Mary Gentle - Grunts

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.

“Aw riiight! ” 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?”