Mary Gentle - Grunts

“I’ll captain you, you miserable gut-rotted offspring of an elf!” Ashnak threw the severed Man-heads to Zarkingu, who cradled them. He strode over the prostrate Imhullu, towards the halflings. Will got to his feet, dusting himself down, and met the orc’s glare with a civil smile.

“Captain Ashnak. We were afraid you wouldn’t be rejoining us. No trouble, I hope?”

At the passage mouth, Zarkingu whispered, “I smell magic, much-magic, stinking magic, magic of Light…”

Ashnak coughed gutturally. He reached down and picked Will up by the front of his doublet, nails digging in through heavy wool and mail-shirt to cringing flesh. “Now we are in these unchancy mountains, halfling, you tell me—what are you here for?”

The mail-shirt, riding up under his arms, pinched Will’s skin painfully. He wriggled. Ned Brandiman stood up and tapped the orc’s arm, as high as the halfling could reach.

“We’re here for the usual,” Ned said. “To steal a hoard from a dragon.

The air had morning’s clarity in the mountains. Barashkukor looked up at the immensity of the rock—the great range of bare crags that ended, to east and west above him, in rockwalls almost vertical. Mountain stone gleamed grey, silver, ochre, and gold in the dawn light. He bared small fangs and snarled at the grandeur.

He shuffled down the parapet above the gate-house, sorting out the straps of his helmet and plated brigandine as he went.

In this sole gap in the mountain range, the isolated crag of Nin-Edin rose up cliff-sided, and the small road through the pass ran around the foot of it, under the walls of its ancient fort.

Barashkukor averted his gaze. He scratched at his balls, missing the sleeping warmth of the fifty bodies in his own orc-nest. He spared a glance back across the ruined motte and bailey of Nin-Edin—the bloody wreckage of the previous day’s Orcball tournament; several dozen orcs around the thinly smoking night’s firepits, sorting out the hunt and rutting in the open air.

“Here, Barashkukor.”

“Thanks, Kusaritku.” He took the wriggling rock-vole the black orc offered, knocked its brains out against his heel, and swallowed it in two gulps without chewing. “What news of the night?”

“Silent as a throat-slit elf.” Kusaritku passed a small bottle of black spirit.

The air had an unwelcome chill. Barashkukor drank. “Who’s the day-watch?”

“Duranki, Tukurash, Ekurzida. I’ll rouse ’em.” The black orc grinned. “Trust me!”

Barashkukor shambled further down the parapet, staring down the long valley of the pass while he pissed a steaming black jet off the wall.

A voice close at hand shouted. “—and I say he will reach it!”

“Never!” Marukka’s baritone bellow.

“You arse-licking elf-lover, he will !”

Barashkukor started, dribbling piss down his leg. Hastily he stuffed himself back in his ripped breeches and came to what might pass for attention. The largest of the black orcs, Azarluhi, strode past him without even a nod, deep in conversation with Marukka. The big female orc held a tiny orc by one leg.

“Watch!” she demanded.

She raised her arm above her head and whirled the small orc like a slingshot. Barashkukor ducked as its hands clipped his helmet. At the point of maximum velocity she let go, and the orc shot away in a low arc. A diminishing wail followed it down.

Barashkukor leaned over the parapet.

A puff of dust showed where the small orc first struck the steep slope, then another, then three more, like a stone skipping across water. The small body bounced and came to rest on the edge of the road, five hundred feet below.

“Aw. It did. But only just,” Marukka grumbled. She leaned over the parapet and yelled at the just visibly stirring figure: “Get back up here, Kazadhuron, you’re on guard duty!”

“That’s five shillings you owe me,” the black orc pointed out.

Marukka’s eye fell on Barashkukor with a gaze speculative as to weight and aerodynamics. She grinned at Azarluhi.

“Wanna make it best two out of three?”

In the timeless dark under the mountains, Ashnak squatted alone in a cavern. The light from the amber cube gleamed on his tusked and prick-eared face, shone from his polished vambraces and the rivets of his black armour.

He prodded the cube’s indentations delicately with one claw. A lightning-fork of black light sparked to the cave-wall. The rough stone turned black with ice, and a searing cold wind began to blow. The blackness became the dark of the tower. The whiteness of the Throne of Bone gleamed, and a shaft of light shot down and illuminated the seated figure.

The nameless necromancer shaded wide-pupilled green eyes with his hand. He glanced up, painfully, and made a magic sign with long, pale fingers. The shaft of light dimmed somewhat.

“What news for me, Ashnak, other than that you are arrived in the mountains?”

Ashnak rumbled, clearing his throat. “I allowed myself to be taken, for a short time, by the cursed horse-riders, and during this time I met one who is called The Named.”

A glacial amusement leaked into the cavern.

“So you have met my sister. That is well. This concerns her also. Now attend well to what I say, Ashnak.”

Ashnak heard the background clink of bottle and glass.

“The dragon Dagurashibanipal is old, and her hoard collected from many strange places and times. I have reason to know that in that hoard there are strange and magical weapons. Hmm.” The voice took on a thoughtful tone. “Halfling bones…too fragile to be truly creative with…no, you need not bring me back the bodies, once you are done. You are to take the weapons to the fortress of Nin-Edin, put them into the hands of the warriors there, and lead them against Guthranc. There you are to kill or take my sister The Named, so that she shall not ride against our Master the Dark Lord on the Last Day. Am I going too fast for you, orc?”

“We are to fight?” Ashnak sprang to his feet, a light in his eyes. Joyously he shook and brandished his warhammer. “I am to lead a war-band! Master, I thank you!”

“Not so loud …There must be servants I might have, of more tact and delicacy than orcs—but there again, you have your uses. Hurry to do my bidding, Ashnak.”

The image on the cave-wall altered. Ashnak saw factories belching out smoke, the siege-engines of war, the companies marching in from every land to a Lord greater even than the nameless necromancer; the Horde of Darkness gathering and its numbers hiding the very earth beneath it.

“Soon, soon , we ride out to the Final Battle. But,” the soft voice said, “my sister The Named must not ride against us. See to it, Ashnak. And be aware that, should you die failing to achieve this, my punishments are not limited by your being dead.”

Will Brandiman walked back out of the carved stone tunnel-entrance, slipping between the silver-inlaid oaken doors. Its roof was only halfling-high. He brushed black char from the front of his doublet. A few curls of hair fell, crisped, to the rock floor.

“All right?”

“Fine.” Ned Brandiman, following, pulled the door to behind him and sheathed a substance-tipped stiletto. “Gets ’em every time. Right. Let’s see what we’ve got…”

Zarkingu, a new skull-ornamented standard-pole over her shoulder, sniffed the air with an ecstatic expression on her tusked face.

“Dragon-magic dies ,” she announced.

The biggest orc rumbled something to Imhullu and Shazgurim, who hefted their jagged war-axes in the narrow cavern and flanked the group. Will held up a small hand.