardry.

“We have both of ush been betrayed, sister! Now—avenge us!”

Orc marine squad leaders watched Ashnak for orders. He held up a restraining hand, his eyes on the Throne.

The Dark Lord lounged against one of the Throne’s carved arms, Her black robe falling back from her calf, knee, and thigh. Her skin glowed sepia-pale in the dusty light. Her orange eyes flared.

“What, little Man? Do you challenge Me?”

“Sssister mine!” the nameless necromancer appealed. “I know your schpirit, your ssoul, still lives within that body. Wake, wake, and take your body back!”

The Dark Lord’s chin dipped towards her silk-clad breast. She looked up from under Her brows at the suddenly silenced Parliament.

She spoke.

“You who were My greatest enemy, you who were called The Named—look now and see what I have made of you. I have kept your spirit alive within Me until now, so that you may see Evil ruling from the Throne of the World.”

“Madam President!” A black-bearded dwarf raised his hand from the Light’s back benches. Ashnak recognized Prosecuting Counsel Zhazba-darabat. “You mean, ‘Evil presiding over this democratically elected assembly.’”

“Of course,” the Dark Lord purred. “Now. You who were called The Named, behold your shame, and your brother’s extinction for daring to challenge Me!”

The Dark Lord’s featureless orange eyes dimmed. Her cyan-and-sepia-shadowed face contorted. Ashnak, meeting her gaze, saw green Man-eyes suddenly stare out wildly at the crowd.

The orc drew his pistol, assuming a combat stance, but did not fire.

The rangy female Man slid her hands down a body clothed in silk. She sprang to her feet, bare feet stumbling as if she had anticipated the restrictions of armour. An expression of horror, revulsion, and triumph appeared on the face of The Named as she saw her brother, yet unharmed.

The Dark Lord blinked, and, without giving The Named time for any last words or actions whatsoever, snuffed her soul out like cracking a flea.

She opened Her eyes again—which glowed like the fires of sunset—and smiled down at the nameless necromancer. “Was I to gloat, and in so doing give her time to repossess me? Was that your plan? I know what commonly becomes of Evil at the end of tales—but I am not so stupid.”

A fork of black lightning stabbed down from the Opticon’s dome.

Ashnak blinked away the afterimages, holstered his pistol, strolled across the black and white tiles, and studied the smoking heap of bones that was all that remained of the orc’s ancient master. As he watched, the bones disintegrated into dust.

“Corporal Hikz, give those tiles a going-over.” He faced about as the grunt scrubbed at the stone. “Well done, Ma’am. Speaking as head of the security presence here, I admire good, quick work.”

The Dark and Light Parliamentary delegates settled back into their seats under the great gold and blue wall-maps, glaring at each other across the chamber.

The Ruler of the World spoke.

“Is that all?” She said.

The Dark Ruler lay back between the wing-carved arms of the Throne of the World. Its feather-and-eye-decorated stone back rose high above Her: Her ash-pale hair, and Her childdelicate face, and Her bare shoulders.

“Is that all…?”

The Ruler of the World pointed, with one sepia-shadowed hand, at the gallery of the Opticon and the walls above it.

“You do not know how petty all this seems to Me. What is pictured there?”

Her hand indicated the great blue and gold wall-maps, with the green hills and farmlands of Ferenzia, Gyzrathrani, Fourgate, Graagryk, Sarderis, and the rest painted in intricate detail.

“Half a hundred petty kingdoms, a few stretches of wild lands, some uninhabitable territories at the poles, and a flooded continent to the west. Number it, it is easily numbered. What is it all to me, who with the mere thinking could turn it all to molten rock…”

Her bell voice chimed in the Opticon’s dome. The substance of the air shivered, as if all the Powers—Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Void—were brought unwilling into that chamber.

“And you…”

The gaze of the Dark Ruler swept across the tiered seats. Specks of sunfire gleamed in Her pupilless orange eyes. Bereft of speech and movement, the races of the earth stared back at Her like animals caught in torchlight.

“No,” She said. “It is not worthy of Me to commit genocide against such inconsequential beings.”

A tension left the air, the Powers fading.

“Always I have fought for the mastery of this Land. Again and again I have thrown My forces of Darkness against the Light. Finally, I am victorious! But when I have the victory, what have I won? The lordship over furrowgrubbers, axe-swingers, and beast-handlers. Farmland, wilderness, and not a city worthy of the name!”

The Mayor of Sarderis made as if to speak, caught Her gaze, and was silent.

The Dark Ruler of the World smiled.

“There are none left, are there, to challenge Me?”

A red-eyed kobold in a mail-shirt spoke up from the tiers of Dark delegates. “Ma’am, we appreciate that as Dark Lord and World Ruler You expect regular challenges to Your power—but this House requests that we deal first with the budget for Lower Shazmanar, and the submitted paper on Waterworks and Canals, and the Evil Races (Suffrage) Bill.”

The Dark Lord rested Her elbow on the arm of the Throne and Her chin in Her hand. From the pinnacle of the world She gazed down.

“Already,” She said, “already I am bored. You do not have the greatness of soul to know how tedious I find this muddy world of which I am Ruler.”

Ashnak chewed his cigar, checked the position of his marines, and moved forward. “Got a priority matter for You to deal with, Ma’am. Before these Bills and suchlike. “If I may…”

“Do what you will, My orc!”

Ashnak jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You’ve met Hive Commander Kah-Sissh.”

Delegates leaned forward on their benches as the double doors of the Opticon were flung open.

A squad of twelve Bug insectoids approached across the floor of the Opticon, bearing on their chitinous shoulders the body of a Jassik warrior twice their size. Upright, the exoskeletal body would have touched the domed ceiling. Now the black chitin was mat and dull, the faceted eyes dim, the great claws motionless. A vast array of black living-metal clustered on the dead Jassik’s body, no lights flickering on it, all dead and still.

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh trod delicately across the floor before the Throne, and folded his legs into obeisance. “Great One, Ruler of This World.”

The Dark Lord glanced down at the Bug, and then at Supreme Commander Ashnak. “What is this?”

“It’s a dead Bug, Ma’am.”

“I can see that!”

“A mostly dead Bug,” Ashnak corrected himself. “Isn’t that right, Kah-Sissh?”

The Hive Commander unfolded, in response to a nudge from the orc’s combat boot, and said hastily, “All but dead, Great One. This is our Swarm Master, who was damaged as we came to this world. You would call him our Emperor. His mind is damaged, dead, and cannot be healed. His body yet has a kind of life in it, but it is fading fast.”

