“Remember the siege?” The Badgurlz marine elbowed Lugashaldim in his stripped ribs. “Hell, man, that was good! That elf—she could swing a whip like she’d been born to it.”
The Undead orc took off his dark glasses, gazing up at the battle-stained keep now visible through the shifting fog. “I remember the Fourgate commando mission and how brave General Ashnak was. He wouldn’t hear any arguments—he insisted on returning to this besieged fort, no matter what the personal danger…”
Commissar Razitshakra made a note in her book, muttering something about not quite remembering it that way. Lugashaldim ignored her. He patted Magda’s arm with a gloved skeletal hand.
“Ma’am, to think he should come to this. Skulking in a garrison in the middle of nowhere; drinking, I expect, and…”
At her other side, Chahkamnit stuffed his flying goggles in his bomber jacket pocket and crouched down to put his arm around Magda’s shoulders. “I say, ma’am, I wouldn’t give any of that a thought if it was me. The old general’s ticketty-boo, take my word for it. He’d never do anything silly.”
Magda straight-armed the lanky black orc, who sat down hard on the earth.
“You’re getting on my nerves!” she snarled. “Damn it, whose husband is he? I know Ashnak better than any of you.”
A great orc stepped out from under the split masonry arch of the inner gate, into the swirling fog.
The General Officer commanding the orc marines wore a ragged pair of combat trousers and had obviously been wearing them for some time. His boots were scuffed, and his web-belt hung low, pulled down by the weight of his .44 Magnum. Fog pearled and shone on his bald head, peaked ears, and deep brow ridges.
Barashkukor saluted energetically. “Sir, you said you had an announcement to make, sir!”
“Did I?” An enigmatic expression crossed the orc’s craggy features. He reached down a taloned finger and touched the shoulder of Magda’s suit.
Lugashaldim, Varimnak, Dakashnit, and Chahkamnit exchanged wary glances. Bewildered, they regarded their large, filthy commanding orc. Ashnak stepped out of the gateway, striding past them down the hill.
“Follow me,” he ordered.
The caverns under the mountain echoed to boots, and the hissing arc lights that orc marines had strung up on cables. Although chill, it was still warmer than the fog-shrouded mountainside above.
Colonel-Duchess Magda van Nassau quickened her pace, heels clicking, to keep up with her orc general. The other orc officers followed, muttering asides to each other as Ashnak led them deeper into the dragon’s caves.
“Will spoke to me before he left Ferenzia.” Magda glanced up. “He holds that the orc marines were bound to come to grief eventually in any case—hubris. And Good always winning in the end, as it does.”
Ashnak’s eyes glinted. He chewed on his unlit cigar. “It ain’t like that.”
“Comparative Good,” Magda amended. “I’m the first to admit, my love, that I’m Good compared only to, say, a seriously bored Dark Lord who might take up continental destruction for the fun of it.”
The corner of the orc’s mouth twitched. “True. But it really ain’t like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me show you.”
With Barashkukor at her heels, and the rest following, Magda entered the central cavern of Dagurashibanipal’s caves. She stared up at the crystal stalactites that were all that remained of the dead dragon. Cables looped across the floor. More arc lights burned, warming the cavern’s chill air.
Ransacked and bare, the halls of the dragon’s hoard stretched out before her.
“I’ve found it, I’ve got it, I’ve—” The voice of Tech-Colonel Ugarit set off crystalline echoes. He hopped from one foot to the other, grinned a sickly grin at Ashnak, and backed away until his skinny frame was flattened against the cave wall.
“I’ll eat you,” the great orc threatened.
“Not yet, my love,” Magda pleaded. “You’ve found something here? What?”
Lieutenant-Colonel Dakashnit eyed the gibbering Ugarit sardonically. “Probably some super-duper new weapons system, man. That right, General? You thinkin’ of blowing the fuck out of people?”
Ashnak sighed. “Don’t encourage him. He’s been wanting to take that ’nuclear’ stuff off the shelves for months and see what it does.”
“Found!” the skinny orc squeaked. His eyes crossed. He went into paroxysms of excited giggles. “Found?!”
Ashnak stepped forward, removed the tech-colonel’s helmet, and dropped his fist on the skinny orc’s skull. Ugarit staggered back against the cave-wall.
“It isn’t a weapon that I’ve discovered. Not exactly…” Ashnak raised his head, momentarily distracted by the line of holes across the cavern roof.
“First time I ever fired an AK,” the great orc remarked in melancholy tones, pointing. “Nearly did for Imhullu! Ah, you wouldn’t remember him, Magda my love. A nest-brother of mine. Fell at Guthranc.”
Magda threw herself forward, embracing the orc’s big, muscular thigh. She fisted one hand and punched him on the painful pressure point of the inner leg. “Don’t you even think about doing anything stupid! I’ll have your ass!”
Ashnak smoothed her chin with a horny finger.
“Is that what you thought?” He shook his head, gazing at the lugubrious faces of his officers. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’m an orc!”
Barashkukor gazed around the cavern.
“Does take you back, sir, doesn’t it? Remember when I was a scrawny little grunt, sir, and you were training us? And then we marched off to war with Captain Shazgurim, and Captain Zarkingu’s band? Those were the days! But I guess those days are gone, sir. I’m beginning to think we were better off in the bad old days in the necromancer’s tower, with poleaxes. We weren’t redundant then. I guess I miss the Dark Lord, sir. At least we had the Light to fight…”
Ashnak looked, not at Barashkukor, but at the diminutive halfling beside him.
She said, “You’ve got something…”
“Fuckin’ A!” Ashnak grinned.
The orc general turned on his heel and marched off, boots clattering noisily in the cavern. Magda trotted to keep up with him. Ugarit skipped in her wake, digging his fists into the pockets of his white coat. His pierced and studded ears jingled as he hopped from foot to foot, shrieking.
“Paradigm anomaly! It’s so simple! Paradigm anomaly!”
In a daze, Magda stumbled after Supreme Commander Ashnak and his orc officers, living and Undead, further on into the cave-system. She was aware at one point of Barashkukor taking her arm to help her down scree-slopes that her heeled shoes could not cope with. She kicked off the shoes and walked bare- and hairy-footed. At some point she discarded the veiled hat too.
She passed through ancient and measureless caverns now stark with the raw light of electricity. She stumbled around pillars and down stairways of an underground city of some hapless race the dragon had exterminated. Grunts with AK47s and M16s stood guard at every corner, every corridor. Barashkukor, Lugashaldim, Varimnak, and Dakashnit were too bemused to return their salutes, which Razitshakra made careful note of.
At last, so deep below ground that the knowledge of the mountain’s weight was an immense pressure, she walked through the newly opened entrance to a hall.
Large enough for six dragons, the roof soared vast and high above her head. She walked out into the expanse of cavern floor, tiny in the great space.
Carved masonry archways set into the walls led out of the cavern.