Grunts (6 page)

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
?”

“Wh’…” The strange words bemused Marukka.

Barashkukor looked up at Ashnak, eyes shining.

Beside him, Marukka shook herself and narrowed her eyes.
“Why you shit-faced—”

Ashnak’s fist went up, came down on Marukka’s head, and the orc fell to her knees, poleaxed. A gasp went through the crowd. Growls and snarls sounded in the noon heat. A few dozen of the garrison orcs began to edge forward with drawn knives.

The big Agaku turned his back and strolled across to the makeshift traverse, at which point he barked: “‘TenHUT!”

The two
Corporals
and the
Marine First Class
slammed their heels together, bulging arms hanging at their sides, beetle-browed eyes facing ahead, narrowed against the light. Ashnak lifted his head and looked round the garrison again.

“I’m here to make you balls of shit into soldiers,” he announced. “You sure as fuck won’t ever make the rank of
Corporal
. I doubt I’ll see any
MFCs
. You’re not the Agaku,
but by the time I’m finished, I’ll make you dumb grunts into Orc
Marines
!”

Jeers and yells echoes off the sides of the mountain pass. The garrison orcs leaped up and down, chanting, foaming at the mouth. Barashkukor fought to keep his balance.

Gunnery Sergeant
Ashnak swung the heavy piece of metal off his shoulder, did something to it with his horny hands that made it click and slam, and lifted it to his shoulder. Barashkukor glimpsed something that looked like a crossbow trigger-grip and flung himself face-down on the earth.

A loud explosion split the air, and a whoosh of heat scalded the compound. Barashkukor lifted his head as a loud
whumph!
sounded. Metal fragments sprayed the crowd of orcs, scything down bodies and slicing limbs from torsos.

The chain of the portcullis flailed, cut cleanly in two. Three masonry blocks fell out of the gate-house wall. The portcullis itself, falling free, buried its spikes eighteen inches deep in the earth under the gateway, impaling three small orcs.

Silence.

Barashkukor slowly dared to breathe.

“I’m here to make you into marines!” Ashnak bawled, “and you’re going to stay here until you
are
marines! Now
get in ranks
.”

A minute’s furious shoving put Barashkukor in the front of the war-band as it straggled into an approximation of rank and file. Excitement burned in his breast. He put on his over-large helmet and pushed it down level with his eyes, sloped his mace across his shoulder, and drew himself up as straight as he could. The gunnery sergeant strolled up to one end of the ranks, and then back down, and heaved a deep sigh.

“Standatt—
ease
!” he barked. The three Agaku relaxed their erect posture slightly. Some of the garrison orcs copied them. Ashnak spun round. “Not you! You’ll stand at attention until I tell you different. Attennn-
shun
!”

Barashkukor thumped his bare heels down into the dirt. The big Agaku caught his eye for a moment, and Barashkukor straightened still further. Ashnak nodded slightly.

“Now listen up!” Ashnak strolled back to the centre of the compound. “You scum can consider yourselves in training for a mission for the nameless. And since it’s an emergency mission, that means emergency training, and
that
means it
carries on, day and night, night and day, until you get it right. Right, marines?”

“Erm…”

“…well…”

Ashnak shouldered his metal weapon threateningly. “Now listen to me, you…you…
halflings
! You’re talking to an officer! From now on, the first word and the last word out of your mouths is gonna be
sir
, you got that?”

Barashkukor led the ragged reply:

“Sir, yes
sir
!”

Ashnak scowled and bellowed, “Can’t
hear
you!”

Four hundred orc voices bellowed: “SIR YES SIR!”

“That’s better. That’s better, you halflings, I can almost hear you.” Ashnak fished in his pockets for another roll of pipe-weed and jammed it into the corner of his broken-tusked mouth. “Now let me hear you say what you are. You’re not garrison orcs. You’re not whatever poxy tribe littered you. You’re
marines
. That flag on the standard is
your
flag, if you’re ever worthy of it. Marines are the best. Marines are killing machines. What are you?”