The Ruler of the World rose from Her throne, pacing down to the floor of the Opticon. Her orange eyes glowed. The great body of the Bug towered over Her. She surveyed its chitinous carapace.

“Ashnak, be so good as to tell Me why you are bringing dead Bugs into My court?”

The dwarf Zhazba-darabat coughed. “Parliament.”

Orange eyes turned to the Light benches. “What?”

“‘Parliament,’ World Ruler, Ma’am. Not ‘court.’”

The Dark and Light delegates looked at each other, nodding their heads in complete agreement.

“Into My Parliament,” the Dark Lord hissed, Her fists clenching at Her sides. Her silk robe slid across Her long legs as She paced the length of the dead Jassik, and then back to the Throne’s dais. She turned Her head, gazing at her Supreme Commander.

“Well?”

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh, nudged again by Ashnak’s boot, spoke. “This is the Emperor of all Jassik. Emperor of those who are here, and of those who rule, in his name, the myriad worlds of the stars. He leads us from world to world, plundering and pillaging, subjecting all to Jassik control. He leads the holy war, across stars uncounted, forging an empire of worlds too many to be numbered!”

“Wait!” The Dark Lord stared at Kah-Sissh’s back and at the Jassik’s multibarreled disruptor. “What discourtesy is this, orc Ashnak? I was under the impression that our foes had agreed to throw down their arms.”

Ashnak shrugged. “Bit difficult with cyber-grown weaponry, Ma’am. We’re doing the best we can.”

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh drew himself up, towering over the assembly. “I am bound by a warrior’s bonour to keep the terms agreed at the peace negotiations!”

The Jassik rubbed his claw across his chitinous skull between his faceted eyes, as if he found the Opticon’s light uncomfortable.

“For some reason, I do not entirely remember all the conditions,” he added, “but nonetheless, I hold to them!”

The Dark Lord seated Herself again on the Throne of the World. She shot a sharp glance at Ashnak. “I ask again: why have you brought this body here? I am not in the healing vein today.”

“Our ship-egg is on the point of hatching.” The alien Hive Commander stood on his exoskeletal hind limbs. Sun gleamed on his articulated thorax, domed head, and acid-dripping jaws. His faceted eyes held a thousand reflections of the Lord of Darkness. “Within hours we must leave this petty world. The Jassik Empire must continue on its conquering way.”

“‘Petty’ world?” the Dark Lord mused. “That is not something it is tactful to say to Me.”

“No, Ma’am.” Ashnak glared at the Hive Commander. “What Kah-Sissh means to say, Ma’am, is that the Jassik need a Swarm Master to lead them. This one is destroyed in mind, but only damaged in body. Dread Lord, the Jassik offer You the body of the Swarm Master to possess—if You will become their Emperor and lead them from world to world, conquering as You go.”

A silence fell on the Parliament. Ashnak’s gaze swept Oderic’s scowling features, Magorian and the White Mages; the Ferenzi nobles and people; the creatures of the Horde…

The Ruler of the World’s gaze returned from the same survey.

“What do I rule, here?” She asked. “Some half a million creatures. Yes, little Kah-Sissh, I have been speaking with your Jassik companions of the worlds that lie beyond the stars. The many, many worlds.”

An orcish voice spoke up from the rear of the Opticon.

“It’s quite all right if you refuse, Ma’am,” Major-General Barashkukor called, almost on cue. “They’ve said that if you don’t want the post, they’ll offer it to someone else.”

“Will they, now…”

The Dark Ruler of the World stood, jewelled belt blazing in the Opticon’s sunlight. She turned Her gaze upon the tiers of seats.

“And who would accept this offer? You, Magorian? To be a hero again in a body not betrayed by age? Or you, Oderic, who thinks he is a wizard, to gain the knowledge of the stars?”

Her gaze swept on.

“My br— My necromancer would have taken this chance, out of courage or desperation. What of you, nobles of Ferenzi? Dwarves, will you study the engineering of the stars? Halflings, will you carry your thievery to other worlds? Elves, will you visit those stars of which you sing? Ah, you see that I see into you all. There is not one of you who can answer Me.”

The Dark Lord’s gaze lowered to the marble dais at the foot of the Throne.

“Not even you, little orc. Come, confess it before your fellow warriors and be shamed. You will not take the offer of a Jassik Emperor’s body. Your bowels loose at the very thought.”

The orc Supreme Commander shrugged, shifted uncomfortably from combat boot to combat boot, and avoided his grunts’ eyes. “Ah. Well. That is…”

The Dark Lord’s voice seared. “Shall I make you take the offer? It is in My power so to do.”

Rapidly concealed anxiety showed in the orc’s porcine eyes. With a more genuine discomfort, he said, “No, Ma’am!”

The Dark Lord laughed.

“It would be a fitting reward, to dispossess you of your orcish warriors. But that I can in any case do. Let Me think…Yes. Curiously enough, little orc, there is something you can do for Me.”

A Darkness began to fill the Opticon.

Out of it, Her voice said, “I here proclaim Ashnak of the Agaku to be My regent, to rule this petty world in My absence!”

Ashnak’s tusked jaw sagged.

Her voice laughed.

Darkness swirled, stinking of rot and bone, smelling of spices and cherries and the east wind. The unseen dome of the Opticon creaked. The shrieks and cries of the delegates fell, muted, as if into infinite void.

Abruptly, Darkness vanished.

Ashnak swiped at his eyes that streamed in the sudden sunlight. All the elves, Men, kobolds, witches, dwarves, and other delegates in the chamber rose to their feet, shouting—and then suddenly fell silent.

Lights ran across the black metal body of the Swarm Master.

Hive Commander Kah-Sissh and his Jassik escort folded and fell, making obeisance on the tiles.

The Swarm Master rose.

His articulated armoured body hung suspended between chitin-metal limbs, weapon-muzzles gleaming. His faceted eyes glimmered with an ancient amusement.

He spoke, His voice ancient and familiar:

“None of you are worthy of Me…You and this world are too poor in scope for My ambition. What, is there no more world left for Me to conquer? Are there no worthy enemies? I go now to rule an Evil Empire beyond your comprehension! Little beings, amuse yourselves in this dungheap that is also Mine, for I shall not return to it, beg Me though you may.”

The Emperor of the Jassik moved on metal-chitin limbs. He lowered his acid-dripping jaws towards the discarded body of the female Man that lay between His feet.

“I have a universe to conquer!” He hissed.

The Jassik Swarm Master picked up The Named’s limp body in one foreclaw, bit her head off, and, escorted by Jassik warriors, paced regally out of the Opticon, chewing.

