“Sir, look at the range on those things!” Major Barashkukor gaped at the figures the head-up display on his cyborg-eye gave him. “We don’t have the firepower to deal with that!”
“There’s a battalion of us, and fifteen thousand of them. Where’s the problem?”
Ashnak drew on his cigar and exhaled a plume of foul-smelling smoke in the direction of the Lord of Night and Silence.
“Thinking of going into battle, Dread Lord?”
Rank upon rank of great orcs, common orcs, wolf-riders, kobolds, hobgoblins, dark elves, and lich riders lined the ridge, their ragged banners darkening the sky. Before the Horde of Darkness, a great palanquin of bone—the yellowed ribcage of some Dragon of the elder world—was supported on the shoulders of six Gnarly Trolls. Black pennants and horse skulls dangled from its corner posts.
The Dark Lord sat on Her throne in the palanquin. Her ash-blonde hair shadowed copper and cyan in the sunlight. She wore black armour, polished as ebony, fluted and pierced and decorated.
“They do not announce the formal election to the Throne of the World until tomorrow.” She leaned Her chin upon Her hand, Her armoured elbow denting the skull of one of the troll palanquin-bearers. “Having played the game thus far, I do not wish to lose it.”
Ashnak shoved his steel helmet up from his brows. “Now that’s what I want to talk to You about, Ma’am.”
A detachment of elf hussars rode up, sabres jingling, and broke formation to disclose High King Magorian, Oderic, and the White Mages. A band of Knights Flagellant rode up in their wake, but without Amarynth Firehand.
“Just taking up a stronger position.” Oderic puffed on his pipe, and with the stem indicated the pass through the northeastern hills to the country beyond. “Going that way…”
The Dark Lord abruptly signalled to Her trolls. They set the bone palanquin down. She leaped lithely to Her feet with the clatter of full plate harness. Her black steel-gauntleted hand fell on Ashnak’s shoulder. He bit back a groan, legs bowing even more than was natural.
“Let Us talk,” the Dark Lord said, and Her spell of inaudibility flickered around them, stinging Ashnak’s dogtag into searing pain. “You have a request, little orc, do you not? Amuse Me by telling Me what it is.”
“Quite simple, Ma’am.” Ashnak assumed a bluff, military manner. “Don’t want other units getting in the way of my marines. Bugs will make cat’s meat of us if that happens. You’d better put me in charge of the lot—before I have to pull my forces out. Give me the rank of Supreme Commander, Ma’am.”
“Supreme Commander of the Horde,” She mused. “I have not appointed one of those in aeons.”
Ashnak coughed. “Not exactly, Ma’am. I mean Supreme Commander of the Dark and Light forces.”
The Dark Lord laughed, a sound like subterranean bells. The nullity talisman around Ashnak’s neck broke into powder under the weight of the one magic of the Lord of Darkness.
“‘There are at least five other major spearheads of Bug attack, Ma’am, other than this one on Ferenzia. You need the orc marines. Unless you’re planning to just wipe out all the Bugs like that.” Ashnak snapped his talons.
“The magic of obliteration is not a subtle magic. Yes, little orc, I could. But if I wipe these Bugs from the face of the earth, I shall in turn destroy the city they are in, and the land upon which they walk, so great is my power. No, my Ashnak. You shall have to face them in battle.”
She broke the spell of inaudibility and turned back to Her palanquin.
“White Mage!” She cried. “I and My Horde shall accompany you back into the hills. My orc, in whom I am well pleased, is appointed over you all, to the command of this battle. Your people shall obey him as they would Me, or else suffer the same penalties.”
“But, but,” Oderic stuttered. “But—”
The vanguard of the Evil Horde began to march on into the hills, drums thumping and horns blaring, with the Lord of Dead Aeons in the bone palanquin.
“She didn’t like that, Supreme Commander,” Barashkukor said.
“I did.” Ashnak shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. He grinned. “Awriiiiight! Let’s get this show on the road—officer meeting, my tent, now!”
Dust rose up from the plain north of Ferenzia. Weapons and carapaces glinted through the murk. Dust rose up from the low ridges, canyons, gullies, and cliffs of the hills. Below every ridge, concealed in every hollow, orcs and other marines in combat drab crouched with their weapons. Infantry battalions, field artillery groups, land-mine companies; signals, engineers, anti-aircraft, antitank and missile batteries; and behind them the auxiliary services, motor transport, fuel supply, repair workshops, bakery and butchery…
Cobra gunships and Hueys crisscrossed the midday skies above Ferenzia, flying nose-down over peaked roofs and spires. Radio traffic filled the air. Surface-to-air missiles roared into the sky.
“We have a go situation!” Sergeant John H. Stryker of the U.S. Marine Corps put the jeep into a skidding handbrake turn and brought it around in front of Ashnak’s field command tent, five miles to the north of the city. “Sir, everyone and everything is where it ought to be, sir—on time, sir!”
“Fuck me,” Ashnak said as he leaped down from the vehicle. “Well done, Sergeant. Maybe you Otherworld marines do have your uses.”
Followed by Barashkukor, the great orc strode into the command tent.
“I want recce reports on the Bugs’ firepower and tactics. Then I want a confirmation of the assault plan; and rehearsals, if performed. Then I’ll give orders. Any questions?”
Lieutenant Chahkamnit, Commissar Razitshakra, Biotech-Captain Ugarit, Sergeant Dakashnit, Lieutenant Lugashaldim, and the higher-ranking general staff, seated on rickety chairs around comlinks and map-tables, shook their tusked heads. The canvas-filtered sunlight gleamed on one marine, not an orc, tall and skinny, in a uniform decorated with beads, scarves, and silver trinkets.
“I’ve got that report on what it is we’re facing here, sir.” The hard-eyed elf Lieutenant Gilmuriel lounged to his feet. He snapped slender fingers. Ugarit cranked the handle on a kinematographic machine. A jerky moving image flashed on the pull-down screen.
“I don’t know what the Bugs call ’em,” Gilmuriel drawled, “sir. We call this one a ‘blaster.’”
A bolt of charged particles seethes through the air of Thyrion, exploding at the point of impact, taking out three elf marines. Another elf seems caught in a beam of wavering air. Her body explodes in a rain of blood.
“That’s a ‘disruptor,’” Gilmuriel continued. “They use that one a lot. That thing there—”
A black cylinder of metal hovers in the air, above the ruins of the City of the Trees.
“—we call that a ‘hunter’ missile. It has the instincts of an elf, to track and follow its quarry. Explosion has a two-hundred-metre radius. Couldn’t get footage of the ‘homing’ grenades they use, sir. This…”
The elf glared at Ugarit. The skinny orc clicked the kinematographic machine rapidly, removed a slide, and replaced it the other way up.
A wavering bolt of energy tracks across an open jungle clearing, impacts on an armoured vehicle, explodes, and knocks the APC forty feet into the air.
“‘Plasma gun.’” The elf leaned one foot up on a chair, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He wore a brightly patterned scarf as a headband, and his pointed ears were pierced with silver studs. “If they can see us, man, they can hit us! There are heavy weapons versions of that. And a contra-gravity harness, sir, I’m certain.”