Mary Gentle - Grunts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPLOOM!

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

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

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

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

SPLOOOOM!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ugarit is here, sir, General, sir!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sir, yes sir!”

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

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

“Marines are never defeated!” he snarled.

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

“ SIR, NO SIR! ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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