Will Brandiman glanced up at the sign over the door—“Wrestling Emporium” and, in smaller letters, “A DIVISION OF MAGDA BRANDIMAN ENTERPRISES”—and trotted past the bouncers into the club. A welcome fug of pipe-weed smoke and small beer hit his nostrils. He paused for a moment, eyes becoming accustomed to the dim light. There were no uncurtained windows to let the morning in.

“Ned?”

“Over here, Will.”

Halfling-sized and Man-sized tables filled most of the floor. The club’s arc-lights shone on the roped arena, on a dais, in which two mud-spattered dwarves wrestled in three inches of black slime.

“Foul!” Ned Brandiman bawled, thumping his fist on the table. His red wimple was pushed back, showing his curly brown hair and his stubbled cheeks. He grinned up at Will.

“Good, isn’t it?” he said happily.

The ex-Son of the Lady, Amarynth Firehand, also looked up from where he sat, his arm around Ned Brandiman’s redhabited shoulders. “Ah. Brother-in-law William. Do you approve?”

With a roar, the smaller of the wrestling dwarves flipped the other over, kneeling on her shoulders and rubbing the black mud into her beard. Will waited until the ringing cheers had died down before he said, “Dwarf mud wrestling, Holy One?”

“No, no. I am no longer Holy.” The elf lowered his eyes. “The Lady of Light has told me how unfit I am. Now I must wallow in sin and depravity, tasting every vice, until my knowledge of evil is perfect. Only then dare I call myself Most Holy again.”

Will reached over and poured another measure of arrack into the elf’s cup. “I feel it could take you some while, Ho—Lord Amarynth.”

“Nor am I to be called Lord, or Knight, or Paladin. I am simply Amarynth, owner of the Azure Roc. But,” Amarynth said, cheering up, “at least I am able to share my new life of shame with someone for whom I care deeply.”

Ned Brandiman blushed.

“I’d like to borrow Ned for a while,” Will said, “if I may.”

“Certainly.” Amarynth lifted his dark cheek for the brown-haired halfling’s kiss, flicked through his programme, and turned back to the wrestling ring and the dwarves. He frowned. “It says here that the next act to audition involves ‘water sports.’ I still don’t see how they’re going to get a shower into the ring…”

Ashnak stood for a moment grinning an inane, stunned grin.

“Awriiight!” he roared, over the tumult of the Light and Dark delegates. “You heard the Lady—from now on, I’m the boss here!”

An orcish voice shouted above the confusion, “Hail, Regent Ashnak!”

“Never!” Oderic, High Wizard of Ferenzia, stomped forward from beside the Throne of the World. “The Light cannot accept this! We—we will crown Magorian King again!”

Sunlight blazed down into the Opticon, glaring back from the wall-maps, the bookshelves, and the rich robes of the halflings, Men, elves, and dwarves who stood up and shouted from the Light benches:

“No orcs! No orcs!”

The armed orc marines lining the walls grinned, readying their weapons.

“NO ORCS!” The same sun gleamed from the black mail, dagger-hilts, sallet helms, and dark velvet gowns of the Dark delegates: kobolds, witches, and Undead all scrambling to their feet.

Ashnak raised his beetling brows. “Whaddya mean, ‘no orcs’?”

The red-eyed kobold waved her dagger. “Orcs are just big and nasty. What sort of treatment will you give the rest of the Horde? You’ll just enslave us!”

“Oh, ho!” The High Wizard Oderic bellowed in triumph. “Even your own Evil side won’t accept you, orc!”

A gang of Trolls on the back benches began to chant, “Orcs out!” A somewhat desperate elven chorus on the opposition benches sang in counterpoint, “Bring back the Dark Lord!”

A knife shattered against the Throne of the World, beside Oderic’s hand, drawing blood and severing a tendon. Ten, twenty, fifty metallic hisses: swords drawn from their sheaths. Men in mail-shirts under their velvet robes leaped up, overturning chairs. Dark dwarf delegates upturned benches with a crash. An elvish blade flashed: a minotaur screamed: a White Mage bellowed a word of Power. An ebony spatter of blood fell on the tiles.

Dakka-dakka-dakka! FOOM!

Chaos froze. Halflings shaking their fists, dwarves standing on benches and shouting, Men using their superior lungpower to be heard: all froze into silence. The assembled Light and Dark delegates sank back into their seats, or stood among the wreckage, all eyes turned to the Throne of the World, and the great orc now sitting on it.

“Thank you, Lieutenant-Colonel.” Ashnak nodded to Dakashnit. The black orc grinned and lowered her AK47. A fine layer of plaster sifted down onto the Opticon’s library shelves. The map of Lesser Gyzrathrani now had a line of dinner-plate-size holes just above the Endless Desert.

Ashnak sat back, rumpled camouflage uniform stretching to contain his large body. He pushed his forage cap back on his head and scratched his crotch. The smell of sweating orc drifted across the Opticon. Sitting with both arms resting across his camouflage-trousered thighs, combat boots square on the Throne steps, and pistol in hand, Ashnak’s eyes swivelled down to survey the World Parliament.

“I’m in charge here,” he stated flatly.

Oderic spun on his heel, white hair flying, pointing to the orc marines at the door and around the walls. “We will never submit to your military dictatorship!”

The Dark kobold gibbered. “Tyrant! Dictator!”

Ashnak’s powerful head swivelled, taking in the recalcitrant kobolds of the Blasted Redoubt and the stubborn trolls of the Horde, the mutineering witches of the wastelands, and the revolting wild orcs of the mountains.

“‘Tyrant’…”

He let his gaze travel from the furious white wizard to the comatose former High King; from Shazmanar’s Snake Priests to Gyzrathrani’s wary warriors, from the elves of Thyrion to the halfling bankers of the Ferenzi suburbs, and the city stockbroker-dwarves.

“Yo! I like the sound of that.”

Orcish voices bawled “Yo!” across the Opticon. Marines beat the butts of their rifles against the floor. Magorian woke up long enough to mutter, “Damned greenies!”

“Let me tell all of you something about orcs.” Ashnak’s smile was almost affectionate. “If you’re born an orc, every race’s hand is against you. Every Dark Leader that happens along thinks, I need an army, what about a few thousand orcs? They’re brutal, efficient, cheap, and there’s always plenty more where they came from.”

Oderic sneered, “Foolish creature, what else is there to do with you? You live in filth, you are filth.”

Major-General Barashkukor stepped forward, protesting. “Anyone would think orcs lived in Pits by their own choice.”