Barashkukor straightened his slouching spine until he thought it would crack. The strange words the big Agaku used were becoming instantly familiar, almost part of his own tongue. No magic-sniffer, he nonetheless felt by orc-instinct that presence of sorcery, geas, or curse. But if the Marine First Class (Magic-Disposal) wasn’t complaining…He fixed his gaze directly ahead and sang out: “We are marines!”

His voice was almost lost in the full-throated chorus.

Ashnak, grinning, snarled, “
Can’t hear you!
What are you?”

“SIR, MARINES, SIR!”

Will put his feet up on the brass-bound chests, rocking to the movement of the ox-cart. He drank deeply from the ale bottle and passed it up to his brother, returning to the chickens, half side of pork, flitch of bacon, and four dozen small loaves that the cart had also been carrying.

The quiet farmland slid past them. The ox lowed from time to time, missing its former mistress, but Ned Brandiman flicked it with a carter’s whip from time to time, ensuring cooperation.

“I tell you one thing I want,” Ned said through a mouthful
of bread and bacon. “I want an easier way to carry our equipment!”

Will scratched under the arms of his ripped doublet, by practise avoiding both the mail-shirt and his store of poisoned needles. “I’ll be happy to stick to city thefts.”

“Brother, you’re a fool. Name me a city that isn’t going to be sieged and sacked when the war comes.”

“Ha! Name me one that won’t grow up like a weed, twice as hardy, afterwards. Merchants never fail to fatten on wars. Even on the Last Battle.”

Evening’s golden light shone on the growing fields. No poppies yet to bloody the green corn. Smoke began to curl up from the chimneys of distant towns. Will shifted round, tugging at the crotch of his tattered trunk-hose, and staring whimsically back at the mountains.

“Do you think the orc garrison will have worked it out yet—that we fooled them into giving us an armed escort to the edge of the wilderness?”

“And transporting our baggage too? Call it part payment from our nameless employer.” Ned Brandiman reached back. Will placed a cold partridge in the outstretched small hand. His brother added, “So far all we’ve had for our work is whippings, beatings, poverty, and—”

“—and is it worth attempting to collect payment from an evil wizard, when his guards are dead or worse, and at any rate trapped under a mountain, and what we set out to thieve is still down there with them?” Will paused.

The ox-cart trundled on down roads that became steadily better-paved as they came closer to the city of Sarderis.

Will Brandiman bit into the chicken and ripped a wing free. He answered himself thickly, “Yes. It’s worth it. Not our payment—our
revenge
. What was it you overheard, brother? The nameless has a sister who is called The Named and who wears the armour of Light? I think we should find her, offer our services, and betray what we know to her.”

The vulture lets the wind feather its wings, rising on a hot thermal. The mountains lie below it like wrinkled grey flesh. Its central vision focuses on the parasites that crawl on that skin. A numerous hive of them, cupped in the fort’s stone claws…

Pickings are good now. The tough-hided beasts are cast out from the walls, bloodied and sometimes dead, in increasing
numbers. True, it is commonly the little or the sick ones. And, true, there is a surprising lack of pickable rubbish in the compound.

It wheels, wings fingering the sky. Other vultures flock in from the wilderness’s wide skies.

Below, the orc marine garrison trains.

Midnight chimed from Sarderis’s city bells. Will Brandiman froze until the harsh clangs ceased. He strained his ears to hear movement from the closed doors that presumably—he and Ned had not been able to case more than the lower floor of the clothier’s shop in daylight—led to bedrooms.

His night-vision adjusted. He watched Ned pad along the upper-floor corridor, stop at the first door on the left-hand side, and listen for some moments. Ned signalled:

—
No movement
.

Ned reached up, tried the latch, and silently opened the door.

—
Child’s room. Girl asleep
.

Will passed him, treading barefoot and silent to the door on the right. Faint sounds came through the wood. He hesitated, signalled Ned to remain still, and padded down to the end of the corridor. Probably the master bedroom…