Mary Gentle - Grunts

Dukka-dukka-dukka-dukka-Foom!

The blacksmith-foundry noise ripped at Will’s ears and stomach. He ducked down into shadow. Hot metal sprayed the opposite walls, splinters of stone filled the cavern, and the orcs cheered. Shazgurim threw the weapon down and seized another, which seemed to require the loading of a metal canister into the muzzle.

Will, sneaking past the first abandoned weapon, noted the sigils 7.62 AVTOMAT KALASHNIKOV OBRAZETS 1947G imprinted in the metal.

Barashkukor dozed in the warm sun, and woke when his helmet fell over his eyes.

He grunted and snarled. “Marukka, go away!”

Another rock bounced off the parapet wall. This one hit his poleaxe, which he had propped against the crenellations. The weapon slid down with a crash. Barashkukor picked it up, scratching between his long, hairless ears.

“Barashkukor!” The black orc Kusaritku bawled from further down the wall. “What’s all the bleedin’ noise about?”

Barashkukor leaned over the parapet.

Thirty feet below, on the foot-trampled earth outside Nin-Edin’s main gate, two halflings stood looking up at him. Each wore doublet and trunk-hose, very ripped and travel-stained. The halfling with curly black hair wore black and grey garments and a blackened mail-shirt, and he had a short-sword buckled to his side. The brown-haired halfling had a heavy crossbow slung across his back, a mailcoat, and stood with a foot up on one of a pair of heavy, brass-bound chests.

Barashkukor stared down at their foreshortened figures, his jaw gaping.

The curly-haired halfling shouted, “Open! Open in the name of the nameless!”

Forty-three miles away, as sunrise touches the towers of Sarderis, The Named suddenly wakes from sleep with an expression that makes her pale features shocking in their ugliness.

Barashkukor stared down the pass again, between the massive raw-ochre slopes of the mountains. A small plume of dust rose from the road.

“ That’s not our escort…” He slitted his eyes against the sunlight blasting back from the dry earth. “Marukka! You’re not going to believe this, Marukka…”

The female orc leaned her hairy elbows in the gap in the crenellations. “What am I not going to…Hey! Those aren’t the warriors we sent out as the halflings’ escort. Dark Lord’s arse! More travellers? I don’t believe it. Turn out the guard!”

Barashkukor tumbled down the steps into the guard-room, knocking an ongoing card game aside, grabbed up a helmet (a size too large) and a spiked mace, and bolted out to the main gate. He peered through the portcullis.

The plume of dust was closer.

Just distinguishable, on a Man-skull-ornamented standard, the banner of the nameless fluttered. Barashkukor strained sharp eyes, making out the standard-bearer and what looked like an immense loaded traverse made by lashing together pine-trunks.

“You! Here!”

He scurried to lend his weight to the winch that lifted the portcullis. Groaning and sweating, ten orcs at last got it up. Barashkukor sat down with a thud in the dust.

“They’re coming,” the largest black orc Azarluhi said, “whoever they are.”

Barashkukor heaved himself to his feet, settling the too-large helmet well back on his skull. It crushed his long, hairless ears uncomfortably. He unbuckled his brigandine, sweating in the noon heat and smelling like wet dog, and strolled to the gateway. The party was near enough now to make out detail.

“What…?”

Marukka, beside him, echoed, “ What the—?”

Nin-Edin’s war-band leader, a hulking orc named Belitseri, elbowed his way to the front of the crowd. Orcs lined the parapet and massed in the bailey compound, yelling and screaming questions. Belitseri rested an elbow on Barashkukor’s helmet.

“What’s that ?” he demanded.

“I dunno!” Barashkukor stared. The wooden traverse trailed dust back down the pass. What could be seen of its load glittered metallically in the sun. Two orcs, a one-eyed male and a hulking female, pulled it by brute force.

Both were wearing odd round helmets, visorless, with painted designs. He saw they also wore long breeches with the same green-and-brown patterns, but—never before seen—worn tucked into Man-boots.

The standard-bearer wore the same loose belted green-and-brown breeches, but with a similar jerkin from which the sleeves had been ripped off. One of the patterned sleeves had been used to tie up her purple hair in a horse-tail. The other sleeve hung from the nameless standard. Bulky metal ornaments hung at her belt and on bandoleers across her breasts. At thirty yards he could see the brightness of her eyes and the flecks of foam around her fangs.

Barashkukor, gaping, fixed his eyes on the largest orc: surely the leader. This one wore black-and-white patterned breeches tucked into heavy black boots that laced halfway up his muscular calves. The breeches had at least a dozen exterior pockets. Metal objects like fruits dangled from his belt and the straps that crossed his chest. Something very bulky and metallic hung across his back. One of his fangs was broken off short, he wore a strip of scarlet cloth tied around his forehead, and he was chewing a thick black roll of halfling pipe-weed, unlit.

“Erm…” Barashkukor stared. “Those are Agaku .”

None of the four Agaku slowed their pace at the gateway. Barashkukor, caught in the crowd of spectating garrison orcs, elbowed back out of the way of the traverse. Leader, standard-bearer, and burden-carriers walked through the gate with a peculiar, rhythmic stride.

By that time the whole garrison crowded the compound and the walls surrounding it, staring and jabbering, calling questions, laughing, throwing small rocks. Barashkukor gripped his mace fervently and used it to make himself a place in the front rank of the crowd.

The largest Agaku held up a horny hand. “Halt!”

Instantly the other three Agaku stopped, slamming their booted feet down onto the earth. Something in Barashkukor began to fizz excitedly. He stood up on his toes to watch.

The big Agaku strolled over to stand beside the standard-bearer. His gaze swept the garrison, the orcs clinging to parapet and ruined buildings. He spat the unlit pipe-weed out onto the ground.

“Now listen up!”

Barashkukor’s ears rang. He shook his head and just managed to grab his helmet as it fell off. The big Agaku surveyed the assembly with an expression of utter disdain.

“Do you know what you are?” His words bounced back from the heat-stricken walls. The orcs—by now several hundred strong—fell silent out of curiosity.

“I’ll tell you what you are. You’re scum! Call yourselves soldiers? You’re the lowest form of life there is—scum who think they’re soldiers. I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong.”

Orcs to either side to Barashkukor began to rumble, tempers rising. Marukka’s eyes flashed yellow.

“Who the hell are you?” a voice bawled from the back of the crowd.

The big Agaku grinned, showing more than one broken fang. “Who am I? Perhaps you’d like us to introduce ourselves?”

“Yeah!” Marukka challenged. “Who are you?”

The big Agaku strolled over until he was looming head-and-shoulders over the orange-haired orc. His voice carrying in the sudden silence, he said, “That, with the standard, is Marine First Class Zarkingu. You, soldier, are not fit to wipe her arse, lowly though she is. Over there is Corporal Shazgurim, and beside her Corporal Imhullu. You are not fit to even think about wiping their arses. And I, soldier, am Gunnery Sergeant Ashnak and you are not fit to even breathe in my presence, do you understand me ?”