“Dammit, we do!” Ashnak thumped his fist on the stone arm of the Throne. “I’m prone to be an orc! I came out of the Pit the nastiest, toughest object you could ever wish to see—the necromancer’s army made me a junior sergeant on the spot. I fought my way up to captain in the Horde; I’ve held command of the marines; now I’ve got the Throne of the World, and I’m keeping it! You ain’t got the orcs to kick around anymore!”

Voices screamed in unison:

“Orcs out! Orcs out! ORCS OUT!”

Ashnak gazed down at five hundred rioting Dark and Light delegates with the identical desire for dead orc in their glowering eyes.

“I don’t think it’s a popular decision, sir,” Wing Commander Chahkamnit remarked.

“I’m not asking them to like me! Time for a couple of volleys into the crowd,” Ashnak purred. “How convenient that we’ve got all the ranking delegates from the Northern and Southern Kingdoms in the same room—”

“FREEZE, MOTHERFUCKER!”

Ashnak saw first the glint of the Brandiman Enterprises camera in the gallery below the wall-maps and then the sunlight flashing from the muzzle of the sniper’s rifle beside it, held by a halfling in the red habit and wimple of a Little Sister of Mortification.

Ned Brandiman kept his eye to the sights. “Make a move, orc, and I’ll blow your heart out.”

The orcs around the Throne shuffled back from Ashnak.

He glowered and opened his mouth to bellow.

Another voice called, “Not so fast, orc!”

The Opticon fell silent. Ashnak gazed towards the open doors. A small, curly-haired figure stood in the gap, the light of the sun behind him.

The figure moved forward, black silhouette becoming a halfling in the velvet doublet and gold fillet of a Graagryk prince. The sun shone down on his black curls, streaked with grey, and his hands that he held out empty before him.

“Gentlemen,” Will Brandiman said. “Let’s be sensible about this.”

The Prince of Graagryk walked with an easy swagger, thigh-length cloak swinging with the weight of coins sewn into its hem. He kept one hand on the swept hilt of his rapier as he marched down the aisle between the benches and halted before the orc Supreme Commander. He turned to face the delegates.

“Commander Ashnak would do a fine job as Regent.” Above protests, Will added, “even though I have experience of him as my stepfather, I still say that. But—if he took the job, he’d have to kill most of you to do it. Because none of you will be ruled by an orc. Right?”

Yowls of agreement echoed from the Opticon’s dome. Ashnak snarled, brass-capped tusks flashing. He stood up, great-shouldered and powerful, the sun gleaming from his insignia of rank. “Asshole halflings!”

“I am,” Will Brandiman said, “a reasonable halfling. So are we all—elves and Men, kobolds and Undead—so are we all reasonable beings. Gentlemen, ladies, we’re a Parliament. It’s our job to debate, to discuss, to agree, to compromise. Am I right?”

Two or three voices dissented, the rest murmured agreement.

“We’re civilised people,” Will continued, striding to stand on the edge of the marble dais, a move that still didn’t put him on a level with Ashnak. The great orc glared and fingered his pistol.

“We’ve civilized people, and the days of warfare are over. Commerce needs to continue, trade needs to flourish, harvests need to be—er—harvested,” the Graagryk prince said. “I suggest we delegate the post of Regent to a compromise candidate who shall be acceptable to us all.”

A much-battered dwarf elbowed his way out of a crowd of Undead. Zhazba-darabat drew himself up and with dignity remarked, “President.”

“Pardon?” Will said.

“Not ‘Regent,’ sir. President.”

“A compromise President,” the halfling reiterated, “whom we can all find acceptable.”

“I’m going to make you eat your own testicles!” Ashnak snarled.

“I knew you’d come round to my way of thinking.” Will Brandiman’s eyes flickered to the gallery.

Ashnak’s command officers went into a huddle behind the Throne. The phrase “not the Way of the Orc!” drifted out of the group. A fist went up, and came down on the commissar’s head.

“Behold!” Will shouted.

Another figure appeared in the Opticon’s doorway, silhouetted against the light.

Will bellowed, “I suggest for Ruler—President—of the World, one whose allegiances are to both the Dark and the Light. People of the South and North, give your support to the one best able to preside over a World Parliament and a Federation of All Races.”

The figure became a short-haired halfling in a smart dovecoloured executive suit and gloves, high heels tapping as she walked down between the rows of benches.

Ned Brandiman cried from the gallery, “Magdelene of Graagryk!”

Ashnak strode out to the centre of the floor, furiously chewing his cigar, and glaring down at Magda Brandiman.

“See!” the female halfling cried, before Ashnak could speak. “Ashnak the Great Peacemaker concedes to the forces of democracy!”

There was a silence. The Dark delegates looked at each other, and then at the Light delegates. The Light delegates looked at High King Magorian, and then at each other. They all looked at Ashnak.

“Long live President Magda!” Albert van der Klump, shop steward, took off his top hat and unhooked his thumb from the armhole of his waistcoat, and waved his fat cigar enthusiastically. Cornelius Scroop, Chancellor-Mage of Graagryk, and Militia Captain Simone Vanderghast pounded the backs of the seats in front, starting a roar of applause that spread rapidly across the Parliament.

Scanning the benches, Ashnak began to count the many, many faces who had at one time or another been customers of Magda Brandiman Enterprizes, Ltd.

“Well, my love.” The female halfling held up her pipe-weed holder for him to light her thin cigar. “That was the longest twenty minutes of my life…”

His pointed ears ringing with the cheers reverberating through the Opticon, Ashnak stared through the many hats tossed into the air. The gallery was empty now.

“Just to get your attention, my love,” Magda apologised sadly. “No one will ever accept the rule of an orc. You know that. Prejudice is stronger than guns.”

“But—!”

The great orc’s shoulders fell very slightly.

He nodded to his edgy troops to stand down.

As delegates across the Opticon sat down, or recovered their chairs and benches and sat down, Magda Brandiman turned to the House.

“I don’t look on this as a position of power,” she said, her rich voice echoing. “I’m thinking of it as a business opportunity. Factories, industrial bases—all the kingdoms can be as rich as Graagryk! Everyone can share the economic boom!”

Magda drew on her pipe-weed and expelled a plume of smoke.

“And pleasure is my business, too. If we work at it, we can make this land the pleasure capital of the world! There are whole territories in the Black East and the Drowned Lands of the West to be opened up. We can build a city worthy of the name, and we can all share in its riches! And no more of this antiquated Dark and Light nonsense—it’s bad for investment.”

“MAGDA! MAGDA! We want Magda! WE WANT MAGDA!”

Will swept the velvet cap from his greying curls, leading the cheers that rang out until they shook the dust from the Opticon’s bookshelves. Magda went into the crowd, shaking hands and smiling professionally.

