Mary Gentle - Grunts

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.