There was a momentary silence. Then, amid yells of “Fix bayonets!”, the company seized their secondary weapons and plunged into the advancing line of armoured Men, wielding their spears, halberds, morningstars, and flails.
The smoke of battle hid them from sight.
All across the Fields of Destruction, the evil Horde of Darkness broke, ran, and routed in utter confusion.
“Ho, Amarynth!”
The squat figure of a dwarf made a black silhouette against the sunset. She plodded across the field, stout-booted feet trampling over the fallen bodies of tribal orcs wearing black plate-armour. Her red hair, tightly braided on the crown of her head, shone in the level golden light.
“Amarynth, you elven rogue!”
The elven fighter-mage leaned wearily against a boulder. Trolls and cacodaemons lay at his feet, his white-fletched arrows jutting from their eye-sockets and mouths. A great many more of the corpses surrounding the rock showed the burns of magic. “Kazra—is that you?”
“Of course it’s me,” the dwarf grumbled, wiping the back of her broad hand across her forehead. It came away green with orc blood, black with the ichor of daemons. Similar blood spattered her small, broad breastplate and arm defences. She held out the hand.
Amarynth gripped it with slender brown fingers. He then examined his hand in distaste, wiping it down his silken tunic. “I never thought I should be glad to see a dwarf! Kazra, well met. Well met, on this day of all great days!”
“It is a great day,” the dwarf said, “and a great victory, although I suppose I must give some of the credit to elves and Men. But we dwarves! How we fought!”
“Yes. There will be many a sad burning tonight at the funeral pyres. But we have won the great Victory of our Age. Evil is vanquished!”
The elven fighter-mage clapped the dwarf on the back, reaching down low to do it. Picking their way among the dead bodies of orcs, enchantresses, and ogres, the two warriors of Light made their way across the Fields of Destruction to a low ridge.
There, beyond the crows flocking down to settle on the field of battle, the countryside of the Northern Kingdoms stretched away in the sunset light. Gold touched the cornfields, the spires of distant villages, and the quiet, winding rivers.
“We shall go to Herethlion,” Amarynth said softly. “There will be much singing. The heroes shall be honoured. And the greatest of them all shall be rewarded by the High King Kelyos Magorian.”
Kazra snorted, resting on the haft of her axe. “And the High King Magorian had better appoint some of us to his Council, since who but we who fought for the Northern Kingdoms best know how to govern them? There is much that needs putting right, friend Amarynth. Traitors and Dark-lovers yet remain in hiding. We must search them out—with an inquisition, if need be.”
An unexpected and unaccustomed smile spread over Amarynth’s aquiline brown features. His black hair shone in the sun. The last vestiges of magic fractured in gold light in his eyes.
“Fear not, Kazra. We have vermin to root out, I doubt not, but we this day have created a world to last a thousand years! A world for the Light, in which no shadow of Darkness shall trouble us again.”
“And what of the scattered remnants of the defeated Evil Horde?”
“Oh,” Amarynth said, “they have nowhere to run to. We shall exterminate them over the next few weeks. After all, their Dark Master is dead and their Dark Land invaded. Where can they go, and what help can they hope for? Every good man’s hand is against them.”
The elven fighter-mage and the dwarf began to walk west, into the light of the setting sun. Kazra’s boot squelched. She swore an ancient dwarvish oath and bent down to tug her foot free of tangled white intestines spilling from the gutted body of a great orc. She cracked an orc-rib and freed her boot, muttering at the stench of decomposing flesh. Two fat cows waddled across the earth towards the corpse.
“To Herethlion!” Amarynth cried.
Kazra echoed him. “To Herethlion!”
Side by side they strode west, into a world of golden light.
The first beams of dawn shafted down through the branches of the Old Forest. Sunlight fell through ancient beech trees to the leaf-covered forest floor. Under spreading oaks, bracken turned autumnal red. Dew hung grey on spiderwebs.
A bird began to sing.
FOOM!
Amid falling feathers, Company Sergeant Marukka blew a drift of smoke from her Desert Eagle pistol and reholstered it.
“All right, you grunts—hands off cocks; on socks!”
Company Sergeant Marukka strolled down the lines of recumbent orc bodies, bellowing, kicking out with her combat boots. Black unit insignia and sergeant’s chevrons tattooed her muscular green arms. Over her squat body she wore a camouflage jacket with the sleeves ripped off and a black undershirt that strained over her large breasts. Knives, grenades, and pistols hung from her webbing. Her orange hair was pulled up into a skull-ornamented plume on the crown of her head.
“I can’t wait all da-ay…” Marukka sang sweetly. “On your feet, marines!”
Marukka turned and stood with her back to the largest beech tree, bowed legs planted wide apart, her gnarled hands clasped behind her back. The many orc grunts who had slept concealed in bracken began to stir, sitting up and rubbing their heads. One green-skinned orc absently stood up to piss. A boot emerged from the bush he had chosen as his target and kicked him across the clearing. There was a clatter of weapons and armour as he landed.
“You’re going to hate my guts,” Marukka announced, satisfied. “I’m here to see you get it right, not to wipe your scaly bums! I’ll leave that to your mothers—those of you assholes who had mothers. Even a mother couldn’t love a scurvy, filthy, undisciplined bunch of wankers like you. Am I right?”
Half on their feet, partly armoured, each with a weapon to hand, the assembled orcs hastily chorused, “Yes, Sergeant!”
“Then get your asses in gear, you ’orrible little orcs, or I’ll have your bollocks for breakfast! Corporals, get your ores on parade! At the double! Now!” Marukka paced forward, still with her hands behind her back. She kept a wary eye on the broken-down hovel that temporarily housed the company’s officers. hearing muttering voices inside. She surveyed the orcs in the slanting sunlight—some pissing up trees, some fastening combat jackets and trousers, some still slumped on the ground.
“You think because you’ve just been through the Last Battle, that excuses you? You shower of shit! You’re marines. You there—your weapons are filthy. You—your kit is incomplete. Smarten it up, you ’orrible little lot!”
“YES SERGEANT!”
One orc marine sat down again, clutching his bleeding arm. In the daylight, a number of marine injuries were visible.
“Fit marines to the right,” Marukka bawled, “and wounded marines to the left. Crawl if you have to.”
The company split raggedly, some three hundred or more orc marines moving to the right side of the clearing and perhaps thirty (more slowly) to the left.
Marukka’s lips curled back in a snarl. She walked up to the dozen marines who still stood in the centre of the clearing.
“So. Can’t make up our minds, can we? Not fit or wounded marines? Just what do you think you lot are, then?”