“Shee-it!” Ashnak reached up and wrenched his jacket collar open. Buttons spanged off and lost themselves on the marble tiles.

The High Wizard Oderic hitched up his long white robes and sat down on a corner of the dais beside Ashnak. Dispiritedly he conjured a pipe, pipe-weed, and a match.

“That does it! I’m—hkk! hakkk! hk!—I’m retiring.” The High Wizard glared up at the orc. “I’ve had enough. Going to write my book. Always said I would; now I will.”

Ashnak fingered one hairy nostril. “What book’s that, then?”

“The history of an Age,” Oderic said, puffing smoke-rings that lurched, lopsided, into the air. “I’m going to tell the real story about halflings, orcs, the Dark Lord, and the final victory. The halflings are going to be cheery and moral and know their place; the orcs will be cowardly, and they’ll lose; there won’t be any mention of arms trading, and at the end of it the Dark Lord will be male, and very, very dead!”

The great orc suddenly snorted. “Nahhh.”

The white wizard coughed, and finally smiled. “But you see, master orc, Good is triumphant. In a somewhat unorthodox manner, I grant you, but nonetheless—Order is restored.”

“Bah!” Ashnak stomped away across the Opticon.

“…But it’s disgraceful,” Political Commissar Razitshakra protested, pointing at the orcs who, with assault rifles slung across their shoulders, were happily mingling with the parliamentary delegates. “The grunts don’t seem to mind peace at all!”

“Hey, m’man.” Lieutenant-Colonel Dakashnit’s rich tones echoed under the domed roof. “Soldiering’s much more fun when no one’s shooting at you.”

“Supreme Commander, sir!” Lugashaldim saluted skeletally. “Sir, Madam President Magdelene has asked if myself and Commissar Razitshakra can be seconded to her, sir, on temporary duties. She wants us to head her secret police.”

“Police?” Ashnak exclaimed.

“Uniformed officers of visible integrity who keep the government in power,” Razitshakra explained. “She’s not having any of them, sir. Just secret police. That’s the same as regular police, but without the uniforms and the integrity.”

The great orc sighed gloomily.

“Got some news, man.” Dakashnit saluted lazily. “Seems as how not all of the Bugs have left with the starship. But no need to worry, S.C. It’s Hive Commander Kah-Sissh and his squad who’ve stayed. They want training.”

“They want our training?” Ashnak asked.

“Yes sir! Well—that and the tea. Permission to turn ’em into Bug marines, S.C.?”

Ashnak growled, “Hell, why not? What does it matter now?”

He tugged at the crotch of his combats. Then he reached across, removed Major-General Barashkukor’s braid-encrusted peaked cap, and tapped his cigar ashes into it.

“Didn’t want to be World Ruler anyway,” Ashnak grunted. “It’s a Staff job.”

“Ah. Stepfather…”

Will Brandiman, standing just out of orc’s reach, cricked his neck to look the great orc in the face.

“You little rat!” Ashnak hissed.

The halfling beamed up at the orc who towered over him. “Think of this as being our revenge on you, Ned and I, for the dungeons of Nin-Edin.”

“Damn you!”

“Quite probably,” Will agreed. “But the moral is—don’t fuck us over. Ever. Halflings have long memories, master orc. But you’ll have enough time to think about that. Since you’re not going to be occupied with world government.”

The great orc stood under the circular hole in the Opticon’s roof, bathed in sunlight. A slight odourous steam rose from him. He wiped his nose, and his eyes glinted as they fixed on the colonel-duchess.

“Hellfire! She didn’t take much persuading to do this,” Ashnak said bitterly.

The halfling raised a small eyebrow. “She didn’t take much persuading to save your ass. She didn’t take much persuading to do the only thing that would stop you being lynched. Oh, and you would have been lynched—Ned and I would have made sure of that. But…”

Will Brandiman waved his hand at the Opticon floor below the Throne of the World. Five hundred Dark and Light Parliamentary delegates elbowed each other in the rush to speak to Magda.

Orcs in camouflage fatigues with assault rifles stood in clusters, at ease, drinking from their water bottles. Each grunt carried with ease the weight of weapons, spare magazines, and grenades.

“If you’re so pissed off,” Will said softly, “waste her. You’re armed. You could still stage a violent coup. But you’ll have to take Mother out first. So go ahead—do it.”

The orc did not move.

“You’re a marine.” Will’s tongue flayed. “That’s what marines do, isn’t it. Go ahead! Take power.”

The strings of the halfling’s ruff already trailed loose. He scratched irritably at the embroidery-stiffened collar of his doublet. Will looked towards the Order of the White Mages’ wizards shuffling about in the background, hastily repossessing the onyx and diamond crown. A priest of the Sun gabbled his way through the coronation oath.

“I can’t.” Ashnak shoved his hand deep in his combat jacket pocket, brought out another cigar, and bit off the end. He spat on the Opticon’s tiled floor. “Damn it, halfling, I can’t.”

“That’s what I thought,” Will said smugly. “Villains always fall short of the mark at the end.”

“Fuck off and die.”

Ashnak straightened his shoulders, chewed his unlit cigar, and watched as, to the cheers of both sides of the House, in the Opticon of Ferenzia, upon a Throne older than cities, Magdelene Amaryllis Judith Brechie van Nassau of Graagryk, Duchess and Colonel, took her place as President of the United Northern and Southern Kingdoms and effective Ruler of the World.

13

The autumn sun burned the dew off the stone walls inside Ferenzia’s colossal stadium, the largest in the Southern Kingdoms. The cheering grew louder as the whup-whup-whup of a Bell Iroquois HU1 helicopter thrummed above the velvet-draped stone tiers. The roar of the marine march-past and All Forces victory tournament echoed to the skies. A single-prop Ferenzi airship puttered in, wavering as the Huey passed it, sporting a contingent of elf musketeers.

“My hero!” a northern dwarf breathed, her hands clasped to the breast of her shining mailcoat, over her rippling beard.

Major-General Barashkukor, in formal black combats and Stetson, strode forward from among a crowd of dwarf and halfling females, flowers in their beards and hair, respectively. They scattered rose petals over the small orc and blew kisses.

He waved the mob away as he approached Madam President Magdelene’s box, and saluted his Honorary Colonel. “Magnificent show, ma’am.”

The World President sat on the straight-backed chair overlooking the arena, her many advisors one row behind. The female halfing wore a peach-coloured executive suit and gloves and a small hat with a spotted veil.

