The ruined walls of the Tower loomed above him, white stone blackened with soot. Men and elves stood up on the walls now, behind shimmering guards of magic. They cast off their helmets and threw down their swords, picking up staffs.
“Charge!” He raised a discarded M16 assault rifle, squeezing the trigger. Nothing. Feverishly he changed magazines, fired again—the firing-pin fell with a dull click. Nothing. Again, and—nothing. He threw down the gun, ripped the pin from a grenade, and hurled it. The green ovoid fell into the rubble with a metallic clink. Nothing more.
Time slipped a gear.
Ashnak became aware that he was running across the inner courtyard of the Tower. He caught his foot and fell. He made to get up and his leg gave way, the bone poking through the flesh. His other leg burned, blistering and pus-filled. Ashnak picked up a dead orc’s Kalashnikov and rested it across his seared forearms and began to crawl, using his arms to pull his useless lower body along.
“Agaku! I smell magic, small-magic, nothing-magic!”
Capering, Zarkingu danced on a section of the parapet above him. Her crest, tied up with a camouflage sleeve, lashed in the hot air and smoke. Ashnak saw her eyes gleaming. Froth spilled out of her mouth. She cocked her Uzi submachine-gun and squeezed the trigger. The gun did not fire. “Colonel, it’s nothing but a simple ’fail weapons’ spell—”
“Incoming! Take over!” Ashnak bawled. “Zarkingu!”
A shimmering sphere sprung into existence around the orc, where she capered with skulls and M16 magazines swinging from her belt. In the space of a heartbeat the magical sphere convulsed closed, opened, and dropped a compressed ruin of orc-flesh and bone dripping onto the parapet.
Ashnak’s bowels let go and he shat himself. He dug his elbows into the rough flagstones, pulling himself up. He detached the Kalashnikov’s bayonet and slid it into its sockets, locked it home, shoulder-slung the assault rifle, and pulled himself by the strength of his arms up to the top of the rubble. His broad nostrils flared at his own stink.
He lay and looked down at the battlefield.
Elven mages and human magic-users crowded the remaining battlements of Guthranc. Sixty or seventy strong. There wasn’t a warrior among them, only those who wielded the staff, or cast witch-fire from between bare hands, or conjured up arcane death with streams of words. Sporadic firing shook the air and died, drowned out now by the conjurations of magic.
Ashnak watched an extended-line formation of marines go down, scythed like wheat. Orc bodies lay in arcs along the grassy slope that rose up to the tower. Their blood soaked the earth.
Ashnak rolled, with an effort, the Kalashnikov held over his head, hitting every spike of rock on the slope down towards the moat. He came to rest against three dead bodies, stinking and corrupt in the noon sun and magic.
Weakness, pain, and fear drained him. The air drummed in his ears.
“Why?” His throat was raw. “How?”
A foot stepped delicately over the marine bodies. Ashnak watched it approach, his teeth bared. He gripped the Kalashnikov in his burned hands, poising the bayonet to thrust up. An elven voice said, “It lives, Lady. Shall I end its miserable existence?”
“You,” a slobbery voice said, marvelling.
Ashnak’s burned leg had some strength, and he flexed it, gathering it beneath him to spring. His shattered leg trailed like a snake. He watched the approach of The Named.
“Bind him. No, you are not strong enough. I will.” The female Man knelt, plate harness clashing. One of her hands darted out and gripped Ashnak’s throat, far too fast for him to avoid, and squeezed.
Breath stopped. His vision went red, black, and then a plain white. He thrust blindly with the bayonet, a belly-cut, and felt her free hand grip the assault rifle’s barrel. She wrenched the Kalashnikov from his hands. His limbs were strengthless. Something hummed in his ears. He felt his gullet surge; and then he was released to vomit, and whimper in blindness, and wait for his sight to clear.
Witch-bonds bit into his burnt wrists and ankles.
Ashnak groaned a protest against the binding of his shattered leg. The female Man nodded to the elven mage at her side.
“I am merciful. This one we will keep. He will know much.”
She hefted the Kalashnikov thoughtfully, testing the weight and length of it in her armoured hand.
The pain of third-degree burns over most of his body loosened his tongue. Ashnak yelled, “What use can magic be against us? Ours aren’t witch-weapons! Why are you using magic?”
The firefight rattled and died to the east, in the Old Forest, where (too far for him to see) the remnants of the orc marine platoons were fighting to a standstill. The helmet RT whispered tinnily in Ashnak’s ear:
“—fall back! Fix bayonets! Use your weapons as clubs! Fall back and regroup at—”
Shazgurim’s voice shrieked and terminated. The distinctive hiss of witch-fire filled the channel, burning it out. Ashnak’s head bowed to his chest. He made no movement even when The Named removed his helmet.
“Elinturanbar, this one was my brother’s plaything and must be questioned.”
The lisping, wet voice ceased. Ashnak raised his head. The Named and the elven mage stared east, to forested cliffs and gorges, and the palls from burning trees.
A Bell HU-1 Iroquois helicopter slanted down across the hill slope.
Flying with unprecedented skill, the Huey feathered between the trees, using them as cover, close enough for the heavy rotors to chop branches. Leaves sprayed up. The shadows of its guns fell on the sunlit trees. Ashnak opened his mouth and hoarsely cheered.
A fork of blue lightning lanced up from the hands of the elvish mage Elinturanbar. Treetops disintegrated. The Huey flared, darted down, and pulled around in a tight circle; shot up, and the blue spike intersected its flightpath again with neat economy. One landing-skid fractured and fell.
The Huey lurched in the air, slanting downwards, made a right turn to gain power, and limped the hundred yards of open air between the Old Forest and the foot of the tower, barely above ground.
The Named’s bare hand moved. She whispered, “Fail-flight…”
Ashnak buried his face against the turf. The helicopter dropped, slammed down, bounced up, and hit the earth again no more than thirty feet away from him. He felt the impact through his burned and broken body. Shrapnel sprayed the ground and hummed through the air.
The doors cracked open. Two ores bailed out, vomiting, and dived into cover amongst the rubble.
A third figure got a slender hand to the hatchway, weaved slightly, and stepped down onto the earth.
A shadow seemed to pass across the sun. Frost fractured the grass and coated the prone bodies with ice. The earth bit into Ashnak’s shattered leg and burned hide. It was so cold that his eyeballs hurt.
The nameless necromancer reached back into the body of the Huey and recovered a spun-silicon bottle. Intact. He shook his midnight-leather robes loose from torn metal, dusted himself down with a flick of spell-fingers, and sauntered across towards the group at the foot of the Tower of Guthranc.
Ashnak stared at the slim, approaching figure. He strained at his bonds. The spell-fraught wires burned into his raw skin and cold-tender wounds. The nameless necromancer raised his head and squinted painfully at the sky.
The pale Man dimmed the sunlight with a gesture. “Ashnak. How pleasant.”
The orc coughed, blood in his throat. “Sir, beg to report, sir…”
The nameless necromancer stepped delicately over Ashnak’s body and walked on, the pale hand that was not holding a bottle outstretched.