Dakka-dakka-dakka!
“Arrrgh!” The body of a brawling Ferenzi Man hit the floor, blown in through the windows from the fight in the square.
“On second thought…” The High King Magorian scrambled into view behind the judge’s bench. “General Ashnak, I hereby pronounce you as thoroughly innocent as it’s possible to be and completely exonerated of every accusation ever brought against you. Now, or in the future. Will that do?” the old Man added, stumbling down from the bench on the arm of his elvish squire.
“That,” Ashnak said over the cheers, yowls, and automatic rifle fire of the orc marines, “will do just fine, Your Honour.”
In the square outside, over the noise of brawling, Ashnak clearly heard the gallows-builder’s yell. “What’s that you say, gentlesirs? A verdict of ‘innocent’?”
There was a pause.
“Oh, fuck!”
“ASH-NAK! ASH-NAK! ASH-NAK!”
“We did it!” Magda exclaimed, hurtling down from the gallery and into Ashnak’s embrace. He kissed the female halfling with enthusiasm.
“We did, sir, didn’t we?” Barashkukor, dazed and starry-eyed, beamed at his general. “I told you you could rely on me, sir!”
The Ferenzi citizens bolted for the exit, and the Order of White Mages did not even look up from their commandeered jury seats. A crowd of cheering orc marines lifted Ashnak and bore their commander on their shoulders out of the courtroom.
“Congratulations, sir!” Marine Commissar Razitshakra shook Barashkukor firmly by the hand. The small orc’s wig fell off. “Politically correct in every respect.”
Barashkukor weaved out of the courtroom between Razitshakra and Lieutenant Chahkamnit.
The small orc grunt in the gallery front row blinked his way back to consciousness. Staggering to his feet, he made for the door in the wake of the cheering marines. A metallic object caught his foot.
The orc bent down, picked it up, and looked at it thoughtfully. The cable trailed behind him as he stepped into the corridor, closing the doors behind him, and squeezed the device’s handle twice.
BOOOOOMMM!
“Arrrrrgghhhhh!”
Ashnak glanced back down the corridor at the brick dust drifting out of the courtroom. He raised his jutting eyebrows, then shook his head.
“Yo!” The hefty orc grunts carried Ashnak shoulder-high out into the square, where the midday sun shone on Ferenzi citizens still busy brawling. Off-duty orc marines stood and watched as if they couldn’t think what all the fuss might be about.
“Hold!”
Ashnak looked over the head of the crowd towards the voice. He slapped the shoulders of the marines carrying him and slid down to the cobbles, taking the clean urban combat jacket Barashkukor was holding out and putting it on.
“Honour guard, tenHUT!” he rasped. The orc grunts around Ashnak, Magda, and Barashkukor trained their M16s on the crowd, and on the High Wizard Oderic, who forced his way through at the head of a column of mages and fighters.
“Reconvene the court,” Oderic shouted to Magorian.
The High King blinked at the sunlight, squinting in the direction of his High Wizard. “You’ve got to be joking!”
“I have a new witness.”
Ashnak looked at Magda, who shrugged, and at Barashkukor, who paled. The White Mages behind Oderic parted their ranks.
A shambling, hunched figure in patchwork leather robes limped forward. The temperature in the sunlit square dropped twenty degrees. The sweet scent of decay made Ashnak’s nostrils twitch.
The nameless necromancer put his hood back from his deformed face.
“I am hish witnesssh! I can vouch for your criminal actions at the halfling bombing, ‘General’ Ashnak.” The nameless smiled, yellowing tusks drawing his mouth out of shape, and wiped away a string of drool. “You and your accomplices. I have sheen it all. I wasss there!”
Ashnak put his rock-sized fists on his hips and glared under lowered brows at the nameless. His hand inched towards the gun in the back of his belt. “That’s contempt…”
“Sir! I say, sir!” The lanky Lieutenant Chahkamnit interrupted, marine radio in hand. “I rather think you ought to hear this, don’t you know?”
Ashnak listened.
He held the radio out so that Magorian, Oderic, and the nameless necromancer could hear the frantic broadcast:
“—Bugs are past the southeastern suburbs of the city! Repeat, our security is compromised, we have hostiles in Ferenzia itself; the Bugs are past the southeastern suburbs of the city! All units alert!”
“Lady of Light!” Oderic suddenly leaned on his staff, his face seeming that of a Man decades years older than his one hundred and twenty years. “How could they come on us so unprepared?”
The nameless necromancer rounded on Lieutenant Chahkamnit. “Mobilise the marines!” he ordered.
The black orc scratched uncomfortably at one peaked ear. “Awfully sorry, sir. I really don’t think I can do that.”
“What?”
The nameless necromancer elbowed past the stunned High Wizard Oderic. Ice formed on the cobbles of the sunlit square. The brawling ceased in mid-blow. The nameless ignored Chahkamnit and loomed over Barashkukor, yellow bile dripping from his fangs.
“Major, you will mobilissse the orcses!”
The orc’s cyborg-eye glowed ruby. “With respect—I don’t take my orders from a civilian.”
The edges of the sky above Ferenzia’s rooftops darkened. The midday sun blurred. The head of the nameless necromancer swivelled, as he glared round at the mob of three hundred orc officers, sergeants, and grunts.
“Is thissh a time to mutiny, with the fate of the world at stake?”
Ashnak finished buttoning his urban combat jacket and tucked it into his trousers. Orc marines fitted him with combat boots, webbing, and pistol holster while he stood bow-legged in the square outside Ferenzia’s Hall of Justice. His hairy nostrils widened, sensing the acrid stink of inhuman invaders.
“‘Snot our city,” an orc grunt remarked.
An orc captain in the crowd’s front rank, General Purpose Machinegun resting over her shoulder, shouted, “This isn’t a mutiny! We’re awaiting orders from our commander.”
The High Wizard Oderic of Ferenzia stared at Ashnak. The white mage swore. He threw his staff down on the sorcerously iced cobbles. The white oak, made brittle, snapped into four pieces.
“That’s politically correct,” Commissar Razitshakra confirmed. “We’re waiting for orders from Joint Chief of Staff Ashnak. Or we marines don’t do anything—except pull out of Ferenzia.”
10
A great stretch of land lies between Ferenzia and the northeastern hills. The colour of the plain changes as if a great shadow is passing across the sun.
The sun shines unhindered.
The blackness on the face of the earth crawled, crept, advancing forward with slow irresistibility: exoskeletoned Bugs marching in their hundreds and their thousands. The crackle of living-metal weaponry hissed through the air.
Unbroken, the lines of Bug soldiers pressed on towards the high ground. Orc vehicles and marines were visible in clumps, clusters, and retreating bands. Mortar fire covered their retreat. A line of helicopter gunships strafed the Bugs and wheeled away, firepower lost in the morass of chitinous bodies.
Unit by unit, company by company, horde by horde, the approaching thousands of Bugs flowed towards the orc marine battalion in the hills. Weapons splashed fire against the granite ridges. Smoke rose up against the sun.