“Make the most of it, Major-General. It’s probably the last one.” Magda Brandiman regarded the sunny ranks of citizens with a jaundiced eye. “The House had the nerve to pass the Marine Reserve Force (Disbandment) Bill today. Not a thing I could do. The defence budget is slashed by 50 percent because the marines are ‘uneconomic’ without a war.”

“We could always start one, ma’am,” Barashkukor suggested thoughtfully.

“With what?” She leaned her chin on her hand. “You’re running low on equipment from Dagurashibanipal’s hoard, and arms factory production is being cancelled from the beginning of next month.”

“Oh.”

“My sons have left the city,” Magda sighed. “Last heard remarking that they’d robbed the Blasted Redoubt, outwitted the Dark Lord, and out-thought the marines, so what is there left to do? There are no worthy adventures left for them.”

She cast a sardonic eye up at the orc.

“I know how they feel, Major-General. I miss adventuring. I haven’t done anything seriously illegal for months. Only politics, and every politician is crooked, so that hardly counts. You see, it’s become my business to support the status quo. More and more responsibility piled on…That means it’s me who has to worry about whether Ashnak—”

She broke off in mid-sentence.

The small orc smoothed down the bare breast of his tunic.

“Would have liked a medal,” he said. “Sure General Ashnak would have awarded me one, if circumstances hadn’t intervened.”

His lower lip began to quiver.

Magda waved her advisors away and leaned forward. “Tell Magda all about it?” she invited.

Barashkukor sniffed. “I’m worried about my beloved general, ma’am! He’s up north in the Nin-Edin fort, brooding, he won’t give the marines orders, he just shuts himself up all the time, and now—”

“He’s either going to retire gracefully or he’s going to wreak bloody revenge,” the World President said. “I know which my money’s on. It’s me who has to worry about it. And…Barashkukor, I haven’t seen or heard from Ashnak in a month.”

The small orc wiped his nose.

“You have now, ma’am. That’s why I’m here. I’ve just had a message through from the north. It wasn’t very clear, ma’am. The general is calling a meeting, wants you there too—he says he’s going to make some kind of an announcement.”

Magda bit her lip.

“Call that Huey down,” the colonel-duchess ordered. “Whatever it is, I wouldn’t like us to get there too late.”

The Demonfest Mountains rose higher to either side as Wing Commander Chahkamnit swung the Huey up from Sarderis and through the Nin-Edin pass. Fog clung to the peaks. Water spattered the viewscreen. Visibility decreased as they contour-flew the pass up to Nin-Edin. The wind blowing through the helicopter was icy.

“Splendidly bracing, ma’am, what?” Chahkamnit bellowed from under goggles and ear-flapped flying helmet.

“Cold enough to freeze a rock-troll’s ass,” Magda snarled. “Didn’t Ashnak’s message say anything else, Major-General?”

Barashkukor held on his Stetson by main force. “No, Colonel, ma’am. Only that he wants all of us here, right now.”

In the main body of the Huey, CIA Chief Lugashaldim, Master Sergeant Varimnak, and Lieutenant-Colonel Dakashnit sat morosely jammed elbow to elbow. Commissar Razitshakra read a tattered paperback. It was not clear whether she had been summoned or had merely attached herself to keep an eye open for examples of unorcish behaviour.

Crump!

“Nice landing, Wing Commander.” Magda swung herself down from the Huey’s cockpit. The machine stood, less than levelly, on the earth of Nin-Edin’s outer bailey. A gothic mist swirled around the battlements and poured down from the mountains, hiding the inner keep and the outer gate.

“Brings back memories, ma’am,” Barashkukor said, disembarking with the other officers. His eyes shone. “First time I ever handled a marine weapon, it was right here in this compound. Me and Marukka and Duranki and Azarluhi…all dead now, ma’am. Fallen on the field of battle.”

Barashkukor dusted his small snout violently on his sleeve. “Wonder if it wouldn’t have been better, ma’am, if the general could have found an honourable death in a firefight…”

Magda glared at the snivelling orc. “No, it bloody well wouldn’t!”

“Falling in battle is the Way of the Orc, ma’am,” Commissar Razitshakra observed, putting her paperback in her greatcoat pocket and wiping the fog from her dripping peaked ears and round spectacles. “The Way of the Orc doesn’t say anything about reserve lists, pensions, or retired marine officers. Or anything about sulking—”

“As far as I’m concerned, Commissar,” Dakashnit drawled, “you can shove that up your ass and whistle Dixie!”

The halfling and the group of orcs tramped up the hill towards the inner walls and the shattered gate that still stood unrepaired, although now a section of marines guarded it. Magda heard Master Sergeant Varimnak sigh.

“Remember the siege?” The Badgurlz marine elbowed Lugashaldim in his stripped ribs. “Hell, man, that was good! That elf—she could swing a whip like she’d been born to it.”

The Undead orc took off his dark glasses, gazing up at the battle-stained keep now visible through the shifting fog. “I remember the Fourgate commando mission and how brave General Ashnak was. He wouldn’t hear any arguments—he insisted on returning to this besieged fort, no matter what the personal danger…”

Commissar Razitshakra made a note in her book, muttering something about not quite remembering it that way. Lugashaldim ignored her. He patted Magda’s arm with a gloved skeletal hand.

“Ma’am, to think he should come to this. Skulking in a garrison in the middle of nowhere; drinking, I expect, and…”

At her other side, Chahkamnit stuffed his flying goggles in his bomber jacket pocket and crouched down to put his arm around Magda’s shoulders. “I say, ma’am, I wouldn’t give any of that a thought if it was me. The old general’s ticketty-boo, take my word for it. He’d never do anything silly.”

Magda straight-armed the lanky black orc, who sat down hard on the earth.

“You’re getting on my nerves!” she snarled. “Damn it, whose husband is he? I know Ashnak better than any of you.”

A great orc stepped out from under the split masonry arch of the inner gate, into the swirling fog.

The General Officer commanding the orc marines wore a ragged pair of combat trousers and had obviously been wearing them for some time. His boots were scuffed, and his web-belt hung low, pulled down by the weight of his .44 Magnum. Fog pearled and shone on his bald head, peaked ears, and deep brow ridges.

Barashkukor saluted energetically. “Sir, you said you had an announcement to make, sir!”

“Did I?” An enigmatic expression crossed the orc’s craggy features. He reached down a taloned finger and touched the shoulder of Magda’s suit.

Lugashaldim, Varimnak, Dakashnit, and Chahkamnit exchanged wary glances. Bewildered, they regarded their large, filthy commanding orc. Ashnak stepped out of the gateway, striding past them down the hill.

“Follow me,” he ordered.

The caverns under the mountain echoed to boots, and the hissing arc lights that orc marines had strung up on cables. Although chill, it was still warmer than the fog-shrouded mountainside above.

Colonel-Duchess Magda van Nassau quickened her pace, heels clicking, to keep up with her orc general. The other orc officers followed, muttering asides to each other as Ashnak led them deeper into the dragon’s caves.

“Will spoke to me before he left Ferenzia.” Magda glanced up. “He holds that the orc marines were bound to come to grief eventually in any case—hubris. And Good always winning in the end, as it does.”

Ashnak’s eyes glinted. He chewed on his unlit cigar. “It ain’t like that.”

“Comparative Good,” Magda amended. “I’m the first to admit, my love, that I’m Good compared only to, say, a seriously bored Dark Lord who might take up continental destruction for the fun of it.”

The corner of the orc’s mouth twitched. “True. But it really ain’t like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me show you.”

With Barashkukor at her heels, and the rest following, Magda entered the central cavern of Dagurashibanipal’s caves. She stared up at the crystal stalactites that were all that remained of the dead dragon. Cables looped across the floor. More arc lights burned, warming the cavern’s chill air.

Ransacked and bare, the halls of the dragon’s hoard stretched out before her.

“I’ve found it, I’ve got it, I’ve—” The voice of Tech-Colonel Ugarit set off crystalline echoes. He hopped from one foot to the other, grinned a sickly grin at Ashnak, and backed away until his skinny frame was flattened against the cave wall.

“I’ll eat you,” the great orc threatened.

“Not yet, my love,” Magda pleaded. “You’ve found something here? What?”

Lieutenant-Colonel Dakashnit eyed the gibbering Ugarit sardonically. “Probably some super-duper new weapons system, man. That right, General? You thinkin’ of blowing the fuck out of people?”

Ashnak sighed. “Don’t encourage him. He’s been wanting to take that ’nuclear’ stuff off the shelves for months and see what it does.”

“Found!” the skinny orc squeaked. His eyes crossed. He went into paroxysms of excited giggles. “Found?!”

Ashnak stepped forward, removed the tech-colonel’s helmet, and dropped his fist on the skinny orc’s skull. Ugarit staggered back against the cave-wall.

“It isn’t a weapon that I’ve discovered. Not exactly…” Ashnak raised his head, momentarily distracted by the line of holes across the cavern roof.

“First time I ever fired an AK,” the great orc remarked in melancholy tones, pointing. “Nearly did for Imhullu! Ah, you wouldn’t remember him, Magda my love. A nest-brother of mine. Fell at Guthranc.”

Magda threw herself forward, embracing the orc’s big, muscular thigh. She fisted one hand and punched him on the painful pressure point of the inner leg. “Don’t you even think about doing anything stupid! I’ll have your ass!”

Ashnak smoothed her chin with a horny finger.

“Is that what you thought?” He shook his head, gazing at the lugubrious faces of his officers. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’m an orc!”

Barashkukor gazed around the cavern.

“Does take you back, sir, doesn’t it? Remember when I was a scrawny little grunt, sir, and you were training us? And then we marched off to war with Captain Shazgurim, and Captain Zarkingu’s band? Those were the days! But I guess those days are gone, sir. I’m beginning to think we were better off in the bad old days in the necromancer’s tower, with poleaxes. We weren’t redundant then. I guess I miss the Dark Lord, sir. At least we had the Light to fight…”

Ashnak looked, not at Barashkukor, but at the diminutive halfling beside him.

She said, “You’ve got something…”

“Fuckin’ A!” Ashnak grinned.

The orc general turned on his heel and marched off, boots clattering noisily in the cavern. Magda trotted to keep up with him. Ugarit skipped in her wake, digging his fists into the pockets of his white coat. His pierced and studded ears jingled as he hopped from foot to foot, shrieking.

“Paradigm anomaly! It’s so simple! Paradigm anomaly!”

In a daze, Magda stumbled after Supreme Commander Ashnak and his orc officers, living and Undead, further on into the cave-system. She was aware at one point of Barashkukor taking her arm to help her down scree-slopes that her heeled shoes could not cope with. She kicked off the shoes and walked bare- and hairy-footed. At some point she discarded the veiled hat too.

She passed through ancient and measureless caverns now stark with the raw light of electricity. She stumbled around pillars and down stairways of an underground city of some hapless race the dragon had exterminated. Grunts with AK47s and M16s stood guard at every corner, every corridor. Barashkukor, Lugashaldim, Varimnak, and Dakashnit were too bemused to return their salutes, which Razitshakra made careful note of.

At last, so deep below ground that the knowledge of the mountain’s weight was an immense pressure, she walked through the newly opened entrance to a hall.

Large enough for six dragons, the roof soared vast and high above her head. She walked out into the expanse of cavern floor, tiny in the great space.

Carved masonry archways set into the walls led out of the cavern.

Winds blew out of the archways.

Magda’s nostril’s flared, catching a hundred mingled scents—all strange, all unknown. An orc behind her swore, breathlessly. Magda stared.

Each elaborately carved stone arch opened into a different place.

The light of strange suns striped the cave floor. Yellow, white, amber, cerise…A flood of sunlights—rich with the heat of summer, pale with the chill of winter, none of it the dank mist and fogs that hung in the Nin-Edin pass.

Magda walked forward until she stood on one elaborately carved threshold. The stone was cut in strange geometries. The aura of draconic mathematics breathed from the rock. A yard in front of her bare, hairy feet, the paving stones of some strange summer-hot city wept tar into the gutters.

She stared back over her shoulder.

Other thresholds opened into rich fields, forests, seas, and cities of every kind, from monumental white stone to vast glass and steel towers. She smelled the mingled scent of a hundred worlds. A hundred Otherworlds…

Ugarit shrieked, “Dimensional portals! Wormholes in space! Parallel dimensions!”

“Is he all right, sir?” CIA Chief Lugashaldim swallowed. His bony jaw creaked. “Am I all right, sir?”

Magda with difficulty turned her back on the magnificent threshold and walked to Ashnak. She reached up and took the orc’s hand.

“You found this,” she growled.

Ashnak stood easy. “I knew it had to be here somewhere.”

Magda shook her head. “I know that Dagurashibanipal was a collector. Very powerful, even for a dragon. A collector of militaria. But what—”

Ugarit stopped hopping, dusty and brilliant-eyed and slavering. “Antiquarian militaria!” he sneered. “Very little truly modern stuff. You know how dragons are.”

The bewildered orc officers wandered through the Cavern of Portals, gaping. Varimnak was so far away as to be almost out of sight, and she had not exhausted the number of gateways yet.

Ashnak smiled, showing brass-capped tusks. “I knew that the dragon collected weapons of war from all the Otherworlds that necromancers and wizards see in their visions. She went there, or sent her golem, and she brought materiél back. And then she died, and cursed her hoard, and we’ve had the Dragon’s Curse ever since.”

Major-General Barashkukor, shocked, cried, “You haven’t found a way to get rid of it, sir?”

“Good god, no!” Ashnak scratched deep in the cleft of his buttocks, and hitched up his combats again. “Dagurashibanipal raided the Otherworlds, from these caverns under the Demonfest Mountains. The gateways are still here. They had to be! How else could Sergeant Stryker have got here?”

Ashnak shrugged modestly.

“He arrived here at least a year after Dagurashibanipal was killed.”

Magda shook her head. “And I thought you were skulking up here, planning some noble suicide…”

“I’m an orc, damn it!”

More amazed than seemed tactful, she said, “Don’t tell me you and the tech-colonel came up with this idea on your own?”

Ashnak said smugly, “I’m not just some dumb grunt.”

“I’ve been observing Stryker’s world—that one, over there, Colonel Ma’am, the one you were looking at,” Tech-Colonel Ugarit dribbled. “That’s really weird. And there’s more than one world. There are hundreds!”

Barashkukor clipped the tech-colonel’s ear with his steel hand. Ugarit cackled. The Undead orc and the other officers began to drift back from the gateways, their expressions dazed.

“Slight exaggeration,” Ashnak demurred. “There probably aren’t more than fifty worlds that orcs could survive in. Some with a higher technology level than us, some lower.”

As if hypnotised, Magda padded barefoot back across the sun-warmed stone to the threshold of Stryker’s world. She sniffed the strange air.

“Smells like the mechanised warfare division.” The halfling wrinkled her nose. Carefully, leaning forward, she moved her head across the threshold. There was a faint sensation of give, as if some transparent meniscus had been penetrated. Sound battered her ears. She stared at the vehicles thundering along the city’s paved streets and across a teeming bridge towards her, at the high glass towers beyond and the gothic spires of a building next to the sluggish brown river.

When she turned her head, the cavern behind her had become invisible. She drew back. Rock-chilled air engulfed her, cold after the sudden exhaust-laden summer.

“You know what this means…”

Major-General Barashkukor, cyborg-eye whirring, stared gobstruck at the dirty blue sky and the red vehicles crossing the iron river bridge. Commissar Razitshakra scribbled furiously; Sergeant Varimnak nudged Dakashnit in the ribs, indicated with a nod of her heavy-jawed head where two young females of the Man species broke from the crowd to lean on the bridge rail, and winked. Wing Commander Chahkamnit gaped. Lugashaldim’s red eyeless sockets glowed. Ugarit beamed.

Ashnak regarded Stryker’s world. “I don’t believe we need worry about an occupation for orcs. Dagurashibanipal seems to have been interested only in worlds completely obsessed with war.”

“Good show, sir!” Wing Commander Chahkamnit shaded his eyes against the yellow sunlight and watched a flight of Tornadoes hurtle across the dirty sky.

“I say, sir, what about that!”

Magda took Ashnak’s hand and gazed into the new world’s rising sun.

“I do have an announcement to make.” The great orc looked at his fellow orc officers, and then down at Magda. “There was something I once told you of, my love. When the Dark Lord touched my soul. Never let on to Her, of course, but it did show me what, as an orc, I really am.”

Major-General Barashkukor assumed a military erectness. “Sir, a member of a proud and noble but misunderstood warrior race, sir?”

The great orc thought about it for a second.

“Not really,” Ashnak said. “More like, a mean motherfucker who loves big guns. I don’t want to be World Ruler. All I want is to go on doing what I enjoy. I intend to carry on being an orc marine. And I intend to take the marines on missions to as many of these worlds as I can.”

“Me too,” Magda said unexpectedly.

The black orc Dakashnit grinned and muttered something under her breath about dumbfuck halflings.

“Damn it, my vice president can take over here.” Magda gripped Ashnak’s large hand and grinned. “Hell, orc, I’m an officer in the marines too—this time I’m coming with you!”

“Yo!” Ashnak swung Magda Brandiman up into his arms, waltzed a few bow-legged steps on the cavern floor, kissed her, and stepped back as she kicked him smartly.

“My love,” the big orc said gravely, “I thought I would at least have to ask.”

Barashkukor seized Supreme Commander Ashnak by the taloned hand and shook it vigorously. “Oh, sir!”

Magda tugged her tailored skirt straight.

“Of course…” Her eyes narrowed. “If John Stryker accidentally came through to here—then others can do that too. Accidentally, Or deliberately.”

“They can’t see us! Can they!” Tech-Colonel Ugarit suddenly whimpered and cowered, turning cross-eyed to survey the cave of dragon-sized arches. “We may even now be under scrutiny for attack!”

Commissar Razitshakra snapped her notebook decisively shut. “Then we’ll have to get our retaliation in first! Supreme Commander, sir, I volunteer to accompany you!”

“I thought you might,” Ashnak remarked.

Magda speculated demurely. “I’m sure the Otherworlds will see the point of trading with the Orc Marine Armaments and Leisure Services Company—once we’ve given a smallscale demonstration.”

“If they don’t,” Barashkukor offered, “we can always give a large-scale demonstration…”

“Congratulations!” Ashnak walloped Major-General Barashkukor’s shoulder. “You just volunteered for the first mission, too. And I will see there’s a medal for you in this.”

“Oh, sir, thank you, sir!”

Wide-eyed, ears jutting bolt upright, Barashkukor surveyed the Cave of Portals and the many worlds. “I can see it now, sir. Missions! Campaigns! Wars! Crusades! Empires!”

CIA Chief Lugashaldim mused, “Employers of mercenaries. Regimes to destabilise…”

“Worlds,” Commissar Razitshakra said, “to which we can take the Way of the Orc!”

“R&R,” Master Sergeant Varimnak muttered. Dakashnit bellowed laughter. She elbowed Wing Commander Chahkamnit. “I love it, man! New worlds to conquer, and she’s already thinking about her—”

“Oh, I say!” Chahkamnit blushed.

“I can see it too.” Ashnak grinned. “Rape. Pillage. Massacre. Atrocity…”

Ashnak threw back his head, hairy nostrils flaring, scenting the winds from the arcade of worlds. The great orc in filthy camouflage battledress put his arms around Magda Brandiman as the Otherworld sunrise shone brightly into the eyes of the orc and the halfling and the orc marine officers.

“Yo!” Ashnak yelled. “It’s an orc’s life in the